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!

Welcome back Kim.

Happy birthday Annie

Hello all.

Guy Martin Channel 4 - speed racing - all ladies doing the engineering - how rare?

Welcome back Kim. Did you have a good break?

Yay to award!

I like Guy M's all female team, he keeps saying things like 'She knows what she's talking about'.

I was just coming on here to post about it. It's an amazing scheme.

I had that saved to read later, not sure it's bed time reading though.

Twitter has been absolutely full of idiots today. UKIP idiots. I shouldn't engage with them, it's such a waste of energy.

Hello Kim, congrats on the nomination.

Read a good blog post that was shared on twitter earlier, that kind of had me cringing at all the things I recognised in myself. Demonizing of Second Wavers So much of the attitude to sex work and porn, and the blithe acceptance that my rights were set in stone, rang a bell in my early 20's me. I'm not long out of my 20's and only feel like I've got any grasp of how gender/inequality really shapes/shaped my life in the past couple of years (post baby really), and am very much still figuring out my feelings on a lot nearly every thing. Time machine would be lovely right about now, if only to go back 10 years and shove a sock in my own mouth.

Am looking forward to seeing all the No more page three activity online tomorrow.

Oh, and shouty man has now branched out into patronising emails, with adoring minions CC'd in.

Hi kim!

ifyou I saw that too. I found it really interesting too.

I am wondering, though, whether feminists beat themselves up too much. It seems to me it should be ok to say you've changed your mind, or grown up, or whatever.

A case in point is some of that second wave writing: some of it is really quite homophobic. And some first-wave writing is incredibly classist (and also almost always tacitly racist in that it assumes all women are white and European). But we can get beyond these things, and can accept that feminists aren't superhumans who were always able to see through cultural conditioning.

Another 'lovely' interaction with the Bully Male Manager that I've spoken about above

So in a meeting today, the Bully Male Manager made a flippant comment "If [the company] wants to pay me a senior manager salary, then I would be happy to take on [this project]." After he made the comment, I said (just loudly enough for him to hear) to one of the women he has been harassing "That's not going to happen."

A far worse interaction - there was a group of us eating in the communal lunch room today, and the conversation turned to travel and scuba diving vs snorkeling. The Bully Male Manager made a comment about "shouting at his girlfriend to get in the water", and then a further (linked) comment about "getting a guilty-blow job from her" . There were too many people to deal with it in an effective manner, and I had to stuff back "So you're an emotionally abusive dick. Right, got it," into my mouth before it came out. I did manage to stop his junior male colleague from making some really, really inappropriate comments with "You should stop with this story before I start thinking less of you than I already do". I will find the right forum to voice how I feel about Bully Male Manager, Who is Also an Emotionally Abusive Dick, when there are only 1-2 others around who will understand the message. His poor girlfriend, I understand that they are going to get married - I hope she finds here way to MN somehow... (and manages to leave him )

I have an extremely first world problem - what to ask for for Christmas... I don't want anything but it seems that is not acceptable ... Is that a feminist problem?

Zazzles It seems to me that the man is being very unprofessional to talk like that at work. Can you get him for that? (These days I go around telling people they are unprofessional whenever they indulge in gender crime ...)

Gender crime? Crime against gender equality.

The problem is LordC I have only been there 2 months, and am on a contract that is due to finish mid-May 2015. At this point, I don't think I have the weight of senior management behind me. It would be different if I had 5 or more years tenure in this company - I would be off to HR or his manager like a shot.

The other problem is that I suspect that I am in a company which has plenty of Sexist/Misogynistic Abusive Dicks in it (ie most of the male managers to one extent or another), and I will be seen as the 'trouble maker' if I start on this one guy. It is better if I deal with him personally, and when I can get in a "Do not cross this boundary" type of comment. As it is, when I need answers from the Bully Male Manager Who is Also an Abusive Dick, he jumps to my tune

Zazzles, no idea how to deal with that.

Lord C, why not get an Oxfam goat and name it the Bluestocking?
DH and I have given up buying gifts for each other. Instead we have given ourselves permission to buy clothes or entertainment stuff without guilt. It is easier to give up gifts than guilt.

I've asked for edibles. :)

The problem is that people like to give, I think. There are worse problems in the world. :)

Zazzles Hopefully at some point these arseholes will realise what aresholes they are.

Hello kim and good luck!
Belated birthday annie - hope you had a good one.

I am also asking for guilt-free spending on clothes for Xmas.

Hopefully at some point these arseholes will realise what aresholes they are.

Oh, they will... I fully intend to give them my 'Behaviour Modification Training Process', aka 'Zazzles' Sharp Tongue'

I don't even want clothes... Am I a failure as a woman?

Hi all. Things move fast - I wonder off to do things in RL for a few days and come back to find the old pub is closed and we're well into a new one already. Zazzles - that sounds awful. I would still be inclined to at least gently flag to HR, but I know how hard that could be on a contract.

Did anyone watch the tennis yesterday? As the spontaneous doubles were starting (to replace Federer), they introduced Boris Becker as a commentator. Someone said to him, "so, do we call this battle of the legends?" and his response, "let's call it the ladies doubles."

Honestly, the best way he can come up with to make a "friendly" insult to his tennis colleagues is to call them ladies? On national TV? It made me so cross.

Indeed but your can't expect respect from a man who has a five minute shag in a broom cupboard with a stranger can you?

you, not your.

Perhaps not. But a man with a platform to speak to the country on sky - I think I have a right to expect Sky to exclude such people if hey are so disrespectful.

If this was football, the world would be up in arms.

Oh FFS, not one but two "poor useless menz just don't know what to do with a child/household appliance unless you constantly spell it out in words of one syllable or less" threads on the go.

So fucking insulting to men and women.

I know. Never ceases to amaze me "I left him written instructions on how to use the washing machine and prepare lunch and the house is still a tip, no washing and the kids have had takeaway every day."

I'm never sure what to be more go smacked at - the woman actually writing down this kind if instruction or the man's incompetence.