Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

Better: beauty standards, booty standards - they're both full of shit.

...I'll get my coat.

Urgh, I have just had a facebook disagreement with a female friend who is giving off about "bloody feminists" (her words) disapproving of a trivial shirt when there is Important Science happening. Somebody pour me a whisky please. She is an otherwise intelligent, nice person entering a science based career - albeit a field which is a lot less male dominated than it used to be thanks in large part to all her female predecessors and a lot of enlightened men. Better make it a double whisky.

Yeah it is shit. Beauty standards schmooty standards

Oh no, don't apologise , trevor, it's an important project. And we could all do with a better body image. I'm more sad that beauty standards have done such a number on me than the link itself.

Annie. Sorry that has made you feel bad

Sadly, Trevor, when I looked for women like me, firstly there were only 3 images because I imagine most women like me don't want their body to be displayed publicly, and secondly, the images didn't look beautiful to me, they just looked fat.

Buffy, I couldn't have said it better myself.

I just came on to share this website - My Body Gallery.

Someone on a thread in Chat mentioned it - it's a website with photos of real women on it.

You can put in your height/weight etc and search for photos of women like you - and see that they actually look fabulous. I find it so easy to get ground down by "acceptable" standards of beauty and slimness and beat myself up about a few lumps and bumps.. when actually, women who are roughly the same as me look LOVELY in lots of different ways.

I feel a bit emotional actually, having looked at them and seeing how great they look.

I quite agree, Buffy.

Karma!

I can't look at that link! My work firewall says it is BAD

Oh I saw that Petula - I liked the low-height door ones for the kids to stop adults from around ruining them, and was intrigued that the japanese public toilets still seem to be the fancy ones with all sorts of controls.

The number of women who could only use the toilet at certain times of the day, or who were habitually harassed while using it was terrible though.

drive-by post, sorry

my toilet - global stories from women and girls

bbc overview here www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-30027513

I am a coward. I don't think I can challenge the list the school just put up asking for items for a boys hamper and a girls hamper. (boys get a car and a ball, girls a doll and a skipping rope).

It's a small school (~30 kids), and my son has only just started, I don't want to get him a reputation for having a difficult mum (I've already loudly shunned the fundraising pamper night, and he took a hello kitty bracelet/necklace for show and tell) Thinking about it, his baby came to school once and he happily yanked up his jumper to show another parent how he fed it.. perhaps he's already marked..

I'm going to live with myself by donating the sticker books they've requested, and giving two identical ones about animals (or something), in a passive-aggressive all children are the same manner.

And teach my son to skip, and send him in with a skipping rope for playtime...

There's extraneous apostrophes too..... but I say 'hi' to the secretary every day, I don't think I can challenge them either.

Total wuss.

The girls and the younger ones have taken that to mean it's OK to hit the older kids. As you expect. The stupidity.

What's wrong with the message, you must not hit people? Doesn't that cover all bases, and mean they're less likely to be on an assault charge later in life, because no one mentioned it wasn't okay to hit boys who are older than you?

Reason #23879 why I hate school: They have rules: You must not hit girls. You must not hit people younger than you. Guess what happens?

AAARRRGGGHHH.

I had an interesting conversation with a Swedish oncologist (male) a few years ago. Iirc they introduced quotas for female consultants (or possibly senior cancer researchers - I have forgotten the details, sorry!) several years ago and there were the same concerns re incompetence due to quota filling. He said that what happened in reality was that because they knew they needed X number of women in X years' time, and they obviously wanted to maintain quality, the effort was made to identify those junior female doctors/researchers who had the potential to reach senior levels, and mentor and support them so that the pool of quality women would be available when the time came. As they had been doing for men for years. I've been pro-quotas since that conversation

Ooh! karma, congratulations!

I think I should go to bed before I post anything I regret on the other threads...

They want to know what this positive discrimination that they so fear looks like from the other side they should fucking ask us.

Oh how I hate everybody! (Apart from you lot, of course. )

"you only got there because you are a man"
Oh this, definitely. Some of them are definitely not there because of ability. (Some are - just not all.)

Today, I was talking to a junior colleague on instant messenger, and he sent a picture of Benny Hill. I asked him what the picture was (because it just didn't make any sense to a comment, "You need to ask John, as he was working on that server.") Apparently it was a smile, the modern way, instead of just putting .

So then I asked him, if "given the sexist humour he represents, if that's really appropriate in the workplace?"

Apparently it can't be offensive, because he's been dead quite a long time.

Is it just me who doesn't follow this logic? (I had spent most of the day talking about diversity and STEM, so that might have been affecting my tolerance levels.)

Only scanned through the article but am sick of the women-don't-make-progress-because-they-have-babies business. (Maybe they address this in the article ...) Women who don't have babies also don't make progress as fast as men.