Feminist Pub XX - may the summer rains wash the patriarchy down the plughole

[NoTechnologicalBreakdown]

Ooh ooh! Do I get to start it?

Wine and cake all round. And a celebratory burst on the patriarchy-blasting cannon!

Old pub here

I feel like I've done ten rounds with Mike Tyson!. My breast doesn't hurt very much, and looks like it's very minimal bruising (I can't take dressing off yet), but by god does every muscle from the public bone right up to my jaw hurt. Kind of like when you do too many sit ups but a million times worse. I felt my stomach hurting a little when I came round and had asked if I'd been sick but they said no and it'll just be hunger.

Muscles I didn't know I even had hurt when I speak, I sneezed yesterday and almost passed out. Dd has a brilliant dry matter of fact wit and in bid to cheer me uo she said "mam, just remember pain is good, it's means you're alive, which is good because you look like faeces" which made me giggle, then cry, then giggle then cry again :)

I know I'll be good in a few days and I'm lucky that it's temporary dh and dd will lift my mood once they are home and thank you all for the well wishes

Oh my Gordon, I'd forgotten the pub was still going!

Found this today. It's probably been posted a million times, but it might be interesting, if a little soul destroying to some.

To My Ex-Husband's New Girlfriend: I'm Sorry

A colleague has a new baby - a boy, after two girls. "You won't be able to do hand-me-downs," said another colleague. "Girls'and boys' toys."

I need another phrase for, "Don't be such a fucking sexist idiot," which was my first thought, but fortunately, something in my brain stopped me swearing in the middle of the office (which would have caused trouble,) so I ended up saying nothing. New father just replied, "well, it's always nice to have some new things," which is fair enough, though I don't think it bothered me as a child until I was at playschool or possibly older.

"No, no hand me downs. Different number of legs."

Or something.

Once someone said something about women teachers can't do football at PE and I said that's because women have no legs and can't kick fucking balls...

I think I was a bit taken aback because I possibly spend more time hanging out in here than making smalltalk to my colleagues, and sometimes I forget how the rest of the world thinks.

RL is overrated, EBear.

The pub fell off my threads I'm on list again.

I hope you're recovering well INicked I loved the PIC of the socks, very fetching.

Ebear I've got a colleague like that too. Everything is categorised by gender rather than just being toys. I take the piss, gently because I do have to work with them, and say things about penises falling off if boys play with dolls, etc.

I suspect I will make a similar comment if it comes up again.

"Hahahaha, you haven't fallen for that old marketing bollocks have you? God, they must have wet themselves when they realised they could con up to 50% of parents into buying it all again, only in pink this time. Oh, mate, seriously, save yourself the money for uni fees."

Never actually heard any colleague come out with anything so dim though, so unlikely to use that line.

I work in a particularly male-dominated area of IT. Sometimes, I get tempted to grab them in a painful area to get their attention, and shout at them, "you do realise I am the one who is usually pushing people to get into volunteering in STEM events in schools, so we improve the take-up of STEM subjects, particularly with girls? Or are you all just totally ignoring me? I can lecture on this subject and how women are treated in IT at quite some very long length, you know, with lots of quotes and statistics..."

Ever since I shed the Athena Swan thing I have been refusing to do anything to do with representing women in STEM. What do they want me to say? Come into this career - it's great! It only takes 20 years to get promoted! And you'd be just about the only woman around! Fan-fucking-tastic! Come and join us!

If you want a woman to represent women in STEM then go and recruit some. This woman is not doing it. Not until she forgets the hell that was Athena Swan. And she's got a fucking long memory.

(Having said that, I really do do do love my job. This split personality thing is going to be the death of me one day.)

Felt bad about gender expectations on one of my dogs today. I was buying a collar for number 2 female puppy and there wasn't a huge selection - the only ones in the style I liked and the size I needed came in pink or blue. I bought blue because I didn't want her to feel like pink was for girls. She already has a more-typically male name and enjoys mud and slightly mindless violence, should I be worried?

freshwater I'm not sure I'd put that much thought into a collar for a dog, but I regularly think similarly about things for my dds.

My rant of the day is about a book I'm reading which has a sort of side storyline about a sexual assault/attempted rape, where there is a massive amount of discussion about the character of the woman, she's a slut, she "had an affair with a teacher when she was 14", etc. Not a single person has thought that she's a vulnerable young woman who has a history of sexual abuse and deserves some compassion. I know its fiction, but it just feels so unfair for that character. I also think it's leading up to a big reveal that she lied about it in the first place :(

Buffy! You're Reasonable again!

I know what you mean Ms Mermaid. I actually quite liked the Dr. Foster ending for example (although I'm avoiding all threads on it) because I was fully expecting her to be punished in some way. Generally women in these things get 'their comeuppance' or have some kind of balancing evil done to them (eg. woman who has an abortion then can't get pregnant when she wants to, woman who gets a promotion over another person discovers that the job isn't what she expected/other person gets a better job somewhere else - some kind of balancing so the woman can't actually come out on top)

There is only a set amount of Reasonableness in the universe. If Buffy is Reasonable again that means I get to be UnReasonable. Brace yourselves. Mwahahahahaha!

NeverEver - am currently trying to gradually disengage myself from various women in tech responsibilities, because they ate up any free time/energy I had for, y'know, geeking around & staying technical myself. I do get a lot of benefit and pleasure out of attending events, but have realised that I need to back away from organising before it eats me alive.

I do my bit in challenging sexism and in doing microaffirmation stuff with women colleagues and students but I do object to being window dressing. It is rage-inducing.

I have met quite a few women who've stepped back from doing women in STEM stuff (not just tech roles). It's something men don't even have to consider - no one has a go at them if they don't do anything, or complain it's taking too much time, and it's not like it's a men's club here anyway (sure about that?), if they do do something. And while I do think that we do need to be encouraging more people in (not just girls), the problem isn't them so much as the men who've been doing it for decades and don't think they are part of the problem at all, when they are mostly entirely the problem.

Exactly. I will tell them that since they made the problem they fucking solve it. And if anyone would object that they didn't personally do it I will say that hang on there, are you saying I should represent women but you can't represent men? And they will all fuck off.

I should stop living in my head ...

Agreed, it's really not going to change anything without men picking up responsibility. One reason I've stayed in my current place so long (despite no longer really enjoying my current job) is that enough male colleagues "get it" that it's not a constant uphill struggle. Not perfect by any means, but it's nice to be in a management meeting and have a male colleague bring stuff up instead of me. Just having moments where I can think "phew, X has this, I don't need to do it" makes such a huge fucking difference. It only needs to be moments! Really such a tiny bit of effort to become a bit less clueless...