Feminist Pub XVIII, in which the Bluestocking greets the first signs of spring with a glass of something soothing

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Just starting this one as the last is nearly full

I've read through the bible once or twice and I don't remember that quote, funnily enough. But it's on the internet so it must be true.

No-one's that good at being ridiculous - it must be a spoof mustn't it?

I love the idea that God is watching your stretchmark covered belly so you should cover it up, like even if he existed he wouldn't have better things to do..

...and being omnipotent would surely know what your belly looked like whether you covered it up or not.

Well, half of 'tinterweb seems to think they're real, half seems to think they're a spoof. Having looked at their Young Disciples page, which is full of pictures apparently drawn by kids but very obviously done by adults, I am swinging towards them being spoof.

D'ya think they might invade MN (another Dino denier type thread for the bank holiday weekend perhaps)?

Someone on a MN thread the other day was convinced people dress in mascot costumes to kidnap or abuse her DCs. In her case it was a walking hedge at a garden centre which doesn't sound all that sinister on the face of it. So I suppose there are really some strange and paranoid people out there.

It sounds a bit like those "I don't have a name" people that someone was talking about recently. I thought that might not be real, but apparently it is.

In other news, Nigel Farage apparently thinks that children don't play in the street because of all the immigrants. Better not let my children out to play, then. Oops, too late.

The older I get (& I am very old) the more I think the world is populated by utter weirdos.

I do sometimes wonder why I have spent so much of my life being a feminist & a socialist - I really feel that I am swimming against the tide.

There was a time when I thought the flow could be reversed.

Now I wonder..........

I let my children play out in with the immigrant children. Is that wrong then? Oops.

Although I generally make them go to the communal grass area. I don't let them play in the street because the speeding drivers make it too dangerous. I can't tell if they are immigrants because they are going too fucking fast.

Apparently my broadband service is fine, but my TV service is intermittently faulty.

I am definitely watching a film on TV, but I absolutely don't have any network access outside of the house. (This is mobile data, not broadband.)

I am blaming them not shutting the telecoms cab just along the road.

(None of this is a feminist issue. I've just come here to whinge.)

Magi I feel like that sometimes and I'm not very old at all

It makes me wonder what the world will look like in 30 years' time. On the one hand the media and everything appears to want to cater to the unthinking masses.

But then there is this sort of strong underground (ish) but fairly mainstream, especially online and in certain circles, current of thinking type media or ways of doing things which are changing and I find it fascinating.

For example I have been reading a website for a few months now called Wait But Why. It's not feminist particularly (but it's definitely not un-feminist, either, despite being written by two blokes.) but it's fantastic. I mean seriously one of the most exciting things on the internet right now, in my opinion. And it is going strong - it's really really popular. The basic premise is that they learn a lot about a certain subject (often science or psychology based) and then condense it down into a really easy to understand format. The articles are long and involved (the AI one in particular could fill a small paperback) but they are fascinating and I always feel really excited when I see a new one has come out.

And TED talks. And then real world stuff - changes in the way schools are run - teaching phonics rather than whole word recognition, letting groups of children work on tables in corridors rather than all in classrooms, less focus on teacher talking time and more focus on doing and inclusive methods. Apart from Gove fucking everything up there are massive changes happening. I read an article this morning in the Guardian about how some police forces now have refuge workers who come right to the scene for DV call outs and are able to talk to and relate with the victim immediately, they aren't left to follow it up on their own which is often a lethal time gap, both in a figurative sense (she has time to think and ends up feeling guilty and blaming herself/talks to family and friends who persuade her to give him another chance, etc etc) and, unfortunately, literal too. And that in some areas there is now a joined up service where police, health workers, IDVAs and social workers can speak to each other and learn more about what the actual situation is. And Sure Start, before it was mostly cut, and Focus E15. There is a lot of stuff happening and although it often gets cut and slashed and pushed back it's not stemming the overall tide, I don't think. There is less of an idea among the educated in general (still there among a certain section of the privileged, unfortunately) that thinking ought to be restricted only to a privileged few, and it's easier than ever to access and share information.

When I think about it like that I get hugely excited but I think that is more important, almost, than worrying (beyond your own power to change, of course!) about decisions made in parliament or cuts here or attitudes there. It is slow progress - it always will be - but it's not happening on such a small scale any more.

My child is an immigrant and I let him play in the street, oops Here I am corrupting all the nice German children, taking advantage of the fact they all play out. (I'd probably be arrested for letting him play out in England, he's only six...)

Stupid or unthinking. I am preferring unthinking/thinking recently rather than clever/stupid as I don't think it has much to do with a person's intelligence. You can have a highly intelligent person (usually male, white, rich, in politics ) who just refuses to think and is only interested in what is directly under their nose. And you can have somebody who is perhaps a bit dim or airheaded, ignorant or not very educated but interested and engaged when it does occur to them.

Although it sounds a bit conspiracy theory-esque, I do think that thinking is discouraged quite heavily by the general media etc. Which is why I'm so inspired/excited by anything which does make or encourage me/people in general to think about things. And funnily enough you normally find that kind of thing in indie media, these days, online.

I agree for the most part Bertie but I also think some people must also be stupid. Otherwise just WHY do they do the things they do?

Also I watch people at work who aren't so quick on the uptake and it's kind of obvious that they can't keep up. So they make up daft things to try to keep up a pretence of keeping up - if you get a few together the web of daft stuff can get out of control.

What definition of stupid, though? I don't know, I think that most actions which are incomprehensible to others make sense to the person doing them. It's really rare that we do something for no reason at all. Even if we're not aware of the reason or it's an unconscious thing (like "My parents always did it this way so that's the way it's done")

Slow on the uptake so making things up is a bit bonkers but it's all because we have a negative perception again of this idea of "stupid". Obviously they don't want to be considered stupid so they don't say "Can you explain this a bit better?" or whatever. But who does it actually benefit to leave people behind? It's not their fault if they are slower than others. I agree it's irritating to have to spell things out constantly but that's not always necessary, sometimes it's just about wording something a bit more inclusively or including some other way to go over the information again later, or whatever.

But I'm possibly not quite understanding you here.

I don't think it's not wanting to be perceived as stupid that stops them from asking for an explanation, I think it's genuinely just expecting the world to operate at their speed. Entitlement meets lack of mental horsepower. I've experienced it my whole life, other people needing things to be explained 3-5 times before they get it. I absolutely agree there are lots of reasons for it. But one of the reasons is being stupid. And another of the reasons I've discovered post-baby is not getting enough sleep

I don't like the word "stupid" being applied to a person. I agree with Bertie what is it supposed to mean?

Is " stupid" someone who can't grasp quadratic equations or decline Latin verbs or read music or get the literary references in The Waste Land ?(random examples of clever things 3 of which I can do and one which defeats me )

It cannot possibly be in the sense of a person with special educational needs.

Or does it just mean someone who understands perfectly well the point being made but doesn't agree?

Sigh. Sorry, it's late, even for the pub, apparently. You're both taking this in a way I wasn't intending so I apologise.

As the "feminist support" thread doesn't get much traffic may I point you all to the post about dealing with inappropriate conduct at work ?

I get where you're coming from SoMuch

There days when I honestly believe that I am a magnet for stupid people. Not people with intellectual disabilities, obviously, but the kind of person who seems to have wasted their grey matter on playing candy crush and watching Jezza, the will fully ignorant if you will.

Sorry am probably getting a bit deep for the pub. I do get what you mean. But I also agree with StillLost. Just a thing I've been realising recently about words, but perhaps unhelpful for this discussion.

I would say for me the "candy crush and Jezza Kyle" thing is unthinking rather than stupid. As in being something that you choose (or if you like a lack of action/choosing) rather than a trait you can't help.

I don't know. I am clever in an intellectual/academic way. And I do often get frustrated at the lack of "mental horsepower" (great expression :)) in general in the world, and I suppose that it's only really recently that I've realised that I do have more of that power, if you like, than a lot of people, which is a bit of a shock because as you grow up, there are always people, (ie adults) who know more things than you, and it's jarring to realise that you have overtaken the majority and that although there are, a great many people still cleverer than you, that most people you meet aren't any more. I also have times where I am completely irrationally annoyed that people don't know everything that I know. (Even stupid stuff, like every time there is a thread about rear facing car seats somebody, or several people, say "But where do their legs go?". Now I know that they have better things to do than to have read every car seat thread ever, and it's a perfectly valid thing to wonder about, and that they may well not have come across it before as their DC are younger, but my mind just yells "People have said this like a hundred million times, stupid! Google it or read an old thread! Gah! How can you NOT KNOW that?" And so I have been known to think or say things about "The stupid" in general. (Fucking dress photo thing almost broke me.) But if I stop to think about it it does make me uncomfortable.

I think I have tried to relate to the point and also make a point about words in the same post and it hasn't really come across or been relevant. And then I've just done exactly the same in this thread. I also need more sleep :)

I am not sure if it's cleverness or what, but one thing that often surprises me is how narrow people's knowledge is. I have a pretty broad general knowledge, and it's taken me some while to get my head round people not knowing what the common birds in the grounds at work are for example. And while I know everyone will have gaps, a lot of people don't seem to fill up the spaces with other stuff, they just don't know as much.

That doesn't bother me as much as when they don't know, they don't seem to care at all, whereas I'm always looking up stuff. How can you come across a new word and not want to know what it means?

And then I spend time worrying I'm some sort of intellectual snob, which probably most people don't. I don't have much tolerance for deliberate ignorance and uninterestedness, though.

I would also prefer not to be having a massive attack of hiccups at 3am...