Feminist Pub 16: where the Bluestockings develop armoured stockings to deal with the thousand paper cuts

[FibonacciSeries]

Carry on.

I caught a silly vampire movie on telly the other day. The female vampires discussed the difficulties of not being able to tell what you look like on account of not having an image in the mirror...

Is that a feminist issue? I suspect it is...

Can I put this here? Don't think it warrants a new thread. (Sorry for possible trigger, discussion of sexual assault/rape)

Local news story about a 14 year old boy who was raped while out walking his dog, and has reported it now (happened before Christmas). Horrible, more male violence. But. I just. The reporting of it is so... I almost want to say respectful? Lots of emphasis on how it's understandable thathe didn't report at the time as it was 'so traumatic'. Not a single word along the lines of 'the boy claims' or 'the alleged incident'. Completely represented as fact - the boy said it happened, so it happened. And not a single comment about what was he doing walking his dog on his own etc. And the vitriol and anger in the comments, calling for the perpetrator to be strung up and hurt/killed etc. This comes on the back of a string of sexual assaults and rapes of women in another area of the city, that were treated with much less empathy and the reporting was exactly what I would have expected.

My colleague thinks this is just me reading too much in to things. But it's not, is it? I'm not just overthinking this?

I must admit DP and I both have apps that update our location so the other can see, and we both have each other's email accounts on our phones (and I think we probably know each other's passwords anyway)

The crucial thing being though, we've both done it, with our eyes open, to each other, for the embarrassingly mundane reason that we'll know roughly when the other will be home for dinner.

Thanks, I just felt like perhaps I was imagining it (basically was told that). But I'm not. I didn't want to get into a big discussion with said colleague about it because it just gets twisted round, (think 'well see, men get raped too and feminists don't care' or 'you see the worst, I'm sure they didn't mean it that way') . Don't have the mental energy to get into that pit of snakes today.

I'm sorry house. It's all just so shit.

Going to go and run off a bit of this rage tonight. Might as well channel it a bit.

Unrelatedly - can't stop, baby about to wake up (espresso to go please!) but there's an article in this week's Economist that might be of interest www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21639439-women-are-scarce-some-not-all-academic-disciplines-new-work-suggests

It's reporting on a paper in Science, gist seems to be that women's and African-American participation is lower in academic disciplines where "innate capability" is believed more important; Economist suggests beliefs of women themselves (resulting from culture that tells them they don't have that innate capability) may be behind low participation rates.

(Obviously no mea culpa from the economist, for being part of a culture that likes to reduce women to their body parts and the market value of those parts, for those of you who saw that grim article on prostitution a few months back.)

Yes, I've seen that on twitter. I'm...hmmm, indeed.

stripeysettee

"If that is the case (and Dr Leslie and Dr Cimpian suspect it is), it suggests that a cultural shift in schools and universities, playing down talent and emphasizing hard work, might serve to broaden the intake of currently male-dominated and black-deficient fields, to the benefit of all."

Don't women get enough being told that hard work will get them through already (when it doesn't always compared to males).

Interesting, Buffy. And like you, I shall refrain from comment apart from to note that Cosmo seem to have rather missed the point of the origin of the term TERF, haven't they?

How about work places altering their culture so that it feels equally welcoming/difficult/whatever to anybody, no matter what their sex/color/etc?
What about work places being audited for equal pay and promotion rates, with huge penalties if they show any discrepancies?

Wouldn't that just be ... (choose an adjective to reflect your personal bias) ... if every work place had an even mix of people based on the population as a whole? So EVERY work place would be 52% female, or x% people of color etc based on who lives within that city/county?

What if that didn't even need legislation, but was so normal and natural that people didn't even notice that their co-worker was differently gendered/accented/colored etc? What if we just looked at a person's ability to do the job, and saw them as a person, not the label attached to them?

What, kickass? Dat's crazy talk!!

Hahaha kickass! Good joke! Very funny!

When I was at uni, we quite often used the cubicles in the men's loos in the SU bar, because there was always such a queue for the women's, and the men were usually only using the urinals. (I wonder if they changed the toilet numbers when they rebuilt it?) I don't remember there being many complaints from the men, though to be fair, there are quite a few evenings I spent there where my memory was severely inhibited by alcohol.

I also don't remember if I had an actual point to make.

• politely declines both gin and coffee but pours a Vodka.

Im not sure that I believe in the concept of a soul so no idea if I have one. I am a vegan though, if that makes you feel any better.
on the subject of toilets, my uni had unisex ones. Seemed to work for everyone.

I am SO in favor of unisex toilets. There's a whole feminist argument about toilets/bathrooms etc (both public and private).

BUt - one serious point is, that the more public/open a place is, the safer it is. So unisex toilets actually make it LESS likely that a "perv" can spy on/abduct/assault children, whereas many people recoil at the idea because, you know, men would lurk there and do nasty things. The opposite is true.

However - toilets are often the safe haven of teenage girls who want to have a private discussion without boys listening in & taking over, so perhaps there's need to be somewhere for that - or we could educate teens to respect each other's privacy.

That is interesting kickass. I went to a boys' school for sixth form and we had a girls' common room (in addition to the junior common room for everyone) as there were about 30 girls and 250 boys across the two years - it was a few sofas, tables and chairs and a kitchen area and loo. The school felt it was important that the girls had a private space (if any boys had entered there would have been serious sanctions). However with so few girls there were only a few single-stall girls' loos dotted around the school so few other private spaces

A handful of boys complained this was sexist. We told them we had a jacuzzi and full-time masseuse in there

The university I work in has some sort of campaign going on in the student Union, I noticed today

"Don't be a victim"

Sigh

It has all the usual victim-blaming stuff re sexual assault.

Though it also includes advice for avoiding burglary etc. One suggestion of which (on a completely non-feminist topic) included "leave your television on when you go out"

Which is in conflict with all te other planet- and money-saving advice that is plastered everywhere else

Yeah, women, stop being victims, don't you know?

We had a women's room in uni. Quite a big space. I never really used it, but there were sofas and showers. If I recall rightly there were even beds where you can have a lie down. Is that a bit odd? Maybe I was hallucinating.