Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Conn Iggulden is a man on a mission: To round up our boys, pump out all that bad overly-feminine wussiness we all know they’ve been fed over the years like fattened veal calves, and re-inject that rugged, noogie-giving, bug-squishing, “Hold My Beer and Watch This” stuff the Good Lord intended them to have.
He’s written a book, with his brother, called “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”
It’s about remembering a time when danger wasn’t a dirty word. It’s safer to put a boy in front of a PlayStation for a while, but not in the long run. The irony of making boys’ lives too safe is that later they take worse risks on their own. You only have to push a baby boy hard on a swing and see his face light up. It’s not learned behavior — he’s hardwired to enjoy a little risk. Ask any man for a good memory from childhood and he’ll tell you about testing his courage or getting injured. No one wants to see a child get hurt, but we really did think the bumps and scratches were badges of honor, once.
Since the book was published, I’ve discovered a vast group that cares about exactly the same things I do. I’ve heard from divorced fathers who use the book to make things with their sons instead of going out for fast food and a movie. I’ve received e-mails from 10-year-olds and a beautifully written letter from a man of 87.
I thought I was the only one sick of non-competitive sports days and playgrounds where it’s practically impossible to hurt yourself. It turned out that the pendulum is swinging back at last. Boys are different from girls. Teaching them as though they are girls who don’t wash as much leads to their failure in school, causing trouble all the way. Boys don’t like group work. They do better on exams than they do in coursework, and they don’t like class discussion. In history lessons, they prefer stories of Rome and of courage to projects on the suffragettes.
I’ve done very much the same thing with my son, although not on quite so grand a scale. On the Doofus Dad list that was picked up and passed ’round a few weeks ago, there are three or four titles I have never seen. My son came up with those, after seeing them himself, assuring me they all met the criteria.
I walk a fine line. To me, inculcating the boy with my jaundiced sentiments about the feminist movement, crosses the line. But to deny him the observations I’ve made about it over the years, withholding even a smidgen of the things I consciously wish others had taught me when I was his age, seems like a crime. And, sometimes he asks questions — in response to which I can change the subject, tell the truth, or lie. There’s no fourth option.
So in response to “How come you refer to the feminist movement in the past tense, and my Mom doesn’t?” I tell him the truth. I tell him there are revolutions that try to make the world a better place, and there are cynical political movements that just try to accumulate power. When President Clinton mistreated women, and the feminist movement gave him cover, it was revealed as a political movement, nothing more, never mind the good intentions that might have started it. And people gave up on it.
Some folks wouldn’t like that explanation one bit. Some folks think the boy would have a better shot at it being raised in the woods by wild animals. And yet it occurs to me: A father who just regurgitates the crap he’s been fed himself over the years, in order to avoid the wrath of third-parties, must be worth — what? Not a whole helluva lot. I’ve made my share of mistakes as a Dad, but I’m better than that. If it’s the truth he seeks, it’s the truth he shall have.
Not to say I’m unbiased. To the question about whether my bias has ascended to lunacy, my defense plan is to hide behind what other folks are doing, and entertain the time-honored question: Which is worse? And what a stellar example I can capture from the work of Iggulden himself:
It’s all a matter of balance. When I was a teacher, I asked my head of department why every textbook seemed to have a girl achieving her dream of being a carpenter while the boys were morons. She replied that boys had had it their own way for too long, and now it was the girls’ turn. Ouch.
The problem with fighting adult gender battles in the classroom is that the children always lose.
I expected a backlash. If you put the word “boys” on something, someone will always complain. One blog even promoted the idea of removing the words “For Boys” from the cover with an Exacto knife so that people’s sons wouldn’t be introduced to any unpleasantly masculine notions such as duty, honor, courage and competence.
Boys had it their way and now it’s the girls’ turn. Removing “For Boys” with an Exacto knife.
Christ on a cracker, we can get silly sometimes. There’s something going on here, not just with the womens’ movement, but with all those rabble-rousing movements from the second half of the twentieth century. They all seem to have followed the same path: Promoting the interests of a designated class; promoting political movements friendly to members of that designated class; opposing political movements hostile to members of the class; opposing people who are members of other classes — and getting stuck there. Stuck in the role of bringing discomfort and pain to individuals outside the membership, punishing the outsiders for the crime of simply being what they are.
And so in 2007, the feminist movement seems to find it difficult to help little girls without hurting little boys. All these movements engineered to conquer injustice on behalf of pre-defined groups of people…they all descend into a muck of negativity, and stay there like a pterodactyl in a tar pit.
I think the lesson here is pretty obvious: All absolutist statements eventually lead to problems, including this one.
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