‘Down with the Sisters’
Maureen Lipman, one of Britain’s best loved actors, talks about feminist matters but with a surprising twist…
One of the best ways to get important issues across is to use humour but a common charge levelled at feminists is that they use too much when attempting to communicate important feminist ideas. Can the ‘F’ word be fun and does it have any meaning today?
Maureen Lipman has become known as someone who is not afraid to speak her mind and often offends with her outspoken views. So when Maureen came to Gibraltar to attend the International Literary Festival, I took the opportunity to ask her views about sexual discrimination and wondered what she would say about the old canard that feminism turns women into victims.
The results of a landmark global study in 2014, backed by the United Nations, found that film-makers worldwide are perpetuating gender discrimination by failing to find strong roles for women on the big screen. This joke by Andy Samburg, host at the 2015 Emmys, puts it perfectly: “The wage gap between men and women hired for major roles in Hollywood is still an issue… Wait. I misread that. The age gap between men and women hired for major roles in Hollywood is still an issue… I misread that again. It’s both.” With that in mind I asked Maureen about sexual discrimination and if she had personal experience of persistent stereotyping of women and girls.
“Listen,” she said leaning forward and talking in an earnest manner, “I sympathise with the sisters and I think there is a lot to be said for the revolution, but I think we need to come back just a little way because we are making a mockery of men and there will be nobody for our daughters to marry.” Wow! I hadn’t expected such a sincere answer to my question, but Maureen is of course a woman of integrity. It is to her abiding credit, that she has never been afraid to voice her strong support for any cause she believes in. “I’m opinionated and thin-skinned, and that’s not a great way to be” she explained in a recent interview in The Daily Telegraph.
Maureen is warm, witty and friendly and definitely not a man hater. Married for 30 years to award winning playwright Jack Rosenthal before his death from cancer in 2004, she has now found love with her ‘new chap’ Guido Castro. It is evident that the hatred of men has become something of a rousing battle cry for staunch feminists who make openly anti-male statements but Maureen takes a different stance. “We have to be very careful when we criticise people like Sir Tim Hunt for just making a slightly piss joke,” she remarked, referring to the Nobel prize-winning scientist’s comment at a conference that female colleagues should work in women-only environments because they either ‘fall in love with you’ or cry when they are criticised. “We must above all retain our humour,” Maureen stated. “I know there is a lot to be upset and angry about but fuel that anger into comedy and you will get a lot farther than bristling.”
We have come a long way from 1975 when linguist Robin Lakoff, in her study on women’s language famously stated that ‘women have no sense of humour’ at a time when it was thought that only men could tell jokes. “There is too much comedy showing men as being hopeless and despicable,” Maureen said. According to Australian novelist and author Kathy Lette in a piece for The Scotsman, “Feminism is in the zeitgeist again… Finally it’s fashionable to be a feminist and especially a funny feminist.” In this respect it is clear that there are a whole host of female comedians who are playing a key role in the feminist movement by using public platforms to speak out in favour of feminism and equality.
Let’s get one thing clear, feminism is about equality of the sexes. We are not all men haters, and in this Maureen agrees. There was a time when the only things women were seen as being good at were cooking, cleaning and looking after men, now women want the men to do their share (eight out of ten women say they do more housework than their male partners) but they also want them to get involved in taking action against gender discrimination. Only last year did we see Emma Watson use her UN Women Global Ambassador position to help launch the HeForShe campaign, which seeks to involve men in the fight for women’s rights. What about the Annie Lennox feminist anthem ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves’. Is that still relevant these days? Hell yes! We’ve come out of the kitchen but we can still enjoy cooking and that does not define our lack of interest in feminism. Women just don’t want to feel burdened by household drudgery.
In a world where women in films are more likely to be depicted in a hypersexualised manner than men, whether as thin, in sexy clothing or in the nude, it is ironic that Germaine Greer (one of the most significant feminist voices of the 20th century) should accuse Maureen of promoting an ‘appalling image’ of older women in her role playing Beattie for the British Telecom adverts in the 90’s. In a piece in 2005 in The Guardian, Maureen hit back, dismissing Ms. Greer as ‘the Madonna of redbrick academia’, with a suggestion that the arch-feminist might indulge in a bit of moonlighting ‘as a deluded old woman’.
Known not only for her performances on screen, Maureen is also a skillful mimic and her appearance at the Gibraltar International Literary Festival included stories about her life together with a few of her brilliantly funny monologues, some taken from Re: Joyce!, her stage celebration of the work of entertainer Joyce Grenfell. Proving that you can find humour in life anywhere, Maureen’s book How Was it For You? Is full of anecdotes and jokes, including this one:
“You know the worst thing about oral sex? The view!”
Awarded a CBE in 1999 for her services to drama, the actress has also been quoted as saying: “Awards are like piles. Sooner or later, every bum gets one.”
Maureen, as witnessed above, is sharp witted and was only too keen to put me in my place when I said that she started out life as an actress: “No, I started out life as a baby” she joked. Now I am worried that I am going to be a character in a new monologue, but then again, that’s not in keeping with the sisterhood, is it?
So if Maureen is ‘down with the sisters’, how does she think the feminist movement is doing? Her parting comment for me, said with a wink as she was whisked away for yet another interview was: “There is a lot in the world to bristle at and women have had a rough deal but it is a slow revolution and it takes time – all revolutions take 200 years to achieve their end.”
(Note from the editor: Many thanks to Jo Ward for her contribution as a Glass House Girls house-mate. Jo is a freelance journalist living on the sunny Costa del Sol in Spain. To read more about her you can find her author page here.. To become a house-mate and contribute articles to The Glass House, click here)
