Yes, I like those. :thumb:

We've seen a number of girls shooting teams from colleges and high schools, but they are cheap to setup, a gun, target, and sturdy backstop. This flying club however is a much bigger commitment, those J-17 trainers can't be cheap to buy or operate. They might be from the Federal Government but this was two months before D-Day, when the war was hardly a given, and all materiel was part of the war effort, with no surplus yet. I suppose the Army Air Corps might have been training in this room and the club got time after hours.

From here (BBC link) which is an article about a new film called Love You to Death by Vanessa Engle, detailing stories of women killed by partners in 2013.

At least they were dealt with seriously by the Courts. There was a time when Judges routinely meted out lighter sentences for domestic murder, citing provocation.

Yeah, I read an article about that. Very interesting.

This caught my attention today:

*chuckles* so because there would be very few female composers, they figured they'd just not include a single one. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it was less about difficulties in finding examples of female composers (though I accept certain periods and musical traditions would prove a challenge) so much as it just never occurred to them to actively include female composers, because this is how music has always been taught.

Well done to the lass who got them to change. And kudos to the exam board for making a relatively swift and genuine change in response (despite some early, kneejerk defensiveness and heel digging).

Read the rest here:

http://www.theguardian.com/education...mccabe-edexcel

And then there's this:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-draft-protest

Now, I am guessing socialism and liberalism will both still be on that syllabus - and no doubt there will be stuff about class and labour relations - but let's not teach feminism as ever having been part of our political landscape or having had any role, at any time in its two centuries of history and multiple iterations and evolutions in shaping our current political systems and institutions.

And poor old Mary Wollstonecraft - always the only chick at the gig. She must get so fucking lonely.

And I am so tired of hearing the excuse that, women weren't part of the public picture for much of history - there weren't many women composers, or writers, or thinkers of prominence, or culture makers, or scientists or political animals. It's a lazy excuse - because there were always a few. They made an impact in their day but historians let them slide away unseen. So we compound that travesty by accepting the analysis of academics who did not consider women worth recording or investigating as historical subjects. We look back through the eyes of historians and cannot see any women and so we say, look there were no women - therefore to say that there were would be to misrepresent our past - a well-meaning lie to assuage modern sensibilities.

And it is important. This stuff matters.

The A-level music syllabus was probably created when women knew their place, and now it's reused over each year and making money with no work. These meddling wimmin are rocking the boat, shameful behavior, anti-business, not cricket, anti-tradition, eroding foundations of the empire, what are the posh to do. :facepalm:

All women, unless they have some serious medical condition, menstruate every month from the age of puberty until the menopause - so, if we say starting roughly from the age of 11 and going on roughly to the age of 50 that's around four decades. Every month for around forty years we have this thing to deal with. And yet, somehow our tax system in the UK continues to consider sanitary towels and tampons a 'luxury' item and therefore imposes sales tax. MPs recently voted to maintain that classification.

Is "luxury item" how tax or not is determined? I think here they call it non-necessities, but amounts to the same thing I guess.


If they're not taxed, they become cheaper, and more women will buy them, then when women have them they'll get dressed, resulting in them wanting to leave the house, and clogging up traffic, and making TV dinners when the lord returns to the manor. :haha:

There are different bands of VAT (value added tax). In fairness to the government, the VAT system is byzantine and partly a matter of EU regulation. We end up with some truly bizarre classification issues. Such as the great Jaffa Cake tax question. I don't know iof you guys have Jaffa Cakes over there, but they're like the bastard child of cake and biscuit. The base is a kind of dense, dry, either cakey biscuit, or biscuity cake. They call it sponge cake. Then there's a layer of orange jam then chocolate.

Biscuits and cakes are in different VAT categories -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_...iscuit_for_VAT


The argument against making menstrual products tax-exempt is that it is a problem under EU regulations (I'm not wholly sure why). The same is true of contraceptives. But - ya know - Cameron's currently going to the mat in Europe over the right to withhold in-work benefits from EU migrants, and they went to the mat to stop the EU enforcing limits on bankers' bonuses - and that's real fighting. That's not navigating a tricky bureacratic monolith and trying to iron out the quirks, that's the full-on drawing of lines in the sand and threats to leave the Union. But they vote, with barely a ripple, against any attempt to make these essential products, that all women, rich or poor will have to use for most of their adult lives, if they want to be able to fully and freely participate in the world outside their homes and not have to hide away one week in four, exempt.

We're not talking about staggering sums here - it's maybe a difference of around .30p per woman, per month. But that shit matters if you're already buying the super cheap 20p per tin spaghetti bolgnese, or 15p baked beans to survive. That extra 30p, is a fucking meal.


Anyways. I came in here to post this:

I remember the Everyday Sexism site launching and have read some of Laura Bates's articles -but I'd never seen her speak. This is an excellent talk:

Is it all menstrual products, or is it like cake/biscuit where tampons are taxed but pads are not? I only ask because everyone keeps very distinctly talking about tampons and nothing else.

It's all menstrual products. It just got christened the Tampon Tax because of our media's obsession with alliteration :p

"Tampon Tax" is a media soundbite.
Towels are taxed too.

ETA - I was too slow - see above.

You have hunger in Britain?

Aheh. Oh yes. Numbers of people having to resort to foodbanks on a regular basis (usually if they're referred to the foodbank they can get a food parcel once a month) are through the roof.

My monthly income, including wages, housing benefit assistance and council tax benefit is less than £800. My rent alone is £375. If I kept up with all the payments on all the stuff I'm supposed to pay - rather than juggling around and missing alternate months , falling into arrears or getting extensions etc etc - my outgoings outstrip my income by about £150 per month.

I count myself fairly fortunate. I know many are having even bigger struggles trying to raise families on not much more than I have for me and the dog. And through ythe miracle of lifts from mum I have easy access to the stores that sell beans so low. A lot of people make the choice between having enough to eat and keeping their houses warm. Fuel prices are ridiculously high here.

If you're a youngster, under 25 things are even harder.

A family cannot live on beans alone.

An example of a request from a food bank for people donating suggests items such as:
Milk (UHT or powdered)
Fruit juice (carton)
Soup
Pasta sauces
Tomatoes (tinned)
Cereals
Tea Bags/instant coffee
Instant mash potato
Rice/pasta
Tinned meat/fish
Tinned fruit
Jam

There are other suggestions, but those are the basics. Protein, sugar, carbs, fibre. Items which don't require much preparation.
And how could we survive without hot drinks, especially tea (says me, who only gets tea in hospital)?

Things used to be worse of course.
My Dad grew up eating sugar sandwiches when the money ran out. But his Dad was a drinker.
My Grandad's parents (and subsequently Great Aunty Alice) could make a roast last four days. For a whole family.
And poor families these days are more likely to scrape up enough money to go to the local chippy than use that money to keep a goose or a rabbit in their backyard.

But times have changed.
You don't expect the super-rich to have their staff serve lukewarm food because of the trek from the kitchens to the table.
So why expect those who are struggling with poverty to keep and kill their own meat.
Probably illegal in most low-cost housing anyway.

Most people who use foodbanks use them temporarily. Often only once or twice. They get to fill their bellies - and those of their children - with cheap, bland food, but the money goes instead to keep the wolf from the door long enough to recover. An electricity or gas bill paid, power back on, bus fare to work that month until payday, a new pair of shoes for a schoolchild etc.
Some need longer term help, but in general a foodbank is a stop-gap.

Crikey me, when I was working I used to send shoeboxes to UK troops serving overseas. "Luxury" items like boiled sweets, decent razors, toothpaste that didn't taste of old socks.

Hmm... I wonder how you know what old socks taste like. :greenface

Knowing someone who volunteers in a food bank several days a week, I hear stories about the difficulty of both getting and handling perishables. Also the purely subjective opinions of the volunteers about the attitudes of "customers" grouped by age, sex, race, etc. Who are grateful, respectful, cooperative, demanding, combative, obnoxious, etc. I won't repeat them here because they are opinions and not conclusive, but...
Lord you know it ain't easy,
you know how hard it can be,
The way things are going,
They're gonna crucify me.;)

I guess it depends on your grasp of history. :rolleyes:

Wapo says, never buy the pink one.

Supply and demand, man. Nobody wants that shit, so you're gonna pay for it.

We always get mad at the people who price things. But it's mostly the people who BUY things who are responsible for the price.

This signal tells us that the people who want to make their girls into little Princesses are absolutely willing to pay the price.

This is how it actually works. The scooter HAD to be priced that way in order to sell.

And when Princess grows up? She continues to live her Princess lifestyle of course! Don't you DARE TRY to tell an American woman that her hair and skin products are pretty much bullshit. Of COURSE they are more expensive!!! and that's because women are precious delicate flowers!!! and if she doesn't use a product that says it will ADD! NUTRIENTS!! to her HAIR!!!, she knows there's a chance her hair will smell like industrial waste and probably fall out in clumps.

They also made 50x more of the boy version. Production scales have a lot to do with it also. Oh, and don't forget the cost of shelf space for that pink crap which doesn't sell nearly as fast but they HAVE TO have or else the lawsuits will fly....
Yup - you want it - Pay for it.

Please. They injected a different color dye into the plastic and a different sticker on top and it flies off the shelves.

And please. Nobody is suing anyone for what scooter is not being marketed. That one is gender horror fantasy and beneath you and deserves two lol heads :lol: :lol:

The pink scooter is a gateway indulgence.

I read a counter argument that this article cherry picked low priced shit, and if the entire spectrum of consumer buying is considered, things targeted at men cost more. He cited cars which are practical transportation compared to sporty cars with all the bells and whistles, and big enough houses compared to homes five times bigger than you need with a pool/tennis courts.

I don't think that's a valid argument because that's spending choices vs pricing structure, although they're both marketing, and there's a lot of factors shaping buyers choices

Roe vs Wade

This 1916 book extols the wisdom of teaching girls to use their hands for more than cooking and sewing. Of course there are always some people bucking the status quo, but I wonder about the timing here. WW I was rearing it's ugly head at us. If we got in deep, who would produce the materiel and tend the home front? I don't think that came about until WW II, but manual arts training might be good for the industrial boom coming post war. A bigger potential labor force helps keep wages down.
Or it could be some do-gooder trying to help the oppressed, although the money in that is mostly in selling the book. Cynical? Moi? :rolleyes:

Great find that, bruce.

Here's an old video that popped up on youtube links:

Islamic Gender equality.

Just to be a pedant - may be a cultural issue or practical failing not a religious one (as in the woman lost/ damaged her shoes). The babies may simply be more comfortable with her. And after all, I've seen plenty of white (presumably Christian) men allow women to struggle with babies and shopping.

The walking female child has shoes after all, and is not carrying her ?sibling?

I only say this because of the many educated and successful Muslim women I've worked with, whose fathers have supported and paid for their education up to and including Masters degrees.

There are serious gender equalities in the poorest nations of the world, and many countries which are predominately Muslim, and especially where they overlap. But they don't have the exclusive right to "barefoot and pregnant".

That picture, complete with caption, supposedly came from a Brit newspaper.

Why is everyone dancing around the issue? A 'grossly in error' title actually promotes hate. The title should read "Feminism in the Human world". Since that attitude is not unique to Islam.

Or probably more accurate, "Feminism in a wacko extremist's world". Since extremists make these mistakes only because that was how it was always done.

Extremists typically are not team players. Need one observe our House of Representatives to see same?

Hey tw, happy new year!

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
The British [print] press have extraordinary knee-jerk reactions. As long as it sells a paper, it's fair game.

I think it was Iain Banks who wrote that the aphorism "the first casualty of war is truth" was naive in suggesting that truth in print was an existing commodity outside of conflict.

Two moves in the right direction.

Child custody is something that should be decided on a case by case basis, according to what is best for the child and family concerned. That is impossible if the start point is an assumption that the mother is first choice for custody unless someone can give a compelling reason for her not to be.

At one time fathers were considered the last word in custody. Only if a child was still an infant, would custody be given to the mother and even then it wasn't a guarantee. That led to some appalling situations, given that men generally didn't do the child-rearing.

Assuming that the mother is automatically the better parent also opens the door to a great deal of misery. I know plenty of people who'd have been far better off if they'd been raised by their dads instead of their mums.

From the assumptions of the patriarchal rights of men, to assumptions of the natural mothering skills of women - both based on rigid concepts of gender and potentially damaging when applied to individual families.

One of 29 maps at WomenStats showing the worldwide condition of problems women face.

That's a fuckton of places coloured red.

I would be interested to see an equivalent map for men. I suspect that it would not be greatly different.

On November 11th, 1817, Mary M Archer placed this ad on the front page center of a Philadelphia newspaper which was predominantly notices of ships leaving for or arriving from the far corners of the Earth. I sounds like a serious attempt to start a school teaching skills which could produce income, mostly for women.

Interesting early rendition of the $

I had my camera out in the supermarket because I saw something with Sheldon's name on it.
Wandered into the children's clothing aisle - which I don't often do, as the items are not on my list and it's not on my way to the checkouts.

Turns out boys like dinosaurs
Attachment 54911

and girls like pandas.
Attachment 54912

You go, girls - at least your chosen animal isn't extinct. Yet.

The children these clothes are aimed at would be my grandchildren's generation.
I don't know why I am so disappoint. Maybe because although I do genuinely have a thing for pink and sparkly (in the same way MI5 Special Agent Limey does for purple and knitted), I grew up in jeans and trainers.

I may be over-thinking this.
In which case it's me who is disappointing.

jebus those are ugly jumpers.

But is your gut reaction against the idea that the girls aren't being taught practicality (as you were with your jeans and trainers,) or that they're being spoiled (as you only wore jeans and trainers because they were less expensive and could be handed down from your brother?)

6 Absurd Ways Modern Medicine Fails Because Of Sexism <---Cracked.com link, be warned.

I really liked that article, thanks Grav.

Very interesting that, Grav. Some of them I was aware of, but some were new to me.

I never had hand me down clothes from boys, only girls. My brother, in fact, had some of my hand me downs, because clothes were more gender-neutral then. I did wear dresses of course (in fact probably all my family photos have me in a dress, because photos were taken on special occasions).

I've thought about this a bit now. And I have to admit I'm still not sure why I don't like it. Maybe I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself.

I think it may be something to do with the lack of choice. Although I only took a photo of one of each item of clothing, the whole aisle was similar. Boys' clothes had dinosaurs, cars and trucks - right down to pants and socks. Girls' had fluff and froth and polka dots and frills.

And the market is driven by parents, which means long before these children have a sense of their own identity, they are being dressed in a gender specific way. And in my mind an outdated idea of gender.

But what would I prefer? Parents having no choice and everyone dressing in Communist era boilersuits? No, not at all. And you weren't suggesting that either, Clod - this came as part of my self-questioning.

It just seems odd to me that in the West we live in a time and place where a woman can be a programmer, a pathologist, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist. But she grew up wearing sparkly polka-dot frou-frou little tops and knickers with sparkles on them. Whereas her brother can be a stay at home Dad, a carer, a nurse or a teaching assistant and he grew up wearing dinosaurs, monsters and trucks on his socks.

Obviously I'm painting with a broad brush. It may simply have been the impact of seeing row after row of separate identity clothing which startled me.

Actually I'd wear both if they were in my size ;)

Today's installment of Girl Genius ended with this... :D

Looking at the global picture the anti-FGM movement is gathering force. I wonder how many more generations of girls and young women will have this barbarous act performed on them.

This is another of those things about some cultures' approaches to gender that fucking baffles me. It is so counterintuitive at a species level. Like parents driven by honour to douse a daughter in petrol and set her alight because she looked at a boy a couple of times and dishonour in the eyes of the community means a kind of social death for families. FGM, practiced in cultures that have as one of their central family goals the production of healthy babies, particularly sons, runs utterly counter to those goals. In order to control the sexual urges of girls and make them pure mothers and wives, they inflict physical injuries which massively increase the chances those women will be infertile, or unable to bear a healthy child.

What the almighty fuck was going through the minds of the people who first decided this would be a cracking good thing to do to their little girls?

It was probably conceived by some rough equivalent to an MBA who figured it would work out cheaper than either chastity belts or letting nature take its course. The older women jumped on the bandwagon and made it trendy. They still do that today.

It would appear that barefoot and pregnant isn't the only option. ;)

In the early fight...

Just the tip of the iceberg, so many more who never got credit...

Most Women in Afghanistan Justify Domestic Violence
 

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Arti...-violence.aspx

Not surprising, that's all they've ever known. One lesson they all... well, the ones still alive, learned young, is don't rock the boat, don't make waves, don't attract attention, don't piss anybody off. That's been passed down from mother to child for a thousand generations.

Naaaaw. They're just kinky, consider disobedience foreplay, and like their foreplay rough.

:bolt:

And everyone knows the area is full of dope, so when someone says, stone her, they all cheer and pull out their BICs.

The first female cop in the US.

Uh Oh...

One politician was so sure of his gender stereotypes that he thought that introducing a gender equality amendment would be a poison pill.

It passed (in committee at least).