Wednesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "My wife is going to lose me" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that he is very close to leaving his wife because of a lack sex in their relationship. He says that he does his share of parenting and work around the house, is a supportive husband, and is in reasonably good shape, but doesn't feel like they are a real couple. Posts of this nature are pretty common in this forum and the men rarely get much sympathy. But, responses to this poster seemed especially unsupportive. Many posters told him to just leave and get it over with. Others suggested talking to his wife about it, even if that was just to give a warning that he was considering divorce. The thread is 13 pages long and I don't have time to read it all, but from looking through a few posts one thing I noticed is that responses are sort of all over the place. Some posters have suggestions for fixing things but many feel that there is no repairing the relationship. Some posters accuse him of having the wrong priorities and blame him for any problems. These topics always attract both posters who believe that sex is an obligation in a marriage and those who do not think it is something that should be expected. Posters representing both views makes appearances in this thread, but there is a big variety of opinions between these extremes.

Next was a thread posted in the "Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities" forum titled, "ADHD daughter making the entire family late in the morning and I cannot stop losing it on her". The original poster goes into great detail explaining how her six-year-old daughter constantly makes them late by getting distracted during her morning routine, requiring repeated reminders, and eventually, causing the frustrated parents to start yelling at her. The original poster says that they have tried everything to fix the problem and nothing works. Hence, she feels like a failure as a parent. The Special Needs forum is probably our most supportive forum and I constantly get positive feedback about it from parents who have found it helpful. Those responding in this thread seemed to be doing their best to offer solutions. Many offered advice based on their own similar experiences. One paradox that can affect many topics, but is particularly evident here is that when a poster provides too little detail about their situation, those responding don't have enough information to provide good advice or unknowingly suggest things that have already been tried or might not even apply. On the other hand, providing a lot of detail leads to nitpicking and hyper-focusing on one particular detail while missing the big picture. A little of both seems to happen in this thread. Generally though, there does seem to be a lot of good advice, along with some posts that are clunkers, so I hope the thread is helpful.

The third most active thread is one that I was dreading because it is a controversial topic. Titled, "The JK Rowling Podcast" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum, the thread — as the title suggests — is supposed to be about "The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling", a new podcast. I say "supposed to be" because it is mostly focused on criticizing transgender people. The original poster begins the thread by posing as an evenhanded listener of the podcast with no apparent agenda. When posters diverted to arguing about trans issues, the original poster even pleaded to stay focused on the podcast. Soon, however, the original poster joined in the anti-trans posts and, for most of the thread, the original poster was an increasingly strident critic of trans people. Much of the thread is based on arguing about whether or not "trans women are women". Ironically, that notion was originally introduced to the thread by an opponent of the idea who presented it as reflecting the thinking of trans supporters. A trans supporter argued that "Even cis-women aren’t all 'identical in all aspects'". Nevertheless, this was adopted as the pro-trans position against which posters vehemently argued. One poster would go on to use the words of a trans person to suggest that "Trans women are women" was indicative that the pro-trans movement is totalitarian. Meanwhile, trans supporters were continuing to argue that this did not reflect their thinking. The irony is that a discussion that began with arguments that Rowlings' critics did not understand the nuances of her position transformed into attacks by Rowlings' supporters provoked by their inability to understand the nuances of the pro-trans posters in the thread. I ended up locking this thread given that discussion of the podcast essentially ended on the second page and reading any additional pages would probably cause my blood pressure to increase to unsafe levels.

The last thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Private/Independent Schools" forum and titled, "Sidwell re-enrollment deposit snafu!". I'll be honest and say that this thread is virtually incomprehensible to me. The best case is that it reflects the result of experimentation with mind-altering drugs because if the thread demonstrates the reality of the Sidwell parenting community, things are pretty dismal over there. The best explanation of what the thread is about doesn't appear until page 12. Apparently, a request for an enrollment deposit increased the amount five-fold without warning. Most people paid it without issue, but some complained to the administration and the situation was rectified. At least one, however, started this thread on DCUM to demand accountability by the head of school. There seems to be a backstory about which I am unaware, especially at the beginning of the thread. Some posters admit that they are mostly trolling. They suggest that they know the identify of the original poster who seems to be someone with whom they have a bone to pick. Anyway, reading the thread gave me a headache. As I write this, there is an argument about whether one of the posters is or is not a snob and whether posters are being bullies or merely trolls. If people are paying big bucks in order to gain access to this circle of contacts, I am not sure they are getting their money's worth. Hopefully the education at the school is significantly better than the level of discourse in this thread.