The Feminist Pub (continued).

[UptoapointLordCopper]

Been busy. Came back today to have a look but the Pub thread was full! Shall we continue here?

Third episode of Borgen on tonight.

Bloody bloody HIGNFY spent ages discussing Thorning-Schmidt's attractiveness instead of making jokes about the selfie at Mandela's memorial. Sigh. And Graham Norton has three men and the token female singer. Damn you FWR for making me notice these things.

Sorry to hear you're not doing so well, annie. Sending some good vibes your way. In a non-woo, entirely metaphorical way.

Can I sneak in a Happy Birthday to scone as, since I've not gone to bed yet it's still yesterday? I'm up late because we went to see the Hobbit. Good, but depressing to notice that they seem to imagine that having one Strong! Female! Character! makes it ok for other female characters to be one-dimensional shrieking lady-types who hide while the menz get the work done. And to add insult to injury, said Strong Female Character only gets to be that way because she's the love interest. Natch.

And yes, everyone I was with did role their eyes when I said some of this.

lego I think, on the basis of your summary and my current level of irritation, I'll put off watching HIGNFY!

You are assuming, mildred, that using the title is also using it to define yourself 100%.

I am no more just Mrs Surname than I am just a mum. And if putting your weight on your name was the convention, I also wouldn't be just 11 stone 6.

It's gross generalizations, in general, that make the feminist movement so unapproachable to many people.

And, yes, I've read many many many of the books. I even met Betty Friedan, which is her married name, BTW, in the 80s. Truthfully, she was a bit of a bitter woman who turned me off feminism for a few years.

On the Mrs thing, I am starting to take tentative steps towards dropping the Mrs and reverting to Ms. On official stuff. I'm not going to ask my grandma to address cards to Ms Stollen.

I like having a family surname. Which is why I changed my name in the first place - I liked the idea of having hte same full name as future children and them having the same name as both of us (though, as previously confessed, I went about this the easy way by changing my name, not the harder way of another name, or both double barrelled or whatever). However, Mrs increasingly annoys me.

I can understand your point Tee. It's not that I'm 'just' Mrs, it's more that the older I get teh more annoyed I am that my marital status is advertised every time I use my credit card, and DH's isn't (well, unless they are looking at his wedding ring as he types in his PIN )

Happy birthday for yesterday Scone

LRD - I think I'm right in saying that there isn't a single female character in the original Hobbit books and they wrote some females into the film versions to avoid that. So no wonder they are a bit thin and shit. Of course, why the books had no female characters is a whole other issue, but at least they are old! I get more worked up about original screenplays and adaptions of modern novels.

"You are assuming, mildred, that using the title is also using it to define yourself 100%."

I am not assuming anything of the sort.

I am saying that if some people don't want to mention it at all - if it is really important to them not to mention it at all, whether or not it defines them 100 percent or 2.69 percent - then anyone else who carries on doing it, blithely sure that it doesn't matter, is perpetuating a convention that doesn't matter to them. And saying "it doesn't matter" when all that is the case, is that "it doesn't matter to me".

I am sure there are groans all around as everyone else goes "oh god not here too". So I will leave it there.

This is a crucial thing that is driving me nuts more and more on mn - I am not saying it is a mn thing, I think it is a societal thing but I have more interactions with society in general (as opposed to my friends) on mn than anywhere else - people refusing to think collectively, and actually refusing to see that there even is such a thing, and getting cross about it as if one is mad or evil or uppity or something for pointing it out as an angle. It's disheartening and it is why we are all fucked. They can do what they like with us while we fall for this. It's depressing as hell.

I am doing this by memory and I'm horrible at remembering character's names, but wasn't Gladerel (maybe?) the head female elf in The Hobbit book? But she was, perhaps, the only one.

I guess I feel there are bigger fish to fry than whether or not someone calls me Mrs or Ms or Miss or Hey You or Fuckhead or whatever.

Nope, I'm wrong. I just found a list. Not a single female character listed Here in Wiki.

Tee - I will confess I haven't read the book so bow to your greater knowledge. But the article I read on the film said she first appeared in LOTR and has been kind of retro-fitted into the Hobbit. That may be wrong though!

Cross post

If a gun to my head I would have sworn she was in The Hobbit.

Then you would have had to shoot me!

Tolkien was, without a doubt, a misogynist. But, and I hate this excuse, it was a misogynistic time.

Yes, it was. I know it's a crap excuse, but it is genuinely why I get more worked up about new screenplays and adaptions of modern books. With something like the Hobbit, I can think "well, they saw that no women was a bit crap and at least gave it a little go without changing the story too much".

With a new screenplay ,where the women are just there to be decoration whilst men 'do stuff' I get far more worked up.

Personally I don't feel v strongly on the Mrs thing - yes, historically it has all sorts of misogynistic connotations and meanings (chattel etc), and I can see how some women would intensely dislike being known as Mrs X (although Mrs DH's Forename X would annoy me more) and I can understand that some women are proud to be MrsX (I don't really understand why why are proud, but I understand that they are IYSWIM).
I just don't care v much. I will be delighted with each and any Christmas card with any of the many variations of my name .
I suppose I am lucky in that I quite often default to my professional title which takes the whole Mrs/Ms/Miss think out of the equation.

I DO feel quite strongly that their should be a more widely accepted married/non-married title for men unless we got rig of all of that nonsense for women too .
In Germany in my generation 'Miss' (Fräulein) has almost ceased to be in use (except for elderly unmarried women) and female people go from being known by their first name to Frau Whatever (their own name). When you get married you do still have to chose a married name which cannot be changed later on.

Tolkien was a chauvinist of the first order IMO.
I still absolutely love The Hobbit and LoTR (the books more than the films, but the films will do to).

I liked the Frau thing in Germany. In many ways it would make a lot of sense if, instead of messing about with Miss and Ms all adult females were Mrs, in the same way all adult males are Mr and not Master. It was odd being called Mrs Maiden name by a receptionist though (she used Mrs, not Frau).

I do get that a lot of older people (particularly, and some others) would be upset by it though, so I'm not sure it's a runner.

I was going to write something incredibly profound and life changing for all to PD's post but it has gone right out of my head due to a coughing fit and losing even more of my voice.

So let's just pretend I did and you can all act amazed and awed, okay?

Wow, TEE, just wow.

How was that?

Perfect Doctrine! Thanks.

Were you laughing at me? Or with me?? Or nothing at all to do with me?

I honestly have no idea. Right out of my head!

In my defence, my head feels stuffed full of wool this morning, my voice is mostly gone and I keep coughing up a lung.

My advice to all people everywhere: do not have a four year old and a husband who is a teaching fellow. You get primary and university germs brought home.

Oh, crap, "coughing" not "laughing" - I can't read!!

Hope you're ok ok, TEE, and just to say I admire your insight and profoundness and general brilliantness.

That better?

Huge sympathies - I have just recovered from my second bout of sinusitis this season and the winter is still young... Tis horrible.
Here have a [Lemsip], Tee.

I almost started a thread expressing my disgust that with middle-age I seem to be unable to just have a 'cold', it always ends up with woolly head, deafness, no voice, pain on moving head fecking sinusitis .
In my job I get coughed and sneezed on rather a lot...

There are quite a few female LOTR characters, they're just all a bit shit. Sam marries Rosie Cotton who is the woman with the terrifying boobs in the film. Not sure about Hobbit characters. I think the spider is female. Or something.

Anyway. If C.S. Lewis (while being misogynistic) could manage a balanced set of gender-equal main characters in virtually all his books, I think Tolkein could have done.

Sorry to hear about people being ill. Blame your DH in a feministy way. It's what I do. I am currently grouching at the bastard because he's not keen on my buying a Christmassy cake stand I want, quite reasonably, to use for approximately 0.1% of the year and which will need storing for the rest.

at Christmassy cake stand. What is a cake stand? Our cake gets plonked on a plate and eaten. Sometimes they don't even make it to the plate.

Oooooh, now I want a Christmassy cake stand too - and you can dissemble this one for easy storage

You should, of course, LTB if he does not 'let you' have one, LRD. Obv.

It's one of those things that symbolize feminine enslavement, upto.

Actually it's this one www.portmeirion.co.uk/portmeirion-the-holly-and-the-ivy-pierced-footed-cake-plate.html, and I'm not usually a cakestand kind of person but, like others upthread, it all goes a bit wobbly at Christmas.