37th Down Under Feminist Carnival at Boganette

The 37th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Boganette. I'm going to have to save this for the weekend, if I start clicking I'm going to get lost in discover-new-blogs land for days and there's stuff what needs to be done around here!

The next edition of DUFC will be hosted by Rebecca at bluebec.com, the one after that will be right here at my little blog, I'm both looking forward to it and slightly mind-boggled by the prospect.

31st Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 31st Down Under Feminists Carnival is hosted this month by tigtog at Hoyden about Town. Yet another fabulous collection of posts for your perusal - enjoy!

30th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 30th Down Under Feminists Carnival is hosted this month by Bri at Fat Lot of Good. Every edition of this carnival introduces me to new bloggers, it's such a fantastic community building enterprise. Lots of lovely reading again this month, click on through and enjoy!

29th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 29th Down Under Feminists Carnival is hosted this month by Rebecca at bluebec.com. It's a massive edition and she's done a fabulous job with it, go hence and enjoy the bloggy feast!

27th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 27th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at In a strange land. Deborah has done a stellar job this month (she had some practice being stellar last month too) and there's a veritable galaxy of links to follow leading to some truly fabulous reading.

So what are you doing hanging around here? Go read stuff!

Linkfest No. 17

Stuff I thought was worth sharing...

Karen Healey, at Attention Rebellious Jezebels, reviews books "in dialogue style in a spoilerific manner that often renders in-depth, wonderful works nonsensical" and is also highly amusing.

Charlotte of Charlotte's Library asks Where are the Good Mothers in Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy?

Ladysquires at Shitty First Drafts explains Why I'm Not Proud of You for Correcting Other People's Grammar.

On the subject of the Ethics Classes trial:

• Teaching Ethics as an option to non-scripture at Motherhugger.
• Practical things you can do to help - a post in the discussions section of the St James Ethics Centre Facebook page Towards an Ethics-based Complement to Scripture in NSW Primary Schools
• Deborah at In a Strange Land is tempted to say, "Diddums"

Domestic violence is bad because...

I don't usually pay much attention to all those Facebook chain statuses. You know, the ones that try to guilt you into reposting them by implying that not doing so makes you mean and selfish and heartless. I skim read them, feel a moment of irritation, and then move on. But this one stopped me in my tracks. It just felt so wrong.

"While you SCREAM at your woman, there's a man wishing he could talk softly in her ear...While you HUMILIATE, OFFEND and INSULT her there's a man flirting with her and reminding her how wonderful she is. While you HURT your woman, there's a man wishing he could make love to her. While you make your women CRY there's a man stealing smiles from her. Post this on your wall if you're against Domestic Violence...."

The way it frames domestic violence as bad because there might be another man who will take your woman away by being nice to her strikes me as a positively dangerous idea to be encouraging in the mind of an abusive partner. And it feels to me as though it turns the woman into an object to be won by a man rather than a human being with rights and autonomy.

Tell me, does anyone see anything good about that quote? Presumably the people who are posting as their status on Facebook do...

24th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 24th Down Under Feminists Carnival is being hosted by FrankiePhD at her PhD Research Blog. The optional theme this month was “community” and as always there's plenty of great writing covering a whole range of other themes too. Get thee hence and do some reading!

23rd Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 23rd Down Under Feminists Carnival is hosted by Bri at Fat Lot of Good. Plenty of reading there to keep you busy while I'm working on a post about our reenactment/farmstay holiday from which we returned this afternoon!

22nd Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 22nd Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Fuck Politeness. Lots of links this month, so how about you celebrate International Women's Day by heading on over to read some fabulous writing by a fantastic bunch of women!

21st Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 21st Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at The Radical Radish. Head on over, avail yourself of her offer of a cuppa (disclaimer: may require kitchen activity of your own!) and settle in for some fabulous weekend reading.

Friday fragments and Linkfest No. 15

Hosted by Mrs4444.

When you get to the bottom of this post don't forget to come back up here and click on this link to Half-Past Kissin' Time so you can go check out all the other fabulous Friday Fragments posts!

I missed fragmenting last week and I've barely blogged at all recently, I ought to have a whole bunch of stuff to offload. Let's see what's lurking in the corners of my brain...

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I spent Saturday night in a small, inadequately air-conditioned room, with a fabulous group of women from the Hoyden About Town blog community, singing loudly and hilariously for 3 hours. Karaoke is so much fun even if it does result in a sore throat the next day. We did everything from Meatloaf and Cold Chisel to Abba and Simon & Garfunkle - there was even a rickrolling courtesy of FP. I'm already looking forward to next time!

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David's first 2 days of high school at the end of last week were a great success, he came home happy and excited, telling us all about his classes. Then on Monday and Tuesday he went to the Year 7 Orientation camp at Vision Valley and came home exhausted and miserable having been separated from his friends both for the activities and for sleeping arrangements, fed pretty crappy food, and generally having a rotten time. What a massive waste of time, effort and money. I had to bully him out of bed and off to school on Wednesday morning, he was in tears and I was so close to giving in and letting him stay home. I had a good cry myself after he'd gone and spent the day in a state of anxiety over whether he was going to have an ok day. Fortunately he came home much happier again, it seems actual classes at high school are a Good Thing. Except for PE - he's not at all pleased that they're doing bush dancing.

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We've been harvesting quite a good crop of tomatoes from Tom's vegetable garden, perfect for slicing nice and thick and having with cheese on Sao biscuits.

Tom's tomatoes

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Things with my Dad have been slowly improving and we're on our way to having the money side of his life sorted out. I'm now managing his finances so if things start to go off the rail again I should know straight away. I feel somewhat weird and conflicted to be in this role especially as when Dad is well he really should be perfectly competent to look after all this stuff himself. I'm going along with him to his next psychiatrist appointment so I can have a chat to his doctor about it too. Dad's still pretty vulnerable but he's a lot better than he was 2 weeks ago and I'm fairly confident that he's not going to end up in a major depression. So that's good.

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I finally got myself a Diva cup after more than a year of intending to do so. It is awesome. That is all. (Actually, I can say plenty more so if anyone has questions - ask away!)

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I finished reading the first Sookie Stackhouse book, I enjoyed it enough that I instantly picked up the second one and started on that. Good thing I bought the box set of 7. The fact that it took me a week to get through the first book says something about my state of mind though, I'm finding I can't concentrate on a book for more than 30 minutes at a time. Stress sucks.

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And now for some links:

At Hoyden About Town Lauredhel posts on the ILCA press release "For Haiti Orphans Wet Nursing Can Save Lives"

At Upside-Down Adoption Atlasien posts about "The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Babies"

Chally of Zero at the Bone hosts the Thirteenth Carnival of Feminists

I need one of these.

Jill at Feminitse posts about "Tim Tebow and the anti-choice Superbowl ad" and also links to a YouTube ad responding to the Tim Tebow ad featuring Sean James and Al Joyner (none of whom I know anything about but apparently some people are interested in the stuff these people do and say).

Deborah's new car and new hair made me laugh :-)

20th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 20th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Pharaoh Katt's place, Something More Than Sides. The optional theme for the month was feminism and childcare and there's plenty of great reading on that and other topics too - get clicking!

19th Down Under Feminist Carnival

The 19th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at mynxii's LJ, The Professional Lapcat. As usual there's bucket loads of fabulous reading on offer, so click on over and get on with it!

Why congratulations?

So, it's like this, some people you know are getting married. They may be close friends, relatives perhaps, or merely acquaintances. They are a cis-gendered, heterosexual couple with an unremarkable age difference, they share the same beliefs and cultural heritage. You've just been told they are engaged, or perhaps you're writing a message for them on the occasion of their wedding.

There are a number of things you might say but I'll bet "Congratulations!" is right there at the top of the list of appropriate sentiments to express. It has certainly been my default message, "Congratulations and best wishes, love Mim" (Damn I'm bad at writing on greeting cards.)

Why? Why congratulations? Has someone won a prize? Overcome some great obstacle? Excelled at something and is therefore deserving of a reward?

I started thinking about this pretty much out of the blue and when I got to the "won a prize?" question my brain yelled "OH ICK!" because it brought to mind all the worst phrases used to describe two people getting married. He has won the girls hand in marriage - she's a possession. She has caught herself a man - how exactly, by trickery?

Then there's the obstacle thing. I can see congratulations being a sentiment I might very much want to express if the couple in question had been forced to battle for their right to choose to marry, but really, that couple I described above are taking the socially approved path, far from a path strewn with obstacles, they are cheered on by all and sundry.

I'm thinking that from now on I won't be saying "Congratulations!" when someone tells me they are getting married, instead I'll go for something along the lines of "How wonderful, I'm so happy for you both and I wish you all the best for your future together." It takes a little longer to type but it has the virtue of saying what I mean.*


*Actually even that phrasing makes the assumption that marriage is an unequivocally good thing, which I'm not at all sure is true, but I figure if two people have decided to do it they clearly believe it's a good thing for them** at any rate.

**Let's not enter the territory of the couples for whom the first thing that pops into your head is "Oh dear god, you're kidding!" or something along those lines.

Link-fest No. 12 + DUFC

One of the reasons there's been so little blogging going on around here lately is that I'm re-reading The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett at the moment. In fact I'm fighting the urge to go back to my book right now! Here's why: Guest post by Linda Gillard at Rhapsody in Books reviewing the series
ETA: Another lovely review of the Lymond series - Been There, Dunnett by Marjorie Leithead at Textualities

Anyhoo, have some links:

The 16th Down Under Feminists Carnival this month is hosted by Hexy at Hexpletive.

Ariane's Unsolicited careers advice for high school kids.

Lauredhel's recent posts on birth looking at a Canadian study on homebirth and WA birthing statistics.

Jo Tamar at Wallaby on Perceptions of medical risk.

Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony on Men, Women and Risk.

Do You Want to Date My Avatar


Yum Yum Yum kitty

15th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 15th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up, this month it's hosted by Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town. Go! Click! Read!

Bloody hell, even the lollies are gendered

I went to the supermarket this afternoon and decided I'd pick up some special treats for the kids because it's school holidays (ok and maybe for me too). I ventured into the confectionery aisle, something I rarely do after having been trained to avoid it like the plague by years of shopping with nagging children, and was greeted by the sight of these monstrosities.

Can someone please tell me what the fuck is wrong with a straight forward party mix? (Which, incidentally, is still available.) Why the hell did someone think lollies needed gendered marketing anyway? They're lollies, they come with built-in kid appeal! If you must have an Adventure Mix and an Enchanted Mix, well, OK, I guess that can be fun BUT WHY THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE TO BE LABELED BOYS VS GIRLS?!!!!! I suppose I ought to be grateful that the need to retain the distinctive Allen's brand red packaging precluded putting them in blue and pink bags as well.

Damn it, I like Allen's Snakes and now I feel like I don't want to buy them ever again.

Link-fest No.10 now with DUFC!

Stuff for you to read.

A whole series of posts at Hoyden About Town on the subject of the proposed
"Harmonisation" of Disability Parking Permit Schemes in Australia - for harmonisation read narrowing of eligibility criteria - and the need to protest against the proposal. There are open letters to use in adding your voice to the protests and a Facebook group to join.

I am Dr Tiller - "This website was created as both a memorial to the lifework of Dr. George Tiller and as a living testimony to the courageous lives of abortion providers."

The Mum Files - a new project from my lovely blog-friend Lisa and her friend Ligia, click on over and say hello!

JoGeek at Unapologetically Fat has been posting a series titled Sewing At Any Size which almost makes me want to haul out my machine and start creating. But only almost. I do, however, expect these posts to come in very useful when I eventually force myself to get some more re-enactment costumes made.

The 13th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up, this month it's hosted by Demelza at SAHM Feminist.

Point me at your interesting finds in the comments people!

12th Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 12th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up, this month it's hosted by Chally at Zero at the Bone. Little old me is in there again this month - aw shucks :) - and as usual there's a cornucopia of antipodean feminist blogging to explore and savour.

And there's cake too!