i stopped at a park and sat on a bench for 15min today and there were parents and little kids
they did a lot of awful things in that short time
like 6-8 different parents came by. there's like a daycare or something next to the park
i got there at 1pm
one thing i noticed is sometimes parents hold their kid's hand while walking
and i saw a kid trip a bit
and i realized holding hands wasn't affecting parent's balance or stride
but it WAS affecting the kid's
to have his hand held upward and immobile
and also to try to match parent's pace
and i thought parent contributed to the tripping
and prolly thinks kid needs hand held to yank him up to prevent falls
but i think parent causes more falls
another parent said kid could only go down slide once and then they had to go
so kid delayed. a lot. and banged on the slide. and sat on top.
and parent got impatient asked him to come again before he'd even gone down once. and parent gave the reason that his brother was in the car waiting.
which is so nasty to put the two siblings at odds against each other. to create a conflict btwn them, where the brother is the excuse for why he can't use the slide
and the amount of time before the left, i figure the kid could have gone down the slide 5 times if he was reasonably quick
but the parent told him once, so he did it really slow
if the parent had said "you can slide 3 times if you are quick"
they might have left faster and with a happier kid
it's so wasteful to drag it out enough time for 5 slides, with parent resenting it, and kid resenting only getting to slide once. so inefficient.
there were 3 trikes someone had left at the park. it's in a good neighborhood, small park, bit isolated, low theft risk.
a mom praised the hell out of a dad who she found out was the owner
she gushed about how big a difference the trikes made. later she said she had one on her porch she never remembers to bring.
it was very like boring smalltalk, very low content, very gushy and exaggerated
but also note the trikes are a big deal for the kids – that she'll gush about – and she just keeps forgetting to bring one she already has. that's how much she actually cares about about kids. not enough to make the effort to remember.
and she said something about 3 trikes being a good number. i was thinking if it was only one then some parents would prefer zero trikes instead of one to avoid kids fighting over it. they'd rather have no resources so kids don't expect anything than some resources kids really want and have to deal with resource allocation. (and these people have plenty of money and other resources to provide plenty for the kids. they all present as being well off financially and it's not a neighborhood for poor people. they just, in various ways, choose not to provide their kids with resources.)
then later i saw a little girl, like 3, was on a small plastic trike. and her mom tried to help her peddle but it wasn't working. she pushed along with her feet on the ground. the mother just gave up and ignored it. she was obviously way too big for it. her knees were bent heavily for her to sit on it.
while the mother was standing 2 feet away but ignoring her, the girl, on her own, noticed the 3 trikes the other guy had left at the park. they were metal and larger. they fit her better. she went to one. the mother followed.
and then she put her doll in the seat and then realized it blocked her from sitting on it herself, and tried to figure out what to do
sigh. and the mother was not helping or offering to hold the doll or suggesting how to handle it
and the gender roles. none of the guys had this problem. they would play. the girl is taught priorities that get in her way.
the girl is taught to treat a doll like it's special and important and fragile
which is inconvenient
so she manages to get on the trike and hold the doll in her lap. and her mom pushes it around for her some. it had a poll sticking up the back the mother could push. kid didn't figure out how to peddle and mom didn't even try to help with that this time.
with the first trike the mom was physically grabbing the kid's feet and putting them on the pedals
and then spun the pedals with her hands when kid had feet on ground like a demonstration
i think she was very bad at explaining it and was not a patient helper
anyway mom says something about time to go, pushes the trike onto the grass instead of stone, stops pushing it, leaves kid stuck and not moving, and stands there
i thought she did it on purpose to end the activity but later found out she didn't have much trouble pushing the trike on the grass, it still rolled fine
but kid had to wait a while. mom talked to someone else or looked at her phone or just stood there, idk, but kid wasn't moving for a minute
and for some reason mom got the doll
and dropped it into a little basket on the back of the trike that was like 2 inches above the ground
mom was unaware or uncaring that her daughter cared about the doll, and treated it very carefully
which i knew from watching her with the doll for 20 seconds a few minutes earlier
and then what next? mom just looks away or ignores kid, doesn't pay attention
and kid tries to reach back and arrange doll better in basket
and spends like 30s trying to get doll more comfortable and properly taken care of for the ride
and mom isn't helping or paying any attention or realizing she just fucking dropped the doll like 1 foot into the basket, carelessly, that kid is trying to treat like a fragile baby
then mom pushed her on the grass some more then made her leave
all the parents were pressuring their kids to leave and no one stayed for long
my friend commented, "Ppl think my sister is weird cuz she asks toddlers for permission to like pick them up"
it's so sad how the parents consistently aren't interested in helping their kid get plenty of trips down the slide, get his fill of the park.
and it's so sad how parents mostly just don't pay attention to what their kid is doing. they can't help much because they don't pay attention. they say "we're going soon" and then talk with another parent and look away and then a few minutes later say "we really gotta go now" without even checking or caring what their kid is in the middle of. they mostly don't play with their kids. they don't try to understand what their kids are thinking. they don't try to help with it. they just don't care or pay much attention.
the one mom did help push the trike. but she wasn't paying any attention to the great care and attentiveness with which her daughter treated her doll. and i'll bet the kid has been loving that doll for months and treating it much the same and mom just doesn't care or have any respect for her kid's wishes and goals. and she just stopped in the middle of pushing the trike for a while for no apparent reason and then kid was stuck sitting still for a while. and she's not a good enough helper to help her kid peddle a trike. and she doesn't care or have the patience to keep trying. she just grabbed her kid's feet, placed them, didn't seem aware the trike was way too small for the kid (knees super bent), and then promptly gave up. kid will have to learn how to use a trike later from some other kid who knows how to use one. or maybe figure it out herself if she gets the opportunity to spend more time with a trike instead of being made to leave. or maybe, being a female, she'll just go through life being bad at that kind of thing because if a girl apparently "doesn't like trikes" parents think that's normal and ok and ignore it instead of figuring there's a problem to help with. but if a boy isn't playing with trikes, a lot more parents would figure something is wrong and help him solve the problem instead of just thinking it's a matter of taste. stuff like that, which isn't very blatant, is how a lot of gender role stuff ends up happening.
my friend also commented:
and it's so sad how parents mostly just don't pay attention to what their kid is doing. they can't help much because they don't pay attention.
when ppl do try to “help”, they mostly just interrupt with their kid is doing
they aren’t paying attention to what the kid is trying to do
so they interrupt and are like “here, do this”
but that won’t even help with what the kid is trying to do
like, say kid is trying to make swing twist around
parent will kind of see what kid is doing, but will think they are just incompetent at swinging
so if they try to “help” it will be either by pushing kid on swing, or trying to make them pump their legs
or maybe they know kid is trying to twist swing around, but they just think that is the wrong way to use the swing. so they are trying to make him use it right
i think both things happen
i don't entirely get how people are so blind to this stuff. you watch anyone interest with kids for a few minutes and you see horrors. they consistently don't pay attention to what their children or doing or why. they consistently don't try to understand. they consistently suck at helping or explaining anything, or don't even try to.
and they try to control their kid and make him leave. with no idea what kid is doing, they have no idea how important staying more is. they don't care. they don't try to figure out if it's worth staying because kid is in the middle of something great. they just have a very limited amount of patience for kid to delay them and they don't care about the park.
some reason people are blind to these horrors:
- they don't think of children as people
- they see it all the time so it just looks normal to them
- they make excuses like parenting is tiring enough without actually paying attention to your kid and his activities and having to help
- they don't respect children "playing", don't regard it as important or having anything to do with learning or education
- they're not very nice to anyone in their lives, including themselves. this isn't all kid-specific
- they treat people by categories (e.g. "child") rather than worrying about specifics like what that individual child cares about
it's so fucking simple though. your kid treasures a doll. you don't just drop it. the parent is just doing generic actions without knowing about her kid as an individual.
if your kid wants to use a slide, that's great. he likes it. this thing exists, people built it, and then other people enjoy it. they didn't have to build it but they did. and here it is. and your kid didn't have to find things in life he likes but he did. liking things and thinking things are good is not automatic. people take it for granted but it's wonderful and takes some positive human spirit and thinking. and then people grow up and don't actually like much stuff, or feel much joy, or have many interests, and they wonder why their lives are so empty. it's because their parents crushed their interests young and had no respect for their joy and preferences.
then people cover up their empty adult lives with a bunch of lies and make excuses for their parents and then do it to their own kids. they pretend getting drunk and partying and having sex are interests, when they're really just doing it because they have no idea what to do with their lives and that's what society offers. some pretend their profession is an interest. some pretend to like video games but play "casually" – meaning without really thinking about it much, just to kill time like watching TV. (some people don't even want to watch TV at higher speeds because then they'd just need to watch more shows to take up the same time slots in their life. they don't actually care about what they watch, and aren't interested in seeing more, they are just killing time.)
Messages (39)
in some ways, everyone already knows this stuff.
they know kids say "look at me" when they go on a slide or something, and they know tons of times the parent doesn't look, or humors his kid by looking but doesn't care.
they know that they don't know in detail what their kids are doing all the time. like if some kids are playing a game a parent who is there the whole time often won't know what the rules are. and you could ask him if he knows the rules and he'd know he doesn't know them.
and kids often fight right in front of parents and then the parents have no idea who started it. they weren't watching. happens all the time. (they often don't tell their kid they weren't watching and missed it though. they often just start jumping immediately to a verdict of some kind without knowing much about the events. this can be rather unfair, and it can also be confusing to a kid who thinks the parent saw he was in the right and then punished him. like kid can think parent actually disagrees with his behavior, even when parent actually would have approved if he paid attention, cuz kid gets punished and parent doesn't state his ignorance.)
lefties think it is bad to try to get ppl from other cultures to assimilate to our culture. But that's basically what a lot of parenting is
>the girl is taught to treat a doll like it's special and important and fragile
ppl seriously do tell girls to be nice to dolly. they'll say: "Don't do that, that hurts dolly!"
I think parents think they are teaching kid to not hurt real ppl
Like if kid bashes dolly's head on desk, maybe she'll think it's ok to do that to humans
Sometimes they just want kid to not break the doll
But that's not what they say to boys who are playing too rough with trucks
For that they just say something like: "Don't break your trucks"
> and the gender roles. none of the guys had this problem. they would play. the girl is taught priorities that get in her way.
Thoughts:
The gender roles might get in her way now she is a child, but having a parent who helps her ignore those roles will create problems for her later. I've heard of a girl who I remember to be allowed and even encouraged by her lefty mother to play like a boy, take her shoes off, get all wet and dirty in the playground, etc. I was told she now identifies as a boy. Girls do not leave in a world without gender roles and without social pressure to conform to those. They are either girly and have that problem set or have the problem set that comes with being ugly, gay, trans, etc.
I had a colleague at work that wanted to be girly at the expense of getting minor injuries by having long nails, which are not allowed. She said she wanted to feel like a girl. It made me think why isn't she working at a job that allows her to be more girly as she likes? Maybe because the standard for girlishness is very high and she has not achieved it yet?
> the girl is taught to treat a doll like it's special and important and fragile
The Toy Story films are not about a girl, so I'm not sure about your theory that this particular doll problem is a girl specific thing.
I do agree girls in general are taught to worry about their objects, clothes and appearance. I can remember as a girl having such preoccupations.
> i think she was very bad at explaining it and was not a patient helper
I disagree with your idea that parents should be super helpful. I think helping kids too much leads to learned helplessness. They lean on parents to solve problems for them instead of figuring things out themselves. The apparent more neglectful parents who leave their kids to their own devices more raise more competent kids. They learn to take responsibility for their own problems very early.
> and dropped it into a little basket on the back of the trike that was like 2 inches above the ground
> mom was unaware or uncaring that her daughter cared about the doll, and treated it very carefully
Early in your post you criticized gender roles that make the girl care. Gender roles the mother passed on. Now you think the mother should have noticed the daughter cared. Seems you are contracting yourself over what is important.
> and mom isn't helping or paying any attention or realizing she just fucking dropped the doll like 1 foot into the basket, carelessly, that kid is trying to treat like a fragile baby
So the child was role playing, learning how to take care of a baby, when you initially dismissed it as a dumb gender role thing.
It is unclear to me what would you have done as a TCS parent. Would you offer criticism and tell the child the doll is not a fragile thing and it's OK to just drop it on the floor when she was trying to get on the trike? Would you help the child with the role play and treat the dolls as a real baby and risk passing on the girly meme?
you're seriously trying to deny that girls and boys get different encouragement, treatment, advice, etc, regarding dolls? you think parents give equally many dolls, of the same types, to girls and boys?
as to gender roles, if something teaches gender roles then stating it teaches it is correct. it's good to know how they are taught. they matter. you should also acknowledge at least some downsides to gender roles.
it's bizarre that you think someone who "identifies as a boy" was not taught gender roles. being a boy is a gender role. you seem to take these parents you don't like, who are doing various bad things, and then for some reason give them *credit* as if they weren't teaching gender roles, even while you plainly state that they did.
how to live in an irrational society is an interesting question and part of the answer, from Rand, is to pronounce moral judgement. another part is to understand what's going on. yet in response to this you complain and think any failure to compromise, even in a discussion, is immediately bad. maybe there are some better alternatives besides making every single compromise you have in mind, but you don't have an attitude of being glad to know about problems and causes, and looking for these alternatives. instead you complain that some other people, who are not philosophers, and are left wing, did something you regard as bad. why do you do that? because you're more interesting in taking sides, and fighting for your side, than solving problems.
> > i think she was very bad at explaining it and was not a patient helper
> I disagree with your idea that parents should be super helpful. I think helping kids too much leads to learned helplessness. They lean on parents to solve problems for them instead of figuring things out themselves. The apparent more neglectful parents who leave their kids to their own devices more raise more competent kids. They learn to take responsibility for their own problems very early.
you seem to think being "super helpful" revolves around doing things you regard as harmful.
you should reconsider.
have you considered that one can help people in ways that are actually helpful and good? that that's possible? that there's some better things to do that leave your kid figure life out on their own?
> Early in your post you criticized gender roles that make the girl care. Gender roles the mother passed on. Now you think the mother should have noticed the daughter cared. Seems you are contracting yourself over what is important.
there is no contradiction in thinking that:
1) it was a mistake to teach the kid to value X
2) once the kid did value X, the parent should respect the kid's values
> So the child was role playing, learning how to take care of a baby, when you initially dismissed it as a dumb gender role thing.
that role play is a dumb gender role thing. it's not useful for 3 year olds to do that. it doesn't seriously help them be good parents later. it's a ritual, not actual learning of useful skills that will come in handy later. and there's much better things they could do like begin to learn math and reading and programming and philosophy.
> there is no contradiction in thinking that:
>
> 1) it was a mistake to teach the kid to value X
>
> 2) once the kid did value X, the parent should respect the kid's values
why respect, why not offer criticism?
> It is unclear to me what would you have done as a TCS parent. Would you offer criticism and tell the child the doll is not a fragile thing and it's OK to just drop it on the floor when she was trying to get on the trike? Would you help the child with the role play and treat the dolls as a real baby and risk passing on the girly meme?
offer child a wider variety of things based on what you think she as an individual wants (rather than going by her group memberships such as "female"). offer advice about the options such as what is normal for girls, what are some good things about doing culturally normal activities, what are some dangers of fitting in thoroughly. help child with her choices.
i don't think you'll understand this.
you don't seem to know much about TCS yet you're already angry about it.
if you want to learn about this topic, you should start by giving some indication of what you think you know about TCS so far, and ask some questions to help make progress. discuss it in the context of trying to learn instead of the context of being offended by criticism of parents and wanting to attack it (which is not a recipe for understanding).
> why respect, why not offer criticism?
you can do that too. respect and criticism don't contradict.
> that role play is a dumb gender role thing. it's not useful for 3 year olds to do that. it doesn't seriously help them be good parents later. it's a ritual, not actual learning of useful skills that will come in handy later. and there's much better things they could do like begin to learn math and reading and programming and philosophy.
in your post you criticise parents for dismissing play as not educational yet here you seem to be doing the same.
why do you think a 3 year old would be able and willing to learn maths, reading, programming and philosophy?
if that's your opinion of role play, why do you care that the child cares about the doll, why do you criticise caring? you are not shy criticising and even dismissing things adults value. you do not even care about hurt feelings. so why do you think the parent should notice the child cares about the doll and help the child with that instead of persuading the child as you are trying to persuade me? or be open to have the child persuade you are wrong they should be learning maths, etc.
it seems a bit deceiving as a parent to pretend to care for what the child cares about when you think the child is doing something dumb. what is the goal of that?
> i don't think you'll understand this.
this is what conventional parents say to children.
play is educational in general but that doesn't mean that particular play educates you about particular things. playing with a doll when you're 3 is not how you get good at parenting a baby and e.g. learn to hold a baby as an adult, many years later, when you're much stronger and bigger.
children at play in general learn things that are either
1) anti-rational memes, which may have a large effect later but are not useful
2) rational ideas which help them with problems they have now or in the near future
they don't do rational learning about the distant future b/c that kinda super early learning is not rational or efficient and doesn't make sense to do. learning should be more just-in-time style for many reasons, including some of the same ones car manufacturers do just-in-time stuff.
> this is what conventional parents say to children.
why are you here? you are hostile. what do you think you're going to accomplish?
> offer child a wider variety of things based on what you think she as an individual wants (rather than going by her group memberships such as "female").
thoughts:
i think you are confused about what being an individual as everyone else is. everyone's life experience is individual but the people's specific preferences are not a manifestation of their individuality.
people's preferences are due to memes and all memes group themselves. if the parent doesn't go by her group membership as female, you'll end fitting her in another group. the gay group. the trans group. there is not belonging to groups and being a pure independent individual.
the child might want to be girly. and you consider that dumb and harmful and anti-individualist. so by offering those ideas wouldn't you be anti-individualist in your own judgement and encouraging her to dismiss individualism?
if the child doesn't like maths and that is a mistake, how do you go about persuading the child?
disagreeing with you does not constitute confusion.
people are not simply controlled by memes. people also make choices and think for themselves. especially children.
you sound like you are very very hostile to Objectivism. do you understand that you are contradicting Objectivism? do you have a refutation of Objectivism to offer?
> if you want to learn about this topic, you should start by giving some indication of what you think you know about TCS so far, and ask some questions to help make progress. discuss it in the context of trying to learn instead of the context of being offended by criticism of parents and wanting to attack it (which is not a recipe for understanding).
i'm not offended of criticism of parents. i wonder why you made this conclusion.
your bald assertion about yourself is an appeal to authority, not an argument.
> have you considered that one can help people in ways that are actually helpful and good? that that's possible? that there's some better things to do that leave your kid figure life out on their own?
i didn't suggest that. leaving your kid figuring life out in some circumstances could lead them to get themselves killed or it would be unfair as they just can't do things for themselves.
what would this help look like?
the child in your story figured out by herself what to do about the doll when she wanted to ride the trike. this was a good thing. yet you see the child as neglected by her parent.
i agree the parent is bad not to care, i just don't think what you suggest as care is helpful.
i do not think the parent would actually be helping by interfering in her problem solving. for instance, the parent could have offered to hold the doll. the child could likely like that, thus throwing away an opportunity to solve a problem and probably learning that it's ok to depend on others to take care of the things you want to be taken care of. next time the problem happens, where carrying a doll conflicts with other play, she would remember mom can hold the doll. she will become more dependent instead of more independent.
but it's not just the case that only offering bad ideas will cause the problem. my idea is that just by offering to help a person you pass on an indirect message they are incompetent to solve their own problems.
until it was an impossibility to return to my parents, i didn't care to keep a job. as an adult. you don't value your life if you can lean on others to value it for you. nobody cares to help me anymore and that's been a good thing.
you're starting in the middle of a complex discussion. you may have history doing this and think it works. it can sorta work when people have enough in common. it generally works badly when there's major differences which result in assumed expectations being violated.
why are you here? what do you hope to gain? how did you find this site?
what would you consider a successful or unsuccessful interaction?
will you still be here tomorrow? next week? next month? next year? do you know? any idea? what does it depend on? is there much chance you go to sleep and then disappear for a while or forever? are you aware that's common? if you think you won't do it, why not? what's different?
what motivates you to be here?
what relevant background do you have and lack?
do you have any major inspirations you take a lot from that i may already be familiar with?
what points of agreement do we have that i can reference without having to explain a tangent?
do you think you have a philosophical system? do you think your beliefs are organized? or do you have a bunch of disconnected, individual arguments? by what methods do you judge ideas?
you seem to have an issue with TCS. have you considered where a good place to begin is? e.g. you could summarize some key points of TCS, check that there's agreement with your understanding, then offer some big picture criticism as well as some indication of what you believe instead and why. rather than making claims about some particulars that seem to misunderstand TCS and without indicating where you're coming from or what you know, etc.
you seem to contradict Objectivism heavily. you haven't indicated if you've even heard of it.
what sort of replies do you want? you haven't indicated what you do and don't care about.
do we have prior discussion history? if we do and you tell me then i could take that into account. if you don't tell me then it could easily waste a lot of time as things get repeated and you get frustrated that my comments don't connect with what you want because i don't know where you're coming from.
> you sound like you are very very hostile to Objectivism. do you understand that you are contradicting Objectivism? do you have a refutation of Objectivism to offer?
i wasn't thinking of objectivism. the idea that people's preferences are a manifestation of their individual self is not exclusive to objectivism. leftists talk about it a lot. i was thinking that it's a mistake to give an identity to your preferences and call it "self". or to value them more because they come from your mind than from others.
but now you mention it, no, i am not hostile to oism. objectivism helped me a lot but so did socialism. i'm not going to be hostile to anything i personally benefited from.
i see problems with objectivism.
one problem of objectivism is as ayn rand said herself of pre-oism ideas: a moral code that nobody is good enough to practice.
> it's bizarre that you think someone who "identifies as a boy" was not taught gender roles. being a boy is a gender role. you seem to take these parents you don't like, who are doing various bad things, and then for some reason give them *credit* as if they weren't teaching gender roles, even while you plainly state that they did.
why do you think that choosing to be a boy means her parents taught her gender roles? because she was pressured to identify with a gender?
do you identify as male or is it more a matter of fact that your sex is male?
what i saw was that the mother was not forcing her daughter to fit female gender roles. i was giving credit for that. the girl was playing happily in the park and learning to climb and the mother actively encouraged this. the girl and getting wet and dirty and not preoccupied with dolls.
now i think back, i remember the father being more traditional. so that's where the pressure for the girl to believe she wasn't a real girl due to her behaviour might have come from. and the parents separated and the father left, so that might have caused the problem.
> how to live in an irrational society is an interesting question and part of the answer, from Rand, is to pronounce moral judgement.
i think few people are in a position to pronounce judgement. and it doesn't seem very useful to solve your own life problems. i'd lose my job if i passed judgement on people.
> another part is to understand what's going on. yet in response to this you complain and think any failure to compromise, even in a discussion, is immediately bad.
i don't remember suggesting compromise? maybe if you quoted what i actually said and where your thoughts fit it would be more helpful.
> maybe there are some better alternatives besides making every single compromise you have in mind, but you don't have an attitude of being glad to know about problems and causes, and looking for these alternatives. instead you complain that some other people, who are not philosophers, and are left wing, did something you regard as bad. why do you do that? because you're more interesting in taking sides, and fighting for your side, than solving problems.
i am not interested in taking sides. i can't take sides even if i wanted. i am not trying to fight for any of the ideas here, they are just thoughts i am not even attached to but i can't talk to other people with.
> play is educational in general but that doesn't mean that particular play educates you about particular things. playing with a doll when you're 3 is not how you get good at parenting a baby and e.g. learn to hold a baby as an adult, many years later, when you're much stronger and bigger.
I don't think anyone thinks that playing with a baby doll teaches children to take care of a real baby.
> children at play in general learn things that are either
>
> 1) anti-rational memes, which may have a large effect later but are not useful
What anti-rational memes?
> 2) rational ideas which help them with problems they have now or in the near future
What rational ideas do children learn from imaginative play or role play?
> they don't do rational learning about the distant future b/c that kinda super early learning is not rational or efficient and doesn't make sense to do. learning should be more just-in-time style for many reasons, including some of the same ones car manufacturers do just-in-time stuff.
i don't know what you mean by just-in-time. do you mean learning when you need it or when you want it? how would you even want to learn something if you didn't already know something about it? doesn't what you like and want to learn depends on the knowledge you already have?
why would learning other knowledge be different than learning english, for instance? if you learn as a baby you learn it optimally. as a second language not so much. it's more difficult and you are left with an accent.
>>> i don't think you'll understand this.
>>
>> this is what conventional parents say to children.
>
> why are you here? you are hostile. what do you think you're going to accomplish?
in what way is catching you doing something we both agree to be a flaw, hostile? shouldn't you should want to know if you fail to live up to your own principles?
>> i'm not offended of criticism of parents. i wonder why you made this conclusion.
>
> your bald assertion about yourself is an appeal to authority, not an argument.
there was no argument on your part either. i was asking how you reached the conclusion that i was offended with criticism of parents. i know what i was thinking and it wasn't "how dare he criticize parents".
I think you should reply to:
http://curi.us/comments/show/6679
if you disagree, could you explain?
i think we should make some effort to organize the discussion, get some perspective and context, set expectations, and decide where to focus our efforts rather than just jumping in and arguing a bunch of details. (which we already tried a bit of, which is fine, and i see lots of signs some things are going wrong, so let's adjust course a bit now.)
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> Girls do not leave in a world without gender roles and without social pressure to conform to those.
defending teaching gender roles b/c ppl are under pressure to conform is a compromise. having a job that gets in the way of passing judgement is a compromise too.
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this may help you too:
http://fallibleideas.com/lulie/overreach
i made a screencast showing my writing blog comments replies + verbal commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4u3kfmVmO4
>> Girls do not leave in a world without gender roles and without social pressure to conform to those.
>
> defending teaching gender roles b/c ppl are under pressure to conform is a compromise.
ok, i see what you mean now.
i still think it's better to follow tradition than teach children to belong to deviant subcultures that end creating less interesting problems.
traditional gender roles already allow women to be citizens with the same rights as men. they don't have to marry or have children. there are gender specific appearance and behaviour standards involved that women have to know and follow if they want to make progress with their lives. if women have difficulty presenting themselves a certain way, say, wearing make up well, it's often because their parents were adverse to traditional gender roles and didn't teach them. then they might struggle and end thinking they'd do a better job being the other gender or agender or any of the other deviations that puts them in the LGBT subculture. it seems so much more work to try to appear to be the other gender or to persuade people they are genderless than just conform.
it's impossible to not have a gender identity in our culture even if it's "genderless" or "genderfluid" or any other tag they made up, it's making an issue out of gender. it's making more of an issue. LGBT ideas are more irrational than traditional gender roles. not traditional gender roles would mean not being pushed into that category.
there's consequences of not fitting in traditional gender roles. those consequences are different problems that are worse than traditional problems.
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> having a job that gets in the way of passing judgement is a compromise too.
i think you are wrong that everyone can get jobs where they don't have to compromise. many job contracts do not allow you to say what you think in public, you have no freedom of speech. if you offend your boss
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> this may help you too:
>
> http://fallibleideas.com/lulie/overreach
i'm aware i overreach in my approach to this discussion. but i can't stop thinking the way i do. i can't pretend i think like a person who can pick one small problem at a time because that's not the way my mind works.
you have a very organized mind and probably are very in control of your thinking because of your early chess education. other people's minds actually work very differently. most people's minds work like dreaming awake. they are just listening and perhaps talking back a little but they have no effective control over them.
i mentioned before i actually prefered to be more stupid and not think. being stuck midway is very painful. i realized that being stupid actually takes a lot of work. it might not seem like work for most people because they learned it from a very early age and their parents helped by not giving them a choice.
as life is concerned, most people become stuck with complex problems they cannot shoo away. i don't think they can just stop and start living life right and choosing small interesting problems they can manage when their life is already a disaster.
> i think you are wrong that everyone can get jobs where they don't have to compromise.
whether you have to compromise is a topic change from whether something is a compromise. recall that you wrote:
>>> i don't remember suggesting compromise?
so i answered that.
> if women have difficulty presenting themselves a certain way, say, wearing make up well, it's often because their parents were adverse to traditional gender roles and didn't teach them.
you say "teach" but it frequently requires lots of force and coercion, for years, to get children to conform.
but anyway:
http://curi.us/comments/show/6679
>> if women have difficulty presenting themselves a certain way, say, wearing make up well, it's often because their parents were adverse to traditional gender roles and didn't teach them.
>
> you say "teach" but it frequently requires lots of force and coercion, for years, to get children to conform.
i do not agree it always does. i think children often just want to do what their parents are doing. soon a girl learns she is a girl she will want to act like mum. you are imaging a child who is born a great thinker and then has to be broken by coercion. i think this idea contradicts evolution. i think knowing how to think well has to learned. like you and chess classes.
except me, my mum didn't do anything i thought interesting. lol. i didn't look up to her at all. so i might have suffered more coercion. some of girly stuff i think i just caught up upon.
my mother thought she was against the idea of "girl toys" and "boy toys" but she didn't try very hard. for instance, i never had toy guns, because violence. i also don't remember any action figures. i had toy cars and a train set but they weren't the awesome boys ones. i never had a racing track. having the chance to enter a boys room for me was a dream.
i remember once i thought a toy gun a kid had was cool because it worked like a real revolver. and my mother said guns are not cool because they are used to kill. although i understood her point, i was upset she vilified me and thought it was useful to say something i already knew. she also missed my point completely. what i was saying was that the toy was cool because it was well done, it had a mechanism, it wasn't just a dumb mold. i was thinking of the fun role play i could do with it.
i had a ball but not a good one and was not allowed out to play out. i broke a porcelain doll by playing with the ball at home and my mum made a fuss of it.
my mother went on how she had toy soldiers as a child and it was ok for girls to play with boy toys but she never got me any decent boy toys.
so she was acting on the theory girls should not play a certain way and not have certain toys even if she believed she believed the other theory.
> > you say "teach" but it **frequently** requires lots of force and coercion, for years, to get children to conform.
> i do not agree it **always** does.
(emphasis added)
ok. you didn't say always. but i don't even agree it requires frequent coercion. i think most children are happy to conform. they are not being coerced as newborns when they are taught gender roles because they do not have conflicting ideas in their minds yet.
i'm sad that you dismissed everything else said because of a little mistake.
this is what i say about hating to think. it's not rewarding. i'm not good enough to engage with you. not bad enough to engage with the rest of the world.
> i'm sad that you dismissed everything else said because of a little mistake.
you have no knowledge of what i did with the rest, and you are apparently dismissing this:
http://curi.us/comments/show/6679
> i think most children are happy to conform. they are not being coerced as newborns when they are taught gender roles because they do not have conflicting ideas in their minds yet.
then what's all the coercion for?
>> i think most children are happy to conform. they are not being coerced as newborns when they are taught gender roles because they do not have conflicting ideas in their minds yet.
>
> then what's all the coercion for?
do you mean gender role related coercion?
i don't think there is need for that much coercion except when the child happens to be interested in boy stuff. it doesn't happen that often for girls to want boy stuff. i am not sure why it happens. i think when it happens it's due to parents having mixed values. or maybe the child doesn't look up to the parent of their gender because they are not as interesting or nice. or there aren't many people their own gender in the family to emulate.
the effort put in having a child act the gender role expected of their sex starts very early and by then coercion is not required. it's how other people see the baby an how they talk to him and the environment they create around the baby that starts an identity for the baby.
i'm imagining one can create an environment for the baby where there would be no conflicting ideas, like "babyproofing". "genderproofing".