I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I wanted this blog to be as much, or more, about recognising the support that there is for the gender equality movement as it is about highlighting the inequalities that exist in our society. I also said that this support can come in many ways, some that don't even superficially appear to be about gender equality. But they're still playing a significant role.
If somebody says 'feminist writer', there are of course key names that spring to mind. Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Judith Butler. But of course, one does not have to write overtly about feminism to be a feminist writer – in fact, there are definite advantages to having a more covert feminist agenda when writing, as you can perhaps get your point across without setting off any 'feminist' alarm bells in any nay-sayers' heads. You can avoid any 'negative' labels and still say what you want to say, perhaps even more successfully.
So... J. K. Rowling. Probably not a name you'd find written on a list of all-time great feminist writers, as to my knowledge, she hasn't written any feminist discourse. For those of you who have been living under rocks for the past 10 years, she is the author of the famed Harry Potter series, and progressed from being extremely poor to having a mult-millionaire status within about 5 years. In addition to her wealth, she's received various accolades, including being named 'Most Influential Woman of the Year' by magazine editors in October 2010, and gave the Harvard commencement speech to Harvard graduates last year. Rowling is open about the fact that she had to depend on the welfare state for survival after the breakdown of her first marriage, and says that one of the reasons she chooses to still live in England rather than running off to another country like many wealthy tax-dodgers have done is because she is, as she says, 'indebted to the British Welfare State' (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7096786.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2 ). She is a guest columnist for the Times, and a notable philanthropist, being the president of the charity One Parent Families. And a mother. Basically, she's pretty bloody awesome, and a pertinent example of the many women out there who have undergone huge hardships and risen to success – even if the difference is perhaps more markedly extreme in her case than in many others.
However, it's not only for the fact that she's a strong, confident, independent, successful, humanitarian woman that I consider her such a good role-model for women (and indeed people) everywhere. It's for her writing too. I know few people would consider the Harry Potter series a work of feminist fiction, and perhaps they're not. But that doesn't mean they can't have influential undertones for young readers, as I want to discuss in my following post. Writing has often been thought of as holding up a mirror to society, and also something that can truly effect change. Thousands of writers have written about social or political situations, allegorically or otherwise, both to inform and to inspire change. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, for example, was published in 1960 and deals with the extremely prevalent situations of the epoque of racial injustice in America.
This view of writing is particularly pertinent when we consider children's books, and the fact that Rowling is a children's author. The books that children read when they are young have the potential to be incredibly influential on their lives. Children aren't born with preconceived ideas about anything – about race, about gender, about the world in general. They're like small, excited, talking sponges, who soak up the views of those closest to them, particularly if they're someone they really look up to. I work in a primary school in Madrid, and I've constantly heard children parroting what I can only assume to be the views of their parents or other family members, or perhaps something they've heard on television. In any case, these opinions aren't their own, they have simply adopted them as their own as they've heard them come out of the mouth of someone they respect, and therefore believe them to be true. And as they get older, they may not question these opinions, and assume that the reason that they believe them is because they ARE true. And then they have children. And so it continues. Someone recently patronisingly told me that 'gender roles just are what they are. There are just some things that men are better at than women and vice versa. I've never met a woman who wants to do yard work, for example'. As much as this annoyed me, I had to bite my tongue and remember that this (uninformed) opinion was probably just something he heard when he was growing up, and has never thought to question. That doesn't make it right though. And I had to look up exactly what yard work was. But I digress.
However, it cuts both ways, because as much as children can adopt bigoted and harmful viewpoints when they are young, they are also just as willing to adopt more liberal, accepting ones, and writing is something that can truly help to do that. Even if a child is hearing from their parents that the world is a certain way, we can hope that if they read a book that gives them a different opinion that some of that information may worm its way into their head and stay there, even if they don't realise it at the time. This is why educating children properly is so important for the future of equality of ANY type in our society. It is the only way we will ever truly combat racism, sexism or any other form of prejudice. Education (in a literary form too) is the best tool we have for social reform, so it's important that we use it properly.
To be continued.
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