Feminist Pub 16: where the Bluestockings develop armoured stockings to deal with the thousand paper cuts

Gah. And I came on here expecting enlightenment, handed to me on a plate.

How very disappointing.

I had a wonderful epiphany in bed last night that I was very excited to share with you all. But can I remember it this morning. No, I cannot. Bugger.

Except that the discover of the New World happened during English medieval history, we lost territories in France during the early modern period and arguably became less powerful as the wool trade declined, and the religious reformations were annoying.

But the early modern period is fascinating. Discovery of the new world, England becoming a more powerful nation, religious reformation across Europe, which changes the landscape of international politics, and lines everything up for all the 17th century revolutions.

Hy VIII himself and alll the Thomases I'm not so bothered about these days, but the whole era was very interesting, with lots of changes going on, society shifting about .

Much better than that Mediaeval stuff.

Dp is really snobby about henry viii and the amount of cultural attention the Tudors get (post wars of the roses)

I think it's because his period of interest is more like 10th century England but fewer people get as excited because they want to know about the king who had six wives and broke with Rome for a shag/son (I am being deliberately facetious - it's another simplification he complains about). Of course he can't stop being interested in the lasting effects of that time

Cromwell was an unmitigated bastard. I'm of the opinion that men like him (along with a possible head injury) facilitated Henry turning from the magnanimous, jolly person he started off his reign as, into the horrendous piggy eyed tyrant he became. If ever a monarch needed the 25 barons, it was 'Good Prince Hal'.

I think he got distinctly uncuddly at the end.

Well done Elisa! Glad the hard stares work!

Wolf Hall - I don't know much about Cromwell, though I suspect he was not quite so cuddly as portrayed so far. But if you ignore all historical whatsit it's good drama.

Perhaps I'll read Wolf Hall, after Moriarty.

Am going to bed now...

Ooh, that's brilliant, elisa, great.

You can talk about Wolf Hall now - it's not as if it'll spoiler me, I know what happens. I just meant, I'd love to talk about it but have nothing to say yet!

Fantastic news, Elisaveta! Well done!

No, that makes sense, Buffy. But I would add that perhaps we would always need some kind of hierarchy and to deem some sexual behaviour "deviant", if only to prevent sexual behaviour which places the sexual wants of one person above the bodily autonomy of another who is unable to consent due to age or physical/mental incapacitation. So who you are attracted to and what you want to do with them are irrelevant and all equally acceptable within the bounds of enthusiastic consent.

Evening all, a round of drinks for all on me. Your good wishes worked well, stupidity was either firmly circumvented or at least delayed until after the election and by then hey, there will be a whole new set of issues. Plus I was twice able to produce actual evidential knowledge which exploded particularly idiotic proposals. I think I may also have been channelling LordCopper on the long hard stare a couple of times.

Can we talk about Wolf Hall after you've caught up Jeanne?

That's true, petula.

I think it probably falls into the same category as "to what extent are men and women innately different" - we basically don't know because we can't separate ourselves from our socialisation. And I'm not sure how important it is becausw the distinction for me is between people who want equal, mutually respectful and enthusiastically consenting sexual relationships and those who don't

I don't think it is purely a construct either, annie.

FWIW, you mention performing heterosexuality, but it would be perfectly possible to find heterosexuality deeply unappealing as a result of conditioning (eg., abuse). So it could go both ways.

(I'm ignoring the Wolf Hall, not out of rudeness, but because I have to watch it on catch up later.)

See, I don't accept sexuality as a social construct. There are too many people who find that their personally experienced sexuality is at extreme odds to that deemed "acceptable" to society (including paedophiles, homosexuals, dominatrices and anything outside of the heterosexual vanilla brand of sexuality) for that to ring true for me.

There are probably many people who perform heterosexuality because of societal conditioning when they would otherwise be bisexual, asexual or have other "non vanilla" proclivities. But for all of sexuality to be a societal construct? No.

That Cromwell is a snake!

Delegating to his scribe and then moaning about it, buffy, and possibly, dunno. Christine de Pizan is cited a lot as a proto-feminist, and she was around then.

carol - Gail Dines has interesting (and disturbing) work on this. She interviewed men in prison for child sexual abuse (IIRC - might have been men who watched child porn - sorry if that is the wrong term), and found many of them hadn't actually been attracted to children initially, but that they explained they had this compulsion to seek after something taboo, something more extreme.

It was really horrible. I heard her talk about this a few years ago and it really stayed with me.

Alongside other people who don't care about consent, regardless of whether they want to have sex with people of their own or the opposite sex

As people who know their sexual feelings, be they nature or socialised or both, should not be acted on because of the damage to the other party, I would say.

What would you say, carol?