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

upto, I spammed you with a PM.

I have spammed back.

Oh God. Will someone read this paper for me?

Buffy at footnotes.

Good morning everyone. Just reading about the Sydney siege and apparently the gunman was allowed out on bail while charged with murdering his ex wife. Apparently the magistrate felt the only person he was a threat to was dead so let him go!
Do you think that would also be the view if he was charged with murdering an actual human ie a man?

He had also been charged with several rapes and sexual assaults. This man should not have been out on bail, not because he was a Muslim no matter what certain parts of the press would like you to think but because he was a danger to women. And men, as it turned out

Exactly. The press reports go on at length about his radical religious views and just mention the violence against women without further comment. The narrative has been decided and the rapes/murder/assaults all fade into insignificance beneath the image of the terrorist. It just plays neatly into the comfortable established view that terrorists are 'other' and that violence against women is a non issue.

The thing is that, despite all his various crimes, the letters written to the families of dead service persons and his demonstrations against the Oz Govt, he STILL wasn't on a terrorism watch list. The Oz secret services, like secret services all over the 'western' world, tend to err on the side of extreme caution now, if he wasn't on a watch list, he wasn't suspected of any involvement with terrorist groups.

Why the press is being allowed to go on about him being an Islamic terrorist is beyond me, except of course it isn't, because otherwise they would have to look at why he wasn't on remand in prison for the extensive charges against him for violence against women.

I had ghe exact same rant at DP this morning. This was a violent man

This is a completely marvellous conversation between Jacqueline Rose and Nina Power

soundcloud.com/novaramedia/women-in-dark-times

Interesting partly in the context of the conversation we had somewhere on here about violence.

Do do do do listen!

Yesterday was a bad day for male violence

Jeanne I think we should be able to give feedback to students as a group too - after all, when you lecture 80 people, it's not entirely up to you how the lecture goes. If the audience doesn't want to play it's quite exhausting to try to make things exciting... We should be able to say things like "periodically exhibit signs of intelligent life but with frequent lapses into gormlessness".

Oh, but then I am cringing thinking what feedback I'd have got!

I have a colleague in the US who does that with her big classes (30-40 students so more like a small lecture really). Students also comment anonymously on each other. I'd be fascinated to do that here, but I don't think we have a culture of it, so they'd find it off-putting.

I think this is all quite closely related to feminism, how you make a teaching space inclusive and how much power people in it have to make it feel hostile/restricted/whatever again.

Come to think of it I frequently lapsed into gormlessness too.

I frequently fell asleep in lectures. I suffer from lack of sleep once I stopped going to lectures.

I can't admit to the number of lectures I attended, because it's truly terrible.

In my defence, probably the fact I was regularly sleeping until midday/2pm and having an afternoon nap was getting in the way of my education a little bit.

So I don't mind students not turning up or falling asleep or even playing on their phones as long as they are not disruptive. But I do expect them not to complain if they don't participate.

I was terrible at lectures, sleeping through many of them, even the interesting ones. There's something about having to listen to someone else without participation on my side (I was educated in a very traditional, listen-repeat-memorize way) that just sends me to sleep instantly, even to this day.

I always fall asleep unless I take notes.

Anyway, you can tell it's Christmas cos there are two threads (that I know of, there may be more) on the go about Christmas cards being addressed to Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs and how fucking frustrating it is as a woman to have your identity completely eclipsed by your husband's. And as usual, these threads are full of teh "but whyyyyyyyy do you caaaaaaaaaaaare? At least you got a card and there are More Important Things you could be worrying about!"

And yes, Puffins, a bad day indeed. [http://elegantgatheringofwhitesnows.com/?p=2145 An excellent blog post]] (as usual) by Louise Pennington about the gunman in Australia. And she has written about the Marine you linked to above as well.

Repeat paragraph with fixed link....

And yes, Puffins, a bad day indeed. An excellent blog post (as usual) by Louise Pennington about the gunman in Australia. And she has written about the Marine you linked to above as well.

I was thrown out of 6th form 3 times. I had improved largely by the time I got to college, but I was still put on a warning due to late work and non attendance. I committed worse academic crimes as well, but not willing to admit to them here.

At one point I was on a warning, but then I had an alcohol related accident resulting in concussion and I got a doctor's note excusing me from class and work for a week. The next time I turned up was 2 pm and I was in pj's having just got out of bed. My lecturer felt sorry for me and gave me a pass, even though the pj's and barely being awake thing was entirely self inflicted.

As a teacher, I am ruthless, and I have never admitted to any of this to my employers.