Couple Reveals Child's Gender Five Years Too Late
A story that defies understanding until you realize... how old the parents are.
It's a boy! And he's five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha. "I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," Laxton said.
I'm confused. Is being stereotyped as a boy worse than being stereotyped as a court jester with an extra chromosome? "Wha--! That is so offensive!" Agreed. So why did she do it?
"Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"
On a hunch I checked out her blog to see how opposed she was to slotting people into boxes:
I may be wrong, but this appears to be a woman whose whole life is boxes.
The premise for this unstory is that the parents wanted to prevent any gender stereotyping, so hid the child's gender from everyone to let him [sic] grow unstereotyped.
The problem is that the parents already know the sex. They can't unknow it. They aren't acting from no information, they are acting in reaction to the information. They are saying they are raising him gender neutral, but what they are actually doing, precisely, is choosing not to raise him as a boy.
Sasha's gender was almost revealed when he took to running around their garden naked, but Beck was resolute and encouraged him to play with dolls to hide his masculinity.
Hide it from whom? The kid knows he's a boy. If he wants to play with dolls that's one thing, but evidently the dolls aren't for him, for his benefit, but as a signal to other people.
Not wanting other people to affect his development is fine, but as parents they are the most important influence in his early years, and their chief lesson is that who he is is less relevant than the appearance of who he is. They are telling him reality doesn't exist. Not "boys can do whatever they want" but "pretend you are not a boy."
As a "radical feminist", would she have encouraged the same denial from a daughter?
II.
Here's where things stop being hilarious:
When Sasha turned five and headed to school, Laxton was forced to make her son's sex public...
This is an extremely revealing sentence, because it shows the hierarchy of power in this woman's mind: she doesn't believe in God, she can overrule biology; but the school system is inviolable. The school system! What next, a pet store? A pumpkin?
She could have home schooled him; she could have refused to tell the school. But instead, she acquiesced to their demand. There's a very specific reason she did this: she is afraid to break society's rules. That's why she got someone else to be transgressive for her.
She wants to be (thought of as) a progressive, to (appear to) challenge society's rules, but being a coward she instead forces her kid to bear all of the negative consequences of this challenge. Is she wearing a man's suit to work? Has she stopped shaving her legs "to hide her femininity"? Is she willing to risk that someone will punch her in the face at the bus stop? Is she willing to sacrifice her own carefully managed identity "to make people think a bit"?
At the risk of me being the kind of sexist she has parenthetically announced she is against, let me say the father in this story is even worse than she is, because he should know better. If you need me to explain why this is, I can't. Amazon suggests you'd enjoy The Descendants.
III.
This story seems like it is about gender roles but it is actually about the deeper generational pathology that comes out in a million different ways, which are all the same way. This isn't about a progressive way of raising children, this is about the consequences of narcissism.
What drove her to using her child as a you-go-first skydiving partner is the desire to be something coupled with the terror of doing anything-- which results in ambivalence and inertia camouflaged in a consumerist lifestyle full of meaningless choices. This leaves a lot of unused emotional energy left over for me me me. She's had 46 years to obsess over her identity, and this is what she came up with, a hail mary pass in the second half of a mid-life crisis.
According to the astronomical guide Being And Nothingness, infinite freedom is proportional to infinite terror, which is why the infinite universe is filled not with nothing or even magic pixie dust but with dark matter. Boo. You may think you want freedom, but the Cenobites can imagine a whole lot more freedom than you can and are just waiting for you to go first. That existential terror is itself frustrating, it is the point of the terror. That's why if you really want a bonerific sex scene you turn off the internet and put on a horror movie. Good luck trying to masturbate to it, though. Which is why it's so memorably hot.
This is why I know that while Beck seems like a hippie-atheist-feminist-freethinker, she is undoubtedly a completely ordinary middle class housewife, no different than the Kansas PTA members she would hatefully roll her eyes at for voting Tory instead of Labour. Her life has been marked by nothing eventful, nothing challenging, nothing unusual, nothing difficult, so she will have created drama out of ordinary events in order to self-identify. "Oh, God," she'd say as she parks her Subaru at the Gymboree. "These mums are all so desperately conformist. Marry the father of my child? How utterly bourgeois. Did I mention my child is a court jester?"
IV.
Still, his mom is intervening. While the school requires different uniforms for boys and girls, Sasha wears a girl's blouse with his pants.
Everyone slow down. This is no longer a gender-neutral child potentially making his own choices, but a boy dressed like a girl, overtly and on purpose. Beck is raising a transvestite.
If you had asked her if she wanted to raise a transvestite she'd have said no-- she wants a child free of stereotypes-- because there are stereotypes of boys and girls but not of boys who dress like girls. That mixed logic reveals the true intent of her "gender-neutral" project. It isn't for the kid, it is for her. If it wasn't for her, you wouldn't have heard about it. Wasn't the whole point not to call attention to the gender? Oh, I had it backwards, the whole point was entirely to focus on the gender. Sigh. The main character in this story is herself. The kid is supporting cast. He is not a person, he is a blog topic.
Of course she wants the best for him, of course she loves him, I'm not saying she doesn't. Neo loved Trinity, too, but I hope it is not necessary to explain which way the force vectors pointed. The purpose of this game show was to be the parent of such a kid, not to benefit the kid. Amy Chua went on the same game show, but at least in her case the kids won some prizes for coming in second.Let me repeat an important quote:
Did you see that wonderful melodrama, Stella Dallas with Barbara Stanwyck? She has a daughter who wants to marry into the upper class, but she is an embarrassment to her daughter. So, the mother - on purpose - played an extremely vulgar, promiscuous mother in front of her daughter's lover, so that the daughter could drop her, without guilt. The daughter could be furious with her and marry the rich guy. That's a more difficult sacrifice. It's not "I will make a big sacrifice and remain deep in their heart." No, in making the sacrifice, you risk your reputation itself. Is this an extreme case? No, I think every good parent should do this.
The true temptation of education is how to raise your child by sacrificing your reputation. It's not my son who should admire me as a role model and so on. I'm not saying you should, to be vulgar, masturbate in front of your son in order to appear as an idiot. But, to avoid this trap - the typical pedagogical trap, which is, apparently you want to help your son, but the real goal is to remain the ideal figure for your son - you must sacrifice that.
She is doing the exact opposite: sacrificing her child's reputation, subjecting him to potential ridicule and god knows what else, not for his benefit but in order to promote her own identity. It's not the gender neutrality that's going to mess this kid up, though it might; but being raised by parents who are using their kid as something other than an end in himself. As was said in a movie I hope has no parallel here: this isn't going to have a happy ending.
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January 23, 2012 2:36 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Way, way too often, parents (not only mothers) use their children as experiments, to try a do-over of their own childhoods. No, your 10 year old daughter does not have her own "green" website. That's you. Unless you're a narcissist, when you get old enough you realize it's not all about you. Let kids make their own choices, and make their mistakes, and always be available.
Score: 80 (86 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 3:07 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Parenting texts on your book, Alone.
It's a must-do.
Score: 43 (45 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 3:27 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Off topic Sir, but having read Becker's The Denial of Death and now your blog, have you any book recommendations?
Score: 7 (9 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 4:03 AM | Posted by : | Reply
A case of media doing its job showing some crazy motherfuckers for readers to get excited about.
1. We didn't have to know this story, it wasn't for us until now.
2a. We're not this crazy anyway are we?
2b. Obviously, the parents are wrong so you could've said anything. This undermines your position even though you are right.
Score: -19 (39 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 4:29 AM | Posted by : | Reply
This is the first time I have felt so enraged and sad at something TLP has written about that I don't have anything valuable or insightful to say or even think.
That poor kid.
Score: 59 (67 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 9:39 AM | Posted by : | Reply
http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/
Hopefully, this couple doesn't wait that long to tell the kid that law school is a waste of three years of one's life, which costs an arm, a leg and a butthole to attend. Then again, it could be worse, i.e. the couple could encourage the child to attend law school, under the illusion that doing so leads to a rewarding life and career.
Score: -68 (86 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 9:48 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I completely agree with your analysis of this family. I am however, surprised that you don't mention something I found shocking in the original article, at least as it was posted on Yahoo! "news." The parents claim to let the boy do and choose his own way, allowing him to parade around in a pink sparkly bathing suit, but ultra masculine attire like shirts with skulls were banned from the house. Wait, what?! You are right on point in that the parents don't want a liberal, free thinking child, they want a gay child. They want the ability to say they neutralized gender and he came out gay nonetheless, and that's who he is. Bullshit. I know a parent like this, she parades around proud of her cross dressed 5 year old who eats his organic, meatless, dyless, soy lunches at school. She gets to brag about how progressive she is, and how she's taking such an active role in his life. Meanwhile, I am consoling him on the playground after his friends tell him they don't want to play cause he's weird for wearing girl's sandals, I am the one who is trying to convince him that pizza really is the root of all evil and he shouldn't be upset he can't have any. Parents like this are going to marginalize their children into the next generation of sociopaths.
Score: 96 (110 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 10:26 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Hi TLP. I just starting reading your blog and I really like it. I've noticed that narcissism comes up quite a bit. I'm sometimes called a narcissist by a particular family member. I always thought of narcissism as a synonym for selfish and from that I've never the criticism very seriously. From reading your site, I gathered that this understanding of narcissism is wrong but I still don't have a grasp on what narcissism really means (something about projecting an identity...). Can you do a post where you explain what narcissism is for laymen?
Score: 11 (33 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 11:17 AM | Posted by : | Reply
The saddest point about that story is that us, readers, cannot escape the same obliviousnes of our own failures and we are probably hurting right now some people we love. Not as much, I hope.
Score: 36 (36 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 11:29 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Shades of Dr. Money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
That poor, poor boy...
Score: 19 (21 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 11:43 AM | Posted by : | Reply
This is so true.
I think the ultimate problem is that parents like these see their children, not as separate human beings, but as characters in films. Where they themselves are the protagonists.
It's so important for this woman to be The Mother Who Doesn't Impose Gender Roles, that I suspect that what the child himself wants is irrelevent.
I can't wait to hear about the coming years. Once he meets other people and wants to fit in/doesn't like dolls anymore, she is going to have a hissy fit. As Alone says, *she* gets to choose to conform. *He* does as he's told.
The ultimate problem I have is that we're hearing aaaaalllll about this. There are millions of parents who, to some degree, don't force their children to conform to gender stereotypes.
They just don't make it central to their indentities; they don't force their children to go the other way and they don't brag about it on the internet.
I understand that being a parent is central to many peoples' lives. But I've always suspected that Mommy Bloggers (and this woman, while she would sneer at the label, is a total Mommy Blogger) are trying to create An Identity without actually doing anything.
Score: 48 (48 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:01 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I had the exact same thought. "if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have?" the same effect as if he was wearing a t-shirt with skulls?
Score: 23 (23 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:10 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Just click around the site, dummy!
Score: -2 (20 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:29 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I did. I've read 5 posts so far and I'm still confused. What I've learned so far is that (a) "selfish" doesn't line up with what he is talking about and (b) it has something to do with "identity" (???). Illustrating through examples are great, but wouldn't be best to first have a firm hold on the vocabulary?
I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely interested in learning about this.
Score: 0 (30 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:37 PM | Posted by : | Reply
If a research psychologist proposed doing this to a child for the sake of science, he might be arrested or decertified, but, at least, shunned by his profession, I hope. This is a woman who craves attention and is willing to make her kid into a lab rat to get it.
Perhaps she subscribes to the notion that any readers are better than none, and that by taking "outrageous" positions, she'll guarantee herself readership. I wonder if she intends to cast her son in a reality TV show yet to come: "What's It Like to be a Whacko?" or, "Untangling Jimmy."
As a living example of an idea stretched to the absurd, her experience is of interest, like a case study. Maslov's dogs. I have to wonder what variety of love it is that she feels for the boy, but it's way out there in the margins someplace.
Maybe it is an example of what general prosperity can do to ensure its own demise: get enough like her and we're back in the stone age.
Mommy Queerest.
Score: 27 (29 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:52 PM | Posted by : | Reply
""I'm terrified of sex" becomes "I'm terrified of getting pregnant" becomes "my Dad would kill me if I got pregnant." That's a girl you're guaranteed to get naked; but she's given way more blowjobs than she's had orgasms."
OMG I'm dating a girl exactly like this. Could anyone give a decent explanation as to what's going on / further reading for me / how she get's over this? Yes I realize I'm probably powerless in this situation but I would at least like to understand it better (which I guess is a form of power, or something).
Score: 0 (14 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 12:55 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
My understanding is this: with narcissism the core problem is that no solid identity actually formed inside of the person. So instead they make up who they would like to be in their head and then write a script for themselves for how they are supposed to act and how others are supposed to act towards them. Basically they simulate being a person, but there is no person inside of them. When they are exposed and it becomes obvious there is no one inside they react with either shame or rage.
Score: 33 (35 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 1:00 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
somedood, be patient. Narcissism isn't even listed as a disorder in the "Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," (DSM) as Lonely posted at the time, Nov-Dec, 2010.
So it can't really be a problem at all, can it?
This from NYT: "Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness."
Look up Narcissism in Wikipedia. And Bing "symptoms of Narcissism." Read TLP. Search phrases within his blog.
This isn't like "Jeopardy!" that ends in 22 minutes, it's about complex human behavior. "I'll take "Narcissism" for 200, Alex."
This might make it worse, or even be wrong, but here are two choruses from him that resonate with me: "It's about you." And, "All of your actions have a blast radius on the people around you."
I've been trying to identify it and get rid of it at the same time for two years.
Happy hunting.
Score: 25 (25 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 1:45 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This reminds me of the language deprivation experiments. Some people believe that the elimination of any so-called "artificial" additions would reveal some kind of pure, immaculate, and uncorrupted holiness.
Score: 15 (15 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 2:11 PM | Posted by : | Reply
When people create identity boxes, is it because of the terror of freedom?
The annihilation of the ego is too much a horror show?
So rather than having to courage to act on freedom, she and other narcissists take cover in the easy comfy armchair that is being "someone"? while desperately ignoring that this is simply a flimsy veil drawn hastily over the terrifying abyss of the knowledge of one's own unimportance?
Score: 8 (12 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 2:11 PM | Posted by : | Reply
The DSM V hasn't been published yet. In the current DSM (IV), Narcissist Personality Disorder is listed and utilized as a diagnosis. Personality Disorders are psychological adaptations of beliefs and behaviors that result in a cluster of behaviors that exist outside of what society, medical experts, or a reasonable person would consider normal.
Reliable treatment for a person with Narcissist Personality Disorder is so rare that it is as true to say that it does not respond to treatment.
In my opinion, if the DSM V excludes narcissism it is not because the behavior is healthy, but sadly, because narcissist behavior is no longer considered outside the norm.
Score: 16 (16 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 2:14 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Oh, and also, does he have FAS or FAE?
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 2:21 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Is the self-righteous rage of narcissists when they are denied acknowledgement of their "specialness" a reaction to their terror of not really existing (i.e., not mattering)?
And given, "so she will have created drama out of ordinary events in order to self-identify", is the chaos seemingly so common in the life of the narcissist also just another smoke-screen to distract him/herself from their utter lack of genuine being?
Score: 10 (10 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 3:50 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Gender Forever" commentary. cross posting between the 2 posts cause this is so very important.
on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJaVL7N4G4
and on the shows "The Agenda" website
http://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/agenda-insight-gender-forever
@jimmy james re Dr. Money and David Reimer - that is heartbreaking and left me feeling cold. Canadian Reimer's; that hits close to home. Mennonite folk.
Score: 2 (4 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 5:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I just realised that the image shows the actual child... it scares the shit out of me.
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 5:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I'm a little late to the party on this, but I'd add that this and future generations didn't learn a damn thing about love when you're 20 from the movies, either. I cannot think of a single film I have ever seen where two characters fall in love because of not just attraction but mutual interests, a respect for each other's intellect, and a fulfillment of each other's needs. It absolutely drives me insane that seemingly every movie that starts with a romance thinks it's enough to establish a believable relationship based on--if not just a passing glance or physical attraction--a montage of dates where the couple is able to have goofy fun. Oh, we tried on funny hats together and he made me breakfast afterward. LOVE!
Score: 8 (16 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 5:50 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Oops, that was supposed to be on the Descendants article. Not sure how that happened. Sorry.
Score: 8 (8 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:03 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This kid's about thirty years away from yelling down at the girl in the pit he dug in his basement that It puts the lotion in the fucking basket or it gets the hose again.
Score: 22 (34 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:30 PM | Posted by : | Reply
So, Sasha's mom sends him off to school wearing a girl's blouse with his pants?
Hmm.... as a Brit, I see this mom screwing the kid's life up even more than Alone talks about. You see, calling someone "a big girl's blouse" is an insult in Britain. She's writing the playground taunt her son will have to endure.
As the Urban Dictionary puts it, a "big girl's blouse" is:
"British slang term for a wimpy, emasculated and weak man. In particular, one who complains immoderately."
Score: 21 (25 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
hahaha, check it out friends: in the posted picture you can see that the woman on the left (whom i presume is the awful mother) is wearing an award medal. yay for her! she did it!
Score: 20 (22 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:42 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
whoops i mean on the right. sorry guys.
Score: 3 (5 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:49 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I'll help!
Narcissism is at root defined by a deficiency of a real sense of self, which the person compensates for by overidentifying themselves and projecting labels to define themselves to others.
This results in the stereotypical/classic symptoms of being excessively egotistical, projecting a grandiose identity, and being compelled to endevors which result in outward signs of status (e.g. being a physician or lawyer or politician or some other socially recognized badge of power).
However as stated, not all narcissists are excessively egotistical, grandiose or obsessed with status. A loner on the internet who has a million labels for him or herself may also be a narcissist, even if their ego / self image projection is dysphoric/syntonic. It's usually the more skilled silver tongued narcissists who are the classic, empty-eyed hollow high status seeking power obsessed hot and cold rageful monstrosities we immediately think of when we think of pathological narcissism.
Narcissism is relatively developmentally appropriate in adolescence, so the label should only be reserved for people past their teens.
People who are narcissists will rarely demonstrate significant introspection, so if you are taking to heart the suggestions of family members that you are one, odds are you are not a pathological narcissist.
Remember, we all have a tendency to narcissism, it's not an on - off switch. "Narcissists" are merely those who are driven by it to the point where they are barely human, but instead more like empty robots who just consume and parasitically feed off of hosts.
Score: 32 (32 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:54 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Perhaps she is sexually traumatized. This is relatively common reason young women may be afraid of sex.
TLP , as usually, simplifies human behavior to uselessness and adds in a dash of misogyny to taste.
The most common reason a girl would be afraid of sex, is sexual trauma... or simply not being ready if she is very young. Men and women have different sexual appetites, particularly when young.
Score: -15 (37 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:57 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
She's 29 years old. Weirdest sexual thing she's had was parents who were semi-nudest in their own home.
Score: 5 (7 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 6:58 PM | Posted by : | Reply
PS, this story is horrible. This should be considered child abuse.
It's one thing if the child is naturally sexually ambiguous or feminine...it's quite another if some nasty old broad is making her masculine son ashamed to be masculine. That's the only place I can see this leading; the boy will grow up with complex guilt and shame for masculine impulses. I am assuming he is a typical male with a typical prenatally masculinized brain; this forced girl-ifying is bound to backfire. She's raising a transsexual, who was born in the right body.
I never understand how crap like this gets approval/support from queer groups, meanwhile they are the first in line to argue that sex : sexuality and gender are products of biology.
Score: 27 (29 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 7:01 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Semi-nudist? Who knows what happened in her life.
Hippies walking around naked tend to lend their couch to drifters and kooks in general, perhaps some kind of inappropriateness went on.
It's sort of not normal to walk around naked when society expects clothes; this blurring between platonic and sexual, parents and lovers, could sufficiently fuck up one's mind.
Of course, being semi-nudist may also suggest being semi-perverted and who knows what went on.
Interesting I suspected sexual trauma, and immediately it comes out her parents were "semi-nudist". That's really WAY FAR from normal. I never want to see my father or mother naked ever and the few times I did I vividly remember that as horrific.
Score: -4 (16 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 7:07 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I don't consider seeing your parents naked as sexual trauma. A sexual bruising perhaps, but not trauma. I'm not being flippant when I say that, I'm saying that because a friend of mine is a social worker and I've met a few of her kids over the years who were sexually abused. Equating parents who you sometimes see as being naked to sexual trauma seems bogus to me in light of meeting those kids.
Score: 17 (21 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 8:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
When I first read this "news" story I laughed out loud - not because it's funny, it's supremely unfunny - but because I thought, when TLP gets wind of this he is going to lose what little hope for the future he has left. Sorry TLP, that's not funny either. I was OCDesquely checking the blog for what I knew would be the next article, and as usual, TLP, you're spot on.
I can't help but think of The Sixth Sense and the very short scene at the beginning when the desperate young patient comes to shoot Bruce Willis for not getting it. Beck better watch out - she is living on borrowed time. I'm going to remember these names, I'll be reading about them again in ten or so years.
And does she really expect us to believe that only a few select family members and friends knew Sasha a boy? Everyone knew, they just played along with this stupid game for some reason, maybe they thought they were helping Sasha somehow. If she is kooky and narcissistic enough to attempt this, who knows what she's capable of if the penis is let out of the jester suit without her pulling the trigger.
Score: 12 (12 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 9:01 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I didn't say that seeing your parents naked once or twice was sexual trauma. I do not have sexual trauma because of the few times I saw my parents naked. It was not traumatizing because my parents did not INTENTIONALLY expose themselves to me. The boundaries between myself and them remained; there was no freakish blurring.
On the other hand, if my father freely walked around butt naked and my mother cooked in the buff, and going home to a house like this, when the rest of the world views clothes as a prerequisite for platonic interactions, I could see perhaps freezing up and not wanting to ever have sex or be naked with another person.
And like I said, that is REALLY WEIRD and who knows what else went on. Where meth lab supplies exist, expect junkies. Where weirdo naked hippies exist, expect inappropriate bizarre behavior.
Score: 2 (22 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 9:04 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I'm sure everyone knew he was a boy.
Female children do not need to be hidden to appear feminine; only masculine children do. If you need to dress your child like a clown to hide his masculine behavior and appearance, NO ONE thinks that child is a girl. They think he is a boy that you are fucking up for life.
Score: 22 (26 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 9:07 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
LOL, for truth.
Score: 0 (4 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 11:07 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Read this:
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/11/a_generational_pathology.html
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
January 23, 2012 11:08 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Do you have anything more about these language deprivation experiments?
It sounds interesting...
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 12:56 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
That she has told you, champ.
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 2:26 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Google "the forbidden experiment". Wikipedia has a page.
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 7:54 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Damn, this made me really sad... it's so artificial from the first word you wrote, it's all so obviously about her. Seriously that's just sad, the poor kid; a tool in someone's game of semiotics.
Score: 9 (9 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 7:54 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Ya it's really sound interesting. I really like it.
Score: -9 (9 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 8:48 AM | Posted by : | Reply
My sister did the same thing with her son, no toy guns, play-play ironing board for the little boy, etc. One day while out walking with him, he picked up a stick, pointed it at me and said "bang bang". Bwahaha.
Score: 31 (31 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 9:00 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I see tons of parents using their children as vehicles to justify their own existences, but wow, these people are taking it to a whole new level. They're all making the same mess, though, not the least of which setting these kids lose in the world, with no sense of themselves and a tether to their parents they'd do just about anything to break, if only they could.
Score: 9 (9 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 10:18 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Dafuq?! This poor boy is not even dressed as a girl but a clown. Girl clothes would actually be an upgrade here.
It's one thing to have a clearly feminine boy and acknowledge that and support him as best as possible; but quite another to be a dominant mother who won't let her boys "be boys." The cases I know already exhibit psychopathic behavior at 10.
Score: 17 (19 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 10:37 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Thank you everyone that responded. This is a good starting point.
Score: 2 (6 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 11:05 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
probably dead right. When my son was 8 or so, he wanted a halloween costume of Jimmy MacElroy from Blades of Glory the year it came out. We helped glue glitter and feathers on a light blue power rangers costume and my wife feathered his hair. I wore black jeans, a red shirt, mullet wig and cowboy hat to be Chazz Micheals. People who hadn't seen the movie and were fairly appalled at a skinny 8 year old in hockey roller blades and baby blue tights "Oh, he's a figure skater".
People who got it kept running inside to get their camera to pose with him.
Score: 2 (8 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 11:37 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I don't consider myself a semi-nudist, but I've been on topless/clothing optional beaches numerous times. I would be uncomfortable around any female friends or couples nude but seeing your parents growing up?
My wife and I close the doors when we're in the bathroom and don't wander the house naked, but my son has seen us naked nearly daily growing up as part of the normal dressing/undressing daily routine. Since he's in the midst of puberty his mom and he are much more private around each other - which I assume is perfectly normal. He and I a bit more so - we don't work particularly hard at seeing or avoiding seeing each other when we're occasionally sharing the bathroom or gym shower.
God's been making naked people for a long time. Why a total equation of nudity with sex and/or perversion? Especially inside the same home - it seems like a weird holdover victorianism/puritanism thing.
If the crazy Mom in question was any kind of nudist, she wouldn't be hung up on hiding what's between her son' legs and would only be concerned with the way people treat him.
Score: 3 (17 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 12:14 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Jesus christ doesn't anyone read, he DIDN'T equate nudity with sex and perversion.
And he was answering a commenters question and talking about something completely different than the lady and son in the article.
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 1:22 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Well, 'not imposing gender stereotypes' would be something different. Like, if the kid is emotional or wants to play with girls more or likes dolls or even wants to try mommy's clothes on, let him be and not indoctrinate him with the 'boys don't do this stuff' lecture.
They could just tell him that the gender boxes exist but he doesn't have to carry them around.. and also show that through their behavior, if they want to raise someone who's free of the constraints gender roles.
I mean, in my family, always when there was a problem that required thinking or some crap that needed to be dealt with, my mother usually asked dad what to do (even though she is as smart as him), whereas dad mostly took care of any issues without asking for help. That made me think that women are not capable of handling their stuff. Although I don't consciously believe that now, this is an example of behavior that says 'boys are smarter than girls'.. which is what people who want to raise gender neutral kids should take care not to send as a message.
However, I also had a vast array of toys as a child, ranging from Barbies (which I was more interested in dismantling than dressing up) to Lego and building blocks.. I had the French house AND the pirate ship and the castle.. My parents bought me whatever I wanted.. and maybe some things that weren't completely gender neutral, like all those Barbies I did not know what to do with, but in the end, I chose my toys and my clothes and everything, so for that, I am grateful to them, and they definitely were not trying to raise a gender neutral kid.. just a happy & not bored one I guess.
Score: 9 (11 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 1:27 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
I agree with you that this kid is in a bad situation which has the potential to turn him into a an emotional mess. Nevertheless, you can't positively predict that this is the outcome for this child. When he goes through his teen years he might realize that his parents are total wack jobs and rebel accordingly.
Score: 13 (13 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 2:50 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
It's an unnecessary risk.
Score: 11 (13 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 3:21 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Camouflage is normally protective for young, and often more prevalent in females.
And somehow, my daughter manages to mix camouflage, pink, black nail polish and a rifle into wholesome and cute.
I would say this woman has issues, but she may actually have entire subscriptions.
Score: 11 (13 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 4:12 PM | Posted by : | Reply
it looks to me like the dad here is getting a get out of jail free card. Why?
I have to wonder if the mom is a, you know, dominatrix. The dad is, what? A bowl of grape jelly?
Score: 12 (14 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 4:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
We talk about the moms because the dads because even the better ones still leave the majority of the child rearing to the mom.
The only ones I know who became "hands on" parents are the ones who had to because the mother skipped town or basically plopped the kid on his lap and said "figure it out, I'm going to work."
Score: 2 (12 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 4:57 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Couple reveals child's *sex* five years too late
fixed that for ys.
Score: 7 (15 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 8:37 PM | Posted by : | Reply
The child will HATE: fill in the blank. He will hate his mother and father. He will dream of killing them and may do so. He will become an alcoholic and or drug addict and a sex addict of the homosexual kind. Sorry, projecting again.
Score: 5 (15 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 8:44 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I couldn't read this without thinking of vegetarianism and veganism. I know five career academics, and four of them are vegetarians currently working in women's studies. The fifth used to be vegetarian. They are very much complimentary ideologies, feminism and veg*nism; they both have a tendency to deny basic physiology and are adopted for reasons other than improving the welfare of women and animals.
Score: 2 (30 votes cast)
January 24, 2012 11:38 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I am quite happy that they have reduced their changes of having grandchildren.
Who would want idiots like that contributing to the future of humankind.
Score: 9 (13 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 3:34 AM | Posted by : | Reply
This is pretty much Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. These twits can't WAIT to go on TV as parents of a bullied child.
Score: 15 (15 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 9:25 AM | Posted by : | Reply
IMHO, you're spot on. Subvert the dominant paradigm on your own time, Mummy and Daddy. What pretentious, negligent idiots. I hope the kid comes to his senses and asks to be taken away from them. Then they can wear each others' clothes.
As for Hugh - WTF? Veganism, vegetarianism and womens studies? Denying physiology? For purposes other than blah blah blah? Get out of the C18th, buddy.
Score: -1 (9 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 10:41 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Radical feminism as practiced by the woman featured in this post (and the women's studies academics I mentioned) and veg*nism deny two million years of evolution. They support the idea that we can walk away from basic physiology just because we think it should be so; that children can be raised sexless & genderless and that human populations can completely abandon an omnivorous diet on a whim. When confronted with mountains of empirical evidence that their ideas can cause more harm than good, they ignore it, because again, their actual aim is not to improve the world but to bolster their self-identity.
Score: 8 (24 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 1:08 PM | Posted by : | Reply
LOL....I'm guessing that putting the mother to sleep and giving the kid up for adoption would not be the appropriate psychiatric intervention here?
Score: 9 (13 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 1:10 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Thank you. :'-)
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 4:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I actually have hope for the kid. To quote GK Chesterton's _The Man Who Was Thursday_:
"Gabriel Syme ... came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.
Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left -- sanity."
Score: 20 (22 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 7:06 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Surely this must be child abuse? She is using her child as the showcase for ideas, which I suppose many parents do, but these are not subtle ideas they are extreme. The fact that she is forcing him to wear half boys, half girls clothes, and the fact that she has orchestrated this to become a worldwide media event must be incredibly stressful on this kid. And surely this stress will just continue to compound - she is doing her best to ensure that he has no identity. What then will his beliefs be by the time he becomes an adult - he will be like no one, just a island, isolated.
Score: 5 (11 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 7:15 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I think this couple should be strapped over a barrel and beaten with a large stick that's littered with rusty nails.
Score: 0 (14 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 7:45 PM | Posted by : | Reply
If you click through from the Yahoo article to the Cambridge news article, the mother shows a peculiar hostility towards girls who dress in - or whose mothers dress them in - stereotypical girly clothes, such as tights and dresses - which supposedly stop them from being able to climb trees, and which make them "prickly" and "prissy". She also finds girls who want to play quietly in the sandbox "very, very boring" compared to boys who are running around throwing things.
This lady has some very complicated antagonisms towards traditional femininity as exhibited by FEMALES. Read what she has to say about her parents, too. This does seem very much to be about HER.
Score: 21 (21 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 8:47 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
CLEARLY THE PATRIARCHY IS TOO STRONG THAT IT IS DEFEATING YOUR SISTER'S ATTEMPTS TO RAISE AN EGALITARIAN MINDED YOUNG MAN.
Either that, or it means men and women are *surprise* different by nature and all the ironing boards in the world are not going to turn a male brain female and vice versa.
Score: 4 (10 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 8:53 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Because it's usually stupid women who tend to believe that male behavior is socialized, and that attempting to create a gender/sexually neutered form of male is not only possible, but healthy. Males generally do not think this, so most likely the husband is kicking back apathetic and ignoring the fact his wife is fucking up and hindering his own son because of her misguided crazy college fem views.
PS, no i am not a misogynist, yes I am female, and I typically believe that gender and sexuality are innate and immutable. Unlike most liberal PC college-brainwashed morons, I don't exhibit double standards (oh yes being gay and transsexual is innate, but WE SHOULD SOCIALIZE AND SHAME NATURAL MALES INTO BEING NEUTERED BEINGS ASHAMED OF THEIR MASCULINITY). Yea, I'm not a hypocrite, and I don't do double standards. You can't have it both ways; you can't believe that being gay or transsexual is a product of the biology of the mind, and then also believe that male/masculine behavior is a product of socializing and patriarchy.
Score: 12 (32 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 8:56 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Sort of /agree
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 10:34 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I don't think there was any secret about this. Just by looking at the child's face, I guessed his gender before reading the article. I was sure he must be a boy.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
January 25, 2012 11:55 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
While I agree with some of what you say, it is not clear to me that 'sexual preference is innate' and 'gender identity is fluid and socioculturally contingent' are inconsistent propositions. 'Gender' is generally used to refer to the peculiarly social aspect of human sexuality, but 'sexual preference' can be said to exist for animals and insects. So 'sexual preference' and 'gender identity' refer to two different things. Therefore I see no reason why we should expect the degree to which they each are biologically determined to be congruous.
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 1:28 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Gee, you sure are all mad about this. I've been so jealous of this kid ever since I first heard about them. Just thinking about how much happier I might have been if no one had ever told me I HAD to do a certain thing, or COULD NOT do a certain other thing, because of my gender. This kid, I never got the big deal; everyone in the family, kid included, knew the kid was a boy. If the gender binary is this essential inviolate thing you all think it is, that should have been enough. Doesn't matter what the kid or the parents do, he's still a boy, right? But instead you seem to be acting like gender is fragile and needs protecting from people who might want to attack it by not telling random people on the internet their child's gender. I think you protest too much.
I don't see a narcissistic parent here, I see a load of internet rage coming from guys who seem to feel like exposure to the colour pink will make their balls drop off. It's almost as if they feel like they'd have something to lose if all parents don't uphold a rigid gender system that sets straight men at the top of the tree...
Score: -15 (23 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 6:40 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Ok, Whirlwind, go for it. The species is 200,000 years old. Its DNA pretty much knows what its looking for and what it needs to survive. If you want to throw pink monkey wrenches into that equation, it's your kid. But most of the rest of us think we have enough going on without trying to "fix" gender expectations. You're rafting in white water, but the human species is Ole Man River, it jes' keeps rolling along.
Score: 1 (15 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 10:44 AM | Posted by : | Reply
That's exactly the point, Whirlwind. The "mother" insists the boy CAN'T wear "masculine" clothing. He can dress like a girl or a Peter Pan fairy, but not a boy.
I wonder if he'll be allowed to play war games on Xbox, or if that will be considered "masculine."
She's not letting him develop as he chooses--she's refusing to let him be a boy.
If you're jealous of that, it sounds as if your own parents had similar issues.
As someone upstream said, when the roosters decide to sit on the eggs, I'll believe gender is a matter of choice. There's a spectrum of course, and gender identity doesn't always match genetics or hormones, but males tend to be masculine, and females tend to be feminine.
It's blatantly obvious she wanted a girl she could mold into a lesbian, so instead she'll mold her son into one. Her attitude is no different from the father who decides his son will be a football star, or the mother who decides her daughter will be a pageant queen.
If you're really jealous of a kid who's going to get beaten by bullies and need years of therapy, I'm guessing your parents were one of the above.
Score: 20 (24 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 11:40 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Rookie sez: "Seriously that's just sad, the poor kid; a tool in someone's game of semiotics."
-If I knew what semiotics was, I would have to disagree. I had better post something intellectual...
Score: 4 (4 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 11:48 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Herodotus, in The History, Book 2.2, tells an anecdote where two ppl tried to figure out the older culture (Egyptians, Phrygians) by raising a child from each in the fields, free from language.
So deprived of a natural component of development, one finally uttered a word at the age of two. It possibly was "bread" in Phrygian, so the Phrygians are the oldest culture.
Here is what is astounding abt that story: a zillion ppl have studied Herodotus across the ages. Yet controlled-trial type knowledge has really finally blossomed just in the recent 120 years.
There is plenty on the web abt feral children, too.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 11:57 AM | Posted by : | Reply
^oops - mine above. forgot to label.
back to the OP: the marxists realized that economic problems would not be enough to push the 99% to revolution.
they (frankfurt school etc.) figured out it wasn't just the stranglehold of the 1% on money - it was their stranglehold on the culture. Less clear to see.
THis was described as the "cultural hegemony:" it is our shared cultural belief in, predominantly, three "givens" of culture: the nukelar family, Christianity (and Judaism just for its contributory role), and free commerce/capitalism/Adam Smith's invisible hand assuring some state of efficiency in trade and economic advance.
The marxists are dedicated to dismantling these three.
Now you know.
This "oppression" of gender is one way to dismantle the nukelar family. This is why the focus is on men not being masculine - men must be shoved out of this "oppressive" role.
These ideas/values are promoted, but surrupticiously, not blatantly. They have become so normal that we have grown goofballs occupying wall street with this anti-hegemony agenda, and all the while failing to realize how they are part of marxist intellectual tradition.
this really irritates the admitted marxists.
Score: 4 (16 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 4:43 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Jeez, I guess when we are not at war, starving, or trying to survive some plague- we really start to get NPD.
What a mess humans are. There always seems to be something horrible many are doing to others.
Why can't people be stable, calm, happy and balanced?
Well, I guess we are coming up with medications to make this happen. THX1138.
Score: 4 (6 votes cast)
January 27, 2012 7:28 PM | Posted by : | Reply
'The Skinner Box Pigeon Guide to Raising Your Child' by Beck Laxton. Published by Insane Pedagogy Press. 2012.
"Operant Conditioning never felt so good!" Reserve your copy now. First 100 orders receive free genderless play doll with extensive range of unitard clothing.
Score: 12 (12 votes cast)
January 28, 2012 5:47 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This kid is going to go all 'Virginia Tech' when s/he grows older. Clown Costume and all!
Score: 6 (12 votes cast)
January 28, 2012 10:57 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"That's why if you really want a bonerific sex scene you turn off the internet and put on a horror movie. Good luck trying to masturbate to it, though. Which is why it's so memorably hot."
Errmmm, WHAT??!!
Score: 4 (4 votes cast)
January 29, 2012 1:58 AM | Posted by : | Reply
as they say in america she's got "white people problems"
Score: 4 (14 votes cast)
January 30, 2012 2:04 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"She could have home schooled him; she could have refused to tell the school. But instead, she acquiesced to their demand."
This also support your hunch about the parents' unwillingness to sacrifice. My hunch: Homeschooling would cause these parents to sacrifice way too much of their own freedom and identity. The father might have to sacrifice income to stay home (or his wife's income if she homeschooled). The mother might have to give up her career/blog/identity (same thing?) to educate her child.
To fulfill your role as a parent you have to be willing to sacrifice your identity in your eyes and theirs. What if dad had to take on a night-shift position as a hotel clerk or mom had to report housewife as her occupation?! These propositions my seem horrifying to this couple, but they are precisely what parents sign up for when they reproduce.
Score: 11 (11 votes cast)
January 30, 2012 2:08 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Seeing your parents naked a sexual bruise? Wtf?! It's very common in Finland. Families will go naked together in a sauna and there's nothing to it. Mostly though, girls go with girls and boys with boys, , but nudity is always present, and a natural thing. So now, The whole country is sexually bruised? That's actually pretty funny shit.
Score: 12 (12 votes cast)
January 30, 2012 2:31 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Hahahahahahaha
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
February 1, 2012 10:25 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I have a question: I am pretty sure I have this feeling of "must do something great with my life" and hence (false) grandiosity stems from it to blanket my interactions.
However, I have backed it up in the past by pushing the societal norms and doing things others make $$ writing about (tucker max, for example)
Do I nurture this and try to run with it - the only problem being steps 1-3 in the 1-10 (10 being Steve Jobs 1 being a mail room clerk) the 1-3 are steps that no longer interest me, unless I am learning a lot. Plus my relationships are.... strange with people either loving me or annoyed by me.
On the other hand if I shelve this:
1. life instantly becomes 10x more boring and 3x gloomy/scary.
2. I'll learn to settle.
3. I'll spend more time helping others or at least considering them
What would the recommendation be? Also I wouldn't say that my life is super exciting right now it is that my narrative makes me think that it is.
I think controlling your narrative is what narcissism is. You are BSing yourself into thinking you are special.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 1, 2012 3:22 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
@RR: "You are BSing yourself into thinking you are special."
If you aren't special to yourself, to whom might you be? Is it a matter of indifference to you whether you live or die? If you prefer to live, does that not imply some self-regard on your part, and does that not strike you as being healthy within the context of you, your survival, your self-respect, and your happiness?
Not being "special" as you frame it might better be termed not being unduly privileged, over-self-estimated, above the rules, or better than others.
But you are special. You are unique. You are the only one who will ever walk your path. If that isn't special in a cosmos of infinite unlikelihood, what is?
Score: 1 (5 votes cast)
February 3, 2012 1:13 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Holy shit, I just tried to read what I wrote high and it was like an energy blanket was put over my eyes- i am guessing a high blood pressure reaction in the pupils...
so what does that say, that i am freaked out to face the truth?
I think you are very spot on , on the part about ...accepting death? or accepting that death isnt a problem.. thats the one.
should I?
it will make life a lot worse. But being scared of the world, even if denying it.... when do you go crazy?
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
February 3, 2012 6:45 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I've seen the outcome of this particular "social experiment" before: it's men who aren't men, but aren't women either, and aren't queer, and aren't fags, and aren't straight -- they're just rotting meat, waiting to die.
I know Jeffers said that life's end is death, but geez -- it's another thing to be dead while one is still alive.
Score: 6 (10 votes cast)
February 3, 2012 11:26 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Here you go, somedude: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/if_this_is_one_of_the_sexiest.html
And:
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/this_is_not_a_narcissistic_inj.html
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
February 4, 2012 9:12 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Identity:
If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible. [2]
Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
http://paulgraham.com/identity.html
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
February 6, 2012 5:44 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Holy shit, this is a case of life imitating art.
The British parody comic Viz has run a strip called The Modern Parents for the last 20 years. The parents, Malcolm and Cressida, give their second son a girl's name, Guinevere, to express their own feelings on the irrelevance of gender stereotypes. The whole point of the strip is that the reader and some of the characters, including the children, realise that Malcolm and Cressida are ridiculous. They are posers and their ideals are a shallow self-aggrandising pretence. The strip parodies well-meaning liberal beliefs by gross exaggeration.
Twenty years later, it's no longer an exaggeration. At least one British couple is as crazy as Malcolm and Cressida.
Social Services should be investigating these idiots for child abuse, but firstly they do not have the inclination because they share many of the same beliefs, and secondly the mother, a self-styled "strident feminist", would shout so much about oppression by the Patriarchy that Social Services would back off.
Score: 6 (8 votes cast)
February 15, 2012 10:45 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
January 23, 2012 5:49 PM | Posted by BHE: | Reply
__________________________
Dear BHE:
I can think readily of five films that may meet your criteria:
1) Pride and Prejudice, with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (1940)
2) How Green was My Valley, with Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O'Hara (1941)
3) All About Eve, with Bette Davis and George Sanders (1950)
4) King Solomon's Mines, with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr (1950)
5) Gone with the Wind, with Clark Gable and Viven Leigh (1939)
I am
Yours in the One True Faith,
André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Diploma (Lenox Hill Hospital School of Respiratory Therapy)
Postgraduate studies in Human and Comparative Anatomy (Columbia University)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
February 19, 2012 8:54 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I knew something was up the moment I read the first quote, avoiding stereotypes by denying the facts. Sounds like a foolproof plan to me. If she really wanted to avoid gender stereotypes, she should've went all the way and named her daughter Kieran, wait, I mean her son; she should've named her son Jenny. Nevertheless, her name's Beck, so you gotta give her (or her own parents..?) a little credit. I think, in all honesty, she's probably mimicking what her own parents put her through as a child... "Beck, look what mommy bought you! a new G.I. Joe."
Score: 4 (4 votes cast)
March 2, 2012 7:33 AM | Posted by : | Reply
F'n fantastic. The best post on any blog I've read in a while.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
March 2, 2012 9:40 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
You could consider not getting high anymore and going through rehab. That tends to help.
Score: -3 (3 votes cast)
March 29, 2012 6:11 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Are you telling me that not one single parent that this child came into contact with guessed that he was a boy? I find that hard to believe.
My children,(girl then boy) from birth exhibited many gender specific types of behaviour. They both played with dolls, toy horses, cars, did craft "stuff" and so on. What happened was that they played with the toys differently and had different ideas about the way to do things. My daughter spent hours dressing up the dolls and then put them in the cars, my son re-enacted battles with the dolls and pushed the cars around the carpet. No encouragement from me I can assure you as I am not a girly girl myself and I am a non-confrontational non aggressive person. I really don't believe that Sasha didn't exhibit any boy type behaviour at all!! Nature plus nurture produce a person. It's not one or the other!!
Score: 6 (10 votes cast)
April 9, 2012 12:04 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Thank you for your post! I have get a lot of useful information and fresh knowledge in your website.
Score: -1 (1 votes cast)
June 9, 2012 9:08 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Browsing through your blog and between some of the entries I dislike, this one is one of few... actually, a bit more than a few, which I like. Indeed, the parents have shown that they do care at all about their son.
Score: -2 (2 votes cast)
December 19, 2012 8:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Has anyone ever told you how wonderfully perfect you are?
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
May 14, 2013 4:06 AM | Posted by : | Reply
@magnum optimus prime im a stand up from hollywood and i just had to take a sec to say to u: well played my friend. .... well played. =-O
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
May 22, 2013 8:23 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Sadly, I just want to see pictures of the boy in a girl's blouse.
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
June 29, 2013 10:36 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Some things are cultural. I have a toddler nephew who loves the color pink. His step mom has informed him that pink is a "girls color" so now he's pretending to like blue. I told him the pink/blue thing being gendered is an American cultural thing, that other countries and cultures don't genderize pink and blue.
The funny thing is - his step-mom is a lesbian who wants to make sure he doesn't grow up to become gay!
Americans sure are a funny bunch.
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
July 25, 2013 1:51 AM | Posted by : | Reply
The saddest part is, there will literally be dozens of such moms coming in the future
http://24.media.tumblr.com/20a61b27c0c2ae26302aad42e52c8534/tumblr_mqe6nsHWeU1ryeto5o1_1280.png
hysterical about their "progressiveness".
Score: 4 (4 votes cast)
November 11, 2013 6:45 PM | Posted by : | Reply
""I'm terrified of sex" becomes "I'm terrified of getting pregnant" becomes "my Dad would kill me if I got pregnant." That's a girl you're guaranteed to get naked; but she's given way more blowjobs than she's had orgasms."
As a girl who's terrified of sex and has consequently never had it: this sounds like the truncated line of reasoning of someone who's terrified of rejection, not sex.
"I'm terrified of rejection" becomes "I have to make sure I never get rejected" becomes "I have to put out more." ... "But I can't be SLUTTY about it because who likes sluts? Outside porn? I mean, really?" "So then I have to be reluctant about it." "But why? I clearly have to have it for all this to work." "Well, there are things to be worried about vis-a-vis having sex." "Right, like getting pregnant." [Still assuming this is a girl, I guess?] "Or dad finding out." "Got it, I will express this to make sure they don't think I'm a slut. Because as long as you suggest that you don't do this every time, it's almost as good as this being special."
Here's my line of reasoning: "I'm terrified of sex." "Good to know. Let's avoid it. After all, the fact that it could make a parent angry or actually get you pregnant and result in saddling you with the life of another human being forEVER (or the decision NOT to be so saddled) absolutely does not make sex more appealing. In fact, those seem like ACTUAL reasons not to have sex, which allow me to rationalize my own irrational fear."
Score: 5 (5 votes cast)
May 19, 2014 1:12 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Narcissism is when you are very self absorbed, so yes, selfish. However, narcissism takes selfishness to the point where you are literally in love with yourself.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
June 22, 2015 4:34 PM | Posted by : | Reply
What the Bruce Jenner transition says about American Culture. - Hint - we rely on magazines to tell us what's pretty, right, acceptable, fashionable, etc. http://monstrousreprobate.blogspot.com/2015/06/vanity-fair-grants-caitlyn-jenner-title.html
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
June 24, 2015 10:42 AM | Posted by : | Reply
With Catelyn Jenner, he didn't become a she officially until Vanity Fair granted her the title. I wonder if this lady felt the same way about her kid. She needed the media attention to validate her choices.
http://monstrousreprobate.blogspot.com/2015/06/vanity-fair-grants-caitlyn-jenner-title.html
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
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