Patronage

In this day and age, modern business parlance tends to use the words "customer" and "patron" interchangeably.  At some point, I expect, someone decided that "patron" sounded nicer than "customer", and businesses should call all of their customers "patrons" to make them feel special.

As is the way of things, using "patron" for every day customers didn't make customers more special, it just made the word "patron" less special.  That's the way the language works.

But there is a difference between a customer and a patron, and this was brought home to me the other night when I walked up the street to buy some food.

My family used to eat fish and chips quite regularly, but we've scaled back on our take-away consumption, and we now buy it roughly once or twice a year rather than once or twice a month.  When I walked up the street to by some fish and chips recently, the shop wasn't there.

In hindsight, I think it hasn't been there for at least a month, because the last time we bought take away we phoned the shop to put in an order, but the number didn't work so I dropped in to a different place on the way home instead.  I didn't frequent the shop enough to know exactly when it shut down.

I was a customer of that shop, but I was not a patron.

You see, a customer buys things, but a patron supports. A patron goes out of their way to buy things from that person. The patron of an artist or artisan commissions work from that artist/artisan in order to make sure they can still work, pay bills and live. The patron of a business makes a point of buying things from that business to keep the business viable.

I didn't patronise* that business.  I liked having it in my neighbourhood, I wanted it to be there when I needed it, but I didn't make a point of giving them regular custom.  That's what they needed from me.  It's what they needed from everyone in our neighbourhood.

If every person in the neighbourhood who wanted the shop to survive just made the point of buying one thing from that shop once a week, the shopkeepers would have made a decent living and it would still be there.

The trouble is that we're not really patrons anymore.  We're customers - and pretty mercurial (and mercenary) customers at that.  We'll give our money to whoever will offer us the cheapest deal - even if, in the long run, it doesn't benefit us, our neighbours or our community at all.

We congratulate ourselves for getting things cheaper elsewhere.  Or for keeping our money to ourselves and trying to get something for free.

The real trouble is that the relationship between a patron and their patronee is different to that between a business and their customer.  There is a tacit agreement that the patron is willing to pay good money for good work, so the patronee will do their best work for their patron.

Without that relationship - without people agreeing to care about each other, support each other, and provide each other with their best - what do we have left?  Businesses trying to get the most money out of customers who want to pay the least money - and nothing good can come of that.

It's worth taking the time to think about what it means to be a patron, and to make a point of patronising the things we want to keep in our communities - the local shops, artists, craftspeople and sporting clubs.

It is, quite literally, for the best.



*From the OED:
 a. trans. Of a person, class, organization, etc.: to act as a patron towards, to extend patronage to (a person, cause, etc.); to protect, support, favour, or encourage.

Singular Plurals (Or, The Polite "They")

I've been sitting on the fence regarding the use of "they" as a gender neutral singular third person pronoun.

On the one hand, the English language desperately needs a gender neutral singular third person pronoun.  I mean, we have one, but we also insist that "it" can't be used for people without being exceptionally rude and insulting, so we need one fit for polite society.

But on the other hand, I wasn't keen on the idea of weakening the "plurality" of "they".  We've already lost a distinction between singular and plural with our second person pronouns when we stopped using "thou"...

But I recently had an epiphany.  You see, the plural "you" was always used to refer to single individuals.

Back in the day, English had two ways* of referring to someone in the second person.  There was "you", which was plural, and "thou", which was singular.  This is actually pretty bog standard in most languages I know of, so I don't rightly know why we stopped doing this.

The other thing that was "bog standard" was the fact that you would use the plural word to refer to individuals if you were being polite.  You (Sie, vous, teie, etc) is used when speaking to one person, even though the word is plural, because it doubles as the polite form.  You would use this when talking to someone you weren't on first-name basis with, or someone you might refer to as "sir" or "madam".**

The singular form, thou (du, tu, sina, etc) is used when talking to someone you don't have to be polite to - like someone who is of a lower social standing than you (and everyone knows it) or, more commonly these days, family and friends.

"Thou" is not just a marker of singularity, but also familiarity.

It wasn't just a matter of pronouns, either.  The entire verb structure altered to say "we know each other well".  Think about that the next time you hear the old hymn "Be Thou My Vision" ("nought be all else to me, save that Thou art"), and others like it.  That way of speaking wasn't a marker of great respect, but of great closeness.

In many languages, it's still a gesture of friendship to be told "you can 'thou' me", and you wouldn't dream of calling someone "thou" if you weren't on close terms.

Anyway, the thing that occurred to me is that there is no reason why third person pronouns couldn't work the same way; we could use the plural version ("they") to refer to people we don't know well as a mark of politeness (or neutrality), and singular versions ("he", "she", etc), as a mark of familiarity.

So, when talking to someone about a friend, you would feel perfectly comfortable saying "he went there on his own", but if that person wasn't also friends with your friend, they would say "Oh, did they enjoy it?" and that would be perfectly normal.

When you think about it that way, using "they" as a singular word isn't really "losing" anything, but regaining something we've lost elsewhere.

Plus, it would be really handy.


*Actually, we once had three, but that's out of the purview of this post
**More on this later

Where's all the female superhero merchandise?

I'm posting this TED Talk on literally every platform I use, because everything this guy says is spot on.

We're living in a media saturated world that is choosing to show us only what it wants to sell us, and no one is selling the female heroes.

We've got the unfortunate situation where the female characters are being removed or replaced... except for the exceptionally girly crap.  But if we don't vote with our wallets and make a point of buying everything with a girl hero in it (for ourselves as well as our daughters AND SONS), then we won't get anything better.

The Yurt's revenge (or, More on the Yurt Game)

I was speaking to a group of people about the Yurt Game the other day, and they all immediately launched into a game of Desert Island Books, as if that what the Yurt Game must have been about.

While it was interesting listening to them talk about What Three Books they would like to have with them if they could only ever have access to those books for the entire time they were stranded, that wasn't the point of the Yurt Game.

In the Yurt Game, you're not cut off from any and all other reading material.  There's no reason to suppose you'll never read any other books for the entire time you are in the yurt.

No, the point of the Yurt Game is to consider the ownership of physical books.

If space is at a premium, and nothing can warrant a place in your home unless it is important or meaningful to you in that physical form, what books do you keep?

Forget about what you want to read.  What books are important to you as artefacts?  Or as books you never want to be without?  You feel you must be able to go back to them at any time, and be able to dip in and out of them at your leisure.  You feel you must be able to hold them in your hands and know that they are real and solid and with you. Or you just feel your home would not be complete without these books sitting on your shelves?

I have to admit, in the two years since I wrote the original post on the Yurt Game, I've come to a point in my life where I'm not sure I'd really want or care about anything other than a couple of sets of dictionaries, two or three cookbooks, an atlas and a couple of books I have that outline the rules of various games and sports.

Oh, there are a few books I'd definitely keep for sentimental value - like the books my grandmother bought me as a child - and a couple that I've re-read a few times and may keep just because I'm likely to read them again...

But, all told, I'm not sure how many books I currently own would have a place in my yurt.  And yet I have soooooo many boooooks!

I packed them all up recently because I was cleaning out a room and thought I might be moving house shortly.  Now I have to put them back, I'm wondering why I have so many.

But, do I have the guts to part with them?  Ah, that's the question.

Of Sport and Books and Girls and Boys

I have a theory that the reading of books and the watching of sport have more in common than we may, at first, think.

This is particularly relevant when you start looking at Gender.

It has long been accepted (based on anecdotal evidence) that boys prefer reading books that feature male protagonists and girls prefer reading books that feature female protagonists.

This is most noticeable in genres that are recommended to "reluctant readers".  When you look at the books librarians, teachers and parents recommend for children who "don't really like to read", you'll noticed that the vast majority of books recommended for boys are books that feature boys as the lead character, and the vast majority of books recommended for girls feature girls in the lead.

Whether we like to admit it or not, it is easier for us to project ourselves into the plot of the book and live vicariously through the protagonist if that protagonist looks a bit like us.  This isn't a new theory, and it's not exactly rocket science.

But I think the same applies to sport.  The old phrase "you play like a girl" has more to it than just a casual insult.  Girls do play "like girls", and boys play "like boys".

This is, of course, a sweeping generalisation (as are all observations to do with Gender), but on a macro scale, it's also true.

The watching of sport is a vicariously lived experience, just like reading a book.  For the hour or so that the game is played, you *feel* like you're playing with the characters - sorry, players - as they are going through this dramatic struggle.

It is easier for us to project ourselves into the drama and live vicariously through the protagonists if they remind us a little of ourselves.  It is not unreasonable to assume that women might be more interested in sport if they could picture themselves playing the game.  It's easier to do that if you're watching women play sport the way women would play sport.

A television station broadcasting the 2016 Olympics in America noticed that more women watch the Olympics than you normally find watching other sports, and put forward the theory that they find the Olympics a bit like a soap opera because of the "stories" of the athletes. If they'd bothered asking any of their female viewers, they'd probably have been told that they watch the Olympics because it's one of the few times that you can see women playing sport on the television - and we actually like watching that.

I love watching sport - but I don't love watching all sport, and I don't love all sports equally.  If I don't know or understand the rules, I can't really imagine playing it myself, and unless it looks like something I want to explore, it bores the dickens out of me.

This is especially true of cricket.  I've tried to like cricket.  I thoroughly enjoy baseball, and I can watch sports like lawn bowls, so I can't work out why cricket should bore me to tears.  It just does.  But, a few months ago, I was watching a game of women's Twenty-20 cricket and found it passable.  I'm not suddenly going to turn into a raving cricket fan, but I didn't hate it as much as I normally hate cricket.

I love watching football (aka, soccer), but I find it more enjoyable when women play.  The way women play football just seems to be a better game to me.  I feel like women play the game while men play to prove something.  Gross generalisation?  Of course, but that's just how it seems to me.

It's the same with basketball and rugby. There's something in the way women play that I can relate to a bit better than the way men play.

If you really want to get more women watching sport, it stands to reason that you should show more women playing sport.  There is a market for it, if you're willing to give it a chance to take root and grow.

I like watching people who "play like a girl", because that's so much more interesting than watching someone "play like a boy" - all boofheaded and moronic. That could very well be because I happen to be a girl myself, and I play like a girl, but it could also be because, as a girl, I'm allowed to see the merits in women's sport while men often aren't.

And there's another similarity between books and sport - we're happy to perpetuate the myth than men/boys can't bring themselves to be interested in anything that features a female protagonist.  Essentially, we're moving beyond saying "you'll find people who look like you easier to relate to" (which is true) to saying "you'll find people who don't look like you impossible to relate to" (which is a load of crap).

Men are just as capable of watching women play sport and enjoying it for the sport (and not for the scantily clad women) as women are capable of watching men play without those men necessarily being half naked* - just as boys and girls are both capable of reading books that feature characters from the other genders.  But we tell our boys over and over again that things featuring girls are automatically and necessarily boring (unless you can objectify the girls), and they shouldn't like it.

We should, really, give everyone a chance to see someone like them doing great things the way someone like that would do it - and to see people who are nothing like them doing things just as great, albeit differently.



*Although, there is an argument that Australian Rules Football has a stronger female fan base than other sports in Australia partly because of the short shorts and sleeveless vests.

I wrote to you

I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who reply to my emails by asking me to call them.

If I had the time or inclination to talk to you on the phone, I would have called you in the first place.  Since I have contacted you in writing, it would be logical to assume that I would like to continue this conversation in writing until such a time as it becomes necessary or prudent to change to a different medium.

Generally speaking, the people I've encountered who do this "thank you for contacting us by email, now please call me on this number to continue the conversation" thing were either over the age of 50 (particularly men) or salespeople.

I'm not sure why this is.

Those of us in our 30s and under are used to communicating by writing.  We spend most of our days exchanging text-messages and email, so it's a medium we feel quite "at home" in.

I suppose "gentlemen of a certain age" spent most of their lives in business communicating by the telephone, so they feel most "at home" using that medium.

This is somewhat ironic, when you think about it.  Technology has taken us from a society where most communication (apart from actually talking to a person in the same room) occurred in writing, to a society where we could talk over great distances, to a point where writing is now more convenient than talking, again.

Communicating by text or email gives the correspondents a chance to reply to each other when they have time to think about it, so they can scatter the conversation throughout the day instead of having to nail down a particular time in order to communicate synchronously.

I think Gen Ys, in particular, like having this level of control over the conversation (even if they don't actually give as much thought to their replies as they ought to).  Communicating by phone just seems awkward and energy sapping.

Also, I wonder if there is an element of status involved.  When communicating by email, you are polite (or, at least, you should be), but not deferential.  It's sort of a status-lite zone.  Verbal communication, on the other hand, brings with it a whole raft of behavioural expectations that seem like more trouble than they're worth.

So, I think "old dudes" like communicating by phone rather than email because the phone was the key communication tool when they were in their prime, and they feel most in control in that space.

As for salespeople?

I think it's easier to take control of a conversation if it is happening in real time.  When you are trying to sell someone something, the last thing you want to do is give them time to think about it.

It backfires, though.  Those of us who are text-centric feel uncomfortable talking on the phone, and we avoid it if we can.

Personally, the minute someone says "I got your email, call me," I want to say "No, because I wrote to you."

If you don't want to reply to an email, don't give an email address.  See how that works out for you in this 21st century world...

WWBGD? (What Would Batgirl Do?)

As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a T-shirt with a well-known bat logo on it.  It’s not my first such t-shirt, and it won’t be my last.  I tend to have one of these in my wardrobe, and I frequently wear it in public.  This is partly “letting my geek flag fly”, but it’s also because I happen to be a librarian with red(dish) hair.  As anyone who knows anything about comics will be able to tell you, the best known and most popular Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) was a librarian with red hair.

However, when I wear this shirt in public, if anyone comments on it at all, it’s invariably to say something like, “Hey, Batman!”

This is disheartening for two reasons.  Firstly, I am not a man.  Granted, I’m tall and androgynous, and I am occasionally mistaken for a man by complete strangers – but I’d like to think that the people I know are at least cognizant of my gender.  Calling a woman “Batman” is mildly insulting, even if she is wearing a shirt with Batman’s logo on it.*

Secondly, it shows complete and utter negligence regarding the existence of Batgirl.**  The fact that people can look at a girl wearing a bat logo and not even think to say “Hey, Batgirl!” shows that Batgirl doesn’t even register with them.  When you correct them, the look on their faces and the mumbling reply before changing the subject can be accurately translated thus:  “Oh, yeah, there was a Batgirl wasn’t there?  Oh, well, it’s not like anyone cares.”

This is a travesty.  It is unspeakably sad.  And it is unspeakably sad because Batgirl is unbelievably awesome and should be a cultural icon.  She is, arguably, one of the best characters in the DC Universe – and certainly one of the best female comic book characters of all time.

When talking about action-hero role-models for girls, Batgirl’s name should be mentioned in the same breath as Katniss Everdeen, Lara Croft and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and all the more because she was around for decades before the others ever existed.

Let me tell you about Batgirl – or, more specifically, about Barbara Gordon (a name that should be as well known as Bruce Wayne).

Barbara Gordon’s father is Commissioner Gordon – but of course he wasn’t always the police commissioner.  For most of her upbringing he was just a cop.  Her mother died when she was young, so she was raised in a single parent household living off a policeman’s wages.  She worked to put herself through college, got a degree (a PhD, no less!) in information science and went to work in a public library.

Barbara Gordon was never rich.  She has always lived off a public servant’s wage, and she has always made the best fist of whatever was available to normal people.  This is because she is a normal person.  She doesn’t have any superpowers.  She isn’t an alien.  She wasn’t granted strength or speed by any gods or mysterious wizards.  She wasn’t exposed to any physiology-altering radiation or struck by lightening.  She doesn’t have a power ring – or a power anything.  And she doesn’t have a bucket of money.

She’s just a young woman who comes from the same background as thousand of other young women and has to work for a living.

And her origin story is basically a tale of cosplay gone wrong.  She was never chosen to be a hero, or driven by some dark tragedy.  She went to a costume party dressed as a female version of Batman as a joke (in a costume she made herself with her own bad-ass sewing skills).  It was meant to be a surprise, so no one knew who she was and no one recognised her when, in costume, she thwarted a crime (and saved Bruce Wayne in the process).  She was put on the spot, rose to the occasion and saved the day.

And then she thought, “You know what?  I could totally do this hero thing.”

And she did.  And she did it all without any of Bruce Wayne’s money.

She couldn’t afford to send herself to remote areas of Tibet to learn martial arts from a secret society of Master Assassins.  She just trained at local dojos and clubs.  She didn’t have a fleet of flash vehicles, she just had a motorbike.

She didn’t have a multinational company with an R&D department that could funnel specially fabricated parts from all over the world to her secret lair.  She bought all of her equipment at sporting goods shops and camping outfitters and altered it to fit her purposes (or just straight-up made it herself).

She didn’t have an extensive private gym and secret training facilities – she had to use local gyms and parks, or whatever she could do in her own small apartment.  Speaking of which, she didn’t have a mansion with an extensive subterranean cave network that could be turned into a secret lair.  She had a small apartment and a one-car garage.  And yet she managed to develop some seriously impressive storage systems, because no one ever noticed any of her Batgirl stuff when they came to visit her.

Oh, sure, eventually she teamed up with Batman and he started supplying her with equipment and training, but (depending on which era of comics you are reading) there were several years there where she was just doing it entirely on her own – off her own bat (if you’ll pardon the pun).

Barbara Gordon managed to do most of what Bruce Wayne did without any of his resources – all because she was resourceful.

Where Bruce Wayne had money, Barbara Gordon had resilience, ingenuity, hard graft and grit. 

She was willing to learn, willing to work, willing to train hard and willing to try.  She applied herself and she backed herself.  She always believed she could do it, she just had to work out how.  Then she would work out how, and do it.  And she kicked butt, thwarted the bad guys and saved the day.

That’s my idea of a superhero.

Batgirl is truly awesome, but it’s the girl behind the mask that is the true role model.  When Barbara Gordon was shot through the spine and “permanently” paralysed below the waist,*** she showed just how much hard graft and grit she really had.  She completely reinvented herself, using her skills as a librarian to fight crime with information.  As Oracle, she coordinated a superhero team from her wheelchair, and gave other heroes the information they needed to help them do their jobs.

Even when she could literally, physically no longer kick butt, she still thwarted the bad guys and saved the day.

Hell, yeah, Barbara Gordon!

I want the words “Batgirl” and “Barbara Gordon” to be synonymous with being resourceful and strong.  I want people to use this character as a way to compliment girls for being capable, independent, active and resilient.  For being powerful women with a power that comes from within.

I want this character and her characteristics to be such a part of the cultural cache that when someone does something amazing with whatever they could get on a budget, people say things like “She went totally Batgirl on this project”.  Or people refer to female athletes who mange to go really far in their chosen sport - even though they didn’t have the kind of sponsorship and support that their male counterparts were given - as being “just like Barbara Gordon”.

I want the idea of WWBGD? (What Would BatGirl/Barbara Gordon Do?) to take the world by storm.  Because what would she do?  BG would figure it out, because she’s smart.  BG would train hard and get fighting fit.  BG would work with what she has and make it work.  BG wouldn’t take anyone’s crap.  BG would kick butt.  BG would rescue herself – and anyone else who needed rescuing.

BG would step up, and show the world what happens when a perfectly ordinary woman applies herself and backs herself.

Will you help me?  If you read this, will you do what you can to make sure everyone knows who Batgirl is, and knows that she is a force to be reckoned with?

WWBGD?

*Yes, it is Batman’s logo.  Batgirl’s logo is slightly different.  The bat is more angular and is usually yellow on a black or grey background, rather than black on a yellow disc.  I’d buy t-shirts with the Batgirl logo on them, but they aren’t easy to find in normal clothing stores, and I’m on a budget, so I’m making the best fist of what’s readily available (WWBGD?).

**There were also a few characters called Batwoman in the comics, but they were never part of the permanent roster or in any of the film adaptations, so we’ll forgive people for not knowing much about her.

***Nothing is ever “permanent” in the comic book world – but she was in that wheelchair for an awfully long time.

Poster Art, Visual Culture, and Esperanto

There’s a blog about Esperanto (but not *in* Esperanto) that I occasionally read, and a recent article brought up the question as to whether Esperanto has a visual culture.

Leks, the author of the post, noted that part of language classes in schools and colleges is learning more about the culture in which the language is situated, and often includes looking at the visual arts of that culture.  For example, a course in Spanish is likely to include at least some reference to famous Spanish artists and well known Spanish paintings.

He wondered whether anything similar existed within the Esperanto culture, and he couldn’t think of any examples (at least, none that were readily accessible).

But I could.

As I was reading his article, I realised that my impression of Esperanto as a culture is actually strongly associated with art.  When I think about Esperanto as a cultural movement or a cultural group, there are a number of artworks in particular that spring to mind – and almost always have.  I hadn’t noticed it before I read this article, but the art of the Esperanto movement is a big part of it for me.

Now, the author of the article is someone who is heavily involved in the Esperanto culture, while I dabble around the edges.  So why would it be that he struggled to think of a “visual culture” within the Esperanto culture, while I’ve “almost always” associated Esperanto with art?

I think it’s because we’re looking for art in different places.  He’s thinking about finding it in a gallery, while I found it in the ephemera collection of a library.

I’ve known about the language of Esperanto (or at least the idea of it) since I was a child, but it was always an abstract concept – one to which I didn’t pay much heed.  I only really realised that there was an entire culture (or subculture) wrapped around the language when I visited the Esperanto Museum in Vienna.

The Esperanto Museum isn’t actually a museum at all – it’s a permanent display by the Austrian National Library.  It takes up two smallish rooms in one of the library’s buildings.  And what they display is…

Posters and other ephemera.

The library has produced some interpretive signs to tell the story of Esperanto (and these signs formed the beginning of my education on the subject), but what captured my attention was the posters, pamphlets, flyers and printed what-nots that were on display on the walls and in the cabinets.

A lot of people forget that posters are an artistic medium.  When you look at a poster advertising an event or product, you’re not just reading it for information – you are looking at a work of art.  Late 19^th and early 20^th Century poster art in particular is fantastic, and you’ve probably seen a lot of old posters (once advertisements) that have been reproduced as decorative items in cafés and living rooms.

Posters, pamphlets, conference programmes… these are all examples of a certain kind of art at a certain point in time.  And they are all things that were designed for a particular purpose or event, and were often destroyed after they had served their purpose.  That’s why we call them “ephemera” – they were never meant to stick around. 

But many libraries have ephemera collections, and in this way they have saved these items that are – at one and the same time – evidence of the historical events of a culture and slices of visual culture.

Thanks to the Austrian National Library, I have a strong association in my mind between the Esperanto culture and poster art – particularly early 20^th Century poster art. 

Not only is the art itself glorious (in a way that only poster art can be), but it’s also rife with symbolism.  It’s fascinating to see how the artists (almost all anonymous) have captured some aspect of the culture’s ethos or highlighted a particular characteristic of Esperanto and Esperantists – all in approximately four colours.

Does Esperanto have a visual culture?  Yes.  Resolutely yes.  And if the flyer I recently saw for a congress in Indonesia is anything to go by, it’s still flourishing.

Artist: Joanne Johns