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

[YonicScrewdriver]

Welcome!

Yonic I needed that after the trollfest that FWR has been today

Goddess, I know, Sabrina!

Haven't seen an trolls. Must be visiting the wrong threads. I'm on one where about man food.

Actually saw in the shops something called "Man Flu". At the medicine aisle with all the lemsip and stuff. Must be for Man Flu.

You go Buffy!

Is there a particular store one can buy big girl fightin' trousers, I could do with some?!

Yay, feisty Buffy is back!!! (ducks and runs after gratuitous use of the word "feisty")

Naughty, Annie, naughty.

Buffy, I've just spotted a poster called WWBuffyD - go tell her what to do!

It is just so blatantly set up so that anybody who isn't a certain type of person having lived a certain life has to fight 10 times harder for scraps.

This is completely true and, like a microcosm of Western capitalism, it is the system that is structured that wag but everything about it is designed to make you internalise it as "your fault". When it's absolutely not. Keep telling yourself it is the system at fault and not you. Become as strategic and as emotionally distanced from it as you can - those I've observed who have been most successful in academia in the last decade have been the ones that have done this. Say a nice "no" to stuff that doesn't help your career (even though it might help someone else), and try not to be preoccupied with whether you're liked (it doesn't help - in fact for women being "liked" is sometimes a drawback). Can you find a way of having a break for a bit - staying with parents, borrowing a bit of money from them so that you can have a term or two off teaching?

the system is shit. You're right to complain about it.

Buffy, so sorry about the shitness yesterday and glad you are feeling better today. How is your physical health? Is that getting any better?

I saw this (a few weeks ago) and thought of you. Not the same kind of thing exactly but doomily similar.

www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/marina-warner/diary

"What I need somebody to do, really, is say look, you must bring in at least £x every year in funding, and you must publish y papers every year, as a rough guide. But they simply won't be clear and specific. And even when they have, they've changed their mind and then implied that I am the one who is somehow lacking for not realising what they meant all along. Or a different senior manager says totally the opposite."

Buffy I wish they would say this too. But no, it leaves more room to, erm, be flexible about who can be promoted.

Oh Buffy

I will tell you a good one about a long suffering colleague who never hit the objectives a boss gave him because said boss gave him other work. He got a warning.

He left and went somewhere much better though!

You see - I don't think they do it on purpose. What it is is that they don't have the incentive to not do it. It's always worked well for them so as far as they are concerned there is nothing wrong with it. When I questioned it there were ums and ahs and how "it varies from discipline to discipline". If you push really hard they will give you a number that's just slightly higher than what you have. So that you are only demoralised to a degree short of topping yourself.

I have so much sympathy for this: "I'd like one person (just one) in a position of relative power who I could trust to tell me the truth straight and not manipulate me for their own benefit"!!!

It's the same from a large corporate point of view. The political shenanigans and manipulation are unbelievable. I decided to see it as an intellectual challenge to sort out how it works and now at least I can see the game being played even if I'm still shit at playing it

I'm hiding in here for a bit away from that racism in schools thread. All sorts of false equivalence going on.

Being bullied for being American is demonstrably not equivalent to being bullied for being (for example) Pakistani- the impact of history and current social status on a particular group cannot be ignored.

Just like discriminating against a woman for being female is not equivalent to discriminating against a man for being male.

I thought I was on safe ground with that point but apparently that's a bit too fucking subtle an interpretation of human interaction for some

The OP on that thread was asking for help because her daughter was being bullied at school and her American background was one of the aspects of the bullying. While I understand your point about the differences in xenophobic slurs, depending on the nationality (it's not too fucking subtle for me); people were pointing out that under UK law, what was happening to the child would be considered racism and that that should be pointed out to the school. Other people seemed to thing that she should not mention that aspect for a variety of reasons.

When a child is being taunted and separated for being "other" even if that other is American, I think the parent is completely justified in pointing out that there are protections in the law against that "othering."