raising kids without gender

[DarkAxel]

I absolutely lost track of topic changes

[dubkitty]

The roles are just roles. Children really don't have any use for them either, not outside of play. And these suspected social roles are really not fixed, not for the adults nor for the children, though the Moral Guardians and the Marketing Strategists try to make us so. Especially if You're a parent, You'll come to know the toy stores and the children's clothing pink 'n blue conspiracy. That is, of course, a whole lot of bullshit.

Sure, some roles come with references to biological traits and some to social connections, but so what - the little children just don't have use for that kind of roles, if they are given opportunity to be who they are.

but the point, i think, isn't what use the children have for the roles. IMO thinking about raising children in terms of what the children have use for is ass-backwards--there's an American idiom you might not have seen!--because life isn't about what children have use for, and parenting should be about preparing children for life. my experience is that most gendering is ingrained--e.g. as a straight male i've never had a sex partner that wanted feminist-approved egalitarian sex; they all wanted and indeed specifically asked for male dominance even given that i'm a little, passive, and not particularly macho individual i.e. not the dom type--and that trying to work this out of humans by parenting, schooling, etc. is an exercise in futility imposed in the name of an ideology (or ideologies) that are false and that doesn't do any good for the child in the end because it goes agains their essential nature. and in any case, once they have to interact with the rest of the culture the roles will have a use for the children, whether the children have a use for them or not.

as i've said above, i'm not a great lover of Traditional Sex Roles. my Mother was born in 1918, and was horribly oppressed by life before first-stage feminism. i'm an old fart who still wears a ponytail because i look stupid with short hair, and i'm still kind of bitter that i couldn't wear lacy blouses when i was a teenager without getting killed even if it was the age of Ziggy Stardust. but you've got to prepare children to deal with life. and as awful as it sounds or seems, i think that includes learning to sit in your identity, which in this culture includes a gender, as much as it includes learning how to sit in a chair. it HAS to. children aren't going to live in the intellectual isolation of the perfect world one envisions in one's idealistic childrearing scheme. the parents in the Sun story aren't going to change the world...they're just going to dump their kids into a world that has no sympathy for that kind of intellectualized BS and is going to stomp on them and spit them out while they're still trying to figure out the myriad social cues involved in trying to fit into human tribes in the schoolyard, college campus, workplace, and corner bar.

[dubkitty]

i pointed out the Leftism of the parents, and the resident leftists got defensive. i then criticized the philosophical justification that all parenting styles are OK as tantamount to PC cultural relativism, and all hell broke loose because Leftists believe you aren't allowed to compare and contrast cultures, or to notice the relative degree of accomplishment of Western and Judeo-Christian culture compared to other world cultures. the Leftists all then tried to call me a Nazi without actually saying it, as such types always do when they have no defense.

[DarkAxel]

Thanks, kitty i feel informed now (i don't feel biased if anyone wants to accuse him of pulling me to his side)

[dubkitty]

i'm now trying to return to our regular program; i would have just let it go, but i'm not going to let Nazi shit go unanswered. i'm used to chickenshit argument on the Internet, but i at least back up my ad hominems with actual facts.

[Blackened Soul]

i'm now trying to return to our regular program; i would have just let it go, but i'm not going to let Nazi shit go unanswered. i'm used to chickenshit argument on the Internet, but i at least back up my ad hominems with actual facts.

learn how to lose gracefully. or, alternately, learn how to persuade a majority of the electorate to your position instead of acting like brownshirts.

Didn't you start all that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

[dubkitty]

the anti-Proposition 8 people have been acting like Brownshirts: they've attacked the homes and businesses of their political opponents. i point out an actual resemblence in actions by a political faction which is trying as a mode of policy to use violence and intimidation to achieve objectives opposd by a majority as expressed in a vote of the people; you use a baseless allusion as a way to avoid substantive argument because you are incapable of intellectually defending your position.

[Blackened Soul]

And what is my position?

[McSpunckle]

now that people have had a free half-day to imply all kinds of half-assery because i had the horrifying temerity to care about my cultural heritage:

fuck all of the several of you who think that "ooh, Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/whatever" is a meaningful response on these issues. tell it to the women who have been murdered by their Muslim male relatives in the ever-increasing "honor killings" when they date non-Muslim men or men their fathers didn't approve. or the entire families who have been slaughtered in California since the 1980s in brutal knife attacks which are apparently the traditional response of the people of one part of Mexico, which has supplied a lot of California's illegal farmworkers since the 70s, to being told your wife/mother of your children is leaving you..i was living in the Sonoma Valley when the first of these was committed there by a bloke named Ramon Salcido c.1983, who (as is typical in these cases) killed his wife, children, and mother-in-law, and it was a nationwide or at least regional outrage...now it's so commonplace that it doesn't even rate a banner headline in the town in which it occurs. you think, with the certainty given by a few propaganda-piece college courses and the self-righteous indignation of deviants trying to justify their transgressions, that everybody is Just Fucking OK and we can All Live Together In A Magic Unicorn World. i KNOW, from fifty years of observation of the marvellous effects of multiculturalism, that you are WRONG.

now, lets deal with y'alls style of argument, or rather cheapshot bullshit posed in the place of argument. baseless accusations of Fascist tendencies have, ever since WWII, been the traditional response of Communists and other Leftist extremists to criticism or competition, especially when people begin to connect the dots. like connecting the dots, right there in the articles, between the parents' extreme Leftism and their enthusiasm for experimenting on their children in pursuit of the Greater Good. every time you do that, you reveal yourself. it's the same as when devnull was bitching at me because i referred to the mayor of London as Red Ken Livingstone, when he's called such by the Guardian and other Left papers in the UK, it's an affectionate sobriquet among his followers, and he regularly attends worldwide Left and socialist conferences where they stand around and sing the "Internationale." but if i notice, all of a sudden i'm a Fascist? no. i'm just catching people doing what they do in public and calling it by its name. isn't it a drag when that happens when you don't want people to know what you're trying to sneak past them?

Spaceritual: get back to me with anything you have to say when you've done anything whatsoever in life other than break your parents' hearts.

I can't believe I'm replying to this... but whatever.

Implying that extreme cases of racial violence means different cultures can't live together is really bordering on racism. Most Muslims, especially the more liberal ones you'd find in the US, would not kill over dating non-Muslims. I actually personally know of cases where Muslims are dating non-Muslims and nobody is being murdered. The vast majority of Muslims, at least here in the US, are similar to Christians in the way they treat their holy books inherent violence.

I don't know anything about the apparent Mexican tradition of murdering your entire family, but crime is just part of poorer areas no matter where you live. Look at indian reservations, "ghettos", and whatever you call the places poor, meth head white people live... it's all geographic, but always has the same result. One bad town shouldn't demonize an entire people.

I'm not gonna say much about that second part, but I'd like to remind you that you did call us "brownshirts" recently for not wanting to support a company (Danelectro) who's owner helped fund a gay marriage ban, so you really have no grounds for complaining about being unjustly called a fascist. Although, I would agree that we should keep the hyperbole to a minimum in serious discussions.

So yeah, chill out.

On that note, I have no idea what's going on. Anyone wanna cuddle?

[ashdown]

i think you should read the second part of your signature over again and edit your post accordingly, sir.

[bigchiefbc]

Spaceritual: get back to me with anything you have to say when you've done anything whatsoever in life other than break your parents' hearts.

This coming from a bitter old pathetic asshole who complains about his unemployed life and has said repeatedly that he wants to die.

[ashdown]

[DarkAxel]

[McSpunckle]

i think you should read the second part of your signature over again and edit your post accordingly, sir.

The whole thing is a dick joke. What? Did you not get it?

... ok, I'm lying. So here's one from the Wikipedia article on dick jokes:


"A professor gives his physiology class a spot quiz. One question he asks is, "What part of the human anatomy expands to ten times its normal size during periods of intense emotion and excitement?" He picks a rather overdressed girl in the front row to answer it. "Miss Callahan!" The indicated girl, who heard the question, stammers with some embarrassment: "Professor, I'd rather not answer that question." The professor says, "That's all right, Miss Callahan, you don't need to answer it. Is there anyone present who can answer it?" He notes an interested face in the back of the classroom. "Mr. Hawkins!" Hawkins says, "Yes, Professor, it is the pupil of the eye that expands to ten times its normal size during periods of emotion and excitement." The professor says, "That is correct, Mr. Hawkins." Then he turns to Miss Callahan. He says, "Young lady, two things are obvious from your reaction to this question. One, you haven't studied this week's assignment; and Two, I'm afraid marriage is going to be a tremendous disappointment to you."

[Mudfuzz]

here never was any. Haven't you been paying attention how every "serious" ends up?

All I will say is, Dubkitty...

just

really just