The real speech of mothers, and their commentary as mothers on what we're used to thinking of as "the political" is, suddenly, itself part of political speech. Maybe I've been ignorant, but when I read these these voices I think, "holy shit, this is a massive change."
Now you only have forty years to catch up on, amigo.
I don't get the (relative) wave of excitement at the rise of "mommy blogs." I get pretty much the exact opposite impression that ogged does - that it's pretty much a bunch of women defining themselves primarily around the basis of their offspring and their ability to produce offspring. Wooo, they can use curse words in it, too! Big deal. A pig in a dress is still a pig.
I believe that in his scenario a woman who defines herself primarily around the basis of her offspring and her ability to produce offspring is the pig, and blogging is the dress.
Gluehorse, have you actually *read* any so-called "mommy blogs"? B/c, not to put too fine a point on it, you are wrong. Moreover, even if you're right: what is wrong with a woman who is highly invested in her kids? Why must she be called a "pig"? Yes, some parents are controlling and/or smothering. But the fact is that parenting kids, especially young kids, is an incredibly demanding job, and I don't see why someone who says "I'm a mom first and foremost" is qualitatively different than someone who says "I am a professor, first and foremost." Except that culturally we've defined the subject of parenting/kids as boring/useless/puerile/silly/worthless/etc. Because we're sexist.
In other words, I agree with ogged. I think even more important is the associated "daddy blog," in which we realize--gasp!--it's not just women who care about the private sphere.
Then again, there's the backlash. Whether it's the moms saying "you're a bad mom" or the trolls. "Bad momming" from other moms, however, is much less of an issue--because moms generally can be counted on to agree, on some fundamental level, that judging other people's parenting is a shitty thing to do (assuming children aren't actually being beaten). Trolls, otoh, are uneducable.
The other thing, though, is that one of the best-kept secrets of motherhood, apparently, is that becoming a mother often makes you more, not less political. The reasons for this are obvious, and the political effect of activist moms is easily discovered if you just look. But we so often don't--and when we do see politicized moms, we tend to be a little contemptuous (e.g. our reaction to organizations like MADD, the Tipper Gore thing with the music back in the day, etc.)--and part of our contempt is *because* it's moms getting involved in the public sphere, not *just* because we differ politically from what they're trying to do.
OTOH, next time you go to an abortion rights rally, check out how many of the women there are carrying kids.
Since gluehorse won't answer my "how do you define yourself" (aka "what is the purpose of your life") question, I'm free to assume that he did not answer because it would expose what a selfish prig he is.
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting.
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting. Few other accomplishments can compare with that.
Maybe some folks will think back on that zinger they posted on that blog that one time.
Teaching is a hell of an accomplishment. So is writing well. Also being a good cook, an excellent host, a doting aunt, a nurse, a doctor, a kind pet owner, a musician, and so forth. Kids are indeed great, but there are lots of other ways to bring joy into the world.
Umm.. So a childless woman blogger who defines herself in terms of something else (JUST a career?) is not covered by the porcine example? A male geek in his pjs ranting on is also not covered? Do come on. That was classy, really classy.
If the so prevalent contempt for motherhood (parenthood) continues, I see big problems for our society.
BPhD: One of the biggest eyeopeners for me in life was just how political i became on becoming a father. So I agree fully. Infact I think there'd be a place for Daddy blogs too.
I do have to think a bit though about just what I'm saying is new here.
The lack of topic/audience segregation? There was always political content in 'women's magazines', for example, but its effect was limited because the audience was women-only. What's new about 'mommy blogs' is that they're one click away from any other blog that links, so the insights that have always been out there are now available to a much wider audience.
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting.
Are you serious? Is life so bleakly reductionist that it just becomes a matter of cranking out a kid every couple years? I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Personally I think "making the world a better place" or "bringing joy to the world" are good "purposes of life."
I also agree that the examples you give accomplish that purpose. I think it is a matter of degrees and for most people (Daddies as well as Mommies) raising fine children will be the greatest among all their accomplishments.
Umm.. So a childless woman blogger who defines herself in terms of something else (JUST a career?) is not covered by the porcine example? A male geek in his pjs ranting on is also not covered?
My point is that this is not some great new wonderful revolution to gush over. It's just another subculture yammering on about whatever their obsession of the moment is. This particular subculture happens to encapsulate the majority - the borderline-natalist "you must crank out a baby to truly experience life" people. Everyone should have a blog, and get to babble on about their own obsession of the moment and what they think defines them. But to think that this subset is somehow new and different and radical and somehow "empowering" - well, this is just silly.
I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Fair enough. What do you propose to do?
I'm not gluehorse, but I'll say: practically anything. At least depending on how you start out. I think having a child because you think it will lend your life meaning is deplorable and incredibly irresponsible; if you happen to have had a child for some other reason and find in retrospect that it has, in fact, lent your life meaning, that's another story.
I've been asking you to enlighten me. Please, expand my imagination with your plans.
I don't like to talk about my own life on the internet. My plans are specific enough that they're trivially googlable even in the abstract, and I prefer to remain anonymous to other anonymous web-types.
But I reject the notion that the sum of one's life necessarily devolves to the production of offspring and that having higher priorities than the establishing of a family makes one a "selfish bitch," or whatever ogged called me upthread.
To answer more specifically: having a child pretty much transforms my life forever and derails a career path I've been reaching for since childhood. Am I less of a person because I want to put my own goals and dreams ahead of bringing one more person into a world that already has plenty of them?
Ah, gluehorse, let me guess. You are Proudly Childfree.
Having kids isn't a "subculture" thing to do. It is a major part of what defines living beings as "alive." Yes, the cult of idealized childhood is annoying but what you will find if you read or talk to actual Real Live Parents is that we, for the most part, don't buy into that cult. The cult, like the cult of "feminists are hairy-legged man-haters" is deployed for political purposes only and has nothing to do with reality. By equating parents, including mommy bloggers, with the politicized hype about the Joy of Children (which is deployed against women, just in case you hadn't noticed) you're being a massive tool.
This is a very heavy topic. What do you want your obituary to say? Ben's life was meaningful because he did practically anything? You really think doing anything has as much meaning as raising a fine child?
From my perspective (being 48 years old) the offspring thing has gotten of greater and greater importance. Perhaps it is because I have not written the great american novel, I have not patented anything of significance, I have not performed for more than a thousand people at a time.
Some colleagues have already died. What is left of them? Contributions fade. Memories fade.
Don't have a kid. No one here is saying you should.
Just don't project your defensiveness on the subject onto us and infer, erroneously, that people who value children are therefore saying that those who do not have children are valueless. Go in childless peace and have a happy life. We'll respect your choices. Do you think you can maybe give us the benefit of the doubt that our lives are not boring, babbling idiots?
It is indeed empowering and feminist to talk openly about children. Precisely because of misconceptions like the one you're demonstrating.
Bphd, I don't know what your issues are here and frankly I don't care.
My initial point was that it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers, or for men to primarily identify themselves as fathers. That this is happening in a new medium, complete with its own new tics and quirks, doesn't mean that something remarkable is happening.
Tripp said "prig," not "bitch." "Bitch" is referred for me on this blog and all others I frequent.
And I think his point wasn't that you are selfish for not having children. His point was that by making sweeping statements to the effect that parents are dull narcissistcs, you're being obnoxious and sexist. I agree.
it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers, or for men to primarily identify themselves as fathers
Now you're just missing the point. No one said that that's what was new. What's new (which we've been trying to work out in this thread) is that the honest voices of mothers are being heard more directly by people who hadn't heard them in such a way before.
I don't know what your issues are here
What issues? She's engaged your points; saying she has "issues" is dirty pool.
The point of ogged's post (it seemed to me) was not that women are now identifying themselves as mothers; it's that they're talking about it in a public sphere in a way that was never possible before the internet. You're turning that into cursewords or something, but if you don't think that the idea of blogging has the potential to create a real shift in how we interact and identify with one another, then I'm not sure that a fruitful discussion with you is even possible on this issue.
That this is happening in a new medium, complete with its own new tics and quirks, doesn't mean that something remarkable is happening.
Excepting that women being invidual mothers does not get communicated about much. So if that changes somewhat because of El Blogonet, that's interesting. Remarkable is a different question, depending on who is being exposed.
Tripp, I don't care what I leave on my tombstone. I don't believe anything happens after death, I believe my existence will effectively end when I do, and any memories that anyone has of me or my children or my grandchildren aren't going to change that. The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can. My plans don't include children. I'm not an evangelist, telling other children not to have kids because I'm not having kids. This is my choice and it doesn't make me any more or less a person than you or anyone else.
I called you a selfish prig, meaning one who is selfishly arrogant or smug. I don't like the word bitch, and have trouble using it even in bitchphds name.
I also assumed you were male.
If you can find lifetime meaning in having a certain career then more power to you. Personally I've had the career, had the successful career, and the meaning has faded. I certainly have no love or loyalty from my employer. Expecting fulfilment from a corporation is a big mistake, in my opinion.
Again, speaking as one who is 48 and has had a good career and has done most anything I wanted it turns out for me there is very little meaning in that.
So I am very interested to hear what other people saywill make their life meaningful. Almost anything they say, such as raising fine children, may be easily dismissed if I wanted to.
Some colleagues have already died. What is left of them? Contributions fade. Memories fade.
That's the way it goes. So what? My obituary will say what it says, if I even merit one: that doesn't mean my life won't have had meaning to me.
(True story: there was a discussion in a german romanticism class (I was absent and have it only at second hand) in which one of the students asked friend of mine who had disavowed any sort of grand meaning to life why he bothered to get up in the morning. He said something like "well, I might be going to a concert or have a date that day", and the professor said "probably not, at this school".)
The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can. My plans don't include children.
Good for you.
This is my choice and it doesn't make me any more or less a person than you or anyone else.
Great. From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend. If you enjoy your genetic deadendness, spiffy. Have a good time. On the other hand, people with kids are continuing life, which is the point of this entire gene business in the first place. If they like it, good on them.
Excepting that women being invidual mothers does not get communicated about much. So if that changes somewhat because of El Blogonet, that's interesting. Remarkable is a different question, depending on who is being exposed.
Here I think you're giving far too much credit to blogging as a phenomenon and its observance by the mainstream press. Only three percent read blogs daily; more Americans have heard about blogs from TV or print than from reading actual blogs. So what will happen to the individual voices of the mommybloggers when this new phenomenon becomes big enough to be noteworthy? Do you think people will actually stop to read them, or just hear easily-caricatured accounts of them from mainstream sources? I hear these "bloggers" are all fiesty, pajama-clad partisan firebrands...
The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can.
Thank you for your response.
So you are not looking for meaning and have settled on hedonism, at least for now.
I'm sure this sounds harsh, and I don't really mean it that way. Personally hedonism was probably one of the happiest times of my life. After I've finished the 'fine children' thing I kind of hope to go back to it!
But, for me, hedonism grew old, just as raising fine children grows old.
What really set me off was your calling mommies (as a group) 'pigs,' which was totally uncalled for.
Great. From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend.
If your main concern in life is becoming an evolutionary deadend, I suggest you (1) donate plenty of sperm or ova at every opportunity, and (2) spend the rest of your life fighting climate change, nuclear proliferation and anything else likely to cause the extinction of your ancestors.
Gluehorse, this is a discussion worth having, but you can't just make stuff up, like
Only three percent read blogs daily
The latest poll figure is 15% who read "regularly". That's a huge audience, and the percentage is significantly lowered by the number of elderly who don't read them.
Actually, gluehorse, since the important thing isn't whether or not you have children, but whether your children have children, it's probably better to have kids that you raise yourself than to scatter your seed/eggs willy-nilly across sperm/ovum banks.
Tripp, I didn't say I can find meaning in most anything, but I think most anything could potentially be source of meaning for someone.
Only three percent read blogs daily; more Americans have heard about blogs from TV or print than from reading actual blogs.
Excepting that that number is slighly fishy from several points of view, given the emphasis on daily.
On the other hand, I can certainly see that blogonet triumphalism tends to get out of hand very easily. As does triumphalism about invading foreign countries. Woo woo.
Do you think people will actually stop to read them, or just hear easily-caricatured accounts of them from mainstream sources?
I suspect that the definition of mainstream sources will change.
WHAT it will change to is an interesting and entirely undecided question, which is why the appearance of 'mommyblogs' (nasty terminology there) is interesting. If it eventually constitutes a widespread new social phenomena then it WILL be remarkable.
I didn't make that up. The "3% daily" figure is from Gallup. I don't know what "regularly" amounts to in the same poll (Mystery Pollster is referring to the same one, apparently), but it's not "daily."
Gluehorse, you came on here to say that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent (more or less). And then people who are parents called you a selfish prig. And then you got all high and mighty about not wanting to have kids. In other words, you insulted people, then got "offended" by their anger. Give me a break.
Ogged, we're having quesadillas, avocado, homemade salsa (the only way to go) and fresh tomatoes. If you want a sandwich you can make it your own damn self.
,i>If your main concern in life is becoming an evolutionary deadend, I suggest you (1) donate plenty of sperm or ova at every opportunity, and (2) spend the rest of your life fighting climate change, nuclear proliferation and anything else likely to cause the extinction of your ancestors.
Well, one, my ancestors are already dead and two, it doesn't matter because the human race starved to death in the 1980's/1990's and the planet is owned by giant talking cockroaches now.
I'm not Iranian. If I cook you something and offer it and you say no, then I don't hassle you about it.
This means, of course, that my German mother-in-law, when she visits, doesn't eat much, b/c she expects to be fussed over. Tough shit, say I. I'll do the work of cooking, but I'm not gonna do the work of babying you into eating.
Well, this conversation is all well and good, and I find mommy blogs to be just like any other kind: the 5% that are good writers are consistently entertaining and the rest are mostly uninteresting with the odd gold nugget here and there. However, being one of the few non-anonymous folks that hang out here, I'd just like to point out that I make pretty children. Boo-yah!
Good point about the Iranian custom Joe, but the beauty of assimilation is that you learn how not to go hungry in the new country. Ah, and I see that b just made my point for me. When in Rome...
Luckily, pseudonymous kid's age is right between 'em, so I can confidently assert that he is the cutest child of his age in the entire world without insulting you and yours.
I suspect that the definition of mainstream sources will change.
There might be some time in the future when blogs are mainstream sources, or blogs exert more influence on TV/print than vice versa, but if that time comes, it won't be for quite a while, I think. I say this partly out of skepticism toward blog triumphalism and partly out of the observation that most mainstream reporting on blogs has distinctly placed blogs as an "Other" - some strange, exotic, unwieldy element raging far offstage. The vast amount of reporting on blogs has been on blogs as a phenomenon themselves, not on the stories blogs are discussing. Attempts to compile "blog digests" in the mainstream media usually focus on the elements that make blogs strange and different - usually crazy ranting bloggers like Powerline and LGF, who can be reliably counted on to spew invective, leading the mainstream press to sit back and ponder, "Are blogs affecting The Discourse?"
The breakthrough moment for blogs will happen when a blog breaks a story and it's reported as if it's coming from just some other source, without the novelty element of "new media vs. old media" attached. This seems so distant right now - because the established media has so effectively defined blogs as being essentially defined by their "new" and novel nature - that it's hard for me to see this coming within the next several years.
Eating high-calorie food does not make you fat. Avocados have high calories, but they also have a lot of good things in them. It's the empty calories that are bad for you. That and the lack of exercise. Which I believe is not something you have a problem with. Eat what you like, don't be all high-maintenance about it.
Gluehorse, you came on here to say that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent (more or less). And then people who are parents called you a selfish prig. And then you got all high and mighty about not wanting to have kids. In other words, you insulted people, then got "offended" by their anger. Give me a break.
No, I really didn't say any of those things, and the fact that you pretend that I did in order to get offended at the drop of a hat says more about you than me.
I don't get the (relative) wave of excitement at the rise of "mommy blogs." I get pretty much the exact opposite impression that ogged does - that it's pretty much a bunch of women defining themselves primarily around the basis of their offspring and their ability to produce offspring. Wooo, they can use curse words in it, too! Big deal. A pig in a dress is still a pig.
If that doesn't imply that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent, then I don't know what is.
And I've already labelled myself a bitch, so there's really no need for you to imply that there's something wrong with my character. I've saved you the effort, see?
The vast amount of reporting on blogs has been on blogs as a phenomenon themselves, not on the stories blogs are discussing.
Sure. The mainstream cannot cope with new things any other way. That they did so, does imply some importance.
The breakthrough moment for blogs will happen when a blog breaks a story and it's reported as if it's coming from just some other source, without the novelty element of "new media vs. old media" attached.
Maybe. But by then, the whol ething will have bled together into a big guacamole-ish mess. Like Movies v. Books, Radio v. Movies, Radio v. TV and so on.
No channel ever dries up, but then total dominance takes awhile.
Not to get sidetracked too much, but "Eating high-calorie food does not make you fat" is just false. Since we generally feel full as a result of the volume of food consumed, foods that are high in calories relative to their weight make us more likely to consume more calories than we burn.
If that doesn't imply that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent, then I don't know what is.
I said that as far as I could tell, there was nothing new about women defining themselves by their status as mothers. There was no "boring" or "self-indulgent" in there.
Now, almost all blogs are self-indulgent to some degree. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a little self-indulgent. As for being boring, well, the right writer could blog about toenail clipping and make it exciting, so there's nothing inherently boring in mommy-blogging any more than there is in anything else. Nor did I ever say there was. My assertion all along has been that this is nothing new. This only starting getting personal when Tripp called me a "selfish hedonish" for not having children.
Oh bah, whatever. I eat whatever the hell I feel like eating and I'm not fat. Obsessing about food is just so ridiculous. If you like avocados, eat them.
Okay, ogged, I'll admit: bad choice of words. But to me, the stigma was honestly not there. I was raised by the worst Jews in the world and ate nothing but pork since childhood.
You can all back up and pretend the pig is, I don't know, a bunny rabbit made of swans or something.
Gosh, and here I thought I detected sarcastic dismissal in that "Whoo... big deal." Guess I was wrong. Deeply, unutterably wrong. I'm terribly ashamed, and I can only beg, nay plead! for your forgiveness, gluehorse. I've seen the error of my ways and you're right, it was only Tripp who got personal, and he had absolutely No Reason to do so, and your comments about my "issues" and "says more about you than me" weren't at all grade-schoolish or ad hominem. You've been entirely noble and above-board and I have just been terribly, terribly mean to you.
Can you ever forgive me? Here. Let me fix you lunch, honey.
I also was naive enough to think I was having a conversation on the subject of "Blogospheric Triiumphalism/ New Media Conquers All/ Livejournal Warrior Womyn Overthrow the Patriarchy" in which a little haphazard snark would be acceptable, and not be interpreted, as it apparently was, as my attempt to personally spit on the face of a thousand babies.
Alright, Bphd, I hate your babies and I personally want them to die because my own womb is a radioactive hellscape where no seed can find its purchase. Do you feel better now?
I contend that IF you say you believe in the social contract. If you believe that society is more than just the sum of individuals squabbling over the avocados, then it is selfish NOT to have children. Id soften that with a proviso about a sufficient set of circumstances, but what would they be?
The societies in which most of the posters to this blog live will experience a population decline in the next half century. This IS not intended to go to a discussion about immigration. Although, hell why not? The two are intimately related.
I don't understand the proposition, austro. Why is it selfish not to have children?
Moreover, whether or not my specific society (say, the U.S.) will experience a population decline isn't the point. Blah blah resource consumption, blah blah pollution doesn't respect national borders, blah blah.
I will go along with saying it is selfish and anti-social to actively dislike children, to privatize child-rearing to the point of withholding all public support for parents or parenting (we're well on the way), or (as so often happens, foolishly) to mistake having kids as a "choice" as if not having children were the default mode for living creatures. But I don't see why not having kids and contributing to society in myriad other ways (many of which are much easier without kids of one's own, especially given how far we've already gone in privatizing child-rearing), including the supportive auntie roles I referenced up thread, isn't in fact extremely socially responsible.
Seriously. I'm not even arguing here, I saying I don't get the hypothesis.
I think having a child because you think it will lend your life meaning is deplorable and incredibly irresponsible; if you happen to have had a child for some other reason and find in retrospect that it has, in fact, lent your life meaning, that's another story.
Ben, that's just silly, at least on my understanding of "meaning." Perhaps yours differs. I don't have any fantasies about meaning as a transcendental signified, as if it had some transcendental nature which I was looking for. To paraphrase Deleuze, Meaning is Use. I'm with Tripp on this one, no matter what you do, even if you're President of the United States AND selll 30 Million Albums AND write a book that's on the NYT #1 Best-seller spot for 32 weeks, raising your children well, if you choose to have children, is no less important or meaningful than those other accomplishments.
On the Gluehorse issue: Ms Bitch, the ONE TIME I was rooting for you to bitch someone out. So let down.
Gluehorse off the bat decries mommy blogs as uninteresting, and compares them to an animal that has been used a hundred thousand times in literature as an insult, and then feigns ignorance that people would take it as an insult. She claims that, contra this huge history, she's using it in a new way, and, of course, EVERYONE should have JUST KNOWN. What an ass.
Is life so bleakly reductionist that it just becomes a matter of cranking out a kid every couple years? I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Wow. That has to be up there along with the "most insulting things one can say to a parent." What an asshole. Then:
My point is that this is not some great new wonderful revolution to gush over.
No, this is not a point that encapsulates your previous posts. This is a new point you are making. If you want to retract your previous points, fine, that would be wise.
But I reject the notion that the sum of one's life necessarily devolves to the production of offspring and that having higher priorities than the establishing of a family makes one a "selfish bitch," or whatever ogged called me upthread.
Total misreading of the other comments. Defending herself against charges never made.
My initial point was that it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers,
NO. You never before made that point.
Ok, my annoyance is mostly vented, and I need to clean, so I'll stop there.
My point is not about population decline and resources.
My point is about changing age structure and the sum of the problems this loads onto a society deprived of sufficient human resources to deal with the issues that raises. Umm sort of. I guess in an american social context those ifs at the beginning are the point.
I know this: In a European welfare society, not having children AND expecting "the system" to stump up my pension and otherwise underwrite my standard of living while at the same time being sceptical on immigration is to engage in moral hazard.
Bphd: Please believe this. I'm just floating the idea. It is something I have thought about on and off for the last few weeks since a certain rightwing politician here in Austria made a speech in which he attacked the idea of supporting immigrant children. THAT throws a whole host of issues with me, but I feel I see here a glimpse of the inconsistency in the argument.
I would never say that the irresponsiblity cancels out any other social good we might othewise do.
ah, Austro, ok, I get your point. Yes, in terms of entitlement packages not having children is economically risky and arguably selfish. I'll go along with you: people who live in welfare states with well-developed pension plans and the like (yay welfare states!) AND who grumble about kids AND who grumble about immigrants, those people suck.
Right... its been fun and all, but if I dont pack up and go home now, I'll still be hitting the refresh button at midnight in this office. So please be nice to each other 'til I get home.
OK, too bad I'm opening up the flamewar again, but without meaning to defend gluehorse in any way this:
From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend. If you enjoy your genetic deadendness, spiffy. Have a good time. On the other hand, people with kids are continuing life, which is the point of this entire gene business in the first place. If they like it, good on them
was really goddamned insulting to the childless. (Also to FUCKING ADOPTIVE PARENTS.) None of us really matter on the scale of evolution. And if you're saying that childless people are missing out on the purpose of life, reread b's 16.
I think having a child because you think it will lend your life meaning is deplorable and incredibly irresponsible; if you happen to have had a child for some other reason and find in retrospect that it has, in fact, lent your life meaning, that's another story.
Ben, that's just silly, at least on my understanding of "meaning." Perhaps yours differs. I don't have any fantasies about meaning as a transcendental signified, as if it had some transcendental nature which I was looking for. To paraphrase Deleuze, Meaning is Use. I'm with Tripp on this one, no matter what you do, even if you're President of the United States AND selll 30 Million Albums AND write a book that's on the NYT #1 Best-seller spot for 32 weeks, raising your children well, if you choose to have children, is no less important or meaningful than those other accomplishments.
I think you're overanalyzing "meaning" here; I'm not speaking with any sort of technical sense in mind. At any rate, I don't see the relevance of your first four sentences. (Perhaps if I were at all acquainted with Deleuze I would be able to extract some meaning from your Gnomic Utterance, though.)
Raising a child well isn't just as important as, it's more important than selling 30 million albums or having a bestseller—once the child is already in the picture, that is. I think I am being misunderstood. My second or so comment (24) could be construed as saying that I think having children is meaningless, or will not create meaning in your life, or will not make you feel you've done something worthwhile (which is I think what's most operative); I don't, not absolutely, anyway. I think that having children because you think it will give you a feeling of meaning or make you feel that you've accomplished something or done something worthwhile is, as I've said, deplorable. I'm talking about the motivations that might lead one to have children. To actually create a new person and set him or her out into a life, because you have some sort of existential dread and corporate life just ain't satisfying you right? Vanitas vanitarum, man. But, let's say you arrive at a child for some other reason. You may very well find that raising that child gives your life meaning, and is your proudest doing in the world. Great! But I wouldn't want that to be why you had a child.
(Of course, deciding whether or not to have a child is really only possible if you have access to effective pre- and post-intercourse birth control and the option of abortion, as is possible but not even close to being generally the case even in the developed world these days.)
Ben, most people have kids because fucking tends to produce children. Not for high- or low-minded reasons, it's just the way it works.
Which I think is what ash's point was. I don't see that it's insulting to people who don't have kids (or who adopt) to point out that, if you step back from anthropomorphizing people (I know, but bear with me here), that the primary goal of living organisms is to reproduce their own kind, and that therefore those living organisms that don't do so have, in those terms, "failed." Of course, we like to think of ourselves are having somewhat more complicated societies than, say, amoebas, and there's a case to be made that people who don't themselves breed but who help raise other people's children (directly or indirectly by simply creating a better society) are, in fact, aiding the perpetuation of the species. But viewed as a flat statement of biological fact, I don't see why it's offensive.
Mitch. It is still fucking subzero where I live. I have a pot of forced tulips on the dining room table and I am damn well eating Mexican-grown avocadoes because my identity as someone who doesn't live on the frozen tundra of hell is important to me. Lalalala, I do not see the snow, I do not feel cold....
Yes, I realize this completely contradicts the post I made directly above. I reserve the right to contradict myself.
B, I'm aware of that. Actually having a choice about whether or not to have kids (where that choice isn't identical to the choice of being celibate or not) is rather recent as a phenomenon.
Living organisms don't have a goal, it just so happens that, in the course of doing the things they do, they make more of each other. Success and failure are foreign concepts.
You're right re. living organisms. I amend my statement to "the primary identifying characteristic of living organisms is that they reproduce their own kind."
Mme Bitch, I think I would make a decent house-husband. Except don't get the impression that I clean that often.
Ben, apologies, was irritated when writing that post. If I had a do-over, I would have been nicer and less pedantic.
We're almost in agreeance (or maybe we are and it's just your sloppy writing which is causing the disagreement. :)). Let me revise one setence:
I think that having children only because you think it will give you a feeling of meaning or make you feel that you've accomplished something or done something worthwhile is, as I've said, deplorable.
If you agree to that, we're in agreement. Having children may well entail those things, and so I don't mind them being among a couple's reasons for having children. Further, I have no problems with people seeking to create a productive human life at home with their children, and doing so because they see it as a relief to the corporate world. If that was their only reason, however, then, yes, it would be unhealthy.
And it's offensive because it asserts something along the lines of "in the grand scheme of things, I matter and you don't; I'm advancing the species and you're a frivolous waste of resources; I'm going somewhere and you're a dead end". Even if it weren't intended as an insult, it's very hard not to read it as a breezy dismissal of those who have no biological offspring. It might be true that, if you take a strict view, the sentiment is accurate, but by the same token, if you take a strict view, gluehorse's pig comment shouldn't be offensive, since all he was saying was "X remains X despite superficial changes".
there's a case to be made that people who don't themselves breed but who help raise other people's children (directly or indirectly by simply creating a better society) are, in fact, aiding the perpetuation of the species.
Yes, I would say a pretty fucking strong case. In fact people who don't themselves breed are ipso facto helping those who do: this world isn't made of resources.
Agreed with 126 about the breeziness. There might be an underlying point that's not objectionable (although I really dislike vulgar evolutionary teleologism), but the way it was stated was insulting.
Now, in the (ahem) dialectical context, I can understand why ash was so insulting. When you're confronted with someone who says "people with children suck [are boring, whatever]," it's understandable to respond "no, people without children suck [aren't fulfilling their evolutionary function, whatever]." Gluehorse deserved no better. But when you're posting it where everyone can read it, some innocent people will get splashed by the mud.
That's fine, then. I agreed with Pat Metheny as well, though not so much as to actually want to listen to any of his own stuff. (Sideman work with Ornette or Kenny Garrett is fine.)
I can't countenance the notion that Richard Thompson is best known as being the guitarist in Fairport Convention, when his solo stuff is so very very good and he was only with them for a few albums.
(quoting you)"The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can."
Thank you for your response.
So you are not looking for meaning and have settled on hedonism, at least for now.
Notice I make no mention of children. My definition of hedonism is: "Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure." I will admit that I assumed when you said you were going to live the way you want and do what you want that involved pleasure, but I may have been mistaken.
Nowhere did I call you a hedonist for not having children, so take that strawman back to Oz.
Tripp, I didn't say I can find meaning in most anything, but I think most anything could potentially be source of meaning for someone.
Fair enough. There isn't much nourishment in 'most anything could potentially be', though.
I'm interested to hear what you, personally, have as a source of meaning. In my experience not many people really think about this and the list of answers is pretty darn short.
Kinda like if you ask people to sing a Christmas Carol and frigging Jingle Bells shows up 9 times out of 10.
Oh, and just to be a real blog hog, it seems to me the good thing about Mommy blogs is the good thing about most every blog - it brings together people with similar interests.
I'm thinking back on the 50's mothers could 'network' at home during the day, but that was lost when mothers scattered into the work force. Mommy blogs let the mothers get back connected with other mothers.
I think the claim is that "For anything, there is some person for whom that could provide meaning." Or maybe "Most anything could provide meaning for some person--but they've got to settle on one thing."
I would consider it to have given my life some meaning if I could make some lasting contribution to the field of philosophy. Or to inspire a lot of students to think deeply about it. Or to write fiction or make music that gives pleasure to people sometime. Or just to be a good person that has positive impact on people's lives. And to appreciate a lot of music and art and fiction and become deeper myself as a person is part of the meaning of life too. Perhaps having children would also eventually be something that was meaningful in my life, but I don't feel right now as though life would be meaningless without them. If I had children, I trust and hope that I would feel that way.
Really, bitch covered this pretty well in post 16. I don't think there's any reason to get imperialistic about anyone's life choices, except Republicans.
I don't get why y'all are so touchy about ash's comment, I truly do not (and I don't think ash has kids, either). Gluehorse wasn't just saying "X is X" -- there were overtly dismissive touches there. I pointed out some (and Michael pointed out many others). In contrast, ash framed his flippant comments pretty specifically: "From an evolutionary angle . . . life . . . is the point of this entire gene business in the first place." It just really didn't seem all that insulting to people without kids. Presumably we (you, who have no children) don't view yourself primarily or solely as biological specimens, and if folks choose not to have kids then they realize that this means "not passing on their genes," which bfd, so why would someone be touchy about having that pointed out?
You guys are amazing. Great defense from bphd. Said so many things I wish I'd thought of.
Here's a perspective on motherhood that might have been missing from the discourse before blogs opened up a different kind of reflection. It cracked me up, and it looks like Dooce won a couple different categories of bloggy awards, so she's found a reasonably big audience.
One of my serendipitous discoveries through blogs is how damn funny lapsed mormons are. Between Dooce and Jesus' General, there's always some fun to be found.
bitch, you really think that "deadend" is not prima facie insulting? It looks insulting to me. "Overtly dismissive," even. And given how frequently evolution is invoked as explaining normative properties, adding "from an evolutionary perspective" to "you are a dead end" doesn't soften the blow much.
I'll grant you that ash wasn't as insulting as gluehorse, and I'll grant you (in fact, I already said) that in the context there was some reason to be insulting. But still, maybe you don't always pick up on insults directed at people without kids.
Hm, the last sentence of 139 sounds very insulting to bitch. I don't mean it to be. What I mean is:
Here there is what I, as a member of group X, perceive as an insult to group X.
You, a non-member of group X, do not perceive it as an insult to group X.
In this case as in most others, I think the intuitions of members of group X ought to be given more weight on the question of what's insulting to group X, unless there's a specific reason to think that members of group X are likely to be wrong here.
I rewrote the last sentence of the previous post a bunch of times to try to make it relatively neutral, but I don't think it worked.
bitchphd claims "Arguably what's new is that non-moms are reading and enjoying the mom stuff."
Well speak for yourself, but I certainly am as little interested in mommy (or daddy) musings as I am in sports musings, and when I come across posts that deal with this stuff, I skip over them as aggressively as I ignore sports posts.
So yeah, have fun making all these claims about how this will change the world, but you all may, at some point, wish to calibrate your theories with a group that isn't self-selected.
Well, Maynard, this is all anecdotal, so yours counts, but just in this thread you have me, Wolfson, Weiner, and Michael who are single, childless men who read mommy blogs. And, I'd guess that three years ago, none of us was reading much mommy anything.
I would consider it to have given my life some meaning if I could make some lasting contribution to the field of philosophy.
That's "proper human discourse," to you, bub. But is an interesting statement, though, and I hope I'm not being too picky on your language, this being a blog and all. But your choice of "given" is what strikes me, as it gives an nonsubjective aspect to your use of "meaning." Further, this meaning is given to you because of a contribution which depends on there being no more "you." So this seems to imply that by giving in a mode in which it is otherwise impossible for you to actually benefit, you do in fact benefit through the gift of meaning. (This is assuming fame, fortune, and ready supplies of willing women are not your ulterior motives, of course.) Is this correct, or would you upon reflection change "given"?
Ok lets do this. A deeply held conviction will be packed out and held up for inspection.
The point about the gift of life (even if "life" is accidental and our consciences ultimately a pointless by product) is to bear witness to being: i.e To Be (no E-Prime here). How one goes about bearing witness is subject to individual choice. Some write the symphony, others write the book, teach and inspire in field. Many have kids and fulfill their duties of witness that way. For me an extension if hedonism is to simply use the time and to leave no witness of existence, assuming that you have the luxury of not needing to invest all your time in just staying alive.
On the next level of subjectivity, I have a suspiscion that getting that software package installed in time and on budget lacks some of the qualities required to fulfill the programme.
Short version:Do something with your time, just dont over eroticise your career as a substitute.
Matt, maybe it's my thick skin, but I really don't see "evolutionary deadend" as insulting. Or at least, I find it insulting in a joking kind of noone really takes this all that seriously kind of way. Like calling someone a neanderthal (which I'm sure I've done at some point on this blog).
Tripp, depends on what you mean by "point." If you mean, "meaning," then yes; it's insulting (and dumb) to say that the meaning of life is to have kids. But if by "point of life" you mean, literally, that life is defined as "things that reproduce their own kind" then it's merely a statement of fact. I honest to god read it that way.
Matt again: I'm all over the "if so-and-so says they're insulted, they're insulted" argument. On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers. So all I'm doing in defending ash is saying, not that it's invalid to be insulted if someone says or implies "people without kids are wastes of space," but saying that I honestly do not think that is what ash was saying.
Maynard: I did not say "all" non-moms are reading mommy blogs. But a surprising number of non-moms are. I, for one, think that this is a good thing.
**This is a very heavy topic. What do you want your obituary to say? Ben's life was meaningful because he did practically anything? You really think doing anything has as much meaning as raising a fine child?**
**Having kids isn't a "subculture" thing to do. It is a major part of what defines living beings as "alive."**
Oh give me a freaking break.
(1) Having children is not some amazing feat that deserves applause. Here's some news --- pretty much all people can do it, as can monkeys, fish, snails, trees and even pigs in dresses. It's cute when 2yr old children ask to be praised for trivialities like walking without falling down --- it's pathetic when adults expect to be praised for what comes naturally.
(2) Since when did "what is natural" become the standard for "what is good". Do we really want to go down that slope?
I expect bitchphd and friends are happy to mock the evolutionary psychology types who tell us that aggression, clannishness, wanting to rape hot teenage women and so on are natural, but suddently, when it comes to having kids, "it's natural" is so good a justification that nothing more needs to be said.
(3) There's been a whole lot of ad hominem attacking in this thread. People are suddenly called "loudly proudly childfree" and mocked as though they're some sort of crusaders for living their lives a certain way. I gotta tell you, it looks a whole lot different to me reading this thread --- those who are making a big deal about defending their decisions are the ones with children. And I have a pretty good idea of why they are making so much noise --- they're realizing the price they paid for having kids in terms of lost opportunities and general hassle, and they pissed off. Of course you can't go around telling people you wish you'd never had kids; quite apart from what people will think of you it's not fair on the children. So, like a gadget buyer the day after his purchase, you're now desperately scanning the internet and talking to your friends, trying to find ex post reasons for what you did.
Ooh, this ad hominem stuff, imputing motives to others, is fun!
(4) No-one is going to remember you in three hundred years, whether you have kids or not, if you are an average person. That's life. If it upsets you terribly, go find god.
And if you're non-average, well go do non-average good deeds. Write great literature, create great art, make scientific discoveries, invent something.
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
Well, Maynard, this is all anecdotal, so yours counts, but just in this thread you have me, Wolfson, Weiner, and Michael who are single, childless men who read mommy blogs.
I do what now? (Is BPhD's blog a mommy blog? It's a blog written by a mother, at any rate.)
[I was typing a longer response to Michael's 144, but I see ogged's is briefer.]
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
And I'm happy to admit that that's a goddamned frightening thing to say. I would trade a fair chunk of art and knowledge to save billions and billions of undifferentiated lives. They're not undifferentiated to the people living them, y'know.
(4) No-one is going to remember you in three hundred years, whether you have kids or not, if you are an average person. That's life. If it upsets you terribly, go find god.
And if you're non-average, well go do non-average good deeds. Write great literature, create great art, make scientific discoveries, invent something.
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
Misses the point I think. The meaning of my life is personal. It is personal fufillment, not contribution to Humanity that is important here. The measure is different.
How "humanity" sees me interests me not one bit. It is after all nothing other than a collection of undifferentiated lives. How those I love see me and sees me life might just be different.
Neither Tripp nor I expect you or anyone else to hand us medals for procreating. We just expect not to be put down for it.
Other than that, though, you're right. I deeply, deeply resent my child and the way he has stymied my career and ruined my girlish figure and sapped my brain so that all I can now talk about is diapers and playdates and yes, my entire purpose in life now--other than raising my child, that is--is to find people I can insult for choosing not to have kids. You're onto me. That's why I started the fight.
Oh no wait! I didn't start it. Shit. Oh well, it was a theory.
That was a long time ago, Ogged. I've cleaned up since then. I'm contemplating clarifying 144, but maybe I'd just look like I was deeper in the bottle.
About 143, I'll say that I've been a huge fan of Alice Munro since I was an undergrad, and at least some of her work deals with motherhood. (Much more of it deals with daughterhood perhaps.) But it does seem as though I ought to be able to think of more examples off the top of my head.
To be a bit less snarky about 144, the thing that I was thinking of as giving my life meaning in that case was meant to be an activity of mine: the work that I do. It doesn't actually require my being dead.
Also, I'll note that with 149, Michael has by Godwin's law lost the argument. Whatever it was.
And the moral of the story is, if you write anything at all about mothers, you can be sure someone will come along to tell you how stupid and meaningless it is.
Well OK, this sentence is true in that it is not eating "high calorie food" that makes you fat, but eating lots of calories. It is, however, a whole lot easier to eat lots of calories when they are densely packed in high calorie food.
Let me guess, bitchphd, you didn't study science at college, did you?
As you phrased it, I think it does. "lasting contribution" implies after your death, as I read it. If you had simply said, "to contribute" that would be a different thing. Now, I believe you would find meaning in contributing to philosophy, but also in making that lasting contribution.
My clarification/defense of 144 has 2 parts. The first is easy: it is at least possible that Matt has an argument for "meaning is given, not taken." The second is the one that might make me look drunker.
b, just one more go-round, I hope (but you like thrashing things out, right? So maybe it's OK):
I think this:
On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers
isn't so much evidence that childless people are oversensitive to insults as that things that might be harmless to other people--"Neanderthal!"--really are insulting to childless people. If you'll pardon my saying so, what you're saying is a teeny bit reminiscent of the old "feminists have no sense of humor" line.
Now, I don't think that there's any parallel between child-freeness and feminism. Honestly, as a childless person I have it pretty great in a lot of ways--I never have to find a babysitter or daycare or anything like that. I think US society is, by a huge margin, too tough on people who have children.
But, I guess, I would see the following as being touchy:
[truly innocent questioner] Do you have any children?
[childless person] No, and why do you think I should? [etc.]
But the following:
[evangelist for childbearing] If you don't have children, you're an evolutionary dead end.
[childless person] Get stuffed.
[efc] Can't you take a joke?
is I think a genuine insult.
Another thing--it would be bad if nobody had children. It is bad that many people lack the choice not to have children. But there seems to be little risk of people choosing to stop having children entirely (Austro, immigration is OK), so no need to worry on that score, I think. (directed kind of at eb's 159, though I think that was directed at Maynard's childfree evangelizing rather than the live-and-let-live approach I favor)
"My point is not about population decline and resources.
My point is about changing age structure and the sum of the problems this loads onto a society deprived of sufficient human resources to deal with the issues that raises. Umm sort of. I guess in an american social context those ifs at the beginning are the point.
I know this: In a European welfare society, not having children AND expecting "the system" to stump up my pension and otherwise underwrite my standard of living while at the same time being sceptical on immigration is to engage in moral hazard."
So there are two choices:
(1) THIS generation has fewer kids, there are transition problems, but the end result is fewer people in, say, 100 years, and a chance to sort out the legacy of overpopulation of the 20th century OR
(2) We encourage people (let's assume this would work) to have enough kids that there would not be transition problems, and, in say 100 years, we are screwed because so many resources have been used up, so much earth ravaged, that recovery is impossible.
Now Austro chooses option number 2, because 1 would make life a little inconvenient, and THEN HAS THE GALL TO CLAIM THAT THIS IS THE *UNSELFISH* CHOICE. This must be some strange new street meaning on unselfish that I'm unfamiliar with.
No, no, no. As noted above, strictly speaking, Godwin's Law involves an invocation of Hitler. More importantly, while Naziism was an exceedingly ugly and murderous philosophy, grammar-Naziism is next to godliness. If Hitler had just stuck to grammar-Naziism, rather than lumpen-Naziism, we'd remember him like this.
As you phrased it, I think it does. "lasting contribution" implies after your death, as I read it. If you had simply said, "to contribute" that would be a different thing. Now, I believe you would find meaning in contributing to philosophy, but also in making that lasting contribution.
The first is easy: it is at least possible that Matt has an argument for "meaning is given, not taken."
I read "it would give meaning to ..." as opposed to "I would take meaning from" more as an acknowledgement that, first, one can't simply go out and make a meaningful contribution to philosophy, or inspire others to think seriously about it, or what have you—these are hard things to do and one might fail, and, second, success at them is the condition is the condition of meaning. I think it's clear from the way Matt started off his paragraph saying that he would consider his life meaningful if so-and-so that he is taking meaning on his own terms—but one must acknowledge that sometimes the activities from which one takes meaning have external success conditions and that therefore, it is also appropriate to speak of their successful execution as giving meaning.
I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge
And the thousands of voices lost for lack of a room of their own, because there's been so little reliable social support for women to be mothers and artists? Even if your sole focus is accumulation of art and knowledge, there is a huge social cost to the way we've organized families. Amazing writers like bitch or flea or dooce often didn't have an outlet or a path to be recognized. A sculptor like Louise Burgeouis who could work without showing for a decade or more while she raised kids is far rarer than many, many who dropped out.
I think Ogged's original point was that diaries of the lives of women like these might have some impact on how we think about women and men and family, and if we're smart it might change how we allow people to blend family and work or calling.
This pissing about who's in the majority and who gets more respect is bullshit. But the idea that we could arrange things much better so that work and family was a more comfortable option for women and men is really important, and hearing the real voices of mothers and fathers in a dialog with other writers and political observers is a baby step towards that.
Funnily enough, Maynard, the largest growth in resource usage has occured in societies with a stable or declining population base. Cutting or even stabilising individual demands on resources in developed economies will stop the ravaging.
Interpret the framework of the contension.
The Malthusian Catastrophe refuses to be realised on numbers alone. It is per capita consumption that will do for us. That means you and I. Not having kids wont save the planet.
Matt, re. #169: On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers
isn't so much evidence that childless people are oversensitive to insults as that things that might be harmless to other people--"Neanderthal!"--really are insulting to childless people. If you'll pardon my saying so, what you're saying is a teeny bit reminiscent of the old "feminists have no sense of humor" line.
Now, I don't think that there's any parallel between child-freeness and feminism.
I do realize the slippery slope I'm treading on with the "childfree folks sure are touchy" line. You may not say it, but I will: I think there is a parallel between not having kids and feminism, and the connection is pretty damn clear: for the most part, it's women who are pressured most to have kids (though guys get it too). I wasn't trying to say oversensitive to insults, in general; just that in my years as a mommy on the internets, I have run over and over and over again into people who label themselves "childfree" who are convinced that "breeders" rule the world and those without kids are a shat-upon minority because of things like, oh, employer-provided health insurance covering dependents. No one here (well, no one who is a regular commenter) is doing that, of course. But anyway, she says loosely, I've seen a lot of touchy "child free" folks who take offense at people even mentioning children. Sadly, it seems, the "child free" label has become synonymous with "aggressively anti-children." So that's really what I was channelling in saying that.
Now, as to the "dead end" comment; ok, I will accept that you and Ben (if memory serves) found it insulting on genuinely non-touchy grounds. I was just, in my hashing-it-out way, saying that I didn't see it that way and suggesting that maybe it wasn't inherently insulting. You continue to find it insulting, ok, I'll take that as evidence that it is. Truly. I still think it's excusable in light of the provocation (and again, ash doesn't have kids, I'm sure he said so upthread), but I'll concede that your (or Ben's, I forget) point that it implicitly insulted more people than just gluehorse is valid. I withdraw my argument that it isn't insulting.
Maynard, in fact one of my college majors was biology. I also studied chemistry and some physics. And it is true: high calorie foods do not, in and of themselves, cause fatness. Their effect on a person's weight or bodyfat depends on a number of other factors including (as I said) nutrient value and activity level.
"Funnily enough, Maynard, the largest growth in resource usage has occured in societies with a stable or declining population base. Cutting or even stabilising individual demands on resources in developed economies will stop the ravaging.
Interpret the framework of the contension.
The Malthusian Catastrophe refuses to be realised on numbers alone. It is per capita consumption that will do for us. That means you and I. Not having kids wont save the planet."
Huh? So you concede my point, but insist of having kids anyway?
Yes, OF COURSE just having children won't stop people wasting resources. But not having children and hot having resources are not orthogonal issues. Whether people do or do not stop wasting resources, children ARE going to require resources, and are going to turn into adults who require even more resources.
Sure, go out and encourage people to waste less; walk to the supermarket, library and post office; don't engage in frivolous driving or flying just because you can afford to do so; switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs; etc, etc. I certainly do all these things.
But don't waste my time and other people's time by making assertions that are blatantly both stupid and mendacious, namely that having children will not utilize resources and won't exarcebate the upcoming problem.
'K, then. One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because the folks who took offense were men. The observations you make in that paragraph sound pretty accurate. I'm not child-free, anyway--not even committed to not having children. Just don't feel like it this week.
(directed kind of at eb's 159, though I think that was directed at Maynard's childfree evangelizing rather than the live-and-let-live approach I favor)
Yes, my comment was directed at the idea that people defending - not necessarily evangelizing for - their decision to have children are merely covering up their resentments over opportunities lost.
I don't have kids, but I'm all for being able to choose one way or the other without being insulted for my decision - whatever it may be. So, I'm all for live-and-let-live.
One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because the folks who took offense were men.
Heh. Feel free to include men in the feminist camp. I'd like to see more of it, to tell the truth. I'll even give you a pass to get past the barricades.
"I have run over and over and over again into people who label themselves "childfree" who are convinced that "breeders" rule the world and those without kids are a shat-upon minority because of things like, oh, employer-provided health insurance covering dependent"
Gee, why would they think that?
Maybe because the tax system strongly subsidizes people with kids who live a very specific lifestyle. Of course the child deduction is part of that, but the biggie is mortgage interest deduction. There are plenty of others, of course, for example things like the cliff in the medical deduction. For the last ten years or so I've paid total rates of oh, 35% or so of my income(federal and state, but not including sales tax), while my colleagues, earning just as much, pay a rate of perhaps 20%.
Now you can say how this is good for society, building the future, blah blah, and I agree with some of that. But don't spread this BS that people without children have UNJUSTIFIED resentment about how society treats them.If "breeders", to use your term, are justified in kvetching about all the terrible ways society treats them, from not being able to show their breasts in public to being forced to pay for childcare, why should the childless not be allowed to voice their complaints?
One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because...
I elide your failure to pluralize "reason" to say: reason is THAT, Weiner! Unless as you clearly aren't you are stating the existential conditions for the reason's being in force.
Since we generally feel full as a result of the volume of food consumed, foods that are high in calories relative to their weight make us more likely to consume more calories than we burn.
Yes avocado has more calories than, for example, the same weight of apple. But avocado will make you feel fuller and more satisfied faster than apple will. Feeling "full" is actually a rather complicated affair, physiologically, and has to do with a lot more than just volume of food consumed.
In mommy blog comment sections "child free" may mean "aggressively anti-children." But that is just because they are trolls. In real life, most people respect other peoples' choices. You wouldn't call your coworkers and neighbors "breeders" or "childfree and selfish".
I think mommy blogs are a good thing. If you don't like them, it isn't hard to avoid them.
When will the "upcoming problem" become an actual problem, Maynard? When we stop having children?
The resources problem is with us now. If the world population remained stable now the world will be ravaged by growing energy/resources demand nontheless. So my contention is that it is the consumption per unit ( I realise i repeat myself here) that is the real issue.
I personally believe that the transition problems you mention can be overcome with immigration.So I see no reason to maintain that a society must produce more kids. Read again what I wrote: It is the combination of demands that I was decrying as selfish. Not purely the not having children.
If you must be abusive at least have the decency to read what is there and not what you would have liked me to say, so that you can pick a fight.
In mommy blog comment sections "child free" may mean "aggressively anti-children." But that is just because they are trolls.
You would think that. But if you google "child free" and spend maybe fifteen minutes reading around, you'll find that that's not the case. Moreover, in real life, I have lost friends because I had a child. True fact. I have also transitioned from passing judgment on my sister's parenting and occasionally fighting with her over it (pre- my own kid) to having a child of my own and calling her to apologize and take it all back. It isn't true that in real life people don't judge and hassle parents.
Maybe because the tax system strongly subsidizes people with kids who live a very specific lifestyle. Of course the child deduction is part of that, but the biggie is mortgage interest deduction. There are plenty of others, of course, for example things like the cliff in the medical deduction. For the last ten years or so I've paid total rates of oh, 35% or so of my income(federal and state, but not including sales tax), while my colleagues, earning just as much, pay a rate of perhaps 20%.
Now you can say how this is good for society, building the future, blah blah, and I agree with some of that. But don't spread this BS that people without children have UNJUSTIFIED resentment about how society treats them.If "breeders", to use your term, are justified in kvetching about all the terrible ways society treats them, from not being able to show their breasts in public to being forced to pay for childcare, why should the childless not be allowed to voice their complaints?
Let me point out in passing that "breeders" is not my term. Do the googling of the child free sites. You'll see that, and much worse. Do you really want to associate yourself with those people?
Now to continue. There is a substantive difference between asserting my right to breastfeed in public without being glared at, and blaming parents for what you percieve as iniquities in the tax system. I didn't write the tax code, you see; but you (the rhetorical "you," not the literal one) did, in fact, tell my husband that he shouldn't let his wife do that in public (true; this happened to us. You can well imagine what my response was).
Now. Let us have a little lesson on what "ideology" means. It means the collection of unarticulated and inconsistent beliefs. So, for instance, our society does indeed give a great deal of praise to the idea of families, to honoring mothers, to adjusting the tax system to benefit families, and so forth. On the other hand. We also, as a society, expect ambitious people to work hours that are incommensurate with children, fail to provide social security benefits to parents who stay home to care for children, believe that taking maternity leave does not give you the right to maintain your income or get your job back, and broadcast extreme hostility to parents with small children in public spaces if and when the children are anything less than perfectly behaved.
The fact of the matter is, the lip service about "family values" that we love to spout, in fact, fucks over real families. It substitutes for a genuine social committment to support parents with small children--the same small children, I might add, who will grow up to write your symphonies, treat your cancer, and pay your social security benefits. So yes. Your resentment of parents is damn well unjustified. As is the clear fact that your position in this comment thread has been pretty much to hassle me personally, rather than to actually present anything resembling a reasonable argument.
"Maynard, in fact one of my college majors was biology. I also studied chemistry and some physics. And it is true: high calorie foods do not, in and of themselves, cause fatness. Their effect on a person's weight or bodyfat depends on a number of other factors including (as I said) nutrient value and activity level.
Nice try, though"
Well, I gave you a face-saving out and you refused to take it.
Let me quote from a textbook _Understanding Nutrition_ by Whitney & Rolfes, 8th edn, 1999.
Earlier we are presented with the fairly obvious points that calories in must equal calories out, and that excess calories (ie more calories eaten per day than are expended in metabolism) will result in some of those calories being excreted while others will be absorbed by the body and saved as fat.
At this point let's note that, to first order, issues of "empty calories", whether you exercise, how many vitamins and anti-oxidants you food consists of, and so on, while interesting and relevant to the issue of the length and quality of your life, are largely irrelevant to the issue of calorie balance. If you're a non-exerciser, your basal metabolism runs at 2000kCal/day, and you eat 2500kCal/day, you will (as I said, to first order) gain a pound of fat a week. If you're an exerciser, your basal metabolism runs at 2500kCal/day, and you eat 3000kCal/day, you will likewise gain a pound of fat a week.
Now let's quote from page 231 which considers interesting twists on the above first order statements
"It stands to reason that a person who eats 3500 extra kCal should gain a pound, and that a person who cuts 3500 kCal should lose a pound, but this does not always happen...Furthemore, people seem to gain more body fat when they eat extra fat kCal than when they eat extra carbohydrate kCal, and they seem to lose body fat most efficiently when they limit kCal specifically from fat. Whether a person chooses extra potatoes or extra butter may make a great deal of difference to body weight and body composition".
Let's point out, apropos of the above, that, while "empty calories" is an imprecise term, it tends to refer to foods with carbohydrates (at least in my experience). As regards avocado, we have that "with the exception of olive oil, no other fruit contains as large a percentage of fat as the avocado", whose fat content varies from 7 to 26%. This puts it in the same category as bacon, peanuts, cheese and butter as regards the dietary fat impact.
There are further interesting things on page 233. Specifically they discuss the difference between what makes you feel like you no longer want to eat any more at a meal (Ogged's point above about your stomach being full), and what keeps you feeling non-hungry (so that you don't snack). Most interesting, IMHO, is that proteins do the best job of making you feel full for a long time. High fiber also does well, (the infamous celery sticks and unbuttered popcorn of serious, knowledgable dieters) while carbs are adequate and fats are bad. This seems to imply that to the extent that Atkins works, it works if you are eating a high-protein diet rather than a high fat diet --- this may be why different people seem to report very different results from trying an Atkins diet.
I just figured out that the comments here automatically end html coding at the end of a paragraph. So please extend the italics in par. 3, above, to include par. 4: both of those were Maynard's, not mine.
re: 188, I'm all in favor of men being feminists, in fact I try to be one myself (though maybe that's hampered a little bit by the little man in my head who is trying to make me say "good and articulate points, b!"), but in this case I'm not sure that men's desire to be free from the encumbrances of children is a force that works on the whole in women's favor. Ask Newt Gingrich.
b-wo, "reason because" is redundant rather than incorrect, and sometimes it aids comprehension. Deal.
My dear Maynard, that long quotation from an introductory college text book merely supports my contention that the correlation between caloric intake and weight gain is complicated. It doesn't refute it. One of the benefits of/requirements for studying a subject is being able to actually understand what one reads.
Matt, no one in her right mind wants to be married to Newt Gingrich. The real solution is to provide government subsidies to single mothers and let them dump the asshole men who want nothing to do with their children. Kids are better off without those people in their lives.
203--sure, absolutely. It's just that men's desire not to have to deal with children can be and is slaked without doing anything to help the single mom--or the woman who doesn't want to be a mom--at all. So, women's desire to have the option of childlessness is inseparable from feminism; Gingrich's desire to have the option of childlessness (or at least of dumping the mother of his kids) not.
204--you got to 200 before I did, thus making my 201 look stupid. Just making fun of myself there. 100 comments is just a yawn now, but 200 is still something special even if it takes two trolls to get there.
Ah, yes, but Gingrich doesn't want the option of not having children. He wants the option of not caring for them, along with the option of blathering on about traditional values while dumping his wife when she has cancer. Big difference.
"My dear Maynard, that long quotation from an introductory college text book merely supports my contention that the correlation between caloric intake and weight gain is complicated. It doesn't refute it. One of the benefits of/requirements for studying a subject is being able to actually understand what one reads."
So that's your answer? "Things are complicated, all is in flux, no-one can know the truth."
Very new-agey and holistic of you, but, assuming you don't actually have scientific refutations of the statements I made, the fact remains that what I posted gives at least three reasons
* fats, for as yet unknown reasons are more efficiently converted to human fat than are other food types with equal calories
* fats don't fill up your stomach much because they are dense in calories
* fats lead you to feel hungry after eating rather sooner than other food types
for why your statement about "high calorie foods don't make you fat" is seriously misleading.
Maynard. I was talking about avocados. Not animal fats.
Now, will someone please take Maynard outside and kick his ass for me? What's the point of hanging out in a frat house if I can't call on some muscle when I need it?
Because, as we all know, I'm far too new-agey (and fat from eating avocados) to fight my own battles.
Maynard, darling, post 154 was meant as a mild suggestion that maybe coming to a blog where you don't post regularly and spewing random insults at the regulars is sub-optimal behavior. Now that b has cut your arguments to flinders--really, if you're nitpicking on the difference between "cause in itself" and "contribute to," you should say so calmly--will you kindly go the fuck away?
I don't think he has, I just want him to calm down a bit and make his points without being needlessly insulting and embarassing himself with all the spittle and foaming and general highschool antics.
Fine, it's ogged's blog. Ogged, I do feel that Maynard was a touch over the line in insulting b--the last sentence of 163 for instance. Also blatantly both stupid and mendacious, which I think was directed at Austro, was a bit much.
You had a yes vote from me and Austro before you asked the question. And didn't you yourself tell him that he was going to far when he dragged the calorie aside back into the thread in the first place?
"Maynard. I was talking about avocados. Not animal fats."
And why is this relevant to calorie issues? Yes there are differences between animal and plant fats that are relevant for some health purposes, but we are not talking about things like essential vs non-essential fatty acids, saturated vs not, or trans vs cis, heart disease and manufacture of cell walls and so on. We are talking energy metabolism, and, as far as I know, for caloric purposes they are equivalent, and as I said, the textbook I quoted from explicitly grouped avocados with peanuts, bacon and butter/cheese as equivalently high-fat items for calorie purposes. If you believe that this is not correct, please point me to something that says so (preferably with lots of background and supporting material).
Seriously, toning down it down is a good idea. There are real issues to discuss here.
(My concern, for those who care, is that we're not too quick to shout down people who aren't "regulars" when they disagree with those who are. So yes, I think Maynard is on the line, but the calls for asskicking seemed premature.)
I don't really want you to beat him up. But he's not just disagreeing, he's deliberately being an ass, and I'm not interested in providing "background and supporting material" to prove that the fat in avocados is not the nutritional equivilant of the fat in bacon, a fact that anyone with half a brain already knows.
Anyway, since you called him a pussy, I'm gonna take that as license to call him an ass and tell him to fuck off.
Speaking of the reproductive capacities of avocados, do you remember growing them from seeds with toothpicks in a glass of water when we were kids? What the hell are you supposed to do with them when they sprout? I don't remember.
Ogged, that's a good idea. If Maynard's posts from the beginning had read like 229, I wouldn't have swored at him; and it might be interesting to have that discussion.* But at this point I think b is well within her rights to refuse to engage with him (and has been for about 50 posts)--it's not that he came in and disagreed, it's that he did it in such an insulting and condescending manner.
I've found Maynard to be an interesting commenter elsewhere, though, so maybe there's something about the dynamics of this thread.
*Actually, the discussion would have been boring as fuck, but nothing wrong with that.
You know, I had a friend in college who had never eaten avocado before I made chicken monterey for him. (Chicken, white wine, mushrooms, and avocado. Delicious!) I was shocked.
He was a small town midwestern boy, though, and didn't like it.
Later he decided he was gay and moved to SF. Where I believe his tastes have been somewhat broadened.
Now what you do, what you do is this. You make the carpet good and wet, then you sprinkle lots of cress seeds. Wait a few days, so the victim has to be away for a few, then you rustle a sheep on the day of victims return and let it graze in the locked room on the cress you grew.
This thread's already overburdened with how to live a meaningful life among the world's scarce resources, and whether your kids will do enough philosophy--or have enough kids!--to make up for the oil they'll burn; I'm surprised there's rage left over to spend on fatty foods.
(after the avocado sprouts you can get a pot and dirt and it'll grow up into a little tree! at which point you forget to water it and it dies, if i recall correctly.)
The real speech of mothers, and their commentary as mothers on what we're used to thinking of as "the political" is, suddenly, itself part of political speech. Maybe I've been ignorant, but when I read these these voices I think, "holy shit, this is a massive change."
Now you only have forty years to catch up on, amigo.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:11 AM
And then there's this story.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:14 AM
I don't get the (relative) wave of excitement at the rise of "mommy blogs." I get pretty much the exact opposite impression that ogged does - that it's pretty much a bunch of women defining themselves primarily around the basis of their offspring and their ability to produce offspring. Wooo, they can use curse words in it, too! Big deal. A pig in a dress is still a pig.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 7:31 AM
Wait...who's the pig in your scenario?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:15 AM
I believe that in his scenario a woman who defines herself primarily around the basis of her offspring and her ability to produce offspring is the pig, and blogging is the dress.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:20 AM
That's what I figured.
I imagine that's going to be a pretty popular sentiment around here.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:26 AM
gluehorse,
How do you define yourself?
I'd really like to hear this.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:26 AM
Gluehorse, have you actually *read* any so-called "mommy blogs"? B/c, not to put too fine a point on it, you are wrong. Moreover, even if you're right: what is wrong with a woman who is highly invested in her kids? Why must she be called a "pig"? Yes, some parents are controlling and/or smothering. But the fact is that parenting kids, especially young kids, is an incredibly demanding job, and I don't see why someone who says "I'm a mom first and foremost" is qualitatively different than someone who says "I am a professor, first and foremost." Except that culturally we've defined the subject of parenting/kids as boring/useless/puerile/silly/worthless/etc. Because we're sexist.
In other words, I agree with ogged. I think even more important is the associated "daddy blog," in which we realize--gasp!--it's not just women who care about the private sphere.
Then again, there's the backlash. Whether it's the moms saying "you're a bad mom" or the trolls. "Bad momming" from other moms, however, is much less of an issue--because moms generally can be counted on to agree, on some fundamental level, that judging other people's parenting is a shitty thing to do (assuming children aren't actually being beaten). Trolls, otoh, are uneducable.
The other thing, though, is that one of the best-kept secrets of motherhood, apparently, is that becoming a mother often makes you more, not less political. The reasons for this are obvious, and the political effect of activist moms is easily discovered if you just look. But we so often don't--and when we do see politicized moms, we tend to be a little contemptuous (e.g. our reaction to organizations like MADD, the Tipper Gore thing with the music back in the day, etc.)--and part of our contempt is *because* it's moms getting involved in the public sphere, not *just* because we differ politically from what they're trying to do.
OTOH, next time you go to an abortion rights rally, check out how many of the women there are carrying kids.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:33 AM
What bitch said.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:49 AM
It's an expression, along the lines of "you can present X as any sort of other Y, but it's still X." I myself am pretty fond of pigs.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:51 AM
It is an expression, yes. The implications of the expression in this particular context are extremely offensive.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 8:55 AM
I myself am pretty fond of pigs.
So, is that the most pitiful climbdown ever?
Now you only have forty years to catch up on, amigo.
I'm not that ignorant. I do have to think a bit though about just what I'm saying is new here.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:15 AM
Arguably what's new is that non-moms are reading and enjoying the mom stuff.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:18 AM
Since gluehorse won't answer my "how do you define yourself" (aka "what is the purpose of your life") question, I'm free to assume that he did not answer because it would expose what a selfish prig he is.
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting.
Few other accomplishments can compare with that.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:19 AM
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting. Few other accomplishments can compare with that.
Maybe some folks will think back on that zinger they posted on that blog that one time.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:22 AM
Teaching is a hell of an accomplishment. So is writing well. Also being a good cook, an excellent host, a doting aunt, a nurse, a doctor, a kind pet owner, a musician, and so forth. Kids are indeed great, but there are lots of other ways to bring joy into the world.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:26 AM
Umm.. So a childless woman blogger who defines herself in terms of something else (JUST a career?) is not covered by the porcine example? A male geek in his pjs ranting on is also not covered? Do come on. That was classy, really classy.
If the so prevalent contempt for motherhood (parenthood) continues, I see big problems for our society.
BPhD: One of the biggest eyeopeners for me in life was just how political i became on becoming a father. So I agree fully. Infact I think there'd be a place for Daddy blogs too.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:29 AM
There are daddy blogs. Try daddyzine for starters. It's awesome. (We already have big problems socially b/c we disdain mothers/parents.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:36 AM
I do have to think a bit though about just what I'm saying is new here.
The lack of topic/audience segregation? There was always political content in 'women's magazines', for example, but its effect was limited because the audience was women-only. What's new about 'mommy blogs' is that they're one click away from any other blog that links, so the insights that have always been out there are now available to a much wider audience.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:39 AM
The sad fact is that when we are ready to slough off this mortal coil and look back on our life then "producing quality offspring" may be the only accomplishment worth noting.
Are you serious? Is life so bleakly reductionist that it just becomes a matter of cranking out a kid every couple years? I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Few other accomplishments can compare with that.
You have a very slight imagination.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:41 AM
bitchphd,
Personally I think "making the world a better place" or "bringing joy to the world" are good "purposes of life."
I also agree that the examples you give accomplish that purpose. I think it is a matter of degrees and for most people (Daddies as well as Mommies) raising fine children will be the greatest among all their accomplishments.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:42 AM
gluehorse,
I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Fair enough. What do you propose to do?
You have a very slight imagination.
I've been asking you to enlighten me. Please, expand my imagination with your plans.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:44 AM
Umm.. So a childless woman blogger who defines herself in terms of something else (JUST a career?) is not covered by the porcine example? A male geek in his pjs ranting on is also not covered?
My point is that this is not some great new wonderful revolution to gush over. It's just another subculture yammering on about whatever their obsession of the moment is. This particular subculture happens to encapsulate the majority - the borderline-natalist "you must crank out a baby to truly experience life" people. Everyone should have a blog, and get to babble on about their own obsession of the moment and what they think defines them. But to think that this subset is somehow new and different and radical and somehow "empowering" - well, this is just silly.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:50 AM
I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Fair enough. What do you propose to do?
I'm not gluehorse, but I'll say: practically anything. At least depending on how you start out. I think having a child because you think it will lend your life meaning is deplorable and incredibly irresponsible; if you happen to have had a child for some other reason and find in retrospect that it has, in fact, lent your life meaning, that's another story.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:51 AM
I've been asking you to enlighten me. Please, expand my imagination with your plans.
I don't like to talk about my own life on the internet. My plans are specific enough that they're trivially googlable even in the abstract, and I prefer to remain anonymous to other anonymous web-types.
But I reject the notion that the sum of one's life necessarily devolves to the production of offspring and that having higher priorities than the establishing of a family makes one a "selfish bitch," or whatever ogged called me upthread.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:56 AM
a "selfish bitch," or whatever ogged called me upthread
?? Show me.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:58 AM
To answer more specifically: having a child pretty much transforms my life forever and derails a career path I've been reaching for since childhood. Am I less of a person because I want to put my own goals and dreams ahead of bringing one more person into a world that already has plenty of them?
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:59 AM
Ah, gluehorse, let me guess. You are Proudly Childfree.
Having kids isn't a "subculture" thing to do. It is a major part of what defines living beings as "alive." Yes, the cult of idealized childhood is annoying but what you will find if you read or talk to actual Real Live Parents is that we, for the most part, don't buy into that cult. The cult, like the cult of "feminists are hairy-legged man-haters" is deployed for political purposes only and has nothing to do with reality. By equating parents, including mommy bloggers, with the politicized hype about the Joy of Children (which is deployed against women, just in case you hadn't noticed) you're being a massive tool.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 9:59 AM
Apologies, ogged. I confused you with Tripp.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:00 AM
ben,
This is a very heavy topic. What do you want your obituary to say? Ben's life was meaningful because he did practically anything? You really think doing anything has as much meaning as raising a fine child?
From my perspective (being 48 years old) the offspring thing has gotten of greater and greater importance. Perhaps it is because I have not written the great american novel, I have not patented anything of significance, I have not performed for more than a thousand people at a time.
Some colleagues have already died. What is left of them? Contributions fade. Memories fade.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:02 AM
Don't have a kid. No one here is saying you should.
Just don't project your defensiveness on the subject onto us and infer, erroneously, that people who value children are therefore saying that those who do not have children are valueless. Go in childless peace and have a happy life. We'll respect your choices. Do you think you can maybe give us the benefit of the doubt that our lives are not boring, babbling idiots?
It is indeed empowering and feminist to talk openly about children. Precisely because of misconceptions like the one you're demonstrating.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:04 AM
Bphd, I don't know what your issues are here and frankly I don't care.
My initial point was that it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers, or for men to primarily identify themselves as fathers. That this is happening in a new medium, complete with its own new tics and quirks, doesn't mean that something remarkable is happening.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:04 AM
Tripp said "prig," not "bitch." "Bitch" is referred for me on this blog and all others I frequent.
And I think his point wasn't that you are selfish for not having children. His point was that by making sweeping statements to the effect that parents are dull narcissistcs, you're being obnoxious and sexist. I agree.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:07 AM
gluehorse, my point is that mommy blogs are not about people primarily identifying themselves as mothers. Which you'd know, if you read them.
My "issues" here are very clear. I'm a feminist, and I don't let people get away with sexist crap. I.e., I'm a bitch.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:09 AM
it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers, or for men to primarily identify themselves as fathers
Now you're just missing the point. No one said that that's what was new. What's new (which we've been trying to work out in this thread) is that the honest voices of mothers are being heard more directly by people who hadn't heard them in such a way before.
I don't know what your issues are here
What issues? She's engaged your points; saying she has "issues" is dirty pool.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:09 AM
gluehorse --
The point of ogged's post (it seemed to me) was not that women are now identifying themselves as mothers; it's that they're talking about it in a public sphere in a way that was never possible before the internet. You're turning that into cursewords or something, but if you don't think that the idea of blogging has the potential to create a real shift in how we interact and identify with one another, then I'm not sure that a fruitful discussion with you is even possible on this issue.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:09 AM
Ogged, welcome to the world of mommy blogging. Fun, isn't it? (She says, dryly.)
Now this mommy is going to go fix lunch.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:11 AM
That this is happening in a new medium, complete with its own new tics and quirks, doesn't mean that something remarkable is happening.
Excepting that women being invidual mothers does not get communicated about much. So if that changes somewhat because of El Blogonet, that's interesting. Remarkable is a different question, depending on who is being exposed.
Beyond that, what?
ash
['Besides the not wanting kids?']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:11 AM
Tripp, I don't care what I leave on my tombstone. I don't believe anything happens after death, I believe my existence will effectively end when I do, and any memories that anyone has of me or my children or my grandchildren aren't going to change that. The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can. My plans don't include children. I'm not an evangelist, telling other children not to have kids because I'm not having kids. This is my choice and it doesn't make me any more or less a person than you or anyone else.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:12 AM
this mommy is going to go fix lunch
Lightly toasted, easy on the mayo. Thanks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:14 AM
gluehorse,
Apologies, ogged. I confused you with Tripp.
I called you a selfish prig, meaning one who is selfishly arrogant or smug. I don't like the word bitch, and have trouble using it even in bitchphds name.
I also assumed you were male.
If you can find lifetime meaning in having a certain career then more power to you. Personally I've had the career, had the successful career, and the meaning has faded. I certainly have no love or loyalty from my employer. Expecting fulfilment from a corporation is a big mistake, in my opinion.
Again, speaking as one who is 48 and has had a good career and has done most anything I wanted it turns out for me there is very little meaning in that.
So I am very interested to hear what other people saywill make their life meaningful. Almost anything they say, such as raising fine children, may be easily dismissed if I wanted to.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:14 AM
Some colleagues have already died. What is left of them? Contributions fade. Memories fade.
That's the way it goes. So what? My obituary will say what it says, if I even merit one: that doesn't mean my life won't have had meaning to me.
(True story: there was a discussion in a german romanticism class (I was absent and have it only at second hand) in which one of the students asked friend of mine who had disavowed any sort of grand meaning to life why he bothered to get up in the morning. He said something like "well, I might be going to a concert or have a date that day", and the professor said "probably not, at this school".)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:17 AM
The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can. My plans don't include children.
Good for you.
This is my choice and it doesn't make me any more or less a person than you or anyone else.
Great. From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend. If you enjoy your genetic deadendness, spiffy. Have a good time. On the other hand, people with kids are continuing life, which is the point of this entire gene business in the first place. If they like it, good on them.
Well, now I feel all tolerant and shit.
ash
['Has no kids.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:17 AM
Excepting that women being invidual mothers does not get communicated about much. So if that changes somewhat because of El Blogonet, that's interesting. Remarkable is a different question, depending on who is being exposed.
Here I think you're giving far too much credit to blogging as a phenomenon and its observance by the mainstream press. Only three percent read blogs daily; more Americans have heard about blogs from TV or print than from reading actual blogs. So what will happen to the individual voices of the mommybloggers when this new phenomenon becomes big enough to be noteworthy? Do you think people will actually stop to read them, or just hear easily-caricatured accounts of them from mainstream sources? I hear these "bloggers" are all fiesty, pajama-clad partisan firebrands...
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:22 AM
gluehorse,
The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can.
Thank you for your response.
So you are not looking for meaning and have settled on hedonism, at least for now.
I'm sure this sounds harsh, and I don't really mean it that way. Personally hedonism was probably one of the happiest times of my life. After I've finished the 'fine children' thing I kind of hope to go back to it!
But, for me, hedonism grew old, just as raising fine children grows old.
What really set me off was your calling mommies (as a group) 'pigs,' which was totally uncalled for.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:24 AM
Great. From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend.
If your main concern in life is becoming an evolutionary deadend, I suggest you (1) donate plenty of sperm or ova at every opportunity, and (2) spend the rest of your life fighting climate change, nuclear proliferation and anything else likely to cause the extinction of your ancestors.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:25 AM
ben,
My obituary will say what it says, if I even merit one: that doesn't mean my life won't have had meaning to me.
I want my tombstone to say "I knew this was going to happen!"
If you can find meaning in 'most anything' then more power to you.
This daddy is going to lunch.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:27 AM
Gluehorse, this is a discussion worth having, but you can't just make stuff up, like
The latest poll figure is 15% who read "regularly". That's a huge audience, and the percentage is significantly lowered by the number of elderly who don't read them.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:27 AM
So you are not looking for meaning and have settled on hedonism, at least for now.
Beautiful. Not having children is the same as hedonism, is it? Do you crib all your talking points from Alan Keyes?
What really set me off was your calling mommies (as a group) 'pigs,' which was totally uncalled for.
I really don't know what your problem with pigs is.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:28 AM
Actually, gluehorse, since the important thing isn't whether or not you have children, but whether your children have children, it's probably better to have kids that you raise yourself than to scatter your seed/eggs willy-nilly across sperm/ovum banks.
Tripp, I didn't say I can find meaning in most anything, but I think most anything could potentially be source of meaning for someone.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:29 AM
Only three percent read blogs daily; more Americans have heard about blogs from TV or print than from reading actual blogs.
Excepting that that number is slighly fishy from several points of view, given the emphasis on daily.
On the other hand, I can certainly see that blogonet triumphalism tends to get out of hand very easily. As does triumphalism about invading foreign countries. Woo woo.
Do you think people will actually stop to read them, or just hear easily-caricatured accounts of them from mainstream sources?
I suspect that the definition of mainstream sources will change.
WHAT it will change to is an interesting and entirely undecided question, which is why the appearance of 'mommyblogs' (nasty terminology there) is interesting. If it eventually constitutes a widespread new social phenomena then it WILL be remarkable.
ash
['Bleh.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:29 AM
I didn't make that up. The "3% daily" figure is from Gallup. I don't know what "regularly" amounts to in the same poll (Mystery Pollster is referring to the same one, apparently), but it's not "daily."
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:30 AM
Gluehorse, you came on here to say that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent (more or less). And then people who are parents called you a selfish prig. And then you got all high and mighty about not wanting to have kids. In other words, you insulted people, then got "offended" by their anger. Give me a break.
Ogged, we're having quesadillas, avocado, homemade salsa (the only way to go) and fresh tomatoes. If you want a sandwich you can make it your own damn self.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:31 AM
,i>If your main concern in life is becoming an evolutionary deadend, I suggest you (1) donate plenty of sperm or ova at every opportunity, and (2) spend the rest of your life fighting climate change, nuclear proliferation and anything else likely to cause the extinction of your ancestors.
Well, one, my ancestors are already dead and two, it doesn't matter because the human race starved to death in the 1980's/1990's and the planet is owned by giant talking cockroaches now.
ash
['They're the BOMB!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:33 AM
Just give him a lightly toasted quesadilla without much mayo. It'll teach him to be more specific.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:35 AM
No a quesadilla will be fine, thanks. But easy on the avocado. Thanks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:35 AM
Wolfson, quit sneaking in front me in line.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:35 AM
Come and get it. It's on the counter.
You don't like avocado? What the heck is wrong with you? Freak.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:36 AM
And gh, "regularly" is glossed by the AP as "at least a few times a month."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:36 AM
I thought it was the Iranian custom to refuse food several times?
Or is that only when offered?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:36 AM
I'm not Iranian. If I cook you something and offer it and you say no, then I don't hassle you about it.
This means, of course, that my German mother-in-law, when she visits, doesn't eat much, b/c she expects to be fussed over. Tough shit, say I. I'll do the work of cooking, but I'm not gonna do the work of babying you into eating.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:38 AM
Well, this conversation is all well and good, and I find mommy blogs to be just like any other kind: the 5% that are good writers are consistently entertaining and the rest are mostly uninteresting with the odd gold nugget here and there. However, being one of the few non-anonymous folks that hang out here, I'd just like to point out that I make pretty children. Boo-yah!
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:39 AM
I gotta get me some of those quesadillas, man, I gotta make some more sperm.
ash
['Wait wait...brain doesn't want to continue following that train of thought! Quick! Pretend I didn't write this!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:39 AM
I love avocado. Makes you fat though.
Good point about the Iranian custom Joe, but the beauty of assimilation is that you learn how not to go hungry in the new country. Ah, and I see that b just made my point for me. When in Rome...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:40 AM
Them are some good-looking kids, a.
Luckily, pseudonymous kid's age is right between 'em, so I can confidently assert that he is the cutest child of his age in the entire world without insulting you and yours.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:41 AM
Avocado does not make you fat. Jesus. See? All that being fussed over to eat just made you have major food issues.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:43 AM
I would just like to state, for the record, that I am from San Antonio, Texas, and I hate avocado.
There. Now I can never run for public office in Texas.
Or California.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:45 AM
I wouldn't vote for you.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:46 AM
I suspect that the definition of mainstream sources will change.
There might be some time in the future when blogs are mainstream sources, or blogs exert more influence on TV/print than vice versa, but if that time comes, it won't be for quite a while, I think. I say this partly out of skepticism toward blog triumphalism and partly out of the observation that most mainstream reporting on blogs has distinctly placed blogs as an "Other" - some strange, exotic, unwieldy element raging far offstage. The vast amount of reporting on blogs has been on blogs as a phenomenon themselves, not on the stories blogs are discussing. Attempts to compile "blog digests" in the mainstream media usually focus on the elements that make blogs strange and different - usually crazy ranting bloggers like Powerline and LGF, who can be reliably counted on to spew invective, leading the mainstream press to sit back and ponder, "Are blogs affecting The Discourse?"
The breakthrough moment for blogs will happen when a blog breaks a story and it's reported as if it's coming from just some other source, without the novelty element of "new media vs. old media" attached. This seems so distant right now - because the established media has so effectively defined blogs as being essentially defined by their "new" and novel nature - that it's hard for me to see this coming within the next several years.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:48 AM
See? I'd get killed.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:48 AM
Avocado does not make you fat.
Does so. By weight, they're super high in calories (note: I'm not complaining about all that good monounsaturated fat).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:49 AM
Yeah, but you're swimming now.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:50 AM
Eating high-calorie food does not make you fat. Avocados have high calories, but they also have a lot of good things in them. It's the empty calories that are bad for you. That and the lack of exercise. Which I believe is not something you have a problem with. Eat what you like, don't be all high-maintenance about it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:51 AM
Gluehorse, you came on here to say that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent (more or less). And then people who are parents called you a selfish prig. And then you got all high and mighty about not wanting to have kids. In other words, you insulted people, then got "offended" by their anger. Give me a break.
No, I really didn't say any of those things, and the fact that you pretend that I did in order to get offended at the drop of a hat says more about you than me.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:52 AM
Excuse me.
I don't get the (relative) wave of excitement at the rise of "mommy blogs." I get pretty much the exact opposite impression that ogged does - that it's pretty much a bunch of women defining themselves primarily around the basis of their offspring and their ability to produce offspring. Wooo, they can use curse words in it, too! Big deal. A pig in a dress is still a pig.
If that doesn't imply that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent, then I don't know what is.
And I've already labelled myself a bitch, so there's really no need for you to imply that there's something wrong with my character. I've saved you the effort, see?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:54 AM
Avocados make you fat
Ogged, we established long ago that you're too skinny.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:55 AM
"then I don't know what does."
Shit.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:57 AM
The vast amount of reporting on blogs has been on blogs as a phenomenon themselves, not on the stories blogs are discussing.
Sure. The mainstream cannot cope with new things any other way. That they did so, does imply some importance.
The breakthrough moment for blogs will happen when a blog breaks a story and it's reported as if it's coming from just some other source, without the novelty element of "new media vs. old media" attached.
Maybe. But by then, the whol ething will have bled together into a big guacamole-ish mess. Like Movies v. Books, Radio v. Movies, Radio v. TV and so on.
No channel ever dries up, but then total dominance takes awhile.
ash
['...']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 10:59 AM
ash, you need to just go to the store and get some avocados.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:00 AM
Whoa.. NEVER go to a meeting when a thread is taking off. So lets see, what happened...
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:02 AM
Not to get sidetracked too much, but "Eating high-calorie food does not make you fat" is just false. Since we generally feel full as a result of the volume of food consumed, foods that are high in calories relative to their weight make us more likely to consume more calories than we burn.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:02 AM
So drink some water.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:05 AM
If that doesn't imply that mommy blogs are boring and self-indulgent, then I don't know what is.
I said that as far as I could tell, there was nothing new about women defining themselves by their status as mothers. There was no "boring" or "self-indulgent" in there.
Now, almost all blogs are self-indulgent to some degree. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a little self-indulgent. As for being boring, well, the right writer could blog about toenail clipping and make it exciting, so there's nothing inherently boring in mommy-blogging any more than there is in anything else. Nor did I ever say there was. My assertion all along has been that this is nothing new. This only starting getting personal when Tripp called me a "selfish hedonish" for not having children.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:06 AM
ash, you need to just go to the store and get some avocados.
I'm goin', I'm goin'.
ash
['Ok, mom!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:06 AM
Oh bah, whatever. I eat whatever the hell I feel like eating and I'm not fat. Obsessing about food is just so ridiculous. If you like avocados, eat them.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:07 AM
Come off it, gluehorse; pretending that "pig in a dress" is neutral is funny the first time, but are you really going to base your argument on it now?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:08 AM
I eat whatever the hell I feel like eating and I'm not fat.
I'll be the judge of that. No, I mean, lucky you. I have to eat constantly, and if I ate high-calorie foods, believe you me, I'd get fat.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:09 AM
This only starting getting personal when Tripp called me a "selfish hedonish" for not having children.
A pig in a dress is still a pig.
Not quite.
ash
['I'm goin' already!']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:10 AM
Okay, ogged, I'll admit: bad choice of words. But to me, the stigma was honestly not there. I was raised by the worst Jews in the world and ate nothing but pork since childhood.
You can all back up and pretend the pig is, I don't know, a bunny rabbit made of swans or something.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:13 AM
Gosh, and here I thought I detected sarcastic dismissal in that "Whoo... big deal." Guess I was wrong. Deeply, unutterably wrong. I'm terribly ashamed, and I can only beg, nay plead! for your forgiveness, gluehorse. I've seen the error of my ways and you're right, it was only Tripp who got personal, and he had absolutely No Reason to do so, and your comments about my "issues" and "says more about you than me" weren't at all grade-schoolish or ad hominem. You've been entirely noble and above-board and I have just been terribly, terribly mean to you.
Can you ever forgive me? Here. Let me fix you lunch, honey.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:13 AM
Gluehorse can have the avocado I didn't eat.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:15 AM
I also was naive enough to think I was having a conversation on the subject of "Blogospheric Triiumphalism/ New Media Conquers All/ Livejournal Warrior Womyn Overthrow the Patriarchy" in which a little haphazard snark would be acceptable, and not be interpreted, as it apparently was, as my attempt to personally spit on the face of a thousand babies.
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:16 AM
Its evening here, and Im starving. A light something would be just the job...any spare Avocados?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:18 AM
Alright, Bphd, I hate your babies and I personally want them to die because my own womb is a radioactive hellscape where no seed can find its purchase. Do you feel better now?
Posted by gluehorse | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:19 AM
This gluehorse thing is just getting weird.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:21 AM
Gluehorse, enough already.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:22 AM
What? I didn't say any of those things. Why are you offended?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:23 AM
Sorry, o., I will let it go. Look! I am practicing my zen meditation technique. It goes along with the avocados. In that hippy kind of way.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:27 AM
I'd like to try this one out:
I contend that IF you say you believe in the social contract. If you believe that society is more than just the sum of individuals squabbling over the avocados, then it is selfish NOT to have children. Id soften that with a proviso about a sufficient set of circumstances, but what would they be?
Move to reject or approve.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:29 AM
Austro -- what about things like population issues?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:30 AM
The societies in which most of the posters to this blog live will experience a population decline in the next half century. This IS not intended to go to a discussion about immigration. Although, hell why not? The two are intimately related.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:34 AM
Fair enough. I was just trying to think outside the box.
And by "box," I mean "Adam Smith."
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:35 AM
I don't understand the proposition, austro. Why is it selfish not to have children?
Moreover, whether or not my specific society (say, the U.S.) will experience a population decline isn't the point. Blah blah resource consumption, blah blah pollution doesn't respect national borders, blah blah.
I will go along with saying it is selfish and anti-social to actively dislike children, to privatize child-rearing to the point of withholding all public support for parents or parenting (we're well on the way), or (as so often happens, foolishly) to mistake having kids as a "choice" as if not having children were the default mode for living creatures. But I don't see why not having kids and contributing to society in myriad other ways (many of which are much easier without kids of one's own, especially given how far we've already gone in privatizing child-rearing), including the supportive auntie roles I referenced up thread, isn't in fact extremely socially responsible.
Seriously. I'm not even arguing here, I saying I don't get the hypothesis.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:44 AM
I think having a child because you think it will lend your life meaning is deplorable and incredibly irresponsible; if you happen to have had a child for some other reason and find in retrospect that it has, in fact, lent your life meaning, that's another story.
Ben, that's just silly, at least on my understanding of "meaning." Perhaps yours differs. I don't have any fantasies about meaning as a transcendental signified, as if it had some transcendental nature which I was looking for. To paraphrase Deleuze, Meaning is Use. I'm with Tripp on this one, no matter what you do, even if you're President of the United States AND selll 30 Million Albums AND write a book that's on the NYT #1 Best-seller spot for 32 weeks, raising your children well, if you choose to have children, is no less important or meaningful than those other accomplishments.
On the Gluehorse issue: Ms Bitch, the ONE TIME I was rooting for you to bitch someone out. So let down.
Gluehorse off the bat decries mommy blogs as uninteresting, and compares them to an animal that has been used a hundred thousand times in literature as an insult, and then feigns ignorance that people would take it as an insult. She claims that, contra this huge history, she's using it in a new way, and, of course, EVERYONE should have JUST KNOWN. What an ass.
Is life so bleakly reductionist that it just becomes a matter of cranking out a kid every couple years? I'd like to make my own life a little more meaningful than the process of making one more blip in the population spike.
Wow. That has to be up there along with the "most insulting things one can say to a parent." What an asshole. Then:
My point is that this is not some great new wonderful revolution to gush over.
No, this is not a point that encapsulates your previous posts. This is a new point you are making. If you want to retract your previous points, fine, that would be wise.
But I reject the notion that the sum of one's life necessarily devolves to the production of offspring and that having higher priorities than the establishing of a family makes one a "selfish bitch," or whatever ogged called me upthread.
Total misreading of the other comments. Defending herself against charges never made.
My initial point was that it's far from new for women to identify themselves primarily as mothers,
NO. You never before made that point.
Ok, my annoyance is mostly vented, and I need to clean, so I'll stop there.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:50 AM
oh, one other thing, before getting huffy about the "hedonism" charge any more, you should probably look it up in a dictionary.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:55 AM
My point is not about population decline and resources.
My point is about changing age structure and the sum of the problems this loads onto a society deprived of sufficient human resources to deal with the issues that raises. Umm sort of. I guess in an american social context those ifs at the beginning are the point.
I know this: In a European welfare society, not having children AND expecting "the system" to stump up my pension and otherwise underwrite my standard of living while at the same time being sceptical on immigration is to engage in moral hazard.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 11:55 AM
Bphd: Please believe this. I'm just floating the idea. It is something I have thought about on and off for the last few weeks since a certain rightwing politician here in Austria made a speech in which he attacked the idea of supporting immigrant children. THAT throws a whole host of issues with me, but I feel I see here a glimpse of the inconsistency in the argument.
I would never say that the irresponsiblity cancels out any other social good we might othewise do.
I simply felt inspired to ask the question.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:00 PM
Michael, will you have my babies?
ah, Austro, ok, I get your point. Yes, in terms of entitlement packages not having children is economically risky and arguably selfish. I'll go along with you: people who live in welfare states with well-developed pension plans and the like (yay welfare states!) AND who grumble about kids AND who grumble about immigrants, those people suck.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:02 PM
It goes along with the avocados. In that hippy kind of way.
Let your soul be as the smooth pit of the avocado.
And by "box," I mean "Adam Smith."
That fucking Smith was such a box.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:03 PM
You should feel his invisible hand sometime.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:05 PM
EW.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:09 PM
Right... its been fun and all, but if I dont pack up and go home now, I'll still be hitting the refresh button at midnight in this office. So please be nice to each other 'til I get home.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:12 PM
Quick, Austro's gone, let's break out the booze.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:13 PM
No avocado, no booze... I feel deprived: Its mobbing.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:14 PM
I thought you were going home? Pick up some avocados and some booze on the way, would you?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:15 PM
On my way, hun.
(That must sound so strange with a Brit/Austrian accent - like Arnie on speed)
Gone already
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:17 PM
OK, too bad I'm opening up the flamewar again, but without meaning to defend gluehorse in any way this:
From an evolutionary angle, you are a deadend. If you enjoy your genetic deadendness, spiffy. Have a good time. On the other hand, people with kids are continuing life, which is the point of this entire gene business in the first place. If they like it, good on them
was really goddamned insulting to the childless. (Also to FUCKING ADOPTIVE PARENTS.) None of us really matter on the scale of evolution. And if you're saying that childless people are missing out on the purpose of life, reread b's 16.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:18 PM
I think you're overanalyzing "meaning" here; I'm not speaking with any sort of technical sense in mind. At any rate, I don't see the relevance of your first four sentences. (Perhaps if I were at all acquainted with Deleuze I would be able to extract some meaning from your Gnomic Utterance, though.)
Raising a child well isn't just as important as, it's more important than selling 30 million albums or having a bestseller—once the child is already in the picture, that is. I think I am being misunderstood. My second or so comment (24) could be construed as saying that I think having children is meaningless, or will not create meaning in your life, or will not make you feel you've done something worthwhile (which is I think what's most operative); I don't, not absolutely, anyway. I think that having children because you think it will give you a feeling of meaning or make you feel that you've accomplished something or done something worthwhile is, as I've said, deplorable. I'm talking about the motivations that might lead one to have children. To actually create a new person and set him or her out into a life, because you have some sort of existential dread and corporate life just ain't satisfying you right? Vanitas vanitarum, man. But, let's say you arrive at a child for some other reason. You may very well find that raising that child gives your life meaning, and is your proudest doing in the world. Great! But I wouldn't want that to be why you had a child.
(Of course, deciding whether or not to have a child is really only possible if you have access to effective pre- and post-intercourse birth control and the option of abortion, as is possible but not even close to being generally the case even in the developed world these days.)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:19 PM
I agree with
Pat MethenyMatt's 116, but didn't want to say anything before because, let's face it, that line of argument is just idiotic anyway.Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:20 PM
I must steadfastly maintain that, like tanning in February, eating avocados in March is tacky.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:24 PM
Ben, most people have kids because fucking tends to produce children. Not for high- or low-minded reasons, it's just the way it works.
Which I think is what ash's point was. I don't see that it's insulting to people who don't have kids (or who adopt) to point out that, if you step back from anthropomorphizing people (I know, but bear with me here), that the primary goal of living organisms is to reproduce their own kind, and that therefore those living organisms that don't do so have, in those terms, "failed." Of course, we like to think of ourselves are having somewhat more complicated societies than, say, amoebas, and there's a case to be made that people who don't themselves breed but who help raise other people's children (directly or indirectly by simply creating a better society) are, in fact, aiding the perpetuation of the species. But viewed as a flat statement of biological fact, I don't see why it's offensive.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:25 PM
Mitch. It is still fucking subzero where I live. I have a pot of forced tulips on the dining room table and I am damn well eating Mexican-grown avocadoes because my identity as someone who doesn't live on the frozen tundra of hell is important to me. Lalalala, I do not see the snow, I do not feel cold....
Yes, I realize this completely contradicts the post I made directly above. I reserve the right to contradict myself.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:28 PM
B, I'm aware of that. Actually having a choice about whether or not to have kids (where that choice isn't identical to the choice of being celibate or not) is rather recent as a phenomenon.
Living organisms don't have a goal, it just so happens that, in the course of doing the things they do, they make more of each other. Success and failure are foreign concepts.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:30 PM
You're right re. living organisms. I amend my statement to "the primary identifying characteristic of living organisms is that they reproduce their own kind."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:31 PM
Mme Bitch, I think I would make a decent house-husband. Except don't get the impression that I clean that often.
Ben, apologies, was irritated when writing that post. If I had a do-over, I would have been nicer and less pedantic.
We're almost in agreeance (or maybe we are and it's just your sloppy writing which is causing the disagreement. :)). Let me revise one setence:
I think that having children only because you think it will give you a feeling of meaning or make you feel that you've accomplished something or done something worthwhile is, as I've said, deplorable.
If you agree to that, we're in agreement. Having children may well entail those things, and so I don't mind them being among a couple's reasons for having children. Further, I have no problems with people seeking to create a productive human life at home with their children, and doing so because they see it as a relief to the corporate world. If that was their only reason, however, then, yes, it would be unhealthy.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:37 PM
And it's offensive because it asserts something along the lines of "in the grand scheme of things, I matter and you don't; I'm advancing the species and you're a frivolous waste of resources; I'm going somewhere and you're a dead end". Even if it weren't intended as an insult, it's very hard not to read it as a breezy dismissal of those who have no biological offspring. It might be true that, if you take a strict view, the sentiment is accurate, but by the same token, if you take a strict view, gluehorse's pig comment shouldn't be offensive, since all he was saying was "X remains X despite superficial changes".
there's a case to be made that people who don't themselves breed but who help raise other people's children (directly or indirectly by simply creating a better society) are, in fact, aiding the perpetuation of the species.
Yes, I would say a pretty fucking strong case. In fact people who don't themselves breed are ipso facto helping those who do: this world isn't made of resources.
Isn't "ipso" a fun word to say? Ipso. Ipso.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:38 PM
I can accept that revision, Michael.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:40 PM
Pat Metheny? When you say that, smile.
Agreed with 126 about the breeziness. There might be an underlying point that's not objectionable (although I really dislike vulgar evolutionary teleologism), but the way it was stated was insulting.
Now, in the (ahem) dialectical context, I can understand why ash was so insulting. When you're confronted with someone who says "people with children suck [are boring, whatever]," it's understandable to respond "no, people without children suck [aren't fulfilling their evolutionary function, whatever]." Gluehorse deserved no better. But when you're posting it where everyone can read it, some innocent people will get splashed by the mud.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:48 PM
Weiner: I Agree with Pat Metheny.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:51 PM
That's fine, then. I agreed with Pat Metheny as well, though not so much as to actually want to listen to any of his own stuff. (Sideman work with Ornette or Kenny Garrett is fine.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:57 PM
Oh, and it was 117.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 12:58 PM
My apologies.
I can't countenance the notion that Richard Thompson is best known as being the guitarist in Fairport Convention, when his solo stuff is so very very good and he was only with them for a few albums.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:01 PM
gluehorse,
Here is what I said:
(quoting you)"The most I can do is live my life the way I want to live it and do the things I want to do while I can."
Thank you for your response.
So you are not looking for meaning and have settled on hedonism, at least for now.
Notice I make no mention of children. My definition of hedonism is: "Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure." I will admit that I assumed when you said you were going to live the way you want and do what you want that involved pleasure, but I may have been mistaken.
Nowhere did I call you a hedonist for not having children, so take that strawman back to Oz.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:18 PM
Tripp, I didn't say I can find meaning in most anything, but I think most anything could potentially be source of meaning for someone.
Fair enough. There isn't much nourishment in 'most anything could potentially be', though.
I'm interested to hear what you, personally, have as a source of meaning. In my experience not many people really think about this and the list of answers is pretty darn short.
Kinda like if you ask people to sing a Christmas Carol and frigging Jingle Bells shows up 9 times out of 10.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:24 PM
Oh, and just to be a real blog hog, it seems to me the good thing about Mommy blogs is the good thing about most every blog - it brings together people with similar interests.
I'm thinking back on the 50's mothers could 'network' at home during the day, but that was lost when mothers scattered into the work force. Mommy blogs let the mothers get back connected with other mothers.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:36 PM
I think the claim is that "For anything, there is some person for whom that could provide meaning." Or maybe "Most anything could provide meaning for some person--but they've got to settle on one thing."
I would consider it to have given my life some meaning if I could make some lasting contribution to the field of philosophy. Or to inspire a lot of students to think deeply about it. Or to write fiction or make music that gives pleasure to people sometime. Or just to be a good person that has positive impact on people's lives. And to appreciate a lot of music and art and fiction and become deeper myself as a person is part of the meaning of life too. Perhaps having children would also eventually be something that was meaningful in my life, but I don't feel right now as though life would be meaningless without them. If I had children, I trust and hope that I would feel that way.
Really, bitch covered this pretty well in post 16. I don't think there's any reason to get imperialistic about anyone's life choices, except Republicans.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:39 PM
I don't get why y'all are so touchy about ash's comment, I truly do not (and I don't think ash has kids, either). Gluehorse wasn't just saying "X is X" -- there were overtly dismissive touches there. I pointed out some (and Michael pointed out many others). In contrast, ash framed his flippant comments pretty specifically: "From an evolutionary angle . . . life . . . is the point of this entire gene business in the first place." It just really didn't seem all that insulting to people without kids. Presumably we (you, who have no children) don't view yourself primarily or solely as biological specimens, and if folks choose not to have kids then they realize that this means "not passing on their genes," which bfd, so why would someone be touchy about having that pointed out?
I don't get the rules of engagement here.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:41 PM
You guys are amazing. Great defense from bphd. Said so many things I wish I'd thought of.
Here's a perspective on motherhood that might have been missing from the discourse before blogs opened up a different kind of reflection. It cracked me up, and it looks like Dooce won a couple different categories of bloggy awards, so she's found a reasonably big audience.
One of my serendipitous discoveries through blogs is how damn funny lapsed mormons are. Between Dooce and Jesus' General, there's always some fun to be found.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:42 PM
bitch, you really think that "deadend" is not prima facie insulting? It looks insulting to me. "Overtly dismissive," even. And given how frequently evolution is invoked as explaining normative properties, adding "from an evolutionary perspective" to "you are a dead end" doesn't soften the blow much.
I'll grant you that ash wasn't as insulting as gluehorse, and I'll grant you (in fact, I already said) that in the context there was some reason to be insulting. But still, maybe you don't always pick up on insults directed at people without kids.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:53 PM
bphd,
Ash said the point (not "one of the points") of life was to have kids.
This tells people who have no kids that they have no point.
Telling someone that they are meaningless is insulting.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 1:58 PM
Hm, the last sentence of 139 sounds very insulting to bitch. I don't mean it to be. What I mean is:
Here there is what I, as a member of group X, perceive as an insult to group X.
You, a non-member of group X, do not perceive it as an insult to group X.
In this case as in most others, I think the intuitions of members of group X ought to be given more weight on the question of what's insulting to group X, unless there's a specific reason to think that members of group X are likely to be wrong here.
I rewrote the last sentence of the previous post a bunch of times to try to make it relatively neutral, but I don't think it worked.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:03 PM
bitchphd claims "Arguably what's new is that non-moms are reading and enjoying the mom stuff."
Well speak for yourself, but I certainly am as little interested in mommy (or daddy) musings as I am in sports musings, and when I come across posts that deal with this stuff, I skip over them as aggressively as I ignore sports posts.
So yeah, have fun making all these claims about how this will change the world, but you all may, at some point, wish to calibrate your theories with a group that isn't self-selected.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:06 PM
Well, Maynard, this is all anecdotal, so yours counts, but just in this thread you have me, Wolfson, Weiner, and Michael who are single, childless men who read mommy blogs. And, I'd guess that three years ago, none of us was reading much mommy anything.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:10 PM
I would consider it to have given my life some meaning if I could make some lasting contribution to the field of philosophy.
That's "proper human discourse," to you, bub. But is an interesting statement, though, and I hope I'm not being too picky on your language, this being a blog and all. But your choice of "given" is what strikes me, as it gives an nonsubjective aspect to your use of "meaning." Further, this meaning is given to you because of a contribution which depends on there being no more "you." So this seems to imply that by giving in a mode in which it is otherwise impossible for you to actually benefit, you do in fact benefit through the gift of meaning. (This is assuming fame, fortune, and ready supplies of willing women are not your ulterior motives, of course.) Is this correct, or would you upon reflection change "given"?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:11 PM
me, Wolfson, Weiner, and Michael who are single, childless men who read mommy blogs.
Manly men.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:15 PM
I hope I'm not being too picky on your language
Good heavens, man! You can't do that here!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:15 PM
oops, time to vaccuum.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:16 PM
Manly men.
Funny, because I was thinking more along the lines of "Man-Child."
But maybe that's the old mirror talkin'.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:18 PM
146. ha! Yeah, what am I doing bothering with caveats when it concerns you grammar-nazis?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:18 PM
Well, Michael, when you leave a comment like 144, the only proper response to which is, "Why is Michael commenting drunk again?" caveats don't hurt.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:21 PM
Ok lets do this. A deeply held conviction will be packed out and held up for inspection.
The point about the gift of life (even if "life" is accidental and our consciences ultimately a pointless by product) is to bear witness to being: i.e To Be (no E-Prime here). How one goes about bearing witness is subject to individual choice. Some write the symphony, others write the book, teach and inspire in field. Many have kids and fulfill their duties of witness that way. For me an extension if hedonism is to simply use the time and to leave no witness of existence, assuming that you have the luxury of not needing to invest all your time in just staying alive.
On the next level of subjectivity, I have a suspiscion that getting that software package installed in time and on budget lacks some of the qualities required to fulfill the programme.
Short version:Do something with your time, just dont over eroticise your career as a substitute.
Here endeth the lesson
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:21 PM
Matt, maybe it's my thick skin, but I really don't see "evolutionary deadend" as insulting. Or at least, I find it insulting in a joking kind of noone really takes this all that seriously kind of way. Like calling someone a neanderthal (which I'm sure I've done at some point on this blog).
Tripp, depends on what you mean by "point." If you mean, "meaning," then yes; it's insulting (and dumb) to say that the meaning of life is to have kids. But if by "point of life" you mean, literally, that life is defined as "things that reproduce their own kind" then it's merely a statement of fact. I honest to god read it that way.
Matt again: I'm all over the "if so-and-so says they're insulted, they're insulted" argument. On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers. So all I'm doing in defending ash is saying, not that it's invalid to be insulted if someone says or implies "people without kids are wastes of space," but saying that I honestly do not think that is what ash was saying.
Maynard: I did not say "all" non-moms are reading mommy blogs. But a surprising number of non-moms are. I, for one, think that this is a good thing.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:23 PM
**This is a very heavy topic. What do you want your obituary to say? Ben's life was meaningful because he did practically anything? You really think doing anything has as much meaning as raising a fine child?**
**Having kids isn't a "subculture" thing to do. It is a major part of what defines living beings as "alive."**
Oh give me a freaking break.
(1) Having children is not some amazing feat that deserves applause. Here's some news --- pretty much all people can do it, as can monkeys, fish, snails, trees and even pigs in dresses. It's cute when 2yr old children ask to be praised for trivialities like walking without falling down --- it's pathetic when adults expect to be praised for what comes naturally.
(2) Since when did "what is natural" become the standard for "what is good". Do we really want to go down that slope?
I expect bitchphd and friends are happy to mock the evolutionary psychology types who tell us that aggression, clannishness, wanting to rape hot teenage women and so on are natural, but suddently, when it comes to having kids, "it's natural" is so good a justification that nothing more needs to be said.
(3) There's been a whole lot of ad hominem attacking in this thread. People are suddenly called "loudly proudly childfree" and mocked as though they're some sort of crusaders for living their lives a certain way. I gotta tell you, it looks a whole lot different to me reading this thread --- those who are making a big deal about defending their decisions are the ones with children. And I have a pretty good idea of why they are making so much noise --- they're realizing the price they paid for having kids in terms of lost opportunities and general hassle, and they pissed off. Of course you can't go around telling people you wish you'd never had kids; quite apart from what people will think of you it's not fair on the children. So, like a gadget buyer the day after his purchase, you're now desperately scanning the internet and talking to your friends, trying to find ex post reasons for what you did.
Ooh, this ad hominem stuff, imputing motives to others, is fun!
(4) No-one is going to remember you in three hundred years, whether you have kids or not, if you are an average person. That's life. If it upsets you terribly, go find god.
And if you're non-average, well go do non-average good deeds. Write great literature, create great art, make scientific discoveries, invent something.
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:25 PM
People are suddenly called "loudly proudly childfree" and mocked
That would be people who started off by gratuitously insulting other people, if you catch my drift.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:31 PM
Well, Maynard, this is all anecdotal, so yours counts, but just in this thread you have me, Wolfson, Weiner, and Michael who are single, childless men who read mommy blogs.
I do what now? (Is BPhD's blog a mommy blog? It's a blog written by a mother, at any rate.)
[I was typing a longer response to Michael's 144, but I see ogged's is briefer.]
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:32 PM
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
And I'm happy to admit that that's a goddamned frightening thing to say. I would trade a fair chunk of art and knowledge to save billions and billions of undifferentiated lives. They're not undifferentiated to the people living them, y'know.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:33 PM
(4) No-one is going to remember you in three hundred years, whether you have kids or not, if you are an average person. That's life. If it upsets you terribly, go find god.
And if you're non-average, well go do non-average good deeds. Write great literature, create great art, make scientific discoveries, invent something.
Personally I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge, not billions upon billions of barely differentiated lives.
Misses the point I think. The meaning of my life is personal. It is personal fufillment, not contribution to Humanity that is important here. The measure is different.
How "humanity" sees me interests me not one bit. It is after all nothing other than a collection of undifferentiated lives. How those I love see me and sees me life might just be different.
OR: What Matt said
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:36 PM
Maynard, you are a nutcase.
Neither Tripp nor I expect you or anyone else to hand us medals for procreating. We just expect not to be put down for it.
Other than that, though, you're right. I deeply, deeply resent my child and the way he has stymied my career and ruined my girlish figure and sapped my brain so that all I can now talk about is diapers and playdates and yes, my entire purpose in life now--other than raising my child, that is--is to find people I can insult for choosing not to have kids. You're onto me. That's why I started the fight.
Oh no wait! I didn't start it. Shit. Oh well, it was a theory.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:36 PM
No-one is going to remember you in three hundred years, whether you have kids or not, if you are an average person.
Well, if at some point nobody has kids, this certainly will be true.
It's a good thing that many people actually want to have children - and consider it an opportunity fulfilled.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:36 PM
That was a long time ago, Ogged. I've cleaned up since then. I'm contemplating clarifying 144, but maybe I'd just look like I was deeper in the bottle.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:37 PM
About 143, I'll say that I've been a huge fan of Alice Munro since I was an undergrad, and at least some of her work deals with motherhood. (Much more of it deals with daughterhood perhaps.) But it does seem as though I ought to be able to think of more examples off the top of my head.
To be a bit less snarky about 144, the thing that I was thinking of as giving my life meaning in that case was meant to be an activity of mine: the work that I do. It doesn't actually require my being dead.
Also, I'll note that with 149, Michael has by Godwin's law lost the argument. Whatever it was.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:39 PM
And the moral of the story is, if you write anything at all about mothers, you can be sure someone will come along to tell you how stupid and meaningless it is.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:41 PM
"Eating high-calorie food does not make you fat."
Excuse me?
Well OK, this sentence is true in that it is not eating "high calorie food" that makes you fat, but eating lots of calories. It is, however, a whole lot easier to eat lots of calories when they are densely packed in high calorie food.
Let me guess, bitchphd, you didn't study science at college, did you?
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:44 PM
Godwin's law refers to Hitler, Matt (and, strictly construed, doesn't mention winners or losers either).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:44 PM
Maynard, now you're just trying to pick a fight. Anyway, I addressed the calorie business at 81.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:46 PM
Let me guess, bitchphd, you didn't study science at college, did you?
Well, that was totally reasonable and called for.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:46 PM
Ya know, all this refreshing uses bandwidth, expensive bandwidth on a cardphone. So er Maynard: please make it worth my while.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:49 PM
Matt, your snark was funny, forget about it.
It doesn't actually require my being dead.
As you phrased it, I think it does. "lasting contribution" implies after your death, as I read it. If you had simply said, "to contribute" that would be a different thing. Now, I believe you would find meaning in contributing to philosophy, but also in making that lasting contribution.
My clarification/defense of 144 has 2 parts. The first is easy: it is at least possible that Matt has an argument for "meaning is given, not taken." The second is the one that might make me look drunker.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:50 PM
b, just one more go-round, I hope (but you like thrashing things out, right? So maybe it's OK):
I think this:
On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers
isn't so much evidence that childless people are oversensitive to insults as that things that might be harmless to other people--"Neanderthal!"--really are insulting to childless people. If you'll pardon my saying so, what you're saying is a teeny bit reminiscent of the old "feminists have no sense of humor" line.
Now, I don't think that there's any parallel between child-freeness and feminism. Honestly, as a childless person I have it pretty great in a lot of ways--I never have to find a babysitter or daycare or anything like that. I think US society is, by a huge margin, too tough on people who have children.
But, I guess, I would see the following as being touchy:
[truly innocent questioner] Do you have any children?
[childless person] No, and why do you think I should? [etc.]
But the following:
[evangelist for childbearing] If you don't have children, you're an evolutionary dead end.
[childless person] Get stuffed.
[efc] Can't you take a joke?
is I think a genuine insult.
Another thing--it would be bad if nobody had children. It is bad that many people lack the choice not to have children. But there seems to be little risk of people choosing to stop having children entirely (Austro, immigration is OK), so no need to worry on that score, I think. (directed kind of at eb's 159, though I think that was directed at Maynard's childfree evangelizing rather than the live-and-let-live approach I favor)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:51 PM
re 164: That doesn't appear to be true.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:54 PM
"My point is not about population decline and resources.
My point is about changing age structure and the sum of the problems this loads onto a society deprived of sufficient human resources to deal with the issues that raises. Umm sort of. I guess in an american social context those ifs at the beginning are the point.
I know this: In a European welfare society, not having children AND expecting "the system" to stump up my pension and otherwise underwrite my standard of living while at the same time being sceptical on immigration is to engage in moral hazard."
So there are two choices:
(1) THIS generation has fewer kids, there are transition problems, but the end result is fewer people in, say, 100 years, and a chance to sort out the legacy of overpopulation of the 20th century OR
(2) We encourage people (let's assume this would work) to have enough kids that there would not be transition problems, and, in say 100 years, we are screwed because so many resources have been used up, so much earth ravaged, that recovery is impossible.
Now Austro chooses option number 2, because 1 would make life a little inconvenient, and THEN HAS THE GALL TO CLAIM THAT THIS IS THE *UNSELFISH* CHOICE. This must be some strange new street meaning on unselfish that I'm unfamiliar with.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:55 PM
Matt : I am ALL for immigration. I really mean that.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:55 PM
Godwin's law
No, no, no. As noted above, strictly speaking, Godwin's Law involves an invocation of Hitler. More importantly, while Naziism was an exceedingly ugly and murderous philosophy, grammar-Naziism is next to godliness. If Hitler had just stuck to grammar-Naziism, rather than lumpen-Naziism, we'd remember him like this.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:55 PM
But re: 161, I referred to you as a grammar-nazi, which is qualitatively different from a plain ol' nazi. So, Godwin's law doesn't apply.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:56 PM
cross-posted with the aposto.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:57 PM
As you phrased it, I think it does. "lasting contribution" implies after your death, as I read it. If you had simply said, "to contribute" that would be a different thing. Now, I believe you would find meaning in contributing to philosophy, but also in making that lasting contribution.
He's just talkin' 'bout kleos.
The first is easy: it is at least possible that Matt has an argument for "meaning is given, not taken."
I read "it would give meaning to ..." as opposed to "I would take meaning from" more as an acknowledgement that, first, one can't simply go out and make a meaningful contribution to philosophy, or inspire others to think seriously about it, or what have you—these are hard things to do and one might fail, and, second, success at them is the condition is the condition of meaning. I think it's clear from the way Matt started off his paragraph saying that he would consider his life meaningful if so-and-so that he is taking meaning on his own terms—but one must acknowledge that sometimes the activities from which one takes meaning have external success conditions and that therefore, it is also appropriate to speak of their successful execution as giving meaning.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:58 PM
I am happy to admit that what I hold precious about humanity is the accumulation of art and knowledge
And the thousands of voices lost for lack of a room of their own, because there's been so little reliable social support for women to be mothers and artists? Even if your sole focus is accumulation of art and knowledge, there is a huge social cost to the way we've organized families. Amazing writers like bitch or flea or dooce often didn't have an outlet or a path to be recognized. A sculptor like Louise Burgeouis who could work without showing for a decade or more while she raised kids is far rarer than many, many who dropped out.
I think Ogged's original point was that diaries of the lives of women like these might have some impact on how we think about women and men and family, and if we're smart it might change how we allow people to blend family and work or calling.
This pissing about who's in the majority and who gets more respect is bullshit. But the idea that we could arrange things much better so that work and family was a more comfortable option for women and men is really important, and hearing the real voices of mothers and fathers in a dialog with other writers and political observers is a baby step towards that.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 2:58 PM
Nice picture, apo. But the linked Wiki shows that even the proto-formulation referred explicitly to the Nazis as well as to Hitler.
As for the distinction between grammar Nazis and real Nazis: I'm sure that Hitler would've been very comfortable with such a distinction.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:00 PM
Funnily enough, Maynard, the largest growth in resource usage has occured in societies with a stable or declining population base. Cutting or even stabilising individual demands on resources in developed economies will stop the ravaging.
Interpret the framework of the contension.
The Malthusian Catastrophe refuses to be realised on numbers alone. It is per capita consumption that will do for us. That means you and I. Not having kids wont save the planet.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:04 PM
Alas, even the Jargon File supports Matt's contention. Ah well.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:06 PM
Matt, re. #169: On the other hand. I will stick my neck out and say that it is my experience that many, though not all, adults who do not have and do not intend to have children are very very touchy on the subject. This, I presume (and my childless friends tell me) is because people without kids are so often given shit by their parents, relations, work colleagues, and other nosey parkers
isn't so much evidence that childless people are oversensitive to insults as that things that might be harmless to other people--"Neanderthal!"--really are insulting to childless people. If you'll pardon my saying so, what you're saying is a teeny bit reminiscent of the old "feminists have no sense of humor" line.
Now, I don't think that there's any parallel between child-freeness and feminism.
I do realize the slippery slope I'm treading on with the "childfree folks sure are touchy" line. You may not say it, but I will: I think there is a parallel between not having kids and feminism, and the connection is pretty damn clear: for the most part, it's women who are pressured most to have kids (though guys get it too). I wasn't trying to say oversensitive to insults, in general; just that in my years as a mommy on the internets, I have run over and over and over again into people who label themselves "childfree" who are convinced that "breeders" rule the world and those without kids are a shat-upon minority because of things like, oh, employer-provided health insurance covering dependents. No one here (well, no one who is a regular commenter) is doing that, of course. But anyway, she says loosely, I've seen a lot of touchy "child free" folks who take offense at people even mentioning children. Sadly, it seems, the "child free" label has become synonymous with "aggressively anti-children." So that's really what I was channelling in saying that.
Now, as to the "dead end" comment; ok, I will accept that you and Ben (if memory serves) found it insulting on genuinely non-touchy grounds. I was just, in my hashing-it-out way, saying that I didn't see it that way and suggesting that maybe it wasn't inherently insulting. You continue to find it insulting, ok, I'll take that as evidence that it is. Truly. I still think it's excusable in light of the provocation (and again, ash doesn't have kids, I'm sure he said so upthread), but I'll concede that your (or Ben's, I forget) point that it implicitly insulted more people than just gluehorse is valid. I withdraw my argument that it isn't insulting.
Maynard, in fact one of my college majors was biology. I also studied chemistry and some physics. And it is true: high calorie foods do not, in and of themselves, cause fatness. Their effect on a person's weight or bodyfat depends on a number of other factors including (as I said) nutrient value and activity level.
Nice try, though.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:15 PM
Amazing writers like bitch or flea or dooce
CW, thank you very much for that. I'm gratified to be put in that company.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:19 PM
"Funnily enough, Maynard, the largest growth in resource usage has occured in societies with a stable or declining population base. Cutting or even stabilising individual demands on resources in developed economies will stop the ravaging.
Interpret the framework of the contension.
The Malthusian Catastrophe refuses to be realised on numbers alone. It is per capita consumption that will do for us. That means you and I. Not having kids wont save the planet."
Huh? So you concede my point, but insist of having kids anyway?
Yes, OF COURSE just having children won't stop people wasting resources. But not having children and hot having resources are not orthogonal issues. Whether people do or do not stop wasting resources, children ARE going to require resources, and are going to turn into adults who require even more resources.
Sure, go out and encourage people to waste less; walk to the supermarket, library and post office; don't engage in frivolous driving or flying just because you can afford to do so; switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs; etc, etc. I certainly do all these things.
But don't waste my time and other people's time by making assertions that are blatantly both stupid and mendacious, namely that having children will not utilize resources and won't exarcebate the upcoming problem.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:22 PM
"Exarcebate", heh.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:24 PM
'K, then. One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because the folks who took offense were men. The observations you make in that paragraph sound pretty accurate. I'm not child-free, anyway--not even committed to not having children. Just don't feel like it this week.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:24 PM
re: 169
(directed kind of at eb's 159, though I think that was directed at Maynard's childfree evangelizing rather than the live-and-let-live approach I favor)
Yes, my comment was directed at the idea that people defending - not necessarily evangelizing for - their decision to have children are merely covering up their resentments over opportunities lost.
I don't have kids, but I'm all for being able to choose one way or the other without being insulted for my decision - whatever it may be. So, I'm all for live-and-let-live.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:26 PM
Damn Maynard, you sure are a mean drunk. Why can't you be a happy drunk, like Michael?
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:30 PM
One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because the folks who took offense were men.
Heh. Feel free to include men in the feminist camp. I'd like to see more of it, to tell the truth. I'll even give you a pass to get past the barricades.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:31 PM
"I have run over and over and over again into people who label themselves "childfree" who are convinced that "breeders" rule the world and those without kids are a shat-upon minority because of things like, oh, employer-provided health insurance covering dependent"
Gee, why would they think that?
Maybe because the tax system strongly subsidizes people with kids who live a very specific lifestyle. Of course the child deduction is part of that, but the biggie is mortgage interest deduction. There are plenty of others, of course, for example things like the cliff in the medical deduction. For the last ten years or so I've paid total rates of oh, 35% or so of my income(federal and state, but not including sales tax), while my colleagues, earning just as much, pay a rate of perhaps 20%.
Now you can say how this is good for society, building the future, blah blah, and I agree with some of that. But don't spread this BS that people without children have UNJUSTIFIED resentment about how society treats them.If "breeders", to use your term, are justified in kvetching about all the terrible ways society treats them, from not being able to show their breasts in public to being forced to pay for childcare, why should the childless not be allowed to voice their complaints?
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:33 PM
One of the reason I was reluctant to draw the parallel between child-freeness and feminism is because...
I elide your failure to pluralize "reason" to say: reason is THAT, Weiner! Unless as you clearly aren't you are stating the existential conditions for the reason's being in force.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:37 PM
Not elide but pass over.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:39 PM
Since we generally feel full as a result of the volume of food consumed, foods that are high in calories relative to their weight make us more likely to consume more calories than we burn.
Yes avocado has more calories than, for example, the same weight of apple. But avocado will make you feel fuller and more satisfied faster than apple will. Feeling "full" is actually a rather complicated affair, physiologically, and has to do with a lot more than just volume of food consumed.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:41 PM
In mommy blog comment sections "child free" may mean "aggressively anti-children." But that is just because they are trolls. In real life, most people respect other peoples' choices. You wouldn't call your coworkers and neighbors "breeders" or "childfree and selfish".
I think mommy blogs are a good thing. If you don't like them, it isn't hard to avoid them.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:41 PM
When will the "upcoming problem" become an actual problem, Maynard? When we stop having children?
The resources problem is with us now. If the world population remained stable now the world will be ravaged by growing energy/resources demand nontheless. So my contention is that it is the consumption per unit ( I realise i repeat myself here) that is the real issue.
I personally believe that the transition problems you mention can be overcome with immigration.So I see no reason to maintain that a society must produce more kids. Read again what I wrote: It is the combination of demands that I was decrying as selfish. Not purely the not having children.
If you must be abusive at least have the decency to read what is there and not what you would have liked me to say, so that you can pick a fight.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:43 PM
Maynard,
The morgage interest deduction is a stupid idea, but you are allowed to buy a house without having kids.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 3:48 PM
In mommy blog comment sections "child free" may mean "aggressively anti-children." But that is just because they are trolls.
You would think that. But if you google "child free" and spend maybe fifteen minutes reading around, you'll find that that's not the case. Moreover, in real life, I have lost friends because I had a child. True fact. I have also transitioned from passing judgment on my sister's parenting and occasionally fighting with her over it (pre- my own kid) to having a child of my own and calling her to apologize and take it all back. It isn't true that in real life people don't judge and hassle parents.
Maybe because the tax system strongly subsidizes people with kids who live a very specific lifestyle. Of course the child deduction is part of that, but the biggie is mortgage interest deduction. There are plenty of others, of course, for example things like the cliff in the medical deduction. For the last ten years or so I've paid total rates of oh, 35% or so of my income(federal and state, but not including sales tax), while my colleagues, earning just as much, pay a rate of perhaps 20%.
Now you can say how this is good for society, building the future, blah blah, and I agree with some of that. But don't spread this BS that people without children have UNJUSTIFIED resentment about how society treats them.If "breeders", to use your term, are justified in kvetching about all the terrible ways society treats them, from not being able to show their breasts in public to being forced to pay for childcare, why should the childless not be allowed to voice their complaints?
Let me point out in passing that "breeders" is not my term. Do the googling of the child free sites. You'll see that, and much worse. Do you really want to associate yourself with those people?
Now to continue. There is a substantive difference between asserting my right to breastfeed in public without being glared at, and blaming parents for what you percieve as iniquities in the tax system. I didn't write the tax code, you see; but you (the rhetorical "you," not the literal one) did, in fact, tell my husband that he shouldn't let his wife do that in public (true; this happened to us. You can well imagine what my response was).
Now. Let us have a little lesson on what "ideology" means. It means the collection of unarticulated and inconsistent beliefs. So, for instance, our society does indeed give a great deal of praise to the idea of families, to honoring mothers, to adjusting the tax system to benefit families, and so forth. On the other hand. We also, as a society, expect ambitious people to work hours that are incommensurate with children, fail to provide social security benefits to parents who stay home to care for children, believe that taking maternity leave does not give you the right to maintain your income or get your job back, and broadcast extreme hostility to parents with small children in public spaces if and when the children are anything less than perfectly behaved.
The fact of the matter is, the lip service about "family values" that we love to spout, in fact, fucks over real families. It substitutes for a genuine social committment to support parents with small children--the same small children, I might add, who will grow up to write your symphonies, treat your cancer, and pay your social security benefits. So yes. Your resentment of parents is damn well unjustified. As is the clear fact that your position in this comment thread has been pretty much to hassle me personally, rather than to actually present anything resembling a reasonable argument.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:06 PM
"Maynard, in fact one of my college majors was biology. I also studied chemistry and some physics. And it is true: high calorie foods do not, in and of themselves, cause fatness. Their effect on a person's weight or bodyfat depends on a number of other factors including (as I said) nutrient value and activity level.
Nice try, though"
Well, I gave you a face-saving out and you refused to take it.
Let me quote from a textbook _Understanding Nutrition_ by Whitney & Rolfes, 8th edn, 1999.
Earlier we are presented with the fairly obvious points that calories in must equal calories out, and that excess calories (ie more calories eaten per day than are expended in metabolism) will result in some of those calories being excreted while others will be absorbed by the body and saved as fat.
At this point let's note that, to first order, issues of "empty calories", whether you exercise, how many vitamins and anti-oxidants you food consists of, and so on, while interesting and relevant to the issue of the length and quality of your life, are largely irrelevant to the issue of calorie balance. If you're a non-exerciser, your basal metabolism runs at 2000kCal/day, and you eat 2500kCal/day, you will (as I said, to first order) gain a pound of fat a week. If you're an exerciser, your basal metabolism runs at 2500kCal/day, and you eat 3000kCal/day, you will likewise gain a pound of fat a week.
Now let's quote from page 231 which considers interesting twists on the above first order statements
"It stands to reason that a person who eats 3500 extra kCal should gain a pound, and that a person who cuts 3500 kCal should lose a pound, but this does not always happen...Furthemore, people seem to gain more body fat when they eat extra fat kCal than when they eat extra carbohydrate kCal, and they seem to lose body fat most efficiently when they limit kCal specifically from fat. Whether a person chooses extra potatoes or extra butter may make a great deal of difference to body weight and body composition".
Let's point out, apropos of the above, that, while "empty calories" is an imprecise term, it tends to refer to foods with carbohydrates (at least in my experience). As regards avocado, we have that "with the exception of olive oil, no other fruit contains as large a percentage of fat as the avocado", whose fat content varies from 7 to 26%. This puts it in the same category as bacon, peanuts, cheese and butter as regards the dietary fat impact.
There are further interesting things on page 233. Specifically they discuss the difference between what makes you feel like you no longer want to eat any more at a meal (Ogged's point above about your stomach being full), and what keeps you feeling non-hungry (so that you don't snack). Most interesting, IMHO, is that proteins do the best job of making you feel full for a long time. High fiber also does well, (the infamous celery sticks and unbuttered popcorn of serious, knowledgable dieters) while carbs are adequate and fats are bad. This seems to imply that to the extent that Atkins works, it works if you are eating a high-protein diet rather than a high fat diet --- this may be why different people seem to report very different results from trying an Atkins diet.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:07 PM
I just figured out that the comments here automatically end html coding at the end of a paragraph. So please extend the italics in par. 3, above, to include par. 4: both of those were Maynard's, not mine.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:07 PM
re: 188, I'm all in favor of men being feminists, in fact I try to be one myself (though maybe that's hampered a little bit by the little man in my head who is trying to make me say "good and articulate points, b!"), but in this case I'm not sure that men's desire to be free from the encumbrances of children is a force that works on the whole in women's favor. Ask Newt Gingrich.
b-wo, "reason because" is redundant rather than incorrect, and sometimes it aids comprehension. Deal.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:07 PM
My dear Maynard, that long quotation from an introductory college text book merely supports my contention that the correlation between caloric intake and weight gain is complicated. It doesn't refute it. One of the benefits of/requirements for studying a subject is being able to actually understand what one reads.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:10 PM
200!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:10 PM
Dammit, b, it's all over between us.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:10 PM
Matt, no one in her right mind wants to be married to Newt Gingrich. The real solution is to provide government subsidies to single mothers and let them dump the asshole men who want nothing to do with their children. Kids are better off without those people in their lives.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:12 PM
#202: ?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:12 PM
You didn't major in math either, did you b?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:14 PM
I didn't major in math. If you're referring to my numbering of the paragraphs, though, look again. I was right.
And thanks for fixing the html.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:15 PM
#202, oh, I scooped your #200. I apologize. You can have it next time.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:16 PM
203--sure, absolutely. It's just that men's desire not to have to deal with children can be and is slaked without doing anything to help the single mom--or the woman who doesn't want to be a mom--at all. So, women's desire to have the option of childlessness is inseparable from feminism; Gingrich's desire to have the option of childlessness (or at least of dumping the mother of his kids) not.
204--you got to 200 before I did, thus making my 201 look stupid. Just making fun of myself there. 100 comments is just a yawn now, but 200 is still something special even if it takes two trolls to get there.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:17 PM
Trolling is such fun though, Matt.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:20 PM
Ah, yes, but Gingrich doesn't want the option of not having children. He wants the option of not caring for them, along with the option of blathering on about traditional values while dumping his wife when she has cancer. Big difference.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:21 PM
"My dear Maynard, that long quotation from an introductory college text book merely supports my contention that the correlation between caloric intake and weight gain is complicated. It doesn't refute it. One of the benefits of/requirements for studying a subject is being able to actually understand what one reads."
So that's your answer? "Things are complicated, all is in flux, no-one can know the truth."
Very new-agey and holistic of you, but, assuming you don't actually have scientific refutations of the statements I made, the fact remains that what I posted gives at least three reasons
* fats, for as yet unknown reasons are more efficiently converted to human fat than are other food types with equal calories
* fats don't fill up your stomach much because they are dense in calories
* fats lead you to feel hungry after eating rather sooner than other food types
for why your statement about "high calorie foods don't make you fat" is seriously misleading.
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:24 PM
though maybe that's hampered a little bit by the little man in my head who is trying to make me say "good and articulate points, b!"
I must protest. I am not a little man, and I am not inside your head. I may, however, be trying to make you say that.
But you can't prove it.
And Maynard, seriously, we're going to have to stage an intervention for you if you keep this up.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:26 PM
Not you, Austro!
b--true 'nuf.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:27 PM
Bphd: You want to hold my coat? or shall I hold yours?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:29 PM
Maynard. I was talking about avocados. Not animal fats.
Now, will someone please take Maynard outside and kick his ass for me? What's the point of hanging out in a frat house if I can't call on some muscle when I need it?
Because, as we all know, I'm far too new-agey (and fat from eating avocados) to fight my own battles.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:30 PM
Heh, jinx. You're a guy, you do it. I'll hold your coat and squeal with admiration.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:31 PM
Ah.. I think I should perhaps have written "Troll Hunting" its getting late, you know.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:32 PM
Gee its way too many years since a girl squealed with admiration while holding my coat... jux you're on.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:34 PM
Maynard may be wrong and a little nuts, but he hasn't really gone too far over the line, has he?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:36 PM
Maynard, darling, post 154 was meant as a mild suggestion that maybe coming to a blog where you don't post regularly and spewing random insults at the regulars is sub-optimal behavior. Now that b has cut your arguments to flinders--really, if you're nitpicking on the difference between "cause in itself" and "contribute to," you should say so calmly--will you kindly go the fuck away?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:38 PM
One "yes" vote from Weiner.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:39 PM
I don't think he has, I just want him to calm down a bit and make his points without being needlessly insulting and embarassing himself with all the spittle and foaming and general highschool antics.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:40 PM
Well Bphd and I had the same thought simultaneously. Not a good test of correctness, but still!
No No, he has not gone to far, yet.
* shrugs coat back on*
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:40 PM
Fine, it's ogged's blog. Ogged, I do feel that Maynard was a touch over the line in insulting b--the last sentence of 163 for instance. Also blatantly both stupid and mendacious, which I think was directed at Austro, was a bit much.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:41 PM
ogged, he's picking on a girl. Can't you at least yell at him a little?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:41 PM
Which is to say, I think he needs to sober up or face an intervention, but not an asskicking (yet).
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:42 PM
You had a yes vote from me and Austro before you asked the question. And didn't you yourself tell him that he was going to far when he dragged the calorie aside back into the thread in the first place?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:42 PM
I mean Im new here an all... but Mendacious and Stupid? and the trip on B was beyond the call of rugged interchange, or do i miss something?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:43 PM
"Maynard. I was talking about avocados. Not animal fats."
And why is this relevant to calorie issues? Yes there are differences between animal and plant fats that are relevant for some health purposes, but we are not talking about things like essential vs non-essential fatty acids, saturated vs not, or trans vs cis, heart disease and manufacture of cell walls and so on. We are talking energy metabolism, and, as far as I know, for caloric purposes they are equivalent, and as I said, the textbook I quoted from explicitly grouped avocados with peanuts, bacon and butter/cheese as equivalently high-fat items for calorie purposes. If you believe that this is not correct, please point me to something that says so (preferably with lots of background and supporting material).
Posted by Maynard Handley | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:43 PM
Maynard, quit picking on the girl, you pussy.
Seriously, toning down it down is a good idea. There are real issues to discuss here.
(My concern, for those who care, is that we're not too quick to shout down people who aren't "regulars" when they disagree with those who are. So yes, I think Maynard is on the line, but the calls for asskicking seemed premature.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:45 PM
Thats it. I tried. really!
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:47 PM
I don't really want you to beat him up. But he's not just disagreeing, he's deliberately being an ass, and I'm not interested in providing "background and supporting material" to prove that the fat in avocados is not the nutritional equivilant of the fat in bacon, a fact that anyone with half a brain already knows.
Anyway, since you called him a pussy, I'm gonna take that as license to call him an ass and tell him to fuck off.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:50 PM
So where were we? Avocados not having children or something.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:50 PM
And I really can spell equivalent.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:51 PM
Speaking of the reproductive capacities of avocados, do you remember growing them from seeds with toothpicks in a glass of water when we were kids? What the hell are you supposed to do with them when they sprout? I don't remember.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:52 PM
Ogged. Respect man. That last comment would have torn it for me. Given the timing.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:53 PM
"Pussy" was a joke. (Isn't it always?)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:53 PM
Tcha.. I was 20 when i saw my first avocado. We grew cress from seeds.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:55 PM
Oh, well, what makes you think I wasn't joking when I told him to fuck off?
Come back, Maynard, and be my monkey some more.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:56 PM
Ogged, that's a good idea. If Maynard's posts from the beginning had read like 229, I wouldn't have swored at him; and it might be interesting to have that discussion.* But at this point I think b is well within her rights to refuse to engage with him (and has been for about 50 posts)--it's not that he came in and disagreed, it's that he did it in such an insulting and condescending manner.
I've found Maynard to be an interesting commenter elsewhere, though, so maybe there's something about the dynamics of this thread.
*Actually, the discussion would have been boring as fuck, but nothing wrong with that.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:57 PM
You know, I had a friend in college who had never eaten avocado before I made chicken monterey for him. (Chicken, white wine, mushrooms, and avocado. Delicious!) I was shocked.
He was a small town midwestern boy, though, and didn't like it.
Later he decided he was gay and moved to SF. Where I believe his tastes have been somewhat broadened.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:57 PM
Now what you do, what you do is this. You make the carpet good and wet, then you sprinkle lots of cress seeds. Wait a few days, so the victim has to be away for a few, then you rustle a sheep on the day of victims return and let it graze in the locked room on the cress you grew.
Which is Maynards room?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:58 PM
#240: My theory, unsurprisingly, is that it's not the "dynamics of this thread." It's the subject matter. You know. Women's stuff.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:59 PM
Later he decided he was gay and moved to SF. Where I believe his tastes have been somewhat broadened.
No doubt.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 4:59 PM
So B, do your avocado dishes often have that effect?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:00 PM
LOL re. cress in the carpet.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:00 PM
I'll let you know when pseudonymous kid grows up. Avocado is a favorite of his.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:01 PM
If you believe that this is not correct, please point me to something that says so (preferably with lots of background and supporting material).
Why? You obviously haven't been reading such stuff so far before running off at the mouth.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:05 PM
Well, anything that broadens the mind, I ssay!
With that I need to get to bed. Its been fun, thanks.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:06 PM
This thread's already overburdened with how to live a meaningful life among the world's scarce resources, and whether your kids will do enough philosophy--or have enough kids!--to make up for the oil they'll burn; I'm surprised there's rage left over to spend on fatty foods.
(after the avocado sprouts you can get a pot and dirt and it'll grow up into a little tree! at which point you forget to water it and it dies, if i recall correctly.)
Posted by mike | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:08 PM
You know, didn't Maynard used to comment here fairly often? Are we sure this isn't a troll who's usurped his name?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:10 PM
g'night Austro. We'll see if we can't start another li'l flamewar for you tomorrow.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-15-05 5:10 PM
Matt you are wrong wrong wrong about "reason is because".
Posted by ben wolfson |