With a book wide open

Well I was flexing my muscles for another feminist rant but even I was starting to get tired of my recently very singular focus on this issue. Once woke, you just can't un-woke. But even raging takes its energy, so instead I'm going to review some of the things I've read and watched lately.

This (very short!) article on racism
There is nothing really new about this theoretical framework for thinking about racism, but it's very neat and it may help you organise your thoughts. The entire article is only three pages (with pictures) and is worth a read if you (like me) have had troubles defining racism to others in the past.

7 Leadership Lessons Men Can Learn from Women
Without descending into a rant, I've been thinking lately about the consistent feedback I used to get at work about speaking up more and projecting more confidence. I admit that these are things I should work on - but I also know that I'm going to have to develop my own style of leadership, because I don't like some of the models I've been given of what confidence in the workplace looks like. I also feel like our conception of workplace success generally looks very male (here I'm using 'male' to capture qualities we traditionally associate with being masculine). I get told to speak up more, but I wonder if anyone ever gets feedback on only speaking up when they have something meaningful to say. I once gave some informal feedback to a male colleague that he talked too much, but I don't think he took it seriously. I also responded to comments my teammates made on a junior female colleague about her needing to work on her confidence - while I admitted this was the case, I also pointed out that she was very honest when she didn't understand something, which meant she genuinely wanted to learn, and wouldn't pretend to know something when she didn't. Contrast this with another junior colleague, who was bad at asking questions and good at projecting self-confidence - this made it much harder for us to detect when he needed help with something which just ended up wasting everyone's time.

My old blog posts
Lol, a 5-star read. I was trying to find an old post where I'd listed my favourite books (back then) and ended up going way further down memory lane. Even just looking at a small sample of my old writing made me realise that the problems I'm dealing with now are all things I've thought about in the past, and that I had answers too (even if they were theoretical answers). Now that I've faced them in real life, I'm glad to say that I stayed true to myself. Here's a snippet from an old review of Go set a Watchman:

I roll my eyes when articles such as 'bookseller offers to refund anyone who is unhappy with Watchman' pop up. Honestly people, good books challenge you, it makes you feel something intensely. When I read Watchman it screwed me up way more than Mockingbird did. There's the bigger issue with Atticus' racial attitude, there's also the issue with him turning out not to be the person you thought he was. I waited impatiently for Atticus to explain why he was at a white citizen's council, maybe he wanted to stay informed of the enemy's movements - I didn't care, it couldn't just be because he was racist. So when it turned out that he was indeed just racist, my heart broke just like Scout's. Who's heart doesn't when someone that you respect so much goes and does something you despise (and thought they despised it too), and suddenly realising that at some point in your life you surpassed the person you used to hold in such high regard.

Masterchef
So I really liked Sarah Tiong from her season which is why I'm so happy she's back! I really like Laura in this season too. The new judges are great, they're all really different. I think I like Jock the most because his feedback is quite constructive, Melissa I feel comes up with these perfect marketing spiels off-the-cuff for every plate of food she eats and Andy just runs around saying things like 'flavourtown'. Sometimes when he's talking to Ben, or Hayden or Lynton I feel like I'm watching an entirely different show, something like 'Blokechef'.

The Magician's Nephew
I re-read this recently and still loved it just as much as the first time. It's never spelt out in the books, but I'd forgotten that the White Witch can only read the minds of men (she makes offhand comments about this) and it seems like she can't read the minds of women at all. (When Polly and Aunt Letty first meet the witch neither can find anything that impressive. Diggory and Uncle Andrew on the other hand are smitten. Also when the children first meet her, she only talks to Diggory - partly because Diggory is the person who rung the bell that woke her, and partly because she can't read Polly's mind). It seems like the more corruptible the man, the more attractive and under her spell they fall. Maybe women are susceptible too though C. S. Lewis appears to suggest that the things that make men more susceptible - their ego, their arrogance, their materialism - are less abundant among women, making them more inviolable. I also think she derives power from the darkness within the people around her. So in Charn she was powerful because it was a dying kingdom where everyone was corrupt. In the Wood Between the Worlds however, the witch is senile because there is no evil in that place (only a sense of eternal stillness). In our world, the witch has no magic but her physical strength and beauty gives her all the power and control she needs.

Diggory is asked by Aslan to prove himself and atone for waking up the evil witch. His guilt and subsequent awareness of his own fallibility makes him grow as a character. I sometimes wonder if those are the qualities that C. S. Lewis means when he has Narianians say things like 'Narnia was never right unless a Son of Adam and a Daughter of Eve sat on the throne'. The interesting thing is, most of his daughters of Eve are incorruptible and not generally subject to the same test of character as the sons of Adam. But most of his villains are also women. Though in his books men generally have to betray themselves before the female villain has power over them. (In the movie Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch claims, by ancient Narnian law, that every traitor's blood belongs to her).

I also found this among my old posts:

Lately I've been harbouring a desire to read books from my childhood, and while flicking through channels waiting for the AFI awards during an ad break on Saturday (was it?), I ended up watching Anne of whatever-is-after-green-gables instead and resenting the fact that I didn't read Anne when I was younger. I don't know why. And next thing you know here I was with Diggory and Polly and the spindly Uncle Andrew and the White Witch before she was white and my favourite scene of all: The Wood Between the Worlds and it's misplaced guinea pigs. Reading children's books again. 

I love The Magician's Nephew, more than it's over-rated sequel, which by the way has this really nice dedication: 

To Lucy Barfield 

My Dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis 

And when I read it, I had a Chris Gardner moment. You know in The Pursuit of Happyness when he wonders how Thomas Jefferson knew to put the word 'pursuit' before happiness in the declaration? Well it was like that, except I was wondering how C.S. Lewis knew people would be old enough to read fairytales again.

I mean, I guess I know why I turn back to fairytales all the time. So it's not surprising that C. S. Lewis also knew. Fairytales are as much for children as they are for adults but modern day adulthood is so practical, shallow and boring that it makes most adults think that's how life should be and you shouldn't waste time on stories.

C. S. Lewis - A Biography
This is the book I bought for a dollar at a book fair. C. S. Lewis was actually a very emotionally stunted man until about his mid-30s when he became a true Christian. I think his spirituality helped him channel a lot of the emotional energy he was bottling up, and his conversion coincided with a sudden burst of literary productivity. Apparently he was great at compartmentalising his thoughts and feelings (red flag!) but eventually realised that living a life without emotion was not natural and you can't control your emotions just by refusing to acknowledge them. Sigh. This is very conventional feminine wisdom - the best way to 'control' your emotions, is to address them and feel them and then understand that just because you feel something, doesn't mean you have to act on it or let it dictate your actions. For the most part though, the book spends a lot of time talking about the discipline of English at Oxford (which is what C. S. Lewis taught) and how it wasn't considered a very serious area in its early days (serious literature was probably confined to greek classics or something). I think the modern-day equivalent would be something like teaching YA literature.

Sleeping Beauty
I'm getting the mileage out of my Disney+ trial which I accidentally renewed for one month. Anyway, I fell in love with the artwork. The backgrounds are so rich and also very medieval but like a 50s reinterpretation of a medieval tapestry.