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

It gets worse, Hovis.

I banked with a bank that folded in 2013. All customer accounts were taken over by another bank, as part of a major deal brokered by Eurogroup. Anyway, accounts from my bank were registered as inactive until they could be dealt with properly and incorporated into the system at the new company. Coincidentally, my dh already had an account at the new company.

When I received the literature about my account and went in to activate it, taking along various documentation, and filled out all the relevant forms, I went home with a sheaf of paperwork in my own name.

Imagine my shock when I got the letter through the post two or three days later and discovered that it had been set up as a joint account with dh!

Ugh... a perfectly interesting thread messed up by a permanent troll.

We really should just learn to ignore them.

I've had an on-going call open with a supplier for a couple of weeks, and in the various emails, I've been called Mrs, Ms and Mr. I have pointed out that I prefer just to be called Emma, but if they must use a title, then they should go for Ms. I still had at least one more mail to Mr. All these mails were from the same person (English not his first language.) It's becoming quite an excitement, wondering which title I'll get on the next reply, because there's no real consistency.

On the subject of names, something I've always wondered, is it possible to stop using married name and just go back to maiden name?

My weather app today says "fucking shit petite rain" Made me smile. When it's foggy it's says "like my life, 50 shades of fucking grey".

Nicked if you're in the UK your legal name is just whatever you're commonly known by. From a purist standpoint you could just post an ad in a national newspaper or similar and start using whatever name you like, but deed poll gives you an official piece of paper that banks etc seem to like. I think with your maiden name it's different though, you can just use your birth certificate instead of marriage certificate when proving your name.

I'm noticing of late (with a toddler DD) how terrible the messages are in traditional fairy tales:

• Sleeping Beauty: your destiny is not of your making and when that (not very nice) destiny kicks in you will need a man to rescue you from it. He will kiss you while you're asleep in a creepy manner.

• The Ugly Duckling: you're only going to be happy if other people think you're pretty.

• The Princess and the Pea: the height of womanly achievement is being physically fragile, and your reward is marrying a prince.

• Snow White: more creepy kisses while asleep by princes.

• Rapunzel: more rescuing by men.

I could go on. I'm going to have to bin them all I think. We keep getting them as presents, and they're often truly lovely books (as physical things, beautiful illustrations etc), but the underlying messages are terrible!

Read the Philip Pullman version of Grimm's Tales. Rapunzel gets pregnant, among other things.

I can see why some of them were bowdlerised for children, though...

There are many fairy tales beyond the ones you have listed.

Rapunzel did indeed get pregnant with twins and made a fair job of getting on with it. The prince, who was blinded by thorns, eventually finds her and recovers his sight when her tears wash away the thorns.

The lassie ( and that is how she is always described in translation, and I personally like it) in East of the Sun, West of the Moon (a Nordic version of the Psyche /Cupid myth) is brave and resourceful and rescues quite a number of other people as well as her Prince.

Gerda in The Snow Queen meets several wise woman and a robber girl who is the leader of a band of robbers on her journey.

The Snow Queen herself is magnificent and she doesn't get punished or put down for her actions.

Is it too early for a pint?

I find Grimm's fairytales useful for young children. Ask her what she would have done instead or tell her what you would do. Snow white? Thank the Prince and go off on an adventure after all that sleeping. Rapunzel? Tie own hair to the window, bungee jump down then cut it off. Cinderella? Stuff the dance, leave the dreadful family and find a job. My dd came up with some truly wonderful and outlandish solutions.

The Princess and the Pea: the height of womanly achievement is being physically fragile

Don't know what version you are looking at but that's not the interpretation I would put on any versions I've read. The point was only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding. It's classist (the lumpen proletariat are too coarse to notice the pea ) rather than sexist.

Lass, maybe the ending for the princess on the pea could be some sort of boot camp to toughen up the fragile aristocracy.

But what can one do with Little Red Riding Hood, what a mess of a storyline.

But what can one do with Little Red Riding Hood, what a mess of a storyline.

When dd was 5 she said she'd "kick the wolf in the nuts and run away" she said she'd do the same if she woke to a man kissing her.

She doesn't like how, in a few stories, the woman is rewarded for seeing through the ugly once she's fallen in love with the person inside she's reworded with a handsome prince. ( beauty and the beast, princess and the frog) Wheras the man it's the beauty that has him falling in love, not the person inside.

She likes to read fairy tales to dissect them and talk about the ridiculous aspects of them, like Cinderalla having a unique shoe size, dd said it makes no sense because shops sell hundreds of pairs of shoes in the same size, so their must be hundreds of women with the same sized feet.

ooh - fairy tales! There's a LOT about fairy tales and the messages they send. Did you know that the first ones in French were all written by women and aimed at the court of Versailles to teach women how they should behave appropriately? Then lo and behold! A woman with a penis rolled up, printed a load (and stole the phrase "fairy tale") and is now credited with being the first person to write down many of them. (There were earlier ones written by an Italian, but Charles Perrault is often cited as the first person to write them down)

Anyway - the Grimm ones were commissioned by the German govt as a way to teach good middle class values to the German nation. All that bollocks about it being an attempt to capture the oral tradition was just part of the propaganda to get the Germans to read the stories and learn how to be good citizens. Catherine Orenstein is very good on Red Riding Hood, and I have a bit of a girl crush on her. She also heads a non-profit trying to get more women into high profile media jobs. And she's funny, and can dismiss a MRA during a debate with dignity and a complete lack of engagement.

(Can you tell what I'm hoping to write about for my final project for my MA?)

Any one who has any interest in folk tales should read Jack Zipes, Marina Warner and Angela Carter.

Grimm brothers’ fairytales have blood and horror restored in new translation

gu.com/p/438mh?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

IKnicked - what weather app do you have? I quite fancy that one. Would love to see what it has to say about the winters here. Or were you providing your own interpretation? In which case, may I offer my own weather for me today? Sunny as fuck. Get the fuck outside and cure my Vit D deficit.

Tangent, but can I say a quick "Grrr" about Fantastic Mr Fox, which we had in the car today. All the foxes and other creatures looking for food are male and their wives after valiant efforts have had to stop for they feel weak/are preparing feasts of food snagged by their husbands.

Need to get the Matilda audiobook...

Some good suggestions for when DD is a bit older. I particularly like the idea of critical dissection of the story / wwyd style of analysis

Red riding hood is much better in the roald Dahl 'revolting rhymes' ( well, unless you're a member of PETA I suppose).

kickass the app is called "Grumpy Weather." It's on iPhone and android, it's free too :)

grumpy weather android

I was out of wifi signal today and it said "turning on internet would fucking help" I won't repeat anymore so that you can discover them yourself.

Thanks, Nicked. I shall be getting that.

Haha to Grumpy Weather!

Thanks for the Roald Dahl tip...

I rather like the idea of the Grumpy Weather app.

All you need now is the Grumpy Satnav.

I'm a Grumpy Stormy today, but there's probably no app for that...

DD's father put a short video of her typing her own name on facebook yesterday. Her surname is mine (Bxxx) rather than her father's (Bxxxxx) so she typed Hername Bxxx. Very impressive for twenty nine months old. And all her paternal grandfather has to say is, "Strange, Bxxxxx isn't spelled Bxxx!"

Can I just twat him one next time I see him?

Stormy >

Nothing to report today. All very dull. Kids at holiday camp me at work and now all at home.