I am sexist. Very sexist. Also racist, but only a little, and that's besides the point. I am afraid that my sexism will have a negative effect on My Future Kids. To be clear, I don't think my version of sexism is the standard issue for the most part. It's less about men or women and more about traits which I internally characterize as masculine or feminine. I know, I know I will tell My Future Kids to man up and rub some dirt in it. I'l never tell My Future Daughters that can't do anything (except get that awful tattoo, etc.), but maybe I'll end up telling them that they can't be girls to do their thing.
I never really felt like I "counted" as a girl. I always saw girls as kind of annoying. It's really only a recent development that I've started trying to look more like a girl, but even that is a little half-assed and I have lesbian hair? Whatever. Anyways, I still have difficulty associating women with engineering, despite who I am and all the people I hang out with. I'm okay with it, because I don't really see myself as a girl, female on all accounts, but not a girl. Maybe My Future Daughters would like to be girls though. Maybe they would like to be girls and be engineers/[insert male-dominated profession here]. I think living with me might be a hindrance to that.
The fact of the matter is that I consider a lot of feminine traits to be "bad," or maybe more accurately, a lot of bad traits to be "feminine." I don't know why, but it kind of makes me angry when guys act like such. fucking. women. And I think that's bad. I think that's bad for My Future Kids, regardless of sex or gender. I don't want them to grow up believing that if they want to succeed, they need to reject their femininity.
Sometimes things fall out of my head and into the world, but the world doesn't always understand them. The models in my head I think can be different, and I'm not the best at expressing what the modes say or what my words mean in my head. I'm afraid that as much as I know that My Future Kids can do whatever without sacrificing bits of their so-called "identity," my words and actions won't express that appropriately. That when I tell them not to be such a woman, they won't hear "calm down and stop being so emotionally erratic and irrational." That when I tell them that something is easy they'll hear "you're too stupid to figure this out" and not some combination of "you'll understand it eventually," "it will be easy," "this is a solved problem and all you need to do is learn how to do it."
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
My Future Delinquents
Today I saw (part of) a video featuring horrible children. I am now concerned with what I will do should Operation Raise a Good Kid fail. What if My Future Kids are bad people? What if they do such wrong that I am ashamed to call them my own?
The video I saw today has been getting around the internet, so maybe you've seen it. It depicts a bus monitor being harassed by a pack of middle schoolers and made quite a bit of money off some poor saps who felt bad about it. It is of course well-known that middle schoolers are essentially the devil's spawn as a rule, but sometimes they can be truly horrible. They are smart enough and brave enough to be hurtful but lack the wisdom to not exert their power.
People have commented on the incident with the bus monitor, horrified by the acts of the children, ruking those among them that did nothing to stop it. They act as though they would have done the Right thing if they were there, and that may be true, but I am doubtful. They've done the experiments on conformity, on cruelty, and I know from 10th grade US History all too well what a mob of adults is capable of. So screw those guys who think that it's so easy to be a good person.
I guess it's hard to even know what the Right thing is sometimes. We all need to make mistakes. We all need to hurt someone to know what it means. Or something. I don't know.
Anyway, back to the original question. Situation: My Future Kids are terrible people. What to do?
If My Future Kids do something horrible, is it enough to punish them? I never really understood punishments, maybe because I've never really been punished. I have been punished for things, but I can only recall a handful of distinct times and then I have no idea what I did wrong. Except for the one time. But other than that, I'm pretty sure even when I was actively being punished, I didn't know what it was for. I remember being told to think about what I had done, but I don't think I ever considered that to be relevant, so maybe that's something for Future Me to keep in mind. I don't know, maybe my sense of cause and effect was not fully developed at the time. Or maybe just how things were related.
Maybe I should just be really disappointed, that's a good way to make a kid feel like shit. Maybe even the best way. But is making a kid feel bad a good way of teaching them good morals? Or at least good conduct?
Is it even about teaching them the difference between right and wrong? Maybe it's not about doing the Right thing. Maybe it's about teaching them how to be brave. Not to know what is Right, but to stand up for it. People act like it's easy, natural even, but I don't even know if I could do it.
The video I saw today has been getting around the internet, so maybe you've seen it. It depicts a bus monitor being harassed by a pack of middle schoolers and made quite a bit of money off some poor saps who felt bad about it. It is of course well-known that middle schoolers are essentially the devil's spawn as a rule, but sometimes they can be truly horrible. They are smart enough and brave enough to be hurtful but lack the wisdom to not exert their power.
People have commented on the incident with the bus monitor, horrified by the acts of the children, ruking those among them that did nothing to stop it. They act as though they would have done the Right thing if they were there, and that may be true, but I am doubtful. They've done the experiments on conformity, on cruelty, and I know from 10th grade US History all too well what a mob of adults is capable of. So screw those guys who think that it's so easy to be a good person.
I guess it's hard to even know what the Right thing is sometimes. We all need to make mistakes. We all need to hurt someone to know what it means. Or something. I don't know.
Anyway, back to the original question. Situation: My Future Kids are terrible people. What to do?
If My Future Kids do something horrible, is it enough to punish them? I never really understood punishments, maybe because I've never really been punished. I have been punished for things, but I can only recall a handful of distinct times and then I have no idea what I did wrong. Except for the one time. But other than that, I'm pretty sure even when I was actively being punished, I didn't know what it was for. I remember being told to think about what I had done, but I don't think I ever considered that to be relevant, so maybe that's something for Future Me to keep in mind. I don't know, maybe my sense of cause and effect was not fully developed at the time. Or maybe just how things were related.
Maybe I should just be really disappointed, that's a good way to make a kid feel like shit. Maybe even the best way. But is making a kid feel bad a good way of teaching them good morals? Or at least good conduct?
Is it even about teaching them the difference between right and wrong? Maybe it's not about doing the Right thing. Maybe it's about teaching them how to be brave. Not to know what is Right, but to stand up for it. People act like it's easy, natural even, but I don't even know if I could do it.
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