Performing gender
A story written by Steve Shann after a number of taped sessions with three girls. I'd like to include their names here, but don't (yet) have their permission.
Double lesson. English. The day of the girls’ performances.
Lizzy sits in her usual seat, at the front but near the window. It’s the spot she tries to make her own in every class. Has since Year 7, three years ago. She’s not sure why she’s so keen to make this spot hers. It’s at the edges. Maybe it’s that. She’s more comfortable at the edges, on the margin, away from the buzzing connected centre of things. Though this year, and in this English class, she’s begun to feel differently. She’s enjoyed this year with their teacher, Andrew Summers.
Today is the day of the girls’ performances. She’s aware that she’s been looking forward to this day all week.
Lizzy used to hate performing in class. An understatement. She used to dread orals, detest them, fear them. She’d wake up on the morning of an oral and pretend that she was sick. She was sick. There’d be this aching knot in her stomach as she imagined all the eyes turning towards her. She’d tell her mum that her period had come and she had stomach cramps, or that she had a sore throat and a throbbing headache. Her mum had bought it a few times, but then learned from the school that Lizzy’s absences coincided with oral presentations. You have to face your demons, she’d said and she would insist on nightly practice after dinner whenever an oral’s due date approached. Breathe, she would repeat when the panic threatened to take hold. Make eye contact with your audience. Tell yourself they are eager to hear what you’ve got to say. Over time Lizzy got better. Over time she started to enjoy them.
She’d been looking forward to this day, but, for the first time in ages, the knot is there in her stomach. She’s performing last today and she’s feeling some of the old fear. Of exposure. Of making a fool of herself. She suspects it’s something to do with the topic.
Gender.
Create a performance, the English teacher Mr. Somers had told them, either on your own or with others, that explores some aspect of gender. Any kind of performance. A speech. A lecture. A poem,. A story. A piece of drama. Even some music or an art work.
Lizzy’s had felt her pulse quicken as the teacher described the task. Gender had been in the air all year, especially since they were regularly asked to look at events in the texts from the point of view of the so-called minor characters. Gender was such an important and urgent topic. But the initial excitement soon turned to a kind of familiar dread of exposure. Gender was a charged topic, skirting the edges of taboo, inviting risky confessions. How might she honestly explore her own uncertainties about gender without opening herself up to wounding attacks, especially on social media?
So, as she sits now in class waiting for the presentations to begin, she feels the old anxiety. She hopes what she’s about to present - she will be the last to perform today - navigates the dangerous waters. She hopes she’s found a way to be honest without being foolish.
Last week the class decided that the girls would present one day, and the boys during the next double lesson. It was a decision they’d come to after a rollicking and sometimes fractious discussion which, if not for Mr. Somers’ firmness and sense of humour, might have got out of hand. There was the argument, passionately argued by a couple of students, that this decision was implicitly supporting the discriminatory view that there were two - and only two - distinct genders. Lizzy had been amongst the strongest advocates of this point of view. In the end, though, objections were overruled. ‘It will be interesting,’ said Mr Somers, ‘to see if this adds a dimension to our discussions. Like thinking about whether there were common threads in the girls’ presentations, and different ones in the boys.’
So today it’s the girls’ turn.
And Trina, who has decided to present on her own, is up first.
Trina
Trina has written a poem. She’s memorised it. Trina is good with words. She stands at the front of the class, confident as usual, and recites with relish.
Last night I shaved off my left eyebrow.
I didn’t mean to. Shave it right off, I mean.
I just meant to trim its edges, to sharpen its lines.
Just a bit, nothing too dramatic.
But suddenly the whole eyebrow was gone.
It looks ridiculous. I feel so foolish.
What was I thinking?I wasn’t. Thinking, I mean. I wasn’t thinking.
I was instead like a leaf in fast-moving river,
Carried along
By voices.
‘Look your best … Pay attention to your brows … Brows take time …
Use the right brush … Don’t use too much product … clean up all that unwanted hair.
Aspire to be perfect.’How many of my decisions are like this,
Shaped not by thought but by what surrounds me,
By what I’m meant to be, by how I’m meant to look?
And is it worse for girls?
Or are boys too nudged and pushed into impulses
That leave them feeling helpless, foolish and weak?
Like me with one eyebrow.
Trina beams at the applause which follows. Then, melodramatically, she pinches her left eyebrow and pulls. Nothing. Her eyebrows are real.
Andrea
Andrea is next. She has a script, which she hands out to the class, and a group of fellow classmates who have agreed to stage her little play. She pushes some student desks together to form one big table, and then the handful of girls, all draped with white sheets toga-style, sit as the table as if at a meeting, chatting animatedly amongst themselves. Andrea announces over the hubbub of voices:
AND THE GODS CREATED HUMANS
Andrea herself is the narrator and reads the stage directions.
INTERIOR: An overcrowded boardroom dominates the stage. Seated around a circular wooden boardroom table are the GODS OF CREATION. They’re all dressed in long white robes.
FIRST GOD
Order! Order! The meeting will come to order! … Order! … Thank you, colleagues, thank you. As it is my turn to lead our discussion today - the fifteenth in our series called ‘Let’s get this Earth project up and running’ - allow me to introduce to you our topic. Today we must decide which species will come to dominate this earth, and what should be its gendered characteristics.
SECOND GOD
And you’ll remember from yesterday’s proceedings, that we’ve already decided to call this new species HUMANS. Some will be male, some female.
FIRST GOD
And we’ve agreed that there’ll need to be some kind of transition for each from dependence to maturity, and that we’ll call this transition ‘puberty’.
GODS all begin to laugh and chatter [‘Oh yes! Puberty! Can’t wait to see how that one turns out! Stroke of genius if you ask me. I’ve needed a good laugh!’], as if a shared joke has just been recalled.
FIRST GOD
Order! Order! There’s serious business still to do, a decision still to be made. Puberty for both males and females, yes, we’ve agreed to that. But should the transition to adulthood, this puberty, involve the same injection of hormones for each?
Puzzled murmurs from the gods, as if this is a silly question.
SECOND GOD
Yes, yes, we know! We know! Of course there must be a difference. Puberty is designed to create one group that can produce eggs and the other that can fertilise them. That’s granted. We’ve already decided on this. But there’s another relevant and connected question to which we haven’t as yet turned our minds. Will these different hormones also produce different side effects, on behaviour and mood for example?
THIRD GOD
Why is this even a question? Why would we want to produce different side effects? What would be the point?
There is a moment of silence around the table, then little murmured conversations, all subdued and uncertain, puzzled as to why this question has even arisen.
FOURTH GOD
Just listen to you all! Why make it different? Have you all so quickly forgotten! We’re creating this species for our amusement. And what could be more amusing than creating totally random differences in emotion and behaviour between the sexes! Let’s inject hormones into the females that create mood swings, random and out-of-control pain, momentary uncertainty and confusions and self-doubt. At the same time let’s inject hormones into the males that lead them to feel unjustifiably confident, aggressive, dominant, protective!
THIRD GOD
And this would be funny, how?
FOURTH GOD
[Laughing as he describes the scenes]
The girls … can’t you just see it … the girls would, around once a month, be plunged into this period … hey, let’s call these things ‘periods’! … they’d suddenly be plunged into these periods where they’re having these unpredictable and undermining feelings surge through their bodies, where they can never be sure whether the reaction they’re having to any particular event is rational or hormone-driven, and where the confidence that they’ve built up over their pre-adolescent years is suddenly, unexpectedly, undermined. At the same time, boys are suddenly filled with a totally false conviction that their strutting and swagger is impressing the adolescent girls. A thousand disasters then unfold! A thousand totally avoidable disasters. You’ve got to laugh!
But the FOURTH GOD has been so carried away by his own warped sense of humour, that he hasn’t noticed that the room has gone silent, that none of the others are seeing this as in any way amusing.
FIRST GOD
You, sir, are totally out of order! Out of order! What do you take us for? Of course we wouldn’t do something like that. The very thought …
Scene ends abruptly with lights going out and the theatre sitting in total darkness.
Andrea and her actors bow. The applause is subdued, especially from the boys. It’s as if the audience is not sure whether Andrea has been making a serious point or is just playing for laughs.
Madison
Madison is next. Madison doesn’t say much in class. She’s the studious type. High marks, highly focussed.
She stands up from her seat in front of Lizzy, walks quietly to the front of the class, and then reads the following story.
Alison sits off to the side of the classroom. At the front but off to the side. She’s found it’s the best spot for observing everyone, for watching the body language and the facial expressions of the other students in the class. Once upon a time, even up until the middle of last year, this mattered very much. She needed to be able to study the other students.
To know the enemy.
But this is a new year, a new school, a new class. English, Year 10. The teacher has just read out a poem. No explanations or anything, no introductory remarks about this Year 10 English class. Just a poem. And then nothing. The room is silent.
‘Thoughts?’ the teacher asks.
‘It’s an interesting poem,’ says a boy at the front.
‘Say some more, Jordan,’ says the teacher.
‘The imagery,’ Jordan says. ‘The juxtapositions. The use of metaphor and poetic techniques.’
Alison smiles to herself. From her vantage point she can see the boy’s earnest face. She can see, behind him, students rolling their eyes. ‘Wanker,’ someone mouths silently. She might have imagined it, but she thinks even the teacher winced.
She wouldn’t have noticed these things a year ago. A year ago, she would have immediately identified this boy as her main rival. A year ago, she would have been plotting how she was going to beat him so she could emerge as the class’s top student. A year ago, she would have been jotting down desperate little notes to herself. ‘Look up definition of juxtaposition. Make list of poetic techniques in this poem.’
Alison knows, now, why she was once so desperately and unhappily competitive. It was because she was an ambitious girl in a male’s world. She’d noticed, right from the primary school days, how it was the boys who got most of the attention. She’d seen, too, how her mother had hit glass ceilings. She’d watched as her brothers wafted through school and breezed into prestigious universities.
Alison had felt all along that she needed to work really hard, much harder than those around her, to be seen as smart. And she needed to beat the boys, the top dogs.
She’d developed a steely competitive streak. She’d argue with teachers over the marks she was given. And she’d made a habit of always identifying, in the first lessons in any new class, the boy who would be her main opposition, the one she would come to despise with a passion and who, come hell or high water, she would beat when the final term’s marks were given out.
Again Alison smiles. If this had been a year ago, she would have already marked this Jordan boy down as her opposition. She would have taken his pretentious and empty little response as a sign of ambition and intelligence. She would be girding her loins. Strapping on the armour.
And, she now realises, she’d be ignoring the evidence all round her that it was actually some of the other girls who were making the most intelligent responses and who were soon to get the best marks.
Phuong
Phuong was next.
No-one has heard Phuong say much. She’s been at the school since Year 7, with very little English. She rarely speaks, even now, though her English is excellent. She’s a listener rather than a talker.
She’s known for her musicianship. She plays the piano in the school hall most lunchtimes, and she’s often carrying around a case with some musical instrument or another inside.
Now Phuong walks slowly to the front of the class. She’s very elegant and very beautiful. Everyone thinks so. Long black hair, very straight and thick and silky, and flawless skin. There’s a kind of aura around her. The class is still as she made her way to the front.
She has wheeled to the front a big suitcase which has been sitting unnoticed at the back of the room, and she is now taking out some musical instruments. An electronic keyboard. A drum. A violin. A speaker.
There’s also one of those recording devices street performers use, where you can play something and then it sets up some kind of loop which plays over any new music that is performed live.
The room is very still. Respectful.
She begins with the violin. The tune she plays is haunting, slow, melancholic. It is soulful music.
With her foot, Phuong presses the button on the recording device, and while the tune she’s been playing starts over in a loop, Phuong picks up the drum.
At first the drum beat is completely out of time with the beautiful violin melody. It is uncomfortable to listen to. But then, about half way through the melody, it is as if Phuong has started to listen more carefully to the looped music. She morphs the rhythm of the drum beat so that, for the last few bars, it blends in with, and then supports, the looped violin.
Again Phuong clicks the loop button so now the class hears the violin and a drum beat continuing in sync with each other, a lovely blending of violin and soft drumming.
Phong stands behind the keyboard and begins a new tune. At first it is out of sync with the music coming from the loop machine, but she keeps adjusting the melody and the rhythm of the keyboard’s music, and by the end of the performance all three instruments are working together beautifully. It is mesmerising.
She finishes. There is silence. Then the the applause.
Phuong gives a quick stiff bow. Then she waits until the room is quiet again.
‘Maybe you are thinking,’ she says, ‘that Phuong didn’t understand what this project was about? Maybe you are thinking that Phuong doesn’t really know what this English word ‘gender’ means? Perhaps this is true. My English is not yet so confident. Not perfect, at least. But I will tell you why I perform in this manner.
‘When I arrive in Australia, I could not speak any English. I sit with groups of students, and all I hear is the music of their conversation. Their words mean nothing to me. But the music … the music is very, very interesting. With boys, the music is often … how shall I say it … increasing in volume but repetitive in melody. And in rhythm. One boy say something, then another say something that sounds quite similar, but louder. Then they laugh. And the first boy say something but louder still and there is more laughing and maybe pushing. This is not always the case. But I notice a kind of pattern when boys are talking.
‘When girls are talking, it is often different. One girl begins a conversation - today I represent this with my violin. Then another would say something and sometimes the melody and rhythm of this second person is different. But the second speaker stops and then starts again, and then maybe stop and then start again, as if searching for a way to say something that was in tune or in time with the first person. That is my drum. And then maybe a third girl, or the first girl, has a turn, and this is my keyboard, and again there is this searching for something to say that fits in, that is a part of the same music, the same melody or the same rhythm. Searching for common ground. Creating a shared space, a feeling of belonging, an ensemble in tune with each other.
‘I think that because I can’t understand the words, I pay more attention to the music. And I notice this difference between some girl groups and some boy groups. I think it is interesting. Maybe you will listen next more to the melody of a conversation and you will hear what I have heard.’
Kaitlyn
Next is Kaitlyn. She has written a screenplay, which she reads to the class.
LOOK AT ME
FADE IN:
INT. A YEAR 9 ENGLISH CLASSROOM
The scene opens as the camera pans slowly with close-ups of students sitting in rows and listening to a teacher’s voice. The teacher is reading a poem. We hear the poem, but for a while we do not see the teacher. Just the students’ faces. They are clearly drawn into the poem by the way the teacher reads it.
TEACHER’S VOICE (Off camera)
The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.Camera is now on the teacher, a long shot from the back of the classroom, so we can still see the backs of the students’ heads. The teacher is not reading the poem; she’s reciting it. Her movements indicate that she, too, is completely immersed in the scene, that she is seeing in her mind’s eye the fish on the hook hanging half out of the water.
TEACHER
Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
And its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly –
…Suddenly there’s an interruption off to the side and the camera - along with the students’ heads - swings round. The classroom door is flung open. A boy is standing at the door with a broad smile on his face.
JOSH
Hey miss, I’m here!
Still smiling, he looks around at the faces turned towards him.
You missed me, right? Well I’ve arrived!
TEACHER
Josh, you’re late and you’re interrupting. Just take a seat quickly. We’ll talk about your lateness later.
JOSH
(with mock innocent tone, picking up an empty chair and holding it up)
This seat? Should I take this one?
TEACHER
Sit down Josh.
JOSH starts to walk around the room with the chair, as if looking for a place to sit. He points to a spot on the opposite side of the room, with an expression of mock-relief, then squeezes along a row of students in order to get there, holding the chair high above his head.
JOSH
Excuse me ... excuse me ... oh hello Brianna, nice hair ... just trying to get over there ... excuse me ... sorry Miss ... nearly there.
In the background we can see some of the boys smiling awkwardly, and a group of girls rolling their eyes. Some of the girls look angry, some resigned as if this is a common occurrence. The teacher stands with hands on hips, fuming but reluctant to engage any more with Josh in case things escalate.
Josh reaches the space, puts his chair slowly and carefully down, tests to see that it’s stable, then holds his thumb up to the teacher as if signalling that she can proceed. He leans forward in his chair, with an earnest look, as if impatient to hear what the teacher has been saying.
TEACHER
OK. Let’s try that again, shall we, from the top? Let’s try to get back the atmosphere we had ...
JOSH
I’m sorry Boss. Have I interrupted something important?
TEACHER
(Ignoring Josh and again reciting, but the conviction has left her voice. The camera again pans slowly with close-ups of the students, just as in the opening, but we can tell the mood has changed. Some of the students are looking furious, some are looking nervously over at Josh as if expecting another interruption. Josh is now writing a note, which he gives to the girl sitting next to him and indicates that she’s to pass it on. The teacher begins again to recite.
The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.[Hesitating, as if not sure of the next words. She is relieved when they come, and unconsciously races through the next three lines.]
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely.[The teacher realises she’s not reciting it well now, and tries to re-establish the right tone, but it’s slightly too dramatic.]
Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
And its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses …The teacher’s voice fades, and the camera comes to rest on the face of a girl at the front, brushing furious tears away.)
FADE OUT
Jemma, Ali, Soraya & Astrid
There is a ten minute delay before the third group is ready. First the group - Jemma, Ali, Soraya and Astrid - rearranges the classroom so there is a ring of desks around the perimeter and nothing in the centre. The audience is directed to sit on the desks around the perimeter, looking inwards. Then the performers go off to the girls’ change rooms to get ready.
They chat in the classroom as they wait for the performers is about what an unlikely group they are. Ali and Soraya are friends - they’d gone to the same primary school. But Astrid is something of a loner, and Jemma has battled depression, or so people say, and only comes to school every so often. They aren’t a friendship group, as far as anyone knows, though since this gender project was announced, they’ve often been seen together, presumably plotting their presentation. If there is anything that connected them, some in the class speculate, it is that each has mentioned, during an earlier English unit, that they’d been targeted by bullies in the past.
Then a hand appears from out of the corridor and the classroom lights are switched off. The audience falls silent.
The four girls march in - not walk, but march, fists clenched and stomping on the ground. It is so startlingly unexpected from these quiet girls.
‘Lights!’ shouts Astrid once they’ve taken up their positions at the centre of the room, shoulder to shoulder facing outwards, facing the audience. Their faces are heavily and aggressively made up. They stand for a moment, all four staring, scowling, with hands on hips. Aggression personified.
One of them then presses PLAY on an iPhone, and a boom box they’ve positioned somewhere in the room begins to play a heavy, throbbing rap beat. Soraya’s foot started tapping to the beat. She stares at the members of the class in front of her. So do the other three. They look powerful, hate-filled.
They begin to chant, in unison, directing their venom towards the audience, stamping their feet, pumping their fists, four throbbing beats to each line.
[Hook/Chorus]
We are the in-group, we know we are hot
The cool girls are in it and you girl, you’re not
Pubescent we may be but when we’re a knot
You cannot untie us, cos we know the plot.
We’re cool and we’re nasty and you girl, you’re not
If you try to get close then we’ll give you a shot
Of our venom, our poison, you despicable grot
We’ll destroy you, upset you, then leave you to rot.[Verse 1]
You’re wearing a short skirt, we’ll call you a ho
You’ve got hoops in your hair and you’re clearly a pro
You’re using mum’s makeup so your face doesn’t show
So what are you hiding? You’re ugly. We know.
We shift all the chairs so you sit on your own,
We post nasty stuff that you read on your phone
We whisper behind you, we snigger and groan
And we stick together while you’re left to moan.[Chorus]
We are the in-group, we know we are hot
The cool girls are in it and you girl, you’re not
Pubescent we may be but when we’re a knot
You cannot untie us, cos we know the plot.
We’re cool and we’re nasty and you girl, you’re not
If you try to get close then we’ll give you a shot
Of our venom, our poison, you despicable grot
We’ll destroy you, upset you, then leave you to rot.[Verse 2]
The school takes us camping and we travel by bus
And we sit right behind you and we loudly discuss
That you don’t have a boyfriend and you’re rooming with us
And it’s clear that you’re gay and attracted to us
Cos we’re smart and we’re sassy and we’re cool and we’re fussed
That you’ll try something on. It’s your nature. You must.
And we say all this loudly. Your cover is bust.
And now you are you crying! We got through your crust![Chorus]
We are the in-group, we know we are hot
The cool girls are in it and you girl, you’re not
Pubescent we may be but when we’re a knot
You cannot untie us, cos we know the plot.
We’re cool and we’re nasty and you girl, you’re not
If you try to get close then we’ll give you a shot
Of our venom, our poison, you despicable grot
We’ll destroy you, upset you, then leave you to rot.
‘Lights!’ shouts Astrid again. Someone, looking sheepish I thought, turns them on. The four march out. The room is silent for a moment. Someone said ‘Wow!’ Another laughs nervously. Students look shaken.
The four return almost immediately. They have nervous smiles now. They look more like themselves.
Mr Summers also looks somewhat thrown off guard. He suggests we each write for a while, to allow thoughts and feelings to surface. ‘These,’ he says, ‘could be part of what we talk about when we discuss all these presentations.’
Louise
It’s Louise’s turn next.
Louise has come from another school. During her first weeks, she was often absent. But often when she was absent from other classes, she came to English. She sits silently most lessons, never making eye-contact, doodling with a pencil.
Today, when her name is called, she stands (eyes still cast downwards), walks quickly to the back of the room, activates her computer which (apparently) she’d hooked up to the data projector before class, and then switches off the classroom lights. Mr. Summers draws the classroom blinds. The room falls silent.
‘I want to show you my most recent painting,’ Louise says. Her tone is surprisingly confident.
A photo appears. A photo of an empty garage being used as a painter’s studio. There are canvases leaning against walls, some with half-finished paintings. There are paint splodges on the concrete floor, and sheets of newspaper, and trays with brushes of various sizes, and jars half-filled with dirty water. And, at the very far end of the garage, there is a canvas on an easel, a canvas completely covered with indistinct images and scrawls and clashing colours.
‘This is where I paint,’ says Louise. ‘I spend a lot of time in this garage.’
She clicks the mouse. The image changes. To a close-up of the canvas.
‘A bit of a mess, isn’t it,’ says Louise. But she doesn’t seem disheartened. She is smiling.
‘It’s a total flop,’ she says. ‘As a painting, anyway. It hasn’t worked. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. So instead I’m going to tell you the story of doing it. And luckily I took some photos of it as it progressed, and maybe they’ll help you understand what I was trying to do.’
The second slide appears. The canvas is now blank, except for what looks like a pencil sketch of a floorpan of a house, and in the centre of the floorpan is a single bed.
‘When I was at primary school, in the early grades at least, I was shy but happy. I loved school. I loved the things we did, the reading and writing, the painting and playing outside in the sandpit, the dressing up and pretending and all that. I had a kind of immortal confidence. It was a quiet confidence; I was never ever an extravert or anything like it. But I just had this feeling that I fitted into the world, or that the world adapted itself to what I needed, or something like that. But puberty came to me early. I was still at primary school. Maybe other kids talked about it, but no-one talked to me about the ups and downs that I suddenly started to feel. The confusions. The unexpected tears and occasional rages that came out of nowhere. I didn’t know what was happening really. My immortal confidence went out the window. I started to cake myself on with makeup and stuff, but it didn’t suit me and kids started to tease me for it. I didn’t know who I was any more, and I was really uncomfortable about what was happening around me. So I started to refuse to go to school. Home seemed the only safe place. Then I’d refuse to get up in the morning. Bed became a kind of haven for me. It was like when I was in bed, nothing could get at me, kids couldn’t tease me. I was just me. So, when I started this painting, I wanted to have first my home then my bed at the centre, as the sanctuary where I could hide away from what was happening around me.’
The classroom is still. There are boys who get uncomfortable when the conversation gets serious or when the limelight isn’t on them, but even they sit silent.
‘But then something changed,’ says Louise, and she shows the next slide. The floorpan is now streaked with red strokes, like missiles piercing walls, and the bed is half-covered with speech bubbles and tiny black clouds.
‘In the long hours I spent at home and in bed during the day, I discovered social media, and I foolishly started creating online connections with some of my school mates. But instead of making friends, I became a target. Increasing torrents of abuse penetrated the walls of my home, my sanctuary. Stories were told about weird things I was said to have done, how I was weird, ugly, mental, defective, obviously on the spectrum … And I couldn’t stop reading it. I just felt so alone, so isolated, so utterly without hope that I’d ever find a safe place again. My home and my bed, my only safe places, had been breached. I had really dark thoughts during those times.’
Her voice, though, doesn’t sound defeated. Angry, maybe, but energetically angry.
‘Then, a couple of years ago, I started to paint.’ The next slide appears, quickly followed by another, and then another. On each a rough painting was superimposed over the invaded and defaced house, first one of a tree in a wind (thick bands of streaky browns and greens), then an overlapping image of a set of bloodied teeth, and then a stormy sky. Thick blobs of paint, bold wild brush strokes. There was now nothing of the house or bed visible, both buried under image after wild image. The final slide was the same as the first one, just a chaotic blur, though now fragments of tree, teeth, sky can be identified.
‘It doesn’t work, I know. It’s a mess. But it’s my story. Discovering painting, doing paintings like this one, letting loose and working with my creative side, has helped me build back confidence. It’s not immortal confidence any more. But when I’m painting, when I’m creating stuff, I feel like I’m reclaiming a self, I’m discovering some kind of safe place where I can be and I can grow. Or something like that.’
There is a hush in the room as the lights go on.
‘I don’t mean this in any critical way,’ says a girl in the audience. ‘I really liked listening to your story. But how is it a story about gender? Anyone of any gender could have had experiences like yours. Boys get picked on. Boys refuse to go to school. Boys find creative ways to re-engage with the world. Yours isn’t a girls’ story. It could be anyone’s.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ says Louise. ‘I guess I have two things to say about that though. Isn’t it true about all our contributions in this project, that nothing is just gender-determined. What we do and think and who we become is the result of lots of factors, all mixed up together. But I do think there’s a gender element in my story, and not just because of the way puberty affects girls, the way it undermines that early confidence. Or maybe the gender element is in a part of the story that I didn’t tell you. The other day I went to see the careers adviser. I told her I wanted to be an artist. She told me that it was hard to make a living as an artist. She told me that my grades were good enough for me to aspire for a job in industry or government, especially because I’ve done well in maths and science. She told me about all these jobs for intelligent females these days, ‘people with your brains’, and listed all these university courses she thought I’d be capable of doing. I felt unseen, or at least just seen as a female with marketable talents. I wasn’t being listened to. I wanted encouragement to be my true self, I wanted to be acknowledged as someone who had kind of saved her own life through discovering her creative self. I don’t know. Maybe that’s not a gender thing. I don’t know. I just know that I felt unseen.’
Mandy
The next session is Mandy’s. After what has been some confronting and for some confusing sessions, the class is ready for something from Mandy, the class extrovert, the singer and dancer.
Her hair is in pigtails, and she is wearing a long coat, as are six of her friends, two of whom lug big spotlights into the room. The classroom lights are switched off, and then, after a short expectant silence (there are giggles from one of the actors, who is shushed by Mandy), a spotlight comes on.
There is Mandy wearing black tights, a la Olivia Newton-John in Grease. There is a sign that says ‘HAIRDRESSER’, and Mandy/Olivia is sitting in a chair surrounded by four ‘hairdressers’. A sixth girl, wearing a ridiculously large John Travolta mask, is sitting, slumped and apparently miserable, a little way off at the edges of the spotlight.
The music to He’s the one I love from Grease begins. Mandy starts to take out her pigtails. The hairdressers are fussing over her, showing her pictures of hairstyles they think might suit.
Mandy has the music to the song, without the words. She has composed her own words:
It’s nice I know, and I aint lying,
But my ex’s girlfriend’s got that style.
I need a look that you’re supplying
That’s electrifying.
Then, as the tempo of the music picks up, she jumps out of the chair and begins to sway and then dance as she sings.
You better shape up cos I need to flirt
And a boy is in my net
He sure better know that he might get hurt
Cos I can’t get stuck, not yet.Chorus (Hairdressers join in)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
The one that I need, oh yes indeed.
Then, back to Mandy singing on her own:
I’ve just remembered that last Friday
Had my hair tied in a knot
He drifted near, then whispered ‘Mandy
Girl you look hot!’
Now, as they sing the chorus again, Mandy dances while the hairdressers fuss around her, putting her hair into a knot.
Chorus
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
The one I need, oh yes indeed.
The hairdressers now have Mandy’s hair in a knot, and she dances around, the hairdressers salon pretending to swoon and faint as she passes by.
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
The one I need, oh yes indeed.
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
He’s the one that I’ll catch (He is the one she’ll catch, Ho, ho, ho, honey)
The one I need, oh yes indeed.
Then the spotlight goes out, and the second spotlight comes on, lighting up the forlorn-looking boy on a chair with the John Travolta mask. He sings the following to the tune of ‘Sandy’ from Grease.
Stranded at the cafe
Feeling like a fool
What will they say Monday at school?
Mandy, can’t you see, I’m in misery
You sitting there, a knot in your hair
A knot in my heart, you see.
You have gone, I sing this song
I sit and wonder why-yi-yi
Why you left me oh Mandy?
Oh Mandy baby, someday when high-yi school is done
Even if I have to wait forever til our two worlds will be one
Me with my mended heart, you with knots in your hair
Oh please don’t leave me Mandy, oh Mandy.
Mandy, my darling, you hurt me real bad.
One look at your hair, and baby I was gone
And now I’m empty inside without you.
You have gone, I sing this song
I sit and wonder why-yi-yi
Why you left me Mandy?
The lights go out and the class shouts and stomps feet and applaud wildly, Mr Summers included. There are big foolish smiles on the faces of the actors. And a good feeling in the room, as if in this moment everyone is pleased to be at school and in this class.
Lizzy
And then, finally, it is Lizzy’s turn. The wild fun of Mandy’s show has chased away any hint of nerves. Lizzy gets fellow students to push all the desks and chairs to the side, and instructs everyone to sit on the floor, as if they were still all back at primary school. Lizzy herself sits in a chair in front of the group. And then, in her best storyteller voice, she begins.
There was once a princess who lived in an island country called Eye-the-Oar. She was Princess Esmerelda. Esmerelda didn’t much like her name - she wished the king and queen would call her Essie - but they wouldn’t hear of it. ‘We named you Esmerelda,’ they said sternly, ‘because Esmerelda is a fit name for a princess. Essie is a fit name for a commoner. You are a princess and you are Esmerelda.’
The young Esmerelda came to appreciate her parents’ inflexibility, where everything was either black or white. You were either a member of the royal family and looked after, or you were a commoner and did the looking after. You were either an adult who made family decisions or you were a child who obeyed. (Children became adults on the stroke of midnight on their 21st birthday.) You were either male, in which case you took part in manly sports, wore trousers and had short hair; or you were female, in which case you played music and developed your artistic sensibility, wore dresses and had long hair. And so on. Boundaries between the opposites were clearly defined and scrupulously adhered to.
The clear demarcation of opposites extended even further. It was either night or it was day. It was either summer or it was winter (they had only two seasons). It was either time for work or it was time for non-work. You were either asleep or you were awake. You were either sick or you were healthy. There were no in-betweens, no fuzzy boundaries. Everyone knew where they stood. .
As I said, Esmerelda came to appreciate this clarity. There was order in her life. Predictability. A rather pleasant sense of security.
But things began to fall apart, to disintegrate, to become complicated, the day she asked her father why their country was called Eye-the-Oar. She had imagined (with an imagination that had grown quietly and secretly out of the sight of her literal-minded parents) that it had something to do with their history as an island state. Had there been a special boat that carried the royal family of old to and from neighbouring islands, a boat with a large eye painted onto one of its oars? Or was it that one of the constellations she would study on a clear night, one that resembled an eye perhaps, had been an important navigational aid to those who had founded their city, naming it in honour of the eye that had guided them to this propitious spot?
Her father looked coldly at his daughter when one day she shared these speculations with him.
‘Where did you get these ridiculous and fanciful ideas Esmerelda,’ he said. ‘We wanted to call our country ‘either-or’, as this is its guiding principle. Some foolish foreigners sneered at our name, so we played a trick on them. We called our country Eye-the-Oar. It’s our only joke.’
One night a mighty wind began to blow outside the palace. The trees outside thrashed about, the windows rattled and shook, the roof beams groaned ominously. Esmerelda found it inexplicably exciting. She secretly left the palace by a back entrance. She battled wind and rain and made her way down to the shore. She got into a boat and untied the mooring rope. She put up a sail. Then she lay down in the bottom of the boat and let the storm take her where it would.
For two days and two nights she lay in the storm-tossed boat, until at last, on the third day, she awoke and found the wind had gone and the boat was still. She looked out and saw that she had run aground on a beach. There were people watching her. Foreign people. Esmerelda was a little bit scared and a little bit excited. A large family group - there must have been eight or nine children - boys or girls, Esmerelda wasn’t sure - approached the boat. They made friendly gestures. They were inviting Esmerelda to join them.
The family took Esmerelda by coach through the city streets. What a queer city it was! They made their way along winding streets (back home the streets were on a predictable grid: they either went north-south or they went east-west). These streets were crowded with coaches, pedestrians, street vendors and animals. Esmerelda had never imagined such confusion, such disorder.
And at the family’s home, the confusions multiplied. ‘Are you hungry?’ they asked her, even though the hour was not a set meal time. ‘Are you tired, do you want to sleep?’ they asked, even though it was broad daylight outside. ‘Your clothes are soaked, here change into these dry ones,’ they said, even though the clothes they offered were clearly more suitable for a commoner boy than a royal princess. Esmerelda felt disoriented, upset. She missed the the order and structure of Eye-the-Oar.
She missed the order and structure, yes, but she also noticed how much more alive she felt here than back at home. She woke up on the second morning and noticed how eagerly she got dressed, and how much she was looking forward to discovering what this new day would bring.
There was one of the children, Alex, who was about Esmerelda’s age, and with whom she shared a room. Was Alex a boy or a girl? Esmerelda had no idea. Alex was unfailingly kind and thoughtful, and Esmerelda at first concluded that Alex was a girl. But Alex also loved to play football and was an outspoken leader amongst the children in the family, and then Esmerelda thought that perhaps Alex was a boy.
One day she decided to find out for certain.
‘Alex,’ she said. ‘Are you a boy or are you a girl?’
‘Essie,’ said Alex, ‘you are no longer living on the island of Eye-the-Oar.’
‘Well,’ says Mr Summers after the applause. ‘There’s an interesting way for us to finish the girls’ contributions to our unit. We’ll open the whole thing up for discussion next week, but first, it’s the boys’ turn. Tomorrow we’ll have the first of them. I’ll see you then.’