Feminist pub no 12: The Bluestocking Returns, this time with goats!

[YonicScrewdriver]

Welcome!

I always imagined it was a dried pea. That would be used to make the pease pudding in the rhyme.

Zazzles, that is quite interesting.

The comments made by the men and the women seem to be qualitatively different:

"Men complain they have to “walk on eggshells” around women colleagues, she said, out of fear of saying something they might find offensive. “They feel like their equilibrium is being thrown off, and it’s uncomfortable,” said Litwin, author of the recently published “New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together.”

Women, however, say they have to fight to get their ideas noticed when the office is crawling with men.

“They feel like they have to be assertive to be heard, and then they get accused of being the ‘B’ word,” Litwin said. “They get told that they’re hard to work with.”"

so in other words:

men ignore the (work-related) content of what women say and then make personal criticisms of them for saying it

women "make" (how?) mn "feel" like their equilibrium is thrown off - because they are expected to be polite?

Dried pea, frozen pea. I was thinking fresh pea. >

vezzie - I would imagine is less that man feel they have to be "polite" and more that they feel expected to be "not sexist", which is very hard for the poor lambs.

Right, annie. But - when they do try, and they pull it off - the results are better.

Odd that "trying hard at work to increase chances of greater success" would be considered an unproblematic requirement in general, but becomes unpleasant when fleshed out to "including making an effort to curb sexism and include the skilled and talented women on the staff"

I don't like the way the article is written. It seems to present a false symmetry between

• it can be hard for men not to obstruct women's work
• it can be hard for women to be obstructed at work, by men

as if the two are equivalent problems. They aren't equivalent because the solution to each is the same and lies with men: stop obstructing women at work, and internalise the necessity to be decent to the extent that it stops seeming like a weird outrageous requirement

Ffs that article seems to imply that men can't help but suppress women's ideas and are innately required to be potentially-offensive - and not like actually if men changed their behaviour then the two sexes could work much more effectively together

Also, went to a kiddie's farm thing at the weekend with the DCs. Every animal we saw had people going 'ahh, look at him, 'isn't he funny, 'isn't he cute' etc. Why does everything have to be male

We have a kiddie book in which a fecking COW is referred to as he

/end cluster post

Sheena - I try and do she. So annoying isn't it!

My rant for today. A potential politician (man) whose theory is that a woman, preferably an attractive one, will do better in politics?! Um, on what planet? If by better you mean, "may get a few extra tv appearances where they focus on her cleavage" then perhaps he's right.

Said in all seriousness.

Frightening.

Did he point out to you all the examples of successful attractive female politicians to back up his theory?

The exact opposite is annoying me with the toddler's books. My understanding of bumblebees (or indeed any sort of bee) is limited, but one thing I do know is the queen bee is the girl. The ones flying round collecting pollen and confusing my ginger hair for a flower are not girls. So why are bees always female in books?

i thought the pollen-collecting bees were always female, but i may have made that up

the males tend to be useful only for mating i had thought

Yes, worker bees are sexually undeveloped females. The blokes lie around in the nest for a little while then bugger to forage for themselves. Their only function is mating, but as apparently only 1 in 7 mate they must be pretty pissed off, especially as all males die at the end of the year anyway.
Now bumble bees could seriously do with some MRAs to help them out.

bugger off (of course)

Every day is an education on here! I was sure the drones and whatnot were male. I can see I have an exciting evening of research on wikipedia ahead of me!

Ah I do like marriedtothesea.com cartoons. This one is called "internet comments"

I also like hearing about bees!

drones are male. They do no work. They just lie around being supported by the hive.
Worker bees are all female. gathering nectar etc - if you see a bee bustling around a flower it will be female.

(as far as I know bees do not intentionally gather pollen - I was not aware it was of use to them? - but I know they do transfer it from flower to flower, causing pollination, incidentally - to them - not at all incidental to the flower of course. The nectar is sugary which they will carry back to be made into honey)

The private members club that Bertie Wooster belongs to is called "the drones", obv. a play on the fact that none of these males will do a stroke of work in their lives.

Modern parlance is confused about what "drone" means in the workplace. I suppose because "droning" is boring, and starts with the same sounds as "drudge", it has come to be mis-used as "the people who do the repetitive, demanding, spadework in an office". Every time I see this it annoys me.

(have had this on my chest a while)

ok i have located this re bumblebees specifically bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/lifecycle/

apparently pollen collecting and nectar consumption/collecting are different activities (and they do seem to collect pollen as well as nectar for consumption, which presumably also forms part of the distribution of pollen among flowers as a by-product)

the male bumblebees do go and eat nectar, so you would see them buzzing round flowers etc. but they don't bring it back to the hive or collect pollen. they do presumably distribute it?

i have to stop using this as a distraction from RL work, but i would like to know more about the distinction between pollen and nectar collection and their uses. i assume it's quite different with honey bees?

Sheena I keep hens & gave a box of eggs to a neighbour, her response (to her small daughter) was to point at the hen clucking round at their feet and say "look at the chicken! has he laid some eggs for your tea?" It's just automatic. I was a bit

Nothing amazing to add. However I love bees and once we're settled a bit better, we're going to look into getting a hive, possibly on an allotment. Should be fun with the dogs, especially idjit dog, who has to get his face into everything. Including this morning, a dead crab.

my parents keep honey bees. i still know arse-all about them

Fuming with DH and want to stay cross.

Have they all drunk EntitlyJuice this month or something?

Hope vezzie and Buffy are feeling a bit better. It's rubbish being ill, and doubly rubbish when you've also had a row.

One of our assistant heads has been telling his classes that girls aren't allowed to wear short skirts because it's distracting for the male teachers . The dress code does specify a length of skirt (2ins above knee or longer) but it's purely so they are smart and appropriate for school, it's not and never has been about male teachers. So some of the pupils now think all the male teachers are paedophiles, and that it's the girls responsibility to stop men looking at them. That's surely the wrong way round.

distracting for the male teachers

for the love of god

they are children