Would it be OK to have a (light hearted) thread about

[HalloweenNameChange]

the embarrassing unfeminsty thoughts we sometimes catch ourselves having?

I keep scanning the covers of rubbish glossies newspapers to see if Kate Middleton is pregnant yet and I will be very excited when she is.. Double I know she is not a breeding horse.. I just can't help myself.

Lily
Calamity Jane was my favourite gum as a child.
I think I have numerous, but the one recent was going to see Skyfall. Although I was chuffed when DS1 said I reminded him of M don't think he meant it as a compliment though

film

AnyFuckerForAMincePie
I used to be like that..but them met dh who is so British his upper lip must be made of concrete.. and now think it would be lovely for him to show some bloody emotion..

Yes, to Jane Austin and the like too.. it's just so drippy and yet can't tear myself away

Oh I LOVED Skyfall. Every sexist minute.

HNC--I know a couple where she's American and he's British. One day she was reading some self-help book, and he said, "Americans are such endless self-improvers!" And she isn't usually inclined to snap at anyone, but she responded, "Yes, but the British know they're perfect already".

But, uh, "Austen".

Or, know they're perfect already.

Tei I will keep save that line for later

Austen

I have many wonderful qualities, spelling unfortunately is not one of them.

I'm sorry, I know it wasn't mean to upset, CailanDana, goodness knows, my mother wasn't cut out for children either, except she stayed at home and bemoaned the fact! I'm just feeling a bit down and I should have left it. Actually, being a single parent was fine in the end, easier than being married to what Xenia might term a sexist man, I think. (Where does one find the non-sexist ones??)

The last bracketed comment was a joke, by the way. Sort of.

Oh, I like this thread.

Maybe we should keep it bumped and link to it whenever someone asks why feminists all do x or y - and we can point out we actually don't, or it doesn't always come naturally, and we're still all working out how to be feminists?

Or maybe that is just me, who's still working it out!

I think my bad one is my tendency to go handmaiden-y those sort of blokes who are Perfectly Nice. So I'll end up chatting and being all politely interested in what they're doing (cos I was brought up proper, to express interest in Men's Doings ). And at some point I will notice that they don't ask the questions back, and they don't politely express interest.

It gets me every time. And I wish I didn't do it, I wish I were better at speaking up about me (even if I'm just saying something boring), because I come away feeling uncomfortable that I've let these blokes, who are not saying anything at all unfeminist and who probably think they are very pro-equality, dominate a conversation yet again with everything they're doing.

This thread is really interesting. I think one of the things that dents my confidence is my feelings of failure as a feminist, so seeing that others also do or think unfeministy things really helps.

Yip LRD, I always say to my mum she brought us up to be too polite, especially to the elderly. With me, I find myself deferring to older people all the time!!! Yesterday the washing machine repair man came in to fix the handle on my machine, and when I told him my landlady would pay him, he said 'Oh, you've got a woman landlord. I bet she does nothing but moan'.

I stuttered something along the lines of 'Actually, she's great coz she leaves me alone...' but the fact is, if that man hadn't been an older gentleman, I would have hauled him up over that.

And going back to Calamity Jane...I LOVE it and never cottoned on how sexist it was until I started to come here and open my eyes. But it is still my guilty pleasure.

haha Calamity jane

never mind Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!!

Ohhh ... yep, so with you there samurai!

It is difficult to find a good balance between a response that won't result in a nasty retaliation (or make you feel really uncomfortable), and one that doesn't make you feel bad afterwards.

Oh God, yes. This bloke was chatting to DS on the train, and he asked if I was taking him to nursery, so I said yes. that's where we were going. He said, just working to pay the childcare then?

I kind of muttered something polite about nursery fees, whereas I wish I had said, and the mortgage, and the clothes he wears, and his food, and his nappies... but he was being nice and friendly with DS and I didn't want to be rude.

It is SO hard!! I could never bring myself to be rude to someone who was older no matter what, as the guilt would chew away at me. Yet I felt I had let myself down by allowing a fellow woman (who happens also to be a very nice one) to be insulted just because she was a woman. I was annoyed.

EdgarAllanPond...oooh Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is GREAT!! When I was a teen I used to dream about Benjamin forgetting about Dorcas and whisking me off to the cabin in the mountains haha. Until I realised Frank was cooler.

I find myself annoyed that DH never takes the bins out, because it's Mens' Work, damnit! A delicate laydee should not be hauling rubbish about the place.

OK, here's my confession. When I'm cutting the hedge (and it's always me that cuts the hedge, unless I specifically ask, which I won't do, because why shouldn't I do the hedge)... anyway, when I'm cutting the hedge, after 15 min and aching arms, I think, "Why doesn't DH cut the hedge, it's supposed to be a man's job!" (Sometimes when my arms are dropping off I ask him to finish it, and hate myself for it!)

I do that with driving, notgood. When I'm not actually doing it, I'm thinking 'ooh, I am such a good feminist, I do all the car-stuff'. When I'm driving, and it's dark and icy and flooded and we've been going for 200 miles, I do think 'why the feck can't you drive, you're a MAN!'. But then, maybe you and I would think the same if we were with women - any excuse to feel maybe someone else should be doing it!

My husband should cut the hedge because he's nearly a foot taller than me at 6'4" and therefore the more logical person to cut the top evenly. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My most recent one was when the lovely man at the car parts shop offered to replace my car light bulb for me and thinking, "I'm glad I'm not DH because he'd feel that he had to fit his own bulb (and the man might not have been so quick to offer to do it) and it's bloody freezing out here!".

I didn't actually go on about how little I know about car insides much but I did feel ashamed of using my spare X chromosome to get out of a tedious and grimy job that I would have done fairly badly and slowly.

I am also guilty of taking the car to my local garage and asking them to investigate the funny noise it is making. I hate myself at moments like that but I recognise that I really do have no idea what the unseen bits of the car actually do to make it go along.

I dunno. We're not born mechanics, whether we have vaginas or not. It's not shame to get the person who knows what they're doing, to do it for you. Besides which, there's a limit to how much you can do for yourself with a modern car, since the computer controls so much of it.