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Feminism - where are the threads?

Edie said:
I just tell my sons they know where Asda is tbf.
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we live within a 5 minute walk of several supermarkets, but kid1 will only leave the house (sometimes :/) for school. she does go out with us, but never on her own. technically i have provided her with both the proximity to the shops and the legs with which to get there but even that isn't enough! (she claims the legs are sub-standard) :D
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Wow. Gender reveal party. I've just googled that as well. Firstly, it's a sex reveal party, ffs. A unborn foetus doesn't have a gender. We're so confused about the sex/gender distinction. Who cares? It's a fucking baby! But yes, wow, everyone needs to know what baby clothes to buy, eh? As FabricLiveBaby! said on another thread, gender is an opportunity for capitalism to sell us the same thing twice. It ain't going to miss out.
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Latest example from Let Toys Be Toys.

There are many reasons why this is shameful, but what struck me was the free cinema tickets for parents on the "blue" box and the health benefits.

Where as the pink box? Well...

IMG_20190503_141943.jpg

I've never been to a gender reveal party.

I always avoid gender reveal parties. I've been invited to them but find excuses, to meet with the expectant mother some other time. I refuse to add to the pink/blue nonsense but also mainly because there'saa danger that I'd go off on a rant and ruin it for everyone. :D

When friends announce they are having kids I always buy something creative for the boys, or something mechanical for the girls to use when they are a year old (or even older) and the congratulatory presents have disappeared (newborns grow out of stuff quickly).

It's not much, but it is a small feminist act to counter the pinkification and bluification that kids are having to battle against today. And an acknowledgement that gifting drops off a cliff after 9 months old (whereas rearing a child becomes more and more expensive).

I recently wrote on twitter recently about how patriarchy and capitalism seem to me to be basically the same thing re: controlling the means of production. Specifically women are the class that is the means of reproduction of the human race, and therefore supply capital their worker force.

I don't know if we can smash capitalism without smashing patriarchal control first. In which case, we seem to be a long way off with the amount of misogyny still entrenched in the left.

The more I read the more I am convinced they are one and the same.

Anyway, this is a great thread, and so are the threads that have sprung from it. Thanks JudithB and friendofdorothy. Good work ladies :)
 
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8ball said:
I don't eat cereals, and don't look at cereal boxes in the supermarket (or haven't done for many years), but is it a thing now to have different boxes for the actual same product? :confused:
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:(

It wasn't hyperbole when I talked about gender allowing capital to sell the same product twice.

 
My mum taught us all to cook and bake from a very early age. She never made us breakfast or cups of tea after we were able to fend for ourselves. Glad she did that a s it made us all more independent and not entitled about whose 'job' it was to feed and water you - it was a case of if you want something, make or fetch it for yourself. So we did. Same wirh things like laundry. Didn't realise til i went to university that some offspring treat their mums like skivvies. :(
The one downside to this is that i am a terrible host who rarely offers guests refreshments
ETA oops must be going senile. I must have been thinking of another thread, or I'm thinking of another exchange earlier in tje thread :oops:
 
Orang Utan said:
My mum taught us all to cook and bake from a very early age. She never made us breakfast or cups of tea after we were able to fend for ourselves. Glad she did that a s it made us all more independent and not entitled about whose 'job' it was to feed and water you - it was a case of if you want something, make or fetch it for yourself. So we did. Same wirh things like laundry. Didn't realise til i went to university that some offspring treat their mums like skivvies. :(
The one downside to this is that i am a terrible host who rarely offers guests refreshments :oops:
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did you not offer your mum a cup of tea when you were making one for yourself?
 
FabricLiveBaby! said:
It wasn't hyperbole when I talked about gender allowing capital to sell the same product twice.
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Yeah, I was thinking of pink razors, and gendered lego, but cereal?
If I saw those boxes in a supermarket my natural assumption would be that the pink ones related to a film promo that had come to an end and they were mid-switch.
 
FabricLiveBaby! said:
I recently wrote on twitter recently about how patriarchy and capitalism seem to me to be basically the same thing re: controlling the means of production. Specifically women are the class that is the means of reproduction of the human race, and therefore supply capital their worker force.

I don't know if we can smash capitalism without smashing patriarchal control first. In which case, we seem to be a long way off with the amount of misogyny still entrenched in the left.

The more I read the more I am convinced they are one and the same.
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I saw someone suggest recently that the essence of being a man (as a gender expectation) is being entitled to control or own anything he desires. So capitalism (and before if feudalism) is the natural consequence of that.
 
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Santino said:
I saw someone suggest recently that the essence of being a man (as a gender expectation) is being entitled to control or own anything he desires. So capitalism (and before if feudalism) is the natural consequence of that.
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it's not really tho is it. the great majority of men under feudalism or capitalism haven't and don't really get much chance to control or own what they want. yeh i'll grant you that of the beneficiaries of capitalism the majority are men. but i think it a superficial and facile comment to say 'the essence of being a man (as a gender expectation) is being entitled to control of own anything he desires'. gender expectations differ in time and place - not to mention in terms of power. it's like the nonsense that there's one unchanging human nature, on the surface attractive and plausible but it's like smoke as you try to grasp it, it slips away in a hundred different directions.
 
8ball said:
Equally weird, but I can't see how you would sell more of them. Plus one looks to be a film promo pack.
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I would think there are two considerations - sell more plasters in total, but sell more of your highly priced brand in particular over cheaper ones with generic packaging.

I remember gimmicks like bake-shrink toy figures in cereal packets as a kid (non-gendered from what I remember, although I may be misremembering). They had a powerful pull on me, and so by extension on my parents.
 
FabricLiveBaby! said:
... If it wasn't profitable (i.e working) they wouldn't have bothered. It doesn't matter if you, personally, wouldn't buy it. Plenty of people ARE buying into it, because if it wasn't profitable the issue wouldn't be getting worse :(
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Are you talking about the plasters or the cereals or just speaking generically?
The Elastoplast pic is unconvincing for several reasons, and the Kinder Surprise thing is understandable on the basis of toys being heavily gendered generally, but selling parallel identical (contentrs-wise) gendered cereals is pretty barking - that's the one that really surprised me.

I assume from the responses on here that this isn't that remarkable these days, though intuitively I find it hard to see any commercial benefit from it.
 
8ball said:
Are you talking about the plasters or the cereals or just speaking generically?
The Elastoplast pic is unconvincing for several reasons, and the Kinder Surprise thing is understandable on the basis of toys being heavily gendered generally, but selling parallel identical (contentrs-wise) gendered cereals is pretty barking - that's the one that really surprised me.

I assume from the responses on here that this isn't that remarkable these days, though intuitively I find it hard to see any commercial benefit from it.
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What is unconvincing about it?
 
8ball said:
Are you talking about the plasters or the cereals or just speaking generically?
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All of it. At the end of the day it's self fulfilling. It might originally be perhaps marginally profitable but mainly feeds into the culture, and then the culture markets it back out again. Like a feedback loop.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Fucking hell. 44p each!
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I get the feeling these are rarely-sold discontinued packs being sold to obsessed collectors, there are some related links to far crazier prices. The Batman ones appear to be from a "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" product line.

It's pretty easy to trawl for Twitter-fodder if you leave out bits of context.
 
FabricLiveBaby! said:
All of it. At the end of the day it's self fulfilling. It might originally be perhaps marginally profitable but mainly feeds into the culture, and then the culture markets it back out again. Like a feedback loop.
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It feels like a patchwork of some things getting better, and some things getting worse.
 
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