Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

[YonicScrewdriver]

Welcome!

This is the 14th incarnation of the Pub and is meant as a place to drop by with random thoughts and meandering chats, on feminist or other related themes. Anything you want to mull over but not necessarily start a thread about. Alternatively, flop onto the chaise lounges with some

We have a pub goat, a feminist cannon for firing at crazy sexists and a variety of drinks and snacks. And stools/bar counters at female friendly heights. And a crèche in the back somewhere

Will link the last pub in the next post!

Oh god. There is some new law about porn, I can't be bothered to discuss it TBH but it's throwing up lots of "Waaah censorship" complaining. Just a heads up, I think it's going to explode on social media over the next few days.

Chunky yay for your DS :)

Please can some of you much more intelligent folks than me go on that thread in AIBU about rape at a university?

FRau, it's shocking but sadly does not surprise me at all.

I don't think I've used LaTeX for 20 years, either. Well, 18.

Chunky, I initially read your post as saying you'd taken DS1 to the sweat shop, and I wasn't quite sure how that was going to be putting your world back to rights...

I've never used LaTeX but now I know it exists I really want to. It's strange I never used it at uni despite my degree being maths and computing. I probably should have heard of it at least.

The pe dept at school today sent out 2 emails telling us teams for the cross country. Theres the cross country team list, then there's the GIRLS cross country team list. I want to raise this as a problem but how can I approach them about it without coming across as picky and petty? They're a pretty sexist dept imo, even though there are more women than men in their dept. They still insist on netball skirts for the girls, even over tracksuit bottoms (they may change this soon as it was raised by the student council my form rep as being sexist and outdated)

Is it really picky and petty to point out that by not having the boys team and girls team, they are perpetuating men being the main default and girls just being an add-on that isn't really mainstream?

ask them if the undefined cross country team is for everyone as it doesn't exclude anyone, and if the girls' one is just for girls, so that they can have an extra go if they want to?

Or write in, congratulating them on being so inclusive that they allow all student to take part in the main team, but alos run one just for girls who may be overly self conscious of their bodies and not want to compete in the mixed race run?

A nice feminist experience today:

I was in another department of the company, one that as 6 men and only 2 women, so rather a boys club. For some reason they were discussing a health issues, and one of the young men said "Its so much easier for women than it is for men." I immediately corrected him and said "From the time I was a teenager, I always thought my life would be easier if I were a male, rather than a female." I was heartened that another young woman in that department popped her head up to agree with me. Then another young woman passing by told us about her experience with her sister giving birth and how physically traumatic an experience that was not only for her, but for her sister. We managed to completely traumatise one young man with our descriptions of how damaging the birth process is to a woman's body , while typically the first young man in the story tried to switch off. However the second young man was rather horrified . A small but important win for women in getting at least 2 young men to have some sort of understanding about what it is like to be a woman .

Hi
sorry haven't had time to catch up properly, hope you are all well.
Is Jeanne on here? just wanted to say that her latest blog post is Absolutely STORMING

A fantastic piece of writing, I loved it and will definitely re-read it.

Jeanne, have you thought of writing anything for non-academic publication? I am sure you could write something wonderful for the general reader. Have you had thoughts along these lines?

I loved Jeanne's post too! Read it this morning over a cup of coffee.

I have no feminist nothing to talk about today. Starting to think about my return to work in a few months and shitting myself thinking no one will employ me, in typical impostor syndrome manner.

Courage, Fibonacci! (easier said than done)

Here is my work-worry du jour: our lovely, dear CM has to move on for personal reasons and I am looking for a replacement.
I actually realised I feel a very complex web of anxiety about this which revolves around... guilt.

• I feel guilty that I am so concerned with our own stuff when her personal cirucmstances that are causing this change are much more worrying and sad
• I feel guilty that I am looking for someone to work for me, looking after my chidlren
• I feel guilty that the last CM worked so hard to go the extra mile and if I can't find someone that good I will be short changing my dcs
• I feel guilty that I will really only be happy if I can find someone that good. Who am I to expect the people who work for me to be excellent?
• I feel guilty about inflicting change on the dcs which will certainly happen
• basically I feel guilty about not being totally available for them, and this is turning into a whole bolus of worry around finding a new CM
• I feel guilty towards my work about the fact that I just have to put more sensible limits in place about what hours I do and I can't work the stupid hours they seem to think I should

and of course there is the sheer practical difficulty of finding someone who will work at all, let alone tick all my pernickety little boxes

Anyway sorry that was so me-me-me. The thing I wanted to say that relates to you, Fibonacci, but forgot in a spiral of egotistical angst, was that I totally relate to the way anxiety can quickly become "maybe this just isn't possible. Maybe it just can't be done. Maybe no one will employ me, maybe I can't get childcare, maybe I won't be able to do the job, maybe -" it so quickly changes from "how will this work?" to "OMG I BET THIS IS NOT EVEN POSSIBLE". It feels like the delicate arrangements around work and family are so tricky and so dependent on private whimsical happenstance and luck that it always feels within a whisper of not happening at all

hahahaha @ myself.

Tidying up - lift a sheet of DDs that is for homework (RE story about Miriam) and is says "girls should include blah blah"

Me (in my head) WTF why girls should WTF what girls oh yeah coz the story's about Miriam so that's ... oh no wait ... she's at a girls school.

Prat moi :D

Ellis, do you have support from a DP or DH in the pick ups etc?

Yes Yonic, very much, but he doesn't drive so we are working around that at the moment.

Hi. I'm (normally) a lurker. I just wanted to say I'm beginning to see it now. The inequality. Other posters are so right - I'm not going to be unable to unsee this now, am I. Half my life as an engineer and I never 'saw' it before, but I now even recognise it in my past career. There's a Fred in chat today about everyday sexism on a topic on This Morning - and I totally get where the OP is coming from :( oh no. Do I need to pay subs for this club, or get a badge or something? Did someone say I get first dibs on the comfy seats as a newcomer?

Thank you

Everyday Hello! I know what you mean. I look back at my so-called career and am so shocked at how many boxes I can tick on how women are treated and yet I did not see any of it while it was happening! It makes me so angry - a bit at myself but mostly, rightly I think, at my "friends".

I want a badge too [pout]

It's not dd's school that has the sexist PE department, it's mine. I wouldn't have any problem pointing it out to dd's school, but when it's people I have to then work with it's more tactical. They do have a boys cross country team and a girls cross country team, it's just the emails we get to let the kids know who's in the team seem to refer to them as the team and the GIRLS team (their capitals not mine), which is wrong, but I'm not sure if it's jsut the assistant who writes the emails who's not thinking, or whether its a department wide ingrained sexism I suspect it's department-wide :(