So we were watching this programme on TV this evening, “Help Mijn Man Is Een Klusser”, which roughly translates as “Hey Some Men Do DIY And Some Of Them Don’t Finish It So Some Other Men Will And We Can all Be Sympathetic And Patronising To His Long Suffering Wife While Casting Aspertions On The Guy’s Masculinity”. Roughly! Actually I usually run in fear from the room round about scene two when the pity music comes on in the background (Flemish TV seems to think that if it involves Real People and pity music is not needed, it is probably not worth making). This time though, it was the Dutch version, from the Netherlands no less! Since the second scene came and went without pity music and a lack of horribly sterotyped gender role based humiliation I ended up seeing it all. As I did, several things struck me. In fact lots of things about it struck me, not least that I saw the whole thing, but mostly there were a couple of things that made it an utterly different viewing experience.
Firstly the presenter was black. Imagine that! A black man on television and no sport, crime or documentary on immigrants in sight! He was just a presenter, presenting! Secondly, the couple in question were a gay couple. Imagine that! A gay couple on television and not a glaring sterotype, documentary or news report to be seen! They were just a couple, one of whom was shit at finishing DIY projects! And that was what struck me.
After nearly a year back in Belgium, I have got so accustomed to non factual television being solely the preserve of white, cis, straight, ethnically Flemish people that this was so surprising that it was my main impression of a piece of televisual fluff. I’ve mentioned before how the Flemish have this massive conception gap between how they view their prejudice and how they enact it but seeing it so well highlighted in this manner really brought home how pervasive it is.
One of the things I’m thinking about at the moment is what I might do in the future as a career. An odd thing to think about you might think for someone already in their mid thirties. Not really though, I’ve already started one career as an architect, I found that the reality of the job didn’t live up to the expectations created by the training – which I loved. The job itself, not so much. All the things that made the learning so engaging and interesting were stripped away in the day to day work and I saw that because of my competances I would end up a only being offered a career as a technical architect rather than a design architect. Technical architects are rare, since we go into the job all wanting to be designers, so any one who shows an apptitude for the technical side is steered towards it regardless of whether they want to and how good they might be as a designer.
So I took my skills and remade my job as a consultant working in Second Life, providing expertise to universities that want a professionally made project. I enjoy it a great deal. However I think it has a shelf life. Not because I feel that Second Life has a short future, but because I think that the role of a self employed consultant in this field does. I think that once virtual worlds really take off the role of professional designer will become something dominated by larger companies, able to provide staff with training in a variety of professional three dimensional visualisation packages. These are skills I can’t afford to develop using programs I can’t afford to buy. So I think that some time in the next few years I will need to change what I do, either to become more of a theoretical consultant or to find a role within a university as an expert in virtual worlds. This would certainly be a possibility in the UK, but in Belgium where I live, not so much. Universities here have little interest in virtual worlds so far.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that one of the things I am considering is taking another degree, in particular a combination of gender studies and psychology. At least I was until I discovered that the only academic centre for women’s and gender studies in Flanders was closed completely in 2006. It was jointly funded by all the Flemish universities, who apparently decided that it was unnecessary, perhaps they felt that studying sexism and gender in society was a luxury extra. Whatever the reason, and I have found no clear explanation from the universities, they pulled the plug despite a petition signed by over two thousand academics, students and concerned supporters, mainly women. So now Belgium, a rich western european country, has nothing more than single semester add on courses in gender studies available in only one university, no bachelor degrees, no post graduate masters, for more than half it’s population.
Sadly I’m not entirely surprised. Belgium seems to pride itself on being incredibly open and inclusive and lacking prejudice. However as a resident foreignor I find it no better than the UK and in some aspects, particularly racism, worse. The attitude towards trans people is, on a daily basis reasonable, but on an institutional and medical level atrociously old fashioned and cliched. Sexism is as rife as in neighbouring countries but an idea of their society being “post feminist” has lead to a strange blindness to it’s presence amongst most women and the ability for men to play up the idea that they are now no longer privileged. That the need for academic study of discrimination and how society creates and perpetuates it should be so completely undervalued to the point of non existence is a sad reflection of this state of affairs.
Found this via Vlaamse Genderkring. A really well done film by the main queer campaign group in Belgium, the Holebi Federatie (they ‘forgot’ to include us trans lot in the name, shame huh?) for teaching about trans issues in schools… well… you do need to understand Dutch to get it, but I liked it anyhow so I’m posting it.
