February 17, 2011 by sarahefranklin
Go on, guess. Or, better still, read Tina Fey’s brilliant piece in the New Yorker about the push-pull tug of juggling a paradigm-shifting career and, y’know, a family
And whilst we’re having a Fey fangirl moment, let’s remember why we really, really don’t want her to give up the day job (not that she’s suggesting that, I hasten to add):
Anthea McTeirnan
Croí na Duibhlinn
Aoife Barry
Aoife McLysaght
Arlene Hunt
Attracta McCarthy-McKenna
clairehennessy
Ann Cronin
Amanda Brown
Eleanor Fitzsimons
Edel Coffey
Anna Carey
Lauren Murphy
Jennie Ridyard
Jude Leavy
Hazel Katherine Larkin
Léan Ní Chuilleanáin
Leigh
Lisa McInerney
Laura Slattery
Maman Poulet
Megan McGurk
Clare Kleinedler
Molly
Rosita Boland
Catherine Crichton
Sinéad Gleeson
sarahefranklin
siobhandowling
Susan Daly
theantiroom
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
At a party last year, i was accosted by a stranger (a woman) who asked me first:
Are you married?
Then
Are you partnered?
Then
Do you have children?
Then
Oh, but if you don’t have children, you must have pets. Cats, right?
It is difficult to express how enraged, humiliated, judged, and pissed all over I felt. i would never ask a woman why she does not have children. It is the rudest, crassest, most insensitive thing you can ask. People have absolutely no idea what your back story or history is. Do men run around asking each other at parties if they have children?
Tina Fey is my hero and I’ll be running into Easons this evening to see if I can get a copy of The New Yorker to read the whoel article.
And I agree Sarah, I hope Fey doesn’t give up the day job any time soon.
Such a great piece, and I liked that she writes “my parents raised me to never ask people about their reproductive plans. ‘You don’t know their situation,’ my mom would say”. So bloody true. I’ve always thought it was the height of rudeness to ask people about whether they have children or not, and if not, why, or whether they’d like to have kids some day. For all you know they’ve just had a miscarriage, or they’ve been trying for years, or they or their partner are infertile, or they have other reproductive issues that you don’t know about and which are, frankly, none of your business. I have no idea why ANYONE thinks asking people about their child-bearing or lack thereof is appropriate.
Also, I love everything she writes in this piece about women being judged on their supposed fuckability in a way that men simply aren’t. So true.
Brilliant straight-forward ‘funny because it’s true’ piece that also makes me despair from the gut. Hearing such crud arguments & misogynist snap-backs all week too about why women aren’t involved in politics while they have kids, etc., because the role of the mother clashes with….with what, being driven around to deliver favours and take bribes? Such a tedious bore that 50% of the population is represented by so few and those who are pushing themselves forward are being questioned on their right to help govern and give birth. People have at last stopped interrogating me on my barren womb. I wonder are men ever questioned on their mickeys at all?
If parliament was 50-50 male-female, and the available candidates on election day were too, would you be more inclined to vote for women than men?
I ask because you say that women are not “represented” as much as men. Yet I would never vote based on sex, I don’t feel that a male candidate represents me or has anything to do with me simply because he’s male.
I think if parliament were majority female I would also not vote automatically for males just to make up the numbers. Vote on policy, not sex!
Parliament isn’t simply about how individual candidates represent you, though. The whole point of a parliament is that a group in dialogue represents diversity better than any individual – there’s a big clue in the name!
I would be really very surprised if all the men who claim that they would never vote on sex would feel so well represented if the Dail were 87% female. I strongly suspect they’d suddenly discover that actually, whilst any individual man didn’t necessarily represent them, a body which was predominantly female suddenly seemed very, very distant from their concerns. But I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever know.
I really WANT to like Tina Fey, but I can’t since I read a piece in which she was making jokes about “trannies with big hands” and “being dumber than a French whore”. Just gross.
On the rudest question note, I was asked by another woman ‘Are you mad?’ when I said I was hoping to have another child after having my first two. It still makes me hop!
Asking a woman if she has gained weight when she was obviously pregnant was the rudest thing I once asked.