(Source: sarahlee310)
Having A Boy: One Dad's Confession About Why He Only Wanted Daughters
When my wife told me, two years ago, that our first child was a daughter, I flushed with joy.
“Do you want to know?” my wife asks.
She’s in such a buoyant mood. We must be having another girl.
“Sure,” I say.
“It’s a boy,” she says.
I close my eyes. My forehead thuds softly against the mirror over the sink. It’s my job now to say something, rather quickly, about how great this is, how excited I am to be having a son, a bouncing baby boy, an heir to carry on our silly family name. But when I open my eyes, the light inside the bathroom is a sickly yellow and my chest is hammering with panic.
[…]I fight with my twin brother, Mike, too, until he hits a growth spurt and becomes too big to tangle with. Our final fight is especially vicious. We grapple and punch and tumble across the bed. We can smell each other — our skin, our breath. The intimacy is disorienting. Not so long ago, the two of us walked to school pressed together at the shoulder. But the prohibitions of boyhood have torn us apart. These days, the only time we touch is when we fight.
Having pummeled each other to exhaustion, we stand face to face. Our chests heave with adrenaline. We’re confused, not sure how to bring this to a close. My hand flies up and slaps Mike across the face. It’s a loud, clean blow, delivered so quickly neither of us can quite believe it. Mike bursts into tears and runs from the room. I stand, staring down at my hand. My palm stings, but the rest of me feels nothing.
[…]I work hard in college to convince the world I’ve outgrown savagery. I quit the soccer team. I rally for nuclear disarmament. I adopt the prevailing feminist spellings (“women” becomes “womyn”). But when my girlfriend makes an offhand joke questioning my manhood, I punch a hole in her bedroom wall.
[…]It’s tempting to blame all this on my father. That would be the safe move. Perhaps if he’d encouraged us to share our feelings rather than pummel each other, my brothers and I would have entered the world without fear and loathing. We would have become secure citizens, ready to talk things through. But that would miss the point, that masculinity has always been governed by aggression.
To put it more starkly: Aggression is the means by which boys learn to share their feelings. Not even the most loving father can protect his son from the playgrounds, the bars and parking lots where bullies lurk, where soft emotions are hunted down and targeted, where fear becomes rage, and rage becomes violence.
[…]And whom does history commemorate if not those men most effective at marshaling their aggression to shape the world? For every Gandhi, a hundred villains. For every Enlightenment, a hundred Inquisitions. For every treaty, a hundred wars.
What I’m asking here is, Do we ever outgrow our savagery? Is there any way to strip from us the masculine pathologies acquired over millions of years of evolution?
Let me put all this in a more personal light: How am I to protect my son from a world that lives inside of me?
[…]So now you know why I feared having a son, and why, when I gaze down at my newborn boy sleeping — he is three days old as I write this — I am sometimes filled with dread. I offer no happy ending here, no eleventh-hour homily about the rescuing powers of forgiveness. A quick look at the state of the world should dispel such mush.
All I can say is that I’ll do my best with the love I have. I’ll hope my boy becomes someone different from his father, braver in the right ways, less frightened. This, it seems to me, is the only reasonable hope fathers can offer their sons.
This entire post is worth reading and speaks volumes as to why I wanted an “Amelia” rather than an “Ethan.” Like this author, I was absolutely thrilled when Amelia Jo was born.
Also like this author, I kind of fear for a son of mine and my reasons echo his, but not as intensely. While I can be aggressive and explosive, that’s usually because I’ve been pushed to some limit, I’m down to my last straw, and I react. Typically, I’m pretty laid-back, low-key, and sensitive.
My wife often tells me I’d be a good father to a son and that we need more men like me, and maybe she’s right when we get said son to his adult years, but I know I’d worry about what he’d face during his childhood, adolescence, teenage years where aggression and machismo rule supreme.
#INSen race may hinge on disenchanted Lugar backers - Yahoo! News
JEFFERSONVILLE, Indiana (Reuters) - Indiana Republicans last spring spurned long-time Senator Richard Lugar for a more conservative candidate, but now supporters of the soft-spoken moderate may tip the balance in the race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Republican Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer, and his Democratic opponent, Congressman Joe Donnelly, are wooing not just independent voters but disaffected and angry “Lugar Republicans.”
“Dick Lugar is a statesman,” said Karl Stein, 63, a Republican, as he was walking the dog near Indianapolis. “I don’t like the way he was thrown under the bus after all he’s done for Indiana.”
Republicans need a net gain of four seats to win a Senate majority, or three if Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House because his vice president would cast tie-breaking Senate votes. Republicans began 2012 in a strong position, with Democrats defending 23 of 33 seats up for election, but have suffered some self-inflicted wounds.
In Missouri, Republican candidate Todd Akin prompted an uproar by saying women’s bodies have defenses against pregnancy after “legitimate rape,” and now trails in the race.
Republican candidates also are facing tougher-than-expected contests in Arizona and North Dakota as well as Indiana.
Mourdock has been hit by Democrats attacking his “extreme” Tea Party movement views - lower taxes, fewer regulations and massive spending cuts - plus his televised remarks after the primary that “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”
“It wasn’t easy for a lot of Hoosiers to see Lugar defeated after a slashing campaign,” said Marjorie Hershey, a politics professor at the University of Indiana, using the term Indiana natives call themselves. “Mourdock didn’t help himself after the primary by taking a very hard line.”
h/t: Yahoo! News
July 25, 2012
To Bob Mazzuca, Chief Scout Executive and the BSA National Executive Board,
Today I join other Eagle Scouts across the country in renouncing my ties to the Boy Scouts of America and returning my Eagle Scout badge.
I recently moved back to Seattle - where I spent 8 years as a member of Troop 15 and became an Eagle Scout in 1995 – and being here has brought me nostalgia for the joy and learning of my Scouting experience. The hikes in the North Cascades and Olympic mountains, the weekly meetings filled with unique friendships, the lessons learned with each merit badge I earned and each Eagle Scout project I contributed to. I eventually became one of the elders in my troop, staying on as Junior Assistant Scoutmaster and teaching new members in the troop the skills I had learned as a young Scout. These are things I am proud of.
I am not proud to be affiliated with an organization that excludes people based on their sexuality. Many of my closest friends are gay, lesbian or transgender and it pains me to think that I invested time in an organization that prohibits their membership. It’s a shameful, bigoted policy, plain and simple.
I now have a son with a disability who uses a wheelchair. I am humbled by the legacy of the disability rights movement, which challenged bias and brought more accessibility and dignity to people like my son; and I am humbled by other struggles like the civil rights movement, the feminist and gay liberation movements. It gives me strength to know that people have fought for and won battles against our society’s most pernicious forms of prejudice, in the same way that it appalls me that the Boy Scouts remain on the wrong side of history. I’m sending in my badge to be on the right side; I know that eventually the LGBT rights movement will win out, and I want to do my part.
In truth I should have returned my badge more than a decade ago when the Supreme Court ridiculously ruled that the BSA had the right to exclude people based on sexual orientation. I had thought, like many others, that efforts at reform from the inside would lead to a change in course. But the recent decision by the BSA to uphold that policy makes it clear that bigotry has been institutionalized and that there is no longer any hope for change. The power of fundamentalist, anti-gay, religious institutions over the BSA has been too much for even a well-crafted citizens campaign to overcome.
So I am attaching my Eagle Scout badge and certificate and sending them back to the Boy Scout headquarters. Others have already taken this step and many more will join. And hopefully someday a new organization will be born that not only gives young boys (and girls) the opportunity to hike and explore the outdoors, but also teaches them to respect and love other people, regardless of how our society choses to classify them.
Sincerely,
Michael Burke Stansbury
This whole movement is amazing
San Antonio Mayor to Give Keynote Speech at Democratic Convention
Julián Castro, the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, will deliver the keynote speech at his party’s national convention in September, reprising the role that vaulted Barack Obama to national prominence eight years ago.
Mr. Castro will become the first Hispanic American chosen for the high-profile speaking slot at a time when President Obama is counting on Latinos to help him win a second term in the White House.
The selection was announced by Mr. Castro himself in a video posted by convention organizers and reported on first by Univision.
Julian Castro the VP pick for 2016 I’m calling it now….unless Elizabeth Warren becomes bigger than she already is
No one producing an Olympic teaser asks, “What’s the importance of 100 meters?” No, they tell us about the athletes who dedicate their lives to running the race, because dedication and triumph are what make a human running 100 meters interesting. If NBC can get us all misty-eyed about 100 meters, imagine what NASA could do with 200 million miles.
The Mars race is about human survival and understanding our place in a vast and terrifyingly beautiful universe. And the stories of its athletes (mathletes?) should be world-class, because they accomplish near-impossible tasks on a cosmic scale — the hardest sport you could ever compete in. It requires dedication and doggedness that only the most passionate people in the universe could deliver. Unfortunately, this drama plays out behind closed doors. We won’t have insights into the sacrifice, scandal, discovery, divorce, hardship, and drama that it takes to work for a decade delivering a one-ton super rover to another planet. It’s the biggest irony that the most junior engineer at NASA is fearless in the face of trying to send a robot to Mars, but the career bureaucrats are afraid to tell that engineer’s story of failure or success.
NASA will say that they’re doing the best they can and stretching their education and outreach budgets to the max. But if they hope to stay in business, they need to tell us how they’re pushing the limits of humanity with over-the-top, risky-ass missions that will answer questions about who we are as a species on this planet.”
Andrew Kessler, The Huffington Post. Why You Should Be More Interested in Mars Than the Olympics.
Kessler, who spent ninety days inside NASA to write Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission, believes the agency is “so frightened of failure that they’re willing to sacrifice their greatest asset: the ability to inspire.” In other words, they no longer tell a good story.
Know who could help? Kick ass science journalists.
Sidenote: AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards applications are due tomorrow.
(via futurejournalismproject)
Although landing on mars and possibly discovering life on another planet is mind blowing, so is the fact that I was completely invested in a water polo match the other day… Basically can’t we do both?
I’m Sure It’s Just A Coincidence…
Nothing to do with each other! Ha
I love graphs, charts and really any data presented in an aesthetically pleasing way
ShortFormBlog: Penn State's punishment: What the NCAA took away from the school
- 5 years of probation handed down by NCAA to Penn State’s program
- 14 number of years of wins the school must vacate — basically every victory since Paterno was aware of the first allegation
- $60M the amount the school will be sanctioned by the NCAA; the funds will go towards programs…
Rough for the school, but they deserve every bit of it
I like this
