Dark and stormies all round! Bluestocking piss up

My neighbour left a bottle of rose on my doorstep as a gift after I helped her get a pigeon out if her flat. She was in a right flap.

I may crack it open soon as I'm supposed to be writing 30 reports.

Oh dear, so funny, see how I deliberately failed to strike through there? (Seriously, how the fuck do you strike through?) Almost trying too hard to ‘look’ incompetent……

I wonder if it's some peculiar initiation ceremony but it's terribly isolating and I'm of that geek profession.

RE GG - I suppose I will have make the time to listen to the hour talk she gave at Hay - I get what she's saying but in that, she seems to dismiss and minimise the very real harm women experience - that literally takes their lives away. It's great if women can get on with their lives and learn to live with the injustice - however many can't.

I don't believe the justice system is fit for purpose so no point in trying to prosecute, however we should be pressing for a new justice process for crimes against women and children.

Snowball please (just joking).
Glass of Sancerre...

Thank you Permission
90 mins done
20 min break now
That thing about only listening to the young....I remember hearing that when I was in my 20s.
I see there's a programme about GG tonight on bbc2. I didn't know she was going down the "everything unisex" road either. Depressing.

Stop procrastinating fgs!

(Feels a bit rich me saying that if you knew the state of me right now but hth!)

It's 1130 and I haven't done anything I'm meant to do
Can someone please yell at me to stop procrastinating?

I think society is really in the shit because of not listening to older people (not just older women- but of course their silencing is off the scale).

I was chatting about it with my mum today. Everything is becoming poor quality shit because deep, practical knowledge isn't valued.

It's natural for young people to think they know it all, but it is unnatural for this to not be counter-balanced by experienced older people correcting/taking the piss out of them. The media balance it tipped way too far over to the young.

Well yes.

There is a thing about not being listened to, because you are older

I don't know much, but I know that nuance and actual life is how it is.

Sorry - in bed now and took a peek as I plugged my phone in.

I agree about listening to older women. I love Greer's take no prisoners position, but I disagree with her when she is being judgemental in areas she hasn't thought through or doesnt know much about- eg - arguing it's time for everything to be unisex as though wanting single sex space is immature or old fashioned. It's pretty dismissive. But perhaps thats just her way - taking a strong position, hoping to be contradicted robustly so she can form a more nuanced opinion.

I've just got in...am I on my own here now?

There's a need, I think, to listen better to 'old women' ILike?

I am still here.

Despite the stormy seas.

Thank you, I will for sure. Going to head for bed too,

Its been lovely chatting and I am turning in now. Have a lovely time at the sea Rowan.

Night.

Seems like a very cunning bluff (double bluff?) Judas

I've now had one more whisky than is good for me though!

Oh dear, so funny, see how I deliberately failed to strike through there? (Seriously, how the fuck do you strike through?) Almost trying too hard to ‘look’ incompetent......

I'm not sure she is reactive. I watched a lecture she gave (thanks to someone sharing it here) she said she respected those who disagreed with her, & she was happy to listen to people who disagreed, what she objected to was not being heard.
It resonated... especially at the moment.

Hmm Permission I think you might be.

I've seen Greer speak a few times.

She is uncompromising, she takes no prisoners.

But in a good way.

But maybe that's just old women.

Does anyone remember back when M15 were recruiting from MN? I wonder how all that went, and if some people are on a right cushty little number getting paid to MN all day
And the thing is that no one will know who —we— they are

I can see how the gravity of rape in law is muddied by patriarchal notions of 'damaged goods' - women as men's property.

It probably is worth revisiting because it is ridiculous the way people think only 'monsters' could perpetrate it and they don't see how utterly mundane it is, as you say, Hands, which doesn't help secure convictions.

I have an uncomfortable instinct there is something reactive about Greer writing a book on rape at this time - as though she is chiding radical feminists for perceiving it as the crux of male domination. Maybe I'm wrong.

The only gender theory that I have really studied was a subsiduary option. I took Women's Studies and my first essay way 'Is there such a thing as marital rape?' I don't thing people appreciate how recently the law changed.

ILikeyourHairyHands I think I understand this. It's nuanced.

Btw bertrand I hope I wasn't being an arse -like i was dismissing your concerns about Greer.

I don't think Greer is becoming a rape apologist.

I understood completely what was saying.

I've been raped, in my first marriage and by a bloke I thought was my friend when I was 19.

It was shit, but it didn't diminish me, it didn't destroy me, I hated the fucker's for it, but there was no way I was going to report and go through a rape trial. I had a life to live.

Germain makes the very pertinent point that rape is generally a very fucking sad and mundane crime, but the process of prosecution flays the woman involved.

Much better to make it a shit thing that men do, make the bar for prosecution lower, make the punishment lower BUT make rape itself an unconscionable act.

Let it be known that you are a rapist and let society do the rest.

I've had another whisky so will disclose that the Rowan in our garden (there are others on the other side of the wall) was planted when we decided to try to start a family.
I wanted a tree there, so jokingly called it the fertilitytree.
I'm more invested in naratives than superstition though and things went more wrong than we could have anticipated.

Its a lovely tree though!

I've got this book shop.nationaltrust.org.uk/britains-tree-story/p2166 and I love it. I've visited a few and it is always magical.