Women's rights general conversations - Thread 6

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 5.

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 "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

Fabulous, thank you! I did wonder if I was being particularly obtuse

The joining info is awful. One of my first tasks once I'm fully admitted to the web group will be to beg them to let me re-write it.

In the meantime, if you ignore all the dire warnings about 'you cannot join the website until you're a local member' and just fill in the general joining form, someone from your local group will get in touch.

My quarantined rant against Russell Brand is now there in all it's glory, if anyone can bear more Brand 😆

Ah, it'll be the tinyurl that did it.

Yeah, I suppose all sorts of evil may be contained therein.

This is interesting, except the little coda at the end which is just typical. Lots of use of woman and mother.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/20/brain-circuit-behind-breast-milk-release-baby-cries-uncovered

Fascinating reading. Agree very much with the last sentence.

I wonder if deaf mothers don't respond, or whether there is some alternative, perhaps pheromone-related trigger?

Funny, I didn't react to that last sentence the way you did, icaketherforeIam. In the context of the whole article.

It can be interpreted as awe at how fucking marvellous women, mothers are. Rather than how neglected we are, unless we have something men want. I'll try to be less cynical 🙂

I read it as:
"Here we are, spending all this money, brainpower and time to understand the wonders of the universe, when there are wonders right here on earth which we have only scratched the surface of."
Probably read it like that because that's how I feel about the natural world - staggeringly interesting, endlessly fascinating.

Now you're going to tell me that we are talking at cross purposes and you were referring to a different paragraph!

No, same paragraph. I think both interpretations are valid. That individual seemed genuinely awestruck.

My sister had breastfed all three of her children up to toddlerhood before she trained as a health visitor. When I asked her what she’d learned during her training that she wished she’d known during her pregnancies and early years parenting, she said “I wish I’d known just how amazing breastmilk is”.

Just the simple fact of breast milk being tailored to your baby's needs at any one time is mind-blowing.

I think that would have made my mind expand a lot more if I hadn't been listening to Naturebang on Radio 4 this afternoon. The episode was called Buff Geese and Gym Rats and started off by looking at the barnacle goose and how it prepares for its over 2700k migration. I was jealous when they said it prepares by sitting around on its arse, walking and flying very little and eating loads. So, they don't get fit their body just knows that it's that time of year, you do the eating I'll figure it out and you'll be fit enough to fly when you need to.

There was a word they were using that I'm trying to remember. It sounded like endomorphic but I don't think it was that as, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, it does not mean what I think it means. ANYWAY! The conversation went on to all manner of animals whose bodies work in that way, e.g. a silverback gorilla's body sort of expands and becomes super muscular when it's clear he's going to be a silverback (overly simplistic on my part but hopefully you get the gist). We, on the other hand, don't do this which is annoying on the one hand but also means that we can adapt to multiple environments in a way that other animals can't. There are some aspects of our development that are like this, however, for example, when boys reach puberty no matter how sedentary they are they will gain more muscle mass without doing anything.

So, the reason for all that preamble is that, now reading about the breastfeeding thing it makes me think of those geese. It's our body that does this for us, our brain telling our body without us having to do anything. What's amazing is that surely they should have been aware of this even without necessarily knowing the whole brain mechanism.

I'm so glad they didn't call it chestfeeding,which is an absurdity, or talk about the male response.

The fact that the whole article was worded like it would have been in the before times was a breath of fresh air which shows just how absurd things have become.

I admit I read it expecting the a dose of the new misogyny. Probably explains why I was so 🦀 y.

No surprises in the sports science here, but it's a nice clear overview of research - including children's sports before puberty - in non-technical language. twitter.com/BrowngaGreg/status/1648410373060452352?t=jTezs7A6ug5MmmN225_Pxg&s=19

(I do take issue with the unexplained 'brain feminised/masculinised' bit of the sex diferentiation pathways diagram, but that's taken from an external source and not really relevant to the paper.)

Fell down an Internet rabbit hole which led me to this

https://www.hersport.ie/weightlifting-sports/discovery-of-womens-lifting-stone-sheds-light-on-irish-traditions-45446

I thought it was <adjusts glasses> quite interesting.

The Irish organisation whose website is hosting that article is also interesting. I've had a cursory look and not been able to find any genderwoo.

@IcakethereforeIam

Fascinating article, thank you/

That's very interesting indeed.

How wonderful. I found this article very moving.

"the Fahy woman's stone is side by side with the larger men's stone, apparently equally as accepted...
... It's also valuable as proof of women's lineage of strength in Ireland, a history that is often hidden..."

This is the crux of it for me - that women can be strong is understood and valued. And the test of strength is different to the test for men.

Very interesting article, I had no idea! I wonder how big the stones were that the women lifted? Ah, just seen, it was 120kg. Not bad!

It reminds me. Many years ago I did some dry stone walling and of all the pieces of stone I shifted there was one that was really big. I was slowly building up strength during the work and saved it till last. Finally, the day came to pick up and place that big stone, more of a small boulder, and it felt like a rite of passage.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast that is a lovely anecdote, with a satisfying ending. I was worried it would go, '...and just as I was about to pick it up, this bloke...'