Americans are like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain who spoke in prose without realizing it. They all (with very few and very crazy exceptions) believe in the

political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

which is the dictionary definition of feminism. Yet in polls conducted by stupid losers among even stupider losers and published in a rag for the most stupid of losers, they claim they are not feminists. Even though they fit the dictionary definition of feminists.

And no, there are not many definitions of feminism. Use the dictionary already.

One word that I really hate is “Islamist.” When there are perfectly good and meaningful words “Islamic” and “Muslim”, this new-fangled concoction seems to carry no meaning other than a dislike of Muslims. I looked up the definition of the word in Wikipedia and it says:

Islamism is a set of ideologies holding that “Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life.”

There are crowds of Christians who hold the same beliefs. One of them was elected to the highest office in this country twice. Yet nobody called him or anybody else “Christianist.”

It really annoys me when people hide behind verbal games when what they really want to say is, “I hate Muslims.”

N and I had agreed years ago that if we ever had a daughter, I would give her my last name and choose her first name, and if we had a son, he would give him his last name and pick his first name.

So yesterday N set to work choosing the first name for the boy. He doesn’t follow the news on principle, mind you.

“So how about we call him Tamerlan?” he asked. “It’s a beautiful name.”

I had to explain why this wasn’t a smart choice at this particular moment in time.

In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I have to confess that I suggested the name “Mason” after my favorite character from the soap opera Santa Barbara. N had to explain why this was not happening.

I have to say, I’d much rather read about perfect grandmothers than see this in a student’s essay:

There is no justice in the world, and it’s pointless to look for it. The protagonist’s mistake is believing that anybody is interested in truth or justice when, in reality, nobody has the slightest interest in these meaningless concepts. He ultimately pays for his naivete, which is what will happen to everybody who doesn’t see that the world is an unfair and cruel place.

This is really not the worldview I wanted to inspire with my teaching.

In an essay on Miguel de Unamuno and the Generation of ’98, a student writes – completely à propos of nothing that came  before or after this statement:

Ironically, men still need women. Because men can’t procreate without them.

This is a male student, by the way. Probably something deeply personal burst out of him with this phrase.

People are not getting what I mean about the difficulties I see in raising boys, it seems. So here is an example.

In order to have a fantastic personal life, a girl needs to grow up surrounded by the adoring gaze of her father. That’s it, this is the recipe. Adoring father = adoring partners her entire life, and crowds of them.

However, does a boy who grows up surrounded by the adoring gaze of his mother have a happy personal life? No! It’s just the opposite! I’ve seen it too many times. Adoring mother = incapacity to form a profound relationship with an adult partner.

The ultrasound specialist says she can see “boy parts” on the ultrasound clearly. Which means we are having a boy!

This is very weird because I have no idea how to raise boys. I know exactly how to raise girls, but boys? Oy yoy yoy. And I don’t know where to look to learn. All that I have seen are the following two models:

1. An adoring, overwhelming, stifling mother who forms an unhealthy symbiosis with the son. The son then has extreme trouble forming a profound attachment to an adult partner and finds professional realization difficult.

2. A cold, distant mother. The son then makes the perfect husband for an adult partner but suffers from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.

Of course, now everybody will tell me to avoid the extremes and keep to the golden mean. Yes, sure, like I couldn’t have figured that on my own. In theory, this is all self-evident. In practice, however, I can’t replicate what I haven’t seen.

With a girl, for instance, I know how to teach her to be popular. But I can’t teach that to a boy because I’m not even sure what makes them popular and valued in their peer group. Also, I know what a girl needs from her mother because I used to be a girl. But what a boy needs is a complete mystery. Everybody I know has girls. Everybody at my department has girls, crowds of them. And the few people who have boys are men. I could be a father to a boy quite easily. It’s being the mother to a boy that is so hard.

So, dear readers, who are men. Now is the time to share. What did you want when you were small boys (the answer “a big shiny bike” is helpful, too)? What did your parents do that helped you become happy, self-assured, popular, and secure? What did they do not do or not do sufficiently? How much of a relationship do you have with your mother in adulthood?

I find it easier to communicate with men than with women, so this should not be too hopeless, right? RIGHT?

P.S. N. is really not helping. “Just imagine if he grows up and decides to join the army,” he says cheerfully. Well, N. will now be the one to have to teach him to use the potty and talk to him about sex and contraception, so we’ll see who has the last laugh. Somebody’d better learn to enjoy baseball, and fast.

Clergy members have jumped into the New York fight over legalizing mixed martial arts competitions in the state, lobbying Tuesday against what they called a vicious “blood sport” that appears to hold special appeal for some hate groups.

Opponents including a priest and rabbi who visited individual lawmakers in Albany said the sensationalized violence of cage fighting has no place in civilized society.

Clerics keep intruding on people’s right to dispose of their own bodies however they wish, and I find that appalling. This situation is proof that the right to choose knows no gender boundaries. We need to let these barbarians know that what has no place in civilized society is a group of priests and rabbis who don’t understand that what happens outside of their synagogue / church does not concern them.

As to the completely ridiculous argument that “the kiddies are watching the violence, OMG, the horror, the horror,” it just makes me want to spit. Where are this priest and this rabbi when religious fanatics advocate beatings of children as a parenting strategy? And if we are talking about violent spectacles, I remember how the beginning of the US’s war on Iraq was televised live. If it’s so dangerous for children to watch willing participants beat each other, how come it is not detrimental to them to see unwilling Iraqis have bombs dropped on them?

Here are the commenting rules published on Shakesville:

Comments are open to anyone as long as they don’t troll and/or traffic in racist, sexist, homophobic, trans*phobic, ableist, ageist, sizeist, or otherwise overtly objectionable commentary based on people’s intrinsic characteristics. Hate speech, slurs, rape apologia, rape jokes and metaphors, violent imagery and rhetoric, threats, trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith, disrespecting the mods, including ignoring them, telling contributors what they should be writing about or how they should be writing about it, and/or invoking the [TW] blogmistress’personal experience to use against her, or doing the same to any of the contributors, mods, or other commenters, could result in any of the following: Your comment edited to remove offending material, your comment replaced with an incredibly sophomoric paraphrase, your comment deleted, and/or your commenting privileges revoked.

I believe that everybody has an indisputable right to manage one’s own blog according to one’s own preference. So in the spirit of simple curiosity, I wonder: what is the point of making these ridiculous lists that make one sound like an anal control freak? This is just a small portion of the commenting rules, mind you. The whole thing goes on and on forever.

Why not just say honestly, “I will let people comment as long as I feel like it and ban them whenever I feel like it?” Given that nothing is easier than accusing pretty much anybody of “trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith“, etc., etc., this pretense at objectivity is a lot more dishonest than my sincere declaration that my blog is about entertaining me and nothing else and I will moderate as I see fit or as my left foot wishes.

What is sockpuppeting in this context? And how does one distinguish between pointless and meaningful belligerence?