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!

Hey Mamushka!

Ummm, I missed the cutted up thing. I know it's a thing just not sure what that thing is about?

Hello Mamushka -good to see you again. Another ?

Evening all. Just pouring myself a nightcap. I'm feeling disquieted - it's been a weird day. We're negotiating buying a house and DH can't seem to make up his mind and doesn't like the way I'm handling the negotiations (but hasn't offered to take over or anything useful). I'm still waiting to hear back about the weird job interview from last week and the longer it goes the more I assume it's bad news (because they're busy tying up negotiations with the person who got the job before they contact me). And just..... blah. Too much waiting for things to happen, too much out of my control. I don't like it.

Oh, and I don't like upsetting people but I made a few SAHMs on a friend's FB page very upset today by saying that being a mother is nothing special. Please note that I didn't say that being a SAHM is nothing special. Just being a mother. Because most adult women are. I meant it is in, it's not something unique or unusual. But of course it hasn't been taken that way and now I'm Oppressing Them and Not Respecting Their Choices.

Sigh.

I'm of the make it up as you go along school if baking, although discovered that flour in the US is completely different from the U.k when we moved.

In other news, I have completely lost my voice. Not so much as a squeak left. And I have teaching to do, and a graded presentation for college on Thursday. Ho hum.

Why have you broken your words, Buffy? I hope you and Jack have a lovely evening.

Early morning today. But nobody seems to want breakfast. DH is the official breakfast maker round here so we'll just wait for him to get up.

Puffin I think the cutted up thing is a thread where people post outraged posts as toddlers being outraged about their inadequate parents doing stupid things, like cutting up pears for them. It was hilarious.

Buffy What's happened to your words? It turns out that our funding body wants things written in some specific san serif font. Now all my documents look like Word documents. It's putting me off a lot. May have to write things in my usual font and then change it all at the end. Or write it all in comic sans. Hahahaha.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/1301196-If-my-3yo-had-access-to-AIBU

CuttedUp pear thread...

people post outraged posts as toddlers being outraged about their inadequate parents doing stupid things, like cutting up pears for them

I remember that thread, back in my lurker days. Very funny.

Hallo Mamushka

This is an AIBU type post but I haven't got the strength...

Let's say I have as hobby collecting postcards of old buildings; there are boxes of postcards of old buildings lying about the place and annoying DH (not bothering me though). I almost never look at them, collecting them is the key point. We have had a couple of arguments about the boxes and their proliferation.

I find an app that will scan the postcards and I come home and tell DH about it. His immediate response is 'why do you even need the pictures still? you never look at them.'

My emotional response to this is a mystery to DH.

Questions: What was my emotional response and who is BU?

I have to say I'd be driven mad if DH filled up with house with something that I considered to be crap, even if it was important to him, without him bothering to put some kind of serious storage system in place to keep his crap away from me. He'd be entitled to want to keep it, I'd be entitled to not have to look at it/deal with it on a daily basis.

So while I guess your emotional response was to be angry that he doesn't respect your love of postcards, if you're leaving them around, you are the one who is BU. Sorry!

Buffy, thanks for having my back on the How to Address Christmas Cards thread. What an odd bunny!

fear, not far, obviously.

Is that a reverse AIBU?

I've always wanted to post that but too scared to venture too far outside FWR

Do you actually collect postcards of old buildings? That's cool, I collect postcards but stick them up all over the place - basically replicating the vibe of my teenage bedroom (sans Blur posters, though a do have a Manics mug on display)... Have I missed the point a bit ?

Emotional response: Some kind of hoarding thing? Being afraid to let go? Worrying that they will be worth something one day/you might want to look at them in 10 years and they will be gone? The amount of time/effort/money you've put into it over the years?

I think he is being a bit U for not realising it's important to you, but, at the same time, he could just be asking the question out of bafflement and literally mean "Really? What do you want to do that for?" rather than the more scathing "What do you want to do THAT for?!" What was the tone? Did you interpret tone or was there a definite tone?

But I don't see what you're asking about you potentially BU. You haven't done anything to judge the reasonableness of. Do you mean AYBU about the emotional response? In which case it rather depends what it is and what it's a response to

On the clutter issue, I think DH sees it a bit like that. But I like a bit of clutter, I find minimalism sterile, clutter makes me physically relax and feel almost cosseted, I suppose. And I like having loads of old stuff that I can come across every now and again. I don't have tons of old stuff though because we moved country so I had to be ruthless about it which gave me nightmares for three months

Just taking this at face value ...
I also find that clutter clouds up my brain so would have no tolerance for it.

The idea of scanning the postcards sounds good IF you would actually get it done AND then throw out the postcards (but aren't they the point?)

I do think that people who collect things like this have some attachment to them that non-collectors just don't get.

Is there a possible compromise - the postcards get properly stored away, and within a reasonable amount of time. Once stored, they can get scanned a few at a time, but get them sorted out first.

btw - the compulsion to store large amounts of something can be (although not always) an indicator of OCD or spectrum behaviors, so reactions to any kind of challenge to them can be completely disproportionate. A reaction along the lines of 'love me love my postcards' would not surprise me.

Thanks sisters - it wasn't a reverse (this is why I don't post on AIBU as I am clearly bad at it!) - I will digest all comments and come back with something more enlightening!

to all

Thanks for the link, it's jolly funny.

Keep your postcards, Yonic, HIBU to ask you to get rid of something precious to you. Does yours and his precious stuff have equal space? Clutter except books is 'noisy' I find too much of it stops me being able to think over the 'noise', however, if DH said 'Oh, you've got a Kindle now, you can get rid of all those daft books' I'd probably make him eat them

OK, my emotional response was upset that he wasn't pleased with my solution to the clutter problem (yes, I would discard the boxes once I had the images digitally).

But maybe he was thinking 'well, if you ever want to track down an image, which you never seem to do much, you probably can anyway, so why not just get rid of them without the scanning part?'

So he was baffled why I was upset and I felt he'd been dismissive of my work to solve this problem (which as I don't have a problem with clutter was something I was doing for him not me, IYSWIM).

Apart from the AIBU fear, I decided this was, loosely, a feminist issue because I struggle not to 'automatically' attribute emotional differences in response between me and DH to our different sexes!

Oh no I see exactly where you're coming from there. With the "But I was doing it for you and now you're not even impressed!" thing, I've had that before, where you (think) you've done something to improve a situation/compromise for someone else and they are not appreciative because in their mind it doesn't solve the problem at all. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth but I don't think you need to take it personally - if you want you could always blame him for not communicating how he wanted you to solve the problem in the first place

Just a difference in the way your minds work I reckon. I think broadly the clutter thing tends to go the way of men having more clutter and expecting it to be allowed to take up infinite space whereas women are socialised to take up less space, but I'm the messy one in my marriage too.

Xposted, I was thinking of the "space" thread too. And the thread recently where the MNer's DH had basically claimed every spare room in the house they'd just moved into whereas she'd been looking forward to having a room for herself and felt deflated. But he was oblivious.