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

Courage, Fibonacci! (easier said than done)

Here is my work-worry du jour: our lovely, dear CM has to move on for personal reasons and I am looking for a replacement.
I actually realised I feel a very complex web of anxiety about this which revolves around... guilt.

• I feel guilty that I am so concerned with our own stuff when her personal cirucmstances that are causing this change are much more worrying and sad
• I feel guilty that I am looking for someone to work for me, looking after my chidlren
• I feel guilty that the last CM worked so hard to go the extra mile and if I can't find someone that good I will be short changing my dcs
• I feel guilty that I will really only be happy if I can find someone that good. Who am I to expect the people who work for me to be excellent?
• I feel guilty about inflicting change on the dcs which will certainly happen
• basically I feel guilty about not being totally available for them, and this is turning into a whole bolus of worry around finding a new CM
• I feel guilty towards my work about the fact that I just have to put more sensible limits in place about what hours I do and I can't work the stupid hours they seem to think I should

and of course there is the sheer practical difficulty of finding someone who will work at all, let alone tick all my pernickety little boxes

I loved Jeanne's post too! Read it this morning over a cup of coffee.

I have no feminist nothing to talk about today. Starting to think about my return to work in a few months and shitting myself thinking no one will employ me, in typical impostor syndrome manner.

Hi
sorry haven't had time to catch up properly, hope you are all well.
Is Jeanne on here? just wanted to say that her latest blog post is Absolutely STORMING

A fantastic piece of writing, I loved it and will definitely re-read it.

Jeanne, have you thought of writing anything for non-academic publication? I am sure you could write something wonderful for the general reader. Have you had thoughts along these lines?

A nice feminist experience today:

I was in another department of the company, one that as 6 men and only 2 women, so rather a boys club. For some reason they were discussing a health issues, and one of the young men said "Its so much easier for women than it is for men." I immediately corrected him and said "From the time I was a teenager, I always thought my life would be easier if I were a male, rather than a female." I was heartened that another young woman in that department popped her head up to agree with me. Then another young woman passing by told us about her experience with her sister giving birth and how physically traumatic an experience that was not only for her, but for her sister. We managed to completely traumatise one young man with our descriptions of how damaging the birth process is to a woman's body , while typically the first young man in the story tried to switch off. However the second young man was rather horrified . A small but important win for women in getting at least 2 young men to have some sort of understanding about what it is like to be a woman .

ask them if the undefined cross country team is for everyone as it doesn't exclude anyone, and if the girls' one is just for girls, so that they can have an extra go if they want to?

Or write in, congratulating them on being so inclusive that they allow all student to take part in the main team, but alos run one just for girls who may be overly self conscious of their bodies and not want to compete in the mixed race run?

Is it really picky and petty to point out that by not having the boys team and girls team, they are perpetuating men being the main default and girls just being an add-on that isn't really mainstream?

I've never used LaTeX but now I know it exists I really want to. It's strange I never used it at uni despite my degree being maths and computing. I probably should have heard of it at least.

The pe dept at school today sent out 2 emails telling us teams for the cross country. Theres the cross country team list, then there's the GIRLS cross country team list. I want to raise this as a problem but how can I approach them about it without coming across as picky and petty? They're a pretty sexist dept imo, even though there are more women than men in their dept. They still insist on netball skirts for the girls, even over tracksuit bottoms (they may change this soon as it was raised by the student council my form rep as being sexist and outdated)

I don't think I've used LaTeX for 20 years, either. Well, 18.

Chunky, I initially read your post as saying you'd taken DS1 to the sweat shop, and I wasn't quite sure how that was going to be putting your world back to rights...

FRau, it's shocking but sadly does not surprise me at all.

Please can some of you much more intelligent folks than me go on that thread in AIBU about rape at a university?

Oh god. There is some new law about porn, I can't be bothered to discuss it TBH but it's throwing up lots of "Waaah censorship" complaining. Just a heads up, I think it's going to explode on social media over the next few days.

Chunky yay for your DS :)

Oh God, LaTeX.. that brings back memories of Uni and X-Windows....

My world has been put a little back to rights - I took DS1 to the sweet shop after school because we had a couple of hours just him and me before we went to get DS2 from the childminder. He is obsessed with surprise eggs, and had a browse of the shelves, and picked himself a pink disney one.

Some of his little classmates came in, and with a confused/horrified look on her face, and clearly thinking she was being helpful, one of the girls told him that that one was for girls, and tried to point out a Spiderman one to him. He was non-plussed, told her that he wanted the princess egg, told her enthusiastically that it would have sweets and a sparkly princess inside and we went and paid.

After all the rubbish that I see being pushed at them about what they should like, I hope he maintains this innocence and confidence as long as possible, and keeps on buying whichever damn egg he wants at the time, whether it's hello kitty, the incredible hulk, or whatever else they decide can be shoved in a plastic egg and (over-) charged a quid for.

Ooohhhh, LaTex will be something to research on the weekend. I love pottering 'round on the 'net, I do, learning about techy stuff. (notes correct use of apostrophes .)

My lovely manager who hired me into this position has resigned and left the company , so I am without any 'backup', so to speak. It has been interesting to watch the political landscape shift on his leaving - for the first day, everything was OK, but I was probably too busy to notice. On the second day I was 'persona non grata', as people's political leanings shifted. On day 3, people started talking to me again, albeit not as much as before. Within my own team, the political leanings have shifted to the person with the most perceived power, ie not me . It will be interesting to see what the happens in the coming weeks.

The good news is that my new (interim) manager seems keen to work with me rather than against me, so we will see what the future holds. However, I am a bit pissed off about being pulled from pillar to post by the senior managers in this company . I would like to say to them that:

a. I am human
b. I work at full tilt all day, but that day is 8-9 hours
c. There are only so many work hours in the day. If you load up my 'to do' list with too many things, expect that I won't deliver on time

Sigh, the corporate life...

Yes, I've had a few at my LaTeX handbook. From those not in the know, of course. Those in the know just nod. It's like a secret handshake thing.

It's not often that a piece of software inspires happy memories.

How odd Annie. I wonder if they are new to conducting interviews?

I have never used LaTeX for my own work but used to receiving files in that format

How to install on Macs.

It's free and works on Macs and even Windows. I use it on Linux (and windows when I have no choice).