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Friday 28 November 2014

Getting My Retaliation In First

It is almost the time you have been waiting for - the Overgraduate Advent Calendar will be with you next Monday, heralding twenty-four days of intellectual stimulation, unbearable tension and fervent speculation amid the thinking classes. Well, that might be over-egging it a little but you know where I'm coming from.

But I need to get my excuses in nice and early. In fact I have to apologise for the misogynist cesspit that has clearly been my personal experience.

Where last year I gave vent to my cinematic prejudices and the year before that to my bibliophilic peccadilloes, this year we venture onto a loftier plain and try to isolate cultural influencers. Not influencers of the human race but merely of this member of it. So there will be sportsmen, politicians, actors, writers and engineers. And why does this cause me embarrassment? Because I have the list scrawled in readiness and there is but one woman on it. I wondered about excising that name and promoting a list of great men, perhaps to save great women for next year, but that would be dishonest. No, given the parameters I had set myself this is how the list came out and I will confess to being a little shocked, even ashamed at the outcome. So this year you can again call me middle-brow but add to it the taint of sexism. Which is pretty upsetting for a feminist. Mind you it would be a different matter if I had to concoct a list of the twenty-four nicest people I have known.

See you on Monday.  

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