Seems like it’s to provide us with hours and hours of amusement…
As I have mentioned before:
Fortunately, even if Compassion is considered a crime on SDMB, there are forums where compassion for all Humans is welcome – Politicalforum and Thepoliticalforums would appreciate anyone banned or chased away from SDMB for the crime of Compassion.
There aren’t enough :rolleyes: on the whole internet for that bizarre claim of persecution.
If we shift to attitudes toward fathers, it’s changed a lot in the last seventy years in the US. I was born in the fifties and my father had an extremely atypical upbringing for his time. He was perfectly at ease dealing with infants and as I was his first, he was thrilled to have one of his own to look after.
Strange women would try to grab me out of his arms or off of his lap with the attitude that they were saving me from danger. He said he literally had to strong-arm a few. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t crying. It didn’t matter if my mother was nearby. Men just couldn’t possibly know enough about babies to be able to handle one safely. It offended him. At least now people wait for the baby to cry and they’re not as grabby.
In the US, men are typically lionized for their childcare, not derided. If my kid melts down with my wife, then she’s a bad mother. If it’s with me, then I’m a saint for taking the kid out alone
If you take your kid to the park, then your wife is a lucky woman and you’re such a good father and the world needs more men like you. If the wife does, then she needs to interact with her child more or else she needs to give him freedom or anything else. If I hug the boys, I’m teaching them to be compassionate men. If she does it, she’s coddling them and making them mama’s boys. In the US, women can’t win and men can’t lose as long as they do the bare minimum. Pretty sweet gig.
Until men want primary physical custody and the court says they are not the primary caregiver. This “sweet gig” comes at a cost.
That’s a pretty broad brush you’re painting with, but I can do the same and point out that if you’re a man and interact with any small child not your own, the default assumption is that you’re a pedophile on the prowl. If I’m at the playground with my daughter and an unattended child comes up to me, I have to be very careful not to touch them even if I’m helping them innocuously (I gave a little girl a Band-Aid the other week for a knee scrape; all I could do was hand it to her). If you’re a woman, that assumption isn’t there.
I originally started reading The Straight Dope back in college when a friend lent me the first book. At the time, I’m pretty sure it was the only book. I liked it not because it told me things I already knew, but things I didn’t. It answered questions I never even thought to ask. I tend to view Quartz’s posts the same way. They may be about things that happen very rarely, but it seems they do happen. And I don’t mean that to take anything away from the struggles, discrimination, and violence that women face. There are plenty of other posters here, and from other sources, who discuss those things. Compassion is not a zero-sum game. As long as they’re not made up, I want additional perspectives, I want a place for the ideas that I don’t hear anyplace else.
Where it starts to lose me is that this ought to help us understand each other, and bring us closer together. Quartz, the way you feel when you post these examples of anti-male injustice is the same way that women feel lots of times in their lives, too. Every time another Harvey Weinstein is exposed, every time some politician describes his binder full of women, every “show us your boobs” comment, is a reminder of ways the deck is stacked against them. Rather than try to one-up each other in a “which gender is more marginalized” contest, seems like we should be able to offer some sympathy to anyone for those times when it seems like they get the short end of the stick. We all see roadblocks in our way. we ought to be able to unite against them rather than draw the line as men vs. women.
The thing is, I think there’s some truth in the opposite view, too. The way people react to Quartz’s posts, with defensiveness rather than acceptance, is the same way lots of men react to stories of sexism, but that we wish they wouldn’t. Stories of men who are not taken seriously as parents, of fathers being given short shrift in custody rulings, of women not pursued for false rape allegations, are met with something akin to "NotAllWomen. How hard would it be to say “it’s a shame that that happened to them. They shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
Examples of anti-male sexism are uncomfortable, but they’re uncomfortable in the opposite way to the sexism we’re all accustomed to. They cast us into roles that are unknown to us, but are everyday reality for others. Seems like we could all examine our reactions and learn something from it.
There’s an old quote from Samuel Johnson:
I think everyone could see how that quote is insulting to women. Your post, senoy, seems roughly equivalent to “Sir, a man’s caring for his child is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” When men are lionized for parenting it comes with the assumption that they should be utterly incompetent at it. Is that still a sweet gig?
Or we can agree modern, first-world, Western countries are still firmly sexist, even if it’s subtle. Two dads, two moms, opposite gender parents, there’s shitty parents and there’s good parents. Gender doesn’t equal skill in parenting. Compassion does.
Yes, men are regarded as incompetent as fathers and yep, it’s still a pretty sweet gig. The reason being that there is very little skin in the game for us. If you are a woman preacher as the above anecdote states, being seen as incompetent reflects both on your livelihood and sense of self. Being a father reflects on neither. None of those park women has any impact on my salary, nor do my parenting skills unless they are egregious actually go into society’s idea of who I am. As a guy, we are more often judged by our occupation than our parenting.
So, the real consequence of low expectation is primarily social. When I exceed those expectations, I get social rewards. The counterpoint is that it’s oppressive to men in general, but as I said, fatherhood is a minor part of our identity and this presumption of ignorance does little to impact our material well-being with rare exception (Being a male preschool teacher or childcare provider is likely quite difficult, so they have a legitimate gripe.)
This has not been my experience as a father taking my girls out. I regularly interacted with strangers’ kids and it’s never been weird on that front. And apparently I used to look like a paedophile, so you’d think it would.
But again, it has a real impact on men trying to gain custody of their children. And fatherhood being a “minor part of [your] identity” strikes me as tragic, not a sweet gig.
The question in the OP, as I read it, pertains to sexism related to parenting. I realize that that can lead to a broader discussion of sexism, and that’s OK to a point. However, a couple of comments about the path of this thread:
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If you wish to debate about whether men or women are experiencing a greater amount of sexism, take it to GD. That does not need to be the subject of this thread. CCitizen, I will note that you, in particular, seem to be looking for any opportunity to inject that argument into any thread, and you need to knock it off.
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My sense is also that the questioning of Quartz’s motives is a hijack of this thread, and yes, I’m aware that Quartz has seemed happy to engage posters on that subject. But I think that’s a separate issue for a separate thread; there are posters here having a legitimate conversation about the issue raised in the OP, and it would be best to keep to that here.
That is fascinating to read. (Sad too)
Here’s my experience, piggy backing on your post. My kids were born in the eighties. I was out and about with them on my own a lot, and I experienced little of what your dad did. (Progress!) there was some criticism, however, always from women and always very…dismissive of my parenting abilities. I recall especially the woman who raised a ruckus about why my baby daughter wasn’t wearing socks on an eighty degree day, and the woman who basically accused me of neglect because I was not within a foot or two of my four year old son at the playground.
So there was some, but not lots. Was it aimed at me because I was a man? I think probably. My wife, in the meantime, got none of this, and she would be the first to tell you that I was every bit as capable a parent as she was.
Anyway, we now have a toddler grandson who lives with us (so does his mom), and I’m out and about with him a lot, and I have gotten…zero criticisms from anyone. (More progress!) Well, maybe I’m better at this child care thing than I used to be, but I suspect (especially after reading this post) that it’s mainly a societal change. Which would be a Good Thing.