There have been better attempts at marching, and they had been made by penguins. – about a group of raw army recruits

The change in the man was a whole-body event. He seemed to get smaller, as if every cell had said “oh, dear” very quietly to itself. – on a man being shot by an arrow

I found this book quite enjoyable, had a few laughs as well.  The two quotes above being some of the reasons for my laughter.

This book is about a young girl disguising herself as a boy, so she can enlist in the Borogravian army to go search for her brother who was enlisted in the army. Later on in the book she discovers that all the recruits in her regiment is women disguised as men for their own personal reasons.

Polly and most of the regiment are able to infiltrate the Keep, by disguising themselves as washerwomen and they free the Borogravian soldiers.

There is a part in the book, where she explains to one of the freed majors that they are in fact women:

Polly sighed. “We all are, sir”. Really women. Not just dressed up as women. And right now I don’t want to put any trousers on because then I’d be a woman dressed up as a man dressed up as a woman dressed up as a man, and then I’d be so confused I wouldn’t know how to swear. And I want to swear right now, sir, very much.”

The surprising part (or maybe not so surprising) and hugely amusing part was when Sergeant Jack Jackrum (who is also later revealed as being a women) exposes at least half of the army leaders as being women.  All of them thought they were the only women never realising they were never alone.

I just poured my hart out (the book part of it) in the about section about why I am starting this blog. So if you are really interested read my about page: About

I recently finished Terry Pratchet’s “Monstrous Regiment” and will hopefully soon have a post on that.

Here’s a link via Wikipedia to the Scottish Reformer John Knox, published in 1558. He was worried about what ‘those people’ would do if they were allowed to come to power. It’s been going on for a long time.

Potworny regiment (Monstrous Regiment) – humorystyczna powieść fantasy Terry Pratchetta, wydana w 2003 r. Jest to trzydziesta pierwsza część długiego cyklu Świat Dysku, będąca przy tym ósmą częścią podcyklu o Straży Miejskiej.

Recenzje książek i nie tylko – całość wpisu znajdziesz na moim nowym blogu, zobacz: Potworny regiment.

Well, I’ve been keeping (um.. I mean having joint custody of) this blog for nearly a month now and the biggest lesson that I have learnt is that WordPress is a stalker’s heaven. Seriously, this thing not only lets us see exactly how many people have been reading us, but where each and every one of you came from, from wayward googlers looking for fizzy recipes to Rose Polenzani fans (there are lots of you), to private facebook messages. And it plots it all on a nice little graph, pointing out our busiest days and unwittingly creating a popularity contest for most-looked-at post.

Which is all very interesting to geeky blog tech-virgins (i.e. me), but this is, after all, Feminism Friday we’re supposed to be thanking Fuck for. My point is that basically I know, thanks to various maps and diagrams that show facebook to be the number one referrer, that if you’re reading this blog, chances are you know me, and therefore will be able to picture my face in all its ‘half-frozen-with-shock, half-paralysed-with-laughter’ Picasso-like contortional glory when I came across this little turd, dropped from the arse-end of internet religious nutjobism. Called ‘The Monstrious Regiment of Women’ after the tract from 16th-century Protestant Reformer and misogynist John Knox, it’s a documentary that sets out to ‘extoll feminity’ and ‘blast feminism’, going ‘all out to destroy the feminist word view’. And what a pile of ideologically incoherent, logic-dodging load of rancid old wombat wank it really is. I hesitated to give the link so as not to flatter the Gunn brothers into mistaking hits for genuine interest and support for the documentary , but a finer example of antifeminist fruitcake I cannot imagine (though for those of you who complain of easy targets, I would like to point out that as this is my inaugural Thank Fuck It’s Feminism Friday, I’m willing to indulge this kind of thing for comedy value. It’s a once-only deal : there’s enough religion-based misogynist guff on the Internet to keep me blogging for the rest of my days, and I have better things to do. Like watch old French TV shows, and eat creme eggs).

For those of you who prefer not to indulge such people in such iniquitous pursuits, or for those whose feminism/common sense isn’t quite fluent enough to penetrate the sometimes bafflingly thick dialect of TOTAL SHIT in which their argument is mired, I have taken the pains to provide a transcript of the video in bollocks-free language. The video is just a series of short statements from womenz of different ages and backgrounds, all united in their condemnation of Satan’s equal rights. It goes a little something like this.

Phylis Schlafly: The problem with feminism is that it deludes women into thinking that men as a class have at least hitherto enjoyed some sort of unfair socially- and culturally-imposed privilege, and that makes these women so moody. They’ll never get a husband looking so grumpy!

Carol Everett: My very presence in a school (as some kind of pro-abortion worker) caused girls to get pregnant. Which is something that last time I checked, no man could achieve. Perhaps I am in fact the risen Christ. P.s. – all sex leads to pregnancy, just as all eggs lead to omelettes.

Jennie Chancey: The goal of feminism has been to allow mothers to eat their babies. Feminists would rather no-one was a parent, ever, which is just socialist. The state? Don’t even get me started on the state. The state wants to remove our right to live our lives as we choose. Now where was I – oh yes, feminism, dreadful thing, offering women a chance to live their lives as they choose.

F. Carolyn Graglia: Hillary Clinton, having had the chutzpah to simultaneously regurgitate and defecate on the American Dream by only having a single progeny AND carrying on a successful political career, cannot possibly identify with that alien breed of women who also have offspring but stay at home. Having her cake and eating it? Where does she think she is, Western civilisation in the 21st century?

Jane Doe: Women in the military really shouldn’t be allowed. Some of us cry (which obviously the men never do, because they have evolved to have the tear ducts of lizards.. oops, I mean they were created that way), and that makes the men uncomfortable. Some of them raped us, which is horrendous, an attack on our soul – some of us never fully recovered from that (pause – *note this was the one sentence in the whole documentary which required no translation.* – OK, now back into translation mode), which obviously means we shouldn’t be there to begin with, because we got what we asked for, expecting to be treated as humans too, you know?

Stacy McDonald: If you wear a policeman’s uniform, people will think you’re a police officer. If you dress like you belong to a decade that knew electricity, people will think you’re a slut and it’s OK for men to rape you. It is a criminal offence to impersonate a police officer.

Dana Feliciano: Feminists hate children. Society hates children. Anyone who works, they really hate children. I love children. Until they grow up and turn into women.

Dr. Sharon Adams: I have a shelf of books behind me, an academic title, and one of those chiffon scarves that are so hideous you assume I must be too intelligent to require even a sense of taste, and I am here to tell you that learning is bollocks. See all these books behind me? Just spines glued onto a wall of MDF, all of them! The Bible’s the only book you ever need to read, ever!

Three more points about this monstrosity: firstly, the use of classical music in the background to make it sound in any way sophisticated, intellectual, or ‘imbued with the wisdom of the ages’ (that’s not a quote, I just can’t use that phrase without the arm’s length that quote marks provide). Secondly, the all-female line up – what could be better than having a whole cast of WOMEN to decry feminism? Except, check the credits – it’s made by a pair of brothers. Feminism denounced by men by proxy. Genius! And finally, the blatant misunderstanding of the word ‘regiment’, which, in Knox’s work refers to a ‘regime’ or ‘system of government’. Knox was positing the ‘monstrosity’ of a female being able to rule the country. The way the Gunn brothers use it, you would think there was a hoard of two-headed, fanged feminist beasts roaming the land in search of blood and socialism.

We wish!

Back in 2004 Doug Phillips was wise to republish an article by William Einwechter on the exegesis of Titus 2

In Titus 2:3-5 the apostle Paul charges the older women in the church to teach the younger women “to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” The instruction for women to be “keepers at home” generally has been understood by the church as teaching that the sphere of a married woman’s work is her home. This understanding is reflected by the Puritan commentator Matthew Poole, who interpreted the phrase to mean: “housewives, not spending their time gadding abroad, but in looking to the affairs of their own families.” (^[1]) The Christian woman as a housewife, looking diligently to the affairs of her family, was the standard in Puritan New England:

In seventeenth century New England no respectable person questioned that a woman’s place was in the home. By the laws of Massachusetts as by those of England a married woman could hold no property of her own. When she became a wife, she gave up everything to her husband and devoted herself exclusively to managing his household. Henceforth her duty was to “keep at home, educating her children, keeping and improving what is got by the industry of the man.”(^[2])

However, this view went beyond the Puritans and was the perspective of all branches of the church and a central aspect of Western Christian culture. For example, Lenski, the eminent Lutheran commentator, stated that the phrase “keepers at home” indicates domestic responsibility and that the home is the place of a married woman’s work; she is a “housekeeper” who dispenses “all good things in this domain.” (^[3])

The article is thoughtful kind and uses scripture to explain this very basic Christian doctrine.