Fucking idiots

Hmmmm. I am not sure (I am trying to be honest).

I think I should apologise to Dittany directly - in my mind she has become synonymous with an aggressive and unforgiving feminist standpoint and has been one of the main reasons I have stayed away from the boards. However, I do see that a) I cannot back that up with evidence and that b) this stems partly from my own extreme dislike of what I think of as indoctrination and aggression, which is my own problem and has a thousand reasons, and is not hers.

So yes: Dittany: I apologise.

However, on the broader point - that to be furious at being challenged, to swear at and condescend to those who disagree, to be unable to see an alternative point of view without being moved to what at least appears like rage, to alienate people with a genuine interest, to start threads belittling and being aggressive towards others - no: I don't think that's acceptable, sorry.

I would be ever so pleased if D apologised for calling me a liar, but I do see that she would need to satisfy herself on that point first!

Are you going to apologise before you go, though?

Hm, still time for it to go tits up Sardine !

Thanks ever so Aye - I'm going to get another 1,000 words down (not on MN, sweat not) and then hie mesen over there for a read as a special post-work reward. Oh yes: I know how to celebrate .

(Although I still maintain it wasn't necessary for t'other fred to have gone quite that bent nor for this terrifying fred title!)

Here's a lovely thread where newbies were welcomed with open arms

There's tons of them. It's only the contentious ones where people come on spouting women-hating views or try to challenge posters whilst not reading what has been posted that get all the airtime with the "the feminists are doing it all wrong" folk.

I love a thread with a happy ending

Hell, you're right C. the other day I saw a bus-side emblazoned with a semi-naked man oiled up in white Y fronts and was absolutely horrified: it looked like porn to me. I then did a gigantic comic double-take and realised that we see images of women like that so often that we've become kind of snow-blind. Er, I do thank you for stooping to point out the most obvious bit of daily discrimination . This is very like a 5 year old sitting in on a semiotics lecture.

Fanks Charity! Dashing off to read Shroedinger's Rapist. Incidentally did you read the Guardian article on the Congo and rape as a weapon of war yesterday? I don't think I've ever felt so angry and so helpless :(

Good question from dittany above!

I feel FUCKING 'discriminated against' by the fact it would be literally impossible for me to go through my day in London without a million idealised versions of naked women bodies being used to sell me shit.

Just as an example!

Dittany I think it's about feeling the misogyny, if that doesn't sound flippant - which is kind of what i mean by 'waking up and smelling the napalm'. If you wholly absorb an orthodoxy it seems reasonable at the time. Now that I am distant from it all I can see the logic behind their reasoning (for ie, if you follow a sacred text and it appears to say women should do XY and Z, then women should do it: simple) but of course no longer agree. I feel as if i have a vacuum that needs filling. It is a curious position to be an edumacated woman but to have such a 'gap' of knowledge (by the same token I ought really to befriend an evolutionary scientist I suppose...).

OK I must protest about the ludicrous straw-man, cruciefied-for-our-sins pasting that dittany gets, by the way.

We're all fucking bitches here.

RE: blogs - anoyther great one (mainly) about fat and feminism is Shapely Prose (archives only now - start in 2008 or therabouts). There's a post on there called 'Shroedingers rapist' which I re-read regularly.

Also I Blame The Patriarchy. Its advanced patriarchy-blaming for sure, but the writing is amaze. Angry Black Bitch, Shakesville, and Finally Feminism 101 are also places I check in. But there ARE SO MANY - you will find your own faves. The F Word is a UK example.

That's a really interesting and powerful way of putting it, Charity - I don't think I have ever really thought about feminism in such positive terms in the sense of its being a liberating and empowering standpoint (doubtless my fault for not reading about it/listening to the discourse).

I think my passivity/ignorance stems at least in part from being from a generation that takes a great deal for granted: I have never felt discriminated against on grounds of gender. That being said I think if I woke up and smelt the napalm I'd have more to complain/think about.

I don't think a policeman is 'a patriarchal prick' - I think we ALL live in a patriarchal system which colours everything we all (coppers and feminists) think about men and women. So I think most interactions can be viewed through a lens of 'does the patriarchal system affect this interaction', just as I can apply a race or class lens to many interactions too.

Do I? With every interaction? No - I haven't got the stomach for it, or the time. But if I'm asked to examine/think about an interaction, then I don't think its fanatical to do so.

What I will tell my daughter(non-existent) is SO difficult. I want her to have an easy life. Being a feminist is not the best way to do this. BUT its the quickest route I know to feeling truly powerful, truly free, truly human, truly beautiful - and to seeing that others are too. So I will discuss with her what I know and believe about rape - though hey are depressing facts and do not play into the comforting myth that women are fed thart if they play be 'the rules' they are protected. It makes feel sad that she can't have that illusion - but as she stands a 1 in 4 chance of being raped I would rather she isnt fed the illusion that that she be raped and blame herself for it.

Oh. Well, I wasn't lying Dittany, as it 'appens. But I won't try and persuade you.

It's OK charity -you're allowed to be patronising (matronising?!) when someone professes to be ignorant! I would love it if you recommended some blogs - there is a great one I sometimes read called Two Whole Cakes combining feminism and fat ishoos. But I like to get involved, you know? And ask questions and what not.

AyeRobot fanks for that :) Maybe i am too easily scared. It's not just the aggressiveness though, although I profess to being horrified by this thread and the other one -it's the orthodoxy thing most of all. Sorry to labour the point but with a background like mine you are very, very wary of those who possess no doubt and no capacity to understand or accommodate an opposing view, IYSWIM.

Just for balance, like.

I was absolutely delighted when I discovered the feminism board and read the no-nonsense and unapologetic stance taken by many of the posters on here (and it's NOT just dittany, but she gets all the grief). My understanding of feminism has been greatly enhanced by that approach and I will be forever grateful to the posters for that.

Honestly blooferlady, I dont want to sound patronising, but googling and reading a wider range of feminist views is the best way to find out about feminism than a message board. I have some great blogs to recommend if you are interested. Reading about feminism changed my life - and I dont mean the 'canon'.

But I have never seen dittany be aggressive to anyone who asks a question which isn't blatanty loaded with anti-feminist agenda, or trying to 'best' her. Which the majority of questions by non-regulars on this board are, and which is echoed across the internet. It gets tiresome.

charity I see and (I think!) understand your reasoning. But (and I'll get me ears chewed off for this ) the difficulty I have with all this is that a fanatical adherence to a cause - any cause! - means that every anecdote, every incident, everything, is filtered through that orthodoxy. If that had happened to me, I'd think, "Yeah fair point, never know who's just around the corner", because I'm not yet a committed feminist. If you are a committed/fanatical feminist then obviously it's a case of "bring out the pitchforks, some patriarchal prick just told me it's up to me to make sure I don't get raped." And I'm sorry but to a lot of us that seems purely bonkers. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what advice they'd give any daughter of theirs about walking through dodgy areas alone in the dark!

I did, yar dittany - so it wasn't passive aggressive, just moderately aggressive. And although in a slightly grudging way I admire your willingness to be aggressive and insulting and not give a damn (I'm too fucking nice for my own good, I suspect on MN and in RL!) I wonder if you fully realise the damage you are doing to your 'cause'?

I honestly and genuinely want to sit down and talk to someone who 'knows' about this stuff. I have issues I want to examine stemming from having been brought up in a Biblical fundamentalist household so patriarchal Moses would've approved, and I need to balance that with the 'other side'. I have some serious stuff I want to think about from the body image/beauty/sexual attractiveness side. So every now and then I sit poised over the PC wanting to talk, then remember the kind of reaction people get who don't have the lexis to battle with you and others, and I run away, and remain in ignorance.

You will (perhaps rightly) say that I should have more balls (hem hem). But, there it is... I'll remain in ignorance until I can find a way of joining in the discourse that won't end in misery.

Sorry, shocking thread hi-jack.

For me blooferlady, it is about the quality of advice. When a woman is walking through a darkened allyway (or whatever area is deemed unsafe - could be common land, or a rough high street at chucking out time, or a deserted precinct after hours - women really don't often get stranger-raped, but it can happen anywhere. Happened to a acquaintance of mine in a bus station literally two minutes from where her friends were) the policeman is not giving her useful advice by remarking that's she made a bit of a foolish choice. All he's done is put the shits up her, without in any way decreasing the chances of her being attacked.

Even if a woman is walking somewhere 'dangerous' and has made thgat choice, you can bet that every message she's received about stranger rape is in her head. A woman who's made that choice isnt sone kind of aliewn creature - she lives in the same world as you, and risk asseses ALL THE FUCKING TIME just like you do. Just like I do. Just like every woman does.

Unless the PC has new information for her, it's not helpful, and I do believe that, on average, leaving out your husband, they are less liklely to say it to a man.

And, even as a feminist, I have the internalised misogyny of millenia of patriarchy inside me. And the 'normal ' instinct to be paranoid about the safety of my loved ones. So I don't doubt that I will transmit some dodgy messages to my poor old daughter when the time comes, including poor advice about avoiding unlit alleyways (I say 'poor' because I dont believe it'll decrease her chances of being raped) cos it'll make me feel better. But I'll try not to...

Oh, and I avoid subjects that touch upon women's rights across Msmsnet because I find the hostility/ridicule/lack of basic Feminism 101 understanding expressed by most posters to anyone putting across a feminist viewpoint upsetting. 'Tis very sad.