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Parenting Pronouns Or Else

The Progressive Dance

November 4, 2024 125 Comments

Lifted from the previous post, an excruciatingly obtuse discussion about wangs and women’s changing rooms. In which the very patient Warren Smith attempts to tease sense from a self-styled ‘Harris voter’.

Again, I say obtuse, but it’s more a matter of practised dishonesty:

 

Responding to the exchange above, Rafi adds, not unfairly, 

Anyone want to bet the ‘Harris Voter’ doesn’t have a daughter (or a wife)?

Mr Harris Voter does seem to be struggling with some very basic realities. Things that we, as a society, used to understand.

I imagine much of his difficulty lies in the need to be seen holding fashionable and therefore statusful opinions, as determined by his peer group, and the illogical nature of the opinions currently in fashion. He wants to be seen as being “inclusive,” as he puts it, even though the consequent position is fundamentally incoherent.

And so we get the pinhead dance. According to which, cross-dressing men have every right to enter women’s changing rooms, and women who object can… er, choose not to use them. Or choose to flee, provided they do it politely.  So as not to cause offence.

We must, it seems, be sensitive. Albeit unilaterally.

Maddening and slippery as Mr Harris Voter is, I think the exchange above is quite revealing. It does show the contortions required of the type. It also suggests that it would be unwise to rely on such creatures.

Ladies, they’ll sell you out in a heartbeat.

If nothing else, the exchange highlights how an urge to seem like a good and progressive person, a caring and inclusive person, can be entirely at odds with actual goodness or anything approaching coherence. Such that the pretence, the preoccupation with how one seems, if only to one’s equally pretentious peers, entails not caring – at all – about women and girls who would rather not share an intimate space with mentally ill men and opportunist perverts. 

As this chap says in reply to Warren Smith’s original post on X:

If you’re concerned with appearances, as I get the feeling this guy is, you will often be morally wrong in your pursuit of the appearance of being morally right.

This is not a trivial point.

Update, via the comments:

Oh, and if Mr Harris Voter’s opinions on What Women Should Be Happy To Put Up With sound vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of Mr Dolatowski, the cross-dressing chap mentioned here previously, and who insists that he isn’t “a threat if I use the bathroom,” and who tells us, emphatically, “I know I’m not a threat to anyone.”

Except, of course, to ten-year-old girls in supermarket toilets.

Update 2:

In the comments, EmC quotes Mr Harris Voter saying, “The reason I don’t care is because I don’t know that these situations are happening.”

She then adds,

It’s That Thing That Never Happens again.

Absolutely. To claim not to know about these things – to not know about any of them – as if the very idea were inconceivable and not an obvious and inevitable consequence – is quite an achievement. Of a sort. Though according to Mr Harris Voter, if any discomfort or conflict of interests should ever materialise – in theory, hypothetically – it will somehow be the fault of women. For not being sufficiently open-minded and progressive.

Liz quips,

I’m not surprised he didn’t want to show his face.

Well, indeed. This is someone who implies, quite strongly and more than once, that mothers who don’t want their six-year-old daughters exposed to the genitalia of cross-dressing men are somehow being uptight and selfish, and are therefore of limited importance. Compared to cross-dressing men who wish to impose themselves, intimately, on women and girls who may object. And often precisely because women and girls may object.

The mothers, we’re told, are “free to leave” their own toilets and changing rooms. Because their expectations of privacy and safety, and the safety of their children, are merely things that the mothers “choose to care about.” By insinuation, needlessly.

And how very dare they.

And so, Mr Harris Voter, our champion of human progress, is someone who would have us believe that the psychological gratification of the male interloper, his triumphant intrusion, is of at least equal importance to the rights of women not to be watched as they undress by some weird and creepy man who enjoys violating normal boundaries.

Again, it’s quite the mental dance. Yet so very much in fashion.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Books Parenting TV

The Much More Difficult Thing

October 21, 2024 107 Comments

A small point, but with a bigger point lurking behind it:

I think there’s obviously a lot of truth to the idea that kids benefit from having desirable behavior modeled for them, but the demand to have it appear in media is a cheap substitute for the much more difficult thing that actually works https://t.co/fsgKMLao5s

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) October 20, 2024

As a child, I wasn’t interested in books and TV programmes that centred on children my own age. In fact, juvenile characters, supposedly there to be identified with, were generally distracting and off-putting, if not downright annoying, a thing that broke the spell. A phenomenon known to some as The Wesley Crusher Effect.

I remember being interested in astronauts, adventurers, superheroes or whatever. But being represented, in the ham-fisted modern sense, wasn’t an obvious factor. As noted in the thread linked above, the whole point of the exercise was to inhabit the minds of people who aren’t you, and whose circumstances therefore seem much more exciting.

As to the larger point – the much more difficult thing – it does rather suggest a parental lapse of some significance.

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Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All Parenting

It’s Been “Queered,” You See

October 2, 2024 122 Comments

Time to run a finger along academia’s cutting edge:

A Kutztown University professor is using art to advocate for the expansion of the term “motherhood” to include “LGBTQIA+ communities.” Art education Professor Leslie Sotomayor will discuss questions about mothers at the public university’s annual Gender and Sexual Minorities Conference, starting Wednesday.

Sotomayor’s presentation is titled, Madres Radicales: Queering Art & Motherhood.

Book those tickets now, ladies. Time is short and you’ve so much to learn.

You will, needless to say, be taking instruction from “agents of self-knowledge production” who will fearlessly and heroically “expand traditional narratives about madres / mothering as an action, an embodied experience,” and who will be “expanding the terminology of motherhood as it connects to LGBTQIA+ communities, racial identities, gender expressions, surviving oppressions, straddling socio-economic statuses, citizenship, and cultural memory.”

At which point, readers may wonder whether referring to oneself, rather earnestly, as an “agent of self-knowledge production,” as if self-awareness were an area of expertise, actually suggests something other than self-awareness.

Other temptations include “virtual LGBTQ-affirming yoga,” an exploration of “trauma-informed movement,” conducted via Zoom. And for which participants are reminded to “bring your own mat or towel.”

Yes, it’s a “self-empowering learning environment,” in which the big questions will not be shied from:

Who is a madre / mother? What do madres do? What is their role in our communities? Societies? How is a mother / madre radical? What does a madre radical look like?  

It’s no use trying to flee. I’ve locked the doors.

While pondering these questions, and the inevitable “intersections of identities,” attendees will be given a precious opportunity to mingle with Professor Sotomayor, along with Dr Ashleigh Strange – a they-person, pictured here – and numerous, equally dazzling “protest organisers, musicians, poets, and drag performers.”

And obviously, when anyone thinks of motherhood, the first thing that comes to mind is the term drag performers. Which is to say, suggestively gyrating men, wearing tights and corsets, and generally being fierce, while demanding your fealty. Your full-throated affirmation of their gyrating, corset-wearing cause.

This, then, is “the expanding terminology of motherhood as it connects to LGBTQIA+ communities.” And nothing screams motherhood quite like a convulsing bald man in a bodystocking.

Above, the embodiment of motherhood.

You will become “AUTHENTICALLY YOU” – authenticity being a recurring theme of the event – by watching peculiar men hurling themselves about while dressed up as women, something they aren’t.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Reading time: 2 min
Written by: David
Anthropology His Pretty Nails Parenting

Shush, Daddy’s Being Fabulous

August 13, 2024 87 Comments

From the forthcoming film by Vaishnavi Sundar, Behind The Looking Glass, about women whose partners, or fathers, have ‘transitioned’:

You’ve got to pretend that it’s all okay… You have to realise that your dad has fallen in love with himself, and there’s no part for you in that where you are not just a prop.

It’s like this person came along and said, “You know how you had a dad? Well, that was all a lie. And all that time, your dad didn’t like being your dad.” And my dad was kind of replaced by this other person. This other person who didn’t love me like my dad loved me, wasn’t interested in me like my dad was.

And his love was conditional.

“Your dad has fallen in love with himself, & there is no part for you in there where you are not just a prop.”

There is profound silence surrounding the lives of the children with trans id-ing father. Are they just props used for championing a delusion? #behindthelookingglass https://t.co/MGRE78WGLk pic.twitter.com/aw9yFit55J

— Vaishnavi Sundar (@Vaishax) July 27, 2024

Emma Thomas, the woman recounting her somewhat unorthodox childhood, also appears in this longer interview. The subjects touched on include unmentionable erotic motives, ideological capture, and the experience of watching a man publicly enacting an approximation of breastfeeding. It’s a strange listen, necessarily, a little sad, and sometimes darkly funny.

Ms Thomas also has a blog, Children Of Transitioners, in which she relates her experiences, and those of others, and where she attempts to parse the phenomenon of dads in dresses:

Most people wouldn’t post a picture of themselves in their underwear in this context.

For instance.

Update, via the comments:

Pete SJ visits Ms Thomas’ blog and quotes this:

While many people assume that autogynephilia is all about the clothes, the fact is that children of transitioners are often familiar with the other markers of the condition. When your father wants to go to a bra fitting or make up session with you, or wants to know all about your period, that’s autogynephilia too. If your father is doing this, he is involving you in his erotic world.

Adding,

“Involving you in his erotic world” – an economic summary that catches the ambiguous or boundary-transgressing aspects of the behaviour. 

At which point, this eye-widening saga came to mind.

And note that those applauding Mr Yates, the star of the link above – the bewigged man quizzing schoolgirls about their panties – are overwhelmingly ladies of a progressive leaning. Selling out their own daughters, and the daughters of their neighbours.

In order to be seen holding fashionable views.

Or, as Ms Thomas recounts in the embedded video:

I lived this very, quite sheltered life, really, in some ways, and then I moved to this situation where there are a lot of people who were cross-dressing and, you know, selling sex. There was a guy who was a prostitute. He’d left a wife and two little children to sell sex. He moved in with us for, like, three months. 

So again, some boundaries being tested.

Given the current near-ubiquity of trans activism, it’s curious how little attention is given to estranged wives – ‘trans widows’ – or, as above, estranged children. Who, I suppose, would be ‘trans orphans’.

To which dicentra replies,

When they stick their heads above the parapet they are told to get over their transphobia and affirm their new mum/wife. The term “trans widow” is considered to be transphobic, because of course it is. 

Before citing the following scolding comment, directed at Ms Thomas by a disaffected reader:

“‘Trans widow’ is an appalling term, centring others where the focus should be on the trans person becoming his/her true self. Of course, there have to be difficult adjustments, but this is not death!” 

Yet the popular activist term deadnaming.

And you’d think the news that your husband no longer exists and that your entire marriage was a farce – or that your dad no longer exists and is now competing for the title of mom – or some bizarre hooker aunt – might be a legitimate basis for some, shall we say, irritation.

Even so-called “phobia.”

Update 2:

The entire documentary can now be viewed here.

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Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Parenting

Display Purposes

July 15, 2024 125 Comments

Or, And This Is Mommy’s Snatch.

I make a point to walk around the upstairs of my home (we have far too many uncovered windows downstairs!) naked. 

Yes, I’m reading Scary Mommy, where exclamation points abound, and where ladies of a progressive leaning share their political radicalism. In this case, Ms Kate Auletta, the publication’s editor-in-chief, is thrilling us with tales of her domestic nakedness:

I hold my weight now in my hips and upper legs, and my large breasts have not defied gravity in the slightest. All this to say, I have far from the perfect body. Which is exactly why I walk around naked. 

It seems, then, that the nudity is not so much shared, a gift to the world, but more something inflicted. Specifically, on the author’s two small boys. I’ll spare you the lengthy description of Ms Auletta’s various physical imperfections – the rolls of excess flesh, the big, sagging bosom, and the whole Fat Upper Pubic Area thing.

I was and never will be one of those women who walk around naked at the gym.

I’m assuming she means naked in the changing rooms, though any observance of such boundaries is not made clear.

In other words, it’s not because I love my body; I don’t really. It’s because I want my kids to see reality, self-love, and body positivity come from one of the people they trust most. 

At which point, sharp-eyed readers may be attempting to reconcile this,

I want my kids to see… self-love, and body positivity 

With this:

it’s not because I love my body; I don’t really. 

Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure what loving one’s body might mean, beyond the obvious off-colour jokes. But apparently, it’s something that one is supposed to proclaim as an accomplishment, a credential of progressivism. I have, however, noted that it tends to be announced by people whose declared triumph in this matter is not altogether convincing, and whose basis for doing so is generally much slimmer than they are.

Still, there are the obligatory noises to be made, and empowerment to invoke:

My show of feminism, of empowerment and acceptance… comes in the form of being literally naked with my imperfect body. 

There we go. Because, clearly, it’s a blow to the Patriarchy, a radical act. A feat of progressive heroism. Not just some incongruous crack and badger. Come up onstage to collect your certificate and enamel badge. Everyone applaud.

Instead of covering up with a bathrobe — which always makes me hot and sweaty post-shower anyway — I just walk around in all my unrefined glory. 

That’s quite enough. You can stop now.

To me, it’s showing my sons what a real woman’s body — one that has birthed two kids and has its flaws — looks like, and how to stand proud in it. 

No, really. We have everything we need, madam.

It’s showing them that while, sure, I like air-drying, bodies come in all shapes and squiggles, that bodies aren’t a “problem” to be dealt with, even if I have a hard time with it on most days myself. 

So, again, it’s all about empowerment and “body positivity,” you see. Oceans of self-love. Or at least the intermittent appearance of such. Something done “without a care,” except “on most days.”

It must be quite strange to go through life feeling a need to boast in print of some pointed behaviour – specifically, “showing my sons what a real woman’s body… looks like” – as if this feat of not wearing knickers were somehow radical, empowering, and a basis for applause. And to then have to justify this lifestyle affectation in ways that are somewhat contradictory and not particularly convincing. As if no-one would notice. It seems a lot of effort.

When not treating her small boys to the sight of her arse and undercarriage, Ms Auletta offers other educational experiences:

As a parent, I spend a lot of time pointing out gaps in thinking about race or inequality in media or books or on the street when I see it. 

Those lucky, lucky kids. How the time must fly.

 

Previously in the world of Scary Mommy:

Empowered woman dreams of Donald Trump, has panic attacks.

Empowered woman, user of Xanax, suffers from internalised capitalism.

Another empowered lady and her mood-stabilising medication.

A tale of laundry and resentment.

On auras, emanations, and paranormal parenting.

Empowered woman, who is in no way unhinged, teaches her small children to scream profanities at random people.

There’s more, should you want it, if you poke through the archives.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the six items linked above, Aitch adds,

Where the hell do they keep finding all these mad women? 

Not an unfair question. What with the recurring motif of mood-stabilising drugs, the existential trauma of hearing differing views, the lurid fantasies regarding Mr Trump, or the obsessive thoughts about babies heads spontaneously falling off. To say nothing of how often these preoccupations bedevil ladies who are employed, or have been employed, as public-school educators.

I should add that the links at the end of the post are but a small sample. I can’t monitor Scary Mommy around the clock. And frankly, I wouldn’t care to.

It’s rather like the now-defunct Everyday Feminism, a publication once very popular among the super-woke, with over four million monthly visitors, had an extraordinary number of articles, several every week, on the subject of living with mental illness. From delusions of witchcraft to serious Cluster-B personality disorders.

But among progressive women, there is, I think, a pattern. One that’s fairly hard to miss.

Though doubtless many try.

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Reading time: 5 min
Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.