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

fluffy, I'm annoyed on your behalf. Not for the first time, I will say that the banking industry has some really outdated ideas on women.

I'm just catching up on the thread. I'm playing tomb raider and it's a really great game. The last one was good too. It shows Lara as a really 3 dimensional character. Her body shape is as you'd expect, her clothes are stylised but practical. I think in the 90s she was about 40% boobs.

Fluffy

So the clothes stay on all the way through the game, that answers a question from another thread.

And i am currently feeling like a stereotype, like adrian moles mum, hitting my mid life crisis getting all radicalised.

You are becoming a radical feminist? Well, better late than never!

FluffyPersian, my partner and I bought a house last year and I went through exactly the same thing. His name was first (if mine was there at all) on many documents and letters, he was being emailed and telephoned and not me, it made me feel like crap to be honest. We were joint buyers and had a joint mortgage.

I rang up one of them (solicitors or estate agent can't remember which) and said my name wasn't on one of the documents and I was concerned. It was nothing important I was just trying to give them a polite kick up the backside to start including me, they apologised and said they'd send out a new one and so on but they never did. I told my dp to forward any emails to me that he got that weren't sent to me and I would reply to all, or to cc me in, he did and they continued to send new emails to him alone. They'd phone and leave him voicemails and not try me. We had a mortgage broker who did the same but dp had dealt with them more so I could accept that; I expected more from the solicitors though, particularly as most of the people we spoke with were women.

Argh it got me so down at the time but thinking back I feel angry! I probably would have kicked up more of a fuss but I was home with a newborn and just wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with it.

Since we are having to get work done on the house and I'm determined not to have anyone who treats me as inferior to dp. It's proved a struggle I'm sad to say. I think I was a bit blind to all this before as up until moving in with dp I'd been surrounded by females. Single mother, all girls school, flat sharing with female friends. Now I'm seeing first hand people actually treating my partner, my equal, like my superior! I hadn't realised that before writing this but that's exactly it.

Sorry for the outburst. I follow this thread usually and saw that post and it brought back all those memories from moving that I'd forgotten.

Bloody amazing and brave Irish women

Grauniad article

Testicle (cool name! ) - I'm going to nip it in the bud now, so emailed the solicitor requesting that I'm named first on the deeds of the house. It seems so trivial, but it's been winding me up for ages - I'm sorry you've had a similar experience.

My partner is a feminist (I couldn't be with someone who wasn't) and he totally 'gets it', so is completely happy for me to go first on things. We opened a joint bank account in the summer to save for our deposit and when the lady asked 'Who shall I put first?' he said 'Put Fluffy first please'... which meant a lot to me as he's first on so much stuff!

I think I'm having a slightly easier ride as I am being phoned by the Estate Agent (ever since my partner instructed them to contact me before him) and they do seem to have been doing that.

It's only NATIONWIDE who seem to have an outdated I.T. system which only list the first person on the mortgage application, even if it's a joint one... (Sort it out, you idiots.... it's the 21st century, after all).

As soon as we move in, I'll be the one sorting out the plumbing / electrician / carpet laying and also getting a very high-tech house alarm sorted (I got burgled a number of years ago and am so paranoid about house safety) ... One of the number one criteria will be 'If you try and talk to my partner and not me... you're not getting the work'. I've had mixed experiences of tradesmen and suppliers, however once I've found someone who treats me like a human being and not the 'Little woman' and provides a good quality of service at a competitive price, I tend to be quite loyal to them.

I hope your name comes first on loads of things in the future!

@Fluffy: Have you looked into the possibility of employing a woman-lead firm for plumbing and electricity and stuff?

I only know this service: pinkplumbers.com/ and they seem more about repairs, but researching women-friendly firms might save you some time and nasty experiences.

Vestal.. No I hadn't but I'm totally going to do that right now! That's AWESOME and I'm completely up for that, I just find the 'pink' bit of the Website name a bit cringey.... but hey, I'm definitely happy to employ women so thank you

Another 'update' RE: house... I got another reply from our solicitor today... It was forwarding on information from the other solicitor.. Oh, guess what? Apparently it's only my partner buying the house... That's right, only one buyer listed... My partner, after all, he's the man and I'm only the little woman .

I replied stating that the sellers solicitors must obviously be woman-haters or have eyesight issues considering they keep missing my name off of things and if they don't seem to think it's necessary to add me, then they won't need me to sign anything, will they? UTTER TOSSERS...

Going to website now and looking to see if there are any plumbers in Hampshire!

Sadly there are none that cover our area ... However it's an awesome idea!

My name is usually first on any joint 'official' mail (we both have a PhD, so titles are Dr and Dr and my surname comes first alphabetically).

However, I've noticed that his name is invariably first on this year's Christmas cards. Even when they are from my friends. In fact even on the one from my parents

Oubliette... it's good to hear you're first... I think that's what's even more annoying in my case as it's Dr and Mr... My Surname is 'P' and his is 'S'....

My Surname is first in the alphabet... My title is first in the alphabet...

I'll tell him he needs to get a PhD and then the system won't know who to put first

However as I don't have a penis, I'm relegated!

I'd be hacked off with your parents!!!!! I wouldn't know how to broach that without sounding petty and I guess that's half the challenge.. as so many people say stuff like 'Urgh, first world problem'

I thought of this recent conversation here when I read this article this morning - I didn't know that in Japan you CAN'T keep your maiden name on marriage. Grrrrrr!

Apparently "Allowing different surnames risks destroying social stability, the maintenance of public order and the basis for social welfare". Well I suppose it might, if your social stability depends on treating half your population as not-quite-fully-human

I'm another one who gets routinely shunted to the back of joint applications and bank accounts, and it makes me feel very much like committing some offences against public order.

Happened to me, I complained and got 50 quid (and the names changed order/me back on the statement envelope!).

Also wasn't alphabetical or time based, or even based on the form (I added DP to my ancient Uni current account). It could be random, the order they're pulled out of the database, but my suspicion is that somewhere there is a little bit of formatting code that defaults to man first. I want that bit of default code gone.

Thanks for the link to the Irish article, PlaysWell. Nice to see some photos of real people, not just the "Generic Victim Photo" - you know the one - backlit by a window, head bowed in arms, face obscured by arms and hair. Like the one to the right of the MN threads today under "Blog of the Day", in fact.

Apparently "Allowing different surnames risks destroying social stability, the maintenance of public order and the basis for social welfare". Well I suppose it might, if your social stability depends on treating half your population as not-quite-fully-human

So what would the problem be with the husband taking the wife's surname?

I just finished reading Philippa Ballantine's "Books of the Order" series, and there is a couple where the man takes the woman's surname. Out of practical reasons, granted, but it is so rare a thing that I don't mind the reasons.

Hah! We'll see what happens to "social stability" if everyone did what one of the women did - get married, have baby, get divorced, get remarried, have another baby, get divorced ...

Lots of paperwork, I guess. Is the economy or something measured by the amount of paper work generated?

I was just watching Cuffs on BBC1, and I realised that there's a thing which really shows how little we're actually expected to cause hassle.

A girl was scanned with a handheld metal detector, and when it beeped around her chest, the policewoman confirmed that it was her underwired bra.

I've had the similar happen to me at airports.

Isn't that an enormous security hole? That any beeping on a woman around the chest is assumed to be an underwire? I'm not saying that there's a good option (although also at airports I've had some fairly thorough pat downs) since most of us wear underwired bras and looking/touching might be a step too far in some circumstances.

The gate-type detectors are generally fine, but the hand held ones, always waver over the bra.

Wine please for someone who's failing at wifework. I'm going to a birthday party tomorrow for siblings, a boy and a girl. It's a pirates and princesses theme (which I thoroughly disapprove of) but I haven't bought a costume for DS. I've just gone to wrap the presents and realised I only have Christmas wrapping paper. Going through the options based on what I have in the house I've put both gifts unwrapped in a black gift bag that I received for my birthday last week. I'm just going to have to ignore the pitiful looks from mothers who give a shit are organised!

Here's your wine

Make a paper crown for DS if you have gold paper.

(Or do nothing and say he's a modern pirate, and they look just like everyone else.)

Unsurprisingly I do not have gold paper

I was going to get him a han solo outfit as he's like a pirate but in the end I couldn't be bothered.

My kids never dressed up for any party ... They don't like dressing up...