Promoting Modesty in Toddlers

This is not sexy. I feel dirty even pointing that out.

If you spend any amount of time in fundyland, even just as an internet tourist, you know how obsessed fundys of every religion are with the female body and how it should be covered. There is no end to it. (Even the Catholics are back to arguing over head coverings in church- for women, of course.) And here is the natural progression of that obsession: concern over whether or not toddler girls are sufficiently modest.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with small children knows two things: 1) Toddlers find no shame in the naked human form, and 2) most children prefer to be naked. I can't say I blame them, to be honest. Most clothing is constrictive and itchy to me*, it's probably at least as uncomfortable for small children with their sensitive skin and inability to communicate effectively.

Toddlers are not sexual in any way, shape or form. Toddlers masturbate because it feels good, not because they want to have sex. Toddlers get naked because that feels good, not because they want to entice anyone. Should we teach toddlers to keep their clothes on, at least in public?Absolutely. But only for the same reason we teach them not to hit people and to pee only in certain designated areas- so they can interact properly in society. Not because they might entice people to lust.

Here is a question for you. How do you promote, encourage and even enforce modesty in your toddler girl?

Some of us are born with girls who have no problem keeping their clothing on and even don't care whether you put them in a dress or a jogging suit.

Some are born with girls who are fashionistas at birth and have very strong opinions about what to wear, even if it's just fairy wings.

Some have little girls who can't seem to keep clothing on! Or at the very least, they have no problem lifting up their dresses or shirts to show off tummy or more! And there's always the potential for a dripping wet streak out of the bathtub, or the fanny flash off the potty training toilet.

A part of me thinks that they're just 2 (or 1 or 3) and they have no idea. They're just babies, so who cares about their nudity. Another part of me knows that modesty must start somewhere and there are just way too many perverts out there, or even people who simply do find it some form of a stumbling block. [emphasis added]

Anyone who finds a naked toddler to be a "stumbling block", i.e., a turn on, is a pedophile, as in the aforementioned "pervert". Pedophiles are sick and they don't need a fanny flash to get turned on. The rest of us look at a child streaking through Walmart naked** and think, "Man, I do not miss those days." Never mind the fact that she's only concerned with female toddler nudity, as if pedophiles are solely attracted to girls. They are not. (See: pretty much every molestation accusation concerning Catholic priests.)

Seriously, your religion is making you sick if you think of nude toddlers in terms of sex. You are beyond sick if you think the problem is with the toddler.

*I think my increasing sensitivity to everything is just an outgrowth of the chronic pain, but it's gotten seriously obnoxious to have to put back 90% of clothing that fits me (which is hard enough to find) because it's scratchy or constrictive, knowing full well I'm the only person on Earth this irritated by it.

**Trufax, this happened to me. I turned my head for 20 seconds in the frozen foods aisle to find the pizza we like and turned back to see a pile of clothes where my 2-year-old niece had been.

"reserve a lot of pity for the youngest girls that give fellatio"

The post snarked below could very well have been written by this dog.

Yeah, um, I'm not sure what to say about that. I'm not even sure context really helps here, either.

This is from a cracktastic series purporting to teach women about men? proper behavior? technical terms for blowjobs?

Maybe the labels for this post will help:

fellatio, handicaps herself, mental afflictions,screw her way to the top, self-importance withers, stroke her ego, teen sex, worthless girl

I've accidentally viewed some fetish porn* that left me feeling the same way those labels do.

Moving on to the post:

Precious granddaughter, I continue describing potential mistakes. In the words of a radio ad in my youth, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Fortunately, your parents have taught you to avoid what follows. Permit me, in the interest of eliminating ignorance, to describe what likely happens to a girl that experiments and participates sexually with boys.

I feel like this was written for Playboy, if Playboy had been around in 1832.

So, anyway, what happens when a "girl", and I'm really hoping he means "teenaged girl", "experiments and participates sexually with boys"? Keeping in mind of course, I was 15 when I began experimenting -for science!- and participating sexually with boys, so I actually know the answer to this question.

She handicaps herself. She can’t associate normally with peers that are focused on developing and maturing themselves with adult skills, values, and attitudes.

Does anyone know any teenagers that are "focused on developing and maturing themselves with adult skills, values, and attitudes"? Anyone? Bueller? Anyway, I graduated top 2% of my class, got 5s on all three AP exams that I took, got a 1520 on my SATs and when I left college, due to financial issues, I had a 3.92 gpa.

Her mental maturation slows. After enough encounters it virtually stops. She then passes into her adult persona with mental development still locked in adolescence. Acting as mature adult women act and deal with the subject of sex seems foreign to her.

I left college at 22, 19 credits shy of graduation**, in order to help support my mother and younger sister after my father left. I worked two jobs and frequently didn't eat in order to help buy asthma medication for my sister and heart medication for my mother. My sex life was one of the few bright spots in my life at that point.

She absorbs a sense of girlish worthlessness except when desired sexually. It pushes her mindset to drop feminine and absorb masculine values.

I'm not removing links or footnotes or anything. There is no proof offered, no outside opinions, just assertions pulled out of grandpa's imagination. I don't feel worthless except when desired sexually. Actually, I get more self affirmation out of earning achievements in video games than in being sexually desired.

What grandpa is talking about is the dual mindfuck of the patriarchy. If a woman has sex and enjoys sex and seeks out sex she is a worthless slut. If a woman does not enjoy, have or seek out sex, she is frigid and worthless. There's just no winning for women in a patriarchy, and as long as you continue to try to play the game, you will be miserable. The answer, of course, is to reject the patriarchy, not your sexual nature.

Her will power doesn’t mature. It doesn’t embolden her to resist masculine assaults on her feminine spirit.

I think what he means here is that will power in women is purely a matter of resisting sexual advances from men, which are assaults on her very soul. Hey, buddy, have you ever had consensual sex? Are you sure?

She becomes afraid to refuse sex for fear of being disliked. Can promiscuity be far behind when teen girls are so plagued with anxieties?

I'm not even sure why promiscuity is a problem, really.

Her hopes and dreams die as she shifts her hopes toward attracting and holding masculine attention today.

Mmm-hmmm. All that from a little fellatio, huh?

She turns more to thinking as boys think. She seeks more stroking of her ego, as she learns how to live with being treated like trash. She cries for attention.

First of all, there's nothing wrong with how men think. (And they say feminists hate men!) Apparently, grandpa needs ego strokes, lives with being treated like trash and cries for attention. No wonder grandpa hates the ladies, if this is his inner life.

After she enters the workforce, self-defense pushes her to adopt the strategy of ‘screw my way to the top’. She fails to develop belief in herself that she can do it any other way.

Sure. You show me a study, asshole, because I've never actually seen this. I have seen, and been, sexually harrassed at work, but that's not something I did, that's something that was done to me. Possibly by grandpa here.

And here's the truly cracktastic part:

Honey, other girls must look out for themselves. You owe them respect as a person but little else until the bonds of friendship arrive in your life.

"Hi! We're the Bonds of Friendship and we'd like to see if you have any interest in attending our Sunday service . . ."

However, reserve a lot of pity for the youngest girls that give fellatio and a lot of sorrow for those that do it in public. They doom their futures much faster and dramatically than other girls.

Um . . . wut? How young are we talking, grandpa? Should the FBI have any interest in your hard drive? Do you regularly visit the Dominican Republic with Rush Limbaugh? And "in public"? Who's giving blowjobs in public? I . . . I'm a little concerned.

*Fetish porn is awesome- if you happen to have that fetish. If you don't, you're left feeling confused and vaguely skeeved. "I know this is supposed to be sexy, but I have no idea why-" *tilts head to side* "Nope, that didn't help." *tilts head in opposite direction* "What, how many penises does that guy have?"

**Technically, I could have graduated in 4 years, but the program I chose, international business finance with a minor in Spanish, was, like so many, a 5 year degree. It's not uncommon these days.

Working Mothers Turn the Sky Green

People often ask me where I find the blogs and websites that I snark on*. Well, see that list of recommended blogs on the right hand side of your screen? Everybody does that, so when I find one blog that looks promising, I put it in my reader and then start clicking. Rinse, repeat. My reader is now full of fundamentalism (and quite possibly a rather impressive cross section of mental illness), which can be both overwhelming and depressing, but I do get a chance to see trends in fundamentalist thinking in a way that's a bit hard to express to you.

For example, I see a lot (seriously, a lot) of this:

To follow close on the heels of the last post, I have to say that there is a mission field out there that is ripe for the harvest. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. It's heavy work. It's hard work. And it has an incredible impact on the Christian community and the world. It's 24/7 missionary work that ends only with the death of the missionary.

If you really want to pour out your souls, to sacrifice your life for Christ, to do something that actually matters in an eternal way...become a mother.

That post is entitled "A Call to War". I have no idea why.

That's just one from today. Here's another:

That you see Biblical guidelines for what is appropriate and inappropriate for men and women in relation to each other not as arbitrary constraints on freedom but as wise and gracious prescriptions for how to discover the true freedom of God's ideal of complementarity. That you not measure your potential by the few roles withheld but by the countless roles offered. That you turn off the TV and Radio and think about...

The awesome significance of motherhood

Complementing a man's life as his wife

Yeah, don't trust anything that rhymes.

It got me thinking, and not just about religion and patriarchy. Fannie had a great post about much the same thing yesterday. So did Echidne of the Snakes.

When we discuss men, the default assumption is that men will be both working and parents. Nobody ever has said the phrase "working father". There's no need to specify that a father works. Men work, it's what they do. It's totally normal and expected. It's peculiar when men don't work. Their parental status is irrelevant. Nobody does studies on the impact of fathers working outside the home, any more than anyone studies the impact of blue skies upon children's perceptions of colour. There are no other colour skies to compare this impact to.

But women . . . that's different. Women are supposed to be at home, waging war. Women are supposed to be at home supporting their husbands, the men who do things. Because they are men. God wants this. Your children want this. You owe it to the future. It's entirely possible the sky might turn green if you don't and then where will we be?

Nobody suggests that fathers might need to stay at home, that fathers working might impact their children's health, that fathers might need to the reallyreallyreally hard work of . . . erm, what was that? . . . the heavy, hard, impactful work of sacrificing eternally to be a parent.

This is in no way arbitrary. True freedom is slavery. Up is down. Black is white, if only you believe**.

It's the patriarchy, it's got its shackles firmly around your ankles and wrists and most of the time, you can't can't even see it. And I'm seeing the same misogynist argument from secular scientists that I am from fundamentalist preachers. Every day of the week.

*I always appreciate recommendations, so if you ever want to suggest a blog or website, or want to see something snarked to pieces, feel free to email me the link at personalfailure[at]ymail.com.

**In This Twilight

Burn my Bra?! Do Have Any Idea What They Cost?

First of all, bra burning never happened***. Yes, feminists did protest the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. Yes, some of the women did remove their bras as part of the protest. However, no bras were harmed in the process.

Now that we have that out of the way, someone claims to have set back feminism 100 years. (h/t to [redacted]). No, it is not Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman.

No doubt the title is somewhat grandiose, but if you are one of those people prone to burning bras on your lunch hour, this post might cinch your girdle (sorry, had to).

Do you have any idea what my bras cost? I'm a 32C. That is a size that is impossible to find outside of Victoria's Secret. Even during the Semi Annual Sale, I'm dropping between $20 and $30 per bra. (A good portion of my tax return goes to this every year.) I would set my pants on fire, while I was wearing them, before I did anything to my bras. I'm also not entirely certain what a girdle is, I'm guessing I don't own one, and puns are the last refuge of the boring mind.

In an effort to educate myself about poetry, I have been going through Francis Mayes’ book The Discovery of Poetry. Fear not, this post will not discuss anapestic tetrameter, iambs, or dactylic pentameter. No indeed. My aim is to call attention to something Ms. Mayes says in her chapter on rhyme. As she discusses different types of rhyme, Mayes defines rising and falling rhymes, pointing out that,

“Formerly, these were dubbed ‘masculine’ (strong, stressed ending) and ‘feminine’ (soft, unstressed ending) but I simply forbid that terminology.” (Harcourt paperback, pg 165)

I am going to venture a guess that Ms. Mayes feels labeling something strong as masculine, and something soft as feminine is sexist. Now, the question is, do I, as a twenty-first century woman feel threatened by rhymes given masculine/feminine terminology?

I don't think anyone felt "threatened" by rhyming terminology, sweetheart*. However, every little bit of a culture sinks into your psyche before you're even aware of it. Every time somebody says, "You throw/scream/whatever like a girl!" every girl in hearing distance absorbs the intended message: it's bad to be like a girl. It's especially unforgiveable in supposed learned texts wherein we ought to be a little beyond "like a girl!"

Why? Because I am a girl. I want to be soft. And I do not feel that being soft in any way degrades me. Being feminine is only degrading if you are not female.

Being feminine is only degrading if you are not female? I'd parse that, but I'm afraid to. Let's try a little substitution, shall we, darling? Perhaps that will make things clearer. Being black is only degrading if you are not black. Um, no, that didn't help. Being Jewish is only degrading if you are not . . . that definitely did not help. At all.

Do you want to know what is degrading?

Do tell.

Being told I have to act and feel the same as a man.

Nobody ever said that. What we said is that women and men are equal and the thoughts of women and men are equally important and should be equally valued.

Being told I have to be promiscuous to be independent.

Who said that?

Being told I have to be independent.

You don't have to be independent. Depend all you want. However, women, being inherently equal to men, should have all the same opportunities for independence that men do.

Being told I have to dress like a discount harlot to be attractive to men.

Sweetheart, that's the fashion industry, which is not the same thing as feminism. At all.

Being told giving birth to a child I conceived is a choice if it gets in the way of the above statements.

It's a choice in any case, not that anyone makes it in order to "dress like a harlot". (And if anyone does choose to abort in order to keep wearing miniskirts, do you really think that person should be anywhere near a child?)

Being told that serving is belittling.

What she means is that she wants to be (or is) a stay at home mom, and that all women everywhere should be stay at home moms. Men can be husbands, fathers and doctors, lawyers, professors, astronauts and presidents, but women have only one career- staying at home. If that's what you want to do, and can afford to do, good for you. It's not for everyone, nor should it be required for everyone. Nor is it even possible for everyone.

Being told that being a wife, or a wife and mother is not adequate employment for one lifetime.

See above.

Being told that being under a man’s authority is slavery.

By definition.

Being told all men are degenerate idiots.

Being told marriage and Alcatraz are the same thing, only spelled differently.

You know, if you're going to try to "set feminism back", you might try finding out what feminists actually believe. The vast majority of feminists in the US are married- to men. If we really thought men were degenerate idiots and that marriage is like a tourist spot off the coast of California**, why would we marry men, or marry at all? In fact, feminists are fighting for the right of gays to marry each other, so we're fighting for more marriage. If we really thought that marriage was so bad, why would we want more of it?

For you next book, I'm going to suggest something on the topic of logic and reasoned thinking.

*I've gone jäger, and I'm never coming back!

**It's worth the trip, if you get the chance.

***I am told there was one symbolic bra burning, but it only happened once, and that was that. Probably because having your breasts jouncing around while you walk is not a comfortable experience, not even when they're small like mine.

La La La La La - I Can't Hear You!

10 more siblings and her life will be fantastic!

I have previously dealt with the Jeubs' (a Quiverfull family that makes a living selling other people on Quiverfull) disingenuous arguments concerning unrestrained baby making and poverty here and here. They're at it again, it's Monday and I'm at a bit of a loss for something else to write about*, so here we go.

Many got what we were saying. Glum financial circumstances have hit most people at some time in their life, especially today. And we so identify! While these times may not be enjoyable, few can confess that they were absolutely debilitating. Whose to say that God can’t reach into the glummest of circumstances and pull people through? We prefer to give hope, not doom.

But a number of people insisted on doom. Read through the 100+ posts, some posts with an attitude like, “How dare you say poverty isn’t bad. It is very, very bad!” And they rattled off the worst of scenarios (famine, starvation, abuse, drug addiction, homelessness, etc.) as if to say, “Seeeee how bad it can get?”

Such hopelessness. Do people really believe money is that much of a determiner of their fate? Apparently so. Does poverty define a person (or wealth, for that matter)? It doesn’t for us. And we don’t believe it should be for anyone!

"Worst of scenarios"? Those are peoples' lives asshat! Right now, in this country, all over the world, famine, starvation, homelessness, etc. are peoples' lives. That is how people, right now, are living. Whether poverty "defines" people or not is rather irrelevant to this particular discussion.

Remember, the Jeubs call upon everyone, regardless of circumstance, to have as many babies as is humanly possible. If you know who the Duggars are, you know what I'm talking about. To the Jeubs, there are no reasons, none at all, to not have 20 children. That's why all the posturing about poverty. Poverty is a damn good reason not to have children. Famines and homelessness are not fixed by adding another person to your family. All you do in that situation is create another starving, homeless person. There's nothing in any of these posts by the Jeubs that actually deals with the issue of how having to divide limited reasons n+1 ways helps anything.

Well, it's dogma, don't expect answers there. It's not like the Pope has ever explained how a million more children ends a famine. (Although Jonathon Swift did . . .)

*What the fuck was up with the Black Eyed Peas? Is that just their thing?

Dear Asshole Driving a Car

Yes, I was walking in the street. I have cramps, I need Advil. The Period Fairy does not deliver Advil along with bloating, cramping and a wicked craving for salt covered chocolate.

Look, I assume, since you were driving, that you have eyes and, since you saw me, and fucking beeped at me to get out of your way, we were existing in the same reality. So you can see that half the sidewalks are covered in a thick layer of ice. I'm not risking a broken anything to save you a few minutes travel time, asshole.

Seriously, go fuck yourself, impatient driver. I'm walking, you're nice and warm in your car. Jerk.

High Octane Nightmare Fuel

This. This is what I know will happen if I get anywhere near a spider. You may think this is funny, but this is a predictable event in my world.