It’s pointless to point out hypocrisy.

Sad but true. A hypocrite will never see himself as hypocritical.

Point it out and what happens?

“That’s totally different!”

It’s a common climactic plot point in sitcoms when someone points out where someone is being hypocritical to get the response of “oh you’re right!” and he changes his ways or something. Yeah, like most other things that happen on TV, that’s bullshit. Never happens.

The people who whined that anyone ever said an unkind word about George W Bush will say the nastiest things about Barack Obama (and vice versa).

Those who fear and fight government monitoring will use even more intrusive monitoring methods on their children.

Someone who tells all his friends something he heard or believes about someone else will complain when that someone else tells all her friends something she heard or believes about him.

From an objective standpoint, seems hypocritical. Oh, but they have their reasons! Bush/Obama deserves to be called Hitler because of XYZ! Children aren’t people! My gossip is totally different from hers somehow!

Just keep telling yourself that.

It’s NOT “just like the Holocaust”!

A common rookie mistake. I’ve done it myself. It’s this need to justify your movement by comparing it to the Holocaust, to slavery, or whatever other Historical Bad Thing that everyone knows is Very Very Bad.

This needs to stop. Not only is the one who makes the comparison often ignorant of the thing they are comparing their issue to, not only can it make light of the compared atrocity, not only does it just piss people off more than anything else (and not in a way you’d want to piss them off), but it contributes nothing to the case and movement.

If the thing you’re trying to say is horrible is really as horrible as you believe (and it probably is, don’t get me wrong), then you can make that case in and of itself.

For example, at my car’s dealership, there are these Humane Society posters with what looks like a half-dog half-child figure, and the point is that people who are abusive to their pets are likely also abusive to their children. And that this is apparently a reason to save abused pets. Yeah, as a youth rights supporter, fuck you, Humane Society! Your point is saving pets, not children. Children are abused rampantly regardless of how the family dog is treated. In fact, the movement to protect abused animals started BEFORE there was ever one to protect abused children. I guarantee you there are active members of PETA who still go home and beat their children. Instead, you piggyback off a serious issue, that you erroneously assume everyone knows is bad (90% of parents hit their children, “everyone” my ass!), and use it to promote your unrelated one. And you don’t have to do this, because abuse of pets is plenty bad enough on its own and you can argue that easily without pretending saving pets means saving children.

And this careless messaging can cost supporters. Alex KP’s friend Jackie is a strong animals rights supporter and vegetarian and all, and she used to be a PETA member. Right up until they compared cattle slaughter to the Holocaust, that is. Is she opposed to cattle slaughter? Absolutely. But not in a “it’s just like my grandparents being in Auschwitz” sort of way.

Whoever came up with that message was probably thinking “well, anyone offended is just someone who doesn’t get the severity of cattle slaughter anyway”. Common assumption, but it’s more complicated than that. Again, I’m sure they have more reasons than “it’s just like the Holocaust” for opposing cattle slaughter. But none of those reasons is apparent when you make that comparison. Who sees a message like that and thinks “oh, really? I didn’t know that! I’ll sign up!”? And when explaining the comparison, you must be explaining what parallels you’re seeing, and in doing so listing off harsh treatment of cattle in slaughterhouses, in which case, you’re therefore stating your case and don’t need to be pretending Jews are cows! Not to mention that the meat-industry-is-genocide message is pointlessly offensive to those you’d need to convince (and thus wouldn’t feel inclined to seek you out to learn more), and they’d just walk away from you since you’d look crazy and stupid, and those who’d see it as apt already “get it” anyway so there’s no need.

Notice I said pointlessly offensive. Obviously, anyone seeking to make radical change is going to be offensive to many, or the change wouldn’t be needed in the first place. But there’s a difference in HOW to be offensive. When I tell you that your 17-year-old daughter is not your property and this offends you, good. You’re offended at my actual message, and any following arguments will actually be about that issue. If I tell you you’re treating your daughter just like plantation owners treated their slaves, then the offensiveness becomes about slavery and the ensuing argument drifts away from youth rights and becomes about the comparison itself and I’d just look dumb.

Another example is I saw a pro-Palestine Facebook page that kept posting images comparing Jews/Israelis to Nazis or otherwise portraying them as evil. And the ensuing comment thread after these images was their very pro-Palestine fans, many or most of them oppressed Palestinians themselves,… calling out the page for spreading hate and ridiculous comparisons. Because it not only detracts from the issue at hand, but spreading such hatred only adds fuel to the fire that perpetuates the Israel/Palestine problems. It is through massive hate and “othering” that crises like that happen, and many of that page’s fans knew this and were displeased. Gross anti-Israel statements like these may feel good to some people especially frustrated about what’s happening over there, but not a single Palestinian has ever been helped by this.

The RIGHT way to do it is ignore the explicit comparisons and stick to what makes you think they are comparable to begin with. Talk about the horror of abusing pets without acting like it’s the same as child abuse. Talk about the conditions of slaughterhouses without bringing up the Holocaust. Talk about the dangers of parental rights over their kids without bringing up slavery. Talk about the oppression of Palestinians without calling Israelis or Jews as a whole Nazis (or invoking South African apartheid comparisons). Even if the comparison seems 100% apt, it serves no purpose for your case and you really just end up derailing yourself into defending the comparison rather than sticking to your issue.

Stick to the issue itself, and its “rightful place” alongside other more-widely-known-to-be-bad will happen organically. Wild comparisons are not needed.

Yes, you ARE racist/sexist/ageist/homophobic/etc.

You just don’t know it.

Wait, what? What am I saying? If you were bigoted or prejudiced, wouldn’t you be aware of it? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

No. Doesn’t work that way. Most prejudices (except for ageism I guess, since that one is still socially acceptable) today are unknown to those who hold them. It’s unconscious.

The idea of white being the standard or male being the standard is so ingrained in our society, so laced in culture and attitudes and language, that it’d be a miracle not to adopt even the slightest unconscious belief that non-white and/or female is somehow “other”.

So don’t take offense to this. In fact, it’s through challenging these assumptions that we can seek out these harder to extinguish bugs of bigotry. Take it as a suggestion, not an insult. True, it is sometimes used as an insult, and that’s not right, nor is someone who points out a possible prejudice in you always necessarily right. In the long run, you do yourself a favor examining yourself for personal unseen prejudices, before it settles in too much.

Let’s take sexism for example. Let’s say you’re part of a group of people, mostly male, let’s say six guys for every one girl. And you generally like most of these people, but some of these people you find really goddamn annoying. You find them hostile or rude or demanding or ignorant. Oh, and the majority of these annoying people just happen to be girls. In a group where girls are outnumbered by guys six to one.

Okay, you’re probably thinking “it has nothing to do with them being girls, it’s because they are hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant!” Perhaps. But are you really saying that very few or none of the guys in this same group are equally hostile/rude/demanding/ignorant? Seems unlikely.

Or… are you more forgiving of guys when they exhibit these traits?

Or do you not notice it as much?

Or perhaps you have involuntarily different visceral reactions to an unhappy guy and an unhappy girl?

Perhaps, unconsciously, you believe when a guy is displeased and saying so, he has valid reasons, but when a girl does, it’s most likely just her own personal issues and she should shut up already?

Perhaps even the most sound arguments are to you only so sound and rational when said by a tenor, baritone, or bass, while unsound and crazy when by a soprano or alto?

Again, the key words are “involuntarily” and “unconsciously”. I’m not saying you’re thinking about it. The whole point is you aren’t thinking about it. And even self-identified feminists (of any gender) make this mistake all the time. I know I do. And why not? We live in a culture where we’re directly or indirectly taught that any time women complain or are unhappy, it’s never because we have an actual reason, but because we’re just being hysterical or are on our periods or want jewelry or babies or some other ridiculous dismissal, while men are the paragons of rational thought.

As for ageism, I wrote last year about how just because you’re a youth rights supporter doesn’t mean you can’t still be ageist. Even the most self-identified radical youth rights supporters I’ve known have been ageist in some way. In some cases, they rationalize it away, but in other cases, well, it’s to be expected, since we grew up in the same anti-youth society as everyone else and received all the same messages that the young are always inferior to their elders, that their elders are always right. As youth rights supporters, yeah, it’s our job to challenge these messages, but it’s silly to pretend we haven’t absorbed any of them and downright negligent to not challenge those that got through.

This day and age, sure, people “know” you’re not supposed to be a bigot. But it doesn’t take much to realize they don’t want to be bigots only because they don’t want to be called names, not so much because they care about not being intolerant of people because of their sex or skin color or age or whatever in and of itself. But whether or not you carry the label of a bigot or not, doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do and what you try not to do. You can call yourself a feminist (or at least a non-sexist or equalist or whatever) all you want, but when a group whose leadership is mostly male over time finally gets some female leadership, yet most or all of those female leaders just happen to be hostile or incompetent, and must be thrown out because they’re so hostile or incompetent, when over time the leaders you’ve had the most friction with just happen to be female despite the group being mostly male… yeah, I’m not buying it. Sorry.

Not an insult. Just work on that. Be aware of it.

But if you don’t… THEN you’re an asshole!

Your cultural traditions are NO excuse for harming others!

In the New York Times today was a piece by Nick Kristof about female genital cutting, and after glancing at Feministing’s mention of it, found a piece from two years ago in American Prospect, Rights Versus Rites.

Rights Versus Rites is about the debate about female genital cutting. That’s right. Debate. As in there’s a side that’s all for it. Seriously, go read it. It’s long and horrifying, but read it.

Okay, seeing as the practice is still going throughout Africa, despite little victories here and there where small areas decided “meh, let’s not do this anymore, seems harmful”, of course it has supporters and lots of them. How do they defend it? Why, with the well-worn: “It’s our culture!”

And there’s this bit from Rights Versus Rites:

For Ahmadu, the time came when she was a 22-year-old senior at George Washington University. When her family decided to bring her and her 8-year-old sister to be initiated in their ancestral village, she went willingly. It was a discombobulating, sometimes thrilling and physically agonizing experience, and one that she now values deeply. Ahmadu reminds us that what public-health officials call “harmful traditional practices” are in fact the very texture of life for many people, the rituals and norms that imbue existence with order and purpose. To talk to her is to begin to understand why a practice that causes so much pain nevertheless remains so entrenched and so zealously defended by its ostensible victims.

All the same, for Ahmadu circumcision was a choice, one she made as an adult. For the overwhelming majority of girls who undergo it that is not the case. Most only have such options when a cluster of deeply rooted values, beliefs, and hierarchies begin to deteriorate, a process that causes anguish and panic for some and offers the promise of liberation to others. The fact remains that, in general, the more alternatives girls have and the more exposure to the outside world, the less likely they are to opt for these old ways.

Ahmadu was quoted throughout this thing talking about how awesome FGC is and that the snotty Western world needs to butt out of their traditions… yet here it is revealed that she CHOSE to undergo it even though she was in a position to very easily escape it. Vast majority of those subjected to genital cuttings are children and have no real choice. Ahmadu was 22 and chose it. That’s an important difference.

Then look at the next part there. “The more exposure to the outside world, the less likely they are to opt for these old ways.” See, that’s the thing. While many of these girls may be okay with going through this, despite the torture and severe bodily destruction, as far as the only lives and culture they have ever known, this is pretty much the only way to do things. If they’ve been exposed only to their own little village, only to their own people, and know absolutely nothing else, that this and only this is the path to womanhood and honor and whatnot, that to not do it means shame and isolation, of course they’ll want it. Yet the girls who are aware that there are other traditions and values in the world, that not everyone does this and that there’s no real benefit to it, they aren’t so keen on the idea. With Ahmadu being an obvious exception.

What does that mean? It means that these apparently sacred cultural traditions seem to only survive through… keeping children ignorant and forcing violent rituals upon them whether they want it or not. Now, call me a privileged white American liberal preaching from my comfy ivory tower here, but if you can only keep your cultural traditions alive through the violent coercion of children, I’m not so sure it’s in the world’s best interest to keep that cultural tradition alive at all. Traditions are only healthy if everyone is participating willingly, knowledgeably, free of harm, and able to opt out without being socially destroyed. I’m not at all claiming that “western cultures” are in the clear here, HELL no! I’m not saying that worrying about one’s culture being phased out due to the influences of bigger ones isn’t a valid concern. But if you believe that maybe dropping or altereing ONE troublesome ritual seems to mean dropping it all, then what’s really so great and strong about your culture that makes it worth preserving? Want to hang onto it because it’s yours and therefore dear to you? Fine. But in that case… slice your OWN damn genitals if you want to so badly and leave those of others (your children count as others) alone!

Stop using sigmas as Es!

How often do we see this shit?

GRΣΣK

Oh, isn’t that clever? Instead of the letter E they use a sigma (Σ) which totally looks like an E and is totally Greek! LOLOLOL

Just one problem. The Greek letter sigma is not an E. It’s an S. So what is spelled up there is basically “Grssk”.

But hey, I can see your predicament. You want to pretend you’re all smart and making something look Greek in a very half-alpha-sigma-sigma’d way and it’s not like the Greek equivalent to the letter E looks all that much like the Roman E…

Oh wait, this is an epsilon: Ε

*facepalm*

But is that too identical to an E for you? Here’s a lowercase epsilon: ε

And here’s what you were trying to spell: Grεεk

True, by Greek phonetics and whatnot that still isn’t technically correct but at the very least you’re matching up the correct letters!

And speaking of Greek letter gripes, can people quit using a lowercase U when writing the metric denomination “micro”? For example, when they say 1ug (1 microgram)? It’s not a U. It’s supposed to be 1µg. That’s not a lowercase U. That’s a lowercase mu.

Seriously, I told this to this cow I’m friends with for some reason, and she agrees.

Babies aren’t sexy!

Happy Epiphany, everyone! It’s the official last day of the 2010 Christmas season, which in practice mostly just means that tomorrow it’s time to take down the decorations and for me to put my Santa Claus pin away until Thanksgiving. Always sad. But, contrary to my perhaps unsatisfactory posting frequency when it isn’t December, Sure, Why Not? is still here to celebrate the win, the fail, and the lulz.

Now let’s talk about the sexualization of infants…

Is anyone else really creeped out by ads on TV and elsewhere for skin products that seem to place a lot of emphasis on the smoothness of a baby’s skin? There’s that Johnson & Johnson baby oil ad that’s been on a few times where throughout the entire thing, some woman is downright fondling a little baby. It starts off with her kissing him on the lips, and throughout she also kisses his feet and rubs his baby-smooth stomach and arms and face. Why? Because he’s a little baby that makes his skin so smooth and fun to touch and rub! Oh joy!

Also creepy are ads for women’s skin products that at some point show a baby or toddler to point out that this cream will make your skin feel all smooth like theirs! Use this skin cream and your skin will be so soft you’ll feel like a baby! A sexy baby. Or a baby-like woman. Textural attractiveness means your features feeling like you spent most of the past year in a womb, be it the smooth baby skin as dictated by skin creams and moisturizers or soft baby hair as sung by Hall & Oates (though they at least think the eyes should be a woman’s).

Of course, the infantilization of women isn’t exactly new and is something feminists have been battling in several forms for about as long as there have been feminists!

Hey, I’m not saying anything against smooth skin. That’s fine. But when extolling how attractive and hot and sexy smooth soft skin and other features are, think you could, you know, leave the little kids out of that one? We really shouldn’t be encouraging people to find their features attractive and definitely not to feel them up!

And can we get rid of the phrase “smooth as a baby’s behind”? You’re talking about someone’s ass, for God’s sake!

*takes down lights, takes off pin*

Leave Twilight alone!

Jesus Christ, am I sick of everywhere I look, mostly online but also some offline, there’s the exact same stale attacks on the popular Stephenie Meyer book series “Twilight”. I used to read most of the Cheezburger sites on a daily basis, but stopped because it seemed like every damn thing on any of the sites was something whose entire humor seemed to be that it was mocking Twilight or Justin Bieber. Honestly, it’s fine once in a while, but all the damn time? There’s other shit in the world, you know!

It’s the same shit, too.

“Oh noes, Edward Cullen is a sparkling vampire? That’s an insult to real vampires! I’m offended!”

“Oh noes, why is Bella so attracted to Edward when he’s totally stalking her? That’s not a healthy relationship!”

“Haha, for Bella it’s a choice between a dead guy who’s 100 years older than her or a werewolf.”

“Oh, God, it’s sooo poorly written!”

I actually did read Twilight recently. It didn’t exactly blow me away, nor really keep me hooked, but I didn’t find it anywhere near deserving of the venom it gets all the time. True, I haven’t read the other three books yet, so we’ll see how I feel then.

I would say that if Twilight bothers you so much, you could, you know, read something else. But that’s a moot point because vast majority of the people who make these attacks have not read them but have merely heard about them from others and make their little complaints based entirely on that. Say what you will about the obnoxious Twilight fans, but at least they fucking READ what it is they are expressing an opinion on!

As for those complaining about how the Cullens aren’t “real” vampires, well, honestly, having actually read the book, they seem pretty vampire-like to me. In fact, a lot of the complaints about the book are things that are answered within it, such as why the Cullens don’t eat humans. But again, most of the people going on and on about how terrible Twilight is haven’t actually read it, so it’s not like they’d know.

And the people whining that Bella’s relationship with Edward is unhealthy? Yeah, I agree with that, but to be honest, in all the books I’ve read, all the movies I’ve seen, all the TV shows I’ve watched, and in very many real people I’ve known, I can’t say any of these fictional or real relationships have been 100% healthy. So if you’re worried about the influence this may have on young people reading this, I think you’re ignoring that this is far from the only look at relationships, real or fictional, that they see, that they have friends, family, and get other sorts of entertainment than this. And, again, if you’re going to criticize Bella and Edward’s relationship, actually read the damn book to see what the issues are.

As for it being poorly written, meh. No worse than many other books. Most other books. Hell, Harry Potter is technically poorly written but it’s still awesome. Plenty of books I’ve read that are “classics” have been at least as poorly written as Twilight. Break just as many “rules” of novel writing, have just as many things that aren’t clear, and make a few obvious factual errors. So what?

I mean, if you yourself read the books and are disgusted, okay, then you have room to actually talk. But if you haven’t, and you make fun of those who have, and have the nerve to act like you know everything that is wrong with them, again, don’t go blaming the Twilight fans for being “conformist” or whatever. They actually read it and made up their own minds. You’re basing your opinion on what others have told you to think and haven’t looked it up yourself. That doesn’t make you cool. Quite the opposite.

As for me, I’m no Twilight fan, whatever the definition for that may be. I thought the book was okay, but that I’ll at least check out the others later. And until then, I have yet to form an opinion of New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn. If I’m disgusted then, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. No sooner.

I get to choose my own religious identity. You do not.

You know how annoying it is for people to decide for you which religious (or any other for that matter) box you fit in? Especially when it is contrary to what you have explicitly stated?

Some people fit in the neat little box of Christian, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, whatever. But not everybody does, in fact I’m certain most people don’t. And that’s where people get confused.

While I don’t really consider myself non-Christian, lately I’ve been going by Secular Theist. When asked what that means, I say “I believe God exists but I don’t believe in doing anything about it.”

And people totally just nod and say that’s cool…

Oh, wait, no they don’t. They instead insist I’m really agnostic.

Fuck you, I’m not agnostic. I do believe God exists. Agnostics believe there’s no way to know and may or may not lean either way. I do know God exists.

Or then I get called a Deist. No, I’m not damn Deist, either. Deists believe God created the universe. I do not believe God had anything to do with that. So, no, not a Deist.

Then they get really confused that I don’t believe in a Creator. So that must mean I’m really an Atheist!

No! I’m not an Atheist. What did I just say? I DO believe in God. Just because I may agree with most atheists when it comes to religious fundamentalism run amok, such as the God in School entry a few days ago, doesn’t mean I’m an atheist myself. Just because my belief in God doesn’t take the same form as that of most other theists, doesn’t mean I’m not still a theist.

Or then I get the “oh, you just THINK you aren’t an atheist but you totally are, lulz!” Funny, if I were an atheist, wouldn’t I then be smart enough to be able to have a better idea of my own religious identity than YOU? That must mean I’m either a stupid atheist or an intelligent theist. Can that idea sink into your mind? LOL PARADOX!

Or can you try the idea of not assigning useless labels to people based on what specific ideologies they may have? Or is that too hard?

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” is really really true!

Alright, everyone, time for a little life advice from the Fortress!

A year ago yesterday, I was walking around my neighborhood, when I passed a man walking his small white dog, when for no reason the stupid dog bit me on the back of my thigh. Ouch! Man didn’t seem to give a shit, and I forgot to get his name or info. So, as I mentioned briefly in last year’s 100 Days of Summer recap, I spent the following week in absolute panic that the dog had given me rabies or something. Yeah, I know, stupid thing to be panicked about, despite everyone and all information I looked up essentially telling me how there was like no chance. Only got out of the panic a week later when I saw the dog being walked again (rabid dogs are dead within a couple of days of symptoms, the only time they can spread it, so this dog had to of course be alright). Didn’t snap out of the panic right away. It took me another couple days to slowly come down from it.

And that week was seriously miserable. Regardless of it being for a stupid reason, I was still panicked, still absolutely filled with fear. And let me tell you something. Fear seriously fucks you UP. You can’t think. You lose your marbles. No amount of logical reasoning showing you not to be scared will snap you out of it. Pretty much just has to go away on its own after a while. Anything I had been thinking about or planning up until that asshole little dog bit me had gone out of my mind. Pretty much all I could think about was this dog bite and my irrational fear of infection.

And that’s why fear itself is a worthwhile thing to be afraid of! I sometimes find there are events or possible events in the future that I think “oh, wow, I’m going to be soooo scared!” For example, if I ever get pregnant. Pregnancy is pretty goddamn scary. Aside from all the crazy shit involved with it even when it’s perfectly normal, if I’m ever pregnant, I would be soooooo terrified! Scared waiting to find out if pregnant. Scared during labor. Scared waiting for labor at any moment. And then of course the most terrifying thing of all for which pregnancy is just the opening, parenthood! Ack!

So I would say, well, don’t be scared, but it can’t be helped. That’s another reason to fear it, since it’s hard to avoid. Education may help, in that fear preys on ignorance, since not knowing what to do in a given situation only increases the fear, while knowing what to do keeps it somewhat at bay, usually.

And your brain is on your side anyway. It gets bored with fear after a while, provided the fear brings nothing new to be fearful about, and logical reasoning grows back. So while you can’t avoid being fearful, because, well, shit happens, you can at least be ready for it and knock it out quickly. Or at least manage until it passes.

Happy Fifty-Fifty!

This has been Day 50 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

My dad is an asshole and so is yours.

Alright, maaaybe there are some who aren’t assholes, but that’s a pretty big leap of faith.

I’ve made a total of three anti-Mother’s Day entries yet no anti-Father’s Day ones. The main reason for it has been laziness, that when it rolled around I never got around to getting an entry put together. One might think it’s because I hate Mother’s Day more, but that’s not the case at all.

There’s an important difference between the days, and therefore in my view of them. I mentioned Mother’s Day has this idea that it is still 1955, that motherhood consists entirely of endless housework and being annoyingly overemotional, and that we should be celebrating this idea. That it’s mom who deals with every little thing about the kids and knows everything about them.

Father’s Day, and the traditional view of fatherhood, however, goes totally a different direction. Dads aren’t supposed to be involved with or to know anything about their kids at all. What’s their job? Grilling steaks. Maybe fixing cars. Oh, and if you’re a boy, teaching you to shave.

In my experience, yeah, dad was the one who did the grilling and the car stuff. But actual interaction with him has pretty much always ever been superficial, mostly quoting The Simpsons or comiserating about the Redskins. Beyond that, well, I grew up terrified of my dad. He had a major temper and drank all the damn time. He’s still like that. He always insulted us and had no real interest in anything about us. In general, he’s a spineless weakling when it comes to dealing with people, and as such gets walked on by everyone, never sticks up for himself, and sure enough, my sister and I had to suffer for it, since, well, that’s what happens when you’re unfortunate enough to be the ones someone like that actually does have authority over.

I could go on, but I don’t want to write it any more than you want to read it. This is far from the sort of stuff that I’d want to sit here today and act like is so wonderful. Yet at the same time, what I went through was fairly mild compared to very very many. I know a girl who was treated brutally by her dad. She’s well into her 20’s now, and what’s her relationship with her dad? Does she speak to him? Uh, yes, yes she does. She sees him. They do stuff. As if there was never anything bad beforehand at all. And that’s even with her knowing full well she was abused, as opposed to the sickening many who refuse to see what their parents did to them as abusive at all.

While obviously I don’t know what all she did to maybe resolve these issues, I find the readiness to forgive parents for mistreatment to be very bothersome. Is there anybody else who could physically assault you for nearly two decades of your life, that you would readily forgive and decide that having a good relationship with them is more important than acknowledging that they had no respect for your bodily autonomy? That it’s always excused with “that’s how they were taught children were raised”. Which is the lamest, stupidest fucking excuse ever.

And that’s another little traditional stereotypical thing about dads. That when the kids are misbehaving (which usually just means having more fun than adults are comfortable with), it’s the dads that must come in with the force, the coercion, the booming yelling. Because apparently, part of being a man is attacking people a quarter of your size. And that, along with grilling some chicken, changing the oil, and building a bookcase, is what Father’s Day is all about celebrating.

Now for the dads who don’t follow that stereotype, who actually are involved with the kids on a more real personal level, have patience, have trust, hey, that’s good. You aren’t the aforementioned asshole dads.

Yet Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day, doesn’t really care whether any specific parents have truly earned that title, whether they’ve used that position for good or evil. Just celebrates all of them. Which, honestly, is irresponsible and dangerous. Don’t tell me I have to honor my dad today. If you want to honor your own dad, that’s your business. But my dad’s an asshole, I’m not calling or visiting him today, and I’m certainly not interested in your judgmental gasping at this, thinking this makes me a bad person. Fuck him and fuck you too.

This has been Day 28 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.