Ramping It Up: Children w disabilities, opinions, books

Doctor's Wives: An annoying, sexist, supposedly demographic label

Well, we know there's an election in the offing, because one of the most annoying labels ever has started popping up in media "analysis" again. "Doctor's Wives." 

The morning began in its usual, weekday manner: alarm goes off at 6, and while nobody south of the border believes it, it's cold in Brisbane. Wrap myself around beloved and try to ignore the time. Then the brain kicks in. What if M's feeding pump finishes and the alarm goes off. What about getting to the Children's Hospital for a bloodtest. Is there any glucolyte made up. I'm not working today, but Abe is, so life will be easier if I can get to the hospital with Miz M before he heads to work, so he and Clancy can hang together.

OK, so get up. Get going. Engage brain courtesy of coffee (thank you, darling, beautifully made). Read part of the paper while we both feed children, eat breakfast, plan the day. Not too much conversation yet.

I'm driving to the Children's Hospital, hoping they'll manage to find a vein to take blood from my girl, while listening to RN. And then, there it goes.  The label that makes me sit up straighter with annoyance, and begin the endless bloody debate with myself about whether it's worth jumping up and down about.

The inestimable Geraldine Doogue on Radio National Breakfast, talking to Michelle Grattan about the election, whenever it will be, and the role of the Asylum Seeker debate, and what Julia Gillard's approach will be. And Grattan says something about the "Doctor's Wives".

This, my friends, shits me.

OK, the whole tenor of the reactive Asylum Seeker debate is annoying too; and Abbott's claims are unspeakably awful. Not wild about the fear and loathing underpinning the public discussion, and maybe that's what I really should be frothing about. And yet and yet and yet.

The casual sexism of the "Doctor's Wives" thing is so ingrained that it's never ever pulled up, interrogated, slapped down, or even seemingly noticed.

I can see why Geraldine couldn't stop mid-discussion to say Oh by the Way isn't it timed you stopped using that outmoded crappy term. It would be supposedly too PC by half. But what exactly is it meant to represent? Supposedly, it's about Middle Class Women of Affluence, whose lives are defined by their man's career and income, and their implied political views. It's lazy shorthand, that creates a group of Trudes and Judes from KathandKim, and gives them supposed political "clout". Sure, demographic analysis might be useful. Sure, trends can be followed. Sure, politics can't be truly subtle enough to allow for the real twitches and switches and thoughts of even a single street . . . But who is really doing this research? The likes of Bernard Salt, who's trotted out to repeat platitudes and generalisations and claim that it's analysis of the Australian population?

Where's the real research? Where's the qualitative research that goes beyond surveys dreamt up by particularly unimaginative marketers who once did a course in sociological surveys, couldn't quite remember the principals, and didn't do any of the humanities courses because they decided they were too "wishy washy" (or, perhaps, too challenging)?

I mean, fuck.

And who are these "Doctors"? 

All male, apparently.

All married, apparently.

And I'll swear to my last ever election campaign this is not merely a self-serving argument - but I am, indeed, while following the Prime Minister's own unmarried style (and bugger off Bettina Arndt, too), living with a Doctor. 

Oh, so it's me that they mean? Feminist lefty grumpy Labor supporters who wishes there was more Light on the Hill and a bit more vision, with a disabled child and an interest in the Yarts and Culture. A very specific demographic, that one. If only we wielded the power . . .

Then again, my own beloved could be a Doctor's Wife, too, if by their shorthand they mean PhD's in history.

Oh, no, don't tell me, they only mean medicos who are GPs or possible surgeons. Who are male. Who maybe work in a private hospital or own a chain of medical clinics.

Come on, Michelle Grattan, isn't it time you interrogated your own labels? You're smart, you're sharp, how about not throwing out these lazy lines in the lead up to an election. So many other presumptions and assumptions are examined in the media, but this one slips through year after year. 

Oh, I stand corrected: just did a quick search and in an earlier election, Antony Green made a comment about how demeaning and silly the term was. Yay, Antony!

Anticipation, Asylums, Art

I'm almost cross-eyed with tiredness today - which is so boring as to be hardly worth mentioning. I've always found the endless "how are you, exhausted?" style of conversation oppressive: the way it's about work, and parenthood, and balance, and busyness, and perhaps a bit of competitive woe-is-me-ness. And so I tend to deny it (I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine, a new day has dawned Pollyanna). But as I'm sitting here in a mad outfit, hair in a bandana, and baby boy has finally drifted off, I'll admit it.

Still, I see this as a reprieve. I was going to take Morgaine to a Special School playgroup, with some terrific therapy and other possibilities built in, meeting other kids with disabilities, and so on and so on, but got a call to say that they were swimming today . . . and it's impossible to juggle Morgaine, baby Clancy and the risk of drowning all at once. So I said I'd leave it and she's off to childcare instead.

And in about two hours time I need to be off again to the "It Takes Two to Talk" language course.

So, much to anticipate.

But I've been pondering anticipation in a completely different form this week, because I've just read Sebastian Barry's novel a A Long Long Way. The first chapter I found a  little mannered, even though I was instinctively drawn to the story and the characters, and then whoosh, I was swept in and loved it. The writing was more poetic and graceful than other I'd read recently, and he seems to deliberately reverse the use of adjectives to pack more punch. And why anticipation? Because it's a kick-in-the-guts, fuck-you, this is too beautiful and tragic, story of the First World War. It's a longish novel, but I read it very quickly. And then there's little Willie Dunn, our hero, and there are a handful of pages left. Perhaps two chapters. And I'm beginning to note the dates with dread. It's the beginning of 1918, and 11 November is burned into me. So I fear there aren't enough pages left for him to make it to the end of the war. Oh no, Sweet William. So a book whose power made me clench my gut with the feel of it, had me clenching it again with knowing the dates. I remember the same thing happened as I read the truly extraoardinary trilogy by Pat Barker, the Regeneration series. The narrative continued, and in my head the historical narrative tripped along, and I started to notice the date with increasing dread.

But I came to Sebastian Barry through a combination of an Irish friend, and by hearing an iv with him by Ramona Koval on the Book Show on RN, about his new book, The Secret Scripture. A terrific talker. Also good, also powerful, although so far not quite as overwhelmingly immersive as Long Long Way. But the Secret Scripture is centrally about an asylum, a patient, and a psychiatrist trying to make sense of both her life and his own, and Irish history at the same time. Which made me think about psychiatrists, and of course psychiatry, memory, trauma, storytelling, poetry and all that is right at the heart of Pat Barker's Regeneration Series. And then there's also Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, which also has a psychiatrist, an asylum, crime and femininity, and a sly poke at our expectations about heroines, narrative, veracity and guilt smack in the middle of it. And then for a local flavour, I remember the impact of historian Stephen Garton's work on Medicine and Madness  when I first read it. And so much of all that is also about gender. (Well, derr . . .)

I didn't realise I had so much incarceration on my bookshelves.

Although the other thing I liked about Barry's A Long Long Way, is that it gave me a different take on the Easter Uprising. I thought I'd approached that in an even-handed way in the past, but even the ambivalent versions of it, those that allowed doubt and pain and violence to creep in, still had an heroic edge to them. Like the exhilerating Roddy Doyle novel, A Star Called Henry - not at all like his Barrytown series; and allowing for the mythic and the everyday and the doubt to all be combined. Although I also remember it because of sitting in a pub in Newtown with a rather political firefighter who I rather fancied at the time - yes yes, years before meeting Abe - and we got rather shitfaced together, talked about Irish history and rebellion and writing, and in a slip of confusion I went home with his 20-something friend. Hmmmmm, how did that story get in here?

But anyway, Sebastian Barry's Long Long Way shows how confusing and divisive and heartbreaking the whole thing could be, and included the rare perspective of Irishmen who'd gone off to serve with the British army.

And like so much "so-called fiction", it shivered down into the present, with the events of this week. The Real IRA and the death of soldiers in Northern Ireland.

All of which puts my little concerns into a helluva perspective, so I don't think I'll bother going into detail on:

- the difficulties of disclosure. Went along to a parents group thing at Childcare, which meant hassling once again about physical access to the centre, the need for a proper turning circle and ramp and door etc, all of which I'm completely fine and calm and directed about. But instead, having to say to a group of strangers "my dughter has a disability" meant that my voice wobbled and cracked and shook and I FUCKING HATE THAT. Feel so exposed and wobbly, or Wallaby as lovely Dezzy says, that I start to loath myself.

- the spectre of yet more STUFF. We were rejected for charity-funding for the next bit of equipment we need, and it's going to be a standing frame thingy. I've seen a version with giant wheels, that could make life for Morgaine easier, or could be over-egging-the-pudding (and beating a mixed metaphor to death with a tire rather than a whisk) and could be logistically rather tricky. Dunno.

- the reality-check of Clancy's condition and the whole metabolic disorder thing. He's a little livewire charmer, doing extremely well, and went to have the checkup with the specialist yesterday. And we all agreed he was doing v well, but then I realised that good management of MCAD aside, there WILL BE a crisis at some point. (Is it really inevitable, I asked? Oh yes, they said, and weren't overly worried about that.) But hey, we're talking hospitalisation and rushing around with heart in mouth. So as the NZ-born actress once married to Rod Stewart said in a long-ago shampoo ad (how do these things lodge ourselves in our brain, whereas the complexities of superannuation management dont'?), "It Won't Heppen Overnight But It Will Heppen". So, brace yourself, girlie.

- and I could whinge about having a sore back and cracked-feeling ribs . . . no, that's too too dull.

- and then there's the whole relationships-and-negotiating stress, which we did incredibly badly last week, and then did rather well on the weekend. So no need to put THAT in writing, thank you very much.

- and of course there's the all-consuming fact I have completely mad hair at the moment, and no idea when I'll be able to get it cut and coloured (and yes, persist in defying and denying ageing - bugger the going grey gracefully malarchy).