It’s funny.  Having a son did move me slightly “to the right” in some aspects of my personal life (frex, making it more likely that I would stand up to a threatening person if I thought he might be a danger to my boy), but it only intensified my “leftish” political convictions (anti-pollution, anti-war, &c;.).

BTW, I now have two sons and two daughters, all grown.  And I didn’t raise my girls to be soldiers, either.

Well, obviously statistical trends have much individual variation.

It always saddens me a little that having a DAUGHTER will get men to slide a little closer to the Feminist column, but MARRYING a WOMAN does not. Nor does, you know, having been birthed and raised by a woman.

All that says to me is “I love my daughter, but I do not love my wife…OR my MOTHER!”

“Oh, I love my mother and my wife…the same way I love the washer and fridge; you know, they are great, labor-saving APPLIANCES!”

Well…people tend to love their children, even wingnuts.  That’s why they think abortions should be banned for all those slutty sluts, but still available should some asshole take advantage of their innocent daughters.

The protectionism fits neatly into patriarchy, but loving your child, even if she is female, doesn’t.

Has this study been peer reviewed? I’m sorry but my bullshit detector went off. This looks like a candidate as a teaching example for confirmation bias.

How amazing that I have two daughters, and no sons, yet, amazingly enough, I’m just as reich wing now as ever.

Then again, while I can’t say that I specifically reared them to be soldiers, one is in the Army Reserve and an engineering student, while the younger one plans on joining the Army Reserve later this summer.  Must be ‘cause I’m a warmonger.

Dana, you’re a really stellar example of why basic statistics should be taught in high school, because clearly you have no understanding of how individual examples and statistical trends are different things. 

cbeach, it’s pretty sound.  I’d read the link, you know?  FiveThirtyEight is a solid source.

I’m gonna go with cbeach—sounds more than a bit suspicious.

Dick Cheney has two girls, no boys.

I read the article that FiveThirtyEight linked to and some of the sources seemed cherry picked to me. I’m not a statistician, but it seems even formulating the study seems to be reaching for a conclusion. I don’t want to accuse someone of grinding their axe without knowing what prompted the study in the first place. That’s why I asked if it was peer reviewed because I couldn’t tell if it was or not. I have a friend who does statistical analysis for the NIH. I’ll see what she has to say about it. Amanda, just be aware of the old maxim “If it sounds too good to be true..etc”.

Once again, I’m forced to remind people that statistical trends =/ individual outcomes.  Your parents’ political party is the best predictor of what yours will be. That my parents are Republicans and I’m a Democrat doesn’t mean that the piles of data describing this trend are invalidated.

If nothing else, the article has provided Our Dana with another opportunity to demonstrate that in his world an impenetrable aura of smugness is perceived as boyishly cute.  Of course, so does dryer lint.

Interestingly, I think I moved more to the left after having two boys (I have no girls, I’m currently preggars but don’t know the gender yet).

I was left before, and I was feminist “light” before, inasmuch as sure, women should have the same rights as men but I didn’t think all that deeply about it. Since having boys, my understanding and motivation to seek out more information and understanding of feminist issues has increased dramatically. I don’t want them to grow up as white, male, able bodied entitled assholes and I really seek to understand how I can teach them how to avoid this when being inundated with it. I think awareness is key, and my awareness of feminist issues has increased dramatically after having boys. (Although some of that has to do with becoming a mother, period. And seeing how mothers are regarded and treated in our society.)

Also, I remember when my kids were just a few weeks old, and my FIL, as a joke to make fun of my pacifist ways, put Marine Corps emblems with their names (Private ____) on them. (He is a 20 year Marine war vet.)  We had just invaded Iraq, and the thought of my boys having to register for selective service and possibly someday be drafted for some such immoral war based on lies horrified me to no end. If anything made me want to protest against that war and others like it, it was the idea that my boys (or anyone’s boys or girls) would be forced to give up their lives for it.

It seems to make sense that having children would make you more leftist. It is hard to understand for me that having boys would do anything to make you lean more to the right.

If nothing else, the article has provided Our Dana with another opportunity to demonstrate that in his world an impenetrable aura of smugness is perceived as boyishly cute.  Of course, so does dryer lint.

Cut him some slack here - he’s proud of his kids.

Alas!  That Amanda’s parents are Republicans, and it didn’t take with their daughter.  The world is poorer for that.

You needn’t worry about my statistical training; I’ve had rather a lot.  (You try doing standard deviations by hand!)  I’d have thought that, on a site devoted to snark as political persuasion, you’d have recognized snarkiness coming back toward you.

Sure, Dana.  You’ve definitely intimidated me into believing you’re smart.  Ignore the smirk on my face as I type this.

I disagree that having that privilege is necessarily the best thing for men, if it comes at the high price of having to put up with other right wing policies.  It’s true that male privilege means access to better, more secure jobs than women have access to, but is that really an adequate substitute for having a decent social safety net and universal health care?  Male privilege lessens but doesn’t extinguish the chance that you’ll find yourself down and out one day.

Not only that, but it also puts that much more pressure on men to be providers.  Think of those news reports recently of a man losing his job and deciding that the best course of action is to kill his wife, his children, and himself.  Those men can’t even conceive of a world where they are not taking care of their families, to the point where they convince themselves that they’re all better off dead.

This statistical trend actually makes a lot of sense, if you consider how gender roles have bent and changed in the last fifty years.

This trend may have much to do with the push since first wave feminism for fathers to be more involved with raising their children (and consequently seeing them as people), and that first wave feminism has also done much to erase the previous idea that fathers could only be satisfied by, and identify with, sons.

Their daughters can now achieve in the world—growing up in the 1950s the norm was considered to be the father who could live through his sons’ acheivements in sports, and then later, in the wider world.

When I was a child, you never saw men holding babies, or pushing strollers, or involving themselves in their young daughters’ interests: I smile now every time I see a baby strapped to daddy’s chest or back.

Ooops, I meant Second Wave feminism (from Betty Friedan on, right?)

Since the Suffragettes are considered First Wave .  . .

Cut him some slack here - he’s proud of his kids.

No.  He supports people and causes that say my family is the same thing as raping children, even if he doesn’t admit to believing it himself.  He gets no slack.

kesh, I do have to say that I think men who do that are control freak monsters, who are suicidal, but resent the idea that their families could survive them.  (After all, the family is FOR the patriarch, right?) They may rationalize it as protective, but at its ugly heart, that behavior is the patriarchy at its worst.

Here’s a thought along the lines of what Amanda is saying:

Last 6 Democratic Presidents all had daughters:

Obama—Sasha and Malia
Clinton—Chelsea
Carter—Amy
Johnson—Luci Baines
Kennedy—Caroline
Truman—Margaret

Pretty uncanny, isn’t it?

I read the article that FiveThirtyEight linked to and some of the sources seemed cherry picked to me. I’m not a statistician, but it seems even formulating the study seems to be reaching for a conclusion.

There’s no kind way to say this. You’re arrogantly ignorant.

I don’t want to accuse someone of grinding their axe without knowing what prompted the study in the first place. That’s why I asked if it was peer reviewed because I couldn’t tell if it was or not.

Yes, it’s peer reviewed and coming soon in your subscription to the Review of Economics and Statistics http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/rest

Huh. I was already pretty far left in a lot of ways. Wonder if my daughter prompted any moves further for me. I don’t think so, but I’ll check with my wife on that. See if she observed any shifts in my thinking.

Re: murder/suicides, there was a recent case in the UK; this quite wealthy guy was facing bankruptcy because he liked to not pay his taxes.

He shot his wife
He shot his daughter
He shot his dogs
He shot his horses
He set fire to his mansion
and then he killed himself

He wasn’t going to let anyone take what belonged to him.

For the first few days after the fire, the news was reporting the daughter as missing, but when they found the wife’s body, I just knew what had happened. Absolutely chilling.

Dilan Esper wrote:

Here’s a thought along the lines of what Amanda is saying:

Last 6 Democratic Presidents all had daughters

As did the last five Republican presidents: 
George W Bush: 2 daughters, no sons
George H W Bush: 2 daughters, 4 sons
Ronald Reagan:  3 daughters, 2 sons
Gerald Ford:  1 daughter, 3 sons
Richard Nixon:  2 daughters, no sons

The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.

Dana, I haven’t done SD calcs by hand since, say, about 35 years ago, about the time that I abandoned my slide rule for one of those new-fangled calculators.  The most important part of statistics is to define your problem, do a quick inspection of your data by descriptive statistics, and choose the appropriate statistical test. Plenty of people do perfect calculations using inappropriate tests.

NancyP - plus, it’s just annoying. Seriously, who wants to take a square root by hand? Unless it’s, like, 49 or something?

Dana, I shudder to think of what you’d be like if you had two boys

Last 6 Democratic Presidents all had daughters

As did the last five Republican presidents: 

Hypothesis: Having (at least one) daughter capable of being hauled out on stage without humiliating the family is a competitive advantage for a Presidential candidate.

Having (at least one) daughter capable of being hauled out on stage without humiliating the family is a competitive advantage for a Presidential candidate.

That is a little bit of a relief, in that it decreases the likelihood of a Palin presidency.

The default model for how a person in our society should behave is still pretty much male, so it’s somewhat harder to subvert the dominant paradigm when raising a boy, or at least that’s my experience thus far. Things like teaching your son to sew, to cook, to clean, not to be an emotionally crippled asshole somehow just get subsumed under life skills and how you would raise any kid, whereas giving your daughter a short summer haircut and teaching her about air nailers would be (in most places) more visibly nonstereotypical.

And, of course, if you want the best for your kid materially, the patriarchy is pretty much the way to vote if you have sons. (Sure, that’s not really true and it’s a devil’s bargain, but it’s much easier to see how equal rights for women would affect a daughter.)

Another possibility here is that the process of socializing stereotypical boys or girls has to rub off at least a little on the parents doing the socializing. So if you’re raising XY kids to be entitled thoughtless posturers, you’ll become more of one yourself. And if you’re raising XX kids to be polite, considerate of others and primarily concerned with maintaining the social fabric, some of that will slip into your thinking, and you’ll test as more “liberal”...

You try doing standard deviations by hand!

Oooo… arithmetic! Multiplication! Square roots! Dana, in math there’s a difference between “interminably boring” and “difficult.”

Dana, you had a wonderful opportunity to add some insight with respect to your experience raising daughters when it came to your evolving political outlook. Instead you used the opportunity to mouth off after a long day at work and then defending yourself by saying that, effectively, you once performed simple mathematical operations on a set of numbers.

My take on all of this is that many (most?) people are not, by nature, empathetic… they don’t think about the experiences and struggles of other people. Those who are like this naturally become Democrats. When people have daughters, however, they suddenly have a personal stake in women’s issues, counterbalancing their natural lack of empathy for these things.

As to why this doesn’t occur merely from having a wife: selection bias. The woman you marry has already succeeded at becoming the person you admire. A newborn daughter is unformed and has her future at risk from all of the barriers placed in front of women that would impede her from becoming the sort of woman you’d hope she becomes.

Jeff suggested:

Dana, I shudder to think of what you’d be like if you had two boys

I’d like to think just the same, but who knows?

Tyro wrote:

Dana, you had a wonderful opportunity to add some insight with respect to your experience raising daughters when it came to your evolving political outlook.

But how can I know?  Our lives would have been different if we’d had two sons, or more children in whatever permutation of genders resulted, or no children at all, but no one knows what lies down the road not taken.  I can’t tell you how having two daughters has altered my political outlook, because I don’t—and can’t—know whether or how it would be different had things been different.

But how can I know?

Presumably there was a time when you didn’t have children.

Dana, if your daughters had not been soldiers by vocation, would you have a different view of military service for women?

Again, while I’m far from Dana’s most fervent supporter (HAH!), his <a >original comment</a> is considerably less jerky and smug than many here from our side of the fence.  It was well within the normal bounds of snark.

IhateHTML

Dana is so proud of his daughters being engineers and soldiers (as he should be) but his daughters could not be those things if it were not for feminism.

Tyro wrote:

Presumably there was a time when you didn’t have children.

A barely remembered time, yes! 

I was pretty conservative then, as well, but American political conservatism was different as well, because the world was different.  The issues were very different in the 1980s than they are today.

Entomologista wrote:

Dana is so proud of his daughters being engineers and soldiers (as he should be) but his daughters could not be those things if it were not for feminism.

Engineers, no, but my parents met in Tokyo in 1952 when both of them were serving in the Army.  My mother was working in General MacArthur’s headquarters.

By the way, PFC Pico at graduation from BCT.

Entomologista wrote:

Dana is so proud of his daughters being engineers and soldiers (as he should be) but his daughters could not be those things if it were not for feminism.

One is an actual soldier, but the younger Miss Pico is still in high school; she plans on enlisting.  Our ol;der daughter is an engineering student, not an engineer yet.

I was vocally opposed to gender roles before our now 7mo daughter was born. We didn’t know whether the baby would be a boy or girl, and people would get visibly upset at this—the more socially conservative they were, they more upset they’d get. When she was an itty bitty baby, it was easy to find gender-neutral clothing, but now that we’re up to 9m sizes, there’s very, very little that isn’t either footballs or princesses. I don’t think having a daughter has made me more leftish so much as it’s made me—us—more conscious of how pervasive gender roles are. Our daughter is a very pretty child, as complete strangers keep telling us, but what about 10% of said strangers, not to mention various drunk friends, have also said is that the fact that she’s pretty is the most important thing about her. “I’m sure she’ll be smart and all, but being pretty is so much more important for girls.” Fuck you.

Dana, feminism did a lot for your daughters, even in your household.  Your mother may have been “in the military”, but in 1952 she wouldn’t have been allowed to carry a rifle, or even allowed very near the front lines (unless she was a nurse in a MASH), even if she wanted to do so.

Now, there are few places in the Army your daughter would be denied.

As I get more liberal in my old age, I am concerned more and more that no one’s sons or daughters ever have to be sent off to die for somebody else’s egotistical obsessions.  Because of that, I hope your daughters (if the younger one joins up) never have to suffer from the logical results of the political views you’ve expressed here…just as I hope mine won’t either…

Standard deviations by hand? Sure! Heck, I even like to do kinky deviations by hand!

[/rimshot]

Seriously, though: this material tracks quite well with stuff unearthed by Title IX. Men with daughters   are more likely to encourage their daughters to play sports, are more likely to be involved with organizes girls’ sports, etc. Nothing surprising here.

Why don’t they just admit they are afraid Democrats are going to confiscate their dicks and be done with it?

What dicks?  These people have dicks? I thought they were dickless wonders, those guys who like to beat up women and treat them like second-class citizens and deny their humanity, and control their wombs.

I was pretty conservative then, as well, but American political conservatism was different as well, because the world was different.  The issues were very different in the 1980s than they are today.

Dana, you seem actively dismissive of any opportunities to be introspective or discuss your inner life and thought processes.

Count me in as another skeptic of the study as it doesn’t seem to probe whether there were other confounding factors such as individual personalities and personal lifestyle preferences matter as much or more than the gender of one’s child(ren).  Seems a bit too neat and tidy to me…...

Interesting. But about as meaningless as saying people majoring in ‘non intellectual’ college majors tend to vote Democrat.

Funny to hear that considering the vast majority of undergraduate business majors IME and those of people I know tend to be far more inclined towards the Republican/right-wing end of the political spectrum…...and describing them or their major as “intellectual” will prompt ROTFLOL reactions at best…..or angry reactions if they are inclined to interpret “intellectual” as a slanderous adjective to be associated with the “effete” DFH.

So, uh, I agree with Piator that folks are being a bit harsh on Dana. Even though everyone knows that statistics don’t and won’t describe every individual, the first, most natural, reaction when you see a statistic that doesn’t describe YOU is to say, “Hey! That’s not true for me!”

Anyhoo, I only have one son so far and I was pretty far to the left before hand. That said, I think that becoming a parent made politics a lot more visceral for me because I’m much more conscious of how connected we are. I know see everybody as someone’s mother or father, someone’s son or daughter, brother or sister. It’s not like I didn’t know this or think about this before, but now I see everyone as part of this big interconnectedness and I think it makes trying to make things better feel more urgent or more important.

It also, like some of the other commenters, made me more committed and engaged with feminism, both from my own perspective of how the way I functioned in the world changed when I became a mother, compared to my husband’s position, and also in terms of being hyper aware of how gender socialization works and how pervasive it is.

As for the study, there was one a while back that looked at voting records of members of Congress and found that legislators with daughters had much better voting records on reproductive rights (and on some other issues important to women but I can’t remember off the top of my head which issues they looked at). The more daughters they had, the better (from a feminist perspective) they voted on abortion. Men with daughters were even much less likely to vote for parental notification laws!

We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party.

You know there are people out there who are going to attribute this to the immense corruptive power of Girl Cooties (even if the girls in question—-and hence their cooties—-are very immature).

What’s sad is that people buy into the ridiculous idea that right wing politics are good for men.  Right wingers prioritize protecting male privilege, but I disagree that having that privilege is necessarily the best thing for men, if it comes at the high price of having to put up with other right wing policies.

Well, you see, right wing policies may not be good for men per se, but at least they don’t make men weak.

I refer you to the funda-kitsch catalogues full of Toys For Boys in which the little male tykes are invited to impersonate Roman legionnaries, Mountain Men, and Wearers Of The Gray, with the evident objective of turning them into flaming head cases.  The promise which attends this sort of bric-a-brac is implicit: Bring your lad up on our stuff and, however crazy he might get, nobody’s ever going to dare break the news to him that they think he might be gay.  On the contrary: when they catch a glipse of that thousand-yard stare they’ll want to move away fast.

Whereas no mere girl will ever produce this effect, no matter what you dress her up as.  So which one makes a funner toy, hunh?  A boy or a girl?  You don’t have to say anything out loud, Dad, because we all know what the answer to that question is.

The truth is that the Lord God Almighty did create Heaven and Earth. His love for Humanity was such that He did sacrifice His only One and Begotten Son on the Cross to save humanity for its sins. He suffered and died for our sins, and as He hung there on the Cross, he absorbed the world’s pain and sins. In His Passion and His pain, He did relieve Humanity of all its evil. All sins were forgiven.

Truly, Jesus was the Son of God.

The truth is that the Lord God Almighty did create Heaven and Earth. His love for Humanity was such that He did sacrifice His only One and Begotten Son on the Cross to save humanity for its sins. He suffered and died for our sins, and as He hung there on the Cross, he absorbed the world’s pain and sins. In His Passion and His pain, He did relieve Humanity of all its evil. All sins were forgiven.

So, like, he came back. 

And the two crucified with him - what about their fucking suffering?  What about all the other thousands who were crucified by the Romans?  What about the millions who have died in even more painful ways, such as bone cancer?

I mean, shit, in comparative terms, Jesus didn’t sacrifice anything.  Why didn’t he stub his toe or something - it would have been just as much a “sacrifice”.

Come to think of it, why is this kabuki play about a “sacrifice” even needed?  Who made these stupid rules - God, right?  If He could say “I’ll off Junior to save them”, why couldn’t he just say “Fuck it - they’re saved” instead?  If He loves, why exactly should any sinner burn in Hell?

There are some uncomfortable facts about the theology of the Crucifixion:

i, It apes other divine sacrifice stories and resurrection stories of the time.

ii, It makes no logical sense when wedded to the idea of an all powerful monothestic God.  It only makes sense in a polythestic context.

iii, It is crafted to be resonant to Jews and other peoples of the time, being based on the idea of a sacrificial animal and ritual absolution.  To people who don’t use animal sacrifice and regard personal contrition as important, it’s not so resonant.

iv, I don’t believe it.  It is not credible based on the evidence or based on logic, and ever since I’ve been 13, it hasn’t been emotionally credible either.

Tyro wrote:

Dana, you seem actively dismissive of any opportunities to be introspective or discuss your inner life and thought processes.

Depends on how you want to look at it.  I’ve mentioned some things previously that I am certain have shaped te way I view the world, but that’s different from speculating on how I might view things differently had conditions been different.  I’m perfectly willing to tell you what I am, because that’s something that can be said with accuracy; telling you what might have been is just fantasy.

Little, seemingly meaningless decisions can have a huge impact.  If there had been just one more Mountain Dew in my refrigerator on the night of December 19, 1978, I’d never have walked to the Convenient Food Mart on the corner of South Limestone Street and Euclid Avenue in Lexington—and never have met my wife.

Alas! That Amanda’s parents are Republicans, and it didn’t take with their daughter.  The world is poorer for that…

Dana on 05/20 at 03:43 PM

News flash, Dana. I’d expect that at least half of the far-left Pandagonians you meet here, myself certainly included, were raised in right-wing households.

I feel that my parents’ values did take with me—and taking morality seriously, as they raised me to do, I naturally went Left.

So did about half my numerous siblings.

There is a reason that Republicans are and, since the New Deal era began, always have been in the minority.

They have disproportionate power because they side with wealth and privilege and despite the absurd meme of “left-wing media” therefore get disproportionate control of the terms of debate.

Also, Republicans do have a sort of “integrity,” if by integrity we mean sticking to a particular rhetoric no matter what, including no matter what Republican individuals may do to contradict the very rhetoric they go on spouting even as they deny it with deeds. This is because, as the Bush admin helpfully pointed out in so many words, they are not “reality-based.”

Democrats, particularly the ones who attain significant power, are compromised by needing to balance a more sane and frank view of how the world works with conforming with rightist terms of discourse. This costs us points.

Count me in as another skeptic of the study as it doesn’t seem to probe whether there were other confounding factors such as individual personalities and personal lifestyle preferences matter as much or more than the gender of one’s child(ren).  Seems a bit too neat and tidy to me…...

Do you think they only interviewed ten people?

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/daughtersrestat08.pdf

“The main source used in the analysis is the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).  This is a nationally representative random sample of British households, containing over 10,000 adult individuals, conducted between September and Christmas of each year from 1991 (see Taylor et al 2002).  Respondents are interviewed in successive waves; households who move to a new residence are interviewed at their new location; if an individual splits off from the original household, the adult members of their new household are also interviewed.  Children are interviewed once they reach 11 years old.  The sample has remained representative of the British population since the early 1990s.”

If you take 10,000 people and divide them into those who have daughters and those who don’t, both groups are going to be statistically equal in terms of “individual personalities and personal lifestyle preferences.”

Unless you’re proposing a vector by which personality and lifestyle cause people to have more or fewer daughters, this is not a relevant objection.

So, uh, I agree with Piator that folks are being a bit harsh on Dana.

‘Folks’ being me.  Our Dana likes his kids; he’s proud of them.  Which is nice and all but seems like something that should be standard on parents.  It certainly doesn’t, to my mind, cut him any slack whatsoever on his support for people who call me the exact equivalent of a child rapist and who would see reproductive freedoms stripped from all women, including those daughters he’s so proud of.

That he’s all flaunting his white male Christian heterosexual privilege where I have to see him?  Oh yeah, I got all kinds of resentment over that.  Could you not flaunt your sexuality in public please, Our Dana?  Flame a little bit less?  There could be children reading.

It’s bizarre that people look at this and go “zomg bias!” like this isn’t precisely what you’d expect given basic human psychology.  Or rather, that because this is about what you’d expect given basic human psychology, the study must ergo be complete bullshit.  It’s like seeing research that demonstrates that having a child who’s gay will tend to slide people toward being pro-gay rights and being disinclined to believe it’s valid because that’s how people tend to actually behave.

I think that having girls is definitely responsible for left-leaning shifts in parental politics. It’s not that everyone who has a girl will suddenly vote Dem, but my father’s father, who had two boys, was incredibly hard-core republican and flaming misogynist—actually admitted that he wanted nothing to do with my sister and I because we were girls and not boys.

Now, the apple that was my father didn’t fall far from the tree. Still a Republican, still a bit of a misogynist, my liberal mother inexplicably married him and he had two girls, and I distinctly remember him, circa 1992-1994, chewing out a RNC caller, explaining that he had no interest in donating to them and supporting them if they didn’t stop screwing around with the Religious Right. Pro choice and completely supportive of his daughters going to college and getting jobs and all of the issues surrounding that… he could have been “a lot worse” had he not had the opportunity to think about how right-wing policies would actually shake out for his family.

The interesting thing is (and again, I stress that the apple, while it rolled a bit after it hit the ground, did not fall far from the tree), is that now that my sister and I are grown and have limited contact, and he’s now with a woman who is much more conservative, he is apparently much more conservative than he was: I suspect that he figures “the danger’s passed” with regards to my sister and I, and since we’re more or less out-of-sight-out-of-mind he doesn’t have to think about stuff like that.

Of course, my Uncle, who never had children and to look at him you think he’d be a staunch Republican, is in fact a pretty hard-core Democrat, and adamantly wanted Hillary to win the primary and the election because he felt that it was time to put a woman in charge of things. So, yeah, individual results may vary. :D

It always saddens me a little that having a DAUGHTER will get men to slide a little closer to the Feminist column, but MARRYING a WOMAN does not. Nor does, you know, having been birthed and raised by a woman.

This bothers me too, but I sometimes wonder if it’s not a “I won’t be able to protect my little girl” thing. Most men like to think that they (or their dad) will protect Mom and that they (or their children) will protect their Wife, but who’s going to protect Daughter?

Then again, if my Dad moved left at all, it was because of multiple screaming matches with me where I pointed out various left / feminist viewpoints and explained to him that he was white, male, and privileged. While Mom sat by quietly, figuring that silence was the easiest way out. So maybe it’s not the magic girl babies that do it, but a combination of girl babies and girl teenage daughters.

(Which would explain the Republican presidents - likely the man’s politics were set in stone long before their daughter started yelling at them about pro-choice issues. Who knows.)

I really like Tyro’s theory, though, that it’s a selection bias thing.

Ponytail, I would suspect that not having children, like not marrying, would also tend to drive you to the left - especially if you find yourself marginalized on the presumption of homosexuality.

hehehehe. Ponytail.

I know that some people are suspicious, but this study really makes sense to me.  My brother was completely apolitical forever.  He was never conservative, but he just never cared about politics.  Or if he cared, he kept it to himself.  So now I have a niece and I was surprised to see an Obama bumper sticker on my brother’s car.  Even I don’t have bumper stickers, and I’m more vocal about politics than my brother ever was.

This same thing also happened to with my dad.  He is literally a sociopath and he is manipulative and even psychologically abusive to basically everyone he meets.  I was affected by it slightly as a child, but I got the least of it by far compared to the rest of my family.  I didn’t even realize how bad it really was for my brothers and mom until I was an adult.  My dad is the kind of guy who is perfectly willing to pay women employees less if he can get away with it, not just out of sexism but out of simple greed and selfishness.  He constantly tried to make my mom quit her job (which she fortunately didn’t do).  He had no qualms about cheating, not just on my mom, but on every woman he ever dated.  He was always suspicious that everyone was after his money, especially women.  But when it came to me, in his eyes, I just wasn’t the same as all other women.  He wanted me to be successful and go to college and have a career and not end up as a housewife to some guy like him.  He was actually more proud that I did well in school than he was about me being pretty.  He didn’t want me to end up with a cheating, psychologically abusive husband like he was.  One of my brothers said that I was the only person my dad ever really listened to and took seriously.  We used to have political, religious, and scientific debates since I was in middle school, and he never talked down to me.  I think it’s just really easy for some men to treat women terribly and think they deserve it, but when it’s your own kid, you just don’t want other people treating your daughter as badly as you’ve treated other women.

I am sure those men who get feminism after having daughters (the study makes it clear that this result was true for men with only daughters, not men with both) were moderate-to-liberal to begin with.  Right-wing patriarchal types are usually set in their misogynist ways.  I know a few women who were rejected by their dads for having been born female. 
If *all men* went feminist after having girl children, patriarchy would be over by now, since men have been having daughters since humanity began.

The study doesn’t say that all men become feminist or liberal after having daughters.  Conservative vs. liberal is a continuum, not a dichotomy.  The study is saying that men tend to become more liberal after having daughters.  If they start out very misogynist, they might become slightly less misogynist.  Also, the statistics show a trend.  That means that not every individual case will turn out the same.

Re:  Dana and statistics:

Another data point for the “Republicanism is dysfunction, not stupidity” point.  The guy knows the statistical issues, but still chooses to say something which implies that he doesn’t, in order to make . . . some kind of point, I’m sure.  There’s something about that philosophy which causes ordinary people to harm their own thought processes, even in their areas of expertise.

Purpleshoes, that’s a good point and it brings up what was, for me, the most shocking epiphany I’ve had on Pandagon when INTPagan (IIRC) was saying that she had had to adjust her thinking when her daughter pulled her hair ribbons out one morning. INTPagan had described her “natural” urge to put the ribbons back in, and then wondered what kind of message it would send to her daughter - that her hair had to be styled in a manner that someone else found pretty and acceptable. So she left the ribbons out and the world didn’t end.

I would have had the same “natural” urge to do this, since that’s what my mother would have done and I wouldn’t have really examined the issue the way INTPagan had. And it sort of hit home what you are saying - that your kids aren’t going to conform 100% to your gender ideas, so you either have to move your ideas, move away from your kids, or try to force your kids to fit. Probably a lot of parents do a little of all three, I don’t know.

I want gender neutral toys for my baby, but outside of alphabet blocks, I can’t think of many.

I want gender neutral toys for my baby, but outside of alphabet blocks, I can’t think of many.

Instead of gender-neutral, try giving your kid both “masculine” and “feminine” toys.  Whether you have a son or daughter, let your child have both dolls and toy trucks, and let them decide which they like.  And try to limit their exposure to commercials, so they won’t learn which they’re supposed to like before they get a chance to try them out.

Hmmm… Could it be that putting an actual face to an oppressed group (in this case, women) can increase sympathy for said group? And that suddenly giving men a stake in feminism in the form of a daughter (guess the wife doesn’t count, sorry laideeez!) increases sensitivity to the challenges women face, and causes men to take action to remedy injustice?

Nah, it’s probably the extra hormones floating around the house that turn dudes all left & shit.

It always saddens me a little that having a DAUGHTER will get men to slide a little closer to the Feminist column, but MARRYING a WOMAN does not. Nor does, you know, having been birthed and raised by a woman.

People’s relationships to their kids and the way they feel about their children is fundamentally different from any other relationship they will ever have. How long does it take us to even see our parents as fallible human beings? We love our spouses and partners and want good things for them, but we also need things from them. A man’s expectations about what family life should look like, his expectations/needs for emotional support from his wife, his sense of what it’s reasonable for her to expect from him or his sense of when he’s given enough - all of those things will interfere with the ability of even somewhat well-intentioned men to put themselves in their wife’s position.

There’s a lot less static in your love for your kids. It really is a less polluted kind of love. Not that there aren’t really fucked up dynamics in some parent-child relationships, but I think it is the one relationship where people are more likely to just want the other person to be happy, or perhaps the relationship where your desire for the other person to be happy is strong enough that it can override your other desires for the person to be like you or do the thing that you want them to do.

I want gender neutral toys for my baby, but outside of alphabet blocks, I can’t think of many.

We gender the toys. The toys aren’t gendered in and of themselves. What’s masculine about a truck or feminine about a doll? Do boys not want to be nurturing ? Do girls not like to build things? Just get all kinds of toys.

Thanks for the callback, Essie - that’s correct, only it was ponytails rather than ribbons, but essentially yeah.

And Catgirl got it right - I let my daughter play with whatever she wants to, essentially, and her favorite outfits tend to be dresses with her black-and-yellow sandals that she picked over the pink ones.  I let her pick her clothes and her toys, and she picks a fair variety of stuff.  It’s entertaining.

Of course, my Uncle, who never had children and to look at him you think he’d be a staunch Republican, is in fact a pretty hard-core Democrat, and adamantly wanted Hillary to win the primary and the election because he felt that it was time to put a woman in charge of things.

Trust me, that is NOT a good reason for voting for a female politician *couh* *cough* *Shipley* *cough*.

Much as it pains me to say this, Dana is less of a twerp in his thinking on gender than some of the other wingnuts on his blog, at least one of which is female.  That’s close to damning with faint praise, but it is something.

I just figured that anyone who thinks having daughters automatically makes you more liberal never read this.

Male privilege lessens but doesn’t extinguish the chance that you’ll find yourself down and out one day. 

When you look at reproductive rights, you really see how this works.

In my early 20’s I had a girlfriend who thought she was pregnant.
After I got over my “ZOMG! She’s trying to trap ME!” hysteria died down I realized that reproductive rights affected me too.

Funny how personal involvement make an impact on attitude.

Hmm. But for all the parents: If you give them “gendered” toys (sorry for the bad term, but I hope this is clear), what do you do when Uncle Bob and Aunt Barbara reach over and start taking the truck away and putting the doll in her hands? I was hoping to just cut through that conversation entirely, but it seems unlikely / impossible.

I can’t even remember what my favorite toys were, or if I was ‘influenced’ to want dolls from adults or commercials. Seems likely.

INTPagan, great to see you! Have you been lurking or did I just mention you at the perfect time?

purpleshoes, it’s been said if I ever have kids they’ll be teething on game console controllers.  I bet a GameCube controller would work pretty well if you froze it a while.

PiaToR—I’m not saying it was, but his sentiment was a complete 180 from how he was raised, and considering how many men out there wouldn’t vote for a qualified woman because women are emotional and irrational and not as smart and all the other reasons they believe, I’m fine with my Uncle feeling the opposite way.

kesh, I do have to say that I think men who do that are control freak monsters, who are suicidal, but resent the idea that their families could survive them.  (After all, the family is FOR the patriarch, right?) They may rationalize it as protective, but at its ugly heart, that behavior is the patriarchy at its worst.

I definitely agree with that, but there is still, even in the 21st century, this pressing obligation for a lot of men that they have to be the providers.  It isn’t any more healthy for them to have these kinds of pressures forced on them, even with all the other privileges they get being white and male.

I just figured that anyone who thinks having daughters automatically makes you more liberal never read this.

Lex on 05/21 at 01:17 PM

True. I think that one study MIGHT mean something but in my line of work it really doesn’t until you study things over and over again. I won’t get my hopes up.

Plus, people tend to still cling to the naieve belief that having a baby actually changes people. In reality, if you are an ass before you have a kid chances are more than likely you will still be an ass. Just one that now has the ability to screw someone else’s life up from the start. If you’re pinning your hopes on something changing after you have a kid then DON’T HAVE THAT KID UNTIL YOU GET IT SORTED OUT. For crissakes.

Really- how to explain purity balls/rings? There’s still a massive swodge of the population that will never get that women are more than men’s property/walking baby factories due to religion, ingrained cultural b.s, etc. It would be nice to be able to separate right wing thinking from religion but I think that the two are far too entertwined to actually say that having a daughter will make people think more openly about women’s rights.
Look at the Duggars - they’ve had far too many chances to turn that train around and it’s going to keep barrelling on regardless.

Plus, people tend to still cling to the naieve belief that having a baby actually changes people.

*blinks*

This is naive? I mean, I get that having a baby doesn’t necessarily improve people, but there’s definitely a change for many / most people.

Shoot, Amanda has even pointed out that having a baby changes your marriage, more often than not.

It’ll change your marriage and the dynamic between people SURE. (mostly on the woman having to do everything side and being resentful about that)
People weighting a child down with the responsibility to magically change mummy & daddy is not just naive but stupid in the extreme.

Oh, I’ve got you now. You were talking about the “magical improvement” change that people believe in and I was talking about the “something crucial about your life is different and you will change in response” change. Gotcha.

In that case, yeah, I agree. Babies don’t save marriages or turn Dad into a serious provider (“Knocked Up” notwithstanding).

Essie - hi!  I sometimes lurk, but mostly just don’t have the energy to read through long comment threads much anymore.  I just happened to read this one.  I spend mosta my time on Facebook.

Oh, and people who grab the truck and replace it with a doll get a very quick, “Put the godsdamn truck back if you like having your hands,” with varying levels of civility.  I’ve done as much whenever I was working for traveling childcare at a church and took my daughter to a room while I worked - she made a beeline for the trucks, and the lady decided to take her to go get more “toys for girls”, upon which I let her know that my daughter was to play with whatever toys she wished so long as they were age-appropriate.  I don’t give a damn that I was on the job at a Baptist church; they were not going to get away with giving her the idea that she isn’t supposed to play with trucks.

She is as impartial as the day is long about gendered stuff, and that’s how I like it - I don’t discourage her from being feminine; I just let her have open options.

“Hmm. But for all the parents: If you give them “gendered” toys (sorry for the bad term, but I hope this is clear), what do you do when Uncle Bob and Aunt Barbara reach over and start taking the truck away and putting the doll in her hands? I was hoping to just cut through that conversation entirely, but it seems unlikely / impossible.’

when i was a kid all my toys were either animals (stuffed animals, plastic animals, the family cat, etc) or building/creation oriented stuff (lincoln logs, playmobile, erector sets, art supplies). my brother was close enough to me in age that we pretty much played with the same stuff (we both went through a hotwheels craze for a few years, but those were pretty much the only “gendered” toys we had), so i think that might be a way to subtly set the non-gendered precedent (i’m female, btw). i think my grandparents might have once given me a baby doll that never got played with, then figured out that i’d really rather play with the dinosaurs or ridiculously extensive crayon sets.

Republicans love their kids.
Democrats love everybody’s kids.

I have children and their birth didn’t affect my political ideas one way or the other, so obviously that survey is full of shit. And you know what else gets my goat? We’re constantly inundated with all these easily refutable theories presented as fact. Today, for example, was unseasonably cool, which proves that global warming is nothing but a crock of shit, unless it’s hot tomorrow. And I’ve been alive for many years without having evolved any kind of useful new appendage. No one else I know has either. What do you say about that, Darwin? Pffffft.

Kaninchen wrote:

t certainly doesn’t, to my mind, cut him any slack whatsoever on his support for people who call me the exact equivalent of a child rapist and who would see reproductive freedoms stripped from all women, including those daughters he’s so proud of.

The equivalent of a child rapist?  Sorry, but I don’t know what your family life is like in the least, so I couldn’t call you anything of the sort.  As for “reproductive freedoms,” yes, I am solidly pro-life, and make no bones about that.

If you equate homosexuality to pedophilia then you are equating kaninchen’s family with child rape.  Deliberate obtuseness does not become you.

I do have to admit, though, that having kaninchen referring to me as “Our Dana” just makes me proud and happy to be part of the group!    I feel so loved.

But INTPagan, I neither knew nor cared whether kaninchen is homosexual.  I suspected it, from hios comments, but did not know, and would not simply assume it to be the case.

Well, since kaninchen has never made a secret of her family on here, and since you’re put to the question, do you view homosexuality as being like pedophilia?

I mean, really, even if you never said, “kaninchen might as well be a pedophile,” if you compare homosexuals to pedophiles and kaninchen is a homosexual…seriously, dude, did you never take the SATs or what?

I don’t compare homosexuals to pedophiles; adult homosexuals who are attracted to sex with other adults don’t qualify as pedophiles.  Pedophiles are adults who wish to have sex with children, regardless of whether those attractions are heterosexual or homosexual in orientation.

I am not asking if you think that they are pedophiles, and I don’t think you’re anywhere near stupid enough to think that’s what I was asking.  I am asking if you think they are the moral equivalent of pedophiles.

Actually, no, I didn’t take the SAT!  The University of Kentucky required the ACT instead, or at least it did in the 1970s.

Can I just invoke the stick rule now?  I know that Dana’s the resident troll, but these past few messages pretty gratuitously violate the stick rule, even if proper grammar is utilized while violating said rule.

No, I don’t believe that homosexuals are the moral equivalent of pedophiles.  I wouldn’t lock them away, and I wouldn’t make consensual sexual activity of any sort, between legal adults, criminal. 

Now, if you are edging toward asking me if I believe that homosexual activity is sinful, as a Catholic, my answer is yes, in the same way that adultery is sinful.  Pedophilic sex is sinful not only in that way, but also as an assault with a victim who is actively harmed.

Further, to take an important distinction, I don’t believe that being a pedophile is either sinful or morally wrong.  That is the description of a condition, one I’d guess virtually everyone who has such attractions dearly wishes he didn’t have.  I’d give great honor to someone who suffered from such desires who was able to master them and not act on them.

Can I just invoke the stick rule now?  I know that Dana’s the resident troll, but these past few messages pretty gratuitously violate the stick rule, even if proper grammar is utilized while violating said rule.

He’s making a careful distinction in his thinking, and engaging rationally.  You and I may not agree with him - he may make us angry - but he’s presenting his case thoughtfully, and he’s more polite about it than, well, I would be.

I heard My Sharona on the radio this morning and thought of this post.  Daughters make men think twice about the patriarchal sexual desire for younger women.  As they and their daughters age, they start to see young women as analogous to their daughter and start to realize that this culture is dangerous for their daughter.  In some cases, this can make them more protective, in more open cases, this will give them a bigger incentive to do something to change this bad behavior.  The parents of boys rarely if ever (I’m sure there is an anecdote to “prove” my general statement about culture wrong) have to worry about their child being victimized by an older woman and thus have no reason to think about changing the status quo.

The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.
Dana, I haven’t done SD calcs by hand since, say, about 35 years ago, about the time that I abandoned my slide rule for one of those new-fangled calculators.  The most important part of statistics is to define your problem, do a quick inspection of your data by descriptive statistics, and choose the appropriate statistical test. Plenty of people do perfect calculations using inappropriate tests.”

Beavis - Numbers suck

Butt-head - Yeah, there’s like, too many of them and stuff

“That is a little bit of a relief, in that it decreases the likelihood of a Palin presidency.”

Sarah Palin ROCKS! She’s definitely our next President. And the precedent will be set - Forevermore the spouse of a female President shall be known by the title of First Dude!

” “I’m sure she’ll be smart and all, but being pretty is so much more important for girls.” Fuck you.”

I’m sorry, but this is 100% true.

What men seek in women: Youth, beauty, and compassion.

What women seek in men: Wealth, ambition, and loyalty.

He’s making a careful distinction in his thinking, and engaging rationally.  You and I may not agree with him - he may make us angry - but he’s presenting his case thoughtfully, and he’s more polite about it than, well, I would be.

No.  I said that he supports those who do call me the moral equivalent of a child rapist.  He is being disingenuous and smug and not addressing my point because it’s fun to poke the angry dyke with sticks.  Look, she’s angry!  Dana wins!

You, unsurprisingly, defend him.  Go on, do share your less polite version with the rest of the class.

Nor is he addressing INTPagan’s point.

Thank you, INTPagan.

My point, kaninchen, and you’re welcome.  The intellectual disingenuousness of his replies was getting annoying to me, and that’s why I invoked the stick rule - when you ask someone if A is *like* B and they say no, A is *not* B, they are being a tool.

He was not being subtle and well-thought-out.  He was deliberately evading the question - and, however you cook it, a sin is a sin.  Also, his comments about pedophilia (the dictionary definition rather than the commonly attributed one) were quite telling in his equivocation.  After all, if the dirty gays would just repress their sinful urges the way that some noble pedophiles do, they would get to be noble, too!

Regardless of whether or not he really does equivocate them (and he can deny it but, really, judge for yourself), he supports lawmakers who will treat homosexuality like any other “sin” - who view the rights of homosexuals to have families as being on par with the rights of pedophiles to have families with child partners.  Whether or not they’re morally equal in his eyes, to him they are equal under the law.

And he can fuck off with himself.

He’s making a careful distinction in his thinking, and engaging rationally.

PiaToR, what? He’s purposely being evasive and not engaging with the topic and simply writes coherently while doing so. You’re giving too much credit to him for being merely literate.

Too many people mistake decorum for honesty, intellect, and morality.

Nonsense, Tyro!  Grammar equals logic, especially if there is no profanity.

Myself?  I would honestly prefer openly hostile opponents to ones who sneakily take away your rights while using carefully couched language like Dana did.  If you really mean it, show your fuckin’ colors.

EricJG, first you seem to only measure someone’s worth in terms of how attractive they are to the opposite sex.

next, in more economically and intellectually advanced dating environments, many more factors come into play.

Maybe you all shouldn’t give EricJG such a hard time. He seems like a nice guy. Though I think his real message is that when these “women” about whom he writes seek men, they go for pretty much anyone other than EricJG.

PiaToR, what? He’s purposely being evasive and not engaging with the topic and simply writes coherently while doing so.

Tyro, aee this comment. He’s trying to explain his position.

You, unsurprisingly, defend him.

Yesh, right - I’m Dana’s no.1 fan.

Damn - Tyro, I meant his post at 05/21 at 08:52 PM.

PiaToR, that’s still complete nonsense whenever you consider the complete disingenuousness of his replies.  Could I have been an ounce more precise?  Sure.  Did he know what I was getting at?  Either he did and he was being disingenuous (“Of course I don’t think gays are pedophiles; pedophiles are attracted to children where gays are attracted to their gender, silly!”) or he didn’t and he deserves to be held to the stick rule.

And, either way, even if he doesn’t morally equivocate the two, he supports officials who do under the law, and it doesn’t make a goddamn bit of difference if the person denying you rights says, “Of course I don’t think you’re evil like pedophiles; I just don’t think that you deserve basic civil rights,” instead of, “You fucking homos are sick.”  It amounts to the same fucking thing.  Anyone who has not thought through the impact of their vote to that degree is too stupid or apathetic to cast a ballot in the first place - not that it stops them.  However, just to be fair, I think Dana’s intelligent enough to know exactly what he’s voting for, and I don’t know if that makes me think he is more or less of an asshole.  Sure, he’s civil, but he’ll take away your rights just like the most vocally bigoted asshole on the block.

Tyro, [s]ee this comment. He’s trying to explain his position.

Hm. Maybe so there, but on the topic related to this post specifically, he was needlessly evasive and had no interest in engaging with the topic. On the other hand, ask him about homosexuality and pedophilia, and he has plenty boilerplate things to say.

“EricJG, first you seem to only measure someone’s worth in terms of how attractive they are to the opposite sex.”

Well, obviously I was talking about matters of Love and Romance, where mutual attractiveness is very important.

In business, one’s worth is measured more in terms of competence.

Sorry if I caused any confusion.

“And the two crucified with him - what about their fucking suffering? “

The Good Thief was promised immediate Entry into Paradise. An everlasting life of eternal bliss, in communion with the Angels and the Saints.

We are in Heaven right now. We are witnesses to the Power and the Glory. For God did say - I am the Light and the Truth and the Way. Jesus is our Saviour. He died for our sins. In the process, He did wipe out Sin and Death. All sins are forgiven, such that we Mortals can enjoy an immortal life. Christianity is indeed the Beautiful Mystery. The theology is simple enough for a 4 year old to grasp, yet so complex that it has tied up the greatest theological minds for centuries. You can swim in its depths for ever, yet never scratch even a fraction of its meaning.

Well, obviously I was talking about matters of Love and Romance, where mutual attractiveness is very important.

EricJG, don’t be disingenuous. felagund said:

Our daughter is a very pretty child, as complete strangers keep telling us, but what about 10% of said strangers, not to mention various drunk friends, have also said is that the fact that she’s pretty is the most important thing about her. “I’m sure she’ll be smart and all, but being pretty is so much more important for girls.” Fuck you.
felagund on 05/20 at 10:15 PM

And you mindlessly replied:

I’m sorry, but this is 100% true.

What men seek in women: Youth, beauty, and compassion.

felagund was complaining that people considered only the prettiness of felagund’s daughter to be important, and you said “this is 100% true,” which only applies if the only thing important in one’s life is attracting a mate. The comment itself had nothing to do with dating issues, but we can see the only thing that’s on your mind. And apparently in your poor dating pool, “youth, beauty, and compassion” are the only valid attributes (which in I suppose the higher-quality dating circles in which I move, are fairly easy to come by).

Are you just trying to be ornery and trollish, or do you have this dating fixation on your mind? Or are you considering the only thing that is important in a person to be your personal standards for what makes them mate-worthy?

We are in Heaven right now.

Proof?

We are witnesses to the Power and the Glory.

Proof?

For God did say - I am the Light and the Truth and the Way.

I didn’t hear him.  Proof?

Jesus is our Saviour.

Proof?

He died for our sins.

Really?  The people who executed him seemd to think it was because he was a Jewish rabble rouser.  Proof?

In the process, He did wipe out Sin and Death.

PROOF?  If that last is true, then you wouldn’t mind me shooting you through the head - I wouldn’t be sinning, and you wouldn’t die, right?

“EricJG, don’t be disingenuous. felagund said: “

I like “Dr. Feelgood”, too, by Motley Crue. Great kick ass song from the Eighties!

“Are you just trying to be ornery and trollish, or do you have this dating fixation on your mind? “

Well, I am looking for a new girl friend. Am putting out some dating criteria. Looks do matter, but so does kindness and compassion. A beautiful woman who cares about those around her is indeed a worthy find!

“The truth is that the Lord God Almighty did create Heaven and Earth. His love for Humanity was such that He did sacrifice His only One and Begotten Son on the Cross to save humanity for its sins. He suffered and died for our sins, and as He hung there on the Cross, he absorbed the world’s pain and sins. In His Passion and His pain, He did relieve Humanity of all its evil. All sins were forgiven.

So, like, he came back. “

Yes. The Gospels are quite clear on this point. Jesus was Resurrected from the Dead.

“I mean, shit, in comparative terms, Jesus didn’t sacrifice anything.  Why didn’t he stub his toe or something - it would have been just as much a “sacrifice”.”

Baloney! Crucifixion was a thousand times more painful than waterboarding, which you wieners have been whining up as “torture”. Jesus endured REAL torture, including a vicious flogging well before the Crucifixion ever began. Now, Pho, is there any cause, any Ideal, for which you would be willing to undergo the same suffering Jesus did?

“There are some uncomfortable facts about the theology of the Crucifixion:”

Actually, there are a lot of uncomfortable feelings, most of them suffered by Jesus Himself. Others that suffered were His friends, the Disciples, who watched their leader be betrayed by one of their own, and of course His friends and relatives, including His own Blessed Mother, who had to watch him suffer in torment for several hours. Imagine being a mother and having to watch your Son die in such a way!

@benvolio: “Men with daughters are more likely to encourage their daughters to play sports”

More likely than who? You’re saying that men without daughters won’t encourage their nonexistent daughters to play sports? How mean of them! I’m not trying to be a jerk, I just really don’t get what you mean. The assertion that men with daughters are more likely to become more liberal, whether true or not, has substance to it. The assertion that men with daughters are more likely to encourage their daughters to play sports does not.

EricJG on 05/23 at 02:58 AM
EricJG on 05/23 at 03:10 AM
EricJG on 05/23 at 03:17 AM
EricJG on 05/23 at 03:24 AM
EricJG on 05/23 at 03:29 AM

At this point, I’m fairly convinced that either someone has hijacked EricJG’s account or that he came home really drunk last night and just started commenting.

So, like, he came back. “

Yes.

So when you say “sacrifice”, it’s in the very very special sense where nobody actually loses anything, then, like writing a cheque for $0.00 or dropping a subway token in a donation box?

Crucifixion was a thousand times more painful than waterboarding, which you wieners have been whining up as “torture”.

Which part of “comparative terms” did you not understand?  Waterboarding is done to people, which is why it is torture.  This supposed crucifixion was supposedly done to the supposed avatar of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, eternal and undying.  To this supposed God, it’s not really that big a deal, is it?

This supposed crucifixion was supposedly done to the supposed avatar of God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, eternal and undying. To this supposed God, it’s not really that big a deal, is it?

Not to quibble with anyone’s observation that our troubled young man’s superstitions are laughable, but in Christian theology that really is a big deal. It was decided that the Jesus character physically suffered. Many people died and countless books were destroyed over that decision. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making that observation to justify anything. It’s yet another example of how batshit crazy insanely primitive superstitious drivel can fuck up the world. The troubled youngster is another example, though with individuals of his sort, if it weren’t a savagely ignorant brand of Christianity, it would be something equally stupid.