| I'm easily annoyed as anyone who's spent more than five minutes with me can attest. I don't usually make it through an entire day without hearing or reading something that I consider an assault on reason and good sense. On the whole however, at least in public forums, I usually find that someone smarter and more articulate than myself is already having a level-headed version of my reaction and I let it go -- possibly after a brief tirade for any unfortunate souls who happen to be with me at the time. Yesterday was no different, except that on this particular subject there seem to be only a handful of dissenting voices. So, I'll dissent quietly where no one will hear to make myself feel better. I heard a clip on the radio about the appointment of the new Poet Laureate of Britain: Carol Ann Duffy. Evidently the first woman ever to hold the post. I was mildly positive on that, as it seemed somewhat incredible that no women had been appointed in the 341 years Britain's been naming them.
Now, I don't know anything about Ms. Duffy seeing as how I'm an American who doesn't read poetry. So I had to take what the guest being interviewed, one Elaine Showalter -- professor of English emeritus at Princeton, said about her at face value. Showalter made a point of her popularity (bestselling poet in the UK) as well the fact that she was bisexual. I'm not sure what that last bit has to do with anything. I certainly look forward to the day when people can be appointed to things without anyone caring enough about their sexuality to point it out. But I suppose the fact that she got appointed despite the fact that people felt the need to point it out is better than nothing.
After admitting that she didn't know exactly how appointees were chosen, Showalter went on to state that "poet and woman, until now, were seen as two contending categories." I was a little confused that a Princeton professor, presumably informed ahead of time that she'd be questioned about this story, hadn't bothered to figure out how appointments to the post in question were chosen. But government can be ineffable at times, so I shrugged it off. I do have a hard time believing that Britain in the 90's (the most recent time a women was considered but not appointed) didn't think women could be poets. They had a women commanding HM Naval Base Clyde, for example, home of the UK's nuclear-armed sub fleet. Seriously, it was ok in the public eye for one to command a huge pile of WMDs but no-one felt they could write verse?
Showalter continued by pointing out that women had been passed over for the appointment in the distant past too. Indicating that Elizabeth Barrot Browning had lost out to Tennyson. To my mind, this was obviously a sexist choice since Tennyson was a complete hack who certainly didn't win out on his own merits. Incidentally, I have to wonder if the fact that a woman's name was bandied about for the post in the 1800s doesn't go some distance towards refuting the claim that, until now, Britons didn't respect women as poets?
So I'm a little confused by the whole segment now... Showalter went on, describing Duffy as being best known for her feminist poems. In particular a late 90s work called The World's Wife -- "a selection of poems written from the point of view of the wives, and sometimes the mothers and the sisters of famous men." The good professor continued: "It's wonderful, it's her most anti-male book in a kind of humorous way, but often in a darker way -- some of the poems suggest that it was the women who really came up with the ideas, others are somewhat more complex."
At this point I'm a bit perturbed. Now it bears repeating that I don't know anything about Ms. Duffys work. The example they read was a quip about Darwin's wife commenting during a visit to the zoo that "something about that chimpanzee reminds me of you." Humorous enough, and perhaps that's the angle Ms Duffy generally takes. I don't know... but Prof. Showalter certainly elevates the idea that The World's Wife goes about attacking men and crediting women.
This vexes me. If a public figure could say about a man that he was best know for his "most anti-woman" book in which he, humorously or otherwise, asserts that the achievements of women in history were actually traceable to their husbands; he'd likely be on his way out of office in disgrace certainly not enjoying his most recent national honor.
Sexism is bullshit, there are rank upon rank of women who are smarter than me, faster than me, stronger, nobler, better. And there are ranks and ranks of men who are too. You don't cure slavery by encouraging former slaves to enslave someone else -- or any other nonsensical form of reversal. Why is it ok to think we can rectify sexism by letting, even encouraging women insulting men? | 
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