Feminist Pub IX. Newbies and regulars welcome - pop your cognitive dissonance down outside and have a gin.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Right, thought I'd better start a new pub. I warn you, my knowledge of Roman numerals conks out shortly after this one, so either buffy will have to start the next thread, or we'll have to go Arabic.

Everyone is welcome in - if you want to chat, or just jump in with a question/link/gin, please do. Especially if it's too small for a thread or you don't feel up to thread-starting.

The old thread has, at my count, about 9 posts to go, and it was here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2126791-Feminist-Pub-VIII-not-as-prolific-as-the-Swaggerers-but-there-are-cushions-and-consciousness?

We were just chatting about feministy light reading, and will doubtless meander onto other topics shortly.

Fair point, Petula.

I think that's very likely, petula.

Wrt undergrad feminism, i went off to study French at uni in 2000 (so prob just a few years before you, LRD) and there was loads of feminist stuff but presented very much as one of a number of analyses you could use (Marxist analysis, Freudian analysis etc etc) as part of critical theory. It wasn't 'angry' or attempting to inspire activism (as far as I could tell) but conferred legitimacy on the analytical process in a way that I feel has stood me in good stead. The one thing that really got me going tho was a lecture on Mulvey's Camera as Male Gaze as it was such a revelation! I had never thought of visual arts in that way before.

But i wonder how different it is being a young undergrad these days what with the mainstreaming of feminism? In 2000 I certainly considered myself a feminist but didn't really feel the need to say it out loud, to identify myself as such, it was a given really. It feels different now.

I wonder the extent to which the intellectual benefits of higher ed are to be realised immediately? For example, there were things that I didn't really appreciate at 20 (eg certain writers) but by being aware of them and having them in my back pocket so to speak, i have gone back and reevaluated in my early 30s. Does that make sense?

YY, very similar timing as I started in 2003. I've just taught a course on theory that included Marxist analysis, Freud, postcolonialism and various others and no feminism. (I didn't write the course!)

I think you're right that it wants teaching as one of several approaches, absolutely. I'll take your recommendation for the Male Gaze. That will work really well for one lecture I'm doing on sex and gender.

I've also been wondering how different it is. I felt the same as you - I was a feminist, but wouldn't have said much about it. And I realize now that much of the feminism on campus was very, very liberal, 'let's love our bodies and enjoy sex girls' kind of stuff.

I am really hoping there will be things to go 'in the back pocket'. My equivalent to that comes from my time at school rather than university, I think. I had some amazing teachers at school, was really lucky.

Very much off the subject of TERFs, but on the subject of women having to be nice all the time, can I just say how much I hate the term 'bitchy resting face' or 'resting bitch face'? I have been seeing it all over lately and it is driving me up the wall. So I thought I would post here before I end up on the ceiling . It isn't just me, is it?

i started the year after you LRD, and i think my experience of campus feminism was the same. though there may have been other things going on that i wasn't aware of or involved in. i was (and probably still am) terribly self-absorbed at that time!

my forays into academic feminism was in relation to studies of women's self-portraits through the ages, so the male gaze was very relevant there

No terraria. It's just "my face" isn't it, or "her face", as it really is, when we're not making a special special effort to be pleasing all the time. Sometimes we might, I dunno, be planning for a job interview or thinking what to buy our mothers for her birthday, or trying to iron out our latest poem, and we don't need to waste mental energy remembering to smile in case anyone thinks we look "bitchy". What's the male equivalent, "dickhead resting face" whenever a man is too occupied to plaster a grin across his chops?

terraria aboslutely not just you. it's about a woman's duty to appear approachable and friendly at all times

Ooh! petula I would love to have studied that, that sounds amazing!

About 'bitchy resting face' ... it does annoy me a bit, but I think I have perfected a much more useful version. I have 'preoccupied middle-distance married person gaze'. It's great, you can put it on and people stop hassling you.

That said, I am finding it annoying now, because I settle into it automatically when I'm out, and the other day I was consciously trying not to do it. And as soon as I started meeting people's eyes I got the barrage of wankerishness again.

It does drive me nuts that anything except a broad smile is judged 'bitchy,' and yet if you're smiley or even if you're looking people in the face, you're automatically on target for stupid comments.

I've been trying that thing of occupying public space like a bloke (not squeezing into my seat and putting my arm on the armrest, etc.), which is all quite fun. I think meeting people's eyes in public might be the next one.

I think I have resting bitch face.

I have been told I have.

Which is really odd, because what I do most of the time is laugh and smile. I am a giggler. So, how did I end up with a face that looks so arsey when resting?

Oh, that's right, it's because my eyesight is bloody awful, so, in order to see anything, I have to do a sort of semi scowl at all times!

I've enjoyed doing the 'walking with attitude' thing though. I don't move out of people's way now. It foxes them.

I should have been on campus at the same time as LRD too, but I dicked about a bit too much and ended up going 2006-2009. The only feminism I came across there was in an English Lit module, I forget what it was called. We learned about Mary Wollstonecraft and how crappy things were in the nineteenth century. That was about it. Insofar as the students I met considered feminism at all, it was as a thing from the seventies that was all done now. But I wasn't paying that much attention at the time, what with being stuck in selfish selfcentred teenager mode (despite not being a teenager any more). Maybe there was all sorts of activism going on that totally passed me by?

Strangely I dislike being told I look happy.

Case study: There's a dubious child in the neighbourhood who knocks on our door to speak to various people.

Dubious Child: You look happy today.

Me (not saying out loud because I have a suspicion it's not acceptable to say this to a child): I'm only trying to be polite because if I'm honest to myself I would rather kick you than smile at you because you are such a dubious child.

But Me (saying out loud): You should not make personal comments.

Conclusion: I have established myself as the grumpiest person in the neighbourhood without even doing my worst.

Imagine what I can achieve if I tried ...

i have a very good "tune-out" mechanism. i literally can't hear or see people. it's something that you often hear of as a masculine trait. i realise it comes across as very rude, and i try very hard to work against it (because i don't actually want to be a rude person), but it does actually work in my favour quite often

I didn't come across any taught feminism during my undergrad course. I did a very traditional chemistry degree - the vast majority of the students and lecturers were male. I spent a lot of time being annoyed at the prevailing opinion that I only got a place on the course because I was female. I still deal with this attitude on a worryingly regular basis.

I'm wondering if things will change. My company has an initiative to increase the number of senior female managers. The target figure is 55% - I'm not sure why the target is beyond parity. It will be interesting to see how the policy plays out.

I didn't finish my first degree so have been studying Politics and IR with the OU for the past couple of years. In my most recent module (3rd yr politics) the feministy content has been superb, both in the module materials and the scope for independent research. I love it :-)

Ooh ... could you say what's good about it? No worries if you're busy/don't want to, I'd just love to know what seems to you to work.

oubliette - that sounds so annoying. And the 55% target - is that them thinking 'well, we'll never do is so might as well overreach'?

I'm not sure. I wonder if the current workforce is 55% female and they are trying to make the management structure match?

Ah, I see. That sounds like a more positive possibility.

this isn't new information at all, but i remember speaking a few years ago to an oncologist based in sweden, where they have quotas for senior hospital positions. he said that contrary to fears there had been no reduction in quality of staff at that level due to "tokenism", but that because the institutions knew that they would need more women to fill the senior positions they started grooming the women further down the line to make sure that they would have the right women to fill the quotas when they kicked in. and of course this is what they had been doing for men for years, so it was just redressing hte balance

it's logical really

The typical senior manager (i.e. someone who gets share options) is currently a 50-something, white, middle class, privately educated, British male (yes - I appreciate this is a stereotype). However, I've recently seen a lot of internal notices about such managers 'retiring'. I don't think they will immediately be a high number of women promoted into these roles (although there should be an increase, as all-male short lists are strongly discouraged), but as the (current) top level of middle managers get promoted into these roles, I expect their replacements to include a much higher proportion of women. These women will then (hopefully) get the training they need to become senior managers in 5-10 years time.

right... so it's us who are beating and raping and abusing prostitutes