The View From the Cello Section
Copyright© 2026 by Marc Nobbs
Chapter 6: It Was Not About the Hat
It Was Not About the Hat
Sunday 3rd November 2013
I am writing this on a quiet Sunday afternoon with an ice pack on my left knee, three enormous books on employment economics spread across my desk, and complete certainty that at least two of you will skip everything serious and go straight to the hat.
I can’t stop you. I can only make you wait.
It is November. That has happened surprisingly quickly. It only feels like 5 minutes ago I was preparing to go out with my new flatmates for the first time, but apparently I’ve been at university long enough that saying “at the start of term” makes it sound like I’m remembering ancient history.
This week contained Law, orchestra, the Celestial Quartet, a badminton tournament, a Halloween Ball and, finally, the Westmouth Union, which has succeeded in getting its hooks into me.
It was a varied week.
But before any of that, there is something serious I need to say concerning that other platform I’m so fond of: Twitter. And I’m afraid it needs rather more than 140 characters.
Threats
Since I first wrote about the attacks in Westmouth two weekends ago, I have received abuse, sexual insults and threats of violence from people who objected to what I wrote. Some of the threats were laughable. Some were specific and frightening. They came from people who knew more about me than I knew about them.
I don’t know who they were. I don’t know whether they were men. Anonymous accounts prove very little. Some of those accounts could well have been women pretending to be men. One of them could live five miles from me. One could live five hundred. One could live on the other side of the world.
For all I know, one lives in my building.
I cannot know. That uncertainty is part of what makes a threat frightening, even when it is probably empty.
Not All Men
Several replies informed me that it is “not all men,” and I’ve been thinking about that phrase all week.
So, for the avoidance of doubt: Not all men. Of course, it’s not all men.
I don’t believe I ever suggested otherwise, and most women don’t need it explained.
I know plenty of men, and I do not believe any man I currently know would attack, abuse or force himself on a woman. I trust them. But that is where the difficulty begins.
Sixteen
When I was sixteen, there was a man the same age whom I trusted. That trust turned out, on this occasion, to be misplaced. I am not going to describe what happened. It was one incident. It was nowhere near as serious as what is feared in Westmouth. Some things will remain mine. I do not have to share everything.
But I want to be clear: as far as I know, he had never behaved that way before, and he has never behaved that way since. He was not someone I feared. That is the point. He was someone I knew and trusted, until one moment showed me that trust had limits.
If you had asked me five minutes beforehand whether he was the sort of man who would cross that boundary, I would have said no.
I would have been completely certain. I would have been sincere. I would have been wrong.
What “Not All Men” Doesn’t Answer
That is what gets missed when women talk about being cautious.
It isn’t a belief that all men are dangerous. It is the knowledge that you cannot always identify the dangerous one in advance. A dangerous man does not always announce himself. He might be a stranger. He might be a friend. He might be somebody who was trustworthy every single day until today.
If we could tell in advance, the problem would be considerably easier.
The problem was never how many men are dangerous. It is whether anyone can identify them before they become dangerous.
So sometimes we are cautious. Sometimes we don’t walk alone. Sometimes we don’t accept the lift. Sometimes we keep our distance.
That is not an accusation against every man. It is risk assessment with incomplete information. A woman who takes precautions is deciding before she has all the evidence, because if she waits for certainty, that certainty may arrive only after she has been harmed.
Yes, this can be unfair to perfectly decent men. I understand why some of them find it uncomfortable.
But look at the costs.
Misplaced caution usually costs an awkward interaction. Misplaced trust can cost a great deal more.
That is why I think trust should be earned, not owed simply because somebody hasn’t yet given us a reason to withhold it. It also cannot be demanded from women as proof that they hold no prejudice. A man worth trusting will understand that a woman’s caution is not a verdict on his character. It is a response to uncertainty.
Caution is not hatred. Fear is not an accusation.
None of this means I live frightened of everyone. I don’t. I like people. I generally expect them to be decent. Caution and optimism can coexist.
Apparently I am becoming very fond of two things being true at once.
One last thing.
Several people suggested I should leave Twitter.
I won’t.
I still love it. I have learned things there, met lovely people there and had conversations I would never otherwise have had. A small number of unpleasant people do not get to decide whether I take part in a space I enjoy. Anonymous people who dislike women answering back will not frighten me into silence.
I have, however, spent the past fortnight discovering the remarkable usefulness of the block button.
Highly recommended.
Not all men. Not all Twitter users either.
Fortunately, I don’t have to work out which Twitter users are safe before blocking them.
Badminton
The tournament began on Wednesday, straight after the regular club session, so we were already warm when we walked onto the court for our first-round match. Paul and I have been a partnership for less than a month, so we’re unseeded. We need four wins to take the title. The draw has at least kept us away from Ross and Gemma until the semi-final, assuming both pairs get that far.
We won 21–10, 21–8.
Our opponents were perfectly pleasant and played a good deal better than those scores suggest. But sport tells you very quickly who is in trouble, and by the opening rallies it was clear it wasn’t us.
I am not going to write six paragraphs about their backhand. This is not primarily a badminton blog, and there is no virtue in memorialising somebody else’s defeat on the internet.
What I will say is that our communication worked. It worked very well. Paul called, and I moved. I called, and he moved. We rotated and covered for each other without once trying to occupy the same square metre of court.
After the final point, we shook hands with our opponents, thanked them and behaved like civilised adults.
For anyone wondering: I behaved impeccably. I did not kiss my partner this time.
Yes, I know.
The Knee
My left knee was less cooperative.
It began to ache towards the end of the second game, and I limped slightly on the way home. It was the familiar post-match ache, but it remained stable. There is an important difference between soreness and instability. Soreness means ice, rest, proper support and rehab exercises. Instability means hanging up the racquet. I am not going to negotiate with my own ligaments.
I decided to skip Tuesday’s and Thursday’s runs with Lily. She responded with only moderate theatrical despair. I am writing this down here so that nobody has to send me a well-meaning message telling me to rest.
When we’d finished changing, I waited in the foyer instead of wandering off alone. Basic communication includes remembering when somebody has offered to walk you home.
Paul watched my stride all the way back to Campus Heights with the vigilance of an anxious physiotherapist. Given how slowly I walked, he didn’t look convinced when I said I was fine, but he had the good sense not to force the issue.
By the time we reached the flat, Lily had already put an extra plate on the table. Wednesday dinner has apparently become a constitutional convention: established by custom, not legislation.
The Celestial Quartet
The Celestial Quartet continues to justify its existence. Despite what I said on Twitter last weekend, no one has been dismissed.
We still have not booked a performance.
Rehearsals remain a diplomatic exercise. Maya and Ari argue over phrasing like delegates negotiating a disputed border. Finn mediates, and periodically reminds the room that the viola also has notes. I sit between them on cello, playing the bass line and wondering whether this is what international relations feels like.
This week was a breakthrough.
We spent most of the rehearsal on Beethoven’s String Quartet in C minor, Op. 18 No. 4. There were stretches that sounded properly thrilling. There were also moments when Beethoven would have been entirely justified in asking for his score back.
We have also made the unwise decision to attempt part of Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet. It is difficult, unsettling and emotionally exhausting, so naturally all four of us felt we had to play it.
Por Una Cabeza is staying. It’s simply too much fun to be abandoned.
But the most important thing was this: it was the first rehearsal where I stopped monitoring every bow stroke and every breath. Maya’s forward momentum. Ari lingering fractionally behind the beat. The golden rule that Finn must never, under any circumstances, be encouraged. Those things used to be sources of anxiety. Somewhere this week they turned into shared instinct.
I didn’t notice it happen.
Orchestra
Tuesday’s rehearsal was similarly satisfying. We are still working on Sibelius’s Finlandia, the Grieg Piano Concerto and Dvořák’s Ninth for the upcoming concert.
Fourth Desk is proving educational. You can see the whole cello section from there, but you are not far enough back to hide. Any mistake ripples forward through the desks and returns reflected in the conductor’s expression.
That doesn’t mean I’ve given up ambition. Sitting among better players means I pick up fingerings, bowings and phrasing I would never have found alone. Our principal cellist can count forty-seven consecutive bars of rest without the sudden spiritual crisis that hits the rest of us around bar thirty-nine.
The conductor has now warned us that we have six rehearsals left. The Christmas concert is starting to feel less like a date in December and more like a deadline.
For the record, there will be no Leipzig-style emotional breakdown at the end of it. Nobody mention Leipzig.
The Halloween Ball
Friday was the university’s Halloween Ball, even though Halloween was on Thursday.
It was everything you’d expect. Deafening music. Overpriced drinks. Costumes ranging from nine vampires, six zombies and one lone traffic cone to somebody who had, inexplicably, come as David Cameron.
I’m not sure which one was more terrifying, the traffic cone or the Prime Minister.
I briefly considered turning an old dress into a 1920s flapper, with beads and a completely unnecessary feather. But it seemed like too much work, so I went as Rosie the Riveter instead: a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a red scarf, red lipstick, and enough fake confidence to flex one arm whenever challenged.
Three men judged this un-frightening. One of them was dressed as a banana and looked far too tired to survive an impromptu lecture on how women entering industrial employment dismantled established gender norms.
I let him off.
Lily had cycled through eight concepts and discarded Catwoman before settling on Lara Croft. She committed so completely that several bystanders looked visibly disappointed when she didn’t perform any acrobatics or discover an ancient tomb under the Students’ Union. Rina went as a polished, Instagram-ready witch.
And then I ran into Paul.
He was the Mad Hatter, and it suited him alarmingly well. Proper coat. Waistcoat. Scarf. And a hat so towering and absurd that when I told him it was ridiculous, he said absurdity was the entire premise.
He had a point. I dislike that.
He was there with the third-year he has been seeing, who was dressed as Alice, in a version of the costume sold under an adjective I dislike.
They looked striking together. Undeniably.
My first reaction was unkind, and unkind in a specifically gendered way. I noticed it. I disliked it. I withdrew it.
Jealousy will borrow sexism if it is searching for a weapon it hasn’t earned. She had done nothing wrong. She dressed up for a party with a man who was entirely free to invite her. My feelings do not create an obligation over her wardrobe.
Paul and I exchanged smiles and a brief wave across the room. Then I went back to dancing badly with Lily, having decided that one extremely inconvenient hat had no business becoming the governing principle of my evening.
The costumes did one useful thing, though. They made talking to people easy. I spoke to people from Law, the orchestra, the library and the Union without any of the usual agonising small talk. I am starting to think university friendships don’t form through one clique. They form through overlapping circles, until one day campus feels familiar.
Campus is starting to feel very familiar.
The Union
I have been avoiding this for weeks, and now it has caught up with me.
I have been assigned to propose the motion: This House believes that the gender pay gap is evidence of structural discrimination.
I am proposing opposite the society president. That is either a vote of confidence or an unusually elaborate initiation ritual. I can’t decide which.
I have already started reading, and here is the first thing I’ve noticed. Most public arguments about this go wrong because they treat two separate things as one. Paying a woman less than a man for identical work has been unlawful for decades. A broad gap in overall earnings persists anyway.
The real debate begins when you ask why. Hours worked. Sector and occupational sorting. Career interruptions. Seniority. Overtime. Negotiation. The disproportionate burden of domestic labour and childcare.
Critics often dismiss these patterns as personal choices. But choices are made within social and structural constraints, and explaining the mechanics of an earnings gap is not the same as proving that the forces producing it are fair.
The same rigour applies in the other direction. An argument does not become feminist just because it uses the biggest headline percentage available. You still have to control for variables, distinguish between mean and median, and define what you mean by “structural discrimination.”
Dr Bennett has already taught me that the quickest way to test whether you understand an economic premise is to define every noun you use.
I intend to do the reading before I put my thoughts on paper. So next Sunday’s post will be considerably longer.
You have been warned.
Where Things Stand
One tournament win. Three to go.
One left knee, behaving responsibly under vocal protest.
One quartet, growing less theoretical by the bar.
One orchestral concert arriving faster than the calendar suggests.
One debate requiring a great deal of economics.
As for the Mad Hatter: his hat was not objectively responsible for anything that happened on Friday night.
I reserve every right to continue disliking it.
#university #law student #badminton #mixed doubles #21–10 #21–8 #ACL recovery #soreness is not instability #I am not negotiating with my ligaments #Celestial Quartet #cello #orchestra #fourth desk #Nobody mention Leipzig #Halloween Ball #Rosie the Riveter #Mad Hatter #Westmouth Union #gender pay gap #Dr Bennett #define your nouns #campus safety #the hat was not responsible #I reserve the right to dislike it #not all men #of course not all men #I said what I said #which one #that is the whole problem #risk assessment #caution is not hatred #fear is not an accusation #trust is earned #two things can be true #Twitter #the block button #highly recommended #I am not leaving #campus safety #Westmouth #some things remain mine #please do not send me the philosophical counterargument
Selected notes on “It Was Not About the Hat”
rosinandrage reblogged cellolana:
“Before that moment, if asked whether he was dangerous, I would have said no. I would have been entirely sincere and entirely wrong.”
This is the centre of it.
Not that every man is dangerous. Not that trust is impossible.
That sincerity cannot provide advance knowledge.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.