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

[FibonacciSeries]

Carry on.

That's interesting about your family, kickass. My family is fully of people who have MH problems. I had no idea until today about the problems of diagnosis in girls and the different way ASD might present. As I say, with DD2 it could be nothing. I just so desperately want my kids to be happy (as we all do) and totally agree about the need for acceptance and understanding.

I suppose my interest in the nature/nurture argument is that I hope that at some point in the future it will be resolved to show that it IS socialisation that holds women back, and that men just need to stfu about being better all the time.

To that end, I am reasonably excited to have got a date for an interview to college so that I can get the right pieces of paper to go and study things at a place for clever people. Without DH and you lot being supportive, clever and generally pretty wonderful, I probably wouldn't ever have actually started.

Trust me, when I come to fill out my UCAS forms, you will be top of the list to annoy

and LRD, and Annie, and everyone else.

Oh how exciting Puffins! I'm sure you will dazzle them at interview

Exciting puffins!

puffin How exciting!

Great stuff puffins!

Yay Puffins!! Very exciting indeed!

i suspect that FWR influenced my choice of MA. I was meant to be doing an MA in Education of Literature, and somehow I ended up doing Womens and Gender Studies, ahving never really thought of it before. I just thought that I wanted to know more, and threads here definitely contributed to that.

I have just written my CV. Very hungry-making business. Now for some sushi. Yum!

I am attempting to build a cold frame, write a job application (hopefully to convert my current fixed-term role to permanent), and make samosas all at the same time. Only the cold frame is going well so far!

I've spent all morning tidying in preparation for dd2 having a friend come to play for the afternoon (it's been a while since we tidied properly because I've been busy with work and dp would never do a proper tidy without me ). Hopefully when said friend arrives they will entertain each other for a few hours so I can get on with writing the millions of reports I have to finish by Tuesday. Not the most fun Sunday afternoon I could think of, but at least I won't then have to stay up til silly o'clock tonight and tomorrow to get them done.

I am constructing a playlist with CLEAN versions of songs for the middle school dance on Fri 13 Feb. Do you know how many songs have words like 'shit' in them? some of the kids are 10. I don't want to be the teacher who enables the kids going home singing certain lyrics.

I am actually surprised by how shocked I genuinely feel if DD (age 11) does use swear words. In theory I have no problem with swearing. In practice, I genuinely recoil if DD uses swear words. Social conditioning at its best.

(And on the nature/nurture debate - does it really matter? If we respect people as individuals, then we won't discriminate against groups of them because of being different)

I know that my DC know most of the swear words but I've not heard them say them. I guess it's one thing to know and another thing to actually use them...

They are watching Amadeus now.

Dd2 went to a school disco before Christmas and I was rather shocked by the song choices. The first song was "I'm sexy and I know it", followed by others just like it. For 4-5yos! What happened to "the wheels on the bus" and the like? Or pop that's targeted at children like 1D. I think one of the teachers had a word during the snack break because the second half was a lot more age-appropriate, and quieter, and some lights were left on.

Dd1 swears, but only with her friends, not near me, even though I've passed the stage of worrying about it with her now she's 15. There's plenty worse things she could be doing than swearing occasionally.

I'm actually quite surprised that "shit" appears to be radio friendly now. I remember "crap" first appearing on daytime TV, and noticing that obviously it had been downgraded. Now songs with "shit" and "bitch" (a much less acceptable word in the US, it's more like saying fuck" are played in full. Also, instead of the entire word being blanked out, I now hear "sh**" so that it's really obvious what word should be in there.

I don't actually mind swearing. I just wish that if society was going to invent good and bad words, and rules about when they can be used, that they would stick to them. Now I have to decide which songs get the OK for a school dance and which ones don't, and I'm quite confused. The kids are age 10 - 14 so quite a broad range of what parents would see as acceptable as well.

I heard "cunt" on a programme the other day - that quite shocked me.

Demis Roussos is dead.

www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/26/demis-roussos-dies-aged-69-greek-singer-forever-and-ever

So have I. I think it's my brain's way of telling me to stop thinking and go and watch Gossip Girl.

I'm going to be kicked out of the pub after that admission, aren't I?!