Tag: gender

Learning from the irritant of ‘ethnographic naïveté’: Truth, method and openness to awareness of myths of sex/gender.

November 13, 2025

When, in Act V, Scene 3 of King Lear, Lear carries in the body of his youngest daughter who had, unlike her sisters refused in the first scene to say enough to prove her love of her father to win his favour, he points out that women are to be preferred who speak hardly at … More Learning from the irritant of ‘ethnographic naïveté’: Truth, method and openness to awareness of myths of sex/gender.

Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s

February 19, 2025

Making a man of yourself – the strain of the 1950s Image from The Science Museum archive: https://coimages.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/58/936/large_2000_0549.jpg (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) We all assume we know what DIY means (without troubling to extend the acronym to the term DO IT YOURSELF). However, it was not always thus as the ‘Brief History of DIY’ page from … More Making a man of yourself for yourself – the strain of the 1950s

“If you can get the balls in, you will”. This blog prepares to revisit Yorkshire Sculpture Park to re-see their Frink collection after reading Stephen Gardiner (1998) ‘Frink: The Official Biography of Elisabeth Frink’.

October 17, 2024

“If you can get the balls in, you will”. Elisabeth Frink quoted her mother as saying to her of sculptural work  to her official biographer, Stephen Gardiner. She used this to illustrate her love of symbolic and embodied passion, imagined as entirely male, that is quite ‘the opposite of passive … somebody who can be … More “If you can get the balls in, you will”. This blog prepares to revisit Yorkshire Sculpture Park to re-see their Frink collection after reading Stephen Gardiner (1998) ‘Frink: The Official Biography of Elisabeth Frink’.

J.K. Rowling asserts when answering questions about her religious beliefs that she ‘believes in biology’: what I learned on Geoff finding for me a book on Georg Kolbe, who felt forced into such beliefs.

October 4, 2024

Geoff works in a charity bookshop as a volunteer and often buys me little books that don’t sell but he thinks might interest me. Yesterday he brought this little book first published in Leipzig, Germany, but undated, with a written brief life of Kolbe by Richard Grant (whom I have failed to trace) in German, … More J.K. Rowling asserts when answering questions about her religious beliefs that she ‘believes in biology’: what I learned on Geoff finding for me a book on Georg Kolbe, who felt forced into such beliefs.