Bluestocking lock in!

I had a long look at Vonny le Clerc's twitter feed the other night - she is fabulous.

Going back to the painting, for a moment, it's interesting how different viewers "see" a painting differently. I can see why Riverside sees it the way she does, but I have never "seen" it that way, perhaps because as a younger woman I was always skinny with small breasts. To me, they don't look like adolescent girls, they look like young women with the body shape I had at any point in my twenties. (And on a related note, is part of the reason we - collective we of early 21st century viewers - now see them as looking like teenagers because we've internalised a view of what the female body should look like which now includes over-the-top silicon filled breasts?)

Now a painting I did find really disturbing back when I was a teenager was Munch's "Puberty" which is a nude of a clearly pubescent girl, deliberately painted in a very vulnerable pose (arms crossed in front of her body as if to try - unsuccessfully - to protect herself from the viewer's gaze), and I got this real vibe from it of "this artist gets off sexually on the thought of vulnerable teenagers that he has power over." Horrible picture.

There's a lot of the surrealists I react to in the same way - paintings of naked women with the heads of birds (or masked) with spears being pointed at their vulvas, that sort of image. Again even as a teenager (my mum was an artist and I grew up in a house filled with art books) I just thought "these artists hate women, this is really screwed up."

I just don't have the same visceral reaction to Waterhouse's picture. (Which is not to say that Riverside's reaction is wrong, just that I'm not sure we can clearly read either age or intent into the picture - though there's something very sexist and very deep-rooted in the cultural fear of women's sexuality and sirens/nymphs luring men to their doom).

A journalist was abused on Twitter recently for reporting on that awful case of the baby who was raped. Apparantly she was being transphobic for identifying the baby as a girl and the rapist as a man.....

OMD poor Rose! Honestly, that is insane. I get the impression she restrained herself and was thinking "stop calling me cis".

Just seen this video of Rose McGowan kicking off. She was speaking about her own experiences of sexual assault when a transwoman started heckling her.

twitter.com/PopCrave/status/959218557946155008

I love the 'what have you done for women'. Nothing I expect, besdes labelling them 'cis, white' (I missed whatever followed that, and verbally abusing them for speaking of their experiences.

What has transwomen being in mens prisons got to do with Rose?!

Yet another case of transwomen having to be centred in every damn thing. I think she handled herself pretty well but got a bit too angry, but thats understandable in the situation tbh

Comments seem to be all on the 'horrible TERF' side though, disappointedly

I can't sleep, so I'll have a small, medicinal sweet sherry.

I'm another who couldn't face watching The Handmaid's Tale. I read the book in my early 20s and found it deeply disturbing. Although I considered the trajectory of events plausible to my nascent Radical Feminist mind, I did not expect to see the attempted erasure of Woman being played out live in the way that we are.
I'm having some interesting conversations with some of the young women I work with. They're ridiculously bright with excellent critical thinking skills and they get it.
However, I do think that for some of them, the biological/class reality of being Woman has only kicked in once they have started a family. Until that point, being the bright young things that they are, used to succeeding and expecting to succeed, I suspect little thought was given as to where their 'equality' had come from.

I might suggest setting up an old school Consciousness Raising group.

Terry that made me lol

Rowdy, that's interesting, thanks.

There's obviously a huge amount of art like this. But I saw this one when I was a teenager and it made me uncomfortable but I couldn't work out why.

Now I see the modern parallel as being a bit like the video that goes with a well known rapey song and I just think, I am so tired of this image of women, wherever it came from or what period of time. So I could see the value of the experiment because I'm interested to know if any other women feel that way.

In terms of censorship, is it censorship if the gallery just don't want to show it any more? This or any other painting?

How do we know that those nymphs are not in fact brave & stunning transwomen getting lots of positive validation from Hylas?

If the four minute warning hasn't sounded yet I'll have another

Grabs a glass
Riverside2
I heard the curator talking about this on Radio 4 and thought she came over very badly. She was trying to argue that removing the painting was to 'create a debate' but her arguments weak. When they mentioned that they'd taken the postcards out of the shop you realise that this IS a level of censorship guided by her own views. She had no valid rationale and came over poorly compared with the art expert Rupert Maas who was opposing this.

I suppose I am of the view that once we start to censor the arts - burning books, hiding paintings, locking up authors and poets - we are on that slippery slope that all civilisations should avoid.

I need much more

Well if it's a four minute warning we are locked in here with supplies.

Anyone see this?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42904024

I think it's an interesting experiment.

Dry January is over WOOOOOHOOOOO.

So I thought I'd pop in for a quick flaming Sambuca. Bottoms up.

Trying to find my email to the mildly gender critical Canadian Conservative MP who I wrote to ages ago. So I can drop in his ear about the federal prison changes. Any idea who that would have been?

Aww thanks Riverside2 I'm hoping booze will kill the lurgy!

Eresh & Hairy too, THT has really been playing on my mind lately but I'm obviously not alone!

That's a great point about the mother...take the 2nd Wavers for granted at your peril although I think it's worse than that now - 2nd Wavers are evil terf bigots don't ya know, and should be consigned to the dustbin of history...

If it's a four minute warning there's probably just enough time for one more

Anyway, now for a positive - caught a bit of a documentary on Marin Alsop on radio 4 on the way into work this week. I remember her as a young conductor back when I first moved to my current location, when going to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra was my "bit of culture" in the long dark winter nights (she is superb at conducting Shostakovich and Sibelius in particular).

Anyway, having been chief conductor at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, she's about to become artistic director at the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (again, happy memories of hearing them in the Musikverein many years back...)

She came across as just brilliant - "leading from the front", but in a really positive way. Lots on her work mentoring young people (Baltimore is incredibly deprived - she told the orchestra that she expected all 90 of them to take part in her mentoring scheme, and that she had got a grant to cover all the funding and their expenses in order to do so!) Interviews with the kids too, who were obviously blown away by this superb musician who was also approachable, didn't condescend to them, but didn't take any shit either.

Put me in a fabulous mood for the morning.

Baileys coffee please. Make it a double.

The thing that struck me on re-reading it as a "grown-up" (rather than a daft young lib fem) was that the real heroine of the piece was the off-screen mother - portrayed by her daughter as an old fuddy duddy who'd never quite got past the 1970s fighting the patriarchy days to gain the daughter all the rights she took for granted, didn't think about, didn't bother to defend - then one day they were suddenly gone in the twinkling of an eye.

It's not the horror of Gilead itself although it is utterly horrific, but it's just how easily the women's rights get taken away without really that much fight back...perhaps I am becoming paranoid!

No, I had the same feeling when I first read it.

Here’s a cheering story - transactivists ‘reported’ an author to her publisher for her gender critical opinions on Twitter - and the publisher supported her publicly

twitter.com/excaliburpress/status/959014323195727872

Terry, I'm 42 and I didn't watch the Handmaid's tale because when I read it as a teen, it seemed like a random dystopia and now it feels like a four minute warning.

I hope you fight off your lurgy.

I think I'm coming down with some kind of lurgy, I've got myself all wound up on another thread and I need a big big glass of ...or possibly a hot toddy (for medicinal purposes you understand)

Sometimes it just feels so bloody hopeless.

I keep thinking more and more about what terrifies me the most in The Handmaid's Tale.

It's not the horror of Gilead itself although it is utterly horrific, but it's just how easily the women's rights get taken away without really that much fight back...perhaps I am becoming paranoid!

Enough of that, bring on the

need caffeine......uuuuugh.....

I sometimes just can't face reading comments, I hate the essays, I wish they would limit characters on comments. Quite often I hear the voice of a man like my dad who thinks - why use 2 words when 20 will make you feel more important?

Hello all. I'd like something strong and dark rum based please, it's been a long day

Pleased to see some rather gender critical comments on this Grauniad piece about CBB and the national LBGT conversation though. Where are all the trans supporters?

Yes. And - Liberty Media made this decision, AFAIK there was no specific high profile campaign (unlike No More Page 3) - just a realisation that this is losing more £/viewers than it gains because many people find it ugh whilst fewer people really like it (plenty are no doubt neutral).

"Bunch of trombones"

Aah, the Bluestocking is still my spiritual home

Nevermind. Of course, I found it straight away after I posted here.