Feminist Pub 15: The Bluestocking hangs up its, err, stocking and hopes for a chatty Christmas and a Feminist New Year

[YonicSleighdriver]

Festive greetings!

This is the 15th 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, get some booze and snacks and hang out! Lurkers, newbies and oldbies welcome.

We have a pub goat, a feminist cannon for firing at crazy sexists and we cheer each other up when patriarchy grinds us down...

Last pub drinkie linkie:

Pub 14

Oh, Toby young.

Enuff sed.

Fibonacci English is my mother tongue and I have yet to manage to wade through LOTR. I love fantasy fic and other worlds etc but LOTR is just not for me

I have to wonder if my DM left the offending item open to that exact page on purpose, positioned so that your eye couldn't help but drift to it as you sit to make use of the facilities. She sees feminism as an Affront To All That Is Good And Decent and gets very angry whenever I mention it.

LordCopper, sorry I didn't mean to imply you had manflu or were cranky! . I originally read LOTR in Spanish, through something called "Círculo de lectores" which was like a small catalogue only publishing company. They employed their own, very good, translators, and the LOTR one was just exquisite.

I don't mind if this is giving away information that can identify me. My friends already know my writing style and would probably recognise me anywhere .

Annie, nice bit of mansplaining done there by Mr Young I see!

...and you know what you should have done with that piece of paper

I reread LOTR every few years, and have done since I was 12.

I should read lotr again. I was so in love with Aragorn as a teen. DH is trying, with depressingly little success to get the DDs into the Hobbit.

Am I correct in my assumption that the Spectator it's just a bunch of smug middle-upper class pseudo-intellectual WASPs congratulating each other on being smug upper-middle class pseudo-intellectual WASPs?

Aragorn is THE MAN

Frodo in the movie though. I would have happily booted him into the Whatever of Doom.

I love LOTR too - although it is at least a couple of years since I last re-read it. It is one of the few books I've read in two languages (although it sounds like Fibonacci's Spanish translation was better than the French version).

I fancied Faramir. Can't remember him in the films, but I fancied him in the book.

There aren't really many fanciable characters in LOTR. Which is probably one of its strengths - you can just get on with the story, with no romance getting in the way.

(Not feeling any love today.)

They changed Faramir's character in the film version. Just as well you don't remember the portrayal if you loved the character in the books.

I really don't like Tolkein, sorry. Just found him so ponderous and worthy with all his ridiculously long descriptions. Typical man-wankery listen-to-me-cos-I-is-so-poetic shite, imho.

I do struggle with LOTR. I read and reread The Hobbit lots as a child but LOTR just makes me fall asleep, possibly because I read other fantasy books (that I recognise are derivative) first. The eeeennnnddllleesss descriptions, I could never wade through it.

Do you not find it a bit "boys' own adventure" as well?

I quite enjoyed reading boys own adventure stories, too. Nothing like a bit of Edwardian imperial boys' adventuring. I also loved stories about girls schools.

I wasn't very good at following gender stereotypes.

Still not, actually.

I pick and choose my boy's own adventure stories, I prefer them to be emotionally realistic in a way I recognise. Jack London, for example, I don't get on with. Maybe that's why LOTR and I don't get on, I can't engage with the characters. I find Frodo a bit whiny (in a way Bilbo isn't).

I love LOTR, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion. There, I said it. I also love the Chronicles of Narnia and reread them at least once a year. I'm also partial to some Mallory Towers.

If I've played my cards right, I might be in line to be given the complete works of Malory for Christmas as well.

Frodo is a bit of a git though, if I were Samwise, I'd probably have kicked him into Mount Doom while he and Gollum were fighting. He's even worse in the film. The last hour could have been done in about 20 minutes and would have been a better film for it. Then they could have had more Ents and Elves twiddling about.

I think LOTR is one of those books that people either love or can't get past the first 30 pages. I have tried so hard to read it over the years, but it just seems very dull to me and I am astonished by the amount of people, who usually like the same sort of books to me, who love it. It's the only fantasy book that I've had to give up on.

My Christmas indulgence book is going to be Dr Zhivago, I've always meant to read it and found a second hand copy in a charity shop recently. I'm 40 pages in and it's already un-put-downable!

I'm the opposite to SoMuch when it comes to Tolkein. I love LOTR, but can't get to grips with The Hobbit. I agree that Frodo gets annoying, and I also think either Pippin or Merry should meet a sticky end (I think this may come from the films rather than the book).

Morning all, just popping in briefly to grab a comfy seat. Going to get a coffee and catch up on the 100+ posts I'm yet to read

Gah! So this gem was on a friend's newsfeed on FB this morning, followed by lots of women commenting "Yup, that's what it's like in my house" and "Amen, sisters" etc. My comment that any woman who put up with that is either a mug or being abused was not received well.

The mind boggles. But then again, my mom does think I'm a bad wife because sometimes DH has to make his own dinner! Not to mention one day when my parents were visiting, DH arrived from dropping the kids off and made himself a sandwich, and my dad totally lost the plot at the shame of a daughter who wouldn't bring out DH's slippers and make him dinner

FibonacciSeries - wow, with parents like that it's either amazing or completely unsurprising that you ended up a feminist!

My mum still likes to tell me about how excited she was to iron my dad's shirts when they first got married. And of course this means I'm a terrible wife because I don't iron at all. And DH is a "saint" because he does 50% of taking care of his own children and home. Sigh.

I have just unfriended said friend. That post made me too angry. She posted a weird thing a while ago about about her DH losing the plot and smashing up part of the kitchen, which she thought was hilarious at the time while I was . She's someone I know from work, and I don't work there any more, so no loss....

That post would make me angry too. Dp does a lot of that list, some is delegated to dd1 our cleaner, some I do it's mostly dp.

My mum thinks I've done well choosing a man who does his share of the housework and childcare without complaining. She says she wishes she'd done the same, but she's grown quite fond of my dad anyway. To be fair to my dad, he's always done a lot more of the childcare and housework than most men of his generation, but still not as much as dp does.