June

The most active thread yesterday was again the Fairfax County Public Schools boundaries thread that I've already discussed. The most active thread after that one was titled, "Young Men are Becoming More Sexist - It's About Status", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster quotes from transcripts of a podcast discussion about attitudes toward women held by young men around the world. According to the discussion, young men are becoming more sexist than older men. This is somewhat of a contradiction because by most measures, young men are more supportive of women's equality, being more likely to support women pursuing any job or holding elected office. Young men are more likely to recognize that women have equal capabilities. But, according to the discussion, there is increased resentment towards women among younger men than among older men. This is attributed to young men's desire for status represented by such things as college education, purchasing a home, and having a pretty wife or girlfriend. Women have been out-performing men educationally for sometime now and the difficult housing market is obviously effecting young people, both male and female. But, it is the last factor, finding a girlfriend, with which young men struggle the most because greater financial and social independence among women has resulted in less pressure among them to find a mate. In short, women are now able to be more picky and young men resent them for it. Moreover, when those resentful young men turn to the Internet, they find welcoming communities eager to encourage and feed their resentment. Topics of this sort have been fairly common in the relationship forum and I have written about several such threads that were among the most active. While I would never argue that the discussions in the relationship forum reach Socratic Club levels, they are head and shoulders above the level of discourse displayed here. Not for the first time, I feel like the political forum is nearly useless. It is filled with automatons able to do little more than repeat the handful of talking points with which they have apparently been programmed. For instance, it is disappointing but not surprising to see that among the first responses were attempts to turn the discussion into one about trans people. It takes a bit to unpack how the thread got there, but what you need to understand is that to some DCUM posters, it is not traditional sexist ideas such as women being inferior to men, their place being in the home, and their duty being to bear children, that threatens women's rights. Rather, it is offering support to trans people that is the real threat, and apparently in these posters' view, a much bigger threat in fact. Similarly, plenty of posters were eager to assure readers that liberal men are actually the biggest misogynists, their primary infraction being that they are not honest about their misogyny as apparently are conservative men. It is always possible to take any issue and wedge it though the prism of your particular political views — and plenty of posters in this thread do exactly that — but doing so does not result in a very enlightening discussion. As such, this discussion is not particularly enlightening.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Would you rat out the neighbor’s kid?" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. The original poster says that their neighbors went out of town leaving their high school sophomore son at home alone. At 7:30 a,m., the boy's mother texted the original poster asking if a specific car was at their house. The car belongs to the son's girlfriend and the original poster says that the car was there when she left for the gym at 5 a.m. The original poster says that her husband doesn't think that they should tell the mother about the car but the original poster does. She asks what others would do. After reading this thread this morning, I locked it because I believe the entire scenario is made up. I was already suspicious that anyone would immediately remember at 7:30 a car they had seen at 5:00. In some situations, sure, but I was skeptical in this case. But, what sealed my suspicion was a follow-up post the original poster made saying that at 7:40 a.m. her husband — remember the one who didn't want to tell — had texted the neighbor a photo of her home showing the car still there. One poster incorrectly suggested that this had occurred prior to the original poster starting the thread. In fact, the thread was started at 7:37, so her husband would have sent the photo after the thread was started. But the timeline provided by the original poster claimed that the original text from the neighbor was at 7:35. So, we are to believe that the original poster received a text, had a discussion with her husband during which they disagreed, and sat down to post on DCUM all in the course of two minutes. The real kicker, however, is that after her initial post and prior to providing the timeline, the original poster responded several more times. All of those responses were at 7:40 or later. In other words, according to the original poster's timeline, she posted multiple times after her husband sent the photo but she did not bothered to tell anyone what her husband had done. This despite many posts criticizing him for not wanting to tell the truth. That simply doesn't seem believable to me. As for the responses from others, the most common reaction is that posters would not go out of their way to tell on the neighbor's son, but since the neighbor had asked a direct and specific question, they would answer honestly. Some posters would find creative ways of not revealing that the car had been there at 5:00, particularly if it was not there when they were asked. Others said that the would either not reply or reply several hours later claiming not to have seen the text. Some posters theorized that the girl's parents might be frantically trying to find her and, therefore, being honest about the car might be important for them. The original poster had described the boy simply as a "high school sophomore". This led to a debate about whether he was 15, as most kids are at the beginning of their sophomore year, or 16 as kids tend to be when they finish their sophomore year. This was particularly relevant regarding the girlfriend given that she would apparently be old enough to drive. I think this is one more hole in the original poster's made up story. Given how she described her relationship with the neighbors, I doubt she would know exactly what year in school the boy might be or his exact age.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "What I’m noticing from millennial high achieving moms" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster describes herself as "mid age millennial born in 1990" and notes several characteristics of high-achieving, elite-educated women as they start to have children. Essentially, few of the women stay at home, they commonly have three kids, they travel a lot, and post on social media about their great lives. I am very confused about the purpose of this thread. Clearly, the original poster's observations don't apply to all millennials and or even to all high-achieving millennial women. Basically, this is a list of observations of the original poster's circle of acquaintances and has little significance outside that group. So what is the point? My confusion was apparently shared by others because the responses in this thread were disjointed, fairly random, and often gave the impression of artificial intelligence bots attempting to converse with each other. Rather than a discussion, this thread is more like posters simply typing out whatever thought immediately entered their minds and hitting "submit". Based on these responses, the only thing that you can say for sure about high-achieving millennial moms is that you can't say anything for sure. Despite the sparcity of stay at home moms in the original poster's circle, other posters say such moms are more the rule than the exception among their acquaintances. Whereas the original poster sees three or more children as popular, others say that one or even no children are common. Posters can't even agree on whether or not high-achieving millennial moms run marathons. Depending on the poster, that is either common or rare. In some cases, posters appear to be attempting to create stereotypes where none exists. Instead of stereotypes, what results are a series of archetypes. There is the doctor or lawyer married to another doctor or lawyer with three kids whose social media is filled with photos of their latest skiing trip to the Swiss Alps such as the original poster might have described. But there is also the Ivy League grad who put her investment banking career on hold to start a family and has no interest in returning to work. Then there is the hard-charging careerist who is at the top of her game professionally, has a single child, and wouldn't stay home if you held a gun to her head. True that all three are high-achieving millennial women, but that is about all that they have in common. Many of the observations in this thread are derived from social media. As such, it is likely that what these posters are seeing about others is not actual reality, but simply what those individuals want others to see about them. They are, therefore, creating stereotypes based on carefully curated images rather than what really exits. So again I ask, what's the point?

After nearly a week of not writing blog posts I was not sure whether I should treat today as just another Monday and write about the most active threads over the weekend or discuss the most active threads during the entire period I skipped. I decided on the latter option. So today I will write about the most active threads for the past week. The most active thread during that period was the thread I've already discussed about Republican women. I'll skip that one today and move on to the next most active thread which was titled, "Princess of Wales to attend public event tomorrow" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread was created on Friday in expectation of an appearance on Saturday by Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, at the annual "Trooping the Colour" parade which celebrates the King's birthday. As I am sure everyone is aware, the Princess has been undergoing treated for cancer and has almost entirely been out of the public eye. This thread is already 42 pages long and that does not include at least 5 pages of inappropriate posts about the the Prince and Princess' children that I removed. Needless to say, I have not and will not read all of these posts. Threads about Kate Middleton all have a familiar pattern by now. Like this thread, they often involve a photo. In this case, the photo shows Kate standing in front of a tree and is said to have been taken earlier in the week. These photos are picked over as if they are the Zapruder film with one group of posters interested in her appearance, desparate to find any impact of her treatment, and another group eager to reveal the photo as fake. Kate fans generally find things to praise about the photos while her detractors pull any possible thread to weave whatever conspiracy theory currently has their attention. Not only is the pattern of the threads consistent, but so are the posters that show up to comment. There are, of course, the Kate fans who are unwilling to brook any criticism. But there are also the Kate haters who, purely from the point of analysis, are far more interesting. The number of ways in which they can find to dislike someone is simply astounding. Central to this thread is the topic of Kate's weight. She has always been thin but whether she has a healthy weight or is clearly suffering from an eating disorder is, let's say, subject to interpretation. Moreover, there is some expectation that cancer treatment might have caused further weight loss. The topic of Kate's weight is so touchy, especially with those posters convinced that she has an eating disorder, that posts complimenting her on her appearance were reported for allegedly encouraging eating disorders. I had to work my way through the logic of those reports but, as best I can tell, the theory is that describing a thin woman as "looking great" is providing support for disordered eating as a means to stay thin. Another aspect of the pattern these threads follow is that posters soon run out of substance on which to comment and begin discussing each other. Instead of, for instance, talking about Kate's outfit, posters will say, "Kate fans do such and such" while others discuss Kate haters who always say x and y. More time then gets spent on posters describing each other rather than discussing the actual topic of the thread. This normally leads to the thread being locked which probably soon to be the fate of this thread.

Quite a few of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I have already discussed. This seems to be an emerging trend as the same thing happened last week. But, that was not the case for the most active thread. Titled, "Help me understand Republican women in their 30s and 40s" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, not only had I not previously discussed the thread, I hadn't even read it. Now it is 40 pages long and there is no way that I will read the whole thing. The original poster states that she understood Bush-era Republicans, but "cannot wrap my mind around how any remotely educated woman today could consider herself a part of the Republican party." She asks others to explain the appeal of the Republican Party to women. Based on some of the responses I read in the thread, many posters — and perhaps the original poster as well — assume that the Republican Party's hostility toward reproductive rights and the former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's history of brutish behavior toward women (which includes being found liable of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll) would push women away from the party. Recent election results have demonstrated that there may be some truth in this theory, though the trend is clearly not universal. Based on the responses from Republican women in the thread, I don't think that Republican women are all that different than Republican men. The traditional view of Republicans is that they are motivated by interest in low taxes, business-friendly regulations, tough on crime measures, and a strong defense. That view is outdated, or if not outdated, those concerns taken a backseat to other priorities. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump recently wrote about Pew survey results regarding race, immigration, and gender. Bump's findings are consistent with the posts by Republican women in this thread. While crime remains a concern, they tend to be much more motivated by cultural issues. In each of the three topics, race, immigration, and gender, the Republican women feel that they are being disadvantaged by Democratic policies. Like White men, White women frequently believe that the interests of non-White people ar put above theirs. One of the first Republican women posters to respond in the thread cited the claim that White women have "privilege" as something she resents, implying that it hurts the employment opportunities for White women. Immigration in Republican thinking is often connected to crime, reminiscent of Trump's claim that Mexico was sending rapists and murderers to the US. But an equal concern seems to be the belief that Democrats are encouraging immigration in order to gain Democratic voters. Again, these women think that Democrats are putting the interests of others above theirs. The gender issue is more complicated. One would be inclined to think that the motivating issues around sex and gender would be reproductive rights, equality for women, and other women rights issues. But, again, Republican women see themselves as being disadvantaged in preference to others. In this case, transgender women who, these women believe, are men impinging on women's rights. In general, I think it is safe to say that Republican women, like Republican men, are primarily motivated by a series of issues which cause them to feel that their position in society is being eroded by trends towards diversity.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Does your community pool have a dress code?", and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster complains that college "girls" home for the summer are all wearing thong bikini bottoms which she doesn't think are suitable for a family venue. The topic of how girls and women dress is always a bit touchy. Prom season routinely provokes threads complaining about the cuts of dresses. But, exchange swimwear for dresses and the debate is amplified exponentially. The thread is full of posters like the original poster who have no issue with nearly naked swimmers if they are confined to adult beaches, but don't really want their children exposed to such things. However, based on the replies in the thread, their concern would probably be more appropriate for their husbands and sons. A number of male posters, extolling the benefits of dark sunglasses, are quite happy to see as much of the young females bodies as the girls choose to expose. Several of these posters asked the original poster to identify the location of her pool, presumably so that they could come visit. Other posters, likely female, argue that the original poster should mind her own business and let girls dress as they please. Moreover, probably futilely, these posters also argued that others should not "ogle" women's bodies and if those like the original poster don't like how others are dressed, they should close their eyes. While the original poster's criticism was directed at college students, other posters said the same dress habits extend to even younger girls. A few posters commented that older women, including formerly heavy moms who have discovered Ozempic, are also flaunting their bodies. This provoked some posters to argue that skimpy swimwear should be left to the young. But others took the opposite view and expressed happiness that women with less than perfect bodies can get away with bikinis. Some posters who enjoy wearing revealing swimwear explained that they have great bodies and like the way they look in such outfits. As for being ogled, one poster was clear that she didn't care if others looked at her or not. Posters also disagreed on the motives for wearing thongs and similar attire. Many assumed it was the current style and the girls were following the trend. But others argued that such clothing had a practical application of minimizing tan lines. An entirely different debate broke out over men, with some posters arguing that if women are going to wear thongs, men should adopt "banana hammocks". But other posters found the thought of this appalling. A few of the moms in the thread suggested that their daughters were so uncomfortable with this trend toward revealing outfits that it might have contributed the growth of those identifying as non-binary.