I had the most wonderful day yesterday!
It all started with a good night's rest and a healthy breakfast. At twelve I arrived in the public library of Exeter to embark on my new research project. I needed to go here instead of the university library because I want to find out some things about what "the general public" reads. A very specific set of popular books form my primary source.
The rest of the afternoon I could be found in the children's section, a pile of sex education books on my left, and a crowd of curious people on my right.
Well no, but I did get some strange looks from people dying to know why a twenty year-old would like to know
Everything about periods or
Where babies come from.
The answer is the following: by studying these books you get to know an awful lot about the conceptions and ideas of an authoritive and probably representative group in present-day British society about gender, sexuality, what is normal, what children should know and how they should behave. And of course the most exciting thing is that I will compare these with some similar books from the 1910's, twenties and thirties.
The hegemonic narrative in Western Europe at this moment seems to be that in the course of the twentieth century, attitudes toward sex, and particularly sex education, have become opener, freeer, closer to "the truth", more informative, more explicit, more attentive to the joys of love and sex (especially for women...) and less to morality and duty, and, lastly, have become more neutral to all kinds of deviant behaviour, the most obvious being homosexuality. The aim of my research is to find out whether this narrative is supported by sources, of whether it's more likely to be a story to pat ourselves on the shoulder and not have a critical look at what's in these books, what's in sex education lessons at schools, and what we tell "our children" (that's right, all you future parents: you watch it!).
I'm just in the first stage of the research, but this is one thing I noticed:
Current sex ed. books go to great lengths to reassure their readers they are normal, and that there's nothing scary about their changing bodies (which of course is not true). Girls are reassured that periods may only hurt a little, boys that girls really don't care that much about looks, etc. You could argue that it is in the advantage of ten year-olds not to be worried about these things (although you might just as well argue that it's more cruel to have them find out later). It becomes more deplarable when people (girls in this case) are frightened with humbug about how dangerous it is for readers to shave their bikini line and how they should NOT use tampons before they have had any sex, and even then only during the day. Or when boys are told that "a girl's vagina is almost numb" (this is an actual quote) (I have never heard any real woman say this) - in order to save them the trouble.
But more than with possible inaccuracies, I am concerned with questions of normalcy. Because, in spite if reiterated statements that everybody is different and readers should not worry if they "develop differently from your friends", gender roles and a very particular morality (or ideology) of sexuality are casually introduced, and repeated so often, that if children would have to do with these books and would get no further (real life) information, they would very likely be worried if they would depart from this model. Three aspects of this model that I have noticed so far (although it differs from one book to another of course, and fortunately!):
1) About gender roles: "Romance is important for girls." Actually, they like a pat on the cheek much better than sex. (Remember, this book is "approved of by the Family Planning Association", a powerful institute in the UK that tries to fulfil a role like the NVSH (the Dutch Association for Sexual Reform
http://www.nvsh.nl/index.htm) in the Netherlands, but of course in the end is about abstinence/contraception more than about sexual freedom. In general, in my Sexuality in Britain-course my former conviction that Dutch Sexual Freedom is a Dutch nationalist myth and the rest of Europe is not that different (anymore), died, and made place for the thought that maybe the Netherlands isn't such a bad place to live after all... By now I've often been shocked and surprised by ideas and problems that exist here.)
Girls are told that all boys have a hard time talking about their feelings; boys that the best way to understand the female mind to read a couple of girls' teenage magazines. Etcetera. And, very sadly, the authors of many of these books still deem it necessary to inform boys of the fact that girls are not that fond of rape.
As you can see, although some aspects of these books are rather funny, they can make me angry and sad as well.
2) About sexual preference: although one book mentions that it might be possible that the reader turns out to be homo- or bisexual, all other books and the largest part of this one book assume that a relationship always takes place between one (1) girl and one (1) boy. Stories are always of the type "when people make love, the woman does this, and the man does that". Nothing about other possible situations for love and/or sex. (Images for example do also never show persons of different "races" together, or of a different age.) Isn't it depressing that a host of readers are not addressed, are simply left out here? If a reader does not recognise their own desires in these stories (and does not hear any different stories), they could feel abnormal, not take these books serious anymore, miss out on some possible rolemodels, or come to view this entire sex thing as something that apparently has nothing to do with their own lives.
3) The books' morality: a) all these funny organs and mechanisms are there to be reproductive. Pleasure is never mentioned in three of the four (present-day) books I studied up till now, and only marginally in the fourth. b) sex is dangerous. Don't try it at home. c) If you want sex, first think about how bad you're gonna feel afterwards. Friendship is The Thing: restrict yourself to this. One night stands are BAD. "If you are attracted to someone, keep your relationship at the level of friendship for as long as you can." Sex becomes a lamentable inevitability. Of course we have to see all these worries in the light of the ridiculous level of teenage pregnancies in the UK...
Now I wonder what the pre-war books will have to tell their "lezertjes thuis". We'll see...
I still left the library in a state of relative joy, for it was the night of Guy Fawkes. For an explanation of this tradition I direct you once again to our anthropologist-in-residence on
http://nican-nicuica.blogspot.com/. All I will say is this: it involves lots of fire (as you will see) and has the kind of questionable origins (I mean dominance and repression and all that) that it shares with Sinterklaas - which does by no means discredit the current celebrations in my opinion, because Meaning Is Constantly Being Negotiated or something along those lines. (Which in this case means that, if our reasons to do something and the meaning we attach to it, change, its legitimacy may change as well.)
In between I prepared some concoction that would surely have won the new Oliver Twist-movie a design Oscar if only had they asked me to be their prop mistress. (Though it turned out to be quite edible, but I'm sure that's what they have actors for?)
And on I hurried (late as always, but so were they) to the library parking lot. I was so lucky as to be adopted by a group of postgraduates, for mind you: postgrads not only are extremely nice and sensible people, they also own clean kitchens and even cars! Or actually, postgrads from London called J. own cars. And are as wonderful as to have us poor foreigners have a go (in the passenger's seat, I mean.) On top of that, these were not just Postgraduates, but they were Friends of mine (or are becoming so more every day, because of course I've only known them for a month or so).
We were gonna do two things: first drive to Exmouth, the seaside town where we had walked some weeks earlier (remember?), to see their fireworks, fluorescent sticks and
sterretjes (I know they're called sparklers, but I like the Dutch better). I hadn't expected this, but it was pretty amazing. I think that if I were eight again, I would have enjoyed it as much as I always did our annual Quatorze Juillet in some remote French village in the Provence. Our sense of infantility (in the positive sense of the word, if there is any) was only enhanced by the presence of a beach filled with flat pebbles and a calm sea to skim (
keil) them. And the possibility of eating barbapapas/candy floss/suikerspinnen (I still have to take O. somewhere...) made S. jump up and down as if she were a little girl again! You get the idea: we had big fun. During the fireworks I noticed some sexologist's professional deformity: the rockets' sparkles swam up to the sky as if we were watching a gigantic sex education film featuring spermatozoa swimming up into the Big Unknown. (Remember WoodyAllen?) However, fortunately our postgrad driver J. made the same interpretation and we "all had a good laugh".
It was a crazy night. This is what happened: We were late for our next goal, the village of Ottery St Mary. Here they celebrate Guy Fawkes in their own peculiar way, by having big men&women hoisting 30 kilo barrels filled with burning tar through a cheering crowd all night. To the front of one of the houses on the central square a notice was attached: YOU ARE HERE AT YOUR OWN RISK. We had to give way to three ambulances. J. said this was probably the only place in the UK where health&safety don't rule. Yet. It was crazy: it was like the Vondelpark on Koninginnedag. Fire everywhere. Many drunks as well, unfortunately, but I'm getting used to those now, here. And half of the international community of Exeter University, eager to see the native ritual.
However, on our way to Ottery and back to Exeter, we 1) had a flat tyre, 2) had to get petrol 3) had to get cash, 4) had some difficulty finding our way over the kind of sinuous, unlit and undirected, one-car-wide roads British takes pride in (as do France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, or
by nader inzien any country except the Netherlands except Limburg) - until they entrusted the task of navigation to me; and, really, this for a change is one thing I
can do properly, don't you agree? ;-) 5) drove into a broken traffic sign which scattered our backseat window 6) lost me in the Ottery crowds 7) lost J. in the Ottery crowds 8) had to queue for one cheesey chips for half an hour, when the electricity failed and we had to wait another half-hour 9) had our feet soaked and frozen by a combination of rain and the first November cold 10) almost hit some drunk pedestrians that were trying to get home via these same narrow unlit roads, by walking
on the left side of the road!
But all was done in good spirits, and in the end we arrived in their marvellous postgrad house where we had a cup of peppermint infusion, some slices of Swiss chocolate roll and conversations about Ella Fitzgerald and love.
At three I started my way back up the Hill Where I Live, and at four I could finally sink into a deep and content sleep.
