Minor male entitlements

Noble,

I think men and women can act in equally entitled ways. Yes, there are many rude arrogant men. But women are not immune from the same arrogance and entitlement. I don't think sex is the predominant determinant of behaviour in this area, more upbringing and wealth.

I can offer you a Cookie and a very nice Leuchterm notebook?

I'll start at £5

I was just thinking that being belittled in one way or another is a massive part of most women's everyday lives - far, far more than men's. Either you put the effort in to dispute the belittlements, or you let it go over your head. Few of us are professional feminists like Buffy, so generally we turn away, walk away, pull a wry face, anything to get rid of it quickly. We just don't have the time or emotional energy to keep bashing on about it.

One very sad aspect of this phenomenon is that, for a high proportion of women, the belittlements do sink in and undermine them. An even sadder one is that, with most such disparagements going unchecked, there's a cultural acceptance that it's okay not to take women seriously when they say things that annoy male listeners. And an annoying one is that it perpetuates the frequent dismissal of female opinions.

(namalt & nawalt)

Larry you said

"Minor (and not so minor) female entitlements:

Taking over entire coffee shops with buggies, blocking passageways and sipping one coffee over 2 hours (never seen a man do this and I used to quite regularly take two under 3 out)"

But now you're saying that you've never seen a man do this because they are all at work. So how can it be an example of women acting in an entitled way if the reason you don't see men do it is not because society has trained them to park their buggies respectfully but because men never have to bother to park buggies because daily childcare is a woman's job?

Btw I have seen many a man nurse a coffee over hours while sitting on their laptops at cafés that provide free wifi.

didn't say I was clever.....and yes I do come by from time to time, as you know, and read a lot. And that's because the board is a source for me, and I add sometimes. Doesn't mean it's always comfortable.
'scorecard'? Okaay.

Buffy, if your town is anything like my town, the prime customers during the day keeping the coffee shops going are parents with buggies.

And when all the babies from our NCT group were born, there wasn't enough space in our local independent, so we met at people's houses.

And when Costa opened with its vast amounts of space between tables, they had the daytime coffee and cake market sewn up. It's almost like some companies see parents with buggies as a valid target market. Shocker.

oops, posted that before you're last post.

The attempts at belittling and shaming seems to be your forte Buffy - liking the 'with me so far?' stuff. Of course I absorb the wider inferences of societal experiences and how they impact on the personal - it's sort of 'given'. And I'm not entirely stupid.
But I'm not trotting off due to some 'status quo ensured' notion - it;s due to having other RL things to do. And, this is becoming a wasteful use of time.

Noble,

Because, on the whole, they are at work at these times. As I suspect you are (and me, now). The pretence on this board that no-one has ever seen what I am describing is earth shattering.

'Wolfe was not exactly being empathetic of the women he described, was he? Borrowing an author's misogynistic quote doesn't make it witty or acceptable, it just makes for misogynistic plagiarism.'

Wolfe is a humourist and caricaturist. There is empathy but it comes out over the novel, not the one line phrases. It is not misogynistic to describe a certain group of women in negative terms, any more than it is misandrist to use the phrase 'pimp roll' as to how a particular type of arrogant man walks. Plagiarism? Please try harder. If you put a quote in quotation marks and cite the author, that is merely called quoting.

Only in a v small bubble of experience would that be sustained.

Pan, this forum is a v. small bubble of experience. It's a tiny area of life, in which women are free to write honestly about their experience of everyday sexism without having to temper their words to suit the prickly male ego.

So that criticism isn't a criticism; it's a fairly tragic comment on reality.

Larry,

Despite knowing you are being disingenuous, because you are incapable of not being, I'll bite. No, women don't have to be described in glowing terms at all times, however, you say you're intelligent, so you are surely aware that those terms are really nasty, and are meant to be so. You chose them, by your own admission for their nastiness. Did you really expect not to be called out on that?

Sorry, but your air of hurt, wide eyed innocence doesn't wash with those of us who have to put up with your mindset before.

Lampoonery is one thing, misogyny another. And I was well aware where the quotes came from, so no need to be quite so bloody patronising.

Nice mansplain though, definitely one of your better efforts.

Bloody hell, Buffy - adopt the victim position all you like otherwise, but don;t sound so plaintive as you do it here. It doesn't wash.

Larry, you say that buggies are where disinterested mothers park their babies while they discuss accessories.

Where do disinterested fathers park their babies? Usually with the mothers! So disinterested fathers can discuss whatever they like, wherever they like. That'll be why you never see male-dominated spaces taken up with buggies or groups of men with buggies behaving like arseholes. Because you don't see them full stop.

Wolfe was not exactly being empathetic of the women he described, was he? Borrowing an author's misogynistic quote doesn't make it witty or acceptable, it just makes for misogynistic plagiarism.
Half a point for not complaining about the space taken up by the social x-rays' puffy dresses, which might perhaps hamper their male companions' power displays by a few inches. In Beckham photos, David often loses half a leg behind his wife's dress. The poor love.

Puffins,

So all women have to be described in wonderful terms? Should the lampoonery of the men have remained in the books concerned and the lampoonery of the women have been censored?

It might surprise you that many women actually enjoyed the books concerned (Two of Tom Woolfe's)