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

Dd2 went to a school disco before Christmas and I was rather shocked by the song choices. The first song was "I'm sexy and I know it", followed by others just like it. For 4-5yos! What happened to "the wheels on the bus" and the like? Or pop that's targeted at children like 1D. I think one of the teachers had a word during the snack break because the second half was a lot more age-appropriate, and quieter, and some lights were left on.

Dd1 swears, but only with her friends, not near me, even though I've passed the stage of worrying about it with her now she's 15. There's plenty worse things she could be doing than swearing occasionally.

I know that my DC know most of the swear words but I've not heard them say them. I guess it's one thing to know and another thing to actually use them...

They are watching Amadeus now.

I am constructing a playlist with CLEAN versions of songs for the middle school dance on Fri 13 Feb. Do you know how many songs have words like 'shit' in them? some of the kids are 10. I don't want to be the teacher who enables the kids going home singing certain lyrics.

I am actually surprised by how shocked I genuinely feel if DD (age 11) does use swear words. In theory I have no problem with swearing. In practice, I genuinely recoil if DD uses swear words. Social conditioning at its best.

(And on the nature/nurture debate - does it really matter? If we respect people as individuals, then we won't discriminate against groups of them because of being different)

I've spent all morning tidying in preparation for dd2 having a friend come to play for the afternoon (it's been a while since we tidied properly because I've been busy with work and dp would never do a proper tidy without me ). Hopefully when said friend arrives they will entertain each other for a few hours so I can get on with writing the millions of reports I have to finish by Tuesday. Not the most fun Sunday afternoon I could think of, but at least I won't then have to stay up til silly o'clock tonight and tomorrow to get them done.

I am attempting to build a cold frame, write a job application (hopefully to convert my current fixed-term role to permanent), and make samosas all at the same time. Only the cold frame is going well so far!

I have just written my CV. Very hungry-making business. Now for some sushi. Yum!

i suspect that FWR influenced my choice of MA. I was meant to be doing an MA in Education of Literature, and somehow I ended up doing Womens and Gender Studies, ahving never really thought of it before. I just thought that I wanted to know more, and threads here definitely contributed to that.

Yay Puffins!! Very exciting indeed!

Great stuff puffins!

puffin How exciting!

Exciting puffins!

Oh how exciting Puffins! I'm sure you will dazzle them at interview

and LRD, and Annie, and everyone else.

Trust me, when I come to fill out my UCAS forms, you will be top of the list to annoy

I suppose my interest in the nature/nurture argument is that I hope that at some point in the future it will be resolved to show that it IS socialisation that holds women back, and that men just need to stfu about being better all the time.

To that end, I am reasonably excited to have got a date for an interview to college so that I can get the right pieces of paper to go and study things at a place for clever people. Without DH and you lot being supportive, clever and generally pretty wonderful, I probably wouldn't ever have actually started.

That's interesting about your family, kickass. My family is fully of people who have MH problems. I had no idea until today about the problems of diagnosis in girls and the different way ASD might present. As I say, with DD2 it could be nothing. I just so desperately want my kids to be happy (as we all do) and totally agree about the need for acceptance and understanding.

Hello!

I'm only partially defrosted after outing to the countryside.

I'm completely not interested in the nature-nurture debate, but with the same reasons as buffy.

Demi, I have a DD who is on the spectrum. Our whole family, both sides, is riddled with symptoms, and my Dad very definitely should have been diagnosed but it is too late now (in his 80s).

What makes me mad is the excuse that it's all so modern, people didn't used to know about it. Well ADHD was first noted, although not by that name, in the late 1600s. Because history is written by the winners, we don't hear the narrative of people who struggled with these things. I have quite a few sensory issues, as does DD, and I cannot wear wool, even a 5% mix of it drives me crazy. We never hear of people back in days of yore hating itchy wool, even though it was often the only material, but they must have existed. So why are all these people ignored throughout history?

Partly because it's a minor detail that gets glossed over, but also because it is a convenient narrative that this is new and we are asking for too much too soon when we expect understanding and accommodation.

It could also be a question then of taking responsibility for our actions. All of them. All of the time. Which can be a bit difficult, e.g if you've just been woken up for the 5th time in one night after a whole week, month or 5 years of bad sleep (almost enough to make me wish for teenagers ).

Yeah 'there is no such thing as society'. that is so laughably wrong.

I suppose if you can place it at the door of biology there is less impetus to change, because that would be"working against nature"

Maybe. I often find myself challenged by my own socialisation and ingrained assumptions. It is quite galling when you think you see things clearly and try to carefully work out how things might be from another person's POV and it turns out that there was something clouding my judgement

"Buffy mentioned people getting affronted by the notion of socialisation a little while back. Why is that? Is it just the thought that we might not be 100% in control of our own minds?"

Would they prefer to be controlled by their biology? Or is it perhaps because as we become adults, we can to at least a certain extent choose our influences and guide our own behaviours and some find that a little frightening? Throwing thoughts out here.