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.

vezzie You are unnatural, you are, not prostrate with gratitude at the offer of help from a gentleman.

When I see someone looking like they need help (not saying you do vezzie) I offer but make myself scarce politely and quietly if help is declined. Surely that's the correct thing to do or have I been brought up wrong?

kickass How did the Knobhead Experiment go?

I have a sudden fancy to go and buy leak-proof lunchboxes, due to participating on a lunchbox thread.

i have consulted with my live-in expert on teenage behaviour. he says that knobhead is an accepted term among the current batch (among other terms of course), though it is considered quite tame

vezzie you do realise you denied him his manly right to show a woman how to do something practical?

Nob Apartments! Ahahaha. I know a few people who deserve a flat in that development.

Lunchboxes. I love lunchboxes.

Offering help is a nice thing to do. It was the barging to take the bike that got me. It reminded me of the first times I became acquainted with general male arrogant fuckwittery at college - I think one of the very first times was when I asked my male neighbour if I could borrow a screwdriver, he asked why, I said I just needed to adjust something on my alarm clock*, he came into my room, grabbed the clock, took the back off, and for inexplicable reasons started straightening out the springs with pliars while I watched in silent horror - the silence is also inexplicable - then he gave it back and said "It's broken". NO SHIT. Men who grab things you are dealing with already make me see red, that was the first in a long line of knobheads.

Actually a couple of weeks ago a nice man did help me with a Barclays bike. I was next in the queue but the lock on the seat was too hard for me to move and I couldn't alter the height of the seat - which was up by my armpits - so I offered it to the man behind. He put it down for me instead, very simply and not making a song and dance about it, having offered first. He is on my list of Men Who Know How To Do Things.

*alarm clock! Hilarious! You wound it up, and a bell rang in the morning! no electronics at all! That seems so quaint

Wind-up alarm clock! I want one of them.

At college I had a friend who was worried that offering to carry heavy stuff for women was offensive. I'm afraid I laughed at him. (I guess that's unhelpful, so now he might think that offering to carry heavy stuff for women was offensive and expressing this doubt was also offensive ... Ah well. As I said before and will probably say again, I will worry about this when we have no gender pay gap.)

well dp is currently stomping about the house because he has broken his bike and in the course of fixing it has broken it further

Oh dear. DH is particularly good at fixing bikes. >

I fancy attaching a photo. A very underused facility on this board. What shall I attach?

dp is usually good at fixing bikes. i don't know what happened this time, but he has gone out to get a replacement part. i have never tried fixing one myself beyond changing a tyre

I'm not good at fixing bikes but that's because I can't be bothered to learn and I don't like cycling much.

I did think, the other day, though, how odd it is that DH being able to fix a bike is wowed at while my ability to cook a variety of day-to-day healthy meals is not. After all, they are both day-to-day things, and arguable you need to eat more than you need to ride a bike.

But I may be going mad.

I also get annoyed when I make something nice and people think I do it to show off.

And I get annoyed when DH and I both cooked something nice for visitors and they thank only me.

And I get annoyed when I'm told how lucky my children are that I cook nice things for them.

And I get annoyed when I'm told what a great mother I am because I cook nice things. As if parenting is so easy ...

In fact, it would seem that I simply get annoyed. But better safe than sorry...

I think I'm bored.

i unintentionally did a horrible thing to dp's mum re cooking once

she organised a family meal for rosh hashanah, cooked lots of delicious and traditional things, decorated the house beautifully, spent days preparing for it. i decided the morning before the evening meal that i would make challah bread to go with the meal, which turned out well much to my surprise as it was a first attempt, and brought it along without telling her in advance. fortunately for me she hadn't already bought bread, but the really embarrassing thing was that despite my best efforts to turn it round to her, everyone kept praising my bread rather than the myriad wonderful dishes she had spent days producing. i think it was because i'm not jewish so they were being very kind about my trying to contribute. she made no indication that this was a problem, and she doesn't do these things for the praise of course, but i still feel mortified that i was so thoughtless and stole her thunder

There's been a discussion on Radio 2 about Ched Evans being reinstated as a football player for Sheffield United after serving half his sentence for raping a 19 year old. The 19 year old that his family, friends and fans outed on Twitter and who now has to live in hiding.

So, a bloke calls in and says a lot of crap about how he's done 'is time, etc. However, the clincher for me was when he said that Ched had been 'a naughty boy'.

So, rape is just boys being naughty. Nope, no rape culture here, and of course men don't despise women.

i am disgusted, but not surprised

There's a lot of people talking about how 'if he was a brickie, then none of this talk would happen, he'd go back to his job and no one would care'

1. If he had been a brickie, he wouldn't have had a couple of hundred people hounding his victim until she became suicidal, even after his conviction.
2. If he had been a brickie, the same people who are telling us that we should give him a chance, would have been baying for him to have his head kicked in in prison.
3. Brickies are seldom hero worshiped by legions of young boys.

He hasn't admitted his guilt, despite how almost impossible it is to get a conviction for rape in the UK, he maintains he was 'fitted up'. Far too many posts on the subject which start with the words 'If his conviction can be relied upon.....' or similar.

Remind me, why do we have so many people saying that we should be giving men accused of rape anonymity when even being convicted hasn't even crimped Ched Evans life particularly?

I was in quite a good mood (even though you 'orrible lot made me waste most of my morning reading your most eloquent theorising on the Frank/Kerrie Maloney thread).

[http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2158920-to-think-that-conforming-to-a-specific-gender?msgid=48886823#48886823 And then this happened.]]

Ooops, missed a bracket.

And then this happened.

I think I'm going to hide from that Maloney thread now, though I've learned a lot from it.

Shall go and surf the interweb for lunch boxes even though I don't need them.

Oh God! I'm also not going to read that thread annie links to.

I'm going to fucking learn Bach's Partita in C minor until my neighbours object to take my mind off the horribleness of the world.

LordCopper - it has improved in the last few posts. Some Sensible People have arrived and are explaining why gender matters in a very capable manner.