#naptogether
Lee Carroll Brooker, a 75-year-old disabled veteran suffering from chronic pain, was arrested in July 2011 for growing three dozen marijuana plants for his own medicinal use behind his son’s house in Dothan, Ala., where he lived. For this crime, Mr. Brooker was given a life sentence with no possibility of release.
See also (these two stories just happen to be about veterans, but the policies need to be better for everyone):
Retired Master Cpl. Paul Franklin lost both of his legs from just above knee when a bomb hit the vehicle he was driving during a Canadian Forces tour in Afghanistan in January 2006.
Ten years later, he is getting ready to fill out yet another set of forms to tell the Canadian government that, in fact, his legs are still missing.
“It’s insane,” Franklin said. “My problem with all this is if you have someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder or some sort of brain injury, or you have a combination of the two and they’re on street drugs or alcohol or whatever, the chance of them filling out the forms correctly is minimal at best.”
When a veteran wants to fill out disability and pension forms, it can sometimes involve multiple applications to several bodies, including insurance companies, even for permanent injuries like Franklin’s.
He said veterans should deal only with Veterans Affairs and the process should be far more simple. If medical status has changed, he said, a doctor’s note should suffice. If it hasn’t, no forms should be needed, he said.
hey here’s a wild idea, let’s not allow teachers and administrators to hit students, it’s fucked up, and it is also disproportionately used against black kids, and this is 2016 and go fuck yourself if you think this is acceptable, honestly, go fuck yourself, thanks, also there is some asshole with Slate Plus making about a thousand comments about how great corporal punishment in schools is, as though we cannot all tell that he is furiously jacking it at home while he types
I’m animated when retelling the story. If I become Lucille Ball on a bad date, I can dissociate. This is the approach when I type it out for the online magazine xoJane. It will soon become the bad-date story that upends my life, but I don’t know this as it spews out of me like stomach bile. I don’t care that the writing’s not good; I just want other women to stay away from him.
Hours after it’s posted, the article goes viral, and the faithful rush to Ghomeshi’s defence.
As I watch the vitriolic comments pile up, my editor checks in. I beg her to change the title they gave it, which is an extraordinary 23 words long. (“IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Accidentally Went On A Date With A Presumed-Gay Canadian C-List Celebrity Who Creepily Proved He Isn’t Gay.”) I didn’t write those words. They make me sound like a homophobic asshole. The editor says she’ll see what she can do and advises me to “ignore the haters.” She doesn’t change the title.
I regret writing that I stupidly thought Ghomeshi was gay before meeting him. I had let that assumption conjure a false sense of safety. I’m a naive fool. The Internet notices. I get upset messages from the LGBT community. My heart breaks. I absorb their pain and field their comments. I’m sorry.
OKAY LET US PIVOT TO SOMETHING FUN! AAM is collecting ridiculous emails people have gotten at work:
The best email I have seen was sent to several hundred people in response to reply all being misused and contained the line
“If you are looking for sympathy, you’ll find it dictionary somewhere between shit and syphilis …….”
Many, many pictures of Titanic survivors and the families waiting to hear about them!
What avoiding eye contact DOESN’T mean:
When I was growing up, eye contact was mentioned during confrontations at home where my truth was demanded. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that?” I was asked. But I can’t recall either of my parents ever saying outright that I should look people in the eyes more, or that it was an expected part of communicating with others. Problems didn’t really occur until my early school days, when teachers insisted that I should look the person I speak to in the eye. During these exchanges, I learned for the first time the pain and trauma that could come from meeting eyes across space.
Yes, I do mean pain, and yes, I do mean trauma.
Eye contact actually hurts me. If I meet the eyes of another and hold their gaze for more than a microsecond, I experience sharp discomfort throughout my entire body. When making eye contact, I also feel that my very soul has been laid bare—that my every inner thought is on display, and that my mind can be read and my secrets made public. The best I way can explain it is that it’s like being opened up totally from the inside out for all to see.
Kate Aurthur is one of my favourite pop culture writers, and her INCREDIBLE look at how Nina became a disaster is so so so good:
In 2005, when Mort began writing Nina, authorship was less contested. The two perceived favorites for Best Picture at the Academy Awards for that year were Brokeback Mountain, a tragic gay love story directed by Ang Lee, a straight man, and the winner, Crash, which directly engaged with racial antagonism in Los Angeles — and was directed, produced, and co-written by Paul Haggis, a white man. That the politics of popular culture and racial appropriation are more scrutinized now is a good thing, said Coates — it means democracy can be a factor. “I think the social media piece is big,” he said. In 2005, “not only is there no Twitter, there’s no black Twitter.”
“Personally, I feel for all of them involved. I really, really do,” Coates said about Nina’s filmmakers and cast. “It’s not a matter of them being bad people. It’s not about them being personally racist. It’s not a matter of Zoe Saldana not being a good enough actor. It’s about a bigger systemic thing. And in a world in which someone who looks like Viola Davis is restricted from the stories she can be a part of, we say that burden should be shared equally. It’s not going to be shared equally. But we say it should.”
the dreaded “people not saying racist things at casual dinner parties” end game:
Anybody have some additional fun/carefree links to share today? LOVE the link roundup, as always, but I’m in a very meh space and need something irreverent to cheer me up. Like, a page full of Steve Buscemi gifs, might do.
Ask and you shall receive!
Ahh. I feel euphoric like I just got a facial or ate a board of charcuterie by myself.
A couple of years ago we were throwing a party and my husband mentioned that some friends were planning to provide the charcuterie. Except he kept pronouncing it shark uteri. So I thought that’s what our friends were actually bringing, and I was trying to psych myself up for it. I was actually a little disappointed when they showed up with fancy cheese and jam.
Hahaha! When I lived in Florida, it was not uncommon for restaurants to serve fried shark or gator…neither of which is worth taking a trip to Florida. Avoid Florida, at all costs.
I have eaten both shark and gator, so no need to go to Florida at all
You’ve made wise choices, I respect that
But, charcuterie is meats! I would expect, at minimum, bologna on a board.
I don’t remember what they actually brought. There was probably salami or something. I just know that it wasn’t shark
I am not having a good day, but you’ve just improved it beyond measure.
I saw a student production of the opera(ish) “Regina,” based off of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes and so I found this interview of Elizabeth Taylor, who starred in a Florida production of the play, and I finally figured out that Patty Lupone learned enunciation from Tom Brokaw.
Anyway, here’s the interview — which isn’t a Steve Buscemi gif, but that’s because I didn’t read to the end of your comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj6HU-ZpABU
Thank you Mike!
Here you go!
Beautiful. My stress level is decreasing. Thank you friend!
This is my favorite gif on the entire internet
What did we do to deserve Steve Buscemi?
Would you like to hear my tragic Steve Buscemi story? OH GOOD!
So, I live in Lawrence, KS, last home of William S. Burroughs (ugh) and after he died there was some sort of…memorial thing? Not just the funeral, but like some Event and coincidentally that same weekend one of my fave local bands was playing a local bar and I went to see them with a friend. The layout of this place is kind of weird (it’s a long narrow room, really terrible for live music, but…) and I always liked to sit on one of the sides, right at the front, so I was near the dance floor if I wanted to dance but also I couldn’t see anyone behind me (basically the entire bar) without craning around (the chairs are nailed down and don’t swivel) which is fine with me because I don’t have a thing about people walking behind me and I was there to see the band, not socialize.
Anyway, the friend I was with told me the next day “Oh hey! I figured out who was the guy sitting behind you! It was the funny looking guy from Fargo! I bet he was here for the Burroughs thing.” She hadn’t said anything during the two hours we were there. No “hey d’you know that guy?” or “that dude looks familiar.” Nothing.
I could have throttled her. What the hell, Kellie.
So that’s how I didn’t meet Steve Buscemi.
UGH. My heart weeps for you.
Here’s my celebrity missed connection:
Back in 2006 ish I was in NYC with my family. I was 16 and this was the height of the High School Musical phenomenon. ONE FATEFUL DAY, my parents left our hotel room and went downstairs to get breakfast while my sister and I slept. My mom called 10 minutes later and was like, hey, you might want to come downstairs. “Why?” I asked. Just come, she said. Gave me zero reasons, and i was 16 and tired so I was like yeah, no.
About an hour later, they come back upstairs with autographs from Zac Efron. If she told me Zac Efron was downstairs, I would have come downstairs. But she didn’t. I’m still mad.
DICK MOVE, MOM. DICK MOVE.
(Unrelated to anything: my friend’s burlesque name is Dick Move and I was scrolling through the comments quickly and saw this and instantly thought it was him. Oops.)
That is a stellar burlesque name.
YOU ARE ALL SO INCREDIBLE. TOASTIES ARE WHAT IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD, MANY THANKS.
KELLIE, GOD
Paul Rudd came to my friend’s bar several years ago. Other friends of mine were working at said bar. He hung out for a while and was generally a cool dude by all accounts.
I cannot say personally because none of my dingus friends thought to notify me. :c
Oh man, many many moons ago, my friends and I went to a certain bar on Tuesday nights because we knew Paul Rudd played poker there with his buddies. And that’s how I wound up eating some of Bobby Cannavale’s fries.
That is incredible
He’s a good guy, too.
Wow.
Hi! I giggle-snorted to this while drinking my coffee this morning: http://ladyhistory.tumblr.com/tagged/the-captione…
Thank you!!!
That is gold right there.
You’re very welcome! I’m glad that you both enjoyed!
I don’t have any Steve Buscemi, but if you like kittens please try: here and here for my current three favorite kitten litters.
I yearn for ALL OF THEM
Puggle the baby fox is the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time! http://www.boredpanda.com/baby-fox-puggle-nationa…
oh my gOD. Holding back screams. I love it!!!!
The picture where it looks like he’s waving at the camera!!!
those little ear tips!! oh my goodness. :”)
Check out the proudest mama moment of this amazing mama dog: http://goodstuffhappenedtoday.tumblr.com/post/142…
(another shameless plug for the Goodstuff tumblr – it’s not mine but it does warm my heart nearly each day)
Oh I love this!!!! So freaking sweet. Thank you!
The link has several more photos from her “maternity photo shoot” which took place on what turned out to be the day before delivery. Recommend.
The daring escape of Inky the octopus was a spot of light for me yesterday.
Go, Inky!
I love when animals foil human kind. <3
I will read anything and everything about cephalopods and this is no exception.
<“It doesn’t mean that Inky was unhappy where he was,” Montgomery said. “Astronauts don’t go into outer space because they don’t like Earth, they just want to see what else is out there.”>
I love them so much!
This one MIGHT supplant the Otto the Octopus story in my heart. Maybe.
“the people of Coburg are coming up with new ways to keep Otto occupied, like giving him a chess board… But then, he was like, no, I don’t want the chess board. And he just threw it out of the aquarium.”
Another Otto story: Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better – much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.
Okay, no, still my favorite.
OTTO YOU MERRY PRANKSTER
It’s not a gif, but there’s a historic prison in my city (in what used to be my neighborhood, even!) where the audio tour is narrated by Steve Buscemi. Come, enjoy the sounds of Eastern State with your good pal Steve: http://www.easternstate.org/visit/regular-season/…
LOVE. Many thanks, bless up.
Toast Hero Nadiya Hussain is going to make the Queen’s birthday cake! Best quote:
“When I told the kids [I was making a cake for the Queen], the boys were great at keeping it a secret. I told my daughter and she said, ‘Oh Mary Berry? You’ve made lots of cakes for Mary Berry.’”
MARY BERRY IS THE QUEEN, HEADCANON ACCEPTED.
Love this!
Here’s the interactive Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights! Very irreverent. https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en
This was the first thing I clicked and I am cackling. Thank you.
Shit, how do you upload a photo? I’m not doing the code right. Ugh, it’s too good not to share.
Ron Funches on Kroll Show is always perfect. As Ron Funches always is in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmF0SH0_kzk
“You look like a hairy chocolate gummy bear.”
How about cool pictures of old sunken roads?
Yes!!!!
Love this, could/do look at this stuff all day- gracias!
my go-tos:
http://sttngfashion.tumblr.com/
http://catalogliving.net/
You are fabulous, thank you!
Fashion made me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Ez_bV_Lr8
OK, I don’t even know where these are from, and they have lit up my life:
This is an article about finding Steve Buscemi strangely attractive, with loads of gifs http://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than…
HEART EYES EMOJI
In my opinion, one can never go wrong with the Gallery of Regrettable Food: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
Warning–when I first encountered this, working in an office with poor sound insulation, I nearly had a stroke trying to control my laughter.
Sarah Palin thinks she’s as much of a scientist as Bill Nye, so there’s your dose of whimsy for the day.
WONDERFUL, thank you!
Science communicators seem to be damned if you do, damned if you don’t in the current climate. If they’re overly technical or have too many degrees then they’re elitists who “regular people” shouldn’t trust, and if they focus on education and accessibility as Bill Nye has done then someone like Sarah Palin criticizes them for being lightweight and not a “real scientist.”
Semi-related, Adam Savage’s podcast did on episode on what it’s like to communicate with the public about science recently that’s worth a listen.
Yeah, he’s the head of the Planetary Society, which is actually developing new space exploration techniques, but sure, that’s not science.
Well, they did invite her. Which of course means they are just ginning for cash and had no intention of having a substantive discussion.
Oh, no question there.
This whole thing is absurd. She said this at the premiere for a documentary someone made that’s all about how the government/evil scientists have faked global warming? Because that’s… something that’d make sense to do, sure.
AND it was hosted by the chair of the House committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which is the biggest joke of a committee because no one on it has a science background, intentionally. Even when there ARE reps with science backgrounds they are just not allowed on that committee because… they’re biased?
(I am a grumpy science journalist with a physics degree and so much sadness.)
This is spangled bolero-cardigan wonderful! 🙂
Helloooo, Dunning-Kruger!
Do you ever wonder what it must be like to harbor conspiracy theories, like to believe them deep down in your bones? I sometimes envy people who truly believe that something like global warming is a vast conspiracy made up to profit scientists (or something) because wouldn’t it be more fun to live in that Dan Brown sort of world than the real world where global warming is threatening to destroy us all?
I’d expand “let’s not allow teachers and administrators to hit students” to “let’s just not hit any kid at all ever for any reason.”
[Oh, but sometimes they–]
No.
[I mean, kids often can’t he–]
No.
[I was hit as a kid, and I’m okay.]
N!O!P!E!
[If it’s between my kid getting hit by a car and my saving my kid’s life by span–]
Jesus Christ.
— signed, a hit kid who didn’t deserve it and isn’t crazy about it still happening
HARD AGREE.
When I was in the second grade, at a private Christian international school in Singapore (mostly attended by evangelical Westerners), they sent home a letter for parents to sign that would authorize teachers to spank students. My parents didn’t just sign, my dad made the official paddle. (It looked like a long narrow cheese board.)
I was spanked as a kid, I’m fine (probably? who knows), but those memories are negative ones and I learned nothing from them. The punishments that made lessons sink in were never the physical ones. Spanking is not a thing that needs to happen! Figure out another way! And absolutely do not give someone else the right to hit your kids!
“My parents didn’t just sign, my dad made the official paddle.”
! ! !
PLEASE don’t peg me as an M. Scott Peck guy, because I’m not, but he wrote a book, and it may have been People of the Lie, and there’s this HORRIFYING story about a boy whose brother killed himself with a gun, and then THE PARENTS GAVE THE SURVIVING SON THE GUN FOR CHRISTMAS. “Oh, you mean, a gun like the gun your brother–” “No. The actual actual gun.”
Anyway, THIS STORY IS NOW IN SECOND PLACE TO THAT STORY.
Now I feel bad for insinuating my dad is not a good person. He is great in many, many ways, and evidence that corporal punishment is practiced by lots of normal, decent folks!
This does not, however, make it okay.
I grew up in Singapore and I almost never use this commenter account, but dug up my login info to STRONGLY AGREE. Until right now I had pretty much forgotten the whole culture of caning/spanking/corporal punishment in general – luckily my parents didn’t do it, and it was not commonly done at my school, but I remember a lot of my classmates talking about it happening to them at home.
Making kids associate learning (and the normal mistakes that go with it) with physical pain is Not OK. All it “teaches” you is that adults have an unfair amount of power and that some of them will use it in place of actually teaching effectively.
I was spanked as a kid as well, and I agree. The lessons I remember aren’t from the spankings. They’re from doing chores, fixing what I broke, and facing the consequences of my actions (which were not spankings). The consequences were always carefully laid out. Like “If you, tinyeviloverlibrarian do A, it will result in B.”
Granted those weren’t always fair either. Like “You’re not allowed to share your dress up clothes with the neighbors because you forget things over there because you’re a 6 year old.”
All I learned from being spanked as a kid was embarrassment. And that I was not going to spank my [then-future] children.
[If it’s between my kid getting hit by a car and my saving my kid’s life by span–] M
Wait what? I can imagine smacking a hand away or pushing a child out of the way if they are in immediate danger because it’s quicker (like about to stick their hand on a hot stove or an iron like I did as a kid. ow.), but it what way would spanking prevent them being hit by a car?
Spanking didn’t teach me not to roam in a daze, that’s for sure. Only fix there was to incentivize holding hands or the voluntary leash on mom’s belt.
Yeah I was terrible about roads as a kid, but that’s because no one taught me about them or what to do on/around them. My mother just assumed I’d pick it up I think, and then later complained a lot about how scary I was cycling on roads.
I was only ever hit out of anger or sheer desperation (I wasn’t a well behaved child, not in a bad way, I just didn’t really listen to anyone about anything.) and it never taught me anything apart from learning to run faster and hide better after I did/said something terrible.
Yeah. When I was three I was nearly hit by a car and my mother grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the road to prevent it, dislocating my arm in the process. But how would spanking prevent that?
(for the record, my mom felt like the WORST MOTHER EVER after this incident. which is silly because I’d rather have a dislocated arm than be dead)
My mum dislocated my arm when I was a baby, accidently obviously, and was thoroughly freaked, but the nurse in the hospital said it was really common because babies/toddlers joints haven’t hardened yet and then she popped in back into place.
The one time I remember my dad ever hitting me was when I tried to cross a very busy road without looking and was nearly run over. (I think he also felt like the worst dad ever after doing that; it was just a moment of panic.)
I only remember my parents ever hitting me once each, and in both examples it was very much the case that they had just got to the end of their rope and made a lapse of judgement (with my mum I remember it was being late one evening and I was messing around and refusing to get out of her room and go to bed); I don’t blame them for it at all, but they never acted as though we deserved to be hit and that it was an appropriate punishment. If they had hit us routinely I’d be much less okay with it.
Your poor mother! Go mom reflexes!
So, of course, the correct answer is “spanking a kid won’t prevent them being hit by a car” and you and I know this because we aren’t addled idiots.
But.
So, I have conversations about punishing children a weird amount since (a) I don’t have kids at all; and (ii) I know that makes me an Unreliable Authority, but I have Very Strong Feelings about it. So I’ve heard a lot of justifications and I’ve heard the “you don’t have time to reason with a kid when they’re in danger” (which seems weird because putting a kid in a situation where an adult is physically harming them seems pretty dangerous to me?) coupled with “like, if they’re running out into traffic, you have to yank them back and give them a swat so they know that they can’t do that again.”
Look: life is a rich pageant and we’re all just doing our best but I’ve decided that I also get to make choices about the people I allow in my life and I just don’t have room for spankers/smackers/beaters in my life currently and for the foreseeable future/ever.
Yeah, a friend of mine told me a long story about spanking her daughter when the kid unbuckled her car seat and stood up while the car was moving. It was all “now she knows never to do that again!” and I was like, yeah, but…but………..ugh, it just made me feel bad.
I also do not have children and so take my perspective with a grain of salt, but hey, my parents were deeply against corporal punishment of any kind and I’m grateful for it. It really sickens me to see anyone argue in favor of hitting a kid.
“now she knows never to do that again!”
She also knows a lot of other things, too, now — like the people that you thought love you can also do the most unloving thing in the world to you.
Man, I’m TOO CLOSE TO THIS CASE.
Ugh, yes!
My parents didn’t spank me all that much, but I can’t remember ANY of the reasons that I did get spanked–it didn’t do very much to reform my behavior. What spanking did teach me, as a young child, was that:
1. physical violence is a “consequence” of behaviors that adults don’t like, even if you don’t understand why or didn’t anticipate it;
2. physical violence is for your own good if someone you love is doing it to you.
Cue my parents’ utter bafflement that I never spoke up about my abuse at the hands of older family members. How can you expect a kid to trust you when they don’t know if you’ll react violently? How can you expect a kid to know the difference between violence that’s okay and violence that isn’t? Why would you put a child through those mental gymnastics at all?
But the child is already scared and scaring them more isn’t going to do much! I often feel like people who really believe in spanking children, as opposed to the people who do it because they’re at their wits end/desperate/don’t know what else to do (which doesn’t forgive, but its a different situation), just don’t see children as people, like have you seen that ‘train up your kid’ shit? Apparently you should start hitting your baby’s hands with a wooden spoon to set them up for a life of obedience. NO.
I don’t know anything about parenting, but I know a little bit about teaching kids, and a lot about behavioural training in animals; and no one, animal or human, learns anything constructive from pain or fear. We use discomfort/pressure to train a lot of animals, because they don’t understand words automatically, but beating an animal has never resulted in a well trained animal, just a scared or angry one. And here’s a newsflash, children are people, not animals, they understand words and can learn a lot faster because of it!
OK, so what about fear though? Because I’ve got my guy not running into the street because I’ve stressed to him that if he gets hit by a car he could be hurt very badly and even die (I started with just “hurt very badly” but it wasn’t working – he considered stubbing his toe as badly hurt. We had already talked about death because our cat died/I’ve asked him not to kill spiders/etc. So to explain that “hurt very badly” means that he could even die seemed logical and also true and I try to parent by truth. )
He doesn’t seem at all traumatized – he doesn’t ask/talk about death all the time, and he isn’t physically afraid things like climbing up way too high on the jungle gym meant for 5+ year olds. But still, I feel like I taught him to be afraid of running into the street, which is a real true thing, but is it parenting using fear and thus bad?
No, to me that’s completely different! You used words to communicate to him that a behavior (running in the road) is dangerous and that he might get hurt or die, which is a real risk. You did not hit him or threaten to hit him, which would teach him that he should go near the road because you’ll hit him.
There’s a difference between teaching a child to fear danger (in a real and reasonable way, roads are dangerous) and teaching a child to fear you or your reaction.
Children need to learn about danger and fear, they do not need to fear their parents.
You don’t have to have kids to have a worthwhile opinion on hitting kids. After all, you were a kid, so you remember what it’s like.
^ ^ ^ THIS
I was spanked a couple times as a kid, I’m fine–it didn’t damage me, and I STILL manage to get that HITTING SMALL PEOPLE is not how you teach control and discipline.
I don’t get how this is a tough concept for people.
The “getting hit by a car” argument is bananas to me, because what do these people imagine the alternative is? There are plenty of countries where it’s illegal to beat children for any reason whatsoever (just like with any other class of people!). Do they think we just let our kids get run over by cars? Or that kids won’t remember ALMOST GETTING HIT BY A CAR?
Yank the kid out of the way, point at the scary car, be visibly terrified, remind them to stay on the sidewalk and never to run out in traffic… is that not a good enough lesson unless you also slap the kid?
Well, if they’re running into traffic you may have to yank them back- i can accept that. But then, they’re no longer in danger! You DO have time to reason with them afterwards!
All this argument makes me think of is that time my mom accidentally ran my sister over with a car. This is not relevant to the conversation, really, it’s just HILARIOUS.
(It is hilarious because my sister wasn’t seriously injured. She had a broken toe.)
The reasoning I heard often when people told me I was wrong not to spark my kids was that it’s essential that kids learn to obey immediately the first time you say anything because it could save their lives. As in, teach them to instantly freeze and obey when you speak because one day you may be across the yard and see your kid about to step in front of a car. If you have let your kid be a jerk that sometimes questions or ignores orders, they won’t stop, will be struck and die, and it will be the fault of your own terrible parenting.
No joke I heard this several times from many people. There is a very vivid story along these lines in To Train Up A Child which is like the Ur spanking advocacy book.
In karate they teach us and the kids that there are special times you do what mom sats, no matter what, as fast as possible. This is part of safety/ self defense/ active shooter defense. We start karate at three–at that level it is discussed at the “mommy and daddy need to keep tou safe, so if you hear the special wird, you do what you’ve practiced,right away”. We are supposed to run fire drills, get in the car right now drills, talk to them. The important thing is that they know those special danger words and know that is different from when mom and dad tell you take out the garbage.
My point being, there are other ways to cue even very young people into obedience mode without hitting. And that 100% obedience isn’t the goal, just obedience for the right reasons at the right time.
I work with kids–including lots of high-need kids who are not inclined to obedience–and have a toddler, and so I’ve read and thought a lot about how to get compliance from children. I’ve also heard this argument a lot, and the thing is: immediate obedience is necessary SO RARELY that the benefit of creating a whole family/classroom culture around it isn’t worth the cost. How do I keep kids who are careening toward the street out of it? With my FREEZE voice. It is big and startling in part because I ONLY use it to keep kids out of imminent danger. And in a decade it has only failed me once, with a kid who had a literal behavior disorder and needed more specialized care than I could offer.
Edited to add: SPANKING WOULD NOT HAVE IMPROVED THAT KID’S BEHAVIOR EITHER.
Yeah. I work with young kids and I also have a FREEZE voice. It’s an instinctive thing and I only ever use it when I’m genuinely terrified for a child’s safety. It has never failed me thus far (I fully expect that it will at some point, but it’s still SO much better than corporal punishment.)
Kids are small people, not stupid people. The only thing they learn from regular spankings is that might makes right.
I was very occasionally lightly spanked as a kid, and I used to think, you know, no big deal, I might use it as a tool or describe someone being verbally demolished as “they got spanked!”
Then I started talking to people who had been physically abused as kids, or who had the threat of corporal punishment looming over them, and it’s been so eye-opening and terrifying.
It’s really been one of those things where I heard other people’s stories and it completely changed my perspective. I won’t ever spank my kid(s), I won’t use the terminology I did. I have changed and I’m glad I did.
Yeah. It’s hard for me to read these comments sections and not be That Person who’s like “I WAS SPANKED AND I’M FINE” (and this is also a conversation I have periodically with my partner who was not spanked and is determined never to spank). But then, as you say, I read/hear other people’s accounts of being “spanked” and I remember that it’s a small word that encompasses a crazy variety of pain/manipulation/abuse. For me as a kid, spanking was an incredibly infrequent event that was almost entirely painless and mostly about humiliation (not that humiliating kids is great either), but it’s easy for me to forget that when others talk about spanking they are talking about something that is simply a form of assault, and that fact invalidates any excuses I might personally have to offer for the practice.
This, exactly. I understand why people get defensive in these situations– my upbringing was very similar to yours, I think. My mom was under a lot of stress when I was a kid and I think she worries that she was a Terrible Parent because she lost her cool from time to time, and I want to shake her by the shoulders and say “NOTHING YOU DID TO ME FUCKED ME UP AT ALL, YOU ARE THE BEST.” But of course I have to step back and realize that this conversation isn’t about my mom and how I feel about her.
In the past I’ve been very defensive about it! Especially with my partner. Like, certainly my parents fucked me up, but in a “they fuck you up your mum and dad” inevitable kind of way that everyone’s do — “normal” weirdness that just has to do with being deeply intimate with other flawed human beings. So it’s tempting to get my dander up when people say stuff like “ANY PARENT WHO HITS THEIR KID IS A MONSTER” — but then I have to remind myself that while I’m welcome, in my own head, to draw a distinction between spankings I received and “real corporal punishment,” it’s not a distinction that’s useful or interesting to anyone else, and it actively diminishes the larger point that I agree with, which is that there is no reason to hit kids. On the most basic level: it’s not kind and it’s not effective.
This tweet has very much spoken to me:
https://twitter.com/thepunningman/status/65093701…
[Quick caveat: I’m not suggesting you at ALL are the “I think it’s okay to hit children” kind.]
But I think that’s an important assumption to examine in these conversations: if you were hit, what do you think you learned? If what you took away from the experience is “sometimes people smaller than you need to be hit to learn” then that’s probably worth spending a little more time thinking about.
Once upon a time I used to be able to ask, “In what situations as an adult have you ever corrected another adult by hitting them?” And then Trump rallies became a thing and that’s really fucking up my rhetoric.
Right. I mean, as I say, the spankings I received had very little to do with actual physical pain and more about the idea of humiliation and control as a disciplinary consequence; it is upsetting to be reminded that someone else has control over your body, even if the actual hitting is not painful. And though well within the spectrum of what I consider to be normal/allowable, teaching by fear — any kind of fear — is in theory not helpful or effective. On the other hand, most of the times I was spanked are in the “or getting hit by a car” category — the only time my mom ever spanked me was because I was determined to touch the woodstove, and I wasn’t listening to her, and she was scared, and made the split-second decision that it would be better for me to get a light swat on the butt versus a burn. And the thing I learned was that she was in charge of my body and so I should pay attention to her commands regarding what I should and shouldn’t do with it. Sure, that is troubling in other ways, but I think your suggestion — that what you “learn” from being spanked is reducible to “it’s okay to spank” — minimizes a pretty broad spectrum of lessons (some very troubling, some arguably necessary) that parents intend to teach by means of physical intimidation.
I guess I would say that part of my point is that hitting is a small subset of the large and complex variety of manipulations that can be exerted over a child. I’m not a parent (yet?), but if I ever become one I feel like I’m so aware of the fact that EVERYTHING I DO will form my kid’s worldview, and so any categories of knowably bad stuff that can be cut out as a whole are only going to be useful. I can’t promise that I am never going to scare my kid — the fear of disappointing my parents was a MUCH more powerful motivator than the fear of being hit; I can’t promise that I’m never going to inadvertently say something that will deeply and adversely affect their future thinking; but it’s relatively easy to just decide that I won’t use corporal punishment, and that’s a whole set of possible issues (for them, for me) off the table right there.
On the other hand, consider that LOTS of adults settle situations by hitting other adults. Plenty of people settle situations by killing other adults! On a national level, we all do! And further, there are lots of things I’d do or say to a kid that I wouldn’t do or say to most adults (hand feeding? holding them by the hand in public? brushing their hair? feeling undisturbed when they run around naked?). So while I take your point…I’m not sure this is the most effective line of argument, regardless of Trump.
And the thing I learned was that she was in charge of my body and so I should pay attention to her commands regarding what I should and shouldn’t do with it. Sure, that is troubling in other ways, . . .
Wait, can we talk more about this particular effect of spanking? That the kid learns that they don’t have autonomy over their body? Because that really does seem troubling. I wasn’t hit as a child, but I’d like to hear others’ opinions. Did this lesson have repercussions elsewhere in life for people?
I do think it’s interesting and would be interested to hear what other people have to say. I suppose the way I put it makes it sound very dire/abusive, and I don’t mean it that way — I genuinely think my mom was protecting me as best she knew how (and here we go with the defensive! haha). Little kids (I was like 3) don’t really have bodily autonomy in quite the way they do later on; parents do and should have the authority to say “don’t touch that,” “eat this,” “pull your pants up,” right? And what are the positive ways to establish that authority? As I’ve said elsewhere I’m not a parent and this is one aspect of parenting that perplexes me because I don’t think it was modeled quite right for me as a kid; I’m not sure how I would handle it as a parent.
(disclaimer? apologies? here that I am a bit of a lurker trying to delurk. Hi)
This was a huge part of how I experienced it. With one exception, I was never hit very hard, so it wasn’t about physical damage for me. However, the experience hugely damaged my sense of bodily autonomy as a younger child, and I felt like I and my body was the property of my parents, so I had to submit to hugs etc. even if I wanted to be let go. I didn’t think about it in those terms at the time, but it did mess up loads of my head and I had difficulty when I first encountered feminism because what I was reading about bodily autonomy and many other things conflicted so deeply with the beliefs I had acquired about my body not being my own during childhood. I was very pro-life as a younger teenager, because of course one has the obligation to give one’s body over to pregnancy, because bodily autonomy isn’t important…. arghh, I want to strangle younger me.
Of course, all of that wasn’t solely caused by being hit, but it was a significant part of it.
And also, after having my autonomy violently infringed upon for many years, I can’t bear to go near my dad any more. I just want to scream at him to go away whenever he wants a hug, because no, you will never touch my body again.
Yup. Learning that compliance in a case where, if I don’t comply, I feel likely to be in physical danger, trumps my bodily autonomy?
That plus general socialization to be nice, as a woman-raised person and a Midwesterner, contributed to me being sexually assaulted.
On the other hand, consider that LOTS of adults settle situations by hitting other adults. Plenty of people settle situations by killing other adults! On a national level, we all do!
The thing is, those are CRIMES. You can be charged for assault and battery on any occasion you strike another adult (and of course murder if you kill them). And (as I quoted Louis CK in a comment below) you can even go to jail for beating a DOG.
But even with the existence of CPS, parents are allowed to hit their children with impunity. I know from personal experience, because my mother called them when she found my dad was leaving bruises on us, and they investigated and still did nothing. It takes a hell of a lot for a government body to do anything to stop parents or to remove children from a place where they’re regularly beaten.
Yeah. Agreed. And an excellent clarification/correction to what I said. I was just thinking that “Do you hit other adults” is not the best rubric for “Should you hit kids” because it falls into the same logical fallacy of “Do unto others” — it assumes that different situations are consistent.
I don’t know very much about CPS except to say that I rarely hear of cases where people are like “CPS did the right thing — children were protected appropriately and adults given consequences”; it always seems to be “CPS failed this kid” or “As a parent who’s done nothing wrong, I’m scared of wrongful accusations from CPS.” I don’t have the experience or the resources to know how the system could work better, but it does seem like it is a potentially incredibly important resource that doesn’t work right as it currently stands.
The thing is, I’m really not bitter about how the CPS let us down. (I DO hold it against those Christian camp counselors who heard my allegations against my dad and did NOTHING, I hope that caused someone lost sleep.)
But I can’t imagine how difficult it is to work in the CPS, because acting in the official capacity of “judging parents” has to be among the least fun and most stressful jobs in America. Our society isn’t amenable to it. Everyone hates and fears the CPS. No one aspires to work there because of the lucrative benefits in any aspect of the job.
My dad was a lawyer and engineer who owned his own home and never touched alcohol, let alone drugs. I’m sure my situation looked great compared to most that they saw. (Doesn’t change the fact that my brother was having nightmares about our dad killing me.)
But this is the problem about corporal punishment — the children have no advocate, no resources that abused adults can find. They can only try to endure and survive. And in the words of the often-problematic Andrew Sullivan, “Hitting people, especially when those people are small and defenseless and dependent on your care, is such a lazy and cruel way to discourage bad behavior.”
You just brought up a fascinating point for me. Just the other week, I told a story in the open thread about how I recently visited the hardware store and recognized an implement that my dad used to hit us with, and I had a flashback memory of standing in another store while he picked it out and knowing exactly what it would be used for.
I remember that, I remember the terror and panic and humiliation and how the beatings played out, but I don’t remember the infractions that caused them. Maybe it’s because I deliberately repressed them — I try not to think about those memories at all — but I really couldn’t tell you if it was used consistently for a certain level of transgression (probably not, my dad was mentally ill). It was probably just when we were deemed too “disrespectful.” (We weren’t actually bad kids, this happened before our teenage years, and we were kept at home 90% of the time with my dad, except for church.)
Oh, I do remember that it probably happened when I fought with or hurt my younger brother. Because I was made to apologize/ask forgiveness of him and God afterward. I remember that part.
Time to quote Don Draper: “My uncle used to beat the hell out of me. It never did anything but make me fantasize about killing him.” Truth, Don.
Yeah, I get the defensive reaction, and I think it must be a version of what other people feel when I talk about sexual harassment or structural/institutional racism or sexism — something that I have personally experienced is invisible to others, but things other people have experienced are invisible to me. In this instance, it’s my responsibility to change. And I am.
Yep. Agree. And by arguing “but sometimes in very specific instances and with very clear parameters in mind certain kinds of hitting aren’t really hitting!” one undermines the larger point that it Just Isn’t Okay in order to defend something that…isn’t all that defensible to begin with. #notallspankings
Thank you for saying exactly what I feel. ‘All spanking is not created equal’
Every time I leave my son alone with my parents I feel the need to stress “no spanking!” and my mom says “we know, we know.” They do know. My parents were wonderful in many ways, and it was just considered an appropriate form of discipline with them for us, and it’s what their parents had done with them. But I’m not sure they understand how truly it fucked me up. I do know that they won’t spank my son, but somehow I compulsively remind them.
So last year I worked in a preschool for very low-income children, and I got in trouble for advocating that the parents *not* hit their kids. Apparently because my cultural/socioeconomic background is different, I don’t get to say things like that.
I say that as someone who *was* abused as a child, but, y’know. Culture.
I’ve had the same argument with wayyyyyy too many parents and daycare/preschool staff.
you live somewhere where ECEs are allowed to hit the children in their care? That’s… I can’t imagine. one of ours once had to disclose to me that she held his arm because he was hitting another child and she could not get him to stop using words. they are not supposed to even restrain unless absolutely required and then have to tell us if they do and get our ok.
A teacher at our old daycare/preschool was fired on the spot for grabbing a kid (like 1-2 year old) by the arm and getting in his face to say “I need you to listen to me” – yeah, you don’t get to do that!
Yeah you know I was never hit as a kid and while it’s true that I’m a listless failure in life I at least know that it’s wrong to hit kids.
I remember walking through stores with my mom and hearing a parent say “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”. It used to drive my mom BONKERS! The kid obviously has something to cry about- that’s why it’s crying!
I try to imagine myself, as an adult, in the midst of a crying jag and being told, essentially, “if you don’t shut up right now I’m going to hit you”. The only thing that would happen is that I would cry harder because, you know, someone is threatening to hit me.
I’m a lurker, and another child free person judging parents, but I cannot stress how uncomfortable this subject makes me. Why is it not ok to hit a nasty co worker, or a rude server at a restaurant, or the your gossipy neighbor, but it’s ok to hit a person 1/4 your size in order to teach them manners?? Why?
“stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”
This phrase immediately brings my hackles up. I hate it. By saying this to a child you are doing nothing constructive, all you are doing is dismissing their emotions and telling them that if they don’t conform to your ideas of an emotional reaction they’re going to get hit, whether you follow through on the hitting or not its a terrible thing to say TO A CHILD.
It was often thrown at me as a child, usually as a way of saying your crying/whining/emotions are annoying me. And now that same person says it to their, male, child and it infuriates me. Stop perpetrating abuse cycles.
I try to imagine myself, as an adult, in the midst of a crying jag and being told, essentially, “if you don’t shut up right now I’m going to hit you”. The only thing that would happen is that I would cry harder because, you know, someone is threatening to hit me.
Ah, but you can, essentially, condition yourself out of crying. Ask me how I know!
Yup.
I cry at the drop of a hat now, and it feels like unbelievable progress, something I’m not inclined to “fix.” If I never hear “I’ll give you something to cry about” again, it’ll still be too soon.
My foster brother went to school in rural Texas when he was with his adoptive family pre-us. The rules in Texas are that if the parents ok it, the school can use corporal punishment. His adoptive parents (who were abusive) okayed it. My foster brother has mental illness problems, including one where he gets stuck in a rut thinking about something funny so will just be unable to stop laughing and frequently got hit at school for laughing and disrupting the class.
So to recap: this law in Texas that okays corporal punishment if the parents ok it, enabled abusive parents to ok their mentally ill son being beaten for something he couldn’t help.
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you to infinity.
Time for one of Louis CK’s better quotes:
“I think it’s crazy that we hit our kids. Here’s the crazy part about it. Kids are the only people in the world that you’re allowed to hit. Do you realize that? They’re the most vulnerable and they’re the most destroyed by hitting, by being hit… but it’s totally OK to hit them! And they’re the only ones! If you hit a dog, they’ll fucking put you in jail for that shit. You can’t hit a person unless you can prove they were trying to kill you! But a little tiny person with a head this big who trusts you implicitly… fuck ‘em, who gives a shit… And we’re proud of it. “I hit my kids!” “You’re damn right I hit my kids!” “Why do you hit them?” “‘Cause they were doing a thing I didn’t like at the moment… and guess what… they didn’t do it after that!” Well that wouldn’t be taking the fucking easy way out, now, would it?”
My response to ” I was spanked as a kid and I’m okay” is “no, you’re not because you believe it’s okay to hit a child.”
Hey Irish Government being terrible to women again https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ireland-wa…
Warning: Symphysiotomies, surgical procedures without consent, Government denying justice, all kinds of fun.
Ugh the Dept of Health hiding behind the Data Protection Act, when it’s so clear that the women were not properly informed of the records destruction decision. And that it’s very far outside the *spirit* of the law to start from a premise that consent to records destruction is assumed unless the records owners say otherwise. The Dept are being such sneaks about this. Not only that but the so called independence of the redress scheme is called into question when all queries are directed *back* to the Dept of Health. Arrrrgh.
The whole thing is a mess as usual. They haven’t communicated well with teh women and have used a lot of fear mongering to get the result they want (You HAVE to take this, tiny, settlement within X time or you loose all of your rights to justices. Yeah no.)
Oh that’s so horrible. Seems to me if you have a problem with security of records you should… fix your records security? Re-scan things under a secure system? For crying out loud.
Its not about records or security; its about removing the records so there can’t be a case against the government. If they manage to destroy most of the records, then all they have to do is wait for the last of the victims to die in the next 10-20 years (most are in their 80s or older) by tying it all up in confusing processes and litigation and then there will be no repercussions and the whole thing can be forgotten.
Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh
Jesus, I couldn’t get any further than “some women had their pubic bone sawn through.”
Yep. And the doctors only did it because it allowed women to have more pregnancies than c-sections at the time, and the male doctors setting the recommendations were Catholics and thought it was important that women continue having lots of babies. Instead of sinful things like being able to walk.
As a follow-up to discussion of laws like North Carolina’s HB 2 from previous link roundups, Jacobin has an article up about companies who are publicly against the bill but have donated money to groups that have helped fund the campaigns of legislators who support it.
And in news that should surprise exactly zero of us, turns out that all-female commentariats tend to not suck! (Present company of Toastmen, of course, excluded, because you are not dingoes.)
Maybe Toastmen ARE actually dingoes, not human men, and that’s why they don’t suck? There’s no way to be sure.
If any Toastmen are former Dingoes please tell us some behind the scenes scoop!
new favorite comment
“on the internet no one can tell you’re a dingo”
It’s more difficult to type mean comments when you don’t have opposable thumbs, I would imagine, as a human man that is most certainly not a dingo.
I already have a baby, and have no plans to take yours. QED
Although Dingoes on Probation would be an amazing name for a band.
#notalltoastmen?
Toastmen are the best men
Hahahaha, I honestly love that “Ban all men” is a legit solution.
IT WORKS
IT ACTUALLY WORKS
IT’S SO SIMPLE
honestly, the Toast and Jezebel were mostly the only two comment sections that I’ve ever hung out in for very long, and it’s because in my own experience, yeah, mostly-female comments sections are wayyyyy better.
I try to explain that the comments actually make articles on The Toast better and am usually met with incredulity until people actually try it.
This is true, but I would also argue (Deleted Comments notwithstanding) that it’s partly because we have such good material to comment on.
Well that’s no shocker. I do wish that discussions of misogynist internet harassment and women-dominated spaces took more time to acknowledge the intersection of race etc…
Yes, that’s a really good point, and can get flattened out in the more general gender discussion.
hmmmmm, I have spent some time on pregnancy boards, and they tend to go pretty nasty pretty quickly (and presumably are almost entirely made up of women…)
Yeah, I don’t know if women-only boards are inherently better — maybe women-only boards sorted by interest? And Toast interests are the best interests?
I think moderation is probably SUPER important. And Toast moderation is the best moderation.
Definitely moderation – and also prevailing tone and so on? If someone reads the comments here I think they would pretty quickly twig what kind of place it is and perhaps be less likely to be an arse? I know it’s not universal due to the delightful deleted comments and so on, but I wonder if it’s at least contributing?
I’d agree with that. I spent years and years on a niche interest forum known for being a friendly, welcoming place (majority female, but several male users). There was definitely modding going on, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from the general Internet. People understood the tone, and although the exceptions to the rule were pretty vivid, I can *remember* most of those exceptions distinctly because they were that much of a rarity.
Moderation in all things, especially comment sections.
Maybe its demographics as well? I can imagine pregnancy/parenting comms have a wide intersection of people, where as private slack channels and feminist websites would possibly skew younger, higher educated, white collar workers (the kind of people who might be able to use Slack while at work).
You think older people and poor people are less civil than young, rich people? And you think the Toast doesn’t have older readers or poor readers? Wow.
No that’s not what I meant at all; just that pregnancy boards might have people who are all very different, whereas people who seek out private feminist spaces might be more similar in their beliefs/values.
I obviously didn’t articulate it well; but it is true that like minded people tend to gravitate to each other, and online that means we all hang out on different websites/communities that align with our values, and so its possible that one of the reasons pregnancy forums are an outlier in women-dominated civil online spaces is that people aren’t seeking it out based on values, but on a life event that happens to almost everyone.
It was just a thought.
I think moderation has more to do with it than demographics. Younger, higher-educated white collar workers are very capable of being asshats. A lot of the deleted comments on Nikki’s casual racism piece remind me of statements I’ve heard from educated white women. And as an educated white woman, I know how easy it is to slip into that kind of thinking when I’m not checking myself for all of the crap I am continually working to unlearn.
I didn’t really mean demographics in a concrete sense, it’s just the language that in my brain. I mean that a private slack channel might mostly contain women with aligning values/beliefs, which can often skew along demographic lines; whereas a pregnancy forum could have people with wildly different values all communicating together and that could possibly be why pregnancy forums differ from other women dominated spaces online, which according to the article are very civil.
I also wasn’t talking about The Toast, I made a snap assumption on some possible demographics of people who might set up or join private slack channels or private, paid for website communities; slack has only reached critical mass recently, a year ago it might have just been early adopters who work in tech who would be using it (So young, educated, professionals.)
I see what you mean in terms of aligning values, though I can still think of spaces where people with similar values get into terrible arguments so I think moderation is the key.
I think I get what you’re trying to say that you (downthread) agree you didn’t articulate well—
People on pregnancy boards don’t have much in common other than being pregnant. Interests, values, life experiences, agreement about what is/isn’t polite, geographic area……. so the mixture of people is going to be a wide cross section.
I think, especially based on some of your other comments— if what you’re trying to get at is that it’s not that young highly educated people are nicer— but instead perhaps young highly educated people are usually nicer to other young highly educated people.
This makes me wonder about forums where GG people hang out— If you take a forum/subreddit/whatever where a number of gg people hang out that are specifically horrible to other people, are they likely to be nice and easy to mod to their in-group, or are they likely to be harder to mod?
Its not even that young people are nicer to other young people, just that historically, homogenous groups get on better, so people of similar demographics or values would get on better and gravitate to online communities that match their values (so gun nuts hang out on gun forums and feminists hang out on feminist forums) apart from pregnancy. I think you get what I mean, I’m just not being very articulate today and since I’m in advertising, demographics are the language of my thoughts. I certainly did not mean to imply that anyone outside those demographics are uncivil or rude.
Taking a wild stab, I’d say GG forums are a lot of toxic masculinity and self congratulating. I wonder about moderation, maybe there’s an element of mob-justice? if you step out of their lines, they’re going to tear you to shreds and call you a n00b or something ‘scathing’, so you don’t step out. Just a massive echo-chamber of ass-hattedness.
Plus what do you think their moderation rules would be? The complete opposite of The Toast? Show any compassion for another human being, or god forbid a woman, and you’re out!
Interesting exception all right. It often seems that anything to do with parenting gets some people of all genders on the defensive very quickly.
Well some of the Classic Internet Discussion Blunders involve parenting: circumcision, breast-feeding, natural childbirth, spanking…
I would rather bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line than raise the above topics on your average internet page.
Hahahhaha!
See also: 9/11
I just googled Classic Internet Discussion Blunders to see if there is an article. I didn’t find much…please write the thing?
That article displays what is becoming more and more obvious: that despite centuries-long stereotypes about women being ‘irrational’, it is actually men who cannot control their emotions long enough to have a civilised discussion. We see it here on the Toast – people frequently disagree, often quite strongly, but are *always* calm, rational, don’t take it personally, separate their own feelings from facts while acknowledging the validity of personal experience, are polite and kind, back up their statements with research or even when hypothetising, do it using a backdrop of empirical, provable evidence rather than from their own grievances…The list goes on. We even had a thread about vaccinations yesterday that stayed civil – probably a record for the internet!
Basically, all of the so-called ‘male’ characteristics of rationality, sense, ability to see big picture, understand emotions and be mindful of their influence – are in fact female characteristics. While men, or a great deal of men at least, seem to be incapable of separating their emotions and grievances from their arguments, ‘reason’ themselves into ridiculous corners using a warped and irrational version of ‘logic’, can’t control their emotions for even a moment and make wild, unprovable statements based on their own personal bias.
Come to think of it, all the traditional male slanders against women could be interpreted as a form of projection – men creating a version of reality where it’s women who manifest all their own worst characteristics. Predatory and uncontrolled sexuality? Check. Over-emotionalism? Check. Prone to outbursts? Check. Unreasonable behaviour? Check. Manipulation? Check. Desire to dominate? Check. Irrationality? Check.
(I know these are all *human* characteristics, but it’s interesting to see how they’re gendered, when a rational assumption would be that they spread across the population.)
Excellently put!
Yeah a weird thing that we (men) do and have done is this kind of thing where we take the worst social behaviors of people — all of them connected to this constant need to dominate others — and cloaked it in the vocabulary of logic, without any real commitment to actually being reasonable.
Yeah. While not about law, it’s a perfect example of going by the letter of the law while completely missing the spirit.
In general, I have found quite a number of men to be (or to seem to be) literally incapable of complex thinking, despite ostensibly being quite intelligent. They often just don’t seem to have the capacity to understand issues on a macro level, possibly because they’re so locked into the micro level of only seeing the world through their own perspective and being unwilling to even try and see it from other POVs.
We’ve got a lot of damage to undo in terms of education, in my opinion — we’ve really been treating “thinking” and “intelligence” wrong almost categorically, from the way we describe it to the way we incentivize it, almost everywhere. My suspicion is that it’s primarily co-opted by our culture of hierarchies, and that’s why you see white men with the most trouble — we (white men) are basically taught that the proof of good reason is that we’re shown to be right (i.e., we “win” the argument), and commensurate with that is that the proof that a chain of reasoning is good is that it justifies whatever the status quo already is on this larger macroscopic level.
It’s a lot of unlearning to do, and it’s hard to convince a lot of folks that they need to do it.
Yes. This is why politics debates are always so terrible. They’re predicated on the masculinist ideal of a fight to the death where the ‘winner’ is the one who displays the most dominance, instead of disagreement based on reason and wisdom. Meanwhile the childishness and emotionality of masculinist thinking is obscured by mind-crunchingly silly rhetoric like ‘robust debate’. I have never known anyone to use the phrase ‘a robust debate’ and mean anything other than ‘displaying maximum aggression with the intent of scaring the opponent into silence’. Really if that counts as winning, what is winning worth? Anyone can wave a metaphorical gun around. It takes a lot more to really engage with a person/subject.
“They’re predicated on the masculinist ideal of a fight to the death where the ‘winner’ is the one who displays the most dominance, instead of disagreement based on reason and wisdom” Yup, because they are primate displays, not actual negotiations.
Hooray!
I wonder if part of it is also the fact that women tend to be socialised to avoid conflict and apologise for their beliefs more often. Obviously as Toast commenters we tend more to the “outspoken angry feminist” side of things, but I know that whenever I say anything potentially problematic here or disagree with another commenter I am prone to being very deferential and apologising for my views. Which is great for keeping things civil, but possibly a negative trait if taken too far.
Predictably, the (mixed-gender) comments to that article are awful.
“Toastmen” sounds like a venerable order of men in funny hats with secret handshakes formed in a pub in, say, Liverpool around the Industrial Revolution.
I dearly hope that all Toastmen are secretly part of such an order. If they’re not dingoes.
You trying to tell me that it wouldn’t be even better if we were dingoes who also wore funny hats and had elaborate handshakes?
it can be two things.
Never been to Liverpool and it’s obviously too late for the Industrial Revolution, but I see of no reason why this couldn’t be a thing.
Yes! That, or an obscure 60s British band that was maybe playing in some of the same clubs at the same time as the early Beatles.
18th-century Scottish masturbation cult.
No, seriously, that’s a thing.
Love this thread.
i grew up with a father who I believed was going to literally explode bloody bits if he ever lost face, and now I work in a culture that is really into being indirect and face saving. I find the fear of being shamed is at the root of so much dysfunctional behavior. I feel sorry for myself, for my own fear of being shamed, and everyone else (male and female) trying to hug the Cape of Worthiness with clawing fingers around their freezing shoulders.
Oh oh oh, speaking of Slate, I have a burning question about yesterday’s Prudie concerning the parent who thinks that letting an under-six child walk 30 to 40 feet ahead of you is “free range parenting”. I mean, that’s crazy, right?
Sure, it would depend on where you live and maybe if you have a kid who has difficulty with impulse control it would be different, but the average four year old is perfectly capable of walking ahead. I walked my four year old to school all last year and let her run ahead as much as she wanted as long as she stopped at driveways and street corners. Or have I been a free range parent all along without knowing it?
I don’t know, for some reason that letter really bothered me.
I had the same reaction! I mean, 30-40 feet isn’t far. You can cross that distance in seconds if need be. Do you really want to restrict your kid within a 5 foot circle of you?
Then again: not a parent, so what do I know.
Well, I AM a parent and feel the exact same! I suppose she could be underestimating the distance, or she could just be overly cautious. Either way, 30-40 feet is not exactly free range parenting.
Yeah, free range parenting was more my parents’ “here’s a bike, a water bottle, and a street map. Go amuse yourselves for a few hours.” starting around age nine for me/twelve for older brother. We did a lot of 10-15 mile bike rides.
Same, especially in summer. Mom kicked us out in the morning, and we didn’t come back until it started getting dark. We weren’t supposed to stay inside or close to home–the ‘rents had better things to do than deal with kids underfoot all the time, and we needed sunshine and fresh air and other kids to socialize with.
My kid is 8, and she’s got a watch with an alarm, so it’s “stay in the neighborhood, don’t go in anybody’s house, head back when your watch beeps.”
But we also have tons of kids in the neighborhood and a playground three blocks away and have little traffic, so..
I like the watch idea!
Yeah, I mean, even if you DO want to keep your kid on a literal leash, you might not be able to keep him/her within 30 feet.
My parents would actually put me on a leash when we went hiking in the mountains when I was about four! I don’t remember it, but I’ve seen pictures.
The first time I saw it, the kid was on a leash while skiing downhill with his mom. Or like, two leashes, like reins.
I remember because I saw them from the chairlift, when my friend next to me screamed out “HOLY SHIT THAT MOM IS STEERING THAT KID!”
Leashes unite! My parents used one tied to their belt that we would hold onto voluntarily (with training), and it cut down on the wandering child phenomenon. My partner is talking about putting one on my satchel for him to hold onto when we go to St Louis Pride this year and I suspect I will let him. I still wander and in crowds, that can end up with me getting overwhelmed and having a melt down, if I lose track of him.
I mean he could just slap a leash on my collar too but I suspect it will be too damn hot to wear a leather collar without melting.
A friend in college and I would both wear our keys on carabiners with a lanyard on them. (this made it very hard to lose our keys). On occasion, we’d grab each other’s lanyard to keep track of each other. More challenging was when we’d both clip each other’s lanyard into our carabiners, meaning we couldn’t be more than about a foot and a half from each other at any time until we unhooked.
This is so college and I love it.
Me too! I was pretty easily distracted as a kid, so my parents kept me on a leash because otherwise I’d just fuck off after something cool and who the hell knows what a weird 3-4 year old thinks is cool?
It could be a doll, it could be a puddle, it could be a historical reenactor, it could be a pretty leaf or rock, it could be angry geese. WHO KNOWS.
Aren’t all geese angry geese?
There’s a preschool somewhere near my house that has the children hang on to a rope with one hand when they go for walks. There will be this scraggly line of youngsters meandering down th sidewalk, but they’re all clutching the rope tightly. It must make herding them so much easier.
I also thought that sounded like perfectly within-the-standard-range parenting, no label needed, but I live in the middle of nowhere, so it might be a geographical thing.
I live in a downtown, urban area where I’m sure the population leans towards very involved parents and they’re letting their little kids walk/use their razor scooters 30-40 feet in front of them. The kids have all been taught to stop at the intersections and wait for their parents to catch up.
They also let their little children use their razor scooters in a crowded supermarket, which I am…less in favor of.
I live in London and I see kids on scooters with their parents quite a long way behind all the time.
I got a chuckle out of that definition of “free-range,” too. I definitely let my kid run ahead of me when she was 4, but that was because I started teaching her to stay on the sidewalk as soon as she could walk and knew that she’d stop when I yelled, “Hey! Stop!” If that’s not the case with the LW’s kid, all she has to say to the other mother is, “Hey, my kid’s impulse control sucks. Can you hold her hand on the way to school?”
Dude 30 feet is like….the length of one house. That is not far. Shit, when I was 5 my mom let me walk to the bus myself about ten houses down, but she would have never had a problem with walking that far apart! Assuming you’re in an average suburban neighborhood? I wouldn’t allow it in like, downtown Toronto, though.
I walked to kindergarten with the “big kids” who shared the same babysitter. They were 9 and 10.
I wouldn’t let my two-year-old walk that far ahead, because she loves cars and tries to hug them. But I do hope when she has doubled in age she will be able to resist running into the street…
I mean, I’ve met a lot of four year olds and I’d say the chances are good.
I thought Mallory’s response was great though (as they always are!) I feel like Emily Yoffe would have gone off on one about how that’s not free range parenting and you’re wrapping your kids up in cotton wool which – yes I agree, but that’s kind of not the issue. Mallory addressed the LW’s concerns while making it clear that really this was on her, not the other parent.
Yes! She was admirably restrained. I’m not sure I could have held myself back from at least one little jab.
It was particularly wise because everyone knows Mallory’s not a parent, so she avoided all the “who are you to define what free-range parenting is.”
I live downtown in a very urban environment and I would not be able to go anywhere if I didn’t let my 3.5 year old, 50 pound, package of energy run in front of me. We set “finish lines” – I’ll say “ok, you can run to that fire hydrant and then stop” and he does, and then I high five him for “good stopping!”
That’s what my mum did with me! That’s a little bit of childhood I’d forgotten about.
My kid is 5 and is not in possession of the best impulse control (even for a 5yo). I live in a very crowded city and the sidewalks are further crowded when I am walking him home from school. I hate, I cannot abide, on a visceral level, when he is 30-40 feet ahead of me, because I know that if something is distracting him, he has a 50/50 chance of succeeding in stopping at the corner, and because I know that there are so many other grown-ups walking their kids home that I’m physically unable to run to him if I needed to.
STILL the allowance of a 30-40 foot lead is NOT free range parenting imo.
Yes, if you live in a crowded area without clear sight/ access lines, I can totally understand keeping your kids closer!
I’d err on the side of caution with sidewalks. I’ve lived on a busy road where a neighbor would let their little kids ride their bikes way ahead of them. There have been times where the only reason I didn’t hit them was because I’d made sure to turn the car around instead of backing out because traffic was busy. The kids are fast and low enough to the ground where I wouldn’t have seen them out my rear view mirror. And I know, as a driver it’s my responsibility to be aware of my surroundings, but if a tragic accident can be avoided, I’m okay with little kids being close to the adult. This isn’t a judgment on free range parenting, kids do need freedom to learn and explore, just my experience from the driver’s side.
Ugh I have a driveway with poor visibility and no way to turn around and exit facing forward and it’s terrible. Not a “kids shouldn’t be free to play” problem, a “wow we couldn’t engineer our environment to be less safe for pedestrians if we tried” problem.
Is “free range parenting” a legit term? That’s actually what’s been bugging me most about this letter, it sounds so derogatory to me.
It’s a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range_parentin…
It was popularised by this blog.
Ah, thank you! I still don’t think it’s a particularly nice term, but at least someone who’s actually in favour of this parenting style coined it.
My partner rather wouldn’t look people in the eye. I’d actually never noticed this, because he’s trained himself to look at people’s eyebrows instead.
He’s such a sweetheart, though: he tells me looking into my eyes is different. I suspect this is just a sweet lie – though honestly, I don’t really know why people put so much stock in direct eye contact, so him looking at my eyebrows is fine by me.
I’m squeamish about eyes and also feel that it’s often uncomfortably intimate, so I look at eyebrows or noses. It doesn’t seem to have affected my personal or professional life, so <shrug>.
Hi! I have this issue, kinda, too! I normally wear glasses, but if I am sitting down to talk to someone I have to take the glasses off because a sort of softly fuzzy face is MUCH easier for me to talk to than a sharply in-focus face. (This impulse isn’t as present for people with whom I’m close.)
AND, I ::think:: the reasoning is this very embarrassing toddler-related thinking where I am VERY concerned with people really looking at me, so I think how my brain is interpreting all of this is: if they look blurry/fuzzy to you, you must look blurry/fuzzy to them.
(I’m 44-years-old and I’ve never felt more alive!)
Both of those are solid strategies.
I’ve developed a weird thing about eye-contact recently; I’m ok in professional settings, I can look at someone and remain engaged most of the time, but in personal relationships I’m really terrible and I don’t know why.
Classic example; on a date recently, talking a lot as I do, and looking past him off to the side a bit or looking around because I find that easier than looking at his face/eyes. He keeps thinking I’m looking at something and turning around to see what it is. *facepalm*.
(I think it has something to do with trying to keep men at arms length emotionally, intimacy and men being really into me are scary af)
“men being really into me are scary af” IT ME
Also me!
“WHY DO YOU LIKE ME DO YOU WANT ME AS A SKIN SUIT OR WHAT WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU.”
I have a fear of men being more interested in me than I am in them, its just awkward! And sometimes it takes me awhile to figure out if I’m attracted to someone or interested in pursuing it further; so I tend to keep them at arms length/be a bit cold, until I’ve figured out what I want. Most guys get put off by this and disappear, the good ones have enough self confidence to keep at it (Good ones, or arrogant assholes. I usually end up with the latter.)
So yeah I’m terrified of doing anything that might make a man think I’m interested in him if I’m not interested in him, and eye contact is a biggie. I also wear sunglasses almost constantly because then I don’t have accidental eye contact with strangers in the street that makes them think its ok to talk to me, its not.
I also wear sunglasses almost constantly because then I don’t have accidental eye contact with strangers in the street that makes them think its ok to talk to me, its not.
Haha! I usually don’t wear my eyeglasses when I’m walking around because I can see well enough to navigate. I don’t, however, see well enough to know if I’m making eye contact with someone. I avoid even looking at strangers on the street to eliminate any possibility that they will start trying to interact with me when I can’t see it, but they think I can.
Especially with men, I automatically look down as I walk past them. Men in particular seem to attempt eye contact as an ‘in’ to talk to women on the street. Women tend to just brush by eachother IME.
Although I’m probably not the most healthy individual these days about men in the street, I find myself bracing my bitchface to walk past almost any men, especially if they’re just standing or sitting outside.
I find myself nodding in affirmation to everything you’ve written (sadly, including the self-confident assholes thing.) I used that same strategy on a date and the guy flat-out asked my about my lack of eye contact, so of course it just got worse after that. I agree, it can feel so predatory, so I just avoid it!
Reading this thread is making me feel like I’m in good company, though!
Why do men think that a woman not immediately jumping into bed with them means she’s not interested?
Like so many times, I’ve been a bit slow to warm up to a guy, cause that’s just who I am, and he’s fucked off because of it! No, come back! I do like you! I think.
Me too me too! I am very rarely instantly attracted to someone based entirely on looks. Sometimes it can happen pretty quickly when a guy is good-looking AND has a stellar personality, but usually it takes me a while of getting to know someone before I’m like “oh dang, you sexy.”
For me, it’s more like, “Oh, someone’s interested in me? Well, let’s focus on everything that’s terrible about him and just not like him anymore.” Works every time, unfortunately.
‘Hey why don’t you like that guy that’s super into you?’
‘His eyes are slightly to close together and also he smiles to much.’
I’m okay in professional settings, but I have noticed that I tend not to make eye contact for 100% of a conversation. I often look slightly down or up at some random object while talking–more when I’m actively thinking about what I’m saying. It happens in job interviews and I feel self-conscious about it and wonder if it makes me seem weird or shifty or something.
The subway is the worst for me. If I shift my gaze and happen to look into someone’s eyes (it’s usually a guy, it seems like guys on the train space out more than women) I look away immediately. ‘Cause I don’t want to look at most people. And if it’s a cute guy I have to look away because he might think I’m a crazy stalker/serial killer because I, someone who is clearly not as attractive and therefore undeserving of interaction with said guy, made eye contact for more than 1 second.
Accidental eye contact on public transport is awful. Its punishable by death in London. (not quite, but it might as well be.). I also find that if men are staring at me, and I happen to be looking around, I’ll end up making eye contact, and I know they were deliberately staring because they don’t immediately look away.
I’m a serious fidget, so I’m always looking around in meetings and stuff. I usually bring my laptop and type notes these days, perfect excuse not to look at people without being rude.
“I have noticed that I tend not to make eye contact for 100% of a conversation. I often look slightly down or up at some random object while talking”
That’s utterly normal! “Making eye contact” doesn’t mean “spending the whole of a conversation looking straight at someone’s eyes”- that could come across as aggressive and/or overly intimate with almost anyone but a significant other. Look at them, glance away, look back, look away again is how it’s supposed to be.
My manager is one of those “crazy amounts of eye contact” people and I am a “prefers to sit next to somebody and not even fully face them let alone make eye contact while speaking” person so our one-on-one meetings used to be excruciating for me. I’ve gotten more used to it now and it helps that we get along really well but still sometimes I’m like “Doesn’t this feel creepy to you??”
I’m comfortable with a low level of intermittent eye contact during conversations, mostly where the talker glances around casually while the listener watches their face, then there’s a brief moment of eye contact at the switch-off before the roles reverse and the other person does the talking. That seems minimally intrusive and maximally effective to me – and it always bothers me and weirds me out when I get into a conversation with one of those people who lock eyes and will not look away even for a split second while they’re talking to you. As the listener I feel compelled to keep staring at them, but it’s so uncomfortable. I really wonder what those people think about the kinds of conversations I think are normal, or whether they’ve ever even had one of those conversations, because everyone they talk to always ends up sucked into a staring match with them and they think it’s normal. I don’t think they’re in the majority – it’s only one out of every ten people or so who does that – but I don’t get it.
In theatre school there was this guy I did not trust because, as I eventually figured out, he didn’t look me in the eye. Most people in theatre are fine with that sort of thing. One night we ended up talking drunk together and he told me he was just shy, he wasn’t as outgoing as the rest of us and it intimidated him. ever since then I have been very conscious of my instinct to judge people on eye contact.
I do the same thing! I get uncomfortable with sustained eye-contact because I feel like I’m staring and find myself looking at people’s foreheads, which is apparently too high. The second thing my (very blunt and very self-conscious) college roommate and now dear friend said to me after “Nice to meet you,” was “Is something wrong with my hair? You keep looking at it.”
It wasn’t until college that I figured out that I almost never look anyone directly in the eyes. Friends would refer to other people’s eye color and it struck me as incredibly strange, until I realized that they thought I was the strange one for having absolutely no idea what color anyone’s eyes were. It turns out that I focus on mouths: close enough to the eyes that no one seems to notice, and similarly expressive.
I teach that trick to students who are nervous about public speaking. You don’t have to make eye contact with anyone. You just have to make them think you are.
I learned that trick in middle school when my mom would yell at me for soccer games and how I didn’t try hard enough. She was super proud that I would just take it.
Edited to add: This is a terrible way to learn and my childhood was weird to not great.
As I have gotten older I am definitely more and more averse to eye contact unless in very intimate situations. For times when I am socially expected to perform eye contact, I look at people’s eyebrows or teeth instead.
When I was a teen my parents chided me for not making eye contact, and I would try to argue that in most species, eye contact is an aggressive action, so looking other people in the eyes is weird (it didn’t convince them). I felt uncomfortable meeting people’s eyes for too long. I’m a little better at it now, but it’s still a conscious effort on my part to maintain eye contact.
The eyebrows thing is a great trick!
The eyebrows thing is genius!!! (I have no problem making eye-contact in casual situations, but intimate, self-revealing ones? Nope nope nope.)
Why is corporal punishment always so disgustingly sexual? Even beyond the obvious question of “should we use pain in education,” 21st century proponents always seem rapturous about the highly sexualized humiliations involved, butt-related or otherwise.
At least the nuns in all the Catholic school horror stories I’ve heard from my mom seem to steer clear of that, even if they focused on pain.
Yeah, my mom’s smackings at school seemed to focus primarily on hands. She’s a lefty, 1950s Catholic school, etc.
Yeah – this is probably wrong, since I’m only improvising here, but I wonder if it’s a difference between the Catholic respect for suffering (the nuns themselves do, after all, choose to live without much comfort) and an authoritarian belief in dominance.
Mortification of the flesh, etc. For the southpaws in the room, it was overcoming natural programming to be a left-handed person, which apparently meant you could conquer all bodily urges and also the devil?
it’s weird that they didn’t try to make right-handed people left-handed then
well, they had less devil to begin with
Certainly they were less sinister.
Nice.
that has not been my experience with right-handed people at ALL
You know what they say, “right hands are the devils playground.”
Forcing left handed kids to write with their right hand was pretty standard in Catholic schools in Ireland up until relatively recently, especially boys’ schools. Both mine and my partner’s fathers were born left-handed but had it literally beaten out of them. My father developed a very bad adolescent stammer which may have been a result of the handedness switching. Both men have a kind of Stockholm syndrome about it now – ‘It was normal at the time! They meant no harm! I turned out fine!’ but I still think it’s horrific.
My dad’s parents were both Catholic and abusive, although I thankfully don’t know many of the details except that they hit him (with a wooden spoon, I think).
I went to Catholic school later than the 50’s, but still got the yardstick across the back for being lefthanded.
One of my favorite family stories is about when my grandmother was at Catholic school as a kid (1930s or 1940s). A teacher hit her on the hands with a ruler at some point, as one did for discipline. The next day, my great-grandmother marched into the classroom, picked up a ruler, and demanded of the teacher, “Would you like it if I hit you with this?” The teacher, of course, said no, and my great-grandmother responded, “then don’t ever hit my daughter again.”
Did you see this article from Jezebel on spanking in romantic movies of yore?
http://pictorial.jezebel.com/i-dont-know-whether-…
‘In the 1963 movie Mclintock!, when a young man is upset by the actions of a young woman he barely knows, he grabs her and puts her across his knee, forgetting that her father, John Wayne, is standing right behind him. As the young man reaches back for a wallop, Wayne stays his hand—and puts a small shovel in it.’
Whaaaaat
That movie is bonkers. I think John Wayne later spanks his wife in a huge comic setpiece?
oh god that was a Thing wasn’t it. Visual proof that women were (and are) infantilised. (if anyone needed it!)
Every time I thought the article had to be ending, it just kept going…
The whole thing is creepy and unsettling but this part really made me shudder:
“Many of these men treating their wives like children were, quite simply, married to children. Teenage wives as young as 13 reported being spanked. In 1908, a New York husband spanked his 16-year-old wife for standing on the street talking to some ‘strange men.'”
Well. I’m not horrified.
For work emails, at my workplace we’re subject to freedom of information requests, and so are told to basically never say anything even slightly negative about anyone in an email ever because they have a legal right to see it. Sounds like overkill, but I think FOI has actually been used to our detriment in this way before.
It doesn’t stop anyone of course, but that’s the policy.
Also, more of an OT thing but I won’t be around for OT – I’m so fed up of my house, the mice are definitely embedded – one of my housemates saw a live one in the kitchen last night and a dead one in the bathroom this morning. The landlord has left us four whole mousetraps (hasn’t set them, just left them for us) and says he’ll come round the week after next maybe and it’s like really? I would just move out, but I promised a friend I’d move in with her, but now due to personal/money issues it’s really uncertain when she’ll be able to move. It’s just brought me down because it’s a whole bunch of stuff I can’t control – including not having enough money to get my own place, which is my absolute dream – not even buy, just have enough money to rent a one-bedroom place – and I hate feeling like I’m not in control.
I worked for a govt agency in NZ, and we had a similar policy. The person whose job I was taking over had a habit of putting highly personal comments in files, and the first thing I had to do was go through and make everything very, very basic and high level and take out all detail/emotion because everything we had was to be made available to people upon request.
I’m often surprised that (here in the UK) more organisations aren’t aware that anybody (customer, employee, competitor) can make a subject access request to have every piece of recorded info about them disclosed, including casual emails across the office. This applies to every organisation, not just government bodies like the FOI rules.
Maybe you can name the mice and give them little biographies? I don’t know. I hope you can move soon!
Do you have access to used kitty litter? Putting an open ziplock bag of smelly kitty litter in my attic took care of my mice problem.
Ooooh that’s a good one, I have a friend with an indoor cat so I can defo get some used cat litter from her. Thanks!
so so sorry about the mice. We recently had a little mouse infestation that lasted about 5 months. They came out of nowhere (we’ve lived in this apartment for 8+ years) and left as mysteriously as they had arrived (we did NOTHING about them because we were still vacillating on what to do about them. I know they didn’t die in the walls/floors/ceiling because there’s never been a corpse smell). It gave me allllll the shivers, thinking about them, and I felt so bad because of course my kid thought the mice (he never saw one) were automatically ADORABLE, and he would talk to the unseen mice in little babytalk and ask them how they had liked the all-purpose flour they had been munching on the night before.
Thanks for sharing, that’s actually really reassuring to know they can just go away. Everything I’ve found online seems to say ‘If you don’t get rid of them straight away they’ll just keep multiplying forever until you’re overrun.’ We know that they get in across the attic from the house next door (I live in a terraced house) that is currently occupied by students. Hopefully when they move out, their landlord will do a sweep of the house and sort it out!
Unsolicited advice but: if you know the entry point where the mice come in, you can soak cotton/gauze with essential oil of peppermint and shove it in the mouse holes / crannies / corners / little spaces where they are coming in. From my earlier research this seemed pretty effective and since it would also be inoffensive to human occupants of the apartment, it seemed like a good place to start!
I got to the point in that article about the MCPL when lost his legs where it said “streamlined” and I started laughing so hard I almost choked. Streamlined! What a hilarious comedy line!!!
Wait, that was meant in all seriousness? Surely you kid! Surely you…..surely you……oh okay I see now, you really do think that is happening LOLOLOLOL
It took me a really, really long time to finally accept that all hitting and probably most negative reinforcement/punishment in general is Bad for children especially when dealt out by adults. I was raised with being hit as normal, and my mother used to say how HER dad was Actually Abusive and she was just punishing us a more reasonable way. To this day my brothers, who are basically getting better at listening, still shoot me down with “don’t exaggerate” when I call how we were raised abusive. The dreaded A word. I think that’s the thing that I keep in mind when people are like “nah hitting kids is fine” I wanna be like “I understand the defensive place you’re coming from– like, who hurt you, why don’t you have permission to feel hurt, let’s start there.” But of course I mostly just want people to stop hitting kids. My home life wasn’t “that bad” and I still think it’s the main reason I underperformed in school and so it’s definitely changed my life forever.
This, so much. I almost feel bad for people who defend corporal punishment on the grounds of “my parents did it to me and I turned out fine” because you know deep down they are not fine.
The best response to that is if you think hitting kids is OK, you did not actually turn out fine.
or “I got spanked but it didn’t bother me, I just learned how to avoid it” which makes me ask “so why are you spanking your kids, if it didn’t actually successfully deter you from misbehavior?”
My mom also liked to illustrate why her parents were Actually Abusive and how what she did to us was nothing, since e.g. at no time had she thrown knives at us. My brothers also think I’m exaggerating or telling tales when I discuss the emotional abuse’s impact on me.
I’m sorry you have been through this too. It sucks bad to be like “things weren’t that bad” and still be dealing with the resulting hurt. 🙁
Yeah, I got a lot of this too. My grandpa died when my dad was 5 months old, so he was functionally raised by his uncles, and they were hard-assed old Midwestern farmers who dealt out discipline very liberally, with a belt or a switch depending on what came to hand. I just got the occasional very hard spanking and a few smacks to the face and head, which was kid gloves compared to what he went through, but was still enough that it ruined our relationship for a decade (and it only stopped after I started playing football and lifting in high school and got big enough to stand up for myself). I get really sensitive about hitting kids because of that – like, I’ve had conversations with friends who feel I’m unreasonable about never hitting my kids. Which I’ve mostly just taken as “Note: this person never gets to babysit.”
My parents used smacked bottoms as discipline in the context of an perfectly loving and warm family relationship, and I don’t think it damaged me in the sense of making me less successful or cowed or anything, but it gave me a completely warped view of how acceptable violence is. Until I was nineteen or so, I truly believed that if I’d reached the end of my tether, it was ok to hit someone. I hit my younger brothers, I hit my best friend, I once hit a girl at school who was annoying me, I hit my boyfriend – I am so, so ashamed when I think that I did that. (I’ve apologised to my best friend, who doesn’t remember the time I hit her – we were thirteen or fourteen – but I remember it vividly.)
The thing is, I think my mum would have been horrified too, but I don’t know where she thought she communicated “hitting people is unacceptable” to me, given that that was not the example that she and my dad set us. I think we were magically supposed to know that parents were allowed to hit children, but adults weren’t supposed to hit other adults. (In addition, there was a lot of cultural reinforcement of the idea that a woman hitting wasn’t *really* hitting: the woman slapping her boyfriend was always played for laughs. I still think about Julia Sawalha’s character hitting Spike them kissing him in Press Gang: it was punctuation, not violence.
I actually learned that it was unacceptable from my sixth-form boyfriend. Neatly everything about that relationship was terrible, but I’m glad he taught me that.
So that is why I will not be hitting my daughter.
Interesting side note: Among at least some Alaskan native groups, eye contact is considered…aggressive? disrespectful?…and avoiding eye contact is the norm. During the summer I spent at a field school there, we had a couple of local kids come out as volunteers, and all the out-of-staters found ourselves trying to make eye contact at first while the boys looked down or away. Even with the difference explained, most of us still had trouble reconciling what we consciously knew and unconsciously expected when it came to one-on-one conversations; it was much easier in groups of three or more.
I lived in Hong Kong for a semester in college and took a super-fun cross-cultural communication class, and let me tell you that all of us polite midwestern exchange students were SHOCKED, SHOCKED!! to discover we’d been perceived as rude and aggressive by our local conversation partners for making eye contact while we talked.
Eye contact as a sign of trustworthiness is definitely not a constant across cultures but that does not seem to be common knowledge.
This can be an issue in refugee and asylum cases or other cases involving recent immigrants as officials and juries tend to find applicants/plaintiffs who don’t make eye contact less trustworthy. 🙁
Anecdotally, it’s believed to be a factor in why non-UK-trained doctors are more likely to be involved in fitness-to-practice cases as well, although I don’t know whether anyone’s done any studies to check that.
That’s the fascinating thing about intercultural stuff, though – even when you *know*, it happens at the unconscious level and it’s very hard to compensate for your reactions. I know that, “good, we’ll meet at seven” is perfectly normal in German where in English you’d say, “OK, cool, how about we meet at seven, then?” But that never, ever stops me freaking out and feeling bossed around when one of my German-speaking friends does the statement-not-question version in English!
“If you are looking for sympathy, you’ll find it dictionary somewhere between shit and syphilis …….”
Okay, but that sounds like something I would actually say. Not in a work email, but…
*files phrase away for future reference*
Yay, I can finally participate in a Link Roundup on time!
My nostalgia link for today is that Hayden is releasing a 20th anniversary album of Everything I Long For – most of my favourite music is loud and/or fast, but for whatever reason, those songs always get me right in the gut and my eyes well up, it’s practically Pavlovian by now.
Hayden interview by Vice
It’s nice to hear that he didn’t turn into a jerk, and doesn’t sound like he was ever a Nice Guy the way so many somewhat nerdy singer songwriters appear now.
Speaking of things that make us happy, here to discuss Hamiltome! So good you guys, it almost makes up for the fact that I will probably never see the show on Broadway.
And thanks to all for your kind words yesterday about my stupid stalled labor. No updates. If this is the universe’s way of telling me to live in the moment or whatever, hey fuck you universe.
SO GOOD. And the freaking book design is incredible, holy shit. The faux-leather spine! The deckled edges! The heavier paper stock! The sewn binding!
And it smells amaaaaaaazing.
I finished it yesterday, it made me so happy! Except I wanted more annotations and cut lyrics. Come on, Lin, SHOW US YOUR BRAIN.
Maybe the universe is telling you that you need to be willing to wait for it??
(I’m 13th in line for one of my library’s copies but I may not be willing to wait for it.)
Birth doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints
It sucks and it sucks and it sucks
Don’t worry. You’ll be in the room where it happens.
I’m considering asking for it for xmas but I’m loathe to bring more books into our house on a permanent basis. Maybe I’ll take SmrtCookie’s suggestion and look at the library copy first…
Everything you just said!
I got it for my sister as part of her birthday present. I am bugging her to finish it so I can borrow it.
Reading the book, seeing some of the new incredibly gorgeous and huge portraits, and listening to the songs one by one brought me to actual tears a few times. Hi, I’m overinvested in this show.
Insurance companies are horrible-of COURSE they asked a disabled man if he was still disabled. Just recently they asked me if I still have MS and I said yes, it is incurable, you know. The agent did apologize. That sick, possibly mentally fragile people have to go this over and over again is not acceptable.
Yeah, we periodically have to affirm that MIL still has Alzheimer’s. With letters addressed to her. (we have been Power of Attorney for both medical and legal affairs for over a decade.)
Just to add…When somebody dies, insurance companies will also call to notify that the dead person’s insurance is ending, and ask if they would like a renewal. And they will say “I am calling for [name of dead person],” “Can I speak to [dead person]?” Lots of fun for grieving relatives immediately after someone’s death.
Since dying is not exactly unheard of for human beings existing on the physical plane here on the planet Earth, and the situation has obviously come up before in the past, you would think they would have a way of customizing their response to this particular form of end of insurance coverage.
Eye contact avoiders! I feel you. I had to pose for some pictures while looking into another person’s eyes and could not sustain the pose. Physically could not. Didn’t realize until that exact moment that I never, ever stare into anyone’s eyes.
Here’s looking at you, my fellow shies! (Not right at you; sort of at your left ear.)
What’s funny is not only do I avoid eye-contact I’ve been told my eye contact is especially intense. Like I’m trying to eat their brains through my eyes. Which doesn’t make me want to do it more.
Dear Toasties: If you feel like your week hasn’t been so great, then please remember that I need to prove my proficiency in English and that yesterday, while trying to sort this out, I wrote an E-mail regarding the test date on “the 22th.”
I assure you 90% (at least) of people who claim English as our first language have done the same thing. More than once.
I know, but I was SO embarrassed.
I’ve done this before and I am a professional speller.
Now that’s comforting 🙂
And also, whily trying to reply, I accidentally followed you on Intense Debate, will fix it right now.
I do that all the time too! I have followed and rapidly unfollowed about half the toast by now.
Last week I sent an email reminding ~50 people about an upcoming meeting on “March 111th,” so, you know.
😀
In high school I once wrote a paper on the famous John Knowles novel, A Separate Piece.
I wrote one on a work by Earnest Hemingway. In retrospect, Do Not Regret At All.
OH NO
Flat out that entire comment proves you have a better grasp of English than a solid half of so-called “native speakers”. (which I don’t mean as a slam against people who speak the various English dialects which didn’t manage to be anointed “proper English” just that many, many people speak something other than “proper English”.)
I often think people who learn a foreign language care about that particular tongue in a different way – as in, I learned it this way and I want to preserve it.
I’ve worked with several people for whom English is their second language and this is totally true.
My two favorite work emails in recent memory:
“If you can’t make it we may reconsider since you were our sacrificial lamb to any radioactive zombie Tiggers that might attack us while we’re there.” (This was a reply to someone who said they might not be available to travel.)
“Crappy US Government clicky pens. The black ball-point ones. I love them.” (I had no context for this. This was the whole email. I later learned that someone else sent everyone except me an email saying that I was the new point-of-contact for office supply requests.)
No but really those government pens are the best! My dad was in the Air Force when I was growing up and I loved taking his pens. They screwed completely apart, which I loved doing during class. Man, I completely forgot about those pens until now. They were truly great.
They are great!
Because of where my mind lives, I’d automatically think “is this a sex thing?” if someone started sending me their pen preferences, apropos of nothing.
“I later learned that someone else sent everyone except me an email saying that I was the new point-of-contact for office supply requests.”
AHAHAHAHA, that is the cruelest work-related prank ever, I’m going to file it away for strictly fiction-writing purposes.
THE WORST/BEST PART IS THAT IT WAS UNINTENTIONAL.
(He’s the guy in charge of supply orders and stuff, but I’m the admin person and most people come to me first for stuff like that anyway, so it was a logical thing for him to decide to do to avoid confusion, but somehow he totally forgot to actually put me on the email.)
Animal-loving Toasties may also enjoy this natural history piece about Walter Rothschild and his penchant for cassowaries. He sounds rather like a Mitford character:
“Walter grew into a strange and enormous man, standing six-foot-three and just over three hundred pounds, with a habit of drowsing in his hammock in the nude. Rather like the cassowary, he was prone to long periods of silence punctuated by sudden eruptions of temper. And like many men with histories of complicated romantic escapades, he lived in mortal fear of upsetting his mother.”
He does sound something of a trial to live with, though:
“Walter’s giant lizards escaped from their greenhouse and ate all the arum lily shoots. His tame wolf picked fights with village dogs at the pub. In 1894, he drove a trap pulled by zebras up to the gate of Buckingham Palace, and watched on in terror as Princess Alexandra tried to pet one.”
http://www.theawl.com/2016/04/a-natural-history-o…
GOOD MORNING, you have a yak on the way
YAKS N THINGS LLC
Oh my god.
BAHAHA @ “c) I’m an astrophysicist, not Baron Moneybags Von Richf*ck so I can’t just spend $3,000 on a yak to amuse the Internet.”
He’s not thinking of the possibilities! He could sell raw yak milk on the streets, constantly moving locations so as to elude the authorities!
He could buy a saxaphone and ride around on a yak all day playing yakkity sax
You know I think being a homeless yak owner is distinctly better than being just homeless.
Also now I think yaks may have replaced goats in the imaginary utopian-commune in my head.
Yak provides warmth and milk. And, presumably, quite a degree of security.
Only thing is, even a miniature yak (according to a one minute internet search, which never led anyone astray) is 6-7 ft long, whereas your pygmy goats only run a couple of feet. So it would have to be an urban commune with plenty of space.
But maybe you could shelter under it if you were homeless.
My imaginary ranch/astronomical-observatory is currently located just east of Cloudcroft NM specifically but the mountains of NM or Montana in general.
<3 Cloudcroft <3
Whoops, if i hadn’t read “urban” for “utopian”, my comment might have made sense!
Ahahahaha omg, best internet story today, thank you.
my favorite email is from my supervisor, it says “fyi” and it’s a forward from someone else that says “fyi” which is a forward from someone ELSE that says “fyi” which is a forward from someone in Harrisburg that also says “fyi” and that is a scanned copy of a fax of an operational memo that was obsolete last year and is about cases I don’t even work on.
this could only get better if you printed it out and kept it.
that is the worst email i have ever heard of. death to all email
Borderline Kafka-level absurd right there.
Pretty sure you are legally required to print out this email and fax it to someone else or the chain is broken and your loved ones get eaten by chinchillas.
Or yaks.
What’s happening with the TPS reports, though?
I get these all the time and when you get to the original message it’s always “see attached” in reference to an attachment that was left off like 3 FYIs ago
Man, as a teacher, I wish I could share some of the craziest emails I ever got, but that would be a violation of the law, I believe. =(
There has to be a multi-year expiration of that if you don’t give clues to the students’ identities, right?
My favorite email was one that was sent out to all of our staff about a week after I started working here saying, “FYI a bunch of the cockroaches escaped so if you see any around the office let us know! 🙂 🙂 :)”
(I work in a place with live animals so this is less bizarre than it could be, but still.)
My favorite part is the smileys.
They give the text a hint of hysteria, don’t they?
My favorite email was about a deer (specifically, an “8 point buck”) that had gotten into the parking lot. It contained the sentence, “After 2 1/2 hours of attempting to trap and neutralize the deer, all efforts were met with negative results.”
Looking directly into someone’s eyes is an act so intimate you should only do it during sex. And even then it’s not always appropriate. MAYBE THIS MAKES ME WEIRD BUT W/E. YES, GOING TO THE EYE DOCTOR IS VERY UNCOMFORTABLE FOR ME.
My former co-worker thinks my current co-worker is a psychopath because he won’t break eye contact. She challenged me to out-stare him. I did, but it was the 3 of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life. He could tell something was up, but I don’t think he figured out what it was.
Haha and here I am, fine with making eye contact during a conversation to show that I hear you and would not rather stare at people walking by, but sustained eye contact during sex totally weirds me out.
I am OK with eye contact a lot of the time, but there are some times when I feel like the other person is making eye contact and I am unnerved because I feel like they are thinking mean or creepy thoughts about me. Maybe it’s the eye contact and the face combined?
Except when I am upset. I can’t make eye contact for the life of me when I am upset. It’s how I am and I accept it. I also struggle to make the contact with people I have crushes on, which is kind of awkward.
Uuuugh the crushes thing. I cant look you in the eyes because you’ll KNOW
YES. That is exactly it!!! I am so scared they will look in my eyes and see my SOUL.
The end game: it starts with trying not to be casually racist, and before you know it, Foreigners have taken over the United States and are herding white people into reservations.
Remembering that “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” was A Thing here a while ago, I thought you might enjoy this comic.
That Chatelaine article made me cry when I read it, especially the last few lines. People are so determined to believe that women have so much to gain from coming forward about sexual assault, I guess because if they didn’t believe that, then they’d have to believe that they’re actually telling the truth.
It made me so, so angry. That poor woman. Kill all men.
Based on the pictures you post, James Tiberius is the happiest baby in the entire world.
I would be too if Sansa was my little sister.
Apparently a large part of this link round up is about stuff that happened to me/I learned as a kid.
So, um, Link Round Up is my therapist today?
And how do you feel about that? *reclines in chair*
Like you’re gonna need to surrender that comfy chair asap toot sweet etc etc thx
*Sits awkwardly on the way too soft couch (BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS WAY TOO SOFT)*
Mixed, so I’m self-medicating with coffee and library management literature.
Night Vale Europe Tour! Night Vale Europe Tour! Ahem. I mean. Night Vale Europe Tour!
Also, my week was crap, and could accurately be summarized as: “Selling e-books to libraries? Don’t do it, publishers! Just… don’t… do it.”
I’m seeing Nightvale in DC on Monday!
I have to wait until October… but it doesn’t matter! I honestly didn’t think they’d do a second European tour, and I’m so excited. I hope you’ll have fun on Monday! Did you see any of the other shows?
“Selling e-books to libraries? Don’t do it, publishers! Just… don’t… do it.”
Amen. A-Fucking-Men.
It’s just so… so.. you know… all the publishers say how exciting this technology is! We need to get our e-books out to libraries! It’s the Future(TM)!! And then they FUCK UP ROYALLY. People, if you don’t know how [stuff] works, don’t try to SELL [stuff]. Just. No.
My best friend is seeing Night Vale tonight in the Midwest! I’m seeing them in Portland on my birthday in July. 😀
Nice, I will also be at the Portland show! I will try to remember to telepathically wish you a happy birthday.
Aha, thanks! (Pssst, if you’re on FB you should join the PDX Toasties group…it’s closed, but I can send you an invite!)
Wait, why not sell ebooks to libraries? I ask because I use the ebook service at my library all the time — is there something shady there that I don’t know about?
No no no, there’s definitely nothing shady with it – in fact, it’s a pretty great idea. It’s just that it’s quite some effort to manage the technical side of them, and I (working at a vendor specialized in selling print and e-books to libraries) have made the experience that the bigger the publisher, the greater their fuck-ups are. The moment the end-user (you!) gets their hand on an library ebook, everything is fine, but the way there can be… difficult.
I inherited a lot of weird phrases from my parents, and the shit & syphilis one is included in that. HAVING SAID THAT, I don’t think I’d ever use it in a work email.
The eye contact thing is so interesting to me, because I often feel like an overly intense freak around here (Bay Area). I was raised, in Maryland, to make eye contact to show my honesty and sincerity, but I found that around here, people tend to get very uncomfortable with eye contact. So I spend a lot of time trying desperately to mirror them so that they don’t think I’m some kind of intense staring freak. I swear I’m not the Eye of Sauron!
In rural NorCal there were relatively few people so you definitely made eye contact. Going to SF when my dad had VA hospital appointments I would walk around the grounds and be so surprised that everyone kept their heads down! Weird at first, and then I grew to like it.
Haha, when people who move here complain about no one making eye contact on the streets, I (a native) am like….do you really WANT to make eye contact with EVERY SINGLE PERSON on like, Market Street? Why? Who has the energy?! Also as a chick I feel like it’s the easiest way to avoid weird dudes by far….
Oh for sure never make eye contact with random strangers on the street. AVOID AVOID.
WRT the eye contact thing, yes for the person listening, not constantly for the person speaking.
That is how I learned to do it: as the listener, I look pretty constantly at the speaker, and then when I speak, I try to look around a bit to make things comfortable. It is the WORST when I encounter a speaker who makes constant eye contact, because then I have to look around while I’m LISTENING to avoid being two people staring at one another during a conversation. It fucks up the flow and makes everything feel so unnatural!
But then where are you supposed to look? See, this is my problem with eye contact: it makes me uncomfortable, but I want to do it the way I’m supposed to, so I overthink it. I think I end up staring people in the eye way too much, because I’ve absorbed that I’m supposed to make eye contact but don’t have an instinctive sense of how it’s done.
Do you think that might just the difference between people you get on with and people you don’t get on with? I am a careers adviser and have training in listening and counselling skills and am extroverted and generally pretty socially adept, but I still have that sometimes. For me it’s just,”we have matching eye contact styles, this makes you easy to talk to, this is a positive indicator of getting on together!”
I think it has more to do with the formality of the situation and whether we’re sitting side by side or standing/sitting face to face. Where it becomes difficult for me is when I run into someone I don’t know well, or I’m at a business meeting or on a date or in some social situation where you’re expected to be looking at each other’s faces, not just casually talking while existing in the same space.
I would have been completely confused about the “end game” comment had I not encountered a similar comment on a different forum two days ago, on a thread about the NC bathroom laws. Apparently, it’s concern trolling of a slippery slope variety: “If PC people change our behavior about this, they’re just going to move on to being upset about something else. What’s next?” I just can’t fathom the level of paranoia and persecution it takes to feel that way about the world. “Oh, no! People want to be treated like human beings! WHAT IS THE END GAME, ALL PEOPLE BEING TREATED WITH RESPECT?!?!”
global Communism, obviously
Is the Slippery Slope a real thing? I spent 20 years of my adult life living in fear of this Slope, expounded by church leaders. Now I think it’s bullshit.
Hm, this is quite like the “gay agenda” joke, though. Like, actually, my gay agenda is not just “buy milk, feed toddler”, it’s that no sexual activity between two consenting adults is regarded as illegal or immoral, or stigmatised, and that they only people who get to decide how and when they have sex are the individuals themselves. I think conservatives are actually more right about how radical a queer agenda really is than a lot of left wingers: my queer agenda should be very, very scary to a lot of people. And treating people with respect is a very threatening concept to people who have a lot invested in knowing which people they don’t have to respect.
My gay agenda is a planner with foil stars on the front and a picture of Marlene Dietrich pasted to the inside cover.
Three dozen plants. That’s 3 x 12 plants. For personal use? Seems about right to me.
One word. Alabama.
One word. Dothan. As in “a pit in.”
So how long are you supposed to maintain eye contact for? Because around me (unless I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time?) its like a second of eye contact every now and then to check the other person is listening, and then both participants in a conversation looking at their hands, feet, papers, the sky, that spider, your nose, their own nose, passing birds and literally anything other than the other persons eyes.
IT ME
Email from PhD supervisor, c. 2004
Dear Mary
This email will have to be short, as my wife is due to pick me up shortly. Oh, there she is in the car park, I have to go.
Yours
[redacted]
Literally all it said.
That’s really charming, actually.
Everything I read today seems tainted by the terrible nail biting paint I tried last night- I had No Idea it would proceed to transfer to anything that I touched and was impossible to remove. And you are meant to use it for 3 months after you stop biting your nails! How? I would already be dead from not being able to eat anything!
Which puts me in the right frame of mind to read about corporal punishment and all the terrible relationships of reddit. Curent favourite? The guy who thought prank proposing to his gf of 4 years as an Aprils Fool joke was a great idea and has no idea why this backfired.
I had no idea that making eye contact was so uncomfortable for some people, either! I have a professor now who, I'm pretty sure, has never made eye contact with a student–he stares at the table in front of us or looks over our heads when he talks to us. It drove me crazy at first because I interpreted it, along with his tendency to speak very slowly, as a sign that he wasn't listening. Then I realized that his gaze was really SO far away from our faces (and entire physical presence) that it had to be something other than inattention. Huh. Who knows.
(I'd like to clarify that the prof and I are from the same culture, otherwise I would've wondered if there was a cultural reason for this behavior.)
Prince died. I am as so many other people are very sad. 57 is not that old. We wished this musician to live for many more years.