I am Spartacus

My Name is Erica Packington. I am @Erica_Jane_MP. And I am Spartacus.

I spent most of my week recruiting fellow Spartacii for Saturdays’ demonstration on Sheffield Town Hall steps. I wanted to do something more concrete as a follow up to my participation in the massive #IAmSpartacus protest on Twitter, sparked by @christt. It’s estimated that 25,000 people have republished a tweet that earned the original poster (@PaulJChambers) a criminal record, a fine and lost him his job (twice). You might already know a bit about the situation – but if you want to find out more, you can do so here and here.

So, how did I come to be spending my Saturday afternoon alongside 20+ others shouting “I Am Spartacus” at bemused passers-by in Sheffield City Centre*? Well, the idea came from a flippant remark from a friend on Twitter. @thegreatgonzo (Tony Kennick) tweeted “@DrEvanHarris @mePadraigReidy now true action would be for us to all pick a time to surrender ourselves #Iamspartacus”. That started me thinking.

What about getting a few people together to go down to the police station with a printout of our republication of Paul’s original tweet under our own names and the hashtag #IAmSpartacus and handing ourselves in? Surely there was no way they’d be able to prosecute us all? And if they didn’t prosecute us, surely that would help demonstrate that the means of securing Paul’s conviction were unsafe – or at least completely ridiculous? Either the tweet is menacing (out of context) or it isn’t….

And while we were getting a bunch of people together, why not make a few signs, shout a bit and hand out a few leaflets? It’d be fun. Hopefully, we’d raise a few eyebrows, have a laugh and and a few conversations with people who may not have heard about the case, or understood the wider implications.

A bit of organising, a tweetflood or two over the next few days and we had quite a lot of interest. It was on.

Kickass-tus Interruptus.

So, I went back to Krav on Thursday for the first time in 6 weeks. In my (dubious) honour Tony decided not to do too many pressups (as my thumb is still a bit delicate and pathetic) so we focussed on the legs. Oh joy. Sprints, duck walks and walking lunges. Ad nauseum.

I still can’t walk properly and it is Monday… Going to see if going to the gym tomorrow will loosen them up a bit, and if not, will concentrate on the arms a bit.

The pathetic thumb also meant that I excused myself from the Krav/Warrior training bit of the session. It was grappling and involved lots of throwing about, slamming to the ground and potential whacking of thumbs. I made my excuses and left.

I think, for the meantime, even though I can’t do any of the cool stuff, I am going to keep going. Mainly as I never work as hard on my own as I do there (for a variety of reasons) and I do enjoy it. Perhaps not *quite* this type of session (or its after effects) but I enjoy the feeling of pushing myself to exhaustion, and I enjoy the results.

Back to the gym (and musings on beauty)

So. The Thumb is now out of cast and into a really attractive strappy harness the colour of “dead white people”* And, my gym membership woke from hibernation on the 1st of the month and has been growling at my subconscious since.

Adds up to the fact that, this morning, I woke up and knew it was time to resume the GGWP Project. No more procrastination, no more excuses. I have 7 weeks to get (back?) into shape for the wedding and become Warrior Princess again. Or resume huffing down the path towards her, whatever.

I walked down to the gym, figuring it was a nice day, it’s only 10 minutes away and, erm, yeah I HAVE NO EXCUSE NOT TO. The walk down seemed to help warm me up as I was able to do my treadmill interval training without cheating (walk, run, RUN, run, RUN, run, RUN, collapse). Which, given that I’ve not really moved very fast very frequently recently (apart from a wheezy stagger around the park a couple days ago) I was really pleased with.

I’ve discovered I can do most of the arm exercises, apart from the ones that will do something about the bit of my arms I most want to work on. Booo….hiss…. Think I need to corner one of the lovely young men with interesting hair and ask them to recommend an exercise that will still deliver me Xena arms, but not involve my right thumb at all. Really work those Sport Science degrees (and fringes) hard.

I had a jolt of serious arm envy when using the machines, and again in the changing rooms. There was a girl there – blond, moderately tall, quite pretty, with an amazingly strong form. Not muscle-bound at all, but very strong looking – I think I recognise her from climbing. Really striking, and looked like she could take the “glory battle” bit in any mythic GGWP encounter. Got me thinking about notions of beauty and how horribly warped the story is that women have been sold, and bought…

I got quite cross on the way home thinking about it. Twig-like waifs who look like they’d break if you sneezed aggressively near them stalk the pages of every fashion magazine and across the screens of the broadcast media we consume. Rarely do you see a woman who looks like they can hold their own – and someone else’s to boot. Even women taking on traditional “action” roles in the movies (like Angelina Jolie in Salt) look like they might snap in two at any moment.  Where’s our modern-day Ripley? If cast today, the lead in  Alien would in all probability be all emaciated form and marionette arms, telling us how she “can’t resist carbs” (but clearly does).

There’s something desperately insulting about the notion that a woman’s greatest achievement is to make less of herself. But we collectively coo and fawn over women who have managed to do so by losing weight – who take up less space. I do it  – “Wow, you look great, have you lost weight?” I get a buzz when someone says the same to me. But at its heart, it’s weird.

The move towards a more accepting notion of different female shapes – such as the current fetishisation of Christina Hendricks (who plays Joan Holloway on Mad Men) still risks positioning woman into a space where they are both defined by their body shape and denied access to the ideal – no one else looks like Christina Hendricks. She is completely fricking gorgeous, and an amazing actor – and as impossible a body shape to assume as Kate Moss is, for many women. It’s not body acceptance that drives a greater range of women’s shapes in the media, it’s fashion and economics. And none of it gets to the heart of the fact that women are (mostly) still judged by how their bodies look and (mostly) how little space they take up.

Perhaps an odd tirade for a Geek Girl, writing on a blog specifically set up to chart my physical “upgrade”.  I have experienced (a little bit) of the power of discovering exercise to change my body shape. But I don’t think my motivation is to get “thinner”. I’ve realised I don’t want to be thin, actually. I want to be strong and toned and Warrior Princess. Not weak and feeble and waif. If I’m going to be judged on my body, I want the message I send out to show just how much space I am happy to take up.

Fight you for it.

p.s More eloquent (and erm, knowledgable) women than me have talked about this: notably Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth. Also, some of the literature on women’s body shape in the media related to economic and social pressures after the 2nd world war (essentially “from Rosie the Riveter to Perfect Housewife”) is worth a read. Sheila Rowbotham’s A Century of Women is pretty interesting.

*you know, Crayola’s infamous crayon shade…no?

WHOA! look at it! It’s HUGE!

The Wire.

after the jump for those of you with a nervous disposition.

GGWP adds another acronym; IS

Idiot Stoic. Obviously.

Is Slowly (healing)

Today’s the DAY! Getting the wire out…The plan is to keep it as a talisman. Or a warning to the other bits of my body to remind them not to be idiotic and get damaged or they, too, might end up pinned together with a coathook-come-tent peg. Anyway, after the operation plus a month of cast-bound thumb immobilisation, I’ve got another 2 weeks of some sort of protection to wear and physio to do. But I Is Slowly (healing).

Internal Saboteur

All this time, I’d been conceptualising a struggle between Geek Girl and Warrior Princess – fighting it out over time and priorities (examples: Geek Girl gets to go to a talk on metaphors ,Geek Girls Allowed beats Krav ,Geek Girl gets Warrior Princess into trouble. Hmm. For a kick-ass warrior, WP gets beat a lot)

Perhaps I missed a sub-personality lurking in the background…the Internal Saboteur. This deep-cover Anna Chapman bided her time, letting the headline battles rage until striking… “No, don’t bother getting the thumb checked out, it’s fine. Don’t be a wimp.” Whispering her tempting message of  “Just ignore it, it’ll be fine. Besides, you don’t have time for a sore thumb” IS has pretty successfully nixed both GG and WP agendas for the past month. Sneaky.

In Suspension

However, despite the best efforts of WP and IS. I can actually type. Hurrah! But I can only really type in 10 minute bursts. That’s why I’ve not really posted anything for so long. Well, that and, you know. It’s all a bit embarrassing.

What this experience has highlighted for me is that my writing style has its own rhythm. One not AT ALL suited to being able to type in 10 minute bursts. As my thumb is immobilised, I have to hunch up my shoulder to get into the right position to be able to hit the keys. This is not a position you would find on any of those workplace ergonomics websites full of glossy people and strange looking chairs. Or maybe you would, but it would be in the “WTF were they thinking??” gallery and Justin (for ergonomics specialists are always called Justin) would be shaking his head mournfully at the damage I am doing to muscles I can’t pronounce.

ANYWAY, for the first week or so after The Op, I finally realised and accepted that all Warrior Princess activities were fully off the table. Which left me with some free time. Time I could hand over to Geek Girl to crack on with The Dissertation. A few valiant (ahem) attempts to get writing illustrated that this would not be the case.

My writing style is not suited to ten minute bursts of typing. Or even 1/2 hour bursts. Oh no, I need to gaze at the computer for hours/day/weeks, then flood it with a deluge of words. Then go back, edit, delete, restore, re-read, re-shape, get despondent, give up, come back, realise it’s not so bad and carry on. Normally interspersed with a healthy dose of gazing and procrastination enlivened with a dash of self-loathing. It is not a pomodoro friendly activity.

So. I’ve put my dissertation submission date back – erm, I am In Suspension* – for how long, I’m not sure. I will be meeting the physio tomorrow who will be able to let me know the activities I can safely get back to and in what timeframe. We’ll see which are Geek Girl friendly and which will enable the Return of Warrior Princess. Idiot Stoic and Internal Saboteur can retreat back from whence they came. IS citizenship in this collective has been revoked.

*’cept I’m not, it’s a Delayed Submission, but that wouldn’t work with the thing. Details, details…

Stoicism is for idiots

Thumbthing *was* up. In fact, I’m going into hospital tomorrow for an operation to correct the thumbthing that was significantly fucked-up. I have “significantly damaged…the UCL in my right thumb”. And now I’m in a cast, having begged, borrowed and stolen favours to organise childcare for tomorrow for while I’m unconscious getting messed with by professionals with sharp knives. Poo.

I was at my accountants signing some papers this morning, which is near the Minor Injuries Clinic at the Royal Hallamshire. My thumb has been sore, swollen, all in all a bit weak and feeble since I bust it 2 weeks ago. So I thought I’d pop in, see what they said. I was kind of expecting them to say “Erm, yeah, that’s what a sore thumb looks like. Put some ice on it, take some tabs and it’ll be ‘reet” (subtext, “You know there are people here with *actual* injuries…”)

Not so much.

They sent me for an x-ray. Then prodded it a bit, pushed it this way and that. Hummed and hawed. They talked on the phone to a hand surgeon at the Northern General, and came back with the slightly alarming news that he’d see me today.  So, off I went to the Northern General, still sure that someone would look at it, give me a bandage (ooh, and maybe some drugs!) or something and send me off.

Not so much again.

The consultant was summoned, after the SHO (a lovely man called Mr Ray) had pumped my thumb full of local anaesthetic (which made me think him less lovely). The consultant (Mr Lamb) then bent my thumb impossibly far to the side to demonstrate (far more times than I felt was *strictly* necessary as the local wasn’t THAT effective) that, yes, it was torn, or ripped or generally completely fucked.

So, I’m not to eat anything past 6:30 am, drink anything after 10:30 and they will slice me up and reattach the ligament at some point tomorrow afternoon.

Will be in a cast for 4 weeks. No Krav for a month, no climbing for at least 6. GGWP needs a new regime – probably one that involves running, as that requires less thumb/arm involvement than the less hideous stuff. And some creative people to help me draw on my cast so it looks like a GGWP bronze warrior shield.

Not sure if I went past stoicism straight into idiocy when I didn’t get it checked out sooner. I blame rugby playing men in my family for demonstrating a “tis but a fleshwound” sensibility when they broke bits and pieces. And my tendency to confuse “I don’t want this to have happened” with “This hasn’t happened”. And the fact that I’m an idiot. Rarrr

Lie back and think of England

Gender. It’s a strange balance at Krav. Mostly, it doesn’t explicitly matter – occasionally the instructors tell me off (for doing girly push-ups for example) or have to remind my partners not to go easy on me because I’m a women (“Go on,   HIT her! You don’t want no special treatment, in’t that right Erica??”). They stopped apologising for swearing ages ago.

Last night, one exercise really threw my “femaleness” (and with it, my “otherness”) into sharp relief for my partner and I. I was working with Steve again, who I co-opted a while ago when I decided it wasn’t fair to keep working with the instructors. We were getting on fine, although it may have been a bit unsatisfying working with me as I wasn’t great with my right hand with the bust thumb. But we managed.

Then came the challenge. God knows what the exercise was actually called, but I’m going to suggest “Lie Back and Think of England”

If you’d like to try it, here’s how:

Start by kneeling between your partners legs, so they can wrap their legs around your waist and grip on. Then, push up on their shoulders to get to a wide standing position, lifting their torso up as you do so. Lean over, 4 hard strikes to the pads that they are holding up, drop down to your knees. Repeat. Swop over. Try not to think about sex*

All in all, not an exercise that allowed us to comfortably ignore my femaleness and his maleness. To say the least. We didn’t have time to think about it too much, or give him the chance to swop out, so we got on with it. After a few giggles and relatively pathetic attempts, and accidental “oops, sorry, didn’t mean to…” we were able to get into the exercise. In fact, as it was so bloody difficult, it soon became immaterial in terms of “what does this look like/what would people think/this is embarrasing” because I was so focussed on trying not to collapse. We made it through, shared a slightly embarassed smirk at the end and moved on.

Went out for a meal afterwards with Nigel, Mike, Steve, Bradley, Tony, Jim, Jevard and Guy to celebrate Bradley’s birthday, and it was lovely to talk to everyone, to have a bit more of a conversation, rather than all “you hit me first”. Most of them are avid readers, and I have a few recommends for some good detective novels that I’ll check out. They also go to the movies occasionally, so I might have a gang of people to go see superhero movies with, which is always welcome.

Anyway, it is really interesting how the importance of my gender waxes and wanes – sometimes feels invisible and sometimes sharply figural. A lesson from the exercise last night is that, in the context of the Krav sessions, I have to choose to make it not matter, and it won’t. Much.

* this may or may not be applicable.

The Dress has arrived. The goal is now startlingly clear…

So, the bridesmaids dress is here – and unashamedly sleeveless. It is gorgeous (although I’m not allowed to show you, or tell you too much about it). Suffice to say, it is drapy and ruchy and flowy in all the right ways. And looooong. I think I might have to have it taken up, or I will be dragging it along the floor and collecting small animals/children along the way as I walk up the aisle.

I now have until October to sort out my arms – to encourage those indents and curves to grow, shrink, expand and contract in all the right places, so that I’m toned and trim. Seeing as my thumb is still swollen and feeble, I don’t think climbing is going to be a key component moving forward. Krav and gym it is.  And swishing about in this gorgeous dress. That’ll help right?

Thumbthing’s up

I’ve done something unpleasant to my thumb (right hand, of course) at Krav (of course) and so am typing with fingers and one thumb, while watching the other go a bit purple. Ooops.

We were doing gun disarms today – kind of weird and disturbing in the context of the Cumbria tragedy to still get that playful “I’m a spy/cop/gangsta” thrill out of a toy gun that all good feminists are supposed to despise. But there it is.

It’s compounded by the fact that, when done well, the disarm is cool, slick, make-you-look-like-a-superspy. Or, more accurately, make other people (like the instructors and some of the longer term participants) look like a super spies. I’m not very fluid. Yet. Anyway, we did a ridiculous number of squats and lunges and sprinting and quite unpleasant leg focussed work for cardio, then moved onto practicing practicing practicing the technique.

I was getting the hang of it a bit more by the end. Twisting my body, grabbing the attackers wrist with one hand, the other on the back of the gun, twisting to sharply wrench it from them. Then quickly backing up, strong legs, shouting, pointing the gun.

I’m better when I commit to it, really shouting and treating it like role play. Trying to rid myself of the inhibitions that tell me I look and sound stupid. I guess I’d rather look stupid in a room full of other people also looking stupid than *not* do it properly and end up being MORE unsafe because I half-think I half-know what to do if I was ever called upon to use any of this.

At the end, when knackered, we did a pressure test. The idea is to take the technique one step closer to how it might be IRL. Legs sore from the cardio, we spun for 30 seconds to get dizzy. Then, the other people in the group attacked, one at a time, again, shouting, making demands. Your objective is to get the gun off them, back up, pointing at them all the time and get away.

It’s scrappy as hell – they don’t let go. They try and trip you up. They shout at you. They fight back. If you don’t get the technique right quickly, you then have to find other ways to get the damn thing off them. Anyway, one time I was attacking (and being comprehensively disarmed) my thumb made a sharp cracking noise and went slack. I can move it, mostly, but it’s developing a pretty good purple bruise on the pad.

Got a fancy-schmancy meeting tomorrow in That London, for lunch. I’m going to end up holding my cutlery like a 4 year old. Or worse, like an American. I’ll take comfort in the knowledge that if he teases me too much about it, I could probably kick his ass. Rarr!

Tonight I learnt…

that someone thought it would be a good idea to hold a dating event at the Freud Museum. Wow.

If you have BBC iPlayer, you can see the episode here: If you don’t, well. I am sure you can imagine. Let me repeat. DATING EVENT AT THE FREUD MUSEUM.