To be honest, even the temperature in here feels kind of 70s. I haven’t been this cold indoors since I wore my hair in plaits.
To be honest, even the temperature in here feels kind of 70s. I haven’t been this cold indoors since I wore my hair in plaits.
Lynne Segal: ‘The language of sex is still phallocentric’
Not for this woman it isn’t. Either she is a feminist because she was deeply ugly before she became one, or she became one and for political reasons has sought out ugliness.
Either way, her obesity has nothing to do with room temperature and everything to do with the fact that men don’t want to shag her.
Phallic much? Especially as the preferred alternative is a “prissy little bay tree”.
Actually I think I do her an injustice. Sure, she is batsh!t crazy, but as batsh!t crazy feminists go, she seems almost sensible. Germaine Greer’s less insane twin perhaps.
Men, for whatever reason, remain fixated on the younger body.” What to do about it? She is rueful. It’s impossible. “You can hardly carry placards that say WE DEMAND THAT MEN STILL DESIRE US!”
Lots of women do that in effect although they are rarely so honest about it.
“You can hardly carry placards that say WE DEMAND THAT MEN STILL DESIRE US!”
This, a thousand times. If only she would spread the word to other feminists.
How much of the death of the commune / collective bullshit is tied to the end of student grants? Today’s students seem a lot more goal-oriented than this 1970s lot: probably because they have to pay for their education. Nobody is going to shack up in a commune for five years while the interest on their student debt grows.
There was a renegade eucalyptus in my garden once. We had to get a SWAT team to take it down in the end.
“WE DEMAND THAT MEN STILL DESIRE US!”
Yes, well this thought did occur, didn’t it?
Say again, who is phallocentric?
PS: I suppose her fantasizes demand uses “us” rather than “me” because the latter would obviously be even more egregiously impossible.
The brevity of beauty is a terrible thing, to be fair. I have sometimes thought I’m glad not to be a woman, so I don’t have to suffer it.
I am old enough to remember ice on the inside of a bedroom window.
But then I am old enough to remember afro-haired Dr Germaine Greer as Golly Greer on children’s TV series Nice Time.
“Nobody is going to shack up in a commune for five years while the interest on their student debt grows.”
We don’t have student debt, we have a graduate tax, at progressive rates. Its just no-one bothers to call it that.
@ Jim
It’s only a tax on newish graduates. It does *not* apply to those who invented it (nor to me).
I would cheerfully pay a graduate tax if it applied to *all* graduates (preferably including all those who have emigrated). In the current reality, I am very confident that the share of the income tax that I have paid allocated to education has already covered all the state has paid towards my education and that of my children.
I continue to regard those who took student grants not in order to study but to play at political protest as spongers. Obtaining money by false pretences is a crime (unless you are a middle-class tennage Trostyite!).
Andrew M – is shacking up in a commune and letting student debt increase any different than getting a decent paying job and letting student debt increase? or even a poor paying job and letting student debt increase?
@ Martin Davies
Have you heard of “peer pressure”? While the post-1968 students felt thewy had a “right” to free education paid for by someone else, they tolerated the communes who wasted thweir grants. The 2010 students who have to pay for their higher education are more likely to resent squatters who ponce around playing student politics instead of studying.
Ian B – “The brevity of beauty is a terrible thing, to be fair. I have sometimes thought I’m glad not to be a woman, so I don’t have to suffer it.”
I imagine yours was measured in nanoseconds 🙂
Was thinking about ‘obesity’ this afternoon, and I can’t recall anyone citing the decline in smoking as a factor in riding ‘obesity’. Smoking is an appetite suppressant, and back in the day every other man and his dog smoked.
A possible factor?
I doubt most students would even notice squatters pouncing about, and even fewer would give a crap.
“I would cheerfully pay a graduate tax if it applied to *all* graduates (preferably including all those who have emigrated).”
I’m sure all the graduates of Continental universities who come to work in the UK would be cheerful for you to pay a graduate tax too.
(and btw, I paid off my student loan from abroad, so I paid my graduate tax already)
John77, the students I met at uni (graduated 2012) did not seem bothered by what other people spent their money on.
I don’t know that any of them were squatters while at uni, I don’t know they weren’t squatters.
We still had those who ‘played’ at student politics, including one classmate who went on from being a year rep to being student president at the uni after his degree was over.
Of such people are politicians made….
An idiot he was, an idiot he will probably remain. But elected so in a position to cause problems for many others. 🙂
@ Martin Davies
I bow to your superior knowledge of modern students. I was extrapolating from the moans about welfare spongers from the working poor and those genuinely entitled to benefits (while the Guardianistas moan about the “welfare cap” it is overwhelmingly favoured by the working poor) and from my knowledge of pre-1968 students, combined wiuth a lesser but substantial knowledge of post-1968 students.
@ Martin Davies
Following your aside. Our college JCR was asked to voite on whether we shoulds affiliate to the newly-created OU Students Union, which was defeated with, as I recall, only one vote in favour (but there may have been a couple); we could not disaffiliate from the NUS (someone did ask) so the only individual who supported the NUS was declared elected as our representative to the NUS because he was the only persaon willing to be nominated.
Student union politics is filled with children interested in playing politics, rather than working at it. I had run (well, partly – my sister’s reserve* boyfriend had more skills and local knowledge while I put in more effort) a local election campaign that won the seat from Labour, so I was shocked at the childishness of university politicians). For reasons completely divorceds from politics, the Hon Secretary and the Hon Treasurer of the OU Communist Club were personal friends and we could talk grown-up politics as I had at home because none of us were trying to use student union politics as a springboard to Westminster.
UYears later some of us accepted that we need to take up roles as “elected reprersaentaTIVES
*If neither of them had someone else to go out with they went out with each other
Don’t know what went wrong
My point was that as only student politicians apply for posts in student politics we get stuffed with them unbless we aboliosh the NUS and other sounding-boards for outsized egos.
I’ve been an area rep for the northwest in an organisation by being both the only person standing for the northwest and the only person able to vote on the candidate in the northwest! Soon changed that and handed off the following year to someone elected by 4 people….
Been other organisations I have been part of that have had equally idiotic rules that nominated then put in the place the one person who turned up… 🙂
Student politics at least has usually a few people involved in some way. And the cries of ‘foul’ when someone gets a campaign going against their pet project….
Perhaps we need to ban people who volunteer for politics from holding posts. Instead take people who do not want the job and let them off with time off for good behaviour.
Is someone off the street any better or worse at being a cabinet minister than pretty much any cabinet minister we have ever had? Is someone picked at random from the adult population any better or worse at voting on issues than the politicians we have?
@ abacab
Quite right.
I thought about putting in a caveat to exclude those who studied at foreign universities but decided it would make my comment too long and verbose.
Andrew K
Golly Greer
Clutches pearls, flutters fan and collapses decorously onto the chaise longue.