Vera and Doris

Posted on 25/02/2017 by StephenJones.blog

Vera de Bosset.

Further to Igor Stravinsky (“Gran visits York”), here’s Alan Bennett again (Writing home, p.30):

During the [1963] run of Beyond the fringe in New York, Dudley Moore and I took refuge from a storm in the Hotel Pierre, where we were spotted by an assistant manager. Saying that there had been a spate of thefts from rooms recently, he asked us to leave. A small argument ensued, in the course of which an old man and his wife stumped past, whereupon the assistant manager left off abusing us in order to bow. It was Stravinsky. We were then thrown out. I have never set foot in the Pierre since, fearing I might still be taken for a petty thief. Dudley Moore, I imagine, goes in there with impunity; the assistant manager may even bow to him now while throwing someone else out. Me still, possibly.

And then (2010):

I tell John Bird the story of Dudley Moore and me seeing Stravinsky and his wife Vera in the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1963, saying how the name Vera has always seemed to me to humanise Stravinsky. “Not so much as Stockhausen,” says John. “His wife’s name was Doris.”

Gender
Now, I’m not so humourless that I can’t see how Vera and Doris (“wives”) are funnier than Igor and Karlheinz (“Great Composers”). Noting that the English have been making light of Storm Doris this week, this brings me to hurricanes.

In the USA, for many years hurricanes bore only female names. The male meteorological community found female names

appropriate for such unpredictable and dangerous phenomena.

Pah! In the 1970s the growing numbers of female meteorologists began to object, and since 1978 onwards male and female names have alternated (Yay!). Nor are they expected to suggest menace, like characters in a horror movie. Fleur or Katrina might be femme fatales, but Tammy and Bob are homely, and Nigel nerdy.

However, in the US people may prepare differently for storms depending whether they bear a male or female name. Hurricanes with female names cause significantly more deaths—apparently (by contrast with that idea of “female menace”) because people perceive them as less threatening, leading to less preparedness and thus causing more damage. You can’t win…

BTW, please can we stop making out that countries and ships are feminine?! Otherwise we’re lucky in English not to have to worry our pretty little heads about gendering nouns…

The “case for the defence” shoots itself in the foot most messily in a breathtakingly Neanderthal essay “Why We Call a Ship a She” from “Rear Admiral” Francis D. Foley—apparently the Benny Hill of the US Navy. This is just a sample:

There can be a great deal of bustle about her as well as a gang of men on deck, particularly if she is slim-waisted, well-stacked, and has an inviting superstructure.

And FFS, it dates from 1998! If it came from 1698 I might reluctantly, um, consider it within the cultural context of the day; but this is indeed the cultural context that afflicts the USA at the moment. Too bad Foley is no longer with us—he would be a shoo-in for the post of Gender Equality Adviser in the new US administration. But amazingly there are plenty more where he came from, eager to fall on their flaccid pork swords before the Amazon hordes of the “liberal media”…

Cf. Surely… in the Messiah.

“No sensa humor, these wimmin…” Never mind Bridget Christie—even Foley’s junior contemporary Stella Gibbons would have given him a piece of her dainty mind.

This is a battle that is important to pursue, like “actress”, “chairman”, and “ballerina” (see Words and women)—however much the “PC gone mad” cabal may splutter.

“Doh a deer, a female deer—but that’s not important right now”, indeed.

I rest my case.