The Feminist Pub - come on in, chat, ask a quick question, ramble ... whatever you like!

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Hello and welcome! Pull up a chair!

This thread started when we all decided to imagine what the perfect local for feminists would be like. So far, it has taps with plenty of good real ale, and some decent non-alcoholic alternatives too. There are comfy chairs and there's a feminist film night, as well as lots of nice feminist-friendly books on the shelves and space to curl up and read. The open-mic nights are attracting feminist singers and comedians, and we're just sorting out the feminist creche.

Old thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1875250-The-Feminist-Pub-is-Open-Chat-Rant-or-pull-up-a-chair-here. But don't feel you need to read or catch up - just jump in.

I'm having a nice cup of earl grey but there is wine mulling as requested.

What can I get anyone?

When I was teaching, I often felt that imposter thing. Not so much in my current job, apart from when I have to go and work at another site.

Can I ask you to submit a strong childhood memory of mine to a bit of light feminist scrutiny, please? I've just been talking about it to someone else and it made me think.

I grew up in the countryside and used to visit my grandparents, who lived in a very rural spot. During these visits, I would walk in the woods and fields with my grandad. Sometimes, he would make references to a gamekeeper who worked in the woods, who was cruel and heartless and liked killing things. Grandad would warn me not to walk in the woods alone, as the gamekeeper was quite gun-happy and "had no mercy".

I never thought much about what this meant at the time; I just took it as Grandad telling me scary stories or cautionary tales, and only half-believed that the gamekeeper existed at all.

Long after Grandad died, I found out the gamekeeper had been real, and had been Grandad's next-door neighbour.

DH thinks that Grandad was trying to warn me about something he couldn't explain to a small child easily. This had never occurred to me.
Of course, all of those fairy tales about little girls getting lost in the woods can be read as cautionary tales about disguised sexual predators, too.

I am now curious about it and would like to talk to someone else who lived in the area.

Variation on the impostor theme….noticeable at work when something went wrong the women would all immediately start examining their role thinking "was it me?" did I cock up" etc. All the blokes would confidently assume it couldn't be them. Even when (as its frequently did) turn out to be a man who had cocked up it never seemed to dent their sublime confidence in their ability. Weird.

Mildred, that's really interesting and I've saved it.

I started a new role about six weeks ago and was convinced I'd be sacked in my first week.

Of course, I wasn't.

Grimble I've noticed that before

Actually, I don't feel like an imposter. I know how to do my job. What totally pisses me off is that men who are crap and drop the ball don't seem to suffer from it at all either.

Small clanger, I have no idea on yours, it could go either way. Your grandad could be worries that a small child might be mistaken for a larger animal and shot at, or it could be something else. Presumably there would have been some incidents that made your grandad think it was unsafe. Could there be any old news stories online? If the man had shot someone or assaulted a child it might have been public knowledge.

OK - I should be working on a paper for college, but just had a thought.

Linked to the papers I'm working on, I was thinking about the movie Sophie's Choice (although I've never seen it). But it plays on a common trope that mothers all secretly have a favorite child. And it is MOTHERS isn't it, that seem to have that accusation thrown at them? Somehow it's tied up with the whole 'mother love' being some kind of superlative unquenchable force, but secretly we all know there's a favorite. And I don't hear that being said about fathers and their feelings for children (although there's generally a lot less said about that on the whole anyway).

Not sure if I'm making sense, but back to a paper on trauma victims.

At least I have a rl buttered rum to keep me going, thanks to inspiration from this thread.

SmallClanger, I've been thinking about your story about your granddad. There is no way of being sure about what he ment about the gamekeeper and possibly he only ment exactly what he said? Is there any way you can find out more about local history? Do you have the name of said gamekeeper? I am intrigued...

Having said that, I saw a graphic re crime statistics in a Sunday paper ?last week or the week before which seemed to imply that overall reported crimes had gone down by something like 5%, but reported sexual crimes had gone up by 8% or so - I cannot remember the numbers accurately. It was labelled "The Jimmy Saville Effect" which made me go because it was not quite clear whether it was implied that the whole sorry JS affair had given more victims/survivors of abuse the impetus to report crimes or that people unjustifiably shout 'sex crime' more readily... It'd be awful to imply such .

Re favourite children: well, DH has one which really surprised me when he just came out with it one evening. After some ... I seem to favour whichever child I see as 'vulnerable' at different times; you know "x is having a hard time at school" = needs a bit more mothering. If faced with a Sophie's Choice kind of 'choice' I really don't know what I'd do. I feel sick to my stomach considering it.

- what do you think of Jackson Katz?

That's a good talk, PD.

Just had a hard time making the DSs tidy up which they eventually did. I hate almost all housework, but actually don't mind tidying up... But in the back of my mind, I think, I think that I don't want them to think it's a woman's job to do housework. Because of this, I think, I make life a lot harder for myself by making them participate in tidying up and washing up and sweeping the floor etc etc. Their friends don't do that ... They hate me ... But NO WAY are DH and I doing it all. I guess they'd better get used to it...

I find it hard to articulate just how much I hate housework.
And I do the vast majority of it. Dh cooks a lot, but did more so before we had DCs (fewer requirements/ preferences to consider?)
Is he untidy because he's a man? Or that's how he was raised?
Neither. IMHO. His brother is super tidy. His sister is what I would call "normal" tidy.
I am trying to teach DS to didy up after himself and will do same with DD. fingers crossed.

Just popping into say hi. Hope LRD's enjoyed her holiday.

I despise housework. I resent doing it and sometimes feel guilty that I don't derive any pleasure or even satisfaction from doing things for DH or DD, apart from cooking sometimes. Like, I'm meant to feel all proud and maternal at seeing DD in her clean school uniform, when I only make sure it's clean because I have to. If I had a choice, I wouldn't bother. Strangely, I don't think DD actually cares - she certainly doesn't experience that much "pride" in things being right and proper.

Thanks for the input on last night's story. I do have the gamekeeper's name, and there must be some archive somewhere that would have any stories about shootings, assaults or missing children near where he lived. It's the sort of thing I cannot talk to members of my family about, as they would have instinctively lied about it and would claim not to remember.

I do have a suspicion that something may have happened to my grandmother. She never came on walks with us and claimed not to like the woods. However, this cannot always have been the way: she was a keen amateur artist and we still have sketches she made in the area, and a painting of a pond in the woods.

She never spoke about the gamekeeper at all, although she did talk to, and about, his wife from time to time.

Oh, good grief, housework!

It is all done in a rather haphazard manner here - there are certain things I do as I go along and I don't really notice them anymore (wiping sufaces, emptying dishwasher, doing the laundry, sweeping hard flooring). We have help with the hoovering and tidying (a woman, of course ).
I am far less interested in housework than DH who is really Very Good in that respect (changes beds, cleans the bathroom, does windows - I never see the point in that - hoovers as needed).
The boys... I could scream in frustration. They are incapable of putting their stuff in the laundry - that is all I'm asking: get undressed and put your smalls and anything else that needs washing IN THE WASH. Aaaaargh!!

If I could get rid of ONE housework related job (not that I do that much anyway), it's putting clean laundry away. That really bores me to tears.

Cooking is different - I like cooking, not so much the day to day stuff (What will I cook tonight?) but the actual creative process of putting a meal together and transforming raw ingredients in to something totally different and hopefully better .

"If I could get rid of ONE housework related job (not that I do that much anyway), it's putting clean laundry away. That really bores me to tears."

Pacific I feel your pain on this.
Sometimes it literally makes me cry that there is so much of it to do. Sometimes I feel physically nauseous at it.

It is probably a sign - completely over-reacting to feeling overwhelmed by laundry - that there is something else wrong, usually, in my case. dp found me literally sobbing over it on Saturday morning. we have had vomitting children so it was more than usual and it was all suddenly unbearable.

I moaned to some friends that everything is a mess since we moved house. We had to move twice this year and I have completely run out of annual leave because of this so it is very hard to find the time to set up proper storage and sort out all the girls' clothes and box up the intermediate sizes and separate all their tights etc. I can't do anything like that when they are there but I imagine if I spent 3 hours on it our lives would be transformed. One of the women - working ft in a very senior job - said "that's a sickie". I was astonished, it would never occur to me to pull a sickie to do that, partly because I am real-life sick so often I don't feel like I have credit. Is this a normal approach?

We do quite minimal housework. I'm beginning to threaten to detract from pocket money any item of clothing I have to remind them to put away. I figure they've got eyes and brains and hands.

My book says girls' play morph into women's work (eg housework, or nurturing stuff) while boys' play morph into men's games. Women are conditioned to think that housework is their fucking hobby and vocation and they fucking like it. If this is true then smallclanger you are not being weird about feeling guilty about not liking it. It makes you sick, doesn't it?

You're looking a bit peaky you'retoastmildred

Yy to the crapness of putting away clean laundry.

My book says girls' play morph into women's work (eg housework, or nurturing stuff) while boys' play morph into men's games. Women are conditioned to think that housework is their fucking hobby and vocation and they fucking like it.

That is scary and true, at least with traditional toys such as dolls.

"My book says girls' play morph into women's work (eg housework, or nurturing stuff) while boys' play morph into men's games. Women are conditioned to think that housework is their fucking hobby and vocation and they fucking like it."

Interesting that you've posted this, saw my counsellor the other day and we got to talking about how I used to have loads of hobbies and interests and now everything I do revolves around DH and DS, I've turned in to a shell of a woman. And scarily it's exactly the thing I feared as it's how I saw my mum, once me and my brother grew up it was like she had nothing to do.

You never hear of men losing their identity once they become dads do you?

No. murder, that's true. It can also feed back into the "smug middle aged man" thing being discussed a few pages back.

I can think of a few men who have developed time-consuming, parochial hobbies (golf, basically) of their own some time after becoming fathers. One of them was always wittering on about "needing a break from family life". He worked f/t and his wife was a SAHM.

My own father heard someone else come out with this and replied "but when my two were little, being around them WAS my break". I bloody love my dad sometimes.

That is so true re girl's and boys' play, but had never occurred to me before

mildred, I totally know what you mean. I am forever so busy fire fighting, doing the stuff that MUST be done right now, that I never find the time to actually sort through things. Which if I did, would actually make life much more organised and easy. Aaaaaargh!

The book.

That's why the let toys be toys campaign is so important.

clanger Your dad sounds lovely, though looking at my toddler I'm not sure spending time around him could ever be considered a "break"

Just got back from the anomaly/gender scan, just been told I'm probably having a girl. Strangely upset, having a boy didn't feel like pressure, but a girl just makes me aware of all she's going to come up against in life. And all the fighting I'm going to have to do to stop people restricting her choices.