How to Be a Woman

  Almost without exception – and wholly understandably – my superiors at the magazine appeared to regard me as some kind of chimp in a dress who’d climbed in through an open window, and who they’d decided they would leave alone to quietly play with the computers, lest it became agitated and started biting people. And even if they hadn’t been looking at me with borderline horror, I wouldn’t have wanted to flirt with them anyway: they were proper grown-ups! Really old! Like, in their thirties! If I ended up getting off with one of them, they might suddenly start talking to me about council tax, or cavity insulation, or grown-up stuff like that, and I would be all at conversational sea. It wasn’t appealing at all.

  So no. I did not further my career by flirting. Indeed, on the contrary: I suspect my burgeoning sexuality burgeoning all over the place led to the curtailment of a great many offers of work, due to worries about being accused of predating a Brummie Lolita. However, I wholeheartedly believe that, should they wish to, strident feminists are allowed to flirt their way to the top, without compromising their strident feminist principles one smidge.

  Ladies, we are at a massive disadvantage in the workplace. Your male peers are flirting with their male bosses constantly. The average workplace is like fucking Bromancing the Stone. That’s basically what male bonding is. Flirting. They’re flirting with each other playing golf, they’re flirting with each other going to the football, they’re flirting with each other chatting at the urinals – and, sadly, flirting at each other in after-hours visits to strip clubs and pubs. They are bonding with each other over their biological similarities. If the only way you can bond with them is over your biological differences, you go for it. Feel pressurised to actually fuck them if you do? Then don’t flirt. Find it an easy way to just crack on? Then crack on – and don’t blame other women for doing it.

  Well, not to their faces, anyway. Bitching in the toilets is always allowed, of course.

  So I am learning about flirting. Not for business – just for fun. God it’s tricky. I’ve only ever flirted with teenage boys before, who don’t really notice it half the time, God bless them. Actually, now I come to think of it, it must have been more than half the time – I am still a virgin. They were obviously not picking up on this stuff at all.

  I’m just too subtle, I think, at a party, a few weeks later. I’m still wearing a huge hat – since I floated the idea in my diary that it might make my body look smaller, by way of perspective, I’ve never taken it off – a metric metre of eyeliner, and I’m fairly tipsy. Well, I’m doing a ‘sexy dance’ at the bar to ‘Respect’ from Erasure. That’s fairly relaxed. ‘I need to be less subtle. It’s not working.’

  The next time a man comes up to me, we talk about Erasure for five minutes, float the possibility of my moving to the left slightly, so he can get served, and then I stare at the man, silently.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks, finally, looking a little perturbed, holding out a fiver to the barman for his beer.

  ‘I was just wondering what it would be like to kiss you,’ I reply, giving him an intense stare from underneath the hat. At the time, I’m not aware of it, but looking back now I suspect I looked like a slightly cross-eyed clam, looking for unwary plankton.

  Ten seconds later, and we’re kissing. He’s stuffing his tongue down my throat like I’ve been on a hunger strike and he’s about to force-feed me with a tube, and I’m doing my level best not to cough him back out again. I am euphoric. My God! Who knew it was this easy! That you can just ask for some sexual contact – and get it! I see now that my previous tactic, in Wolverhampton – simply hanging around boys, hoping they might trip over, fall on my face, and then get off with me ‘while they’re there’ – was hopelessly amateurish. This is the way forward – simply putting in a kissing order, like at Argos!

  The next few weeks are revelatory. I essentially put my career on hold to go round getting kissed as much as possible. I learn a great deal about it. I find that, by and large, the best kissers are also the best conversationalists: they kind of … listen to what you’re doing, and reply. One man kisses me right out of my shoes in an alleyway in Soho, and I spend the next three days so high from the experience that I write a six-page poem full of terrible metaphors about stars, anemones and quicksand. On another kissing night with another man, we both manage to smoke cigarettes all the way through our session, although I do have to demur over his chewing gum: I fish it out of his mouth, and dramatically chuck it over my shoulder, saying, ‘Chew on me, instead,’ in a sultry, Wolverhampton accent.

  But the music and media industry is a tiny world – essentially a village congregating in the same five or six bars and venues every night. I start to get a ‘reputation’ back at Melody Maker. Things start happening in the office I feel uncomfortable with. One writer fills that week’s gossip column with barely concealed references to the fact I got off with another writer. A bloke from the art department spends one of our editorial pub sessions making comments about someone else I got off with’s premature ejaculation problems – ‘I hope that dress is wipe-clean.’

  Then one of the section editors calls me over to his desk, and tells me that the feature I’ve just filed could be a cover story, ‘So why don’t you sit on my lap, while we talk about it?’

  Wow, I think. This is some sexism! Some sexism is happening at me! Even in an office full of forward-thinking liberal outcasts, there are still some people who are judging me for being a sexually active woman! In some respects, it’s almost exciting – after all, the last time I was being judged on issues of my sexuality, it ended with The Yobs throwing stones at me on my birthday. If I’ve gone from being wholly undesirable (then), to being looked down upon as a slag (now), this is, surely, a bit of a promotion? Becoming a woman has to be done one step at a time and this is, in its own way, considerable progress.

  On the other hand, I’m initially stumped about what to do about it. I’ve read novels about the patriarchy judging sexually active women but those books don’t give me a great deal of advice on what to do next. By and large, those women end up dying on moors, being excluded by the society of Atlanta, or swallowing arsenic, before their daughter is sent off to work in the cotton mills. The coping tactics of grown women in the 19th century give me little to work on, and so – without any better role models – I simply regress back into the coping methods of my childhood. As the eldest of eight children who regularly punch each other, my tactic at Melody Maker is just go a bit … gonzo. I require the guy from the art department with his ‘wipe-clean dress’ comments to buy me a double, for ‘injury to feelings’. The writer who defamed me in the gossip column is told to stand on a chair, in front of the whole office, and apologise to me, while I point at him and say, ‘That column didn’t even have any jokes in.’ I can think of no worse insult.

  And when the section editor asks me to sit on his lap, in order to discuss my ‘promotion’, I think, merely, more fool you, dude, and plonk down on him, heavily, then light a fag.

  ‘Lost your circulation yet?’ I ask, cheerfully, as he sweats and coughs.

  I get my first front cover. He spends ten minutes in the conference room, banging his thighs until he gets the circulation back in his legs.

  On the one hand, I can see why I have become a bit of a running gag in the office. I am, let’s be fair, acting like a sexed-up lady Pac-Man – running around flapping my mouth open and closed, gobbling up people’s faces. It’s certainly worth a good 100 gags or so. Hell, I’m making about 50 on the topic myself.

  But the jokes aren’t ‘amused’ jokes. There’s an odd air to the comments; there’s a kind of … poking, pinching, mean quality to them. And I notice that these jokes aren’t being made about the men in the office who are kissing me. There’s a kind of crushing element to them. It feels like these jokes are coming from a dark place. A darkness is what I sense, as I walk out of the office for the day, smoking a fag, to prove I’m a grown-up, and still one of them. An uncomfortable darkness.

  These d
ays, sexism is a bit like Meryl Streep, in a new film: sometimes you don’t recognise it straightaway. You can be up to 20 minutes in, enjoying all the dinosaurs and the space-fights and the homesick Confederate soldiers, before you go, ‘Oh my God – under the wig! THAT’S MERYL.’

  Very often, a woman can have left a party, caught the bus home, washed her face, got into bed, read 20 minutes of The Female Eunuch and put the light out before she puts the light back on again, sits bolt upright and shouts, ‘Hang on – I’VE JUST HAD SOME SEXISM AT ME. THAT WAS SOME SEXISM! WHEN THAT MAN CALLED ME ‘SUGAR TITS’ – THAT WAS SEXISM, AND NOT AN HONEST MISPRONUNCIATION OF THE NAME “ANDREA”!’

  It never used to be like this, of course – before the second wave of feminism, political correctness, and women having Mace in their handbag, sexism used to be both overt and everywhere. You knew it when you met it. It was all, ‘Know your limits, women,’ ‘Make us a cup of tea, love,’ ‘Look at the rack on THAT,’ and wolf-whistles from any passing male over the age of 12.

  Benny Hill chasing a blonde round and round a desk, making ‘honk honk’ gestures with his hands, wasn’t ‘light entertainment’ back then. It was a simple fact of life. Sexism – like ashtrays, David Essex and the smell of BO – was everywhere: no matter how inappropriate the setting. I rewatched Gregory’s Girl recently – Bill Forsyth’s lovely, fluffy, heart-warming film about the girl who’s good at football and wants to play in the school team – and was amazed to note a scene where the guy teaching cookery gropes schoolgirl Susan’s arse and she just saunters away, and neither she nor the film has any comment to make. In Gregory’s Girl! The film that I’d remembered as being essentially Vindication of the Rights of Women for anyone who, at the time, slept under a Holly Hobby duvet!

  And no one even thought to complain at the time – because, if you were cheerfully and publicly touching up a schoolgirl, it was just good, healthy British perving. Wench-handling. Part of our heritage, like cheese rolling, and drowning malformed babies in cider barrels.

  And, of course – like half-timbered buildings, and Stonehenge – there is still plenty of this old-fashioned sexism around today. I asked on Twitter if anyone had experienced any outrageous sexism recently, and whilst I was expecting quite a few, amusingly stereotyped clangers, I wasn’t expecting the deluge that started 30 seconds after I inquired, and which carried on for nearly four days afterwards.

  In the end, I had nearly 2,000 replies – which, as they stacked up, very rapidly turned into a gigantic debate amongst women, who’d all presumed their cases were more isolated than they were.

  Here are the ones that made me actually gasp:

  ‘I had a boss who said, “We all have a wank thinking about Rosie – but I’m the only one who’s got an office to do it in.”’

  ‘A guy jumped out of a car and stuck his hand up my skirt to see if I was wearing stocking or tights as I stood at a bus queue.’

  ‘I once worked in a Ford garage where the rest of the staff would shout TITTIES as I walked across the workshop.’

  So that’s old-fashioned sexism: as slow-moving yet obvious as the giant boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And in some ways, however ghastly, depressing and enervating it is, I miss it. It is an increasingly complex world out there, after all. Over the years, all kinds of sexism variables have sprung up, muddying the waters. Now, there are female chauvinist pigs, and men trading in ‘ironic sexism’, whereby calling you ‘Tits McGee’ and telling you to go and ‘make us a fried egg sandwich’ is technically not sexism but ‘a laugh’, which you must ‘laugh’ along to.

  These days, a plethora of shitty attitudes to women have become diffuse, indistinct or almost entirely concealed. Fighting them feels like trying to combat a mouldy, mildew smell in the hallway, using only a breadknife. Because – like racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia – modern sexism has become cunning. Sly. Codified. In the same way a closet racist would never dream of openly saying ‘nigger’ but might make a pointed reference to someone black having natural rhythm, or liking fried chicken, so a closet misogynist has a vast array of words, comments, phrases and attitudes that they can employ to subtly put a woman down, or disconcert her, but without it being immediately apparent that that is what they are actually doing.

  Take, for instance, a small dispute in the office. You have had a difference of opinion about a project. A male colleague has taken it quite badly, and stomped off. When he returns, he places a packet of Tampax on your desk.

  ‘Given how emotional you’ve been, I thought you might need these,’ he says, with a Jimmy Carr grin. A couple of people snigger.

  What are you to do? Obviously, had you more resources, you would be able to reach in to your desk drawer, pull out a pair of testicles and place them on the desk, replying, ‘And given how spineless you were over our last contretemps, I thought you might need these,’ but, alas, even the most prepared woman in the world is unlikely to have a spare pair of rubber knackers in her desk.

  Or how about a social situation? You’ve gone on holiday with another family. You all have children. You notice that the men are doing around half the amount of housework and childcare that the women are – they have an amazing ability to sit in an armchair, serenely playing Angry Birds on their iPhones, whilst the wives run around peeling potatoes, and rescuing wailing, shit-encrusted toddlers from disused wells.

  ‘I’m just not as good at that stuff,’ the men say, almost mournfully, as the women stand in the kitchen, stressed, knocking back shots of whisky from 4pm onwards.

  Again, ideally, you’d be prepared for this: perhaps having taught your older children to quote The Female Eunuch from memory, in exchange for a Milky Bar. Or maybe you’d have an iPhone App called ‘Division Of Domestic Labour Tracker, 1600 – Present Day’, which you could fire up, and leave on the table, next to the beer, for the men to have a look at. But again, who has the time for these delightful schemes?

  When I asked the ladies of Twitter for their instances of sexism, it was, in the end, the more codified examples that were disturbing. Kate, who explained that she ‘no longer wears a white top and black skirt to meetings, since a queue formed in front of me at a coffee break. They all presumed I was a waitress’. Or Hannah, who – on being made redundant – was comforted by her boss with the comment, ‘Don’t worry, love – at least you still have great legs.’

  Of course, the reason these instances are so pernicious and damaging is the element of doubt involved. Are they being sexist on purpose or was it just some accidental sexism, due to carelessness and stupidity? The ‘great legs’ comment, for instance – that could just be an extremely cloddish attempt at condolence, rather than the implied assumption that the only thing that matters for a woman is looking good and that, as long as she still looks nice in a short skirt, she’ll be fine in the work-place; although, obviously, buggered when she gets older and starts wearing comfy shoes and slacks.

  Are you going to look like a screaming, humourless harridan if you call people out on this? Should you just shruggingly let it pass when someone your inferior sees you standing next to a tea urn, and asks you for ‘Milk, no sugar – and you got any HobNobs?’

  In short, how can you tell when some sexism is happening to you?

  Well, in this matter, what ultimately aids us is to simply apply this question to the issue: Is this polite? If we – the entire population of the earth, male and female alike – are just, essentially, ‘The Guys’, then was one of The Guys just … uncouth to a fellow Guy?

  Don’t call it sexism. Call it ‘manners’, instead. When a woman blinks a little, shakes her head like Columbo, and says, ‘I’m sorry, but that sounded a little … uncivil,’ a man is apt to apologise. Because even the most rampant bigot on earth has no defence against a charge of simply being rude.

  After all, you can argue – argue until you cry – about what modern, codified misogyny is; but straight-up ungentlemanliness, of the kind his mother would clatter the back of his head for, is inarguable. It
doesn’t need to be a ‘man vs woman’ thing. It’s just a tiff between The Guys.

  Seeing the whole world as ‘The Guys’ is important. The idea that we’re all, at the end of the day, just a bunch of well-meaning schlumps, trying to get along, is the basic alpha and omega of my world view. I’m neither ‘pro-women’ nor ‘antimen’. I’m just ‘Thumbs up for the six billion’.

  Because I don’t think that ‘men’/maleness/male sexuality is the problem here. I don’t think sexism is a ‘man vs woman’ thing. The Man is not The Man simply because he’s a man. Sometimes, The Man is a woman – particularly if you go to the kind of late-night clubs I do, although that’s a different issue altogether. Men don’t do this shit to women just because of their ‘femaleness’. AND I DON’T THINK IT’S ABOUT SEX.

  As I start to watch men and women interacting in the adult area – in work, relationships and marriages but mainly, to be fair, in the pub – I don’t come to believe, as many people, including the Goddess Greer, do, that men secretly hate women. That men hate women because there is something about penis and testosterone that wants to wage war on vagina and oestrogen.

  No. Even though I’m quite drunk half the time, and often wearing so much eyeliner I am, technically, blind, I don’t see it as men vs woman at all. What I see, instead, is winner vs loser.

  Most sexism is down to men being accustomed to us being the losers. That’s what the problem is. We just have bad status. Men are accustomed to us being runners-up or being disqualified entirely. For men born pre-feminism, this is what they were raised on: second-class citizen mothers; sisters who need to be married off; female schoolmates going to secretarial school, then becoming housewives. Women who disengaged. Disappeared.

  These men are the CEOs of our big companies, the big guys on the stock markets, the advisors to governments. They dictate working hours and maternity leave, economic priorities and societal mores. And, of course, they don’t feel equality in their bones – sexism runs deep in their generation, along with a liking for boiled puddings, spanking and golf. Their automatic reaction is to regard women as ‘other’. The entrenched bias against the working, liberated female will only die out when they do.