DCUM Weblog

The most active thread since my last blog post continues to be the Gaza war thread which added over 1,600 new posts. The most active thread after that was one titled, "Fairfax County Double Murder" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Several months ago a thread on the same topic was among the most active threads about which I wrote. I eventually locked that thread after it degnerated into little more than lurid gossip. At the time, a poster asked whether a new thread could be created if or when there were additional news on the topic. I agreed that would be okay. But, when this thread was created on October 1st, it was not because of news updates, but rather by a poster asking whether there was anything new. There wasn't, so this thread lingered until this past Thursday when there was a surprise development. First, to review the facts. Nearly seven months ago, police were called to the home of Christine and Brendan Banfield in Reston, VA. Christine had been stabbed and Brendan told police that he had shot an unknown man who was later identified as Joseph Ryan. Also in the home were the family's nanny, Juliana Peres Magalhaes, and the Banfield's young daughter. Ryan was dead when police arrived and Christine later died at the hospital. Exactly what occurred has been a mystery with heated disputes about why Ryan was in the home. On Thursday, police revealed that Christine and Ryan knew each other prior to the event and they announced that they had arrested Peres Magalhaes and charged her with second degree murder in the death of Ryan. Nobody has been charged in Christine's death. The bombshell about Peres Magalhaes unleashed a flury of posts in the thread. Posters speculated about why Brendan had told the police that he had shot Ryan when it now appears that it was Peres Magalhaes. There is considerable speculation about the relationship between Brendan and Peres Magalhaes. According to news reports, Peres Magalhaes has been seen caring for the Banfield's child but it is "unclear whether she was still working in her capacity as an au pair". One poster produced a photo that he claimed came from Peres Magalhaes' Instagram account that showed Peres Magalhaes and Brendan looking quite cozy together in a restaurant. The caption on the photo suggested that the two were in a relationship. There is still no official word on why Ryan was in the home, leading to considerable comment and several theories. The murder mystery aspects of this combined with it being a local story — friends and neighbors of the Banfield's and Ryan have posted — has led to the thread having considerable interest.

The thread about the Gaza war continued as the most active thread yesterday with over 600 new posts. The thread about billionaires withholding funds to colleges that I've also previously discussed was the second most active. So, I'll start with the third most active thread which was titled, "People tell me being weird is a great thing, but I find it isolating" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. The original poster says that she hates being weird in the way that she thinks and the activities that she enjoys. Being weird has caused her lots of loneliness and she wonders if others can relate. I guess I just have to come out and say it. This thread is weird. The original poster absolutely, unconditionally, under no circumstances will explain what is weird about her. She does let on that she is "heavily obese", but that is hardly weird. As a result, it is very difficult for others to offer advice and it looks like the original poster eventually abandoned the thread altogether. Several posters also described themselves as weird, but in their cases they claimed to be normal or better than normal in their appearances. As such, they tended to attract normal people which was problematic for them because normal people can't relate to their weirdness. Some posters who are not outwardly weird even reported being rejected by groups of weirdos. This left them stranded in a world in which they are too weird for normal people but not weird enough for weird people. Eventually the thread was almost completely hijacked by a poster who is a woman, but much prefers to hang out with men. This is something she thinks is weird. This led to all kinds of debate about gender stereotypes and expectations for women. Then a weird thing happened when a poster announced that she was a "female farmer" which I don't actually find weird in the abstract, but I was surprised to find on a forum for "urban moms". But, I welcome the poster who provided one of the more elucidating responses. To further disabuse me of my notions of who frequents our website, a second poster immediately identified themself as also being a farmer. So, maybe I am the weird one. One poster attempted to politicize the discussion with a claim that the "Democratic left" celebrates "eccentricity" and being "offbeat". I have no objection to that assertion, but his claim that this is a bad thing was, frankly, weird. Conformity prevents change and, without change there cannot be progress. So, of course I celebrate those who are weird.

The thread about the Gaza war continued to lead as the most active thread yesterday with nearly 900 new posts. Another conflict which looks like it may continue forever — the selection of a new Speaker of the US House of Representatives — was the subject of the second most active. Moving to the third most active thread because I've already discussed those two takes us to sort of an oddball topic. Titled, "Montgomery County Council recognizes International Pronouns Day" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum, the original poster complained that while Virginia was seeing the benefits of Amazon's HQ2, the Montgomery County Council had passed a resolution recognizing International Pronouns Day, something the original poster considered to be a joke. One of those responding embedded a 16 minute video of the portion of the Council meeting dealing with this topic. The event consisted of Councilmember Kate Stewart introducing a group of supporters of the resolution, most of whom represented local organizations, and then speaking about why she considered the resolution to be important. In addition, Council President Evan Glass and Councilmember Kristin Mink spoke. A few of the supporters also spoke and then the Councilmembers read the resolution. The resolution was the first item on the agenda and from what can be seen on the video, most Councilmembers hadn't yet arrived and had little to no involvement with the resolution. I mention all of this because many of the responses complained about the Council wasting time on what those posters considered an unimportant issue. But, in fact, very little actual time was lost. Many of those responding appeared to be quite angry that the Council passed this resolution, some even threatened to move out of Montgomery County. One poster — who could probably benefit from a government class provided by Montgomery County Public Schools — declared this to be another reason to homeschool. The resolution, of course, has nothing to do with schools. Of course, local government entities pass all sorts of ceremonial resolutions of this type. For instance, the Montgomery County Council also recently recognized National Farmer’s Day and National Service Dog Month. These are simply easy ways to recognize issues of importance to members of the community. There is certainly something ironic about posters spending 9 pages complaining about what they believe to be a waste of time. Personally, I would be in favor of a resolution recognizing "National Make Conservatives' Heads Explode Day", but that may have already been held on September 12 when the Council presented a proclamation "Celebrating the Drag Story Hour and Participants".

The thread about the war in Gaza continues to lead as the most active thread with over 750 new posts yesterday. The next most active thread is somewhat related to that conflict. Titled, "Wealthy donors pull funding from from Harvard and U Penn for failure to denounce ‘antisemitism’" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread is about wealthy donors to universities pulling funding to the schools because the institutions have not been forceful enough in speaking out against anti-Semitism. There are a number of different issues that come up in the thread. The first, something that the original poster touched on, is whether universities even have a duty to comment on political topics. Several posters pointed out that schools have issued statements in regard to other issues and that being silent at this time would be seen as condoning anti-Semitism. But, this immediately led to disputes about whether actual anti-Semitism is involved in these cases. After the the Hamas attack on Israel, many supporters of Israel demanded unequivocal condemnations of Hamas. Because almost everyone expected massive retaliation by Israel that would result in significant numbers of Palestinian civilians being killed — something that is now coming to pass — many of those issuing statements combined denunciations of Hamas with expressions of concern about Gazans. In some places, including a few colleges, there were protests in support of Palestinians and, in some cases, even in solidarity with Hamas. Any or all of these actions were labeled as "anti-Semitic" by various parties. In response, others argued that even in the most extreme of these examples, the activities were anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish. This touches on a long-running debate about whether being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist is anti-Semitic. Another long-running debate is about free speech and the ramifications of being punished due to speech. Several posters saw the withdrawing of funding as anti-free speech actions while others disagreed, saying that free speech often comes with a cost. Many objected to what they perceived as wealthy Jews using their influence to control what is considered to be acceptable speech at universities. But, one of the examples highlighted by the original poster, Jon Huntsman Jr, is not Jewish. Moreover, the trope of rich Jews controlling society is itself anti-Semitic. Universities have been hotbeds of contention over the Israel-Arab conflict for some time and it is clear that pro-Palestinian viewpoints have made significant headway among students. Whether reactions such as these will influence this trend one way or another remains to be seen.

The two most active threads yesterday were ones that I've already discussed. The first continued to be thread about the Gaza war. The number of posts in that one dropped to less than 600 which is about half of what the thread had been seeing daily. The second thread was also in the political forum and is about the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. That was revived because there will be a vote today that could result in Jim Jordan becoming Speaker. Skipping those threads brings us to a thread titled, "Homecoming dresses are so short!" and posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum. Exactly a week ago I discussed a thread that I predicted was the kickoff of DCUM's annual "criticize how teen girls dress" season. The original poster (who, by the way is definitely not "judgy") continues that honored tradition by finding current homecoming dresses to be too short and "slutty looking". The thread immediately entered the predictable pattern of some posters agreeing with the original poster that girls are dressing like "street walkers" while other posters argue that teens always push the limits and that their parents didn't like the way they dressed either. But, then the thread turned to the suggestion that this all was a demonstration of internalized misogyny. As a poster pointed out, regardless of style changes, boys stay fully dressed while girls' attire becomes increasingly revealing. There was quite a bit of agreement with this notion, but then that discussion sort of got lost in a debate about whether criticizing how girls dress is "slut shaming" with the implication being that this was also misogynistic. Some parents described how they managed their daughter's fashion choices, in some cases requiring that biker shorts be worn underneath short dresses and in other cases helping to choose looser and longer outfits. There was also quite a bit of comment on a trend of which I was not aware in which girls wear sneakers with their dresses. One more big debate had on one side posters who argued that girls should either be taught or develop a sense of style. Rather than wearing what everyone else does, they should choose clothing that fits their style and body type and flatters them. The other side contended that girls don't need to do anything to please the first group, could wear whatever they wanted, and that the first group should leave them alone. Just as I was about to publish this post I received a fairly angry report demanding that I lock this thread because it was degrading high school girls. I decided to comply and, therefore, the thread is now locked.

The most active thread since my last blog post on Friday continues to be the Hamas-Israel war thread which added over 2,000 new posts. But, if there is one topic that can rival the Middle East in divisiveness, it is the British Royal Family. So, much to my chagrin, the second most active thread over the weekend was titled, "Do you think Kate Middleton is genuine" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. The complete text of the original post was simply "Or performative?", but those two words were sufficient to inspire what is already a 22 page thread. Obviously I am not going to read 22 pages about Kate Middleton or any other member of the British Royal Family. Moreover, whereas with Meghan Markle I might be able to conjure up an opinion or two, with the Princess of Wales I am drawing a complete blank. About the only thing I can say about this thread is that I don't belive a single post in it has been reported. That either means that posters are being exceptionally well-behaved or posters have given up reporting posts. Well, the previous sentence was true when I wrote it, but before I finished the other entries in today's post there was a report which included a request that I lock the thread. I don't know if I will do that at this point, but maybe things weren't as pleasant as I thought.

The Hamas-Israel thread continued to be the most active yesterday, but with only 600 some new posts. This is almost half of what we saw for the first few days, but still several times more than the next most active thread. I also wrote a Special Edition blog post based on my observations from moderating that thread. The next most active thread was titled, "MIL buying items on my baby registry for herself" and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum. The original poster says, as the title states, that her mother-in-law has been buying items that are on the original poster's baby registry but keeping them for herself. The original poster says that she has no plans to leave her baby with her mother-in-law for any length of time so she doesn't know the reason for these purchases. Posters assume that the mother-in-law is simply preparing for visits after the baby is born. The original poster clarified in a subsequent post that the mother-in-law is not marking the items as "complete" on the registry, so most of those responding don't think there is a problem. I didn't read very many of the posts in this thread because, frankly, the topic bored me. But, as best I can tell, this is a battle between those who think the original poster is being overly-sensitive and those convinced that this is a sign of a domineering mother-in-law. In the first group's view, the original poster is being ridiculous. According to them, it is not the original poster's business what her mother-in-law buys and, in any case, she can't predict what will happen after the baby is born and she might end up being happy that her in-laws' home is well-equipped for the baby. The second group thinks the mother-in-law is being controlling and will use the baby items as an excuse to demand more visits than the original poster prefers. The original poster was fairly diligent about identifying herself as the original poster in her replies through much of the thread. But, eventually she began to sock puppet a bit. It appears that the real issue here is that the original poster already has issues with her mother-in-law not respecting boundaries and, therefore, her buying baby items feeds that preexisting frustration. Personally, I can think of a hundred more important issues that commonly face new parents so I can't imagine giving this one a second's thought.

Since the first news of the Hamas attack on Israel Saturday morning, I have had to devote myself almost around the clock to moderating discussions of the conflict. I have seen supporters of Israel, especially those who are Jewish, suffer shock, horror, and then anger. This anger was first directed toward Hamas specifically and, occasionally, Palestinians more generally. But later the anger turned toward fellow Americans who, instead of joining in solidarity with Israelis and American Jews, demonstrated support for Palestinians. In some cases these groups simply opposed the expected Israeli retaliation that would most certainly result in the wide-scale killing of civilians in Gaza. In other cases, they went further and actually blamed Israel for the violence. Many could not even bring themselves to condemn the senseless attacks on Israeli civilians. I then saw another emotion come to the surface in many of the Jewish posters. That emotion was fear. Fear because Hamas had undertaken what was probably the single biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and people who might have been seen as allies were not only not there to provide support, but in some cases actively engaged in opposition. Not only were Jews not safe in Israel, but in America demonstrators took to the streets not to support the victims, but rather in favor of the perpetrators. Fear and anger were amplified by a sense of abandonment.

The most active thread yesterday continued to be the thread about the Hamas attack on Israel. But, for the first time the number of new posts was below 1,000, though still nearly 900. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, topics such as this tend to find their way into other forums. Such was the case with yesterday's second most active thread. That thread was titled, "Discussing the recent Israeli-Palestinian Conflict In Schools" and posted in the "DC Public and Public Charter Schools" forum. The original poster says that the topic of the Israel-Palestine conflict came up in her 6th grade child's class and, based on "talking points" with which her child came home, she wishes the topic had been skipped. She wants to know if teachers have free rein in discussing this topic or if there are guidelines. The dispute highlighted by this thread is basically how an event as horrific as the Hamas attack should be viewed. Speaking broadly and not just in the confines of this thread, some individuals argue that the attacks were so terrible that there can be no excusing them. Any attempt to add context or explain possible causes is seen as doing exactly that, even if that is not the intention. Again, broadly speaking, others, some of whom may acknowledge the atrocity of the attacks and some who won't, argue that context such as the conditions in Gaza are an important part of the conversation. In today's emotionally-charged environment, there is a real lack of listening and thoughtful discussion. Instead, there is a tendency for black and white thinking. A person who condemns the Hamas attack but doesn't express concern about Palestinian civilians in Gaza may be called a supporter of the genocide of Palestinians. Similarly, someone who suggests that Israeli policies toward Gaza might have created an environment conducive to violence will likely be condemned as a supporter of terrorism. Even those who try to be objective can not escape this trap. Objectivity itself, ironically, may be perceived as taking a side. For instance, discussing the history of Israeli violence against Palestinians will likely be viewed by many as false equivalency in a discussion of the Hamas attacks and pro-Palestinian. I dare anyone to attempt an "objective" explanation of how the Palestinians came to live in Gaza in the first place. Some will say they fled at the behest of Arab armies attacking Israel. Others will say they were forced into exile by Israeli forces. Another argument might be that they are forced to stay there by Arab countries to be used for political leverage. A few extreme voices might argue that there is really no such thing as a Palestinian in the first place. A teacher would have to spend nearly the entire class simply trying to be "objective" with regard to this one historic question and there would still be those who are critical of what was presented. Due to all of this, there are those who argue the topic shouldn't be addressed at all. But, leaving children ignorant is the exact opposite of what schools should do. Regardless of all of this, the thread itself turned into a political discussion and, therefore, I locked it.

The most active thread yesterday continued to be the Israel-Palestine thread that I discussed on Sunday. That thread added another 1,200 new posts. The most active thread after that one was titled, "Invited neighbor friends over" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that her family invited neighborhood friends who they hadn't seen in a while over for dinner and the couple showed up both wearing sweats. The original poster is not really upset but was a little annoyed that they didn't dress nicer. She asks what others think. This is obviously not the most important issue with which the world is dealing at the moment, but that doesn't stop posters from having fairly strong feelings about it. In fact, many of those responding seem to care a lot more about this than the original poster. A significant number of posters wouldn't be bothered by the neighbor's choice of clothing. A smaller number would be put off, though by how much varied from poster to poster. Some of these posters thought that coming to dinner in sweats reflected poorly on the neighbors and suggested a lack of class. On the other hand, a few posters opined that the original poster looked bad for being concerned. A lot of the discussion revolved around exactly what type of sweats the couple was wearing. I learned a new word, "athleisure" which apparently refers to sweats that cost a lot. At some price point it seems that sweats cease to be clothes for working out and become fashionable status symbols. However, the original poster clarified that the the neighbor's were not adorned in athleisurewear. This topic highlighted a host of supposed divisions. Whether these divisions were real or imagined is another story because a lot of them appeared to be based on inaccurate stereotypes. There seemed to be different opinions between young and old, or at least anyone expecting guests to dress up was assumed to be old. Similarly, some posters generalized about relationships between socio-economic status or political leanings and clothing choices. Few of these suggestions seemed to hold up. The thread also had the occasional hardliner such as a poster who would not accept a dinner invitation if she were required to "dress up", where by "dress up" meant wearing jeans.