I guess this post is going to end up being a bit more of the same theme as the last post. The traffic has been quite busy and I want to contrast a couple of comments and posts from various places and then look at what it means.

The first example is taken from Dalrock, where Lori says.

God the men that read this site are f_cked up. Do any of you like women? I am a single mom with two kids who works, has her own business from home, and a PhD. Women don’t want to be married nor stay married because of the BS expressed on this site. Most women just want to be left alone with their kids. I can tell you I am happy being single. I talk to so many women whose husbands are into porn or have cheated or who boss them around. I am Christian and the God I know wouldn’t want me putting up with that cr_p. Look I am making money but I am not rich, but I will take being poor any day over the BS you all are spewing. And you call yourselves Christians? God help us. Did some guy on here encourage married women to grease the rope to hang single mothers? Is this a witch hunt? Really f_cked up

Oh joy. This is not an atypical example of the kind of shaming language that occurs in the comments section. Now, the next commentator fisked her over good and proper. Dalrock is part of the Christian manosphere and generally this kind of thing is not welcome. Someone then nicely asked her what her PhD is in… which is a good question because I know some prize dunces who have that degree (and a US PhD is roughly equivalent to a Kiwi Master’s degree)

Let’s consider for a second her attitude. What Lori has done is go trolling. She has come into an overtly male site, one which tolerates slang and blunt language, and shat all over it.  She is demanding others warp reality to her wants.

This drives people away. Her post leaks hate. It is not the way to influence people.

When I was a kid, and I sulked, my Mum used to say that if the wind changed (quoting Mary Poppins) my face would stay like that. If you are habitually bitter, it shows.

Contrast her failure with this example from Whaleoil… of a principal talking to Maori (indigenous) people. For the non kiwis, whanau is Maori for extended family and it has become a loan word in NZ English, and John Campbell is a member of the establishment press who is campaigning for schools to feed all kids.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation one of the whanau asked me when we were getting ‘breakfasts’ at school.  To this I replied that I had no intention of starting up a ‘breakfast’ regime at our school. I was asked, “Are we promoting food in schools or not?”  My reply, “John Campbell might be promoting this but I am not”.  They asked why.  I explained that when I was asked about my (our) school by outsiders, one of the ways I most often respond is by saying I am proud of the fact that our whanau (families) all care about their kids.  Some are probably very poor by comparison to others but they still put their children first.  Our kids (with the occasional exception) all come to schoolwith lunch.  They are all appropriately clothed.  The vast majority pay their way by paying for trips and stationery and the like.  I don’t often pry into what children have for breakfast but, again, the indication is that food is provided.  Some homes expect their child to get breakfast for themselves and you might argue that the parents could/should provide some more structure for 7 or 8 year olds – but who am I to say they are wrong to expect kids to get their own breakfast.  My pre-schooler gets her own breakfast if she wakes earlier than Mum or Dad.  As far as I am aware, the children at our school are not routinely neglected.  (Note: I am not saying that they are all in happy nurturing homes – but none are starving).

I looked directly at the whanau and said, “That is you guys I am talking about!  You care about your kids.  You feed your kids.  Your kids come to school with lunch.  It is your responsibility to feed your kids and you do it.  So why would I change that?”

This, to my surprise, met with complete agreement.  ”Yeah, that’s right,” they said (almost in unison), “we look after our kids”.

One of the whanau then told me how on the occasions she has taken her son to Pac ‘n’ Save he would refuse to nominate what he wanted for lunch because he said that if he took lunch to school the eating time would cut into his playing time. So he preferred to wait untill after school to eat.

Another told me that there was always food in the cupboard, and if there wasn’t her boy knew that he could “go to Aunty’s next door for a feed any time”.

“So are you telling me that you have no real problem having food in the house?”

“Yeah, we always have something,” came the reply.

“So why would the school provide breakfast?  We are here to teach your kids – not to feed them”.

What the principal did was start with some facts. The children at the school came fed. They were appropriately dressed. They had school lunches. The families cared. He knew the parents he was talking about cared and their kids ate.

And he wanted them to continue to do that. Because he started by saying what the families were doing well he was able to get these parents to see that a certain elite plonker on the TV was not going to give a suitable solution for a rural school.

——

As I am thinking about the two passages I’m recalling how I teach about personality and personality disorders. I have had a reasonable psycho-dynamic training, but I am no analyst. However, i work in an acute ward and these issues occur.

I’ve found that if I start with universal ideas such as understanding that your beloved is not perfect, that it takes time to grieve, and then move to the behaviours that the students are seeing on the ward — I find myself talking about how under stress people may grossly distort reality and accuse others, act in severely hurtful and damaging ways, and generally cause distress.  Most people do not like to be around that level of emotional turmoil.  And this leads to people turning away, losing trust, closing doors.

(A lot of therapy is about holding those options open in a circumscribed setting that is time limited and does not involve meeting outside of therapy. And most therapists can stand that turmoil given that kind of structure)

—–

Back to the situations.

Folks, we have a problem. We have a series of societal pressures that both put much greater demands of parents and spouses than existed 50 or 100 years ago (when a woman could go to a tea room or a man to the pub and find companionship and a good kvetch circle), and we have an idea that the state will be able to just take over and provide when families crumble under the burden of (state) mandated activities and modes of discipline.

There is an ongoing push-back against this. It includes young men not engaging with the system because they have seen it damage their older brothers, uncles and fathers. It includes A bunch of Catholic and Reformed people (both men and women) are using theological and exegetical tools to both analyse the effects of these pressures on Christian Families and to find strategies to combat them. And a bunch of older men are not re engaging with the dating and romantic scene after being divorced and dumped by their spouse and losing access to their children.

The response from those who benefit from this is more like Lori’x than the principal. They use shaming language. (Particularly within the church, where they use pious shaming language). And my response now… varies.

Most days it is … Meh. Other days it is wrath.

But it is not engaging in a discussion.

The Christian feminized person, the Churchian… has to come to the party with facts. there needs to be logic. There needs to be engagement. Or… they will find us walking away, finding that remnant that live according to the teachings of the apostles and not according to the wishes of the politically correct or the state, and disengaged from their programmes.

Because life is not therapy. If you stick with an attitude consistently, you will end up reaping the consequences of that attitude.