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

Hahaha kickass! Good joke! Very funny!

What, kickass? Dat's crazy talk!!

How about work places altering their culture so that it feels equally welcoming/difficult/whatever to anybody, no matter what their sex/color/etc?
What about work places being audited for equal pay and promotion rates, with huge penalties if they show any discrepancies?

Wouldn't that just be ... (choose an adjective to reflect your personal bias) ... if every work place had an even mix of people based on the population as a whole? So EVERY work place would be 52% female, or x% people of color etc based on who lives within that city/county?

What if that didn't even need legislation, but was so normal and natural that people didn't even notice that their co-worker was differently gendered/accented/colored etc? What if we just looked at a person's ability to do the job, and saw them as a person, not the label attached to them?

Interesting, Buffy. And like you, I shall refrain from comment apart from to note that Cosmo seem to have rather missed the point of the origin of the term TERF, haven't they?

stripeysettee

"If that is the case (and Dr Leslie and Dr Cimpian suspect it is), it suggests that a cultural shift in schools and universities, playing down talent and emphasizing hard work, might serve to broaden the intake of currently male-dominated and black-deficient fields, to the benefit of all."

Don't women get enough being told that hard work will get them through already (when it doesn't always compared to males).

Yes, I've seen that on twitter. I'm...hmmm, indeed.

Unrelatedly - can't stop, baby about to wake up (espresso to go please!) but there's an article in this week's Economist that might be of interest www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21639439-women-are-scarce-some-not-all-academic-disciplines-new-work-suggests

It's reporting on a paper in Science, gist seems to be that women's and African-American participation is lower in academic disciplines where "innate capability" is believed more important; Economist suggests beliefs of women themselves (resulting from culture that tells them they don't have that innate capability) may be behind low participation rates.

(Obviously no mea culpa from the economist, for being part of a culture that likes to reduce women to their body parts and the market value of those parts, for those of you who saw that grim article on prostitution a few months back.)

I'm sorry house. It's all just so shit.

Going to go and run off a bit of this rage tonight. Might as well channel it a bit.

Thanks, I just felt like perhaps I was imagining it (basically was told that). But I'm not. I didn't want to get into a big discussion with said colleague about it because it just gets twisted round, (think 'well see, men get raped too and feminists don't care' or 'you see the worst, I'm sure they didn't mean it that way') . Don't have the mental energy to get into that pit of snakes today.

I must admit DP and I both have apps that update our location so the other can see, and we both have each other's email accounts on our phones (and I think we probably know each other's passwords anyway)

The crucial thing being though, we've both done it, with our eyes open, to each other, for the embarrassingly mundane reason that we'll know roughly when the other will be home for dinner.

Can I put this here? Don't think it warrants a new thread. (Sorry for possible trigger, discussion of sexual assault/rape)

Local news story about a 14 year old boy who was raped while out walking his dog, and has reported it now (happened before Christmas). Horrible, more male violence. But. I just. The reporting of it is so... I almost want to say respectful? Lots of emphasis on how it's understandable thathe didn't report at the time as it was 'so traumatic'. Not a single word along the lines of 'the boy claims' or 'the alleged incident'. Completely represented as fact - the boy said it happened, so it happened. And not a single comment about what was he doing walking his dog on his own etc. And the vitriol and anger in the comments, calling for the perpetrator to be strung up and hurt/killed etc. This comes on the back of a string of sexual assaults and rapes of women in another area of the city, that were treated with much less empathy and the reporting was exactly what I would have expected.

My colleague thinks this is just me reading too much in to things. But it's not, is it? I'm not just overthinking this?

Is that a feminist issue? I suspect it is...

I caught a silly vampire movie on telly the other day. The female vampires discussed the difficulties of not being able to tell what you look like on account of not having an image in the mirror...

• tentatively pops head around door and considers posting rather than lurking

No, but I recurded it!

I'm dubious about "pope for feminism".

Speaking of the pope, did anyone see Wolf Hall last night?

Hello!

I'm in a huff with people (again).

In future I shall have to be careful about who I collaborate with at work. That's my New Year's Resolution.

What's for packed lunch today?