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.

exactly the same with my brothers lordc - though none of us has children yet so that has yet to play out

dp is one of two boys, and both pull their weight at home, as does their dad (these days at least). it would be interesting to see how that would have worked out if he had a sister

I grew up with my mum and dad, 1 brother, 1 sister and my grandma. I have to say i think my parents were very brave in the running of our household. My mum worked ft, dad was a sahd and the main carer for grandma (his mum) when she was no longer safe to live alone. It was VERY unusual at the time (early 80s) for a man to be the sahp and it gave me a far less sexist view of the world than most of my friends had, I always assumed that men and women just split the tasks that needed doing between them. Men cooked and cleaned just the same as women, and children were allowed to be children without any domestic responsibilities.

I was a single parent for 7 years and I do think I sometimes gave dd1 (she was an only child then) more responsibility than she was ready for, but I don't really know how else I could have done things, I couldn't have coped if she hadn't been that independent. She was perfectly happy when dp arrived on the scene and was never jealous or anything like that. But I do sometimes worry that I made her grow up too fast and take on too much responsibility for herself. Dd2 won't have to do that, because we're now a family of 4, with 2 adults to split the jobs, and teenage dd1 now gets paid to do most of our cleaning, so dd2 doesn't have to be so independent and responsible for herself.

My dds are both seeing that men do as much loads more cleaning and cooking and childcare as women do. I am way too lazy to clean and cook any more than the bare minimum, so dp does a lot more of the day-to-day household tasks while I do the bigger jobs that can be left for ages, like this week I cleaned the carpets, decluttered the bedroom and sorted out dd2's toys. I don't like seeing the way some of my friends are still remarkably sexist in their parenting, it's especially obvious when they have one boy and one girl, the difference in expectations is astounding.

trevor, he is, and they do see him do stuff like that. also they have a CM whose husband is technically registered as her partner and does odd bits at home for them too when he is around, he WOH on shifts.

The only woman my age I know who demanded, and gets, genuine 50/50 domestic support at home from her husband, grew up with a single parent mother and I think not growing up watching men being waited on behind a newspaper might have influenced her positively in this respect. she is a school friend of mine, knows my parents very well, and once asked my mum if she could look after her baby for a couple of hours. Regretfully my mum had to decline as she was going out. So she asked if my dad could do it! the ridiculous idea that my father could look after a baby (he could not) blew my mother's mind, but the idea that he couldn't blew my friend's. why ever not? He had three children of his own! (At arm's length. With his normal hot meal service suffering no interruptions.)

My little boy likes helping around the house, he and his dad had an argument because he wanted to do cleaning but his dad was putting out breakfast.

I think my two will not have the sense that anything is gendered wrt household tasks... though now I think about it, I don't do stuff like plug replacement which I need to get onto, I think. DP is great at this stuff but not because of temperament but because he has a real sense of agency. He would never just throw something out and always assumes that he could fix it. He recently fixed a computer monitor but has no qualifications (literally none) and hasn't done any form of electronic stuff like that before. He googled it, watched a Youtube vid, bought a soldering iron and a new transistor. My contribution was pointing out that all electronic parts have a positive and negative, like a battery, which he honestly did not know and had to work out during the fix. But he did fix it and couldn't understand why I felt intimidated by it, specially as I have a rusty knowledge of electronics from GCSEs. I think he has a great sense of agency and can do and I really want my DD as well as my son to inherit it.

I do earn all our family money, DP has work but it doesn't pay enough to have an effect on our financial situation, really. I pay all the bills and give him some spending money, he has spending money from his work too. I do about half of the cleaning and childcare, sometimes less. I have reworked my whole working life and massively interrupted my career for this. I think more men doing what I do would make the path to liberation clearer.

vezzie that's shocking about your dad isn't it? I wonder if it's a generational thing...

My mam gave up work to look after me but once I was in junior school she and my dad were both working FT. So as far as I can remember they shared everything pretty equally - definitely washing, ironing and cooking. I wonder if she did loads of stuff that I didn't see as well.. although neither of them is houseproud so vacuuming, dusting, cleaning etc was done by no-one as far as I know. Childcare wasn't so much of an issue as they were both teachers so their holidays matched mine.

It's funny - a recent poster on another thread on FWR said (scathingly) that the regular posters on here seem to think they've "taken the red pill" and think they are the only ones who can see how the world truly is.

It was meant as an insult but I do actually feel like this! Looking at threads and discussions on FWR has made me understand the world a lot better, I think.
But when I share some of my feminist awakenings with my mam, she often looks at me like: "Well, duh, obviously!" . I feel bad for not realising she's been dealing with this shit all her life too!

My dad couldn't look after a baby either. Or cook for himself. My mum thinks he is 'good' because he irons and helps with the cleaning.

I do worry what I am modelling by being a SAHM. Not so much now, but when I go back to work it will be hard to give back all the household responsibility I have slipped into.

my dad shared care of me equally with my mum when i was a baby because they were both doing shiftwork at that time. when my brothers were born mum moved to part time and her career stagnated while dad flew up the career ladder. now dad is scaling back while mum's career has taken off since her children have left home. he has supper on the table and jobs done when she gets in at 8pm these days

dp's father used to do very little, but now does almost all the cooking and clearing up. dp and his brother were always expected to do their share though. i was rather shocked when dp's mum said that dp's dad "refused to do nappies". i thought that was rather poor tbh.

penguin i think the important thing with the sahp role is that the work has to demonstrably be valued equally to the paid work by both parents

Just swooping in to say I finally persuaded my bank to change my title to Ms today. They've said they'll do it before but it never happens. Lovely woman behind the counter just looked incredulous at the computer when it asked her to demand evidence of a name change from me, and clicked the button :)

DP's father never changed a nappy, and seems quite proud of the fact. Quite baffling, really - why would you be proud of being an incompetent parent?

Well done Elephants!

My dad thinks he used to change nappies but my mum told me later that what he means by this, is that occasionally she would leave a bathed baby with a bare bum to kick for a while, while bathing someone else or doing something else, and would leave out a terry nappy - clean, folded and in the right shape - laid out and ask my dad to put the baby in it and fasten it after a certain period of time. So, no dirty nappies, no dirty bums and no nappy washing. Still - he thinks he has "changed nappies"

this is interesting - backlash against banter

it notably doesn't include anything about misogynistic "banter"

What Malky Mackay did wasn't banter, it was racist, sexist and homophobic. Harry Redknapp was said and I am paraphrase here he's a good bloke, you're all being mean to him, at least he's not a peadophile, rapist or murderer.... Karne Ingala-Smith tweeted this, I responded with, If he thinks that rapists should have nothing to do with soccer, what does he think about Ched Evans, and a pillock tweeted back saying that a mayor was right and that he wants Ched to get justice. The Mayor he was talking about was this little gem

Sorry.... slightly off topic, but made me cross.

no no - i didn't know anything about the specifics of that episode, so helpful to hear the background

"banter" is often just a way of minimising, gaslighting and silencing

Hi, apologies if this is the wrong thread for such a question, but as it's a fairly large and rolling one I thought that if it was the wrong place at least my post would be moved on from/buried quickly.

I'm Irish & male (used to post under 'mayorquimby' ) and recent events in my country have prompted me to evaluate my thoughts on abortion.
I was just wondering if the fwr would be an appropriate place for me to start a thread and ask for opinions.

I know there's been a fair amount of trouble with derailers and mra/wums of late and also thought that many may like this to be a female only space so didn't want to start any thread that would cause in intended offence or bad feeling.

If this message itself is inappropriate I apologise and will ask for it to be removed should anyone ask.

I don't think it's inappropriate at all. There is a fairly long running one currently, but as ever it headed off into late abortion fairly fast. I'm not going to be around much this weekend, but I really don't see any problem with men starting threads on here. It's more "Come, listen to my logical opinion and I will explain to all you emotional women why you are wrong" that gets us annoyed .

Just my two pence worth, obviously.

Perfect thanks for getting back to me.
It's actually kind of the opposite in that I think my position may be wrong or essentially fence sitting/moral cowardice so was interested in a feminist evaluation which I'm not sure I could do properly as a man who's obviously never been pregnant. I didn't intend to go down the "a man has arrived with his manly views" route.

But if even one person thinks its inappropriate or has the potential to offend that's one more than I'd like.
Thanks

For me, all subjects are open to discussion, and if you want a feminist viewpoint on something, then you're on the right bit of the board!

Post, and if it gets out of hand, then we can look at it getting removed/locked/whatever if that's what you want.

Oddly, we don't hate men here, we're just not keen on the ones with hairy hands who bring crayons.

Ah I know it's not a man hate zone, I posted before under my last username, but just from reading recently I've noticed a more vocal and most likely unwanted level of male posters than there used to be.

Right I'll try and formulate my thoughts into some sort of coherent jumble of words. Don't want to post and run and I'm in work today so I'll brave a thread in the next couple of days.
Thanks for the input

Are you going to be a regular in the pub MQ? We don't get many deletions as we tend to not get trolled.

My opinion of the abortion campaign in Ireland (and anywhere else tbh) is that men should not be deciding on womens' reproductive rights. We've done enough damage, as has religion, it's time to allow women the right to choose.

Hi, just checking in as I have wifi and we're sitting in a hotel room looking at the rain, trying to convince ourselves that we should go out and do something. This is very much an outdoors type place, not much to do except brave it with the weather and carry on regardless. (Yes, we left all our rain gear at home, as it almost never rains her in August, so why would we need raincoats?)

It wasn't going to rain here either. Not even when I had to rush out and get the laundry in before they were soaked.

I am so happy my 5 year old daughter likes Taylor Swift

www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/23/taylor-swift-shake-it-off

"Has female friendship become more important to her than romance? “Without a doubt.""
...

"As a teenager, I didn’t understand that saying you’re a feminist is just saying that you hope women and men will have equal rights and equal opportunities. [...] And now, I think a lot of girls have had a feminist awakening because they understand what the word means."

Go, Taylor! Consciousness-raise!

MQ I would happily read and contribute to a thread about abortion with a special interest in an Irish perspective and I would hope to hear from Irish women on that thread too.

But be aware that if you start it here, as opposed to Chat, or AIBU, a certain male poster will come here and say that there is a "party line" rather than a "balanced response" and will blether on with a literally nauseating degree of arrogant stupidity until I feel sick and have to hide the thread.

I would like to see that poster banned actually. I feel really stupid for getting drawn into it again and I can't believe the amount of good energy he sucks out of us and the potential for any decent conversation. I can't think on what grounds to suggest banning him though because "ruining the conversation and making me feel sick" doesn't seem to count

How about we just don't answer any hypothetical poster who behaves like that know who you mean? Like an imaginary 'hide poster'. I've seen it done once or twice to those who deliberately derail threads and t's very effective normally (after the annoying poster stops jumping up and down trying harder and harder to be noticed).