Rest assured, I certainly don't suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I'm not even sure that I like living here. I certainly don't want my kids growing up to become sniffy Parisians. such a total fucking douchebag that the words don't even exist to describe it.
But maybe the French have 30 different words for total douchebag.
Don't click the link. Pretend heebie is apo.
Gee, thanks.
At least you're in the middle. Did they send the same note to Sibling B?
2.last: That makes your wager from earlier in the week both more interesting and creepier.
5: The one I had totally forgotten about, but which was apparently bubbling right up near the top of your consciousness? That one?
Mumble didn't help 'em withstand the Blitzkrieg mumble Coco Chanel something.
She's just trying to help, Heebie! Why can't you appreciate that?
Most excellent article, and absolutely correct.
I was struck both by how sweetly Delphine said it and by how certain she seemed that Pauline would obey her.
Watch Dog Whisperer. Americans don't have a fucking clue how to be Alpha.
I blame the Patriarchy Capitalism.
There's not nothing to this article (although it is annoyingly written). I was kind of arguing the other side of this one not too long ago, saying that managing very small children is always going to be attention-intensive for a caregiver. But depending on how you treat them (and on the individual personality of the kid as well, but not exclusively on that) you can have a lot of effect on how civilized the behavior of a very little kid is, without terrorizing them or anything. I didn't do this spectacularly well, but you could really see the differences from one family to the next, and generally I thought expectations of civilization were too low among most parents I hung around with.
HG, you do have a Mandarin tutor for each kiddo, right.
The other article in the "Why can't we live in enlightened, topless Europe" genre that has been going around is the one in Slate about how the French government pays for new moms to play video games with their shnush.
So remember, french moms
1) have better behaved children then you,
2) have well toned pelvic floor muscles, thanks to their government
3) go topless a the beach.
12:Wish I had been drafted in '71, so I coulda had a good reason for exile.
Quebec woulda worked right? They're mostly French.
Look, the "Alphaness" of Urp versus the Beta packless insecurity of Americans is the reason they have health care and a lot less war. After the Crazy years and before The Empire ruined them. It has to do with the ability to say "No", as in "See the Guillotine?" without feeling guilty or isolated or unjustified.
It has to do with the "Right to Command" which no American has, and most Urps have, cause we're like all free and equal. Thanks Boss. Once you have the "Right to Command" then people will follow your lead without commands.
Cesar knows.
Does 13 seem right to you, Urple?
Ahhh, but how Chinese are you compared to your siblings? That's the real question.
The Chinese don't have siblings.
This article is idiotic. "I learned from a Magique Pixie Française in 5 minutes how to really say non to my kid." Her article about setting up a 3some for her husband's 40th is pretty charming, though.
17: Is that like those lists of anniversary presents? First anniversary paper, tenth anniversary tin, fifteenth anniversary visit to a BDSM club?
There is no way I'm going to tell someone else how to raise their kids, but this worked great for us.
We hated whiny kids, so we made a point of immediately attending to a child who wanted something BUT, and this really important, while we gave them our attention they did NOT always get what they wanted.
We heard their demand and we satisfied it if that was appropriate, or we told them "We know you want this but you can't have it right now (or you may have it later or whatever). Do this instead."
This didn't work like magic, but it really did work well, even before our children could speak.
We still had one child who had tantrums at age 3 or so. I don't think there was any way to prevent those.
17: "I learned from a Magique Pixie Française in 5 minutes how to really say non to my kid."
Not that I necessarily agree with the article or anything, but this is really not very successful as a summary of what's wrong with it.
"so we made a point of TRYING TO immediately." Sometimes you simply can't do it.
9: In general I agree, but around these parts I see many parents being the Alpha. Notice in 21 I told the child what to do. Nicely but firmly.
My aunt may have been praising tis article (which I haven't read). She said that somebody was talking about how French children eat the same food as their parents and don't get catered to with special kid foods like hot dogs or chicken fingers.
Sweet! My vintage patent formal pumps arrived!
Uh, I mean, it's wrong to spoil children.
More of 10: I'd actually to love to know objectively how we did, civilized-behavior-wise, with ours. I found lots of other kids annoyingly undersocialized, and can think of parents who I thought did a good job in raising pleasantly-behaved little ones. But I couldn't really tell you for certain where Sally and Newt fell on the spectrum.
22: But it is of the last 'graph! Keep reading! You can do it!
||
Slightly condensed version of a conversation I overheard yesterday:
A: "I recently met a beautiful journalist writing an article on Ian Fleming, and joined her on a trip to Jamaica where we stayed at his house and typed on his typewriter."
B: "Oh, how nice. My best friend was just in Jamaica and stayed at Bob Marley's house."
A: "Oh. My best friend is Julia Roberts' agent."
The rich: they are more obnoxious than you and me.
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31: At that point you step out from behind a plant and say "I am Julia Roberts, and you know nothing of my work."
23: Its in the Slate article, along with many other fun words.
31: They visited Goldeneye?! That is pretty cool. Although I think it can be rented by anybody with the dosh these days.
it can be rented by anybody with the dosh these days.
Meetup!
32: I hated that movie but loved that scene.
30: Keep reading! You can do it!
Yeah, notice how when I just disagreed with you I didn't also try to imply you're some kind of fucking cretin? See if you can work on that. There is of course a fair amount of context leading up to the last 'graph, right, which I'm sure you are aware of and can probably understand I was referring to.
Richard Brody has been cogitating about this, and calls Druckerman's conclusion "interesting, accurate and limited." He says:
Druckerman has caught one of the fascinating paradoxes of middle-class American parenting: in the absence of constant pressure, the hyper-organized, overprogrammed child is utterly unhinged. She also knows that the basis of the French cadre is what she admiringly (and longingly) describes as French parents' "easy, calm authority with their children." In the article, she relates the story of taking a cue from a French mother at a playground and just saying "no" to her two-year-old son in a tone that suggests that she really, really means it. She says it's starting to work, and I wish her well.
But what Druckerman calls the French cadre isn't a product of a determined mother's stern tone of voice. It isn't even something that starts at home; rather, it's a product of French society at large, and French society deals harshly with those who haven't internalized its strict limits at a very young age. The country's schools are rigid, its exam system is severe, and, as a result, the average child is likely to assimilate and master a large quantity of pure knowledge before graduating from lycée (which requires passing a demanding baccalaureate exam--no senioritis there!). However, children with unusual temperaments or unusual skills often find themselves suffering through school--exactly the sort of students for whose talent and character the suppler American-style system is made.
All well and good -- France produces pleasant order, America neurotic freedom. But I found this conclusion puzzling:
Americans are cadrés, too--where the French internalize authority on the grounds of authority, Americans internalize it on the grounds of empathy and consideration for others. In the realm of values to internalize, I know which I prefer.
He follows that with a long P.S. about superior French criticism and a quote about the invention of "woman, cooking and literature". Is there a thing here? What does it mean to internalize authority on the grounds of consideration for others?
she relates the story of taking a cue from a French mother at a playground and just saying "no" to her two-year-old son in a tone that suggests that she really, really means it. She says it's starting to work, and I wish her well.
Plus, your tone of voice doesn't mean shit if the kid knows that next you'll count down from 5, and then you'll count down from Z, etc, and then just get progressively more upset. You have to piss the kid off, ie put them in Time Out or whatever. Or jostle their attention away. Or something, but it's not the sheer timbre of one's voice.
Also on point, the author of the Slate piece directed me in a couple of plays in college. Using her hands and voice, thank you very much.
44 is not exactly my experience. Sometimes the boundary has to be enforced, but often it's enough to just be clear that it's there.
44: Huh. I would disagree with this. I'm not claiming to have had perfectly regimented kids, but IME successfully exerting authority over a kid had more to do with timing/tone of voice/body language rather than followup with punishment.
What does it mean to internalize authority on the grounds of consideration for others?
Certainly he just means internalize morality. He claims that the American system teaches you to internalize norms based on care, while the French system teaches you to internalize norms based on authority.
It is an easy enough claim to understand, but I bet the daughter whose IT cowboy dad shot her laptop would agree on the characterization of American parents.
IMO and E, French teenagers are like the worst fucking teenagers on earth. Just despicable badly behaved bastards, way worse than their American counterparts.
Using her hands and voice, thank you very much.
No, thank you, as the bishop said to the actress.
46, 47: But at some point, they tested the boundary, and got some result they didn't like. I'm not saying every "NO" ends up in Time Out, but Hawaiian Punch knows that it can end up there.
Or something, but it's not the sheer timbre of one's voice.
Heebie is not one of the Sisterhood.
Actually, that action and the response to it supports Brody's claim -- dad's hysterical bid for authority is undermined by norms that find his actions at once hilarious and terrifying.
A French father would simply have said non, and if that didn't work he would have crushed the laptop using only his vagina.
I'm just saying, when Hawaii doesn't feel like getting dressed and is running around and giggling her head off, my most baritone commanding NON would be toothless without some sort of implied consequence.
What does it mean to internalize authority on the grounds of consideration for others?
The Dead Kennedys sang about the suede denim secret police. Northern California orthodoxy.
40, 43: Yes, shocking, I am occasionally uppity enough to get pissed off by completely gratuitous insults. What can I tell you, topsy-turvy world these days.
Further to 42:
This, on the other hand
France is a nation of nuanced psychology and exquisite sensation; the sophistication of French art, the delight of French conversation, the pleasure of French food, the allure of French fashion, the sublimity of French urbanity, the perceptive power of French criticism, the suavity of French seduction--all these arise from the unity of a society that fosters, from the earliest age, a constant assessment of a barrage of coded social messages on pain of--well, of pain
is just bullshit. There's little I hate more than attempts to say some crappy piece of tyranny leads to something special and beautiful that you can't measure and only a select few can appreciate, and if you can't see what will be lost by moving to an egalitarian society you have the soul of a pig.
55: This may be a YMMV thing -- probably is, most things are. But I really never got much mileage at all out of timeouts or similar punishments: we did, some, but it never seemed as if wanting to avoid punishment was driving obedience. (Can't tell, it might have been, but it just never seemed that way.) Body language and voice (and sometimes physical compulsion: "Sit down and put your shoes on." [Noncompliance] [I go, pick up kid, put kid on couch, hand kid shoes]. Not punitive, but physical) were much more effective.
What does it mean to internalize authority on the grounds of consideration for others?
See Rawls, John, Theory of Justice
But I think he is wrong. The difference is based on different Revolutions, and the different foundational documents, and the source of sovereignty. Rawl's System of Justice versus the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Why do Americans have Rights? Because we took a vote, or can take a vote, according to previously agreed procedures blah blah. This is in our bones, that authority and sovereignty are conditional, and must be justified.
The French said the People are Sovereign. Why are the People Sovereign, and can such a thing work? Guillotine is that way, dude.
where the French internalize authority on the grounds of authority
When you think you have to explain why, you lose the Right to Command. Cesar is not Alpha because he is human and they are dogs.
There are a lot more neo-Nazi skinheads in France than there are here. So it can't be all bon-bons and aced exams.
For extra credit, use Druckerman-via-Brody to explain parkour.
France is a nation of nuanced psychology and exquisite sensation....
I have met French people and thought them quite nice, but this is insane. Buying those Tintin books (Belgian, anyway) for your sprogs won't make you thin, Slate readers!
62: No, Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than I do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
I dunno. Jammies and I have different parenting styles for 2 year olds. I'm having a hard time juggling that interior monologue, which involves a lot of self-discipline to just hush up, with this conversation. I think I should go jogging now.
This thread is uncivil, incoherent and not much fun (except for LB's response in 32 to 31), and is likely to head even further downhill under the weight of dumb stereotypes.
Instead I want heebie to do a series of "hateful thread" slice-of-life comments.
61: There are a lot more neo-Nazi skinheads in France than there are here
Are there really? I always thought it was the other way around.
except for LB's response in 32 to 31
Also 65. Heebie's fired; I want LB to write the hateful thread comments.
67:Indeed
Let's talk about the Japanese, with which we have much more in common.
Or why our Democratic Representatives are begging Republicans to let them cut taxes and just add the cost to the deficit (see Digby)
Servile fucking Americans.
68: that is what i hear from correspondents. A colleague was in Nantes? Nice? Someplace like that, last summer and had to be diverted to avoid the thousands-strong neo-Nazi-in-support-of-LePen-and-against-immigrants demo that had taken over a section of the city. I have never seen more than a dozen neo-Nazis gathered in public here. Even when they have barn shows of Nazi bands, they rarely get more than a couple hundred to show up on private property in the sticks.
exactly the sort of students for whose talent and character the suppler American-style system is made.
Say what?
The hateful thread sits on a rose-colored toile sofa. The hateful thread's not so bad, although self-disparaging about her weight.
Belgian, you racist!
1. I mentioned that.
2. All foreigners are pretty much the same. Second Amendment! Coors Light! Silver Bullet! Gold standard! USA!
74: And the shopkeepers or whoever told her that this was unusual. My understanding is that there are always A LOT of neo-Nazis in Marseilles, but this was someplace that people thought was safer from that kind of action.
59 is pretty close, but has too many consequentialist undertones.
The Right to Command may rarely include the Right to Compel, but never includes the Right to Punish. We ain't God.
Are there really? I always thought it was the other way around.
Dude, do you know anything about Europe at all?
The hateful thread loathes the little shit next door, who is only four.
74, 78: Hmmm. I wonder if anyone's attempted a systematic comparison of the size of white supremacist movements in Europe and America.
(The hateful thread retaliates to abandonment by visiting her spouse's shoes and making all the laces uneven.)
80: I guess maybe not. The impression I had of France was that the skinhead movement as such largely gave way to the "casuals" movement some time ago and was assimilated to the broader-based xenophobic sentiment mobilized by the likes of Le Pen. But that could be wrong.
The SPLC is probably better qualified to say, but there must be some distinctions* between an actual Neo-Nazi and a garden-variety member of the right-wing rabble.
* About which I do not wish to be informed in gruesome, depressing detail.
Yeah, notice how when I just disagreed with you I didn't also try to imply you're some kind of fucking cretin? See if you can work on that.
Well, now you're even.
Did Castock really get oudemia and essear to leave the thread just by being a giant, random baby? That's a skill, I guess.
I really never got much mileage at all out of timeouts or similar punishments
It was the same with our kids. Fear of punishment worked, but not nearly as well as positive reinforcement, modeling, and immediate (but brief, and the answer may be "No" with an explanation why the answer is "No") attention.
With all that said, offspring number two did have tantrums, and offsprings 1, 3, and 4 didn't, so kids do vary.
90.last: True. There are few things more obnoxious than someone with temperamentally calm, pleasant kids attributing good behavior to awesome parenting rather than luck. Sally and Newt are both pleasant to be around (I think) but there's a fair shot they would have been like that as junior members of the Seeone wolf pack.
a giant, random baby
Always nice to see Sifu enjoying the scenery from the largest of glass mansions.
I would have a lot easier time taking that Slate article seriously if it didn't run through all those cutesy euphemisms for vagina. I rolled my eyes with every one.
That said, yay for pelvic floor exercises! Figuring out how to lock down all those muscles makes a lot of the crazier balance poses in yoga possible.
Oh yeah, it's February. Some of you folks have been cooped up inside looking out a gray skies for a while now. I remember that.
We had a very mild winter here. Europe has the cold weather.
Let me guess, it's 79 and sunny, with a couple of ten-minute rain showers expected in the hot part of the afternoon?
I never liked you.
Sally and Newt are both pleasant to be around (I think) but there's a fair shot they would have been like that as junior members of the Seeone wolf pack.
One shed a nostalgic tear at the sound of Jessica Chastain reading The Jungle Book in Tree of Life, for childhood reasons.
96: Actually kind of crummy and gray, with occasional sprinkles. Feels a bit like Seattle in July. But it was nice yesterday probably will be tomorrow.
I begin to find these "French women [parents/poodles/etc] do it better" essays somewhat annoying. Don't apologize, American parents! Your parenting practices are the stuff of superior sitcoms.
Also, I'm a bit surprised by the assumption that it's all the parents, given the state-funded nursery system in France (where care can begin at about three months old or something like that). Maybe French parents can be more calm about it all because they're not the ones doing the everyday work of discipline and socialization (or, they're not doing it alone, in any case)?
OT: Can anyone recommend, from personal experience or nearby observation of a not-driven-mad colleague, a project management application for Macs? I'd like something that can natively produce critical paths, Gantt charts, other stuff that looks like that without making me reach for a firearm the way that Microsoft Excel's jury-rigged versions do.
92: wait, my feelings get hurt super easily and I'm terrible to argue with because I have no idea how little I know and will run any argument into the sordid, boring ground of ad hominem bitching when it becomes clear that I have no idea what I'm talking about, which is always? And I have no ability to moderate my tone so I lay into people who are pretty much nice and interesting and somehow never get into bitch-fights with other commenters? Dag! I am the glue to your rubber, sir. Well played. And now you're sniping at somebody comfortable operating at your own level of internet-dickishness! A great success indeed.
Ahaha! As if! I am enjoying the company of an actual, charming baby for O's first bday! Ridiculously perfect pink cupcakes in effect!
100: Haven't seen it but want to, even though it clogged traffic in my neighborhood for a while and the author's stepbrother is on the strange and obnoxious side.
102: my feelings get hurt super easily and I'm terrible to argue with because I have no idea how little I know . . . I have no idea what I'm talking about . . . always . . . And I have no ability to moderate my tone
See, it's a beautiful thing when failed sarcasm becomes unwitting self-revelation.
Maybe when we have police tanks on every streetcorner, the children will be more polite.
105: Dude, come *on*. If you're gonna be bitchy, at least be more entertaining. If I wanted this level of slapfight I'd be over at Re/dst/ate or something.
Sorry, just at the moment I'm too busy being entertained. There really isn't anything more than that to say to 102.
108: Are you, like, bound and determined to run through the Troll's Handbook? Lemme guess, next you're going to tell us that this was just a social experiment?
Further to 104: just watched the trailer and can report that the goat in the yard of George Clooney's house actually does live there. George, not so much.
Europe has the cold weather.
They're not the only ones.
Hey, I'm not the one following Sifu around to bitch incessantly at him several months after I had the temerity to disagree with Blume and question his comedic judgment (which was exactly when all the bullshit on the Tweety front started). If you want to complain that I'm a "troll" that's up to you, but don't expect it to impress me.
(112 to 109. I'll leave you crazy kids to it.)
Has this already been posted here? The central anecdote definitely falls into the too-perfect-to-be-true category, but the overall slant is interesting.
How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did.
Eh. We just spent three weeks on vacation with my French cousins and their babies (ages 1, 3, 9 and 12). Using them to stand in for all French people, I will say that there were some differences in child-rearing that made my sister and I widen our eyes in shock. Some of them could be explained with that article's notion of "cadre". But they weren't anything I would adopt.
114: I haven't read that article, but I did read Felix Salmon's related piece."
I've been thinking a bunch about online privacy lately and mostly coming to the conclusion that (a) my internal preferences about appropriate privacy aren't based on any rigorous thought (b) I want to ask the mineshaft at some point for help clarifying my thoughts.
The thing that bugs me about this genre of article are lines like this:
But these public services don't explain all of the differences. . . yes, let's just ignore any discussion of how these public services, which are actually quantifiable and clearly mutable, could be effecting outcomes and go straight to a neurotic, handwavy, unmempirical, narrowly applicable discussion that we can spend hours and hours on rather than face up to the fact that we refuse to actually take care of our society in any socioeconomically reasonable way.
99: Your parenting practices are the stuff of superior sitcoms.
Does France even own a TV?
Earlier today, in the depths of my feverish and nauseated delirium, I was musing that so much of The Cosby Show was deeply anxious about class. Which is hardly shocking, I believe I've seen interviews with Bill Cosby where he talks about his desire to depict a middle-class African-American family as fairly crucial to his conception of the show. But especially when you look at some of the supporting characters (Vanessa's fiance/husband, the squirrelly old handyman, Vanessa's Puerto Rican friend who talked really fast) it seems like a lot of what was going on was some pretty strict policing of lines of class demarcation. Then too, the whole thing with Theo being kind of a fuck-up in school and the contrast with his really clever friends and his ne'er-do-well friend 'Roach', provided a lot of fodder for the Huxtables to lay down the law about what was appropriate UMC behavior and what was not. I don't really know where I'm going with this. Probably get a couple of good papers out of it.
.
I think "I'll leave you crazy kids to it" is in Chapter 8 of the Troll Handbook, entitled "The Flounce."
110: I think it was in some friends' yard (it's a film that in the end is going to leave but a small residue in my brain). And actually it didn't suck that bad, just rather disappointing in a different way that I had expected it to be rather disappointing.
Does France even own a TV?
Japan has lots of TV's!
Kotsko had a funny post about Eurocentrism this week, in which I think he concluded that we need to read our White Male Euros against the grain. And David Graeber writes about Others!
Flounce would be a superior name for Bounce.
106: The Army police came to visit me, 'twas in the early hours, with Saracens and Saladins and Ferret armoured cars, they thought they had me cornered, but I gave them all a fright, with the armour-piercing bullets of my little Armalite!
111: They're not the only ones.
Is there some relatively unique aspect of your current location that you are trying to subtly make us aware of for the umpteenth time?
125: The hateful thread really hates the innocent.
123: Or they could just call it "Sissy Bounce"
Nobody's at work right now, right?
Is there some relatively unique aspect of your current location that you are trying to subtly make us aware of for the umpteenth time?
Hey, I haven't said anything about the weather in a while. Mostly because it's actually been pretty moderate lately, but still.
Anyway, just wait until summer when I won't be able to shut up about the long days.
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This is just a note to say that Castock should not leave or be driven off.
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Why wouldn't it be? That seems like a perfectly appropriate use of the signs.
It's not really off-topic (or any more off-topic than what prompted it).
Least compelling meta-discussion evar.
And to think: We could be talking about the class politics of The Cosby Show! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
That's why it's not prefaced by "OT:", neb! (she thundered)
Just lay off Castock. LC is an honorable member of the 'tariat; get over it and get off it. That is all.
(a) the whole idea of the pause/play symbols was that they're used for otherwise off-topic things;
(b) while I don't think Sifu acted well in his reaction to LC in this thread, he is not (here!) being persecuted, and his reaction to oudemia was bizarre.
121: I just figure I ought to see it because it's supposed to be decent and at worst I get to quibble with its portrayal of a world I know reasonably well. But my wife doesn't much want to, having grown up in a more vexed relationship with that world.
135:Ah well, records are made to be broken, they say
138(a): To be honest, I initially wrote 131 without the symbols, then added them in order to indicate that I didn't want to fight about it.
138(b): LC was being a little bitch to oudemia, but it's not as though occasional little bitchiness or downright pissed-offedness is out of bounds around here. Sifu has a bug up his butt. He should cut it out, if you ask me.
139 -- you should definitely see it and report back. I don't think it's a great movie, but it's a nice small film and definitely doesn't "suck" in any blatant way, except perhaps IMO in the resolution of the plot (leaving aside the accuracy of its portrayal of the Hawaii aristocracy, which I'm not qualified to judge).
I should note that I am very much not part of that world, just have lived in proximity to it for some time and know a fair number of people who are part of it.
I endorse 142, by and large. It's a tender film about love and death, with an unfortunate narrow field of policy options in re the larger plot. Clooney as actor rather than Clooney as star is interesting. Among my year's best, second tier.
99: YES no f'ing kidding. Exactly what I thought. Did you happen to read the NYer profile of the French liberal feminist... rats, I can't remember her name... from a couple of months ago? Did anyone read that? I should find it. It was eye-opening.
103: Happy birthday to O! Little, uh, keyaki is almost six months old, and we're finally starting to accept that she will in fact grow up and not forever remain a small, warm, cuddly shriek with a fermata on top.
paywalled, but here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/25/110725fa_fact_kramer
then added them in order to indicate that I didn't want to fight about it
Somewhere, ogged sheds a single tear.
146.1: I read that article! Yeah, she didn't come off well at all.
several months after I had the temerity to disagree with Blume
I don't want to engage in whatever fight is going on, but I do want to say I have no idea what this is referring to.
150: me neither! What did you do to him?
A good memory is the most essential tool of anyone wishing to engage in successful feuding.
Myself, I love Castock like a sister (or a brother, come to think. I'm not sure if the comparison is to the speaker or the spoken-of) but he undeniably gets in his fair share of tiffs, kerfuffles, and brouhahas. Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing to get particularly exercised over on any particular occasion.
Nothing wrong with that, but also nothing to get particularly exercised over on any particular occasion FUCK YOU CLOWN.
Ahhhh I know my dyspepticism boring'd up the blog, and apologize to most people for that. And of course the proximal cause of my frustration is not his being a jerk to oudemia (although who does that?). Said cause(s) isn't (aren't) what he thinks it (they) is (are), however (on the other hand).
I approve of vicious, pointless personal attacks on the blog based on imaginary resentments, so long as they're followed by making up and continuing to procrastinate by wasting time here, so I support both sides.
154: Whatever the causes are, don't be an asshole, and don't engage in a campaign to drive him off the blog, right? Castock makes his own decisions, obviously, but an unrelenting attack on your part is not cool.
154: But come on, Sifu, why aren't you engaging with his arguments?
So what's the article that Josh and lurid keyaki are talking about?
parsimon I'm pretty sure I posted a total of two comments in this thread before he flounced. I'm glad you hold regard my commenting blitzkrieg as such an unstoppable force, but I have not yet begun (have no intention to begin) to wage.
I would say something interesting but I was in meetings all day, and thus have been rendered deeply, thoroughly boring. Did you know that new video projectors have longer lamp life, but sometimes at the cost of accurate color reproduction? True!
"I'm glad you hold regard"? Way to edit, Rommel.
158: Something about an elegant looking older woman, I think.
147 to 158. I was actually a bit surprised by how sympathetic I found her (not terribly sympathetic, in absolute terms).
158: The one about Elisabeth Badinter, I assume?
An elegant looking older woman who spells her name wrong.
Campaign to drive him off the blog? Wha'd I miss here?
I learned about this elegant (much, much) older woman today. Apparently she just got a new grant (at 93) to keep researching. The person describing her (who is probably closer to the ev psych view of the universe than most people here would be comfortable with) was just aghast, not about how sharp she still was (a non-trivial number of people who make it to that age are still all there, cognitively, he said), but about how fast she was. She still talked incredibly fast, and, per this dude, if you talked to her about your research you should be ready for intensely probing questions. I got the strong sense that he'd be really interested in getting a better look at her brain.
don't be an asshole
Now *I'm* shedding a single tear.
O, El día nacional de dolor en la parte inferior.
Josh, I don't understand your tear-shedding comments at all.
I feel like there are sometimes asymmetries in when certain people perceive certain other people to have transgressed the "don't be an asshole" suggestion.
Todo el mundo entero tiene el espíritu del día.
Goddamn am I tired of airplanes. And hotels. Economy Plus needs a few more pluses.
I was accused of being too quiet earlier so I will spam this thread with comments to make up for it. Still hoping the seat next to me will go unoccupied.
135: If we were French the children wouldn't be annoying the grownups with their tantrums.
Cosma's recent post about power laws amuses me.
Damn, seat is filled. By a small person, at least.
172: This has never been a "one big happy family" kind of a place. I won't say that it thrives on conflict, but we've certainly never shied away from it either. (That's one of the things I always appreciated about ogged.)
179.1: oh, me too! And the science article he linked is quite cheerfully succinct.
179: I did this to a dude hoping to have his economy plus row to himself, and O screamed and screamed. I was totally abject and felt terrible. It was the first time he'd done that!
If you put your seat back, you will be the asshole.
182: Your parenting is clearly insufficiently French.
180: Ah. Sure, I know that (quite well). I don't expect one big happy family. Nonetheless I remember past feuds that became incessant drives that drove people off the blog. Hence my comments here.
184: I said "tais-toi!" with great authority, I'll have you know.
Nonetheless I remember past feuds that became incessant drives that drove people off the blog
Let's list them! Then bring the people back to reminisce!
On a recent* flight, the woman seated behind me swapped seats with her young kid and then told me that I should feel free to recline. I offered her one of my Xanax in thanks. She declined, the uppity bitch. But really, I was very grateful.
Telling this story reminds me that I have to fly to Madison, WI next month. I suspect that large jets don't fly into (I forget the name) airport. I suppose I can fly into Chicago, rent a car, and drive up to Cheesehead U.
* Not very recent.
||
I would like to complain-slash-sort-of-ask-for-advice. I am having extended-family drama that is super stressing me out: my uncle is basically, probably, drinking himself to death.
My uncle has had some longstanding, minor*, mental health issues. Untreated. Probably something on the order of OCD or some similar anxiety disorder. Whatever. He decided awhile ago that he would quit his job and move back in with his dad (my grandpa) to allow my grandpa to stay in his house rather than move into assisted living. Granddad is more or less fine, just old, with increasingly problematic minor ailments attendant with age.
Anyway, Uncle quit his job last August. He was supposed to head to Grandpa's house soon after, but ended up postponing that off and on for months. Then in November he (uncle) had a total meltdown, ended up in the ER for pneumonia and dehydration and DTs and a ruptured esophogas and et cetera. He had apparently been drinking ~3 bottles of wine a day for an unknown period of time. In my opinion, in an attempt to calm himself down. (he has consistently refused to see a therapist or psychiatrist or get any other anxiety reducing treatment).
Then he got out of the hospital and went to take care of my granddad. Except he didn't actually get any treatment. He maybe quit drinking for a while? But whatever underlying thing was there, is still there. Meanwhile I am staying in the uncle's apartment, iwhile teaching/looking for a place. So Uncle and I have been sporadically in touch about logistics.
So, my mom emailed me today that the uncle is obviously drinking again. And not actually taking care of my grandpa at all. Now it looks like there is going to be some kind of stupid big family showdown, where some of the siblings (my mom, her sister, my other uncle) insist that the crazy drunk uncle goes to rehab or back to DC or something. And then I guess granddad goes to assisted living.
I feel totally helpless and guilt ridden and stressed out, like I should be doing something to help fix things, but I have no idea what to do. So instead I'm drinking whiskey and watching tv. Woo!
If anyone has any input I'd be glad to hear it. Otherwise, I'm also pretty glad to read arguments about French people or whatever.
*as far as anyone could tell at the time anyway.
Oh dear, 190 was intended as a follow-up to 188. But now I've started a fight with that dyke, Roosevelt. I hope I can drive her off the blog.
187: Then bring the people back to reminisce!
At least one of them isn't able to come back, so that wouldn't work.
Milwaukee's a lot closer, there's a shuttle. Or drive.
Has anyone from AA tried talking to the uncle? They do that, sometimes that works, especially if he's tried to stop before. Good luck, sounds difficult.
194: Barba Streisand killed a guy once.
192: Are you implying that 189 is NOT a great story? I'm never speaking to you again.
195: true, but I can fly direct from here* to Chicago.
* Not really here.
198: wait, you're back? Neb told me you were dead. And Josh shed a single tear at the news of your passing.
189: If uncle has rupturing esophageal varicies he's probably in the latter and nasty stages of liver failure and if he's drinking Dr. Oops won't do a transplant. There is nothing you can do except possibly add your weight to the idea of assisted living for Grandpa and whatever help Uncle will accept.
Buying yourself a ticket for a guilt trip won't get you to Disneyland anyway so don't bother.
198 is an anonimity mistake I guess. Eh. I don't think I actually care very much but if a boss poster would like to fix it someday, that would be very nice.
Mis condolencias. Yo no tengo ninguna idea sobre cómo puede arreglar eso.
When I found out that I wasn't allowed to construct small enclosures on my property, I tore a single shed. Down.
Professor Roosevelt should pretty much do her best not to feel guilty, and should as much as possible leave the showdown to the older generation. You'll get your turn for such things!
Dumbasses, this is all cute and all, but you'll recall that pdf23ds was ushered outta here with the door hitting him on the ass on the way out, and he's dead, so chill out with the guffaws.
My sense of humor is impaired this evening. I'll be off.
SWA hits MKE, doesn't show on aggregated travel sites. But you know your airports. Don't stop at the casino from Chicago, the sandwiches aren't that great.
I … don't recall that, actually, but I could well just not have been paying attention.
At least one of them isn't able to come back, so that wouldn't work.
That's kind of low, don't you think?
206: I don't know who that is, but I accept full responsibility for that person's death.
I'm reasonably sure parsimon was talking specifically to me.
210: It was. I thought it was low to joke about inviting people who've been beaten up here back to reminisce.
Let's let it go.
201 is right, of course. 201.2 is the important point for ER.
She said "dumbasses", and everyone knows I answer to that.
213: yes, let's. Now that you've accused people of having blood on their hands for making internet fun of the (definitely loopy) ideas of a person who later turned out to be seriously mentally ill, and who killed himself. Let's just sweep that right under the rug.
210: It was. I thought it was low to joke about inviting people who've been beaten up here back to reminisce.
Yeah, because people were obviously cackling and thinking of pdf when they did so.
188: Having done a whole lot of permutations over the years, I honestly think it is worth it just to fly into Madison. Major airlines fly there, if not always large airplanes. However, if your layover is at O'Hare, and it is winter, and your connecting flight from Madison looks like it might even possibly be late, chances of getting stuck are excellent (because of the nature of O'Hare).
168: ok, fuck. How much of this is environmental, again? What foods am I supposed to avoid, exercise regimens to immediately adopt, places to live or not live, organs to use or remove, in order to maximize mental acuity into old age? I need a cheat sheet.
I remember people expressing bafflement at pdf23ds's futurist/transhuman talk. Some of that bafflement was dismissive, but I don't remember anyone telling him to go away or issuing ad hominem attacks.
I could be wrong though. We tend to omit the worst parts of our memories of things like that.
205 is nice to hear. I would really like it, though, if there were something magic I could do that would make everything okay again. Get on it, mineshaft! Magical solution stat, please!
It is frustrating, on top of everything else, how hard it is to have sensitive emotional discussions via email. It's really difficult to figure out how serious the issue is, or even what exactly is happening, when my only input is text and always after the fact. I don't miss being able to hear super often, but this is definitely a time when I do.
This is so like late season 1 of Gossip Girl!
220.1: I'm really quite frightened of flying, is the thing, and have a very strong preference for doing so only on large jets. I'm pretty sure that I can take a 757 both to and from O'Hare, which is a hateful airport, sure, but it's worth it to me to endure some hate on the ground for less panic while in the air.
From his blog, pdf was hurt at the blog's reactiin to some of his beliefs, but I've never seen evidence that there was any connection to his suicide. In any case, any standard that would disallow those conversations would make this a pretty boring place.
216: Now that you've accused people of having blood on their hands
I did not mean that. At all. I truly apologize for any way in which it might have seemed that I did. I was rankling at the tee-hee nature of inviting people back to reminisce, and recalling that they're actually people.
Urge, that was so not directed at Mrs. Roosevelt, for whom I don't have any great advice.
224: I like to fly Southwest because they haven't killed anybody yet. They only have 737s but those are nice planes.
The real problem with the Tweety/Castock sniping is the ratio of entertainment to meanness is off.
I shouldn't have laughed at 166, because this is about feminism and it's supposed to be humourless.
I can't get beyond the paywall, but would be interested in reading that New Yorker piece. I read one of Badinter's books years ago, I cannot recall the title. Something about mother love, and the invention thereof. I was on a 'social construction of motherhood as a means of oppressing women' kick at the time.
Comstock was wrong to address Oudemia in the manner of a professor marking an undergraduate's term paper, and Oudemia had good reason to take offense. It's not clear to me that anyone else needed to intervene, since Oudemia can take care of herself, and did so. At a certain point, after two or three or more commenters had joined the fray, it began to look like a pile-on, and a disproportionate response to Comstock's initial comment, to which Parsimon quite reasonably objected. It all looks like a wasted opportunity to me, since this thread should have been about bashing the French credulous Americans who go to France on a summer holiday and discover another form of civilization, about which they cannot help but proselytize, through earnest dispatches to their fellow barbarians in Illinois or Ohio or, okay, NYC.
Minnie's comment about class and The Cosby Show is quite interesting, but also got overlooked in the bloggy brouhaha (a French term, that: see? they really are more civilized).
Urgh. Not urge. I should just shut up now.
Por favor, diga lo que está en su cabeza.
It love that Mary Catherine is calling DS "Comstock."
Does anyone know what's happening with Moby Hick? And where is Dona Quixote? Not to mention, did someone drive off the TOS? What a loss, that.
224: There's the Van Galder bus, or whatever it is now, if you just want to sit and read for three hours. Check its schedule before you book your flight, in that case. It goes to Midway as well. Pleasant ride overall. My most vivid memory was the weekend after 9/11, when there was such a demand for buses to connect with Amtrak that we all ended up, going home for the weekend, on some kind of crazy party bus with couches and armchairs. I sat awkwardly next to an academic who was editing a paper on Vittoria Colonna and seemed terribly frightened of everything; I vowed never to become a skittish academic.
I vowed never to become a skittish academic.
I'm not skittish when I fly; I'm full-on frightened.
227: well. Loath as I am to discuss honest emotions on the internet (per 222.2 it never works right, and just makes everybody feel worse), I will say that you managed to imply exactly that, and it made (continues to make) me quite genuinely angry, as, in context, does your reminder that commenters here are "actually people".
I kind of love Mary Catherine. Actually. Maybe if I'm laughing a lot it means I'm tired, though.
235: Todo el mundo estaba de mal humor. Pero nadie puede estar de mal humor si la oye el locutor de Univision en la cabeza.
began to look like a pile-on, and a disproportionate response to Comstock's initial comment, to which Parsimon quite reasonably objected
I don't know, could it have had anything to do with how he talks to absolutely everyone who doesn't agree with him and the rather pronounced lack of dickishness of the person he went off on?
Comstock was wrong to address Oudemia in the manner of a professor marking an undergraduate's term paper, and Oudemia had good reason to take offense.
Oh dear.People thought I was offended because LS scolded me like a dumb student? This hadn't even occurred to me. For the record, my reaction to him wasn't offense and it wasn't "Oh my he just scolded me like an idiot!" It was, "Wow, you're being a defensive and humorless ass right now."
However, if your layover is at O'Hare, and it is winter, and your connecting flight from Madison looks like it might even possibly be late, chances of getting stuck are excellent (because of the nature of O'Hare).
"Never fly through Chicago" is a reasonable aphorism to live by.
I think we should all make lists of the commenters we love.
245: I was just about to claim the people I wanted on my team.
240 before seeing 239.
All I can do is apologize again, then. Some of your comments make me quite genuinely angry, but that's not the point right now.
I repeat that I did not at all, in any way, mean to suggest that anyone besides pdf himself is responsible for his death. I get upset in general when I think about him.
234: It love that Mary Catherine is calling DS "Comstock."
Are you saying his mother was a lode?
224: Doesn't the weight of the large jets make it that much less plausible that they won't just fall out of the sky?
244: I know this is true. Again, though, I'd prefer to spend a week as Tom Hanks's character from that crap movie (though in O'Hare) to suffering through even a few minutes of real terror in the air. Imagine, if you will, having several large birds roosting on your shoulders and nesting in your hair. That's exactly how I feel when I fly.
249: after sifting through all of your negatives, I'm pretty sure you're right. Crap, this is a real dilemma.
Imagine, if you will, having several large birds roosting on your shoulders and nesting in your hair. That's exactly how I feel when I fly.
Fair enough. On a related note, avoid the Aleutians.
You know a road trip might be fun, VW.
254: None of my previous ones have been.
Not linking a thing, but apropos of part of 235 and several other recent queries, I will just say that two aspects of this thread would seem to be relevant.
I somehow read that as being about a road trip to West Virginia. I should probably get some sleep.
is calling DS "Comstock."
Oh hell, I meant Castock. Jesus, where is my head!?
I'm not skittish when I fly; I'm full-on frightened.
Yeah, me too. I try to say the beads silently, so as not to alarm my fellow passengers, but I keep my eye trained on the flight attendants, always looking for signs of suppressed panic. I think flight attendants are under-appreciated, actually: they're the first responders in the unlikely (unlikely? well, so they tell us, but I never can believe them) event of a fatal catastrophe.
251: But the big ones are checked more carefully 'cause the airlines don't want high casualty numbers. Also, they bounce around less so the spilling of precious alcoholic drinks is lessened too. Go big.
258: Being a first responder in a fatal catastrophe just gets your relatives an invite to a White House ceremony. Better to skip it.
254: if you're offering to drive with me to Chicago, neb, I'm so in. I'll even cover the cost of the rental car and the gasoline. You'll have to buy your own Charleston Chews.
256: if this means what I think it means, that makes me terribly, terribly upset. Fucking hell. If you don't mind, JP, and you think it's appropriate, will you please send me an e-mail?
I worry that 256 was insufficiently specified.
Yeah, uh, JP, more than one person has been the subject of recent queries.
I'm not French, if that's what's being implied.
231: Not to interrupt the grim discussion with a minor thing, but Mary Catherine, feel free to email me if you'd still like to read the article...
To interrupt the grim discussion, I did just moments ago buy spring break plane tickets to Rome for myself and the boy, so look forward to earnest, proselytizing dispatches, barbarians. That he will be his usual model traveler can of course be chalked up entirely to my brilliant parenting.
That he will be his usual model traveler can of course be chalked up entirely to my brilliant parenting. Ari slipping him a Xanax from a row ahead.
You're coming to Rome with us? Fantastic. You will never have eaten (or drunk) so well.
Catching up, holy fucking shit at 206.
277: we've covered this. Bygones!
I got stuck at ORD on the way to Madison recently. Ari should drive from there.
At a minimum, he should have a rental car reserved.
279 -- I think they mean the other Rome.
I think they mean the other Rome.
Georgia or New York?
283: Whoa. That's a mighty slick website for such manly men who protest so much about the manly masculinity of the soap they're selling.
JP, get back here!
Seriously! agh.
283! Hooyah! (and variant spellings).
Murder, marriage, dating, cold brewed ice tea -- is there anything commenting can't do?
Murder, marriage, dating, cold brewed ice tea -- is there anything commenting can't do?
It can't make you a real man. For that you need to buy a special kind of soap.
I will say this about French children: they would never drop into a thread, seriously imply that someone had killed themselves, and then bugger off leaving everyone gobsmacked and head-scratching.
I prefer to think that JP is saying that a certain commenter has become an American grandparent and is uncooperative.
Surely some kind of backchannel discussion is underway? In the meantime, I am going to turn off internet access so I can finally grade this last goddamn paper read Cosma's post about power laws.
re: 273
Before I went I'd read some dismissive things about Rome, but ended up thinking it was great. I'd take Rome over Paris any day of the week. We were there in spring, too, and the weather and general vibe was excellent.
290: yeah. it is the case that the ToS has disappeared rather than that we have become ninja-expert editors, and naturally we are all a bit concerned about him, but I don't know any terrible news about him.
it is really egregiously unfair to accuse sifu of killing pdf23ds just because lord castock decided to be a dick to oudemia and then flounce about blaming everything on feuds no one else even remembers. honestly. really beyond the pale I think. I imagine sifu would a) be perfectly OK with being accused of trollery or bullying (he might defend himself, but he wouldn't retire to a fainting couch) but also b) would be perfectly happy if, say, strasmangelo jones were to return to the blog and then get in fights with him about procedural liberalism. nobody's a fucking murderer around here. christ.
lord castock is also a grown man and perfectly capable of surviving a situation in which two--or even three!!--people say sarcastic things about him on a blog's comments thread. he doesn't even need von wafer to send him some xanax. he is fully capable of making sarcastic remarks right back. if I'm freaking out about a thread and can't deal with things people are saying I'll usually say "aaagh I can't deal with this I am freaking the fuck out like a giant baby!" people generally back off at that point, since they don't really care all that much, and it seems like I'm losing my shit. so, in my experience, if it's getting genuinely painful, you can tell people that you are losing it and ask them to please shut up, and they usually will. because hey, where's their nickel in it? what with them not being murderers and everything.
It always seems like the worst blog fights come from people feeling they have to step in and defend/protect/assert the rights of someone else. You don't have to do it! Nobody gives a shit! People can argue back if they want, or not!
I think the correct shorthand for this advice should be "mind your own asshole" but I'm open to suggestions.
I presume there is some kind of complex back-channel discussion going on, because I've just read the whole thread and I feel like I watched a football match without being able to see the ball. What did Castock take exception to again? What's with the Spanish Moby Dick? Has something been edited?
It always seems like the worst blog fights come from people feeling they have to step in and defend/protect/assert the rights of someone else.
+1 to Palaeosteak Copyright McCrossfit, right there.
On France, well, I won't even bother reading the article, but I will point out that in general American thumbsucker pieces about "France" usually mean "Paris and very restricted circles of it at that".
No, nothing's been edited, and the thread was just as confusing in real time as it is now. There may be some back-channel discussion going on that sheds light on the confusion, but if so I'm not a party to it.
||
Ok, a distraction for those still awake: I am making myself completely miserable arguing with a friend (the argument has its own difficult contours) about a past relationship of mine, in which I beat up my ex. Friend says I need to forgive myself for it. Is it possible to forgive yourself for such a thing? So far, I can't do it. The ex forgave me and then, I think, un-forgave me after thinking harder about it, but I haven't talked to him in almost a decade. I would say that about four times a year I consider killing myself, or trying to get myself arrested for the past crimes, or giving every penny I earn to my ex and his family, or any number of other non-doable things. I'm not so much wondering if I'm psychologically capable of getting over it -- let's assume I am, with proper treatment -- but: is it morally acceptable for me to go unpunished forever for repeatedly battering an innocent person? Don't I need to pay?
|>
Well, how badly did you beat them up? But generally:
is it morally acceptable for me to go unpunished forever for repeatedly battering an innocent person?
Yes. But don't do it again, ok?
Don't I need to pay?
No. But, again, no more of that!
This has been another episode of Ask a Consequentialist. Then again, I'm on the record of expressing no guilt about downloading copies of copyrighted works without a license, so take the advice with a grain of salt.
Well, how badly did you beat them up?
Minor bruises at worst. Pain and fear. I have a vividly remembered laundry list of all the culpable things I did. For instance: I threw a shoe in anger. The shoe broke two panes of window glass. Somehow, over time, a bird flew in the broken window, got trapped, and died. I like to think that, had I been living in the house at the time, I would have noticed it and freed it.
But don't do it again, ok?
It's hard to imagine ever doing it again.
I have never seen more than a dozen neo-Nazis gathered in public here. Even when they have barn shows of Nazi bands, they rarely get more than a couple hundred to show up on private property in the sticks.
I think that's probably because they all find fulfilling careers as 0317s in the Marine Corps.
It's hard to imagine ever doing it again.
Well, then. Go, and sin no more. It doesn't seem like the guilt is doing anybody any good--not you, not your ex, not anyone who might be helped by you being a more healthy and helpful human being. Donate an extra 5% of your income for the next few years to, I don't know, de-worming or something.
Minor bruises at worst. Pain and fear.
There's no way to take that back, and there're no cosmic scales out there that can be balanced--not by your actions, not by being forgiven. Guilt and punishment are sensible insofar as they deter future malfeasance, and permit society to ritualize the reintegration of the punished wrongdoer back into the community; in this case, neither is relevant. The guilt is just fucking you up, and it doesn't sound like your ex has any real interest in helping you work through this (nor do they owe it to you). So: let it go. Try to tell yourself that it's part of a narrative of sin and redemption, of learning from your mistakes and becoming better. Read lots of high-quality fiction that trades in such stories.
256: Sorry*, I absolutely forgot that there had been a truly grim "aspect" to the discussion in this thread that it may have seemed that my comment was hinting at. Nothing like that. I would not have been so stupidly coy if I had thought it through. Comment was referring to a much smaller "blog dynamics" item that transpired last year and involved someone VW mentioned in 235, and who I noticed had happened to be asked after several times recently Not ToS. It was stupid (and somewhat hateful!) for me to even bring it up . And since "who drove off whom" discussions are always so fruitful, I will simply mention that one of the aspects of this thread that was relevant was "french" and the other was blog-commenting personnel related. The connecting of dots is left as an exercise for the curious, or they can e-mail me, or it will be sussed out in subsequent discussion. So many possibilities to the world.
*I did not intend to flounce off leave abruptly like that; I had had a long day plus a pretty tiring session at the gym last night (workouts, hooray!), and had simply gone upstairs with the intention of coming right back down and reëngaging with the sometimes interesting arrays of dots on my computer screen but instead fell asleep. Certainly did not mean to be so dramatic (I recall having the fleeting thought as I lay down that I had left things hanging, but the sandman triumphed).
buh whuh? we drove away...fleur? why? we all love fleur? because she was sleeping with donaquixote? I'm confused.
edith wilson, you should channel your self-destructive blaming energy into doing something genuinely useful for someone else. that's not likely to be your ex, who probably doesn't want to hear from you. why don't you volunteer at a shelter, or answer phones at a hotline, or something along those lines. you can't precisely make it up to him and you can't line up the cosmic scales completely, but you can do your best by being a good, kind person today.
in AA you need to make "amends" to people whom you've harmed, and sometimes you can't find them or there's some other reason you can't give them a formal apology, or more is needed. then you need to make "living amends." this involves doing your best to be a good person, and working particularly hard in the areas in which you were weak before. as I say, helping people who have been abused might make you feel better too. and you do need to forgive yourself; you're not uniquely monstrous and this is not a valid peg to hang suicide on. you fucked up badly and now you're doing you're best you can to make it better, and you will never, ever let yourself make those mistakes again. if one of your good friends told you she had done something like this and truly, deeply regretted it you wouldn't tell her to go snack on a .45. you'd try to bring herself around to being gentle to herself again. and I can see why the detail of the bird is eating away at your brain but just let it go. you're going to be OK.
stormcrow, you either need to be more 'splainey or email me at realfirstname.reallastname@gmail.com, cuz I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
306: And now having read the intervening comments. Jesus, apologies again and let me repeat, NOTHING LIKE THAT*! And despite my manifestly obvious poor commenting impulse control, I would like to think** that I would never be so coy about someone's actual death and will promise to not ever be so in the future.
All of that said, I was not really internalizing the stupid fucking subthread on the death--and to pile on, it was most certainly a very stupid fucking tangent***. But as a wise man once said, this thread has all kinds of hateful.
*If a fpp wants to add a [NO ONE DIED, see 306] note to my 256, I'm fine with that.
**Of course I would like to think lots of things. But cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies and all that.
***Says the guy caught indulging in a merely pretty stupid fucking tangent.
307.1: Confusion is my super-power.
Was going to offer something like 307.2 as advice to Edith. If you wish to give money, give it to a relevant charity.
I have no actual knowledge, but I believe JP to be saying that DQ is not commenting here partially because of a conversation during the DSK thing where she went off, rather broadly, on French men as harassy gropers, and a bunch of people took extended exception.
I don't know that this is true, but I don't know that it isn't.
And parsimon, that was a really filthy thing to say. If you're going to be loosely claiming that 'we' drove pdf off the blog and then he killed himself, that's pretty fucking intense, and you shouldn't say it unless you mean it (and I don't see how you could, truthfully, mean it.)
312.1,2. Yes, exactly.
312.3: And yes to this.
Sorry, I was so shocked by what parsimon said that I missed her subsequent apologies; I would have softened that last if I'd seen them. But still, Jesus, parse.
Flight Attendants are your best hope of surviving any crash that has survivors. In the winter of 1991-2, a big jet went down at JFK, and was a fireball 90 seconds after landing. No deaths, minimal injuries: the cabin crew cleared a full plane in just under a minute. I was paying attention because it was TWA, and when I saw it on the news I didn't know whether it was Mom until I called home.
297: So one vote against a multicultural me.
146: a small, warm, cuddly shriek with a fermata on top.
A fermata is a musical pause mark. I think you mean a fontanel. Unless your baby has an odd birthmark or something.
Hah. I boggled at that one, but didn't connect it to fontanel -- I thought it was some complicated musical joke about when the shrieking stopped.
You slip Spanish Moby Hick into someone's drink if you want them to promiscuously crack one-liners.
Also referred to as a Hicky Finn.
French babies are better because they have fedoras on top.
And by fedora I actually mean beret but it;'s spelled wrong.
I thought it was some complicated musical joke about when the shrieking stopped.
I think it was meant to suggest that the shrieking is protracted. Wikipedia says:
A fermata (also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is an element of musical notation indicating that the note should be sustained for longer than its note value would indicate.
I'm not an expert or anything, but I was in middle school orchestra and can testify to "goes on for a really long time" as a common understanding of what a fermata does.
[cross-posted at Standpipe's]
Also I would like to say that I don't normally read unfogged before 8:00 in the morning but I checked in specifically for more details about the hinted-at commenter suicide. Jesus, JP.
the hinted-at commenter suicide. Jesus, JP.
Fuck you L. I did not hint at any fucking commenter suicide.
The hateful thread was hateful.
I have a bad cold and I blame this thread. I can't make myself go to work because of the muscle-hurt.
331: No thanks to you I'm sure.
300: If you've sincerely apologized and offered to make reasonable amends three times then you are automatically forgiven.
If your ex wants no further contact, then that is the desired amends (since anything else should have been requested before an end to contact), and insofar as you avoid further contact (and also don't repeat the wrong actions) you are forgiven.
Alameida is probably right, but you should really be performing service when and because it's the right thing to do, not for your own benefit.
And since 325 was an intemperate kneejerk defensive reaction on my part and clearly not in the spirit of elevated blog discourse, I will reiterate that the weird-ass flyer about a commenter's suicide had not lodged in my brain as a salient feature of the thread (unlike "driving off" in general) when I wrote my comment, and I am quite sorry to have inadvertently caused some bad moments for folks.
I would be tempted to go on to say that my defensiveness is due in part to my feeling a bit hurt that people would think I "hint at" something like that, but long hard years on the internet have taught me that if you are down to explaining your perception of what other people's perception of you should be, you have already lost. So I won't. That and the fact that I am in fact often fairly flippant about otherwise serious matters. So ugly shoes that fit, I'll wear them.
+would and other assorted typos and poor wording.
Off to work! It looks to be a good day to die turn the wheels of capitalism.
Edith, I'm sorry you're suffering. I think you've gotten a lot of good advice. I'll just say that one thing I've picked up from recent meldowns over Hu/go Schwy/zer is that there are people who feel a need for victim-support spaces to exclude anyone who's ever participated in being on the other end of the dynamic, so I would tentatively advise against direct service there if you think it would make others uncomfortable, not that I think you would or should or would need to disclose.
We've all done things that we're ashamed of and that you're hard on yourself about it seems like a good sign that you've learned and grown and are a moral person. I don't know that I really think anything is unforgivable and I'm against the death penalty, for whatever that's worth.
328: If your muscles ache, it's almost certainly the flu, not a cold. Not that the distinction really makes much of a difference to you, except insofar as now you're less likely to get sick again if/when the flu comes back around later in the season.
I'm working hard to avoid spreading cold germs to a bus full of complete strangers. I'm going to count that as my good deed for the week.
335.last: I wouldn't feel bad at all that people would think you'd say something like that: seriously, I, in general, wouldn't ever think you'd say something like that, but I did this time, because I just failed to see any other reading. Now that you explain what you were thinking, I understand, but it simply didn't occur to me.
In general, and not to you specifically, I think speaking elliptically is mostly a terrible idea if there are any actual feelings in play. Kidding around, it's fun. If it's googleproofing, there are better ways to do it. A semi-coded message to one or two people who will get it? I suppose that could work, but it's often obnoxious. But something that's sort of meant for a general audience of everyone who's been paying attention, but is supposed to be hard to figure out, is going to lead to unpleasant misunderstandings when there are genuine issues in play.
338: Working to not spread flu germs is even more good. I'm not being nice to anyone for the rest of the month.
300: Edith, just because your ex can't forgive you doesn't mean that you don't deserve forgiveness. It's right to direct most of your concern to your ex, and you've done that, recognizing that it was wrong, committing to never doing it again, trying to make amends. But I think you can be concerned, as well, for the person you were then: what made that person resort to violence? Can you feel some compassion for that person now?
is going to lead to unpleasant misunderstandings when there are genuine issues in play
In the clear light of day can't we all agree to call it a wacky mix-up?
I'll just say that one thing I've picked up from recent meldowns over Hu/go Schwy/zer...
Is that the guy's motives for latching onto what he calls "feminism" are embarrassingly transparent? Off-the-peg moral superiority, a prescriptivism that cannot be countered or disputed, "instructor/guide/wise man" status, the admiration of the young and vulnerable, praise singling him out for being "one of the good ones," the desire to surveiller et punir other people's sex lives? The twerp's a combover from running for Congress in South Carolina on a "Sluts Ruin Everything for Jesus" ticket.
Edith Wilson, your sins as stated seem pretty minor to me especially given the time lapse so I wonder about other issues. Perhaps you are still mad at the ex for whatever caused you to become violent (which you seem to say was out of character for you) or you are still mad at yourself for wrecking the relationship.
And Edith, don't dwell on your own sins. I'd look for a way to be kind, caring and helpful today and tomorrow and let the balance take care of itself.
don't dwell on your own sins
If you must, rent. Don't buy as resale is impossible.
Don't buy as resale is impossible.
Ahem.
A Chris Brown joke would have been more current.
342, 343: I'm down with wacky mix-up (I claim dibs on the film rights ... forever), because it certainly had those elements. I'll certainly cop to the elliptically-speaking charge (even in my morning comments), but I have my reasons... not good reasons but reasons (among them that someone like you would come along and give a quick coherent summary such as 312.1, good job). I did, however, think all would be made clear in subsequent comments if I had not gone upstairs and essentially passed out*.
*I slept very well. Almost as if I were totally oblivious to the effect of my words.
You owe it to someone you've hurt to apologize, ask for forgiveness, and try to do something to make amends. However, the point of the amends is to show that the apology is sincere, not to actually compensate for the hurt. And the point of the apology is to allow them to forgive you if they want to.
Once you've done those things you have to move on. All you continue to owe that person is respect (in particular if they don't want you involved in their life respect that) and a commitment to never treat anyone else the same way.
I sort of want to support Edith in the argument with her friend: 'forgiving yourself' for something you did wrong sits poorly with me. At this point you've made the amends you can, and you're trying not to act wrongly any more. That's what you can do. Anyone you've hurt can forgive you or not as they choose; you need to go on with your life in the best way you can, without obsessively beating yourself up over past sins you can't change. That's not really 'forgiving yourself', though, that's more like avoiding self-indulgence.
349: There's nothing funny about that little shit.
354: You're killing me here, dude..
353: but James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Gil Scott-Heron are still OK, apparently. Because, 70s fashions or something.
357: no, they're all dead. Let me just be mean to Chris Brown and then everything will even out.
Edith, I find myself wondering if you are currently internalizing a rage that you previously expressed outwardly. In a thread that's already had an above-average number of misunderstandings, I hope I don't come across as unkind or flippant when I say: Don't beat yourself up.
Is that the guy's motives for latching onto what he calls "feminism" are embarrassingly transparent? Off-the-peg moral superiority, a prescriptivism that cannot be countered or disputed, "instructor/guide/wise man" status, the admiration of the young and vulnerable, praise singling him out for being "one of the good ones," the desire to surveiller et punir other people's sex lives? The twerp's a combover from running for Congress in South Carolina on a "Sluts Ruin Everything for Jesus" ticket.
Agreed. I dont understand how anyone can stomach reading Hugo.
I'm not really up on the music industry enough to make a clear, principled distinction, but isn't there something to be done along the lines of not boycotting someone's music for personal bad behavior, but also not having people who've done awful things singled out to be honored by the industry at awards shows? I don't really have anything against anyone watching Roman Polanski's movies, but I'd get queasy watching him on stage at the Oscars.
556: Taco Bell is now making tacos with giant Doritos. Truly a Golden Age is upon us.
The LAPD has your back on that one.
I dunno; I think "forgiving yourself" is important in Edith's dilemma, although I prefer to say "have compassion for the past-you". If you abhor the past-you that did those things, you're living with self-loathing, and that's an ongoing horrible punishment for something that's over, and long over.
"Having compassion for yourself" means loving the past-you that did horrible things, without excusing the horrible things. The quote that my therapist used to say is "When we know better, we do better", to make this point.
Back then you were a person who didn't know better (forgive the sloppiness of the word "know"), and now you do. Except you're haunted by hating the former you, and the self-loathing of that, which needs to be addressed, via some self-compassion.
OT: Sloth tacos.
If one has to choose a taco associated to a deadly sin, I think one should stick with Gluttony tacos.
366: Wrath is good on toast, like Nutella.
344: He's enormously squicky. Even his little morality tales are sort of pathetically self-admiring. ("I used to pull so. much. tail. Thank goodness I've recovered. But seriously. So. much. tail.") I think he makes it all up.
362 is intended to rescue us from comment 556, at which point the thread will have turned so awful and despairing that our only hope is dorito encased "Dorito Loco" tacos.*
*not Paleo
**I believe currently available only in Toledo, Ohio. Hahaha Ohio.
Megabus will take me to Toledo for $19. Anybody want one.
Regarding Edith:
Rarely is someone nearly as horrible as they imagine themself.
I deal with this every day. "I am so embarassed! My life is horrible" or "I did the worst thing you can ever imagine."
To which I respond: "You ate the legs off live babies?"
"no"
"You killed an autistic kid?"
"No."
"You slept with your spouse's father?"
"No."
"Ok. Then, I am not impressed. Get over yourself."
You did something bad. Now you have changed. Not much more to do about it. We have all done something bad in our lives. Except Halford.
Megabu inspired me to take an overnight bus to NYC to see the Met. It was low-down and an awesome.
"You ate the legs off live babies?"
Mmm, paleo.
To which I respond: "You ate the legs off live babies?"
But so delicious.
Rarely is someone nearly as horrible as they imagine themselves.
I ... I wore a button-down shirt with a tie. It was years ago, but, but....
Don't look at me! I'm a monster!
It was low-down and an awesome.
I do not know these euphemisms for anonymous museum sex.
If they claim to have done the worst thing they can think of, worse than whatever you suggest, and then they won't tell you what it is, DO NOT DRINK the drugged coffee they offer you.
That sent me on a sloth science fugue. As you may know, 2 and 3 tied sloths are rather distantly related within the sloth family tree (most of which consists of ground sloths). It is widely believed, but not know for sure, that they developed arboreal habits independently. What you also may know is that sloths bizarrely come to the ground to urinate and defecate every several days and then bury their feces in a hole. This is bizarre and poorly understood behavior as it's very risky to come to the ground. What I hadn't realized until just now is that *both kinds of sloth* engage in this behavior! Wtf? Am I meant to believe they evolved it convergently? Or that burying your feces is basal for sloths?
374 last: not bad, badass.
More seriously, I agree with all of the other parts of 374. We have all done awful things and we all need to feel compassion for ourselves. We are human. Acknowledging that you did something wrong is different from, and does not require, eternally shaming yourself.
384: Sir, you have disenchanted my sloth.
378: What about tube socks and dress shoes?
Or dress socks and tube shoes! Even worse!
383: Jared got so buff on the lean sandwiches, he broke up a lot of relationships.
It is widely believed, but not know for sure, that they developed arboreal habits independently.
Hipsters always claim they got the idea themselves.
I found myself in a florist shop on Valentine's Day. I was so ashamed.
I wore tube socks as a teenager. I have not yet forgiven myself.
Somewhat related, after a certain point in time, it is impolite to hold a grudge. It just means your memory is far too good and far too focused on the wrong things.
I simply cannot remember who I am supposed to be mad at for more than a week.
387: I'm not an animal.
390: I will not dignify the implicit insult to my taste by responding, but come on. We're just barely into the sharing-painful-memories phase.
That was quite a thread, unfogged.
Ok. Then, I am not impressed. Get over yourself.
Shit, I think Will is my therapist.
394.2: "I've never told anybody this before, but, well, there was this thread, and it just really went off the rails and... oh god, I can't. But I just... I'm glad you're here. For lunch."
Somewhat related, after a certain point in time, it is impolite to hold a grudge.
I somehow managed to misread this as "judge". "I bet the bailiff will make it clear when you've crossed the line!" went my idiot brain.
390: I will not dignify the implicit insult to my taste by responding
I said it just to wound you. I'm sorry.
389: I really did think 383 had something to do with Subway. Thank goodness for Urban Dictionary.
399 confuses me. You've watched enough TV to know about Subway's Jared, but have managed to reman blissfully unaware of the phrase, "He went to Jared!" ??? Those are among the most pervasive best/worst commercials on TV.
399: I thought he was referring to the discount jewelry store that runs ads with women in the throes of ecstasy because they got a ring so they won't need to sue for child support. Urban Dictionary's meaning was unknown to me.
(On preview, pwned. I still like mine better.)
As you may know, 2 and 3 tied sloths are rather distantly related within the sloth family tree
Wow, I've never even seen a sloth with one tie.
The jewelry store is regional, I believe.
Where by "regional" I apparently mean "ubiquitous nationwide except for most places I've lived and New York".
I went to Jared Diamond but that turned out to be something different.
403, 404: I guess that explains it. Except that Flippanter is a NYer too, right? Maybe he gets out occassionally.
The sloth haberdashery store is regional, I think.
405: I bet he tried to sell you land with a "Mediterranean" climate, the bastard.
I should move to Sicily. I think I'd blend in and the sun would do me good.
409: Wouldn't it be nice to eat brioche ice cream sandwiches for breakfast and drink one's espresso coretto?*
*It has been corrected with grappa.
My ancestors left in a big hurry, so maybe I should trust their wisdom.
And they left for Omaha, so they must have had very strong reasons.
My TV watching fell off a cliff a year or two ago when Netflix started streaming. The selection kind of sucks, but I find I would much rather pick something lame from a large menu of lame things than ever just watch what's on TV. Jared from Subway has to be from at least five years ago -- I'm guessing the diamond ads are more recent.
(I know the cool people have a wide range of different streaming services through which they watch less lame content, but I'm resistant to paying for more than a very few subscriptions -- I forget about them and then find myself paying for years after I've stopped using the damn thing.)
411: Mine aren't from there, but apparently their native village was destroyed by a volcano! I am a superhero! Or something!
Late to the thread (work has been rough these days), and I'm sorry I missed out on the spiral of shame and recrimination. (Sorry for the flippancy; I like to think I would have tried to help, but it seems to be over, or as close to over as things like that are, and I won't restart it now. Or maybe I should, rather than glossing over things? Ugh. Probably not, but I'm not sure. Oh well.)
Re: the original post, my girlfriend sent me that article Monday, and I admitted in advance my own prejudices against both the WSJ and overthinking parenting, but still, I thought it was horrible and told her as much. I agree with 99 and 118. One single, short paragraph about the relevant huge differences in government policy? Furthering pernicious cultural narratives with nothing stronger than anecdotes about tone of voice? That was reductive, just-so-story bullshit. I lived in France for a while (not near Paris, FTR, contra 298, but still in a northern urban area, if it matters), and while I admit that parenting of pre-school aged children is probably the aspect of French life I'm least familiar with, still, it strikes me how similar French family life and parenting is to American. I'd bet there's more variation in parenting styles and expectations and stuff within American and French societies than between them.
299
No, nothing's been edited
Just to be a little bitch, I'm pretty sure that an edit was made for the sake of presidential pseudonymity as requested in 202, but that doesn't have anything to do with the main discussion, so, like I said, little bitchiness. And speaking of 202, I don't have any helpful advice, Eleanor, but good luck with that. Sorry. My grandmother basically drank herself to death despite multiple attempts at interventions, but she also moved across the country around the same time, so if your uncle is still living near family it might be somewhat easier to help him (if the family members he's living near are capable of helping, if your family can handle it along with helping your grandfather, if he wants to be helped...), FWIW.
As for the various meanings of "Jared", I agree with 413 - I'm familiar with the Subway meaning because it was on TV well over five years ago. (This may be your makes-you-feel-old moment of the day: according to Wikipedia, Jared first came to national attention 13 years ago, in 1999.) I'll bet we'll have a greater and greater division of knowledge of memes pre- and post-widespread streaming or downloading of TV.
413: Jared of Subway has had a remarkably long-lived career as a spokesperson. I'm not sure if he's currently appearing in any Subway commercials, but he has been on them fairly recently. But, I guess you wouldn't know that since you're not keeping up, LB.
I'm still irked that they stopped cutting the sandwich rolls funny.
416: Oh sure. Vesuvius is chopped liver.
Chopped liver with crappy onions from the bottom of the drawer.
420: Would you like that on white or whole-wheat?
Whole wheat. Cut the 'U' out of the bread instead of sliciing it in half.
Mount St Helens is the only volcano named after a rugby league team, and therefore the coolest.
Everyone probably knows this but regarding flying in the central US: In the summer, avoid late afternoon/early evening flights if you can. That's when the thunderstorms form and flights get delayed.
416: Etna is the only cool volcano.
Moby is dead to me.
426: That's going to confuse everybody again.
corretto
(I do love that idiom.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HotspotsSRP.jpg
You people don't know shit about cool.
It's funny that Vulcano, the original volcano, doesn't get more press.
When the Bourbon rule collapsed in 1860 (see Francis II of the Two Sicilies) a British man named James Stevenson bought the northern part of the island, built a villa, reopened the local mines and planted vineyards for grapes that would later be used to make Malmsey wine. Stevenson lived on Vulcano until the last major eruption on the island, in 1888. The eruption lasted the better part of two years, by which time Stevenson had sold all of his property to the local populace, and never returned to the island.
"Nostromo" meets "The Leopard"!
Urban Dictionary is annoyingly blocked for me at work, but I can usually get the first couple of defs in the Google window, so as far as I can see the 2nd Jared* def is someone you would stride to be like. I'd stride to be like someone fit if I thought I'd actually stick to it and it would work.
*Wasn't Clay Henry (sculpted fireman dude) supposed to replace Jared at some point? I assume that fizzled out, right?
"Went to Jared" is what I searched for, rather than "Jared" simpliciter.
I'm hoping everyone who would find it adorable instead of irritating has seen the Kristen Bell Sloth Meltdown, yes?
432: Urban Dictionary's first definition could have caused 383 to lead to another hilarious round of misunderstandings.
Could that be an actual usage?
"Damn. Missed the news for a couple of days, and Whitney Houston went to Jared."
No.
And parsimon, . . . If you're going to be loosely claiming that 'we' drove pdf off the blog and then he killed himself, that's pretty fucking intense, ...)
I think this is mostly resolved (and probably I should listen to Halford's, "mind your own asshole" advice) but I would note that even before Parsimon apologized I read her original remark as maybe 20% accusation (out of pique) and 80% saying (rather pointedly) that, life being what it is we are not always afforded the opportunity to reconcile or apologize.
Mount St Helens is the only volcano named after a rugby league team, and therefore the coolest.
That's until the Norwegians give approval for the renaming of South Wales Scorpions Massif.
Even that 80%, taking your numbers as given (and you know, 20% of an accusation that you made someone so unhappy that it contributed to his suicide is pretty hefty), is screwy in the absence of a specific malefactor or group of malefactors who parsimon thinks should be regretting that they will never be able to make it up to pdf for what they did to him. It's been apologized for, it's over, I don't need to talk about it anymore, but I will push back against any statement or implication that it was a reasonable thing to say.
295: he doesn't even need von wafer to send him some xanax.
Hey, hey, whoa. Let's not be too hasty here...
Yeah, it's honestly not that big a deal, nobody is driving me off and certainly nobody's persecuting or murdering me. While I'm amused that after showing up and vomiting bile all over the place, the Sifu Tweety Circus of the Absurd went through all the expected beats -- including the "Who, li'l old me?" act and the "Golly, I sure don't 'member that!" act (Blume I believe, Tweety not for a second, but he can play it any way he needs to) -- the origin and species of insect up that particular clown's rectum just doesn't interest me very much. He'll extract it or he won't, likewise with his more passive-aggressive tag-alongs, and life will go on.
As for Oudemia, since the consensus view seems to be that I overreacted to 30, I shall make amends with eighteen hours of volunteering at the nearest charity for the humorless as soon as I can find one. I'll let you know how it goes.
Or post more photos of yourself from the 80s.
Some "He Went to Jared" pictures.
I did not know the phrase either.
441: Think I'd better save the rest of those for when I have to confess to a felony or something.
Thanks for all the advice and support. Thinking about it more, I think the biggest barrier to self-forgiveness, or letting things go, might in fact be that so few people have ever acknowledged that my actions were seriously wrong. So I have to ride myself insanely hard, to make up for all the slack I was given, and continue to be given. My ex chose not to ruin my life by turning me in to the police -- he said so explicitly -- and so I can (sometimes) see him as having a claim on my later success and good fortune, since his actions at the time enabled me to live freely now. It's insidious, but also stupid.
But insidious, because for a while ex was having significant financial hardships and although I could not possibly be said to have caused them -- I forgave him a $600 debt, in fact -- I think I got myself into a loop of believing that, if our genders were reversed, you could argue that I had irreparably damaged his sense of self-worth and ability to care for himself by abusing him, and why would you not say the same thing with the real gender roles? (And yeah, the gender double standard is a big part of this. It's certainly been real in my life; of course I don't know how widespread it actually is. On the one hand I think this would be the useful advocacy I could do, to try to give some kind of support to male victims of domestic abuse. On the other hand, though, I am so scared of those guys' anger and hatred that it makes me tremble to contemplate. So I suspect I wouldn't really be that useful, as per Thorn's remark about therapeutic communities.)
So I think the answer is a) to call a moratorium on punishing myself, because it can't possibly help him or anyone else in any way, and b) to rejoice in my present, happy life, which is at least as much the result of my own actions as all the bad stuff was with my ex. And c) get over the fact that, you know, many of my friends hated my ex and like me, because god forbid that they hate people and like others without considering the state of our souls.
But it was definitely nice to have a lot of reasonable people acknowledge, publicly, that it is a fucked-up, bullshit thing to hit someone. Hooray, progress.
"I've never told anybody this before, but, well, there was this thread, and it just really went off the rails and... oh god, I can't. But I just... I'm glad you're here. For lunch."
" Make yourself comfortable. Mind if I call you, Soylent? .. It's sort of a private joke .. I'll explain it in a bit.
Thinking about it more, I think the biggest barrier to self-forgiveness, or letting things go, might in fact be that so few people have ever acknowledged that my actions were seriously wrong. So I have to ride myself insanely hard, to make up for all the slack I was given, and continue to be given.
I can totally sympathize with this.
444: I specifically thought about this with a "if the gender roles were reversed" mindset and all I can really say is that what I want for the people who've hurt me badly and in abusive/illegal ways is for them to never do that to anyone else again, preferably because they realize it was wrong and have chosen not to behave in such a way any longer. That you have gotten to your point on your own is sort of reassuring to me. I don't think I could comfortably handle any reparations directed at me by my past abusers because I wouldn't even know how to say what I wanted or what could be done, but.... I don't really know what I'm saying here.
There are a lot of stories to make about any given situation and I believe we're all in charge of making our own. You get no say over how Ex writes his story about what happened to him during and after his time with you except in that you were a player in the situations he's now remembering and processing. Similarly, what your friends think of things are on them and people are awfully willing to think well of someone if it lets them off the hook from having to do any hard moral work. But you're in charge of how you make sense of things and how you create the context for the future. That's not a bad thing.
Let's see, no shoe through window, so, good, Edith isn't my ex. That would be... weird. Cause otherwise it sounds rather familiar, including the unforgiving. The latter being due to finally thinking about the ex's habit of going into punching bag mode whenever she got upset and being emotionally vicious after years of very deliberately pushing it out of my mind as too painful (explaining to your SO that they are a horrible person that no one wants to interact with and going down a list of friends, parents, other relatives one by one and saying that the real way they feel about you is whichever time you argued and other times are just politeness, duty, or pity but they really wish to never hear from you is not a nice thing, especially when your SO is already rather severely depressed).
But that said, I sure as hell wouldn't want my ex to kill herself over the memories. Nor even for the memories to be fucking up her life in a major way. On the other hand, I also wouldn't want her to _completely_ put it out of her mind in some sort of 'that was wrong, but I've changed and that's not me' way. Also, does your ex know you realize that what you did was very wrong? Mine never really apologized - it ranged from 'I shouldn't hit you, I know, but I get so upset around you, you shouldn't make me upset' to 'I never hit previous boyfriends, you made me this way, so don't blame me'. Hence the unforgiving. If this is the case, letting him know that you realize that what you did was very wrong, and you genuinely regret it might be a good thing.
It is horrible to hit someone else.
But......many domestic violence cases result in the charges being taken under advisement for two years, doing some community service, and going to classes regarding anger management.
So, it isnt really like his good deed in not turning you stopped an otherwise certain trip to prison and a ruined life.
Instead, you learned your lesson without the necessity of classes or community service.
How many apologies should be necessary? Four? One every 5 years?
On the one hand I think this would be the useful advocacy I could do, to try to give some kind of support to male victims of domestic abuse. On the other hand, though, I am so scared of those guys' anger and hatred that it makes me tremble to contemplate. So I suspect I wouldn't really be that useful, as per Thorn's remark about therapeutic communities.)
I think in this case (battery of men by women) you really could do some good, and I think it raises different issues than other therapeutic communities. As I understand it there is massive public skepticism and even contempt toward men who claim battery or abuse (despite lots of research that shows it is not uncommon). This is different from other issues where there is a strong culture to validate survivors. I think a woman willing to speak up and work in this area could really do some good.
Of course, whether you are that woman and whether that works for you in a personal sense is an entirely different question.
I am so scared of those guys' anger and hatred that it makes me tremble to contemplate
When I finally, for the first time, actually talked about it with a non-shrink friend a few months ago, she suggested I find people who'd been in abusive situations and talk with them, saying it had helped her. I went looking for online communities of guys who'd been in abusive hetero relationships. Not good. The level of hatred against women is just far too disturbing. I get hatred at the person who did the abusing, even if in my case it's more deep resentment, but this shit was just fucked up.
450: It's funny -- this sounds right to me. Except that I can't imagine using one's experience as an abuser to advocate for victims. It's not that it might not be useful, I can completely see how and why it could be. I just, somehow, can't wrap my head around anyone actually opening a speech or an article with 'Domestic violence against men is genuine problem in the real world. I know, because seven years ago, I was in a relationship in which I battered my then-boyfriend."
This isn't a strong opinion that such advocacy would be wrong or ill-advised: I don't know. I just can't see how it would work somehow.
First, George Washington, I'm so sorry you went through that and sorry you're not able to find a safe place to talk about it. The men's rights advocacy people are super scary and I'm not surprised you ran into that.
as per Thorn's remark about therapeutic communities.
Edith, If you're going in explicitly to say, "Look, this is what I did and why I did it and how it impacted my life," that could potentially be useful for someone, sure. I hadn't been able to tell from previous advice and what you said whether you were thinking of that or just of volunteering at the local women's shelter, which was the part I thought could be problematic for people who need a safe place.
448.last is really important. You owe someone you hurt a genuine sincere apology. That doesn't mean they have to forgive you, but at least it means they can if they want to.
likewise with his more passive-aggressive tag-alongs
I can't tell if this is directed at me or not. This is almost as disappointing as Emerson doing a half-assed job of insulting me in the Diamond thread.
Actually, thinking about this, maybe Edith could volunteer to be part of some academic studies of women abusers in hetero relationships? That would be a way of turning the experience toward public good without the potential weirdness LB talks about. I have no idea how easy this would be to find, but presumably the people doing that kind of work are looking for more data.
Although, if you really have apologized already in a manner that conveys that you know what you did was wrong, there's a lot to be said for leaving the ex alone rather than contacting him again for a better apology.
457: Yes. You don't want to implicitly convey a message like, "You'll never be free of me contacting you unless you indicate that this apology is great."
452: maybe I've just watched too much daytime TV, but I have faith in America's confessional culture. The article opening you describe strikes me as perfectly workable. Not really so different than saying "I know drug XX/alcohol is dangerous because I totally fucked up my family's life using it". There are lots of examples of people who killed others in drunk driving accidents giving don't drive drunk speeches, etc. It could be particularly useful in this case because there is skepticism about the very existence or significance of the problem.
Of course it also exposes the speaker in a very raw way and it's really up to Edith personally whether she wants that in her life. It's above and beyond the duties of ordinary repentance certainly.
This discussion raised an interesting question in my mind about my own relationship. I have never laid a hand on Mrs. Madison, and cannot imagine myself ever doing so. She, on the other hand... she has flown off the handle on several occasions: has flung things at me, tried to hit me, etc. I'm much bigger and stronger than she is, so I've never been in any danger. In fact, she has never really made contact or hurt me. Which makes me wonder: what if I weren't bigger and stronger? Would she still act out her anger physically if she knew she could hurt me? I think probably not. I think she relies on the fact that I can easily defend myself, so the violence (such as it is) has a ritualistic aspect to it. Also, if she really wanted to hurt me, she could have grabbed a weapon to even the odds. I want to believe that, anyway. OTOH, she has quite a temper and can fly into a rage. If we were physically more evenly matched, could she be an abuser, and I an abused spouse? It's an interesting hypothetical, and I'm not sure of the answer.
Certainly 457-458 are right if you've already apologized. It's not that a kinda good apology needs to be replaced by better and better apologies, but rather that shitty apologies (see the examples in 448) don't count.
448 shows at least one person who would like a real apology. In a less extreme situation (no abuse, just run-of-the-mill shitty treatment) I've been hoping for 10 years for an apology from someone. Anyway, I'm sure you know your situation better than I do.
460: I think actual pain and fear are a big issue in domestic violence, which is a large part of the gendered double-standard about hitting: lots of people have the (false in general) presumption that a woman doesn't have the physical capacity to injure or frighten a man, so any female on male violence (that doesn't lead to hospitalization or death) is by definition unserious and unimportant.
I don't think this is true in all cases: Edith thinks she hurt and frightened her ex, and I believe her, and I think it was significant wrongdoing for that reason. For what you're talking about, though? If you're saying that your partner's attempts at violence have never actually hurt or frightened you, I think there's a fair argument that they probably weren't intended to, and that your perception of them as kabuki rather than real violence is accurate. (I still think that's kind of terrible behavior, but more along the lines of being shouty rather than violent.)
But you're the one who's in the room, so you know what's going on.
...I've been hoping for 10 years for an apology from someone.
If this involves vomit in a car, I am really very sorry. Just too embarassed to admit it was me.
"Look, this is what I did and why I did it and how it impacted my life," that could potentially be useful for someone
IME Edith's one time thing accompanied by a lot of regret and introspection is very much not your usual case.
464: I got the impression it was more than once but "beat up" past tense isn't clear either way. Once rather than as a pattern (I'd been imagining something like James Madison's version) seems different, yes.
so the violence (such as it is) has a ritualistic aspect to it.
That's happened to me once in my entire life. I can't find an illustration easily on Youtube but it was as if copied from an old movie, hitting with the pinky side of her fists and sort of drumming on my chest. I took it as just an extreme emotional display rather than OMG VIOLENCE!!, there were plenty of knives or guns around she could have used in any serious attempt at injury, and I didn't have any problem falling asleep with her next to me afterwards.
So, theater instead of threat.
Morally speaking, I'd argue that it's much better for bad behavior to get fixed without punishment than with. Punishment is just pure deadweight loss that makes everyone worse off.
467: Perhaps, but some people see needed scale balancing going on.
461.2 Waiting for an apology is a doomed thing. [Personal story deleted on account of TL;DR] It turns out there's no established protocol for telling someone "I'd like you to take note of a problematic dynamic in our friendship."
GW, if my ex were commenting on unfogged, he would be... conspicuous, so I'm sure we're strangers. That catalog of social estrangement your ex pulled out on you sounds truly vile.
It would take a considerable effort for me to get in touch with him at this point, and I'm pretty sure even an apology would be unwelcome. The last time I tried to call for that purpose, he hung up on me -- this was eight years ago, and I don't really know where he is now, although given the financial projections I doubt that he & his family have moved. At some point it became clear that the thing he wanted was to sever contact forever, so that's what I've done. (An unfortunate side effect is that he never responded to my increasingly desperate requests to return my old computer, with two decades of creative work & correspondence on the hard drive -- the backup mysteriously failed and in my hurry to move out, I slammed the door on it. Even that was not enough punishment for me, although I've only recently stopped agonizing over it.) I have some memory of an apology that elicited the initial (then implicitly retracted) forgiveness, so I think I tried to make amends. And our last year together was pretty abuse-free; I got counseling, I tried to repair things, I ended the relationship as supportively as I could, etc. It's the two years of hell in the middle that I will always regret.
The "advocacy" I had in mind was more about trying to encourage people who focus on male-on-female abuse -- mostly women -- to acknowledge and find productive ways to talk in public about the opposite pattern. It still doesn't happen enough, and so the conversation is dominated by people like the ones in 451. An article might work. I'd never have the guts to sign my name to it, though. Well -- maybe after 20 years. 25.
Christ, GW, I'm so sorry your ex mistreated you. It's making me cry. I hope you're safe and supported now, as much as you can be.
Yeah if you're not in touch, don't try to get in touch. That's different.
460: I think the majority of violence is symbolic or communicative in nature and is not best understood as an attempt to do maximum physical harm to the target. This is likely true for male abusers as well. A male who gives his wife a black eye when he could easily kill her with a kitchen knife is sending a message about her role in the relationship and the boundaries of her freedom within it, not trying to maim her. What is the message your wife is sending, the privilege she is claiming? I get to fly off the handle in a way you don't, I can make physically tangible how upset I am with this situation and you have to stand still for it? You can't cross such-and-such a line?
Relatedly, I think the line between screaming / shouting and violence is not an absolute one. This is pretty obvious when a larger male is screaming and posturing at a smaller woman, slams his fist into the wall, etc. The more you communicate lack of control in your actions the greater implicit threat of some kind of unpredictable escalation there is.
Really, the core question is whether some form of bullying is central to the relationship dynamic. There are lots of ways for that to happen. I even think there can also be forms of violence that are mutually agreed on as bounded forms of communication and may not constitute bullying. Because we have used 'domestic violence' as a way to draw a bright line around what are actually very complicated and fuzzy relationship dynamics we miss all of this.
460: A woman I dated in college for much longer than was reasonable used to fly into berserker, fist-swinging rages semi-regularly, but there was such a difference in our sizes (seven inches shorter and 70-90 pounds lighter depending on the year) that she couldn't really do any damage. I never retaliated beyond wrapping her up until she stopped flailing and then leaving which, to be sure, was all for the best (better still would have been just to stop returning but 18 to 21 is not an age of wisdom). However, a little part of me I keep hidden away still believes that everybody probably ought to get one free opportunity to forcefully demonstrate the mismatch in that situation.
Because I'm a feminist.
Waiting for an apology for 10 years?
That cannot be healthy.
If someone borrowed my car, crashed it, and didnt apologize, then I wouldnt lend them my car in the future.
But, I wouldnt be waiting for an apology for ten years. At a certain point, it seems unhealthy to not drop it.
I stomp when I get extremely furious, which is the stupidest, least dignified rage ever. My family used to call me Clancy The Stomping Cat, (while I was mid-rage) which unsurprisingly didn't placate my feelings.
Jammies has tried to tactfully tell me later on how ridiculous it looks. But it's still just what comes out.
Oh of course it's unhealthy.
...I've been hoping for 10 years for an apology from someone.
It's better to buy lottery tickets, the chance of a good payoff are much better.
I think we have discussed forgiveness before, and I mentioned that I enjoyed the book Amish Grace.
slams his fist into the wall, etc.
Remember everyone, breaking shit during a fight with your spouse or live in partner is a DV offense. Breaking something expensive can land you a felony DV charge. Not bueno.
Can I still break shit at the office if I'm not fighting anything but Windows?
maybe needless to say, I obviously didn't want to minimize the importance/danger of violence in 472. A relationship where one partner imprisons the other using threats and bullying is a terrible thing and violence is usually going to be the easiest way to do that.
I had a "girlfriend" in college (we dated for about a month) who threw a toaster at me and tried to hit me with a hammer. It was actually pretty scary; I never retaliated and always had some confidence in my ability to use physical force if I had to, but if I hadn't ducked from that toaster there would have been real damage done. It still didn't really feel like "abuse," mostly because the relationship wasn't ongoing and my reaction was to get the fuck away from that crazy Greek pscyho rather than to try to maintain the relationship and internalize the fear.
Can I still break shit at the office if I'm not fighting anything but Windows?
Have at it.
Can I still break shit at the office if I'm not fighting anything but Windows?
Throw a brick through it?
I am cracking up so much at Clancy the Stomping Cat. Sorry, heebie!
I'm almost always calm and even-tempered in arguments, but once while being screamed at by a volatile girlfriend I closed myself in a room with a punching bag and worked it over hard enough to give myself a boxer's fracture. Was this out of line? No intimidation was intended, but I can imagine that it may have been read that way.
My wife left a small scar (eyeglasses broke) and small bruises a couple of times-- not in the last few years, thankfully. Never taken up edged weapons or tried to do permanent harm while I'm asleep, though. I guess something between a physical expression of a scream and kabuki. Individuals vary, I'd expect.
Actual injury is unambiguous. Both physical and emotional rage should be calibrated to leave the enraged one plausible deniability afterwards.
Was this out of line?
This isn't an answerable question for anyone who wasn't there. Probably not, but I can conceive of circumstances where it might come across as threatening. But if you didn't mean it to be, it probably wasn't.
I feel really, really lucky right now to live in a relationship where the worst things get argument-wise are at Stomping Cat-level. Lee and I went through some really tough times recently, as everyone here knows, but knowing that I could rely on my physical safety even when I was emotionally hurt and just exhausted was something that definitely made getting through it easier. Hell, made it possible. I'm not happy that it sounds like there are a lot of women who need some helpful reminders from gswift.
472.1 sounds right to me.
Breaking something expensive can land you a felony DV charge.
??? So why didn't Tiger charge Elin? Would have saved him many millions.
I'm not happy that it sounds like there are a lot of women who need some helpful reminders from gswift.
Official reminders, not the kind with the "some of the neighbors have said this party is too loud" intro and the tear-away pants that go flying after the front door is closed and boom box started.
Some of the neighbor have said you forgot to close your tag.
491.last: Depends on the jurisdiction? I don't know what state they were in, but I'm sure it wasn't Utah.
472.1 is right, I think, that most violence is on some level controlled and meant as communication: I guess the line I see as the line between 'real violence' and 'kabuki' (which isn't a perfect bright-line, of course, nothing is) is whether the message is "I can and might hurt you more if I decided to or got angry enough" or "I'm very very angry and either bad at doing damage or I really don't mean to."
But this is all complicated by whether the message sent is the same as the message received, and so on. I pretty much think anyone hitting at all is doing something they really shouldn't, even if it meets all my criteria of non-seriousness.
473:However, a little part of me I keep hidden away still believes that everybody probably ought to get one free opportunity to forcefully demonstrate the mismatch in that situation.
Once, and only once, after numerous similar situations with my smaller than me now ex-wife, where she'd fly at me in a rage, scratching and hitting, I squeezed hard while I 'wrapped her up,' and I felt bad about it, and during our divorce she claimed that was abuse (which it was) while still refusing to believe that her assaults on me were not abuse. This had no bearing on our legal settlement though.
Sigh.
I still wish that wasn't the way it was, and I wish we could still be married, because she had a lot of other very great traits, and I love her dearly.
So don't retaliate. Just don't do it, even a little. It only makes things worse.
So why didn't Tiger charge Elin?
As I recall they were sticking to their account that she smashed the window on the Escalade to "free" him after the crash.
There's probably some kind of formula (wealth + endorsements + children + strippers + waitresses + porn stars + not deleting really incriminating text messages + etc). Your lawyer will tell you when your score is too high for you to gain anything trying to get the law involved.
489: But it did communicate that the way she was treating me was filling me with violent thoughts, even though my intent was to do something harmless with this impulse. Is this ever a legitimate message to send?
370: He's enormously squicky. Even his little morality tales are sort of pathetically self-admiring. ("I used to pull so. much. tail. Thank goodness I've recovered. But seriously. So. much. tail.") I think he makes it all up.
The better to win over the immature and vulnerable young women whom he spends so much time and energy defining as "off-limits" and improper for men his age to pursue. It chaps my hide to no end that the guy makes such a California-king-sized douchebag parody display of his inchoate "Christianity."
If one could, one would think worse of J/e/z/e/b/e/l for reprinting his rubbish, but one's opinion of Gawker Media is pretty low already. Except for Annalee and the gang at io9, I guess.
I just today saw a story on the local news where a domestic argument between a Marine (with a record of clobbering her) and his wife escalated into HER arrest because she threw a cellphone down the garbage disposal during a 911 call HE had initiated because SHE was bleeding from a scalp wound.
So, read up on the applicable laws before hitting or getting hit.
498: Is this ever a legitimate message to send?
I don't think this is a question with an answer -- what does 'legitimate' mean, and what's the difference between sending a message and acting in a way that your emotions can be deduced from your behavior? It doesn't sound as if you did much wrong to me, but I wasn't there.
It doesn't sound as if you did much wrong to me, but I wasn't there.
I should've used hand wraps, for one.
I think that this thread is missing something, and that the something that it is missing is the views of Bob McManus.
498: Going off and punching an inanimate object is obviously preferable to staying and punching the person, but there is some implicit threat of violence there. Same with punching walls or furniture. Indeed threat can be conveyed simply by expression or how you hold your body; I have an unhappy recollection of a fight with a psychotic girlfriend which became so emotionally flaying that I was closer to the point of snapping violently than I'd ever been in my lie. I didn't punch anything, just let some of what I was feeling show in my eyes, and the memory of the way she cowered is still painful and shameful.
None of that is okay, but then OTOH neither is verbal and emotional abuse. Any of that happening is a signal that it's best for all parties to leave the situation.
AFAIK, and IANAL, unwanted touching of any kind is assault. Don't do it. I did not consider my wife's assaults on me to be abuse, because I suffered minimal physical damage and no emotional trauma. The assaults took place in private, they were infrequent, and my wife worked continuously on changing the behavior.
From my understanding, basic personality traits can never be completely changed, but they usually can be dealt with, at least to some degree.
Wow, I've never even seen a sloth with one tie.
499: Has he done something recently? I found him unbearable when I first discovered him years ago, but that was more dislike of his leftier-/gentler-than-thou persona than antyhing concrete.
This three-fingered lazy animal is pretty damn cute.
Any of that happening is a signal that it's best for all parties to leave the situation.
This is probably the answer. If one is in a relationship where "the way you're treating me is filling me with a psychotic rage"* is ever a reasonable thing to communicate, it's better to just leave.
*Hopefully it's obvious that this is an exageration.
507: There was some confessional post recently where he admitted to/bragged about having done something to assist a fucked-up girlfriend with an ultimately unsuccessful suicide attempt. The whole story was immensely skeevy.
re: 502
[in bad taste given the general tenor of the thread, but ...]
Or using a vertical fist and hitting with the bottom three knuckles, bare-knuckle-stylee.
This one, though, I'm less sure about.
It turns out there's no established protocol for telling someone "I'd like you to take note of a problematic dynamic in our friendship."
Send them a link to a discussion thread on an internet forum. That can't possibly go wrong.
509: Well, that's right. Once you're in that situation, I don't think shutting yourself in your room and hitting a punching bag is terrible. But of course you should avoid repeatedly finding yourself in a situation where you're trying to figure out how to control that kind of rage -- if you need to get away from the person who's inspiring it, that's what you do.
I wasn't ever physically scared in the sense of worrying about real injuries. It would just be minor bruises. And I was more than a foot taller and outweighed her by around forty pounds. And some of the times it happened I eventually punched her in the arm. That's one reason why I was wary of talking about it for so long. I'm also pretty sure that that wouldn't be the case if the genders were reversed - a single punch in the context of getting punched or kicked dozens of times in the hope of stopping it, is, I've decided not worth feeling bad about. It was also about the only thing that sometimes stopped the punching. Begging her not to hit me didn't, nor did crying, nor did curling up on the floor - or rather that stopped the punching, but all in all I prefer getting punched to getting kicked. Grabbing her arms didn't work, she would agree to stop hitting me and immediately start up again. Locking myself in the bathroom worked until I gave in to her insistence she needed to use it. But a single punch in the arm sometimes did work. And sometimes not. Or run in to the bathroom where I could sit on the floor, maybe burn myself with a lighter to drown out the pain and cry for a breather. And whenever I was getting hit, part of what was going through my mind was whether or not to hit her in the hope of getting it to stop. Otherwise, if I was unwilling to hit her in the arm or when it didn't work, just wait until she got tired. And hope that she didn't get a second wind a few hours later. On the other hand, the fact that my strength advantage meant that if I wanted to I could have easily stopped it through brute force wasn't of any help. That's more along the lines in which a woman in the reverse situation, i.e. one where she isn't getting seriously injured, could just stab her partner or bash him over the head with a baseball bat. True, but not really helpful.
But no major physical fear, which is a significant difference to the typical reverse gender dynamic, but I don't think as significant as LB imagines. By the time it got to being a regular thing, mostly without any detectable reasons other than her being in a bad mood or stressed or something (the first few times were in the midst of protracted real arguments, over real issues, rather than zero to sixty out of the blue) I would constantly be at least a bit on edge, even when things were going great, monitoring her mood, watching for the telltale signs - going demonstratively quiet and then physically tensing up - that indicated that it could happen. Or not, sometimes it passed. But the constant psychological/emotional fear was real and it sucked.
The weird thing was that most of the time she was a very kind, incredibly supportive and fun person. Go figure.
Wow, that sounds awful. I'm sorry it happened to you.
Don't answer if you don't want to talk about it, but what ended it? Did you just break up and move out when you realized it wasn't going to stop, or how?
That description helped me understand what goes on in those situations, George. Thanks.
This has become a terribly, terribly sad thread. I hope we can start a new one later and discuss Cute Overload or something.
Possibly similar to Tripp's situation, one ex of mine was the sort of person who would often get violently angry, which included sometimes smashing things, throwing things, once in a while (I believe--I've blotted out most of my memories of the entire 1+ year relationship) hitting me. I was almost never genuinely afraid for my physical well-being--I was probably stronger than her, in an upper body strength sort of way, though not by much--but the overall experience was somewhat harrowing, especially since, when I was growing up, my father clearly had a lot of rage that he kept bottled up but almost never let out. Anyway. The worst of these times, after (I seem to recall) she'd thrown something that almost hit my head before smashing against a wall, I pushed her back, and she fell against the bed and knocked her head against the wall on the other side. As Tripp says, this only made things worse; her overall behavior didn't change one bit, but it sure did contribute to the feelings of my own shame and worthlessness that kept me in that relationship much, much longer than was sensible. This was also, I think, a relationship that exemplified PGD's comment about communicative violence--whether or not it was intended as such, her pattern of behavior, especially when combined with other things (telling me she wanted X; later telling me she had always hated X, because X was intrinsically hateful, and that she had only ever said otherwise to please me; that sort of thing) very much functioned to keep me on edge and anxious about staying on her good side, and tied to her--in the sense that her mood, how she was feeling, was always on my mind--more so than would otherwise have been the case. And that last was definitely something she did want.
None of which has anything to do with the ambivalence towards relationships I've displayed in the years since then, oh no.
518. Agreed, and thanks. I know it's tough to share these things, but that was worth sharing. I'm so sorry that happened to you.
This has become a terribly, terribly sad thread. I hope we can start a new one later and discuss Cute Overload or something.
Well, nosflow's been trying, but I think this is clearly the cutest sloth picture around.
523: That is the best thing I have ever seen.
How big can you be and still be cute?
If Doofensmirtz were a woman, would Perry's violence still be funny?
527: Oooh. Dolphins get all the fun.
There was some confessional post recently where he admitted to/bragged about having done something to assist a fucked-up girlfriend with an ultimately unsuccessful suicide attempt. The whole story was immensely skeevy.
Are you talking about how he attempted to murder his girlfriend and kill himself in their sleep? That wasn't about helping her kill herself; it was attempted homicide. (The link to the original post doesn't go through; maybe he took it down.) That said, I rather like Hugo. Yes, he's obviously a narcissist, and smarmy, and it really seems like he gets off on talking about all the sexy naughtiness he used to engage in--but still, I think he's basically correct in his views about gender and sexuality (aside from that silly god-stuff), and it's useful to show that even smarmy narcissists can be productive members of society. By all accounts he's a good teacher, and an inspirational one.
I guess ultimately I just like how relentlessly sincere and uncool he is.
531: Whoops, I hadn't read the initial post and got it wrong -- I thought he'd done something to try to make sure that a woman he was with wouldn't survive a suicide attempt. That's really very much bad enough, but if she wasn't committing suicide that's entirely different. Jesus christ.
"Whatcha thinkin about?"
"Just sloth stuff."
531: I really, really do think he makes all of this shit up. Not just smarmy narcissist, but unhinged. I don't know him and have no access to actual truth here, but I think he comes up with this bullshit so that people will pay attention to him on the internet. In the same way that in the mid-aughties he'd insert himself into any and all blogspats just to lap up all the run off outrage/attention.
She broke up with me, while we were long distance, very much against my desires. I think the combination of her being incredibly supportive and kind most of the time with the stuff she talked about when she wasn't made me more emotionally dependent then I would have been in a healthy relationship. Add the fact that I was in a socially isolated situation and a few non-relationship things and the initial break up pain spiraled into a suicidal depression in spite of coming to terms with the break up as probably a good thing. We remained close friends, with some abuse eventually mixed with quite a bit of help getting help once I got back from abroad and finally discussed my depression with her - she was the only person I felt able to talk to about it. I started getting out of it, dating again and feeling good, and a year after the initial break up she suggested trying again. I was reluctant by that point, but she argued that I'd regret it if I didn't, which unfortunately was true. So we did, and it was worse than ever. We then broke up by mutual consent the following year.
I didn't think of the relationship at the time as abusive. Just one with very serious problems. I think that here gender and pop culture images of abuse worked against me. I wasn't getting seriously injured, I wasn't in serious physical fear, and abuse is something that happens to women, not to men. Plus probably a reluctance to admit it to myself because that would mean needing to get out of it. And apart from the unhealthy emotional dependence, things were often just good in a healthy relationship way. Part of coming to terms with it is trying to sort out the good memories from the others and being able to accept that I can remember certain things fondly without that negating other stuff. One lasting effect, however, is a strong fear of any serious relationship. I'm terrified of ever allowing any one to become central to my life in that way.
Huh--well, I suppose if that turned out to be the case, I'd feel pretty silly. Nevertheless, I feel that reading him in the 'oughts really did help me move away from the thoughtlessly "feminism is irrelevant these days" stand I had back in college and before; I do think he's said things a lot of guys need to hear, and he's a more accessible entry point to it than, say, Twisty (whom I also learned a lot from!). A narcissist, absolutely; but I do think he's been a useful presence online.
523! I saw someone with a Perry tattoo* on his calf the other day. It was the first tattoo I've seen in years that made me like the inked-up person more.
* I first wrote "tat" and then thought better of it. You're welcome, Flip.
Add my voice to the "thanks for sharing, George" chorus. It's very helpful to hear these things.
This is sort of OT, but is it sexist that I'd feel much more comfortable using physical force to defend myself against an aggressive man who was smaller than me than I would using force to defend myself against an aggressive woman who was bigger than me? (And it's not that I like to hit small people but not big people. I'd not talking about judging my odds of being successful. The point is that I'd be comfortable defending my against a man in any way that I thought might be successful, but I'm not sure I would be with a woman, even if she were stronger than me.) I think, yeah, that's blatantly sexist.
Also, I could be wrong about myself, I suppose--I've never really been attacked by a woman, much less a bigger one. Maybe if I really felt threatened animal instincts would quickly override any discomfort I felt about fighting back. But I'm not sure.
541: Sexist, but I'd rather be sexist than hit a girl. Call me old-fashioned.
What do you mean "is it sexist"? If you mean "would a reaction like that probably arise out of gender stereotypes and so on", sure, probably. If you mean, "should I worry about what this reaction says about the egalitarianism or lack thereof of my underlying values", I gotta say that if you're actually in such a situation, and find that you do have such a reaction? You've got more urgent problems than whether you're a sexist -- you should focus on the fact that some Amazon is hitting you.
If you want to beat yourself up over your values and actions, focusing on situations you're actually in is probably more productive.
[Y]ou should focus on the fact that some Amazon is hitting you.
A young, shapely Lynda Carter isn't just "some Amazon," LB.
542: How tall are you, 6'4"? As long as you avoid pissing off the WNBA, you're probably not going to have to worry about disaggregating your reaction to "violent women" from "violent people smaller than me". I would put this one low down on your agenda.
Urple's at least fragile enough to make this a question -- he's taller than I am, but I'm probably a fair amount heavier.
544: Buck is in fervent agreement.
541: Sexist, but I'd rather be sexist than hit a girl. Call me old-fashionedsexist.
531: Holy christ that link is like the distillation of everything I always hated about his writing. Reading him is like being trapped with someone who's just gotten into therapy, only he's been at it for *years*.
he's taller than I am, but I'm probably a fair amount heavier
Wait, really? You're what, 5'7"? I'm not going to ask what you weigh, but I doubt you're a fair amount heavier than me. We might weigh roughly the same amount, maybe.
Wow, I am always late to the exciting threads.
First, let me just say, without taking sides on the original dispute, that "big, random baby" is my new favorite insult and I can't wait for my roommate to get home to try it out.
Second, holy shit, I had no idea Brenda Milner was 93 years old. I met her briefly several years ago and would have guessed she was in her 60's, which she obviously wasn't, because "several" is not 30.
When I grew up, my mother was subject, with some frequency, to absolutely epic rages that resulted in relatively little bodily harm (she is wee) but serious property damage on the order of bullet holes in the ceiling, doors taken down with sledgehammers, bricks through windows, etc.
The upside of this is that I have an *incredibly* long fuse before losing my temper, and not being tempted to engage in idiotic internet fights is like my superpower. (I am also quite good at patching drywall).
The downside is that I have no tolerance at all for unrestrained shows of temper and as soon as someone I'm friends/lovers with pulls out the crazy-screamy-destructive act, I basically can't go back; the relationship is effectively over even if I try to let it go. It's sad because I realize this is a common enough human frailty that need not evoke such a hard & fast reaction.
Just ducking back in to say: well, this is enough evidence to suggest that the advocacy work I was talking about is seriously, badly needed. On one discussion in one internet community in part of one day. Christ.
Now I must duck back out again.
Suddenly I feel like we've had the conversation in 541 before. Oh well.
541: Sexist, but I'd rather be sexist than hit a girl.
You don't always have to make the choice.
[tumbleweeds]
What?
549: Well, I'm remembering what you looked like the one time I met you, which was while you were wasting away: while devastatingly handsome, of course, you looked like a coathanger on a broomstick with a suit draped over it. You may have put some weight back on since, but if you were 150 then, I'd be surprised. I'm 165 -- right about what I was then.
548: I don't want to imply that I think ill of people in drug/alcohol/sex addiction recovery or whatnot, but some of them seem unjustifiedly enthusiastic about telling other people what to do with their lives and how.
555: Also, at a geopolitical level, former communists and jihadis.
554: Oh, that's right--I'd forgotten the timing of that. I think I weighed about 125 when we met. I haven't been on a scale in a while, but I think I'm probably 30 lbs heavier than than now. (Which is still not exactly overwight for 6'0".)
Also, I'm terrible at judging weight; I wouldn't have thought you were 165.
552: We have. John Scalzi had a post on his blog about his wife resenting being groped in a bar, and her (after some verbal attempts to get him to go away) pinning the guy up against the wall with a forearm to the neck to convince him to stop. And there was an old-school blogosphere kerfuffle about what a terrible person she was, abusing the poor man like that, that Giajin Biker brought over here, arguing that it was sexist of her to defend herself violently because the guy groping her would have been prohibited by chivalry from hitting her back. And the conversation got all about cross-gender violence.
This was all ages ago, god knows when.
Speaking of ladies and mass, I would be interested to learn the distaff commenters' thoughts on the fact that the woman you reprobates have named Lunchy proudly announced her dress size to me the other day. (I had made some passing complimentary remark on her graceful delicacy in the evening's dress or something like that.)
557: Hah -- I still outweigh you. I am 5'7", and heavier than I look; literally big-boned.
Jesus, the link in 67 is funny.
562: The only reason I can see for saying that is that the dress was bought recently, and was an unexpectedly small size for her, so she's pleased. Can't think of any message you should worry about, other than proof that she is not entirely free of the body issues that plague us all, but most people aren't.
6' 150lb? It shouldn't be hard to knock Urple over. Let's start trying.
There's differences between men and women on average in terms of physical intimidation factor that go beyond height/weight. I'm shorter and lighter than many (probably not quite most) women, nonetheless I'm faster and stronger and don't feel physically intimidated by most women the way I do around a big man. Similarly, I think I'm more of a physical threat than a typical woman whether she be taller or stronger than me or not. Which is just to say there's some non-sexism related reasons to have a different instinct when threatened by men vs. women.
So, LB, you not only outweigh me, but you're probably in better shape than me too. So: do you think it would it be sexist of me not to punch you? (If I needed to.)
Well, that was what I was saying -- that's a man who actually needs to have a thought-out reaction for when he runs into a violent woman who's bigger than he is. It could happen at any moment.
proudly announced her dress size to me the other day
What was it? Nothing whatsoever could go wrong with posting that here.
Second, holy shit, I had no idea Brenda Milner was 93 years old.
Anna Schw/artz is another of those academics who seems to have remained extremely sharp far longer than one would expect. I saw her at a conference a number of years ago--I guess she'd only have been around 87 or so back then, since it was in 2002--and it was pretty amusing, because the other presenters clearly wanted to treat her as some sort of relic to be celebrated and honored, and she was all, "sonny, your paper is all wrong, and here's why." She's apparently still writing Op-Eds and stuff, or at least was until recently. Impressive.
er, somehow heavier became stronger. Which gives the opposite meaning, the point is that I'm likely to be stronger/faster than a woman at the same weight/height.
I figure I'm fast enough and darty enough for flight to be a reasonable response to just about any physical threat from a woman.
568: I think I said the same thing in the last thread, but anyone who's being physically attacked is entitled to use whatever force is reasonably necessary to make it stop. Would it be sexist of you not to defend yourself physically if I were attacking you? Um, I suppose? Patriarchy hurts men too? Sexist seems like the wrong word for it somehow.
(I will say that I could take approximately no one in a fight. I'm fairly strong for a 40 year old woman with a sedentary job, but that's a lot of qualifications. And I have no idea how you go about hitting someone. My life plan around violence centers on avoidance.)
Hooray! I'm going to go pick a fight with a big woman, just for kicks.
Megan excepted, of course.
If there was a woman bigger than me threatening me, that would be a big goddamned woman.
576; Man, you move from defense to attack pretty quickly there.
576: Just calling a woman "big" ought to work, in most cases.
The problem I anticipate in picking fights with big women is that many of them might have even bigger men around, who because of the patriarchy might feel compelled to step in.
It's pretty remarkable how strong the "don't hit women" thing is ingrained though (obviously, not in every man, at all, but still). When I was with the toaster flinger mentioned above, even though I really did have a fear of physical harm, it didn't cross my mind for a second, even instinctually, to fight back. The response just wasn't there, at any level.
I guess if I had been part of a sustained relationship over time with a female abuser that might have changed.
is that many of them might have even bigger men around
The mechanism for this is a little unclear: you do know that tall women are fishing in the same dating pool with the rest of us, rather than visiting with their boyfriends from Brobdingnag?
583: you aren't very good at picking fights.
583: then you'd better say it in an e-mail or comment thread if you want to get a fight started
584: one is told that many straight women prefer to have taller-than-them mates, and that this holds true even of tall women. So, other things being equal, one might expect tall women to have taller men around, because men who are shorter than tall women will still be taller than short women.
583: Yes, try that if "big" doesn't work fast enough. Maybe "Some of my best friends are full-figured gals!"?
584: well, but while there are plenty of women bigger than me, there are lots of men bigger than me (many quite substantially so). So even if you assume that a woman bigger than me might be around a man of random size (which seems plausible, since I didn't even mean "dating" necessarily, just "around", although I actually doubt this would remain true if we looked strictly at dating relationships), the odds that there will be a man larger than me are relatively high, who, as I said, because of the patriarchy might feel compelled to step in.
Oh man, I was a visiting a friend recently whose girlfriend's 8 year old boys sometimes hit their mom. I found it quite shocking, as I would have expected them to have learned "you don't hit girls" by then. It makes a certain amount of sense given their upbringing (two moms, super lefty town) that they haven't internalized much of the patriarchy yet, but it was still really strange to me.
582: In most cases, the strength differential really is fairly significant. If you're limiting violence to the amount necessary to leave the scene or otherwise bring the attack to an end, for most men, and most women, a man is going to be able to get away from or restrain a female attacker without a lot of violence.
If there's a cultural thing that's really missing, wouldn't you think that it's more that there's no cultural script for a man 'getting in a fight' with a woman? If a man threw a toaster at you, you might feel that punching him was a normal option: not as self-defense, exactly, but that he started it so you were entitled to hit him. Take that script away, and I'd think you never considered violence against the woman who threw the toaster because it wasn't necessary for literal self-defense; she couldn't stop you from leaving.
you might feel that punching him was a normal option: not as self-defense, exactly, but that he started it so you were entitled to hit him. Take that script away, and I'd think you never considered violence against the woman who threw the toaster because it wasn't necessary for literal self-defense; she couldn't stop you from leaving.
That sounds about right. I suppose if I was literally in fear of my life and the only way out was to fight back against a woman, fight back I would.
there's no cultural script for a man 'getting in a fight' with a woman?
Flippanter said I ciould just call her 'big'.
590: those boys should meet my mother
I think it's relatively rare that in the face of a genuine threat fighting back makes more sense than fleeing. The main circumstance would be if it was someone who you attacks you on a regular basis (an abusive relationship is one example, but a more normal example would be going to the same school), in which case running won't stop the harassment. But barring those circumstances, fights happen when both parties want to fight and that makes it a ritualized culturally-mitigated thing.
fights happen when both parties want to fight and that makes it a ritualized culturally-mitigated thing
Yes, very true.
My point is that in an enlightened society, I could go fight a woman in a bar tonight. In our society, though, that seems too risky--I'd likely get my ass kicked (and I don't mean by her).
Hugo Schwyzer comes across as a self-righteous prick. He's basically a dry drunk -- the same egotism that led him to be a manipulative SOB with women when he was younger is still operative, consciously or unconsciously. He works the 'feminist leader' gig to ensure he continues to be surrounded by adoring young women.
It annoys me when people pose the Hugo Schwyzer issue as 'can a man be a feminist'. The issue with him is who he is, not his gender. Although I guess his particular domineering quality is sort of male.
That's how we'll know when the patriarchy has finally fallen: when a man can hit a woman in a fair fight without worrying about other men jumping to her aid.
599: I hope we never sink so low.
in an enlightened society, I could go fight a woman in a bar tonight
If you could limit your aspirations to some variant of wrestling, I feel sure you could be accommodated.
592: Although the trouble is, if you did, there's a substantial narrative in society that would more-or-less automatically categorize you as an abuser regardless of whether it was self-defense or not, and would disregard or even cheer on the woman's violence whether it was abuse or not (or would be categorically unable to define it as abuse). That MRA culture is messed up and scary is true, as previously mentioned, but this is one of its common grievances that actually seems to identify a real problem.
595: Well, yeah -- pretty much only when you're trapped. Fighting back, as a means of self defense in an actually violent situation, is mostly fighting-to-regain-the-option-of-fleeing, rather than fighting-to-be-the-winner-of-a fight.
He's basically a dry drunk -- the same egotism that led him to be a manipulative SOB with women when he was younger is still operative, consciously or unconsciously. He works the 'feminist leader' gig to ensure he continues to be surrounded by adoring young women.
Yeah, I just read some reactions to the whole attempted-murder thing, and more importantly his responses to those reactions, that have soured me on his value to the public sphere. If he's a good teacher, that's great, but he probably ought to be trying to step out of the limelight.
Speaking of ladies and mass, I would be interested to learn the distaff commenters' thoughts on the fact that the woman you reprobates have named Lunchy proudly announced her dress size to me the other day. (I had made some passing complimentary remark on her graceful delicacy in the evening's dress or something like that.)
She is hott and wants to stay hott! All good, full speed ahead!
If you could limit your aspirations to some variant of wrestling, I feel sure you could be accommodated.
piminnowcheez is Andy Kaufman.
598 was me, sorry. It was before I dropped my feminist mask in 607.
591.2: I think this is right. Even if there is minimal physical injury, a man's getting hit first by another man gets read as an insult that it's craven to walk away from (unless the assailant is in a wheelchair or something), whereas a man's getting hit by a woman gets read as hysterical (and therefore weak) on her part. Given the assumption in the second case that the man could easily win any fight, walking away reads as a demonstration of forebearance and strength.
608: Yeah. Nice way to ruin 27 years of prep for my next piece, jerk.
604: Is there a real problem there? I mean, put aside "fair fights", where people have mutually agreed to punch each other -- I don't really understand the rules that make this not a bad thing to do, so I'm not going to get into "what would a non-sexist 'fair fight' culture look like?" If we're talking about self-defense, are there actually a lot of situations where the amount of violence necessary for literal self-defense (that is, generally, the amount of violence necessary to regain the ability to leave the situation) is going to get a man in trouble?
The thing is, as I said above, given the strength differential, the amount of violence necessary for most men to defend themselves from attack by most women is pretty much none: it's hard to restrain someone unless you're a lot stronger than they are, and if you're not restrained, you can leave. Female on male situations where violence is actually necessary for defense are going to be both quite rare and quite extreme -- I don't know, but I doubt public opinion would be hard on a man in such a situation.
"[W]hat would a non-sexist 'fair fight' culture look like?"
A Joss Whedon message board, crushing a human face, forever.
I bet Gswift has a bunch of stories that are basically "Some woman called in and said she was being abused by being shoved into a wall, and it turns out the man was shoving her into a wall to get away from her hitting him with a stick." I vaguely remember some such thing.
I think he's told stories like that. Counting gswift as 'public opinion', IIRC they support my claim in 612.last.
I bet gswift has a lot of stories that would bum us the hell out.
Occasionally I still get the creeps remembering the one about the guy with all the bugs and the fungus.
612: I think there probably is a real problem, yeah. What the actual statistics would be I'm not sure, but stories of men being arrested for assault and subsequently hit with restraining orders for the minimal use of force to escape an abusive spouse are relatively commonplace and credible. The size and strength differential may mean less physical danger to men on average, but even given that I don't think female on male situations where there's a genuine danger to the man are necessarily all that rare, since weapons and the throwing of potentially harmful objects frequently come into the picture. I've never been with someone that violent myself, for which I'm deeply thankful after reading GW's posts especially, but it's certainly out there.
but stories of men being arrested for assault and subsequently hit with restraining orders for the minimal use of force to escape an abusive spouse are relatively commonplace and credible.
I'm having a hard time believing this -- it's not inconceivable in any single event, but the combination of 'minimal use of force' and 'escape' leading to an arrest for assault seems really implausible as a commonplace.
If you throw in a swearing contest, where the arrest and restraining order is based on false testimony from a complaining spouse, alleging actual assault from the man rather than the minimal use of force necessary to escape, sure, people lie about each other all the time. But if that's what you're talking about, it's really not the same issue.
612.2: I think this is a misperception. Any violent situation is dangerous and can create injury. If a man restrains a woman in ways that leave any marks he risks jail. Same if she blocks his exit and he shoves her out of the way. Trying to leave is nice to say, but what if it's your house? Are you going out on the streets?
There was a recent Metafilter thread on this that was full of shocking stories . One point made relevant to this discussion --
Say you decide to go outside and cool off or go leave the room - and your partner blocks the doorway. Do not touch them. Not at all. Don't gently grasp their shoulders and move them to the side. That is assault.
619.1: I wish it seemed as implausible to me, because it's a genuinely disturbing unintended effect of what is otherwise one of the great (and most profoundly necessary) feminist success stories, the ending of the silence about violence against women. But unfortunately I don't think it's implausible. Far as I've seen, the stories PGD links in 620 could be multiplied many, many times over.
As far as I read, all the stories in 620 fell into the same 'swearing contest' pattern. I am absolutely not saying that there is not domestic violence by women against men, nor that there are not false complaints of domestic violence made by abusive or violent women against male victims. That is a real problem, or two real problems if you count it like that.
It is not the same as saying that a man will be punished, either legally or by public opinion, for using force as necessary in self-defense where everyone actually knows what happened.
622: I don't see the swearing contest pattern in any of PGD's links. In the second one, for instance:
The one time I called the cops, they arrived to find me barricaded in the closet. My shirt was torn, I had a fat lip and bloody nose, my face and arms were full of scratches and bruises. Broken shit all over the house. They knew what had happened - and I broke out in tears telling them.
But they were unable to remove her. If I were to file a complaint, I would go to jail. My choices were to sleep in my car, or sleep in jail. This was because one of the successes of the feminists was to get laws written such that the abuser is removed. This is good, but often they were written with the assumption that the man was the abuser, and with no provision for female abusers.
So, she would get off scot free. She got to beat me up, have the cops arrive, and her victim gets punished by them for being so cheeky as to call the cops to begin with.
This doesn't directly mention him trying to defend himself, but given those parameters, I don't see how he wouldn't be even more hosed if he had.
The third link does directly mention self-defence and who gets arrested:
Last week I saw a drunk woman slap her partner so hard she knocked him down. He stood up and tried to walk away, but she pounced him. He pushed her away and she fell to the floor, scraping her knees and hands. The dude left, and the woman called the police.
Five minutes later the cops showed up with the guy in handcuffs. Luckily for him a bunch of witnesses talked to the cops and he was released. It took about half an hour to convince the cops that he was the victim.
all the stories in 620 fell into the same 'swearing contest' pattern.
Come on, every one of those stories specified exactly why the man was under grave threat of arrest and losing his family and home as soon as the police got involved, regardless of whether he was defending himself. Of course, they are just internet posts, so whatever.
I was traveling recently and watched a lot of this MTV 'teen mom' show (I love reality TV). Just casually watching I saw several on-camera examples of girls whaling on their boyfriends while the guys either cowered or tried to get away. Sometimes the girls were screaming threats to call the police and have the boyfriend arrested in between blows! Amazing. Not too smart to do that on camera either, but that's the MTV teen mom demographic for ya. I think one (girl) eventually did get arrested. And it is true that the boys were not physically injured. But man, what a horrible way to live.
I have to say that without a link to the local statute, I simply don't believe a story that says that when a bruised and bleeding man calls the police from inside the closet where he's barricaded, they categorically may not arrest the woman who attacked him. Possibly he's talking about an 'arrest them both' statute, but if that's it, it impacts female victims just as much as male victims. (And further, that's not someone who's claiming to have been punished for using minimal necessary force, that's someone who's claiming to not have been protected by the police despite having used no force in self-defense.)
The second one is absolutely a swearing contest -- she called the cops, said she was attacked, and a half hour later when witnesses supported his story that he used minimal force in self-defense, they let him go. Lying is bad, and there probably is a sexism problem in the way the police evaluate credibility in violent altercations, but that's different from saying men aren't allowed to defend themselves.
It's totally plausible to me that doors cause problems. There's only one way out of my apartment and getting out against someone who was determined to stop me would require real violence.
Come on, every one of those stories specified exactly why the man was under grave threat of arrest and losing his family and home as soon as the police got involved, regardless of whether he was defending himself.
Right, but they're basically all variants of saying that the real abuser claimed falsely to have been abused, and the cops either believed her or almost believed her. That's a terrible thing to happen, and a real problem. But it's exactly what I was talking about as a swearing contest: not an unreasonable standard for how men are allowed to use force in self-defense, but a situation where the police believe something false about what violence was used and by whom.
626.1: I would agree with you in that I doubt that the statute is literally written to specify that only men can be abusers, it's likelier to involve implementation. As for 628, the reason there's a problem with the police being likely to believe something false about who is the abuser and who isn't seems to me to be connected with an unreasonable standard for self-defense by men from abusers. They're related problems.
From the link in 620:
For a period of several years, I was beaten by my wife. Not constantly, but often enough. And every time she did it, she jumped on the phone to tell her friends-who used to be our friends- that I was becoming violent and she was scared. She made up stories about the horrible things I was doing to her, and kept threatening to call the cops on me.
Swearing contest: no one's holding this guy to an unreasonable standard, they're just believing someone who falsely claims that his actions are genuinely wrongful.
From the 'barricaded in the closet' guy:
If I had ever laid a hand on her, she had resources to make my life very difficult. As it turned out, I didn't even have to touch her. She could just say I did, and it would work the same - irrespective of anything she did.
Swearing contest.
I'm not saying that the swearing contest situation isn't a serious problem and a source of injustice where it happens. What I'm saying is that the problem is not that men are not allowed to use necessary force in self defense against women.
I have no idea, as an empirical matter, what the scope of the problem is, but 629 makes sense to me. There's not a clear line between "swearing contest" and inability to use necessary force in self defense -- the problem is that if a man uses necessary in self defense, the police are unlikely to believe him in the "swearing contest."
Again, I have no idea how widespread that problem is, but it seems like a potentially very real one.
630: Sounds more like one of those things where in theory you're allowed to vote, but in practice there are inequitably applied literacy tests, etc.
(Not that the aggregate level of social harm is comparable, obvs. In fact, I ban myself.)
Sorry, I've had a busy day and haven't gotten back here. My point in mentioning Hugo was exactly what x. trapnel links in 606, specifically the part about safe spaces.
I got what LBJ was saying as a warning that if you (m.) do anything physical, you leave yourself open to major repercussions. That seems like it's worth keeping in mind even if it's not going to be universally applicable.
I've noticed drastic differences in how the parents of kids we've encountered in foster care have been treated based on their gender. While "inadequate" moms are judged harshly by just about everyone involved, the dads are assumed to be uninvolved at best and it's much harder to get them services. There have been some excellent caseworkers and service providers who've been exceptions, but it's noteworthy.
If a man threw a toaster at you
Instant, non-thinking reactions: If a man threw a toaster at me, I would be very likely to charge at him full steam. If a woman threw a toaster at me, it would probably just result in a bunch of shouting. Neither one seems a particularly useful response while I'm considering it calmly.
620: one of the reasons I feel so confident that I won't abuse people again is that I don't live with someone large and anxious who likes to corner me. I genuinely don't think this excuses my actions, but I remember that blocked-doorway dilemma pretty well. And the many times I was confined in a moving car during arguments. We were mismatched for many reasons, one of which was that he was strongly opposed to letting me walk away to cool off, or stop arguing cold. The funny thing was that eventually, after enough meta-fights about how I should be allowed to leave or stop talking, I could no longer calm myself by leaving or silence, because... it felt something like being let out on a leash; I didn't ever feel like I had left. He found it comforting, apparently, to keep all conflicts live and open until they were completely resolved, and couldn't trust that this would happen if, say, I was too stressed to make eye contact.
So one really marvelous life lesson I have learned is that even with a set of excuses and qualifications like that, you don't feel substantially less guilty for fucking up and being violent.
Hey, look, a quite fuzzy kiwi chick!
This is all very much complicated by the domestic violence context, of course.
I think 612 holds up pretty well where leaving the scene is an uncomplicated option: most situations, most men are going to be able to get away from a physical assault from most women without injuring the attacker. On the other hand, if something about the relationship dynamic makes moving out and getting away from the abuser not an option (for female abuse victims a big factor is fear of an escalation of violence; for male abuse victims, I'm not sure what all the factors are, but clearly they exist sometimes), that gets really hard for a stronger person being abused by a weaker person.
I understand (in theory) how to use violence in self defense to get away from an attacker, or to stop an attack by incapacitating or killing an attacker (theory. I know nothing at all about interpersonal violence other than that I wish to encounter it as little as possible). Using violence to stop someone from attacking you while you stay in their presence is something that's a lot more complicated: as far as I can tell, all you can do in that regard is hurt or frighten them until they give up the attack. If that's what a male abuse victim made an attempt to do: stay with the abuser, but defend himself from her violence with violence in return... I might sympathize with the guy if I knew all the details of the story, but from any kind of perspective of someone without intimate knowledge of the situation, it'd be hard not to think the stronger/less-badly-injured party was the primary malefactor.
This is rough on an innocent victim: why should they have to leave? But the kind of rough it is isn't really about not being able to use violence in self-defense.
We got one of those super fancy British toasters that don't make toast very well (wedding gift). My wife would never throw it.
Which is probably not directly related to anything but how shiny the counter is.
635: This is in no way intended to let you off the hook for your wrongdoing, which I still think was significant. But Jesus, am I glad on your behalf as well as his that the two of you got away from each other.
Surely part of the problem is that whether one can confidently say "I know that man was being abused or acting in self-defense" is informed by different standards for knowledge that depend in part on gender stereotypes. E.g., in the case that LB mentions, the cops don't believe someone when presumably they'd be more likely to believe it easily if the genders were reversed.
But it's exactly what I was talking about as a swearing contest
LETTS GETT READY TO RRRRRRRRRRRRRUMBLE!
We were mismatched for many reasons, one of which was that he was strongly opposed to letting me walk away to cool off
Whoooo baby is this a bad idea. And not just in the domestic violence context. Walking away to cool off is almost always the best move in any conflict situation. "No, honey, you have to stay here and escalate and make things worse."*
*I guess you do have to provide a real assurance that you'll address the issue eventually, instead of just avoiding it. But dealing with things when everyone is worked up already is like the worst idea in the world.
Hey, look, a quite fuzzy kiwi chick!
THƏT SƏME FEMALE NEW ZƏLANDERS CHOOSE NOT TO SHAVE IS NONE OF YOUR BƏSINESS!
635 is more evidence that EW is not my ex since the arguing instincts were exactly the opposite in our relationship, and it was my going into a wall of silence mode during one that prompted the first episode.
I don't know what the solution to the law enforcement issues are, except perhaps making cops aware that the direction of abuse can be in the reverse direction from the conventional one. The stats I've read are that it's about 6:2:1 in heterosexual relationships, that is women abused by men, mutually abusive, men abused by women. So while what I experienced is considerably rarer than the reverse, it's also not a man bites dog situation.
Why does one stay. Fuck if I know. It's what bothers me the most when I think about it.
479
Remember everyone, breaking shit during a fight with your spouse or live in partner is a DV offense. Breaking something expensive can land you a felony DV charge. Not bueno.
Does that include shooting their laptop?
I really hope I didn't drift into sounding victim-blaming about someone who doesn't leave immediately when abuse starts: I know lots of people don't, for all sorts of reasons within the relationship. I was just noodling around the issue of how violence in self-defense really only works as a tool for being able to leave; once you're using it for much of anything else, it's going to be legitimately very very difficult for anyone outside the situation to know who started the violence and whose fault it all is.
620
Say you decide to go outside and cool off or go leave the room - and your partner blocks the doorway. Do not touch them. Not at all. Don't gently grasp their shoulders and move them to the side. That is assault.
IANAL but I don't believe this is the law. You are being unlawfully detained and I would think could use reasonable force to free yourself.
645: Heh. If it's on their lap at the time, then definitely.
647: I think you're right that that claim is overblown, although I don't actually know how the statutes governing unlawful imprisonment and battery interact. My guess is that it was more intended to claim that an exaggerated and untrue version of the contact would be believed by the police, which I do agree is likely to be a problem in cases of female-on-male violence.
I am not sure if there's anything further I should say about events in this thread. If anyone thinks I should, or wants to discuss anything, let me know; perhaps it should be off-blog.
On Edith's situation, what most everyone else said, especially Thorn, and heebie's explanation in 365 about having compassion for the past you.
444
... Thinking about it more, I think the biggest barrier to self-forgiveness, or letting things go, might in fact be that so few people have ever acknowledged that my actions were seriously wrong. ...
Maybe your actions were not in fact all that bad.
... My ex chose not to ruin my life by turning me in to the police -- he said so explicitly ...
Just because he said so doesn't mean it is true.
637: My understanding is that the British don't eat toast very well, either, so it seems like these toasters should be just the thing.
Walking away to cool off is almost always the best move in any conflict situation.
I agree, and yet this is the very thing that often seems to set people off the most. My father/stepfather walking out of an argument was a pretty reliable trigger for my mother to move from merely screaming abuse to demolition mode.
620
Not that I have read the link or anything but although there are surely innocents who have gotten into unjustified legal trouble there are also a large number of people whose legally problems are mostly (or entirely) their own fault but who claim total innocence and it is kind of hard to tell them apart just based on their own interent accounts of their problems.
I would totally watch a reality show called "James B. Shearer: Therapist."
Yeah, that is part of what's going on in a "swearing contest" situation. There are certainly at least some men who have been lied about by abusive women, and had to deal with criminal prosecution as a result. Of course, there are also going to be some abusive men who claim that was what happened to them even if it's not true. There's not a clean solution there, other than for cops and prosecutors to get better at telling who's lying.
I agree, and yet this is the very thing that often seems to set people off the most
It often occurs when two people are locked into pursuer/distancer roles, where one person is always needy and clingy and the other person is always seeking space. "Distancing" is a way of managing intense emotions, but it registers like abandonment to the person stuck in the pursuer role.
If you don't do distancing for intense emotions, then you have to have intense emotional talks. Those are hard and usually a mistake.
Not if you rigidly control your psyche to the point that you no longer have intense emotions.
I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
If your turn out not to have intense emotions when every one else does, you'll be seen as distancing regardless.
I find smiling beatifically regardless of context either calms people down, or creeps them out enough that they do the distancing for me.
Maybe that's my problem. My bored, impatient head tilt just seems to infuriate.
Speaking of personality conflicts in relationships, Lee is out for a little while and just called to ask whether I'd mind she had a cigarette since she hasn't in over two months. I just said that I thought the point of quitting was to not smoke anymore but that I'm not her jailer or anything. She now claims she's not going to have one but ARGH!!! WFF?? AUGH! I HATE THIS! It is not my job to be the designated buzzkill! Also I'm mad because she left her phone here and keeps calling me from the phones of other people at the bar and they'd just better never call again because I hate talking on the phone.
Trying to head things off before everybody gets too emotional is my usual strategy.
I don't think I would keep calling home from the bar, but I might have tried to make somebody else tell me not to smoke.
Being the enforcer of non-smoking in a relationship doesn't seem to help either the relationship or the non-smoking, IME.
663: Funny, that's something annoying I'd do. I call Buck and tell him to tell me to do something, or not to do something, all the time. Doesn't even matter if he knows what it's about, it's just easier if someone tells me to do the right thing.
My bored, impatient head tilt just seems to infuriate.
Having extricated myself from a relationship once upon a time with someone who did this, yeah, it infuriates (not to point of actual violence at all).
The best approach I've ever encountered was from someone who'd say: we can talk about this after you've counted to ten/eaten something/gotten some rest. Until then, this is not a good time to talk about this. He'd say that to me or to himself as well. Eventually we'd say it to one another as needed. Worked a charm, which is not to say it would work for everyone.
667: Yeah, which is why I refused to play the role this time when she quit, because it was really awful and I didn't even want it last time. She now says that she wanted me to justify her decision not to smoke but "I really want just one cigarette and ..." is not the way I'd start a request like that. Oh well. She's settling in with a beer and some Frasier reruns and I've put my quilting away and can go to bed now.
668: yup. I get calls from my wife asking me to tell her to go swimming. And I often call her and ask her to tell me just to write the fucking conclusion or whatever already so I can go out for a bike ride. Admittedly, I've always found this pattern of behavior somewhat juvenile, but we talk on the phone about thirty times a day regardless, so what's one more call.
655
... There's not a clean solution there, other than for cops and prosecutors to get better at telling who's lying.
There is the issue of the appropriate standard of proof. Liberals who confidently assert in the abstract that it is better that 20 guilty people go free than 1 innocent be convicted often seem reluctant to actually apply this standard in rape or domestic violence cases.
Having written 672, I think it was stupid. Quitting smoking, ending an addiction, is way more fraught than continuing to exercise or finishing an essay or whatever. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to minimize the issue. (Subtext: you're a monster, LB)
we talk on the phone about thirty times a day
Sickening.
VW, no, you're totally being fair and I know I'm not being supportive enough about how hard it is for her to quit because I'm sick of the quitting and then trying again and so on. So that particular thing and pinning the responsibility for it on me is really a trigger.
The other hang-ups it touched on were that she called while I was putting Mara to bed, which is just really fucking annoying although not a big deal in the scheme of things, and that I would totally suggest that any kid of mine use "mean Thorn won't let me do it!" to avoid peer pressure, I hate being put in what feels like a parental role with my partner and so I was being resentful about that.
I know quitting smoking is awfully hard and I'm not being as supportive as I should be because solo parenting 2.5 kids for five months was no walk in the park either, so give me a fucking break. I knew this time after Val and Alex went home and we both started feeling like we "deserved" things because of that time would be hard. And she did make big sacrifices and big progress their last few months, but the serious work was all me and it makes me berserk when she hasn't considered that she'll need to provide dinner for Mara if I'm still immobilized by the stomach bug because she's so used to me always having to do that sucky job. Oof, parenting is a stress, as is the stomach bug.
parenting is a stress
Around the time our older boy was born, I remember my great aunt telling me to get as much good sleep as I could. "Why?" I asked. "Because you'll never sleep the same again, not even when they're grown," she replied. Gulp. Now, to some extend I expect that this is an artifact of survived-Hitler Jewish culture. But not entirely. Parenting is some stressful shit: one oneself and on one's relationships.
That sort of meticulousness: not worth it.
677: She's wrong! You just have to add one who wakes you up 20+ times a night and then in the first week after he's gone you'll sleep like you never have before in your life. Except apparently that stage is at an end because I'm inn bed and really not tired yet even though I should be.
677: Tell it, great-aunt of Von Wafer!
I have a new idea, lord castock. you should exchange '80s pictures of you for von wafter's xanax. I think your pix are so awesome that each is worth a 10 tab strip, is everyone with me?
You'll have to pry my pictures of Lord Castock in a Princess Leia bikini Xanax from my cold, dead hands.
Why not just use your hands as a morbid pillbox so we don't need to do all that prying?
684: Hey, how did you know about those? That's spooky.
Uhhhh, I mean, there are no such photos! The very idea is ridiculous!
677: I'm sentimental, but I admire Michael Connelly's detective character Harry Bosch's description of the experience of having a child rather late in life as having a gun to his head all the time. That's a man who has the right idea.
Parenting is some stressful shit: one oneself and on one's relationships.
My girlfriend's take: "everyone says that, but we don't have to believe it".
688: As someone who would like to have a child, and would be rather late in life if successful, I'm going to have to look into this Harry Bosch. Unless you think it'll scare me out of it.
My girlfriend's take: "everyone says that, but we don't have to believe it".
True; you can re-derive the proof for yourself.
690: The books are workmanlike in most respects, but Connelly provides a good metaphor (which I'd spoil by quoting) for Bosch's emotions when he learns he has a child.
I bet Gswift has a bunch of stories that are basically "Some woman called in and said she was being abused by being shoved into a wall, and it turns out the man was shoving her into a wall to get away from her hitting him with a stick."
You have no idea. One of my favorites was the woman who's ex "assaulted" her by crushing her arm rolling up his car window while she was trying to punch him in the head from outside the vehicle.
Say you decide to go outside and cool off or go leave the room - and your partner blocks the doorway. Do not touch them. Not at all. Don't gently grasp their shoulders and move them to the side. That is assault.
Legally is is not true. And my preference is to jail women to pull this nonsense for unlawful detention. BUT, there is a lot of variance in training and competence (the South, you live there and takes your chances). My brother's agency (GA) had some DV "training" from some supposed expert that told them outright if they weren't arresting the male half at least 95 percent of the time they were doing it wrong. Fortunately my brother and other guys with experience called them out on this shit.
I bet gswift has a lot of stories that would bum us the hell out.
Do I ever. The crazies who try and get people arrested on fake domestic violence sometimes up the ante and go for a rape or sexual assault story.
