More Horrific Parenting

There was a lot of pushback to the tweet yesterday, the one where the woman bragged about hitting her three year old for being insufficiently cheery. Most of the tweets said things like, This isn't Christianity! and Christians don't parent this way! But quite a few claimed this sort of parenting was better than the way liberals parent, which is to raise kids without a "moral code." 

That shit is hilarious to me, since half my kid's childhood was spent debating morality. Why do we do this? Why is that better? What if I want to do this? Also, Why do all my friends' parents hit them?

The people making those tweets didn't mean that kind of morality, of course. What they meant was authoritarian morality. There's rules, and those rules are made by God, and so we don't examine or question or discuss, we just obey. (Not God, of course. Children obey parents, who pretend or actually believe they know what God wants; and the woman obeys the husband, ditto.) This kind of morality leads to an unexamined life, which -- as we know -- is not worth living. And often fairly evil, besides.

Anyway, here's another tweet from Marissa Burt about this horrific kind of parenting: 

I’m spotlighting dominionist parenting teaching over on instagram & was inspired by Canon Press’ latest marketing push to turn my attention from one Doug (Vision Forum) to another.

Will be taking a closer look at parenting teaching coming out of Moscow this Nov. https://t.co/CNq3UzZcoF pic.twitter.com/gYxBs2ojf7

— Marissa Burt (@AlethiaWrites) November 11, 2023

The clip mainly focuses on Douglas Wilson, the slavery apologist (slavery must be good because in the Bible it's good), but as Marissa Burt says elsewhere, there are dozens of Christian parenting "experts" who teach people to parent this way, and tens of thousands of Christian parents who listen to them and parent in this horrific fashion.

If you can make it through that video -- I could only handle about half of it -- you'll find a dad laughing with delight as he recounts how when his daughter (disobeying his command to eat her hamburger) vomited up food, he rinsed off the remaining burger and made her eat that. 

Christian parenting.

Terrible Parenting

This is awful. I saw the same sort of "parenting" among some of the Christian kids my kid went to school with, especially the girls. Disappointment, sadness, grief -- none of those were allowed. Kids had to be happy, or else they were punished, usually with beatings. These kids grow up to be like one woman I had in my class once, who explained that her husband expected her to have a smile on her face at all times. When I expressed mild alarm at this, she smiled sweetly at me and explained he just wanted her to be happy, all the time. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Here is Nancy Wilson spanking her 3-4 year old for not being excited to see her pic.twitter.com/FtVH9lSJJ1

— Poison in Moscow ID (@DWsChristendom) November 14, 2023

And this too: 

Yes, exactly this. Much of this kind of teaching is a Christian version of enmeshed and narcissistic parenting practices.

— Marissa Burt (@AlethiaWrites) November 14, 2023

Baby Jasper

 Look what came up in my memories today: 13 years ago:

Baby Jasper

Newsie News

 It rained all day yesterday and also got cold, and today, though sunny, was also cold. I had to be at school yesterday from seven until 3:30, walking across campus several times, and I had forgotten my umbrella, but the very nice guy in the office next to mine, who used to be my student but is now running a program through the writing center, loaned me his, luckily.

Anyway, I came home at 4:30, having stopped for groceries, and kind of collapsed. I may be too old for this high-paced professor life.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 and drank tea and wrote something and then it was only 11:00, so I went to the gym. This is a terrible time to go to the gym, as it develops. Not only was everyone in the Fort there, there were several exercise classes being held and each instructor had music and loudspeaker and a microphone through which they were bellowing instructions.

I do not do well with noise and tons of people all talking and moving at once. But I rode my stationary bike and did weights and managed to walk a little, leaving after 30 minutes instead of 40. I took heart from this post, over at Nicole & Maggie's, where a guy in the comments says even a little exercise is better than no exercise. But ugh.

The dog was very glad when I came home early. Dr. Skull was having a nap.

I spent the afternoon reading a book I'm going to review for Interzone, and then fell asleep around 3:00 and slept until five. Getting up at dawn does not suit me.

Also the kid sent me a text: Remember when will smith slapped a guy and then for like two weeks after there were a bunch of very serious thinkpieces about Will smith slapping a guy

Ah, internet culture. You gotta love it.

I'm going to watch something on YouTube and go to bed early.

Is This an Omen?

 I had to cancel class because my classroom was full of wasps.

ETA: Ever since I posted this on FB, I've had people stopping by my office to tell me about various insect-swarm related catastrophes. It made for a fun afternoon!

Ohio and the USA

 John Scalzi's post on what happened in the Ohio elections and what it means is pretty good. Go have a look.

It's also worth noting that only rabid gerrymandering has allowed the GOP to win elections in most places, and that the courts (even Trump-dominated courts) are cracking down on that particular practice, which bodes well for the country.

Formerly Known As Twitter

I mostly stay off Twitter these days, since it's become an utter sewer; but I followed this tweet from Pharyngula over there, and wow. Not only have the hate-filled tweets continued, but now it's about 50% non-stop ads.

That Elon Musk. He sure knows how to build things. No, wait. Not "build." That's not what I meant. Appropriate, gut, and destroy things, while sucking all the profit he can from the twitching corpse. That's what I meant.

In other news, I still have three Bluesky invite codes -- send me an email if you'd like one! 

drdelagar@gmail.com

Banning Books From the Left

This story in the Washington Post today deals with a group of teachers who are asking that no one in their school district be allowed to assign To Kill a Mockingbird to their students.

Their argument is that the book, which in part deals with racism in the South in the 1930s, centers around white characters and the white savior, Atticus Finch, and does not deal realistically with black characters or allow black characters realistic agency. There's also the fact that the novel uses the n-word, though as I recall it's only used by "trashy" and bigoted characters. As I recall, Atticus mildly tells Scout not to use the word, at one point, because it's "common." (The classism of the book is not discussed.)

These are good points, and I can't help noticing that the defenders of the book in the article are all white. I do think Harper Lee's book appeals to white moderates, who were, after all, her intended audience. And having read Lee's sequel, Go Set a Watchman, I can't help reading back the reactionary politics of that book into Mockingbird. So I understand where these teachers are coming from, I guess is what I'm saying. And I certainly am not defending Lee's book, even though I loved it to pieces as a kid.

On the other hand, banning books is banning books. If they had wanted, as was their apparent first motive, to just removed the book from the required curriculum, I would have been with them 100%. Their point about how using a book by a black author which deals with racism would be a better approach -- that's a solid argument. 

Also, I don't think teachers should be forced to assign specific books. We have a thing here at our university where we assign a common text to all the freshmen students in our Comp II class, but we also allow teachers not to assign that text and sub in a different one. One year when the book assigned was an apologetic for Nazis (not the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but one like that one), I honestly could not teach it. Even thinking about teaching it made me queasy.

But they wanted to keep anyone in the school district from assigning the book in their classroom. The book can stay on the library shelf, they said, but no student should be forced to read it. (As a side note, I'd like to see anyone force a student to read anything. I mean, have these people met students?) That, I think, is a step too far. And I think the school district did the right thing -- the decision they made was that the book could be assigned, but no longer *had* to be assigned.

Anyway, it's a thoughtful piece, which I recommend if you have access to the Washington Post.

These two paragraphs encapsulate the issue:

“We profoundly question why we should read a book by a White author, in which Black characters are secondary, voiceless, meek, and two-dimensional,” Kuzmany of Kamiak said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks.

“I am standing against taking books out of the hands of our students for any reason,” Freemon of Mariner said, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “There is not one novel that we teach at the high school that is not offensive to someone, in some capacity.”

 

The Woke Mind Virus

 Apparently, "the woke mind virus" is something conservatives actually believe in? I mean, it's hilarious, but also sad. 

On the other hand, Bluesky is having fun with it.

Invitations to Bluesky

 Bluesky has given me FIVE invitation codes, so hit me up if you still haven't joined!

I admit the app image always cheers me up. I have no idea why.

Halloween in the Bible Belt

As usual, we had no trick-r-treaters last night. That's partly because this is an elderly neighborhood with no sidewalks, and mostly because in the Fort, Halloween is the Devil's birthday. Or something. I can't remember the current explanation.

Just file it under Fundamentalist Christians love to ruin everything.

Some of my students did dress up, and I gave everyone in my classes candy, so there was that. 

ETA: This was on FB this morning -- the local churches do this thing called a "harvest festival" at which they have "trunk or treat," with kids running around from car to car in their parking lots getting candy and little Jesus statues and so on. 

Which is perfectly fine, because that's not worshipping Satan, unlike what those evil liberals do.

WINTER

Carol Collette, Clear Winter Night

 It is 29 degrees here this morning. ABOUT TIME.

Just Give Him a Fish

 

(Image: Text saying "Give a man a fish. Just give him the fish. You have extra fish, just hand it over. He doesn't have time to go to your shitty fucking fishing school.)

In other news, winter has arrived. It's 44 degrees here now, and the weather guy says tonight it's gonna freeze.

What I'm Reading Now

Nicola Griffith, Menewood

Griffith is a SF/F writer, but this and Hild, which is the first in what Griffith called the Hild sequence, are historical novels, set in seventh century Britain, about the woman who would become St. Hilda. These are dense, fascinating novels, best read slowly. I loved Hild to bits and am already looking forward to the next volume. Menewood is about Hild when she is in her early twenties, dealing with a war raging over England at the time while also trying to protect those under her care.

It's been more than seven years since the first novel, but it was worth the wait. Lots of detail about daily life in the seventh century, about organizing and supplying military forces, about women and their lives, about how power works and can work. I'm hoping we won't have to wait another seven years for the next installment.

Sarah Myer, Monstrous

This is a graphic novel about a child adopted from Korea as an infant, and raised in an ultra-white conservative community in the Midwest. She has an older sister, also adopted from Korea, who has an easier time growing up in such a community; Sarah, who is neurodivergent and non-binary, is bullied and tormented by her classmates, and despite the support of her parents ends up feeling like a monster. Lovely art here, and a compelling story. 

Madeline L'Engle, Dragons in the Water

This was released in a Library of America edition, and I had not read it since I was about ten, so I decided to have another look. L'engle, as you'll know, wrote A Wrinkle in Time and Meet the Austins, books I loved as a kid, and read over and over. I remembered not liking this one much, and oof, was I correct. Among other flaws, it's extremely boring. I only got through the first half this time, so maybe it picks up in the second half; but in the first half, nothing much happens, despite the lovely set up -- Dr. O'Keefe* and two of his seven kids take a cargo boat to South America with some other people, including Simon Renier, who is the sole surviving heir of a family from South Carolina, one which lost everything thanks to those evil, evil Yankees and the Civil War. Down in Venezuela, some noble savages who have mystical powers are waiting for a "white savior," and that is the literal term L'Engle uses, to come save their society. Simon is, I am pretty sure, that white savior.

You don't have to worry about the fact that his ancestor (the one who impregnated one of the noble savages and then abandoned her to return to his plantation in the south) was a slave-holder, since -- like every fictional southern hero -- he freed his slaves. Then they all lived together in one big happy family on the plantation until the evil Yankees came and destroyed the plantation, and then after "the War" sowed salt into the soil, you know, how the Yankees did, during Reconstruction. That's why Simon is so poor. His evil uncle comes from the branch of the family that collaborated with the Yankees during reconstruction. That's why he's evil.

If you know anything about actual Reconstruction, and what white people in the South did during those years and into the 20th century, this heap of lies is even more offensive. I know L'Engle had relatives in the South, and spent some of her adolescent years in South Caroline, but holy hell.

Anyway, do not recommend. There are three other novels in this LOA edition; I don't know if I can bear to give them a try.

*You'll remember this Calvin O'Keefe, from A Wrinkle in Time, who married Meagan, the math prodigy. Meagan, instead of becoming a mathematician, began having babies. She had seven. Calvin became the famous scientist. Meagan cooks meals and mends clothing.

Asimov Review

 My review, On Books, is live at Asimov's right now. 

Among other books, I reviews Ursula Vernon's A House with Good Bones and a compilation of Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric novellas. Also The Light Pirate, a book about near-future Florida by Lily Brooks Dalton which I liked a lot:

We follow Wanda as the hurricane season lengthens and the storms grow ever more powerful; as some people leave but others stay; as the world heats up until people must become nocturnal to survive; as Florida sinks into the ocean and as various local and state governments fail, until finally the federal government announces the “closure” of Florida.