What ordinary things make you feel positive about feminism?

This might sound odd, but the fact that people are surprised that I don't drive. It used to be taken for granted that the man would be driving. Now it is not.

I love this thread :)

My DH is a very big hairy (gorgeous :) ) Glaswegian who used to be in the army and likes to ride large motorbikes. He is also currently thinking about giving up work to see more of DS while I become sole breadwinner.

His boss, on retiring, told him in 1960s Wales there was no way he'd have been seen even pushing a pram, let alone becoming a SAHD - it would have been utterly inconceivable. I think of this sometimes to remind myself how far we've come in what is really quite a short time :)

MN often makes me feel positive, because it's full of women who are kind and supportive to other women and who think in feministy ways, even if they don't identify as feminists.

The Olympics (still thinking about them, sigh) make me feel positive, because there was 2 glorious weeks of women being paid attention to for what they could do and not just how they looked.

(On a side note, I saw a clip of Chris Hoy hugging Victoria Pendleton and telling her what a great rider she was, and that made me feel positive too, that it's not just women recognising women, but also men.)

My partner recognises how hard it is to be a woman, recognises sexism when he sees it and very rarely indulges in it.

Regarding paying bills and tasting wine, it's something I've REALLY noticed recently in London that the person serving puts the bill directly in the middle, or offers the bottle of wine to both people.

I've just seen an interesting debate about Julian Assange on Facebook, around how we shouldn't allow the extradition to the US business to allow us to be distracted from the rape charges. Lots of quotes from his lawyers etc. The debate is between about 6 people, 5 of them male, all abhorred by his actions and shocked that it's not being paid proper attention.

A female poster on the debate made a comment about how refreshing it was to see men publicly expressing such views, to which one replied that rapists being scum was pretty self-evident. Makes a good change from the Uni-Lad-Wahay! type banter normally associated with male students.

Alexpolismum Thanks for the etymology explanation, I'd never come across that and it's highly distasteful.

I think (as many others seem to) that in common usage "lady" has connotations of appropriate behaviour etc and that woman is just more generic and the equivalent of man. Person is even better of course, if I can avoid it I'd use a non gendered term.

Interesting point about calling meetings to order; I think I'd just say "colleagues" or "quiet down now folks" or similar.

Can I shift the thread back to the ordinary things? DH works PT in a professional post and is a PT SAH Dad for a 3 year old. He has a job share, also a PT professional and a PT SAH Dad to 2 small boys.

They've never had any comments, either at work, or from their respective families, about their decisions to work PT or to be their children's primary carers - both mums work FT. It's good to see that this is less unusual than it would have been say 10 or 15 years ago, but it would still be nice to see more PT job opportunities for dads - DS has benefitted hugely from seeing so much of him.

I like a pint (or three) and I buy rounds.

I find that the wine for tasting is generally offered to whoever named the wine when ordering.

LRD woman doesn't mean exactly "man with a womb". It's much worse than that. It was wifman in Old English (wife comes from the wif root) and gradually the pronunciation altered to "woman", although we kept the original pronunciation in the plural. According to my etymological dictionary, the *wif root comes from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning either "shame" or "pudenda". So woman= shame/ pudenda +man.

*lady on the other hand has a much nicer etymology - "one who kneads bread" (although I suppose it does mean that even far back in the past women were expected to do the cooking!)

I haven't been able to find any reference to gentlewoman being used in reference to prostitutes. (although interestingly, gentle comes from a PIE root meaning "beget, produce" - think of generate, genus, genesis, all from same root)

I'm glad we can have great tv programmes like Mad Men, which make the sexism of the 50's and 60's look ridiculous.

I'm off to work now - to my part-time professional job, where many of my male colleagues also work part-time, and my boss is a woman.

Just thought of another one. I took the DC to a 21st birthday party a couple of weeks ago. Because of the structure of our company, it was quite a big crossover between work and family.(Not my family, I was invited through work)

I have had compliments about my DC from colleagues since, but they seem to fall in to two categories.

Firstly how confident my DD is, and secondly how kind my DS is.

Which is lovely, and accurate, and coming from a broad range of people.

Disregards the numerous shocked opinions I also got about the amount my very skinny children actually do eat

She really is brilliant LRD She really, really wanted to go to university and was devastated that I would give that up for children (she had 5 children and never had the opportunity to go to uni or have a job outside the home). She really didn't know it was possible to go to uni and have a career once you had children.

I was a single parent for 6 years and the only person even slightly bothered by it was my elderly grandma, and even then it was because she was very jealous that I had the opportunity to go to university that she never had and she thought I was giving that up to have children. She was thrilled to bits as soon as I explained that I could do both, it was so completely different to when she was younger.

My other grandma had to leave teaching when she got married! It was a job she loved but it was illegal to be a female married teacher at the time. I am now a teacher and I would never have even considered that I should give up when I got married (not that I am, I proudly co-habit which was never really an option even for my parents).

I have 2 children and a full time job. I earn twice as much as dp does and nobody thinks this is weird. We share the childcare and housework 50/50 (no we don't, he does most of it because I'm a slob ) and again this is just what we both expected to happen.

I could murder a pint, though.

It's fab, thanks!

Can I join in? I'm on paid maternity leave. Get a load of that. My mum was sacked for having me in the 70s and here I am, swanning around with rights and pay and stuff. It's a different world, even if there are improvements that could be made to the system.

Loads of people have asked me when I am going back to work. It is just assumed that I will, which is ace.

Just thought of something else.

A couple of weeks ago I was at (a bit younger) BF's house. He called out from the kitchen "you want wine or vodka Baby?"
His (much younger) housemate asked me "Baby? Sexist? Much? Why do you put up with that kind of language?"

While we're on drinks- an everyday benefit of feminism is that we don't feel we have to be "ladylike" and order a half if we happen to be thirsty. I've been drinking pints of ale most of my life and no one gives a damn- but my mother never does.

Ennis, no, but age might have something to do with it. My very generous parents often take me out and it always gets plonked in front of my dad, who hasn't really got a clue but likes to make swishy noises and sniffy sounds.

When I'm with my girlfriends they do ask of course and usually person nearest waiter tastes it. In mixed groups own age groups, can't conclusively remember as probably already a bit drunk so will pay more attention next time.

Glad I'm not the only one annoyed by the wine tasting.