Helen McCarthy
@HistorianHelen
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Historian @CamHistory Author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (2020). Now writing social history of retirement for Penguin/Allen Lane
Cambridge & Kew
Joined April 2012
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Good morning! It’s publication day for Double Lives, my history of working motherhood in modern Britain. If you’re interested in women, work, feminism, childcare, Shirley Conran or I Don’t Know How She Does It!, please read on (and retweet if you can)
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For any researcher who has felt overwhelmed by their material, here’s Virginia Woolf on note-taking at the British Library: ‘It was distressing, it was bewildering, it was humiliating. Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.’
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Long queues to vote in Kew/Richmond Park. Polling clerk says she's never seen it so busy for a GE. So much for voter fatigue!
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Lovely to see Stella Creasy re-elected in Walthamstow with her slumbering baby daughter at the count:
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‘Vassalage’, ‘slavery’, ‘colonial status’: how lightly these Brexiteers play rhetorical games with the past, as though history were simply a repository of convenient soundbites to be raided when occasion demands.
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Tomorrow I send this baby off to the publisher and I'm nervous as hell about it but also just a teeny bit proud. Fingers crossed it'll be out next spring with the wonderful
@BloomsburyBooks
!
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Some personal news: after nine wonderful years at Queen Mary, I’ll be taking up a University Lectureship at Cambridge in September. Will miss my brilliant
@QMHistory
colleagues & students but looking forward to new opportunities with
@CamModBrit
@NYCTC_History
&
@CamHistory
!
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Did anyone else in the 1980s & 90s cover their school exercise books in sticky-backed plastic & wrapping paper? I remember vividly the thrill of personalising these standardised objects each September, but my kids don't do it at their school. One for
@Sesc_Cam
perhaps?
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😃🥳
We are delighted to announce the
#WolfsonHistoryPrize
2021 shortlist, recognising the best historical non-fiction writing from the past year.
Congratulations to all the nominees!
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The college backs in Cambridge on a solitary early morning walk
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This has got to be up there amongst the best cover images of an academic book
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It really feels like universities are under the cosh right now, with academics in the front line of a rumbling culture war. Yes there are things we could do better, but the UK HE sector is world-leading and much about it that is precious needs defending.
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If Clegg falls it will be major loss to British public life. Many cannot forgive him over tuition fees, but he's a sane voice in dark times.
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My youngest daughter has produced an alternative cover for my book.
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Really looking forward to talking to
@BBCWomansHour
this morning about Double Lives, my history of working motherhood. Fittingly enough, I'll be squeezing it in between home-schooling supervision, my academic day job & doing the laundry.
@BloomsburyBooks
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If you read a scholar's work (especially an early-career scholar's) and find it insightful, illuminating & suggestive, write and tell them.
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I did a simple administrative task today for an anxious student after a senior male professor, whose responsibility it was, refused point blank to do it, pleading overwork. This stuff gets so tedious.
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Can anyone beat historian Diarmaid MacCulloch for super high-brow lockdown pastimes?
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I wrote a personal essay for
@HistoryWO
on ageing and the subjectivity of the contemporary historian (& yes, there’s a pic in it of me & Cherie Blair, c. 2004)
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Really? I'm not even convinced that I'm right about what I said in my PhD thesis.
This is not a subtweet of anyone in particular and it's going to annoy some people since I have a lot of PhD followers/friends and also I'm a stubborn guy myself but...one thing I'm noticed is that once someone gets a PhD, it become 10x harder to convince them they're wrong.
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Like many, I've been watching the A-levels debacle unfold with mounting anger and astonishment. The government has gone from asking students to accept the unconscionable to forcing universities to do the impossible. Truly a master-class in how not to govern.
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Very excited to be offering a funded collaborative PhD studentship
@CamHistory
with
@HomeworkersWW
on a hugely timely subject: Homeworking in Britain and Beyond, c. 1970 to the present. Please circulate & contact me if of interest!
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If my institution owns my research because it helped facilitate it then so does everyone who's ever helped me with childcare.
#SternReview
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If this really is the direction of travel for
@nationaltrust
then I’m appalled. & how will this affect NT research partnerships w/ universities, including collaborative doctoral awards, which have done so much to frame, interpret & unlock NT’s rich histories for diverse publics?
I've written more on the National Trust's new strategy for
@TheArtNewspaper
. The cuts at curator level are worse than I feared.
ALL specialist curators are to go - books, furniture, paintings, sculpture, etc. (Thread, 1/)
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If it turns out that 18-24 year-olds proved crucial in decimating May's majority, all I can say is: more power to you.
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Have been feeling the lockdown blues this week, but what a pick-me-up! Double Lives is the Guardian’s book of the day. Grateful for this exceptionally thoughtful review by Alison Light.
Double Lives by Helen McCarthy – a history of working mothers
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Very excited to see Double Lives, my forthcoming history of working motherhood, included in the Guardian’s 2020 literary calendar!
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The only political statue that I *really* like in Britain is the one of Clement Attlee at QMUL in Mile End. I became very fond of him as a cheering sight on the way into my office building for 9 years
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Am I the only one for whom apocalyptic existential dread about global warming is detracting from their enjoyment of this glorious and unexpected sunshine? 😬
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Yesterday, late afternoon, I made a request to an archive, which is currently closed to visitors, to have some material scanned. The files have just been appeared in my inbox, free of charge. Confirms what we already knew, which is that archivists are
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This must have tasted so sweet
“As far as I’m aware she does not have any degree in economics.”
“I was and I remain a professor of economics.”
This is what happened when a Brexit Party MEP questioned the expertise of Green MEP Molly Scott Cato over post-Brexit trade.
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If you host a conference on X and 90% of the people you want to invite are white men, you should either: a) broaden your networks b) use your position to increase representation of women and PoC in your field or c) write an angry & defensive broadsheet op-ed on April fools day
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Spied at the Cabinet Office today. Future historians will thank you!
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QMUL's gender pay gap is 21.7%. One reason given: 'High hourly rates of a small number of external experts, who are male & employed to lecture at the time of the data capture.' Sounds like a nice work if you can get it. It's a shame that women apparently can't.
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I just changed my profile to say goodbye to amazing colleagues & students
@QMHistory
and hello to new challenges and projects at
@CamHistory
Can’t wait to get started 👍😀!
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Someone really should write a history of British sexual culture since the nineties, from Lads & Ladettes to Me Too. A sexual revolution which, like the '60s, was fun for some but in 2023 we're still living with its ugly consequences.
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To my dear European friends and colleagues living in the UK: I'm so sorry. Please remember the 48%.
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Identical strategy to that taken by Hunt re junior doctors, ie championing 'consumer' rights over 'producer' interests without acknowledging that working conditions for doctors & university staff are fundamental to the quality of care and teaching received by patients/students.
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I regret the social media-driven trend towards filming people talking on the radio. I mean, it's the RADIO. An aural medium, not a visual one, and the last safe haven of the camera-shy & poorly groomed.
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Looking forward to this. And look! My book cover exists in the real world!
A century ago, working mothers were a minority in Britain.
But now 75% of mothers are in work.
How did this happen? What explains this huge social transformation? And how has it affected our economy?
Upcoming podcast with
@HistorianHelen
🤩
#RockingOurPriors
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Best Sidney & Beatrice Webb anecdote I've found thus far comes from Kingsley Martin:
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Saving THIS for when I write my history of everyday life in Covid-era Britain: 'Oh, no. Boris Johnson said you must sell scotch eggs'
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Anyone who has ever tried to organise a group of academics to do anything collectively will snort in derision at the charge of 'groupthink'
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Next month I stand down as Managing Editor of
@TCBHJournal
after ten years (some of it spent as Reviews Editor and Co-Editor). Can’t resist temptation to share some reflections & memories (THREAD)
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I tweeted last week about the Covid-19 lockdown and the history of teleworking. Here's a longer piece by me which the nice folks
@guardian
have just posted:
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Very excited about this (permanent, full-time) appointment: University Lecturer in Black British History, closing date 15th March
@Cambridge_Uni
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The paperback of Double Lives is out next Friday, which is rather exciting:
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Deleting, with a heavy heart, a long, extraneous passage about the doomed courtship of Beatrice Potter (later Webb) & Joseph Chamberlain from a chapter draft & when oh where oh when will I get to write about this thrillingly mismatched late-Victorian pair?
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Hobsbawm was a great historian but not a very good oral historian, based on these remarks from a 1993 lecture:
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Out campaigning for anti-Brexit liberal candidate Sarah Olney in Kew with lovely Jo and Catherine
@MoreUnitedUK
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I’m getting so old that I now watch films on Netflix in the evening in instalments over several nights. Haven’t the stamina to watch one all the way through these days. Please tell me I’m not alone.
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Robust, critical debate is the lifeblood of academia, but I do wish people wouldn’t go out of their way to review books they are intellectually or ideologically primed to dislike. Particularly when the book is by an early-career scholar.
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No, it’s because of the singing rats.
#otd
A Muppets Christmas Carol was released. 95% of what gonzo says in the film comes from the novel. Is that why Victorianists love this adaption so much? Read
@EmmaLCurry
too
#MuppetChristmasCarol
#Dickens
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I'm signing out of Twitter for a while. I need to preserve some kind of mental equilibrium as British universities approach the beginning of term. Good luck everyone and let's try to be kind to each other.
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Staggered to see my name on this list of the world's top 50 thinkers 2020 (ps. it's unlikely, but should you feel inclined, you can even vote to push me up to the top 😍) via
@prospect_uk
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Make your sentences shorter.
What is the best academic writing tip you ever received?
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Have resisted
#MeAt20
thus far because in nearly every surviving photo I am doing some insufferable Oxbridgey thing, (punting in a ball dress etc). But hey ho, here I am in costume on Aldeburgh beach posing for publicity shots for a student play. Pretentious, moi?
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I love this
@I_W_M
image of a mother saying goodbye to her toddler at a war nursery before going to the munitions factory, but two things: first, she's TWENTY; and second, her HAIR. I can barely brush let alone curl my hair before going to my very sedentary desk-based job!
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If you're a PGR working on Britain in the late 20th century, do consider writing a blog (paid!) for Rethinking Britain in the 1990s, a virtual workshop series co-organised by myself &
@DavidGeiringer
& launching in January, supported by
@PastPresentSoc
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The scenes of women being manhandled by police in Clapham tonight are utterly sickening. Absolutely no reason why a peaceful, socially-distanced outdoor vigil to honour Sarah Everard should have been forbidden. My thoughts are with her family & my anger with
@metpoliceuk
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So let's start with some historian stuff. As it happens, I've been exploring debates about home-based work in Britain & the US from the 1970s, including the rise of white-collar homework, including remote 'teleworking'.
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Are you a historian whose work explores British politics, society, culture or the economy in the 1990s? If so, please consider submitting an abstract for our symposium in September! Deadline 4th June, full details here:
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Reading Hobsbawm from 1993 on how the fall of the Soviet Union 'inserted its punctuation mark' into the flow of history, changing 'the vision of every living historian of the twentieth century' and wondering how far Covid-19 will do the same for historians of the 21st. THREAD
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On Mumsgate, the problem w/ berating Sunak for not mentioning dads is that the data clearly shows mothers *are* shouldering significantly more of the care burden. Trick is to find language which acknowledges the reality of sexual divisions in the family without naturalising them.
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Lyndal Roper is delivering the Lisa Jardine Lecture on Luther and Women 24th May 6pm at QMUL. Book here:
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Congrats to
@jamesbsouthern
for passing his PhD viva today with no corrections but buckets of praise from examiners
@TricksterPrince
and
@JohnBew
! It’s a brilliant thesis on culture & diversity in the post-war Foreign Office supervised across
@QMHistory
&
@FCOHistorians
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Ordered this online due to my interest in Margaret Cole and was delighted to have it delivered in its original dust jacket. The interwar Left knew how to do fonts.
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I do so love writing contemporary history 😲😀
In 2001 when I was a young working mother I wrote a piece on the subject for the Daily Express. I was thrilled to find my piece referenced in this impressive new book, especially as my baby is now a Cambridge undergraduate and the author is her tutor.
@HistorianHelen
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Very delighted to be on this list: Mid-Career Fellowships awarded to public engagement champions | British Academy
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With a heavy heart, I have resigned as external examiner for UG History programmes at Durham University. I do this in support of
#USStrikes
to defend pensions & because I care deeply about protecting teaching quality & research excellence in our sector.
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Am having a mildly interesting time on here discovering which of my academic colleagues/acquaintances are aged 45-49.
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Do any other
#twitterstorians
google the addresses of their subjects as they come across them in sources? There's something poignant about seeing them pop up on property sites devoid of any historical context. Here, eg., is the Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer's pad in NW8:
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It continues to baffle me why politicians publicly berate one of the sectors where UK is genuinely world-leading (esp in Brexit climate)
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Historians should use momentum created by Nazi salute story to pressure Royal Archives for openness & transparency about family's past.
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I have zero sympathy for Hancock, but very pained by thought of his 3 kids and her 3 kids knowing that this video of their parents’ infidelity will be on the internet forever.
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Hugely honoured to be in conversation next Thursday 2pm GMT about Double Lives, my history of working motherhood, with three brilliant historians of women, gender & work, hosted by Oxford History Faculty. You can book here👇
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Daughter’s birthday today & I confess to having had a little weep this morning thinking about her party with her pals last year & all she (& so many others) have missed out on since then. Have rallied my spirits but my goodness this is hard.
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Day fif'een in the bake off tent and Val has been called to the Diary Room for some bad news about her pastry.
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There’s a young man on my train silently and nervously practising some sort of speech or presentation in his head. I want to tell him to stand up and give it to the carriage. We’re rooting for you buddy.
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I'm speaking at a Chatham House event in a couple of weeks called 'Preventing World War III'. How's that for impact?
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Extraordinary fact from a 1995
@demos
pamphlet: the proportion of seven-year-olds travelling to school unaccompanied fell from SEVENTY PER CENT in 1971 to SEVEN PER CENT by 1990.
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@earlymodernjohn
Once heard a DJ on the radio playing Don’t let the sun go down on me who afterwards said ‘George Michael was correct to say “ladies & gentlemen, *Mr* Elton John” because the track was was released before he got his knighthood.’
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People have been rightly praising this zinger of a review, but by far the most interesting part is Pedersen’s admission that she, like Hobsbawm, has written under a pseudonym. Is this the best kept secret in modern British history? What is it?!
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This is Paul Addison, quoted by Peter Hennessy, reflecting on writing contemporary history. I essentially feel this way about the late 1990s.
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There’s a famous experiment, pioneered by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s where researchers stand on a street corner looking intently at the sky. Passers-by always stop and start looking too, and the larger the crowd, the more people stop and look.
If we were not an international laughing stock before, we are now.
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Political satire fans please note, the Spitting Image Archive has been deposited at
@theUL
in Cambridge. Puppets included!
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Anyone else finding mid-week lunch the toughest meal to cater under lockdown conditions? Sandwich, soup, soup, sandwich, hummus, leftovers etc. (I have, though, rediscovered the home-made tinned-tuna sandwich - the staple diet of my teenage years during the school hols.)
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The most depressing part of this for me is how the last three and a half years appear to have had no educative effect whatsoever on the electorate. I used to think democracy was a political learning process, but it turns out I'm an idealistic idiot.
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Academic followers: I'm sure I'd be a better scholar if I read more outside my field, but I'm also aware of how much about my *own* field I don't know & really ought to know. What are good strategies for achieving intellectual range whilst sustaining specialist knowledge?
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Does anybody else freshen up with a quick squirt of perfume before going on a Zoom call, or am I genuinely going round the bend?
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A thread on writing contemporary history and getting older:
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Wept last week over the death of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson's second child aged 15 months; weeping today over Annie Besant losing custody of daughter, taken from her frantic & screaming. Researching the history of working mothers can be so emotional.
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We’ve had no online grocery deliveries for weeks but are lucky to have local foodshops near us. Feel a strong identification these days with the 19th & 20th-century working-class housewife, who spent much of her week ‘provisioning’ ie buying food, baking and preserving.
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I genuinely wouldn’t mind if I never shake anyone’s hand ever again. Or be kissed/embraced on social occasions by men with whom I have only a passing acquaintance. Other than that, none.
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Have just started reading Simone de Beauvoir: A Life by
@philosofemme
and isn’t this a wonderful description of what it means for a woman to have agency on p. 11
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