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

[HarryLimeFoxtrot]

Found you!

[YonicScrewdriver]

Oh Inicked that's horrible.

Sounds like she was doing something, trying to stay in the light. If she'd run he'd've run too; if she'd tried a doorbell and no one had answered he could've cornered her. Everyone is so fucking wise when safe at home not fuelled by terror.

[Thelilywhite]

oh that's awful Inicked ..and still it continues- blame the victim coz she had the cheek to be outdoors..
and in a similar vein I was at an Edinburgh festival show today and the comedian was talking about this issue together with a lot of very clever/funny observations about the stereotyping/marginalising of women in the media. If you are in Edinburgh I can highly recommend her show.Its called 'feminasty' and her name is Megan Ford.
Oh and can I have a large white wine please to celebrate not returning to a very stressful job today!!

[UptoapointLordCopper]

We went shopping for school shoes today. 'nuff said.

A large white wine for me and I might even feel human again.

[alexpolistigers]

I hope your school shopping ends soon, LordCopper! It's been quite a saga.

Red wine for me please. Just leave the bottle on the counter.

I took my son for vaccinations today. Try explaining the situation to a nearly 6 year old with SN and a severe developmental delay, who is afraid of the doctor. I had to hold him and distract him. Not easy, and he wasn't having it. Still, we got there in the end.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

All done now alex :)

Hope the vaccination is not too traumatic.

[VampyreQueen]

I remember being a whiny little sod whilst doing the back to school shop.

Makes me glad I'm not a parent

[EBearhug]

I was always sweetness and light.

[drspouse]

Don't envy you LordCopper. Clashes between what the children want, what the parent wants, and what the shops are willing to provide within their rigid framework of approved activities for girls (especially) wearing school shoes.

Ditto alex. I had to take my 1yo DD to have her eyes tested yesterday. She didn't seem phased by not being able to see (they do it with drops to dilate the pupils), and sat quite quietly on my lap while the opthalmologist looked in her eyes with a light, but slept for hours afterwards so it must have been stressful.

Today I'm taking both DCs on the train for about 2 1/2 hours. I have LOTS of snacks and a magazine with free plastic toy packed.

[INickedAName]

I remember once shopping for school shoes with my Dad, when I was about 8. He'd just gotten a new girlfriend and contact had dropped (and maintenance stopped) so the week before returning to school he very reluctantly took me shopping.(because he thought my mam would spend the money on silly things like food) He wanted to be straight there and back as he had promised girlfriends son he'd take him swimming, I was having none of it. I deliberately moaned about every pair I tried and kept him out a couple of hours before returning to the first shop. Childish I know, but it made perfect sense to me at 8. I'd make him spend time with me.

I'm doing our school clothes shopping tomorrow. It's probably karma that the item that stresses me the most is shoes.

[StormyBrid]

Two years to go and then I get to join the moaning about school related shopping! Where the hell did my tiny scrunchy newborn go? I've just been to the bank and asked them to change the title on her account to Ms. They asked how old she was. Two, I said. Staff looked somewhat perplexed. "And you don't want Miss?" they asked. Nope. Ms. Because her marital status is irrelevant, I added. Cue total bafflement on all faces but my own.

[alexpolistigers]

I am so glad my children don't have uniform at school.

But I have to label ALL of ds2's clothes, including his underwear. He thinks nothing of stripping his pants off and wandering about with a bare bum. I am sure they know how to deal with it at his school (special school), but still. I don't want him coming home with someone else's pants on!

[UptoapointLordCopper]

In fact the trying-on-shoes part was really easy. DS1 chose the first pair, and DS2 chose the first pair that actually fiited him. It was the other adults that were the problem. Oh God. OK I'm going to wipe this from my memory this instance.





Shoes? What shoes?

[INickedAName]

To be fair, dd herself is easy to buy for, it's her feet that don't comply. She was born with positional talipese (autocorrect says that wrong, but won't offer the correct spelling) and although it's corrected itself, her feet are very broad at toes, and getting shoes that support her feet properly is a pain, then an added pain when they never ever have her size, as her feet get bigger it gets more difficult. Dd hates shoe shopping as much as I do, the shop gets hot because it's summer and because it's busy, and we want to leave the minute we enter :)

[ChunkyPickle]

alex - all the kids I know have come home in other kids clothes - including pants (although I once had a note in DS's diary that he had firmly refused school pants after an accident) - one kid I know wears 9 year old pants, and came home one day squeezed into 4 year-old ones!

I think it's one of the mysteries of school.

[alexpolistigers]

So there's not much point in labelling everything, you mean ChunkyPickle?

Last year, with my older two, who are in the mainstream school, it was lunchboxes. Dd lost her lunchbox several times during the year. Her clearly labelled lunchbox and matching flask. Finally, I told her she could take an old margerine tub if she lost it again, and she managed to keep it until the end of the year.

[kickassangel]

With my DD it's calculators that she keeps losing.

I am going to get the next batch of jeans at the last possible moment. She keeps growing, and if I but her stuff now it may not fit in 4 weeks, so I shall head out the weekend before school starts.

At least it doesn't have to be uniform. I still don't get how. People find uniform easy. But then DD lives in jeans and t shirt so ridiculously easy to buy for and her to get dressed each morning.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

My DC dress themselves. Uniform is a pain. But let's not get into that - there was a very long thread arguing about uniform ...

[missjoy]

Lurker here

Been getting into feminist literature recently. Just finished reading sultanas dream and Herland which I both immensely enjoyed.

Any similer recomdations?

[YonicScrewdriver]

I don't know either of those - what are the themes?

An Elegant Gathering of White Snows is a great book about a group of women going on a trip in America

[UptoapointLordCopper]

missjoy I had a quick look on wiki about those books. They look quite interesting. What did you think of them? Have you tried the Left Hand of Darkness? That one has no men or women. How about the Knife of Never Letting Go? That one is more dystopian and grim...

For non-fiction how about the Delusions of Gender?

[ChunkyPickle]

Oh goodness, no Alex - I label everything (I keep a pen by the door for emergency re-names when I see it's faded) - you have no chance at all of getting it back if it's not named (and only half a chance of getting it back anyway... I have no idea where most of DS's polos have gone - I presume they evaporate)

Someone recently recommended Elizabeth Moon - I'm afraid I don't remember the name of the book, but it was from the perspective of an old woman who stayed behind on a planet when everyone else was re-homed. I enjoyed it a lot - it was interesting hearing things from a different perspective to the usual male hero.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

I thought Howl's Moving Castle was also interesting this way - a young woman and an old woman were regarded quite differently. (Apart from that it's simply a great novel! :))

[alexpolistigers]

LordCopper I love Left Hand of Darkness. I've read it lots of times. Actually, I like Ursula LeGuin in general. I started reading The Tombs of Atuan as a child, and then the whole Earthsea series and the Hain books. Loved them.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

I wonder whether the Left Hand of Darkness would read very different if she'd chosen to use "she" instead of "he" when referring to the inhabitants of Winter.