Mary-Dan Johnston: Nowhere to Throw a Wrench

By Mary-Dan Johnston (Maritimes & Jesus 2012)

Oxford asks for narrative, for cohesiveness. The security of the place is built on the knowledge that we belong to a lineage unbroken over the centuries. Matriculated, we claim a heritage, gain value because of our membership in something consistent, something that has been weathered and withstood. What a comfort, that stone which turns to gold when the dusk comes on.

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When I said yes to my offer, that voice was speaking to me: “you could be part of this, this ancient thing—tested by the ages, still standing.” Who could say no to that kind of belonging? I am an historian; narrative appeals to me. 

My “yes” was clouded, though. I wouldn’t call it trepidation, or caution. Just that lip-biting feeling you get when something totalizing comes into the frame. All those moving pieces…a magnificent machine, and nowhere to throw a wrench.

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Here is what I learned: There are women whose bodies fracture the institution; that break it in places, sometimes publicly, messily. There are women whose bodies break on the institution. Sometimes silently, in the volumes of tear-stained pages holding the place up, in a play published thirty years later. We don’t always stay long enough to put the institution back together. We don’t always stay long enough to put ourselves back together. I didn’t bother doing either.

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The horror stories pile up. We shuffle through postcards of pain, of righteous indignation, of resignation, of despair. “The counsellor suggested I had been drinking too much.” “I know a girl whose tutor touched her. The college ignored it—he’s a leader in the field.” “The attending officer asked me if it was just ‘sex with regrets’.” “I’m not eligible for parental leave from my DPhil.” “I’ve been outed by my college. I am mis-gendered regularly in my tutorial.” But heritage. But tradition.

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I was at a seminar on Stuart Hall just after his death. A black man I hadn’t met before talked about climbing the stairs in Rhodes House to the Commonwealth Library. Here, your own history belongs to your oppressor. It would have been crass for me to apologize to him, but I wanted to. Sometimes, men at Oxford would apologize, prompted, (I assume) by a sense of guilt similar to what I felt that afternoon. More often, they would act. The men I trusted would listen.

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The stories are fragmentary. Jagged edges that you should get to sanding. The message: turn pain into anecdote. Turn anecdote into data. Quantify the unspeakable. Make the institution believe you. Whatever you do, don’t go to the press. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

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I was nearly finished my degree by the time I encountered departmental colleagues who talked about gender in a serious way…or perhaps, who had a venue to talk about gender in a serious way. Why had I felt so alone? I read Carolyn Steedman’s Landscape for a good woman for a seminar with Selina Todd. It felt like breathing again. I had been in Oxford for nineteen months.  

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Here is a metaphor: It was kind of like watching a fan spinning, and wondering what would happen if you stuck your hand in it.

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There are people the institution believes. They just aren’t women.

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I cannot talk about Oxford in an unbroken way. The experience was not cohesive. 
 

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 There is not a clear, bright line.