A Mumsnet thread about a book about a Mumsnet thread “Under the Duvet of Darkness” written by the women of Mumsnet THREAD 2

[Boiledbeetle]

Thread 1:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4776556-a-mumsnet-thread-about-a-book-about-a-mumsnet-thread-under-the-duvet-of-darkness-written-by-the-women-of-mumsnet?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

You do not need to have read thread 1 – this is not that sort of thread.

But to recap… Over Christmas and New Year after the passing of the GRR (Scotland) Bill a thread was started with a poem about Nicola Sturgeon. Eventually on that thread (and a couple of other threads) over 80 poems were written.

“Under the Duvet of Darkness: Poems written by angry women for angry women because WOMEN WON’T WHEESHT” was published as a paperback on 31st March 2023.

Available on Amazon only: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C129WKDD

In a rather bizarre turn of events at one point it reached No 2 in poetry best sellers and No 5 in Feminist Criticism best sellers. No one will be surprised to discover that a book that is in the main about people, especially men, claiming to be something they are not was kept off the No1 spot in poetry best sellers by a crime novel, identifying as poetry, written by a man ;-)

E-BOOK:

Some people wanted an e-book rather than a paperback, but for that we needed someone who could actually make an e-book and some extra poems.

FairyKindleMother came to the rescue with regards the e-book and posters wrote enough poems that we could add 20 more poems into the e-book.

I pressed publish on the e-book a few hours ago. It can take usually up to 3 days to appear and populate all the info etc on the various sites, and there is always the chance they knock it back for some reason. But I've done all I can do at this point. We just have to wait and see who spots it on sale first! It will appear on the Amazon link above hopefully soon, (or I'll get an email asking me to change something).

MONEY FROM SALES OF ALL FORMATS:

In honour of Magdalen Berns, who co-founded the Scottish campaign group For Women Scotland, 100% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to For Women Scotland.

“It’s not hate to defend your rights, and it’s not hate to speak the truth.”
Magdalen Berns (1983 – 2019)

As I started work on the e-book posters continued to write poems. So we had a choice: leave them there, languishing on the thread, unloved, forgotten, never to have their words uttered again OR we could just do volume 2.

Posters voted for Volume 2 but we still need more poems!

And that’s the gist of thread 1.

Ooh...we've just had a new review!

Why thank you! 😘

Considering that this was the month that FWS were fundraising for the legal case so they didn't push the book at all and I haven't really tweeted about it unless it was because someone had tweeted first, I'm actually pleasantly surprised that we sold more than a couple this month.

It would be nice if every month was like March but I think that was a one off!

So we sold 22 copies and raised £55.

Hopefully next month will see some e-book sales - if it ever gets off 'review' status. 😬😟😳😱

And the profit on each e-book sale is actually a lot higher. So it will be interesting to see how the e-book sales compare to the paperback.
On

PLUS we still haven't gone back on the naughty step so we may pick up some random buys from people who are looking for dark coloured duvet covers, or under bed storage!

I'll put the payment through to FWS when I get up.

For completeness the overall sales figures are:

£847.84 and 339 📚📚📚📚📚!

So, It's in at least 10 houses!

Moves huge stack of UTDOD from middle of stairs to side so I can get past

OK should I be flattered or worried?

See attached. the QR code on their profile is the QR from my profile so at least it takes people to the book!

And I did make the payment first thing even if I forgot to put the screenshot on until now!

Well that was a shit screenshot. Let's try again

Having finally seen the interview...oh my god! I understand why it led you to poetry now 😁

https://twitter.com/RachaelWongAus/status/1664237642232532999?s=19

STILL IN REVIEW. 😬 this is driving me nuts! I have been informed Amazon have been doing loads of behind the scenes updating stuff and everything is getting processed slower than usual lately. But it's still driving me nuts waiting!

On the plus side FWS included links to the book in their newsletter yesterday.

I was thinking about that quote everyone says is by Voltaire (which was actually written by a woman* in her biography about Voltaire)

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

SILENCE

Why is there such a need in men
To silence women's choices?

Who was it made the scolds bridle
To stifle women's voices?

We are not shrews to tame
We will not just 'be kind'

We have our right to know ourselves
To decide our own minds.

No man will ever stop my words
With violence or the threat of death

I will defend our right to speak
Until my dying breath.

If you are not born of my sex
You can never speak for me

You have the right to your own voice
I support your right to be,

But you may not shout down my right
To firmly disagree.

*Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 –13 April 1956) who wrote under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote the Friends of Voltaire which she completed in 1906.

In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs.

Seriously Amazon, 3 days you say. I know its an estimate but this is taking forever! Yes you've guessed, its STIIIIIILL in review status.

I feel like Christopher Robin today:

“Halfway down the stairs, is a stair, where I sit.
There isn't any, other stair, quite like, it.
I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair, where, I always, stop.
Halfway up the stairs, isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts, run round my head:
It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!”
A. A. Milne

But whilst we wait I see FairyKindleMother has more than one string to her bow! Excellent computer skills and poetry writing skills! 😀

I'm halfway through writing a pockets poem. Its on a piece of paper somewhere but I don't know where I put it (if only I had a handy pocket in my pajamas).

I'm off to retrace my footsteps.

* Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 –13 April 1956) who wrote under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote the Friends of Voltaire which she completed in 1906.

In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs.

Thanks for that - it's always good to have these popular misconceptions corrected.

Just checked Wikiquote to make sure it was properly attributed (it was). But in doing so I came across this passage from Voltaire which seems apposite given the new gender identity religion and its mantra that TWAW:

Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth.
(Translation from Norman Lewis Torrey: Les Philosophes. The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy. Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 277-8)
Questions sur les miracles (1765)

@TheBiologyStupid That's rather fitting isn't it.

"Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices".

He would be agasht to see what we have become in the 21st century.

I wonder how many other quotes by women have been misattributed to men? And inventions and discoveries!

We are having a little book sales surge and it's doing quite well on the sales front this month. We have just gone past last months total.

I've also found my pocket poem! Now I've just got to tidy it up.

MANY MANY POCKETS

I want many many pockets in my clothes.
Think of men’s cargo pants… Yes! Just like those.

I want small ones and big ones and ones with a zip.
I want buttons and Velcro and ones that don’t rip.

I want soft ones and thin ones. I want all this and more.
But I have still yet to find what I want in a store.

I want them in sweatpants, and leggings, and in my kecks.
I want them in gloves, and in coats and ooh… turtle-necks.

I want lots in my dresses, and deep ones in skirts.
I want them in sweaters and hoodies, and even T-shirts.

I want them hidden in socks and side ones in blouses.
Hell, even my shoes, and many more in my trousers.

I want my phone in my pocket, and not in my cleavage.
(I’m scared I might lose it, through annoyed bosom heavage).

I want things in my pockets, and not in my hand.
I want both my hands free. This is my demand.

To those working in fashion please hear my plea,
I want many more pockets; I want to be free.

(‘clothing designers’ and ‘vaginas’ rhymes but I couldn’t get it to sit right in mine.)

Awww I love this.

(‘clothing designers’ and ‘vaginas’ rhymes but I couldn’t get it to sit right in mine.)

😂

Come on, please make an effort, pathetic clothing designers!
Women need pockets, however capacious their vaginas
Except for Dylan Mulvaney... oh hang on - no, ouch!
He's found there's a limit to his (yuck!) "Barbie pouch" ...

I refuse to buy pyjama bottoms that don't have pockets.

It's amazing how hard they can be to find.

Fantastic figures, Boiled!

Are you still seeking cat poems? If so...

Cats (and not-cats)

My dog is not a cat.
She comes when called,
she knows her name -
Her instincts simply aren’t the same.
She likes to roll, she’s rarely clean,
She bounces into muddy streams.
My dog is not a cat.

My dog is not a cat.
She wants to claim
the litter tray.
Her hang-dog features seem to say,
“I have the right to sniff in there”
But I ignore her hopeful stare.
My dog is not a cat.

My dog is not a cat.
I sometimes think
She’d like to be.
The cats have better food, you see.
She’d eat their Dreamies if she could
But there is more to cats than food.
My dog it not a cat.

I had a dressing gown of doom, it was a mens, It had fantastic pockets, big enough for my tablet.

Sadly it had to go to wherever gowns of doom go and I replaced with a pretty ladies one. It too had pockets. And a hood, with ears. But sadly not as capacious.

First time I tried to get my tablet in the pocket, I almost cried with the frustration.
How can I be expected to carry, keys ( to let dogs out) phone, tablet and two large drinks without capacious pockets.

I'm trying really bloody hard to kill off my pretty gown so as I can buy another mans one.

So in conclusion it's not just pockets we need, its decent sized pockets.

@TheBiologyStupid niiice!! You rose to the challenge! (And as it's you I've taken a screenshot just in case!)

@Motorina always seeking poems 😻 and manages to be relevant to FWR! The orders are starting to add up! We've gone over 350 since we started. Who knew people would buy a book about a thread on Mumsnet!

@Brokendaughter the annoying thing was when I finally found the poem it was only because I remembered I had been wearing a different pair of pj bottoms when I wrote it. And there it was in the pocket!!!

I gave up buying women's pyjamas many years ago and buy men's with pockets. But every now and again Sainsbury's miss the pickets of the men's ones and it drives me bonkers!

@Ourladycheesusedatum 😉 Mens dressing gowns are far superior can't your current one have an unfortunate accident before you next go shopping!😉i daren't put a phone or tablet in my dressing gown pocket though as if I bend down to stroke a cat they tend to fall out of those massive man pockets in my dressing gown.

This may be the closest our book gets to the Queen of Terfs herself (although I assume she's secretly bought a copy! And if she hasn't why not?!?)

THE E-BOOK IS IN THE KINDLE STORE

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C739HTDK

I only got up for a pee, thought I'd have a quick check!!!! Woo hoo!

Now I must go back to sleep

Fantastic!! I've downloaded it and am re-reading and enjoying the new poems 😃

Also my first time in print (or e-ink) under a different username

@LilacpointMummy excellent! I Hope the experience reading it as an e-book was successful.

I will admit that I wasnt actually awake enough earlier to do any actual reading. I was so relieved about it being available that I went straight back to sleep!

I'm wondering who you are now!

Roll up. Roll up THE E-BOOK IS IN THE KINDLE STORE it snuck in during the early hours of this morning!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C739HTDK

It's definitely a different experience reading it as an e-book!!