Pirates of the Caribbean and feminist academics

The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie being made is Dead Men Tell No Tales. And Carina Smyth, the female lead, is to be a feminist bluestocking.
Kaya Scodelario (pictured below), who plays that role, says Carina 'is an astronomer, and she is an academic. She's fighting for the right to study at university, because women couldn't at that time.'
It's very good to hear that a mainstream movie is addressing injustice in education and showing that women were anyway pioneer scholars.
Read more: http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/movies/movie-news/kaya-scodelario-says-pirates-5-more-like-first-movie-874421.html#ixzz3lbvp08nK

Yes, women could be astronomers
If Pirates of the Caribbean is set in c1700 then in fact it was only 180 years later that the first women pioneers took STEM subjects at universities, and over 240 years before they were awarded degrees.

But some technically-minded women, such as Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), (pictured on right) pursued their interests in such matters even without access to universities. In 1786 Caroline became history's first woman to identify a comet. http://www.womanastronomer.com/women_astronomers.htm

Women maritime leaders: new book

This month sees the launch of a new book: Maritime Women: Global Leadership. It's from the World Maritime University (WMU, sometimes jokingly nicknamed Women's Maritime University as its positive discrimination policies have been so successful)

https://www.wmu.se/news/book-launch-maritime-women-global-leadership

The publisher, Springer's, website says the book:
~ Is the first book of its kind to focus on women in the maritime sector at a global level
~ Offers inter-disciplinary approach to gender issues in shipping
~ Covers women’s leadership in various maritime roles
~ Contains the overview of women's integration into the maritime sector

The editors are (see pictures, left to right) Dr Momoko Kitada (who has already written very interestingly about how women seafarers manage their identity strategies) Cdr Erin Williams of the US Coastguard and WMU lecturer Dr Lisa Loloma Froholdt.

The blurb says 'Even 20 years after the Beijing Declaration gender-related challenges at work still remain in the maritime sector, for example, lack of gender policy, difficulty in work-life balance, access to education, and leadership opportunities.

'The book addresses a series of recommendations that may further help the integration of women into the maritime sector.'

POLICIES CREATE ACTIONS
This seems a very good idea as women are still only 2 per cent of the world's maritime labour force.

Although WISTA International is very effective at networking women at the business end of the maritime spectrum, there are few women doing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) jobs actually out sea.

Committed women making maritime policy can help bring on the woman captains and chief engineers, at long last.

* It would be good if the publishers made the price more accessible: who can afford that £100 price ticket?

Queer voyages to the Falklands/Malvinas war

Today I've just written a piece for Pink News (http://www.pinknews.co.uk) about gay merchant seafarers' voyages to and from Falklands/Malvinas war, thirty years ago this Spring.

Read the article for more on these topics:
Steward Roy 'Wendy' Gibson on the ferry Norland (see pic) kept up morale with his piano and became the most famous out gay man of the Falklands/Malvinas War, as well as an honorary Paratrooper.

GBT men have been omitted from Falklands/Malvinas War history because it’s inconvenient news for stereotype-lovers that gay men can be brave. But as Wendy said ‘I may be a Mary but I’m as hard as the next, we gays had to be.... We’re still men.’

Lots of sex with virile young soldiers is only the stereotype but....

These merchant seamen don’t think of themselves as Falklands/Malvinas War heroes. ‘No, I was just ironing the captain’s shirts’ joked Norland steward Frankie.

Their unsung contributions not only include treating Argentinean prisoners like human beings and keeping mum about being gay-bashed and insulted by sissyphobic troops.

In Frankie’s case when their ship was being bombed ‘I went into my Peggy Mitchell mode, screamed ... it was my way of coping… it gave men the chance to express their fears too. Maybe us gays were better off than some of the straight people, because when we was frightened we could say “I’m frightened”… we could let it out.’

Daily living changed homophobia. As Para Ken Lukowiak wrote in his memoirs ‘it is true to say that he [Wendy] now gets more of a mention than the likes of Colonel Jones, VC... And no longer is Wendy referred to as …an arse-bandit … “Gay boy” is about the worst you will hear and it’s always … said with affection. You see, we do live – and we can learn.’

As for the veteran seafarers, in ports throughout Britain they'll be celebrating the June 14 end of the war, some in gay-friendly dockside bars. They're just glad they're back in one piece, even if their nerves are still frayed. So what, they say, if the record is silent on their contribution: 'We know what we did.'

I myself just want them to be properly recognised.

Falklands Conflict seafarers: women & queers

I’ve been tracking down stories about GBT seafarers and women seafarers who were in the Falklands War. It’s for two articles, as well as a conference paper at the Falklands War 30 Years On conference at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth on May 19-20 2012. http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/documents/Falklands2012conferenceprogrammeMar12.pdf

Finding them is a needle in a haystack job, not least because so many survivors don’t want to talk about that traumatic time. Also many traditional historians prefer the story that only tough hetero boys were there, so it’s hard for people with hidden histories to speak out with confidence.

Researching has been fascinating. The best part of the process was this week:
• by a miraculous accident bumping into 'Wendy' the most famous gay seafaring man of that war, a steward on the Norland, and finding he’d let me interview him.
• discovering that a pioneer woman was there doing ‘men’s work’. She was a Second Mate on the BP tanker British Tamar. Next step is to find her. I’d thought only women doing ‘female work’ – such as nursing - were in that war.
• interviewing a stewardess on one of the non-posh ships in that war, Jean Woodcock on the Hull ferry Norland

My work is going to be published gradually. But you can already read two key things that other authors have made available:
• Sally Children, the Assistant Purser on the Canberra, tells her story at http://www.jamescusick.co.uk/2011/02/sallys-story.html
• Canberra’s acting deputy purser Lauraine Mulberry’s diary extracts, in John Johnson-Allen, They Couldn't Have Done it without Us: The Merchant Navy in the Falklands War, Seafarer Books, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2011.

And there are two autobiographical books by women, which don’t focus on gender:
• War artist Linda Kitson’s The Falklands War: A Visual Diary, Mitchell Beazley, London, 1982.
• Nursing Sister Nicci Pugh’s recent book, White Ship, Red Crosses, Melrose Books, Ely, 2010.

And a book that doesn't deal with women at sea but the wives of the combatants who sailed: Jean Carr's Another Story: Women and the Falklands War, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1984.

Fishermen's strike and domestic violence

On Sunday Usha, a 34-year old woman from Trincomalee in Sri Lanka, attempted a water-borne solution to the domestic violence her in-laws were apparently inflicting upon her. She ended up inadvertently precipitating an indefinite strike by over 4,000 fishermen and 800 boats.
The Times of India today reported the event. It seems from early evidence that Usha used the St Antony's feast on the islet of Katchatheevu as a way to get away to India.
She joined the 3,700-odd pilgrims from Tamil Nadu and about from 2,000 Sri Lanka who were ferried there for the day’s celebrations.
Usha and her child Neera were found stranded on the islet after the feast. She told authorities that she was from Rameswaram (India) and that the fishermen who had brought her there had left, unaware that she was not on board, and she needed to get ‘back’ to Rameswaram. A number of people, including naval authorities, believed her story and helped her get on a boat ‘home’.
When she arrived in India marine police arrested her and the men on the boat. Later police in Mandapam found she was a ‘run-away.’ The five fishermen who helped her have been detained, charged with violating the Passport Act.
It is in protest against the accusation that they had assisted illegal entry that the strike has been called. The men see themselves as innocent but duped parties who thought they were simply being helpful.
The point, really, is not that Usha is now regrettably incriminating those who helped her, but that domestic violence is so hard to escape. If the victims of it were more adequately supported they wouldn't have to take such desperate steps.
For more see http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/5-held-for-ferrying-Lankan-woman-to-Rameswaram/articleshow/12155896.cms

Blogging and talking about the process

This blog is - I'm honoured to say - one of those the British Library has chosen to archive. I like that because it means material on the gendered sea that is not saved in any one place elsewhere will have a long, useful and certain life - and will be easily available to all the people who don't have physical access to specialist libaries.

Today the BL has just uploaded my articles about having my blog archived:
~ UK Web Archiving: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/webarchive/2012/02/index.html
~ BL readers stories: http:// www.bl.uk/yourstories/Readers-stories.aspx?s=5a35389e-67fb-4edf-ad0d-80eb76f06695

In the UKWA article I say:
'In 2011 when staff from the UK Web Archive at BL emailed the news that my blog was one of those selected to be archived for posterity that really gave me a boost.

'And it changed my blogging practices. I write more frequently and more carefully, because of a greater sense of its significance. My entries are now made at least twice a month. I spend hours, no longer minutes, writing each entry as vividly and elegantly as I can; I make more effort to explain significances and acronyms.

'Having your blog harvested feels an oddly alienated experience. It’s like being a rose that knows the gardener is plucking it, but never feels the secateurs nor sees itself finally arranged in the vase with all the other blooms.

'So it really helped when the Head of Web Archiving Helen Hockx-Yu took the time to show me how the process worked. In her office papered with Chinese poems on the Underground I saw the crawler in operation, scuttling round and scooping up other’s blogs and websites like some diligent crab from a William Gibson sci-fi story.

'Finding out the program’s name, Heritrix, seemed to make the process feel more comprehensible. OK, it’s just another clever piece of software, like Photoshop.

'Hearing that I was one of the 10,000 websites owners and bloggers helped me see my in/significance within the UK Web Archive; it’s a bit like looking your house via Google Earth.

'And understanding that my ‘donation’ was collected every six months helped me get a sense that there was someone listening.'

Piracy and tampons

Modern women have been appropriating the idea of piracy for several decades now. Scores of US female soccer and basketball teams have swashbuckling names, such as the Orange Coast College Pirates. The point is to stress the values of teamwork and bold courage.

But this witty product really takes such appropriation of piracy to a new level.I'm not sure it's for real.(found at http://withlovekommetjie.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html)

Lesbian sailors' famous kiss?

Yesterday two women kissed in what may become the most iconic real embrace in women's maritime history. It's been downplayed, it wasn't a show, but it's been photographed for posterity and shared with the world by Associated Press. You can even see it on video.

This real kiss compares interestingly to a spoof one posed by models ten years ago. It's a pastiche of the famous V-J Day 1945 kiss shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt (see this blog, 15.2.2010). To me a decade ago the embrace felt very very far from what could happen in reality. Now it's not.

And that progress merits celebration. I can see why the US navy is downplaying it. There must be anxiety that it shouldn't be fetishised or trivialised. And certainly human beings' right to embrace should indeed be taken for granted. But actually this a significant and serious step forward.

Journalist Brock Vergakis reports that 'A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule on Wednesday [Dec 21] when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

'Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif.,[left] descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, [based on the USS Bainbridge, the guided missile destroyer] Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans.

'For the historical significance of the kiss, there was little to differentiate it from countless others when a Navy ship pulls into its home port following a deployment. Neither the Navy nor the couple tried to draw attention to what was happening and many onlookers waiting for their loved ones to come off the ship were busy talking among themselves.

'David Bauer, the commanding officer of the USS Oak Hill, said that Gaeta and Snell's kiss would largely be a non-event and the crew's reaction upon learning who was selected to have the first kiss was positive.

'"It's going to happen and the crew's going to enjoy it. We're going to move on and it won't overshadow the great things that this crew has accomplished over the past three months," Bauer said.

'The ship returned to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story following an 80-day deployment to Central America. The crew of more than 300 participated in exercises involving the militaries of Honduras, Guatemala Colombia and Panama as part of Amphibious-Southern Partnership Station 2012.

'Both women are Navy fire controlmen[sic], who maintain and operate weapons systems on ships. They met at training school where they were roommates and have been dating for two years, which they said was difficult under "don't ask, don't tell."

"We did have to hide it a lot in the beginning," Snell said. "A lot of people were not always supportive of it in the beginning, but we can finally be honest about who we are in our relationship, so I'm happy."

'Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship's return. Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets, a figure that she said pales in comparison to amounts that some other sailors and their loved ones had bought. The money was used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.'

'Brock Vergakis, Associated Press, 'Marissa Gaeta And Citlalic Snell, U.S. Naval Petty Officers, Share First Same-Sex Kiss At Ship's Return', http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/marissa-gaeta-citlalic-snell-lesbian-navy-kiss-_n_1163444.html

SEE THE VIDEO of kiss and interview at http://www.usatoday.com/video/raw-video-2-women-kiss-at-navy-ships-return/1340937846001

Gay US navy man wins victory

Google Alerts seem to daily highlight cases of LGBT people in the US navy enjoying new lives now that DADT [the notorious Don't Ask, Don't Tell law] has been overturned. I don't put them all on this blog because the stories are not about my point: lives on ships. And I'm no supporter of the US's military-industrial complex.

But today it seems like especially good news for someone TWICE ousted from his job. Justice has been done. LGBT Weekly reports that 'U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd class Jase Daniels, 29, was reinstated as into active duty as a [Hebrew] linguist after the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster pushed for his return to duty. He was sworn in Monday, saying.

'“Today, I took an oath and affirmed to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I am humbled as I am reinstated to the job I love and by the enormous support I have received on this momentous day. I look forward to returning to the Defense Language Institute and ultimately, my career in the military.”

'Daniels was discharged in 2005 after coming to terms with his sexual orientation. He sent his commander a letter which confirmed he was gay. Daniels was discharged shortly thereafter, but later received a notice recalling him to serve in Kuwait for one year. He was discharged a second time under DADT [the notorious, now-overturned Don't Ask, Don't Tell law].'

(A longer version of this article was posted at http://lgbtweekly.com/2011/12/12/discharged-u-s-navy-officer-reinstated-after-dismissal-under-defunct-dadt-policy/. It's called 'Discharged U.S. Navy officer reinstated after dismissal under defunct DADT policy' The original appears to be by Ruth Fine of San Diego gay news.

19C women aboard Cornish ships

Selina Smith (above) went to sea with her husband, the master of the Gem, in 1887, along with their son Percy. They went to Malta, Greece, Curacao, and Galveston.

Fortunately - and unusually - she left a log. Joanna Thomas uses it and some fascinating census data to paint a very new picture of the extent to which women, in Cornwall at least, were aboard ships.

They were there - and maybe sailed - as wives and daughters of mates, seamen, boatswains, carpenters, shipkeepers, gunners, lieutenants and bargemen, as well as nurses, servants and stewardesses in their own right.

See her article 'Women aboard vessels in late nineteenth-century Cornwall' in Troze, the online journal of the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall, Vol 3, no 1, August 2011, pp.1-11.

I particularly value the way she discusses the problems of how the census recorded and omitted women on ships.

http://www.nmmc.co.uk/index.php?/collections/troze_latest