Women's rights general conversations - Thread 2

[Kucingsparkles]

Continuation of Thread 1

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

It's very believable, Brit. I'm in a group for people who had a bad time at boarding school and similar stories come up repeatedly. Children as young as five travelling alone on long journeys, often from one country to another, with no one apparently concerned for their welfare. Parents would take them to station, wave them off and then go on holiday or wherever. Amazingly, they all got to where they were meant to go, but they sure as hell didn't appreciate being sent alone.

My husband says he didn't mind it at all - he loved being on the train. He and I have just been having a conversation about this. Neither of us can remember our parents really playing with us as children - we remember being read to and taught things, but not really any other type of interactive play. If we played (after the age of maybe five or six) we went out in the neighbourhood and played with local friends, unsupervised. Children now seem to have much more structured activities than we had.

My husband says he didn't mind it at all

I was thinking about it after posting and I should have added that these kids were going somewhere they didn't want to go, rather than to see grandparents.

Also, can you imagine that happening now? There would surely be uproar.

People have had visits for letting their kids walk to school.

Just looked up the route I used to walk to and from infant and junior school and it was a mile. I cannot imagine that happening now.

Born in the 70s and my junior school was part boarding. Several friends were regularly shuttling unaccompanied between the home counties and the Middle East at the age of 8 or 9 (not sure how they got to and from airports, but at least on a plane there's little risk of getting off at the wrong stop). I got a lift to that school because we lived in small, busless village 10 miles away, but as soon as I started secondary it was a walk and a doorkey. And once I was 13 my mum was doing shifts, so alternate weeks I was either getting up and out of the house alone, or making my own dinner and having the house to myself til about 9.30.

Holidays, too - dropped off at Waterloo Station at rush hour on a Friday evening to find a group of people I'd never met before who were identifiable only by their luggage labels. Delivered back to parents in similar fashion a fortnight later (generally as an unrecognisable lump of ambulant mud).

I remember playing with one grandmother when I was very young, but play was mostly solo unless it was things like boardgames and card games. And taking off for the day - alone or with random other kids - was routine. There was a time to be home, but no real other restrictions. Even the boarding houses at school had few limits. There was a fine for not being back within a specified time of the bell being rung, so boundaries were set only by personal sprinting ability.

It wasn't always a better world them, but it was certainly an extremely different one that fostered a very different mindset and skills.

it was certainly an extremely different one that fostered a very different mindset and skills.

That's for sure!

Your school sounds very different to the one I went to. We weren't allowed off the premises at all unless walking in pairs in a supervised crocodile. It drove me crazy. After leaving there at 13 I went wild and was hardly ever at home. It's a miracle I made it adulthood but I did manage to navigate the free world fairly well. The early 70s were indeed a very different time and kids seemed far more capable and resilient.

I was an army brat and although I always went to school wherever we ended up (there was always a forces school), there were a lot of very young kids who shuttled to and from boarding school. I think the airlines took responsibility for not mislaying them at stopovers in Calcutta or Beirut.

I laughed at Mr Britinme's story. I think American kids of that generation were pretty robust. MrGonners, born the same year, used to be taken to and from school on the NY subway by his sister, 3 years older. This involved changing trains. One day she deliberately got on the wrong train, jumped off as the doors were closing and ran away. He was 5 and not able to read. He did, however, have the sense to get off at the next stop and knew the name of his local station. So he asked someone to point out on the map where he was and where he needed to get to, worked out a route (possibly not the most direct one), counted the stops, and walked in just as his mother arrived home from work. She was not happy, but his sister was absolutely furious, as she thought she'd successfully got rid of him!

Jawdrop there at MrGonners' sister's tactic!

If my school had had crocodiles they would probably have been in the school farm.

It was a bit of an odd place. Big on independent thought and asking questions, rather than making and following rules. Not what any education minister would consider good preparation for productive emloyment the wider world, but it suited me well.

I had a reasonable amount of freedom as long as I told mum where I was going and was back in time for tea or bed. I've watched with bemusement friends ferrying their kids to "play dates".

By the time she was 35 she'd been divorced three times, with custody of her only child eventually awarded (better late than never) to his father. Shortly after that she was admitted to a secure psychiatric unit, for her own (and everyone else's) safety. She died there in her 60s - a sociopath/psychopath and they couldn't help her. Weird, with hindsight, that she started so young!

Britinme

^Here's one that sounds almost unbelievable. My husband was born in August 1942. When he was 5 (though almost 6) in July 1948 his mother put him on a train in Portland, Maine...

In 1977, when I was 7, my mother put me on the train in Newcastle, to go to my gran's in Bishops Stortford. I had to change at Peterborough and possibly Ely. I was handed over to a conductor and then another etc. A friendly middle aged couple talked to me all the way to Peterborough.

Generation X here, or the generation everyone forgot as it all seems to be about how terrible boomers are and then skips straight to millennials. We exist too! Some freedom as a child but we moved to a rough estate so less than others here. But, we went to Ireland for the six weeks summer holiday every year and there we were gloriously feral. Popping home at lunchtime for banana sandwiches and then out until dark. It was heavenly.

The article was interesting although frankly if generation z destroy capitalism fair play to them. I do hope that we can move past the veneration of victimhood soon though. It's not healthy for anyone.

Happy New Year MMXXIII

I hope that's right

Yes it is, happy new year all!

Still another two and a half hours to go for me, but I raise a glass and wish you all a happy new year.

It's very interesting to read of how our parents/ourselves viewed risks. I certainly did stuff I'd not let my kids do, but see below.

At 11 I was going to concerts alone - last bus home from Birmingham to the black country, havinng seen Duke Ellington, the MJQ and others. At 14, hitchhiking alone to festivals and sleeping rough. I swore I wouldn't let my kids take the same risks. Then a call one sunday morning from my just-about-to-be-14 daughter, "Dad, I'm at Glastonbury. I'm ok, don't worry."

Except she'd gone with her mum's (my ex's) 20 year old boyfriend ...

I went and got her.

I can't think of anywhere else to post this:

uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-mp-shares-list-20-143227620.html

A Labour MP shared a list of 20 Westminster figures alleged to be “sex pests” with colleagues on a WhatsApp group. Charlotte Nichols shared the list of names of those purportedly accused of sexual harassment with some colleagues – later claiming she could not be a “bystander”.

It seems that some of the men included have complaints outstanding against them.

Am currently blocked from Twitter pending an appeal against a strike for hateful conduct. My "hateful conduct" was to repeat the statistic cited in this video around the 7 minute mark which states that 47% of transwomen within the US federal prison system, are in prison for sex crimes. The conversation then goes on to find out transwomen enjoy privileges regarding the ability to shower where they feel safest, that no other prisoners do. Keep in mind I made this comment in the context of someone claiming transwomen in prison are actually victims and no threat to anyone. (Starts around 7 minute mark)

I was gutted to find that the Righteous thread of TRSOH Bingo got deleted, while I was enjoying reading it, for being by a previously banned poster.

On here or the other place, Kuc?

It was here. A TRSOHer doing that faux-naive "Why are gender critical people all associated with flaming far-right evil bigots" thing, with frequent segues into "intersex, chromosomes, spectrum" followed by "how dare you derail the thread by talking about intersex/chromosomes/spectrum."

It was notable, for a TRSOH thread, in that the OP actually posted a lot on their thread instead of running away.

I liked their insistence that you couldn't tell what sex you are without measuring your chromosomes.

I don't think I saw that thread, it sounds frustrating and annoying, though it would have been interesting to see what the OP had to say. Insisting that no one can another person's sex without a chromosome test is baffling.