Feminist pub XIX: The Bluestocking meanders into May

[YonicScrewdriver]

We're running at about six weeks per pub at the moment! So if you want chat with a feminist flavour, or with fellow feminists, or just want to admire our patriarchy blaster cannon and goat - welcome!

Last pub Here

Mmm wine. I am having Real Wine

Depth, I would rather be with a man I can have those conversations with than anyone else. Men with brains and thoughtfulness are very appealing.

I agree, kickass.

Why is school pestering people about SRE (I think it's sex and relationship education) classes for Yr 6? Is this a feminist issue?

Pestering in what sense, Copper? IIRC they asked us for consent and also we could see the material they used if we wanted - seemed quite reasonable TBH. If it is a 'feminist issue', it seemed on the whole on the right side of it though schools (and individual teachers) could vary quite a lot in making it positive or negative.

Texts about the class... I guess not really pestering but it's just another thing I have to give brain space to. >

There is a current thread about teachers telling Y5 (I think, maybe Y4) how to shave (faces for boys and legs for girls) as part of SRE. I imagine that other issues such as consent may also be pretty feminist and could be well or badly addressed.

At least we are likely to get a balanced official curriculum unlike the zip code lottery that is US school sex ed, and nobody is going to be too egregious on the side of abstinence-only or consent issues. One hopes.

One of the SRE teachers at my current school (secondary) is a very sexist man. I hate to think what sort of messages he gives out to the pupils. He once told me I'd never get married if I can't cook and is shocked to the core that I'm not changing my name when I get married, and that I have 2 children yet I still work ft (he didn't change his name when he got married, has 2 children and works ft, so we're really not that different)

The list they sent home looked quite plausible. I don't remember reading about shaving legs. That has nothing to do with either sex or relationship, has it?

We had biology lessons. That's all.

Well, I'd say not, but apparently at some schools they think it does. I don't have time to search for the thread now, but apparently it came up under "changes that happen during puberty" and the OP was shocked/annoyed but pleased she'd already briefed her daughter on this being a choice and related to society's image of women (paraphrasing) with a lot of the other posters saying "oh good everyone has to do it so better they learn properly at school than do it badly on their own".

I think I saw a thread title like that but thought it was too depressing to look ...

Is this a feminist issue?

This is from my US state's statutes:

"The health education curriculum for students in grades 7 through 12 shall include a teen dating violence and abuse component that includes, but is not limited to, the definition of dating violence and abuse, the warning signs of dating violence and abusive behavior, the characteristics of healthy relationships, measures to prevent and stop dating violence and abuse, and community resources available to victims of dating violence and abuse."

Domestic violence activists (and so feminists) did play a part in getting this enacted.

Yes. SRE is a feminist issue.

Oops thread dropped off my active ones, now to catch up!

I missed Buffy's return! Welcome back

I like that the robot in Dirk Gently is called a gynoid...

Is that the electric monk who believes the world is pink? I missed that. DA was a clever chap.

Ohhhhh sorry. There's a TV series based on the characters on at the moment! No gynoid in the books

A tv series? Is it any good and when and where is it on? Though DA doesn't usually translate to screen that well - sometimes you really need to stick to radio cos the pictures are better.

It's on iplayer for catch up. Dirk is played by Stephen Mangan, Susan by Helen Baxendale and someone I don't know plays MacDuff. They did a one off episode a while back which was broadly DGHDA but with lots of the plot points cut out (though with a sly allusion or two). They haven't touched TLDTTOTS. They are now using the characters for new stories. Hence gynoid.

The concept is that MacDuff has bought into the agency and now works with Dirk.

An article about how women talk: debuk.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/just-dont-do-it/

DNA's work always changed from genre to genre, the H2G2 books have different plot points to the radio show, which was different again from the TV show and changed again for the film, which I loved and cried at the end of.

Anyone do Twitter? A "singer" called Brookstein has excelled himself today by relating the events of 7/7 by how they affected him... which is not at all, but has managed to plug his bloody awful book during the ensuing twitterstorm. The man is a twunt.

The tv adaptation contained only the search for the old woman's cat and the leading characters. But it's a book that's almost impossible to adapt to tv unless you include everything, only then could you do it justice. I'd love to see them do that with TLDTTOTS. That's be brilliant.

Love that post LordC. The last paragraph, "I think Seitz-Brown is right: the problem isn’t women’s speech, it’s the way women’s speech is pathologized and policed. Anyone who does that should be greeted by a chorus of ‘you ignorant sexist, just STFU’.", is just spot on.

Ah, but did you see the white board atvthe beginning dr?