Feminism chat thread

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Hello

Been saying for ages that it'd be nice to have an area for just saying hi, letting off some steam and sharing the little things that don't warrant a whole thread.

So, I'll start...

My brother made me :o:o:o last night when we were talking about some crap sexist song. And he said (in all honesty) - well this is just one of the millions of ways the patriarchy keeps itself going.

Also got the updated email from the Feminism in London conference this morning - can't wait.

Anyone else?

I haven't been on so much recently. I have been playing world of warcraft doing very important RL stuff.

Hi Aviatrix Hope you're not too hungover this morning

Coffee bean would also be very useful to indicated nice little constipated poos

I keep thinking that "conflating coffee and poo" sounds like something Heston Blumethall might do and then charge you £50 for it

I home ed. I think one other MN feminst does but I can't remember who it is off the top of my head.

Why do you ask?

Hi aviatrix, and everyone.

Today in Tales from the Patriarchy (That May Also Make You Laugh), I saw something on the front of a crappy true-life-stories mag earlier.

Horrible low-res picture of tired looking woman in corset and fixed grin.

Accompanying headline was...

Wait for it...

I Strip For The Blind

Elephants - What!?

Aviatrix - who do you home educate? I've got my four girls, but only two are school-aged at the moment. One would be starting reception this September. I love seeing them finding their own likes and dislikes not influenced by school group peer pressure. I hope that one of the good things about keeping them out of school will be stopping them being too influenced by the boys vs. girls culture. At the moment they all have just as many close male friends as they do female friends and it's lovely.

That's the attraction of home-edding to me. I don't, but it has crossed my mind to- it would definitely be doabe but not sure I could retain my sanity...
As it is I just try to make sure she doesn't watch too much TV and I heavily　censor the books coming into the house
I read somewhere that the more TV boys watch, the more sexist they are, and that girls who watch a lot are more likely to have low self esteem, or something.

Do you have Studio Ghibli stuff? My Neighbour Totoro etc? they are lovely.

talking of tv....

yesterday morning I noticed that 3 CBeebies programmes in a row had male main characters/presenters.

so I started counting. and you know what? the next 7 (ie total 10) ALL had male main characters and there were only 2 programmes in the entire day where the main one was female (Come Outside and I Can Cook), plus a handful where they were equal.

basically Come Outside appears to be the most feminist programme on the whole of CBeebies at the moment, and it was made in the f*cking 1980s!

aviatrix - yes, seeing my children interacting together does make me relieved I don't have an only child sometimes. I think it must be harder work, in a way, especially if you're home educating and you have to put extra effort into making sure your child gets to play with other children. On the other hand, my oldest, in particular, does really crave time with older children and 'her' friends, which I have to work hard for, so I guess it's swings and roundabouts!

sakura - yes, retention of sanity is a tricky one! I do have to make sure I get plenty of breaks otherwise I do tend to go a bit loopy. Thankfully we have very, very supportive family and lots of HE friends who help eachother out when needed.

We don't censor tv etc., just appreciate that we're on hand most of the time to help them make sense of the things they see/hear/read about/experience when they need it, unlike when they're at school.

Elephants - what's studio ghibli etc? Not heard of those!

I would hope the feminist chat thread can be defined as a chat thread for feminists, not just a thread for feminist chat? Otherwise we will have to have two, the feminist chat thread and the feminists chat thread IYSWIM.

now MN is so big sometimes you just want a natter with like-minded familiar people. don't worry about hijacking.

Yes, I've noticed that defensiveness too, aviatrix. Do you notice them saying 'luckily for us, tarquin simply loves school', even though you know he's started wetting the bed?

Ok, let's bring it back to feminism; and this is an issue for me. I did a degree in nursing and finished in May 2002. I got married in August 2001 and put off getting pregnant until I qualified. I got pregnant three months after qualifying and starting work. When I went on ML at 27 weeks, at no point was I told that if I didn't return within such-and-such-a-time, I would lose my qualification. What has happened is this:

A couple of years ago, I tried to get on the nurse bank. I was still registered and the NMC were happy that I had worked for long enough, recently enough, to still be registered, but not for much longer, so I needed to get work. Get this! No one would employ me as an RN because my experience was too long ago. Talk about Catch-22 situation! I was really gutted. Apparently work as an HCA wouldn't count, so I couldn't even do that. I tried everything - nursing homes; nursing agencies.

So then, feeling rather gutted, I thought 'fine, I'll just have to do a return to nursing course'. I applied, got the forms...you have to have worked for at least a year post-qualification to get on the course.

So that's it - my career gone! My degree wasted! And of course, because of home educating, being able to do bank work would have been really useful. How would this have been different had I been a man...or in a more male-typical career?

oh Flamingo, this kind of thing makes me so angry.
It is as if society is systematically trying to keep women (the valueless ones who've had children rather than the nice young ones) at the margins. Even if it is cock-up rather than conspiracy it still reflects a really depressing lack of value placed by society on our knowledge and ability.

But not just about women, but about how our society is geared to not support families. How children are so separate from real life. If jobs and careers worked more flexibly so that children were more welcome, and could be worked around more, then far more parents would be able to not use FT childcare and still earn enough money to survive. And children would learn more about the real world than they can now (IMO).

Dh worked a half day last week, and had so much to cram in, but he did it all, and remarked that he probably (genuinely ie. not exaggerating) did more in that half day than he did in his normal whole days. And it's proven that employees are more productive when they are allowed to work flexibly. But employers just seem to refuse to listen to the evidence, and keep making employees put their work first.

More flexible ways of working - working from home, evening working - and more supportive ways to help mothers maintain their place in the workforce, at a level they can manage with their children (ie. not all or nothing), would help feminism immensely, I think.

Of course it's a chat thread for feminists :) and it's interesting to branch off into different topics.

Studio Ghibli - I was introduced to these a couple of years ago by ex-P who loved them, they have great female characters. Of the ones I've seen My Neighbour Totoro is fine for tiny kids and older ones, Kiki's Delivery Service maybe slightly older, 6 or 7 plus, then Spirited Away & Howls' Moving Castle maybe 9ish, there are some scaryish bits. Feel free to say differently though, anyone who's got kids and these films and therefore knows more about ages etc :o