I’ve had a remarkably quiet day, the children all started playing a variety games early on and pretty much left me alone all day. Maddy and Amelie started off by opening a rollercoaster stand, complete with food stall, money, tickets and a rather alarming number of serious injuries to riders 😆 Still, i saw plenty of educational usefulness it it, there was sign writing, appropriate money play and lots of co-operation and organisation.
During that time Fran was in fact on EC, working her way through the yr3 maths. She was perfectly happy for ages, then threw a wobbly at an english game that was too hard for her. Still, i think spelling and writing are not far off as skills she’s mastered now, she still seems to apply flightly guesswork to things, but she can do it.
Later in the afternoon they all went off to play some sort of beach game in their room and that occupied them till it was time for Brownies/Rainbows. Left me free to spend my afternoon tootling about doing this and that, mostly notably the somewhat incompatible past-times of reading this blog entry and its comments and sorting the washing. The washing sorting, therapeutic when not being done at breakneck speed trying to find just one pair of matching socks to go out in 5 minutes ago, gave me time to think, if nothing else. Both activities seemed to leave me sighing wearily, even so.
I spent some time trying put my thoughts in order on the blog post, but decided i would only end up looking either stupid, or irritating, or misinformed, or all 3 and would probably annoy most of the people i really liked, so i think perhaps i just won’t bother for now. I think my over-riding impression was that there must be something wrong with me, i’m missing a “righteously politically furious” button somewhere and i don’t quite know if it’s one i ought to be looking for? Would it make me any happier?
Jax says
depends what you think you ought to be righteously politically furious about I would have thought, and unlikely to make you happier unless you can figure out a way to fix it!
I find blame the patriarchy quite hard work, but do keep popping in there, if only to keep adding different points of view to my understanding of the world iyswim. I got righteously annoyed on the bbc the other day, with their close the gap have your say thing about fair pay, but I’m still working my way through thoughts about it all, wait for a blogpost soon 😉
merry says
I think that is the problem Jax; i don’t feel politically righteous about anything much. Mostly i read stuff from people who are ranting about stuff and i get so bound up in trying to work out what their agenda is, that i can’t really take their argument totally seriously. I get so wound up in knots trying to figure out if they have a point, or if they’d just have a different point if circumstnaces were different, that i just mentally turn off and hope it never comes to bother me.
It doesn’t particularly please me to be that way, but i’m darned if i can work out how to motivate myself to be different.
Debbie says
whats politics got to do with it. its all futile
merry says
Grin… oh inspire me why don’t you!!!! 😉 😉
Allie says
Afraid I gave up on that comments thread! I used to know a great deal about that debate, within feminism, about 16 years ago.
I knew friendships destroyed over that issue. Back in 1990 or so I was at a club where fist fights broke out among lesbians over it – and the police came and arrested a whole lot of women. It was somewhat ironic to see all these women being take away in handcuffs when handcuffs had been the cause of the row in the first place!
I certainly do have a righteously politically furious button but long ago decided it didn’t need to get pressed over the activities of consenting adults in private. Now, Guantanamo Bay, there’s power, abuse, domination, humiliation and torture that does get me furious…
Nic says
yeah and Michael Jackson said ‘I’m starting with the man in the mirror’ 🙂
I sometimes feel vaguely uncomfortable with such reading as BTP and I certainly didn’t get even halfway down the comments but I do have plenty of things I get angry and passionate enough about to want to shout from rooftops and go on marches. I simply can’t get riled up about things just because I might fall into one of the groups of society that *should* feel angry about them though. I also subscribe in many ways to the ignorance is bliss theory – I accept it might be shortsighted and brainwashed and everything else such activists might throw at you but it also doesn’t leave you quite so bitter, cynical and worldweary. Not sure which is better really…
Debbie says
I used to get furious but it wastes so much energy, then I got sad and it wasted a lot of energy too. Now I just see it this way: if I can change it then I try, if I can’t then I offer supplication and do what I can do within any given time.
Politics is futile since it simply a means where materialistic people want to change other people. If you want to make a difference in the world you should begin with yourself, and if we all did that then we would have won a revolution wouldnt we?
Was it Gandhi who said “be the change you wish to see in the world”?
Think so.
And as regards feminism and patriarchy, does it really matter to everyday folk? Are the blind and seeing equal?
Alison says
Oh, I adore Twisty – she never compromises. Which may or may not be easier if you’re a spinster aunt than a married mother 😉
But I absolutely think feminism and the patriarchy are relevant to ‘everyday folk’ – and I don’t particularly care what people think of things, as long as they show some evidence of having thought iykwim.
And Merry, I’d say the whole school/HE thing was something you’re fairly “politically righteous” about, and something which you seem to be doing something about!
layla says
But Twisty puts the fun in Patriarchy Blame!
I have fits & starts about being righteous some things I can’t compromise on though.
Debbie says
No actually I take some of that back – injustice gets me very very angry when innocent people suffer. World poverty gets me angry and so does war. I hate injustice and I can’t help that at all. But as for politics – no. Doesn’t do a thing for me.
Debbie says
Michael Jackson??? oh really…. :p
merry says
Allie, oh that image did make me laugh! My previous London life of gay clubs as the only acceptable places to go (if you are at Drama School) gives me plenty of scope to enjoy that!!!!!
Nic, glad it isn’t just me 😉
I found, regardless of the actual topic (i had to look up what it was, that was an eye-opener of a google!) that the comments sat uncomfortably with me. I didn’t feel any sense of familiarity with the commenters, i didn’t feel we had anything in common at all. That bothered me a little. I’m happy enough to get angry about inequality without choice (i really would have been a Suffragette) but i find people who (and i could be putting words into their ideology here) see themselves as defenders of a gender but ridicule my life choice for its own sake, profoundly unnerving. Not uninteresting, but unnerving.
I had a sense, reading those comments, of being told “anyone who lives life as a wife, mother and childcarer is a disgrace to womanhood and WORSE, you don’t even know it AND THAT MAKES IT DOUBLE BAD!” and i can’t sort out whether i respect that view or abhore it.
Does that make any sense at all? Perhaps not.
Yes, i can be politically righteous about HE/school; on my good days i’d like to think i’ve done a small amount of positive work in the direction of that. I find it difficult to become reactionary to everything on the basis that i’m reactionary once. But how come everyone else has room in their brains for every other fight too? 😆
Nic says
and also, I think Twisty might just be a man! 😉
Joanna says
I haven’t room in my brain for many fights I believe in passionately, e.g. world poverty, animal rights, care for the environment. It’s more than enough for me to do to (badly) run the house, go out to work, educate the children, run the local Playschool, choose good food, etc. The political stuff has to go to the bottom of my list, sadly, but I try to remember that this is just a phase of my life and it won’t be long before I can give more time to other stuff again.
Katy says
I glazed over before I got to the comments… I suspect the Feminist movement moved right on by me and left me teetering on the brink of Muffindom blissfully unaware that I’m being a total traitor to womankind. Sigh, must try harder… on the other hand maybe not 😉
Joyce says
I just love twisty.
site admin says
Oh lord, i’ll just renamed this one now then shall i? 😉
Debbie says
I dislike so-called “feminists” who seem to trying to save me from myself. I mean, if women weren’t meant to have kids then why do we have wombs? I met people like this in uni – most of us pitied them as they spent a lot of time being very angry.
Debbie says
oops. said too much. *vanishes*
khadijah says
baffled, but glad to see everyone is well!