The Feminist Pub - come in and chat.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

This is something like the fourth pub chat thread - please pull up a chair at the bar. Everyone welcome.

Old thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1920422-The-Feminist-Pub-continued?

But it's pretty much full so welcome in.

Sorry if I'm thick by what is the argument to NOT post things that feminists might agree with on a feminist board??
Do we all have to fight at ALL times?
Is that where I go wrong? That, and not shaving my legs out of slovenliness rather than to make a feminist point??

Sorry I am of no technical help at all.
But I like chamomile tea. And fennel - yum!

Buffy, have you solved your data transfer problem? I noticed the line 'Them: bring the files to us on a memory stick, we will compress them' ... hasn't the collaborator compressed them? If not, I'd ask him to try that before thinking about splitting them. Not sure how compressible audio files are but your IT guys seemed to think it was relevant. My company is tending to use 7-zip nowadays, its a free utility which is easy to use

buffy what format is the audio in? wav/mp3/raw? (there are other formats too). How high quality do you need it to be when you get them?

If wav or raw then you could compress to mp3 before sending, that'll get the files quite a lot smaller.

Oh, grr.

Just come back from cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2. It's a good film with a well realised female co-lead - but ALL of the other buddies of the hero are male, as is the enemy (although his side kick is female) and the "unexpected ally" is described as "he" as well.

No wonder shit keeps failing the Bechdel test.

I know feel a vague sense when I enjoy stuff that fails the Bechdel test .
Most recent example was 'The Universe vs Alex Woods' which I still think is a great young adult book (it's about the brain, the universe, bullying, love in various forms, Kurt Vonnegut jr, assisted suicide and cannabis farming - it also deploys the word 'cunt' on one memorable occasions and you just cannot fault Alex for using it in the context that he does).
The female characters are all too eccentric for my liking, too much like caricatures: Alex' mum is a tarot reader and into all sorts of woo, has a shop that sells woo paraphernalia (they live near Glasgonbury). Ellie, a girl from his school, is some kind of goth with a hugely dysfunctional home life. The male characters are all far more 'normal' ie relatable too IYKWIM.
Still think it's a great book and DS1(almost 11) has started reading it [worried].

When I say the male characters are 'normal' that is only when compared to the female ones: Alex has a significant head injury which leaves him with severe epilepsy, he also may be somewhere on the spectrum although this is not explicitly stated. His friend, Mr Peterson, is an old recluse who reads Vonnegut and farms cannabis for his own consumption.
So 'normal' is all relative - the older I get the less I know what 'normal' is tbh .

Anyone know why the "my mother is stuck in dubai" thread was deleted?

Was it fake?

I'm reading The Brothers Karazamov and it's a great big Bechdel test fail. I was balancing it by reading the Mitford Sister Letters (very interesting BTW, although very discomforting reading the letters between Diana and Unity raving about Hitler. Probably the best Bechdel pass ever though).

Anyway, I was at a local 'disco' that does birthday parties for LOs. They played Blurred Lines, do you think they could have thought of anything less appropriate? Bizarrely they had other poppy songs that were completely aimed at kids (I saw 'What does the fox say?' for the first time, I lead such a sheltered life!).

I've just read Dombey and Son, which considerably to my surprise (especially given the title!) is a Bechdel test pass. Various cliched female characters but also some interesting and unusual ones, and the importance of women's relationships with each other is a theme throughout.

Also depicts very powerfully the effects of emotional abuse/neglect on children.

Huh. I must read it. I admit, I was put off Dickens early on, but I suspect I am impoverished by it.

Did you enjoy it?

I'm sorry to lower the tone, but I'm currently knackered, and so I'm reading John Marsden's young adult books from the 'Tomorrow' series. Does anyone else know? It's just striking me again how good they are. They're not perfectly 'Andrea Dworking and 2013 feminists would love this,' but they're just neatly one step more radical than I think a lot of teeangers are. Or so I judge. I'm enjoying re-reading.

Oh, I must look them out - I am always on the look out for books for DS1 .

DH is currently clearing his mother's house (a difficult job physically and emotionally) and brought home 4 volumes of The Hardy Boys by Somebody Dixon - I've only read the blurb and they seem to me to be a great big fat Bechdel fail. I'll have to read one, won't I?

Yes, I did enjoy it, though a cull of some of the more tedious Humorous Characters wouldn't have gone amiss. I went off Dickens for years but am now rediscovering him. At his best the descriptive passages - always channelled through the interior life of the character experiencing whatever it is - are absolutely astonishing, with an intensity like those of Virginia Woolf and much more life and energy. And he can be amazingly sensitive and emotionally intelligent... not that that stopped him treating his poor wife like utter shit.

Those YA novels sound v interesting, LRD, I shall have to look them out.

The Hardy Boys, on the other hand, are utter dross

I loved the Hardy Boys books when I was young.

I'm reading the first Chaos Walking book. It is so good.

I've had it up to here > with stereotyping of small children. Can't be specific in case they are on here. But > .

There, there, LordCopper

As in "Ooooh, 4 boys - you'll have your hands full" - yes, I do, because I have 4 children.

That kind of thing?

No Pacific, more about what toys are "appropriate" for each gender. >

But how can you not know that ALL girls only want to play with toys that teach them to be subservient to men and all boys only want to learn how to kill each other...

My MIL was terrible for making comments about the DDs playing with toy cars or trains. I just kept on repeating 'yes, because they aren't ever going to travel anywhere when they are adults' until she shut up. My PILs don't like me much, I'm not sure why .

LordCopper - presumably this is in a context where you can't use the 'Is it genitally operated' - if yes, it's not a children's toy, if no it is appropriate for any child' flowchart?

No. I challenged a few comments and then it just got to the stage where you feel so dispirited that you just mentally bang your head against an imaginary brick wall... What is up with people????

I have also had a head against wall moment this week. Someone on a group I'm on had seen the 70's lego advert/why can't girls just play with Lego without it having to be girl's Lego meme, and had commented on it that normal Lego is done in boring colours (?) and that she wants her daughter to play with things that are nice colours because...... girls prefer colourful things.

When I pointed out that maybe having gendered Lego might narrow the aspirations of girls to cleaning, keeping house and looking after children, whereas boys can be anything they like, I was told I didn't know what I'm talking about.

Of course not.

(There will be no walls left soon.)

Lego is done in boring colours?

All the bright red, blue, green, yellow bricks, ya'know, primary colours, are not 'nice' colours? Because pink and lilac and pastels are nicer?
Good grief.

Oh dear, dd is about to get her hair dyed in bright, not nice colors, to go with the bright reds, greens, blues etc that she wears all the time.

I shall have to tell her to go for pastel Easter egg hair instead as that's a nice shade for girls.

Bollocks to that, I'll get a splash of green added!