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.

Just had local tory party canvassing on my doorstep. "MRS Curve".

on so many levels

I'm a New England girl, through and through, Scone.

Belle they lose 10000 'take them seriously' points just from being Tories.

If I'd thought for a minute it was the tories I wouldn't have opened the door!

I can't even say "no, that's my mum" cos she is Ms too!

I got a call from a Republican canvasser the other day. They got my name right, but needless to say, not my politics. Turns out it was a joke my very right wing brother-in-law was playing on DH and me (he had given our names to the local party). I am biding my time for the payback.

Scone, yes, the Hillary Rodham Clintob style is uncommon.

Agh! I am having a similar trauma to Annie. I am 1 10th of the way into my MA and not sure I can do it as I just don't get time. I need to be able to say to people that I have to study and for that to be respected. Today I have dh taking dd to see the hobbit then to a frined's house. This would give me 7 hours to write my final paper and do all the housework (which I treat as a study break once an hour).

Now the frined's mum wants me to spend an hour there cos there is friction between the kids. They are spectrum kids so this is something we need to do, BUT can it not just wait until Wednesday? Once I finish my final paper I will have time, but I don't have a spare hour today.

There's just always something getting in the way, like dd losing her nerd guns and the car breaking down etc.

I want a wife, the kind who does everything so I can selfishly focus on my career and still have food housework etc happen.

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.

True but what really annoys me is the revelation that Cressida Cowell didn't think to have any female characters in the first few 'How to Train Your Dragon' books so they added Astrid to the film. I suppose it's like Lily being added to the cbeebies Peter Rabbit but it's still a token one female isn't it.

Peter Rabbit original had Flopsy, Mopsy and was Cottontail a girl?

Except Lewis was writing over 10 years after Tolkien. Or at least was published that much later. And those 10 years are major in the history of the world, with WWII in there.

Also, Lewis' story, meaning Narnia as a whole, aren't exactly original. Lewis just took the bible and changed the names, at the bare bones, really.

Tolkien created a whole new world.

So I'm not sure you can compare the two, was my point that I seemed to have no made in that post.

That's true, tee.

And I do take the point about it being worse in later books/TV as well.

Oh the other hand, the one person who ever got the best of Sherlock Holmes, was a woman. And that was in 1891!

Tolkien was also deliberately trying to reflect Anglo Saxon literature which was all about warriors and acts of war. If he'd written more about life at home it could have included more females. Still, female warriors existed in times if yore so he could have included some.

kickassangel - you need to learn to be absolutely ruthless, both with yourself and with others, about what you can and can't manage. "No" is easier to say than you'd think! Good luck!

Tolkien was a linguist. He was really interested in creating a new language. Which he did. Elvish can be read, written and spoken.

The main premise of the LOTR story is nicked from Wagner's Ring Cycle, which is itself a version of various traditional German stories.

I have a sneaky feeling that a female author, doing the same thing, would be criticised a lot for doing this.

Tolkien was also deliberately trying to reflect Anglo Saxon literature which was all about warriors and acts of war.

Sorry, but no, it wasn't.

There are poems about love, and heartbreak, and riddles about the home and about sex, and chronicles of history about queens as well as kings. Warfare is a theme but it is absolutely not all AS lit is about.

Even if you only read Beowulf, which is the stereotype, there is Grendel's mother as well as Grendel, and there's Queen Wealtheow as well as King Hrothgar.

Huh, sorry, meant that first line to be in quotation marks:

Tolkien was also deliberately trying to reflect Anglo Saxon literature which was all about warriors and acts of war.

(Side point, I'm fairly sure much of Tolkein is later medieval, anyway.)

I have just addressed all the Christmas cards to my "traditional" relatives as Mrs X and Mr Y Jones.

I have also signed them from Annie, DH, DD1 and DD2 instead of putting DH first.

AND, I have signed myself as Annie. Which wouldn't seem a big deal, but my mother/family call me by another version of my name, which I hate and stopped using nearly 20 years ago. I have always still used it to sign family cards because they all think the name I prefer is silly and refuse to have anything to do with it. No more! I will sign it with the name I choose to be called by, and damn their confusion!

AND I have refused to do cards for DH's colleagues. Luckily I don't have to worry about his family cos they don't celebrate Christmas.

Sad, but I feel deliciously subvertive!!

That's probably not very Christmassy of me, is it?

When we send cards I am first on the signature list because I write them. I used to do me first on cards for my family and dp first on cards for his, but then I decided that if I write the card I go first. I also put the name of the person I am actually related to/friends with first when addressing the cards, so Auntie X and Uncle Y, but Uncle A and Aunt B, purely down to who is the person closest to me. We don't generally do Christmas cards though and the only one I send is to my grandma who lives alone so I have nobody to be subversive to :( It is sad that it feels subversive though. Stick with it, it'll become second nature.

Annie, well done on the cards. LRD you know a lot more about AS lit than me. What I should have said is that Tilkein tried to reflect his version of AS lit. You can imagine what his lectures were like, can't you? I can't quite imagine him covering much of the love poems.

I am doing 'The Smith family' for everyone with kids, and 'Jane and Frank Smith' (with which name is first based purely on how they flow) for most other people. I'll bow to convention for those I know would be offended with that though (i.e. older people, mostly).

I always sign my name first on cards if I wrote them. Can't imagine doing anything else really. I sign my name and leave a space for DH and then do the kids (except DD1 will be old enough to do her own name on a few this year).

Oh, obviously that was meant to say where they share a family surname. I won't do Jane and Frank Smith if it should be Jane Brown and Frank Smith!

Now you've all made me overthink how I am going to address my Christmas cards, damn you! I have to do them today and I am feeling a tiny little bit delicate as was on a night out last night which almost ended with dancing on tables (we kept it to the floorspace in front of the bar as everybody's balance was slightly impaired . And no, there was no dance floor, but if they have music in a pub then surely there ought to be dancing, non? ).

May I present you with this atrocity? I keep coming across these awful toys for girls - I don't know why, but I find it easier to avoid the most horrible stereotypic toys for boys, but struggle for girls. They are all getting some arty-crafty kind of thing
Why would you want your daughter to have a game in which the princesses compete against each other to win a dance with the prince and that makes you the winner?? Yuck.