The Most Active Threads Since Friday

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "The Dad Privilege Checklist" and was posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a Substack article that was titled the same as thread. The author of the article posits that "Almost all fathers can slack off, confident in the knowledge that someone else will do the work for them" and then provides a list of ways that fathers are privileged relative to mothers. The original poster of the thread invites others to read the checklist and provide their reactions. One of the earliest reactions was to say, "It's an idiotic list." In contrast, just after that another poster stated that "My husband enjoys most of the privileges." My own reaction is that while the idea behind the Substack article has some validity, the actual article was not particularly well done. Frankly, some of the things listed were pure nonsense. It is true that ours is a traditionally patriarchal system that has provided significant privileges to men, especially fathers. But equally true is that for several generations, significant inroads have been made toward equality. Progress has been uneven and varies from family to family. As such, no such checklist is going to be universally applicable. Nevertheless, this was not a particularly good list. As one poster noted, "It's a crowd-sourced list of petty grievances and projections, most of which are unsupported by any real data or facts." On a list of this length — over 100 entries long — there are obviously going to be a few entries that fit specific relationships. In many cases, however, it is reasonable to ask if the items are true privileges, or rather the result of a division of labor. For instance, one poster — who is a father — wrote, "We divide and conquer. For example, I handle paperwork like school registration, health forms for camp, and paying tuition" but his wife "handles clothes, including laundry and buying clothes" and other duties. He says that they divide up tasks based on who has time and skills. The real failure of the article, I think, is that it almost guarantees that the forest will be missed for the trees. There are so many items of questionable validity that they tend to undermine the entire point of the post. I think a better approach would have simply been to point out that, more often than not, the mother is the default parent and responsible for all that entails. This results in natural privileges with regard to parenting for fathers that may or may not be offset by responsibilities in other areas. Just as the length of the list means that it includes several items for which many fathers take responsibility, it also includes "privileges" that ring true for many of the women responding. However, women who say that the list applies to their husbands come under fire not only from defensive men, but also from women who question why they made such a poor choice of a husband. This might be the ultimate privilege. A man can be lazy and incompetent, but his wife will be the one who is blamed.

The next most active thread was posted in the "Family Relationships" forum, though it is probably better suited for the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The thread is titled, "My marriage is going to break over the little things". The original poster says that she and her husband are on the same page with the major issues in their relationship such as how to parent, finances, and work/life balance. However, they tend to have a lot of minor disagreements over which her husband tends to double down rather than concede. After the minor disagreement develops into a larger argument, he may agree that he didn't go about things correctly, but the original poster wishes things didn't have to reach that point. The example she gives is that after eating pizza while watching television, her husband put his plate on the couch. The original poster was very upset about this and questioned why he didn't simply get up and put the dish in the sink that was just around the corner. He didn't accept that he had done anything wrong until the original poster brought it up again the next morning. The plate incident is obviously just an example meant to illustrate an ongoing problem, which one poster later described as "Death by a thousand cuts". But most of those responding chose to focus on that incident. Many posters thought the original poster was out of line in the way she described confronting her husband about the plate. They argued that her approach would understandably cause him to be defensive and that there were better ways for the original poster to handle it. Posters repeatedly emphasized the need to let the little stuff go. All humans have flaws and nitpicking over minor issues is not healthy or good for a relationship. Poster after poster suggested that the problem is not the original poster's husband, but rather the original poster herself. The original poster then clarified that this issue really is about her "doing 90% of the work at home" and then getting frustrated by a plate placed on the couch. This sort of ties in with the previous thread and the author of the Substack article discussed there should probably add "put a plate on the couch" to her dad privilege checklist. However, this causes the thread to diverge into different directions. Some posters still address the plate issue, discussing how the original poster can improve her communication and not let minor irritations bother her. Others focus on the larger issue, many times describing the original poster's husband as an additional child for whom the original poster must care. In this regard, posters are in two camps. One group advises the original poster about how to communicate with her husband so that he will be more cooperative. Others argue that this forces the original poster to essentially become her husband's mother, something they don't believe that it is necessary. These posters also argue for better communications, but just don't agree the original poster's husband needs to be treated like a child.

Next was a thread titled, "S/O - Is Biden TRYING to lose?" which was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster, apparently angered by a statement by President Joe Biden the previous day about campus protests, argues that Biden cannot win the electoral college without the youth vote but he is putting loyalty to Israel above everything. This she says, jeopardizes his reelection. She is frustrated that, as a woman, she risks losing many rights, all because of what she describes as a "senile stubborn old man". I am not going to bother reading this thread which is probably not worth the effort and, at any rate, is on a topic about which I have plenty of my own opinions. Feel free to skip if you are not interested in my blathering. The original poster has correctly identified a glaring weakness that Biden faces. His statement was meant to be take a middle position not unlike Trump's infamous "very fine people on both sides" comment. Biden supported the right of peaceful protest but also stressed the need for law and order when protests turn violent. Biden also objected to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian discrimination. The problem for Biden is that the voters to whom he needs to appeal have differing perceptions of the protests. The protesters and their supporters see the students protesting in a generally peaceful manner while being unreasonably threatened by those more powerful than them. In their view, members of Congress, large financial contributors to universities, and university administrators are all misrepresenting their protests and unnecessarily unleashing the police on them. In their view, the police, in turn, are the ones inciting violence with their heavy-handed tactics. The clearest case of this occurred at the University of California Los Angeles where a violent mob of pro-Israel aggressors attacked the student protesters, launching fireworks into the crowd, hitting, kicking and otherwise physically abusing them. The police stood by doing nothing for hours, at which point they arrested the student protesters. On the other hand are moderate Democrats, as well as Republicans, who — influenced by around the clock cable news coverage and many intentional misrepresentations — believe that the protests are broadly violent, anti-Semitic, and supportive of Hamas. This group favors cracking down on the protesters. I've quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" before so I won't do so again here, but the problem he highlights is at issue here. Moderates vastly prefer "order" to "justice". They may well support the student's goal of ending the war in Gaza, but they firmly believe that protesters should not be seen and should not be heard. Mind you this comes after months of praising former U.S. Representative and civil rights hero John Lewis for his support of "good trouble". Good trouble is fine in theory, but the reality of students sitting on the lawn is quite different — especially when portrayed in the mainstream media as a violent uprising. The result is a circle that Biden cannot square. He can chose "order" or he can choose "justice", but he can't, or at least refuses to, have both. My advice when faced with such a predicament is to act on your own values. This is a chance for Biden to show what truly drives him. Is he bothered more by disruptions on college campuses or the continued slaughter of Palestinians? 

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum. Titled, "FCPS HS Boundary", the original poster says that she is considering buying a house that is near the border between Lake Braddock Secondary School and Robinson Secondary School. The house is on the Lake Braddock side which she prefers because of its Advanced Placement program but is concerned that boundary changes could zone the house for Robinson which, in contrast, has an International Baccalaureate program. Therefore, the original poster wonders how often the boundaries are changed. This thread was started back in early March and has now reached 64 pages. Nine of those pages were added this weekend. If I understand correctly, and admittedly I may not, Fairfax County Public Schools basically never changes school boundaries except in exceptional circumstances involving only a couple of schools. As such, the original poster should have nothing to fear. Nevertheless, an inordinate number of posters in this forum are kept awake at night due to their concern that their school's boundary will be changed while they sleep. What instigated the rash of posts over the weekend appears to have been a newsletter written by School Board member Robin Lady saying that one of her three priorities is saving money by taking a "holistic view" of the boundary policy. Two separate posters posted the same excerpt within 8 minutes of each other. This provoked sort of a feeding frenzy of posters hypothesizing the worst possible outcome of a boundary policy change. Posters see everything from a desire for equity between schools to an effort to raise property values as driving the change. Almost every DCUM school forum has been riled up by boundary changes. But, I don't think I've seen any group of posters act as apocalyptic as the posters in this thread. One poster predicts "Hundreds of millions lost in property value". Mind you, what is being discussed is a boundary change policy, not actual boundary changes. Not only is this loaf not fully baked, a recipe has not even been agreed upon. Posters debate various proposals — mostly emanating completely from the posters' imaginations — and the nefarious motivations allegedly driving them. Another factor in this thread is an ongoing feud between two individuals who are longtime posters in the forum. If I cared about this dispute, which I don't, I might have made a better effort to understand it. But, as it is, I mostly know about this ongoing clash because of the dueling reports they submit. What I do know is that there is a poster who is a Langley High School booster and another poster who is a staunch McLean High School supporter. Both are routinely seeing monsters in their closets and blaming it on the other school. There is almost no thread that these posters are not capable of highjacking for their own battles and this one is no exception. In this case they accuse each other of elaborate triple bankshot theories in which redistricting of some distant area into another distant area is expected to have a domino effect that eventually does or does not impact McLean or Langley. It's all quite tedious really.