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So, for that matter, is capturing and enslaving sex workers, or people who use drugs, or people who steal from fucking Walmart.

The real way to make friends

⚪️ man

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🔘 person with adhd

and i am seeking:

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⚪️ women

the op, whose name is currently "captain a.c.a.b.", is jeffrey cranor, writer of popular podcast "welcome to night vale"

the quote retweet is cecil baldwin, voice of said podcast, "welcome to night vale"

the tweet is liked by noelle stevenson, showrunner/creator of popular netflix show "she ra and the princesses of power"

the joke itself is comparing the tulsa trump rally to tumblr dashcon, which is a circa-2014 tumblr joke

Night Vale had to pull out of Dashcon, yes, because Dashcon refused to pay them. Likewise, Noelle Stevenson was there, & had to pull out part of the way through the con when she found out that she would have to pay for her hotel room. The Night Vale group let Noelle Stevenson stay with them in their room. (She has since designed merch for them + been invited backstage to their live shows.)

Like… This post isn’t about forgetting a name/age because of memory loss, social anxiety or dyslexia. This post is specifically about how Straight Men aren’t involved enough in their kid’s education and well-being. It’s about the inequity of gender roles, and how men aren’t expected to care too much about their children.

We have a concept for this in French: “la charge mentale” (the mental load). It explains how women are expected to do all the chores and to remember everything which is relevant about the children’s development, while the men just… aren’t.

The comic you added  is 100% what is going on.

Clueless dads relying on their wives HAVE NO idea how much of a mental/emotional load  their wives are carrying.  They’re NOT bearing their own ‘‘mental load” when they come into our office and majorly drop the ball regarding their children’s needs.

I’ve been working in schools for several years. Here’s what happens when dads don’t share the mental load:

-We see dads who have no clue who is approved  to pick up their kids from school

-They don’t know if their child  has updated  medications in the health room

-They don’t know how to spell their child’s name/ they don’t know their child’s birthdays when they complete forms

 -They don’t know when IEP meetings are

-They don’t know when parent teacher conferences are.

-Clueless dads  don’t remember to sign field  trip permission slips, so their kids miss field  trips.

-They don’t make appointments, so they forget to pick up their kid from school early and the kid misses their doctor or eye appointment.

Older children often ‘‘fill in the gap’‘ and will pick up the slack for clueless dads in regard to meal prep for younger siblings or getting younger siblings ready for school.

Many wives have said they felt like they’re raising an additional child  because their husbands won’t independently cook/make appointments/ do laundry/ clean unless the wives ASK them to. 

Wives shouldn’t HAVE to ask their husbands to pitch in. They’re exhausted of feeling like they’re nagging/reminding their husbands all the time. 

No, it’s not a memory problem thing. It’s willful ignorance.

They stand back and rely on their wives making all of the appointments, doing all of the childcare, doing all of the home management, cooking, laundry, et cetera.

These guys have partners who CONSTANTLY REMIND THEM, print lists, mark appointments on calendars, or will write down a daily routine when these dads are filling in when their wives are busy.

The dads I’m talking about up there CAN’T BE ARSED WITH INDEPENDENTLY MANAGING THESE THINGS. 

These guys expect to be micromanaged by their wives.

“Oh, but YOU’RE better suited to scheduling!” 

“You made the appointment for the parent teacher conference, right? You know I’m no good at e-mailing teachers!”

“You want me to check in with the health room about our kid’s meds? Why would I need to do that? You handle those things!”

We’ve had a dad DROP OFF THE WRONG KID because he forgot WHICH of his children was the middle school student.  (That high schooler ended up being SUPER late to school! High school starts at 7:30 am and advisory at our school starts at 9:20)

Our office staff had to prevent an unapproved person from picking up a child because the dad didn’t think he HAD to add another relative to the ‘Approved Pick Ups list.  Instead of saying, “Oh, yeah. They’re approved. Let’s add them!”  this guy argued with our office staff because,  “I shouldn’t have to do all that. It’s just my kid’s aunt!”

We’ve had kids come in ask for clothes from our Clothing Closet because “Dad didn’t do our laundry.” 

A very common one is kids bragging about how good their cooking is. Usually the kids are cooking nerds. Unfortunately some of them are the ‘‘designated cooks” when their moms aren’t able to cook dinner. When asked why, they’ve said, “My dad says cooking isn’t his job and I’m better at it anyway.” 

These are often the same children who pick up slack for dad in other ways. These are the kids who wake up early, wake up their little siblings, get their little siblings breakfast, and wait at the bus stop with them before the big kid gets to go to school.   These are kids who do this when dad is home.   “Well, if I didn’t do it, they’d be late all the time.”

HARD FAIL, guys.

As many people have brought up before, a lot of the moms who are managing appointments, meetings, e-mailing teachers, calling the office, taking the kids to the doctor, and managing the household have mental illnesses and/or physical illnesses that make all of the above extremely hard. 

We have many moms come in our office who vent or break down because “I have all of this going on AND I have to manage (mental health/physical health) issues. I’m just so tired!”

Some guys go about it like “Oh! I just didn’t know!” and some guys actively don’t care enough to know.  Some guys let their wives know that “I don’t do that appointment making crap. You do it.”

I’ve had dads tell ME that “Oh, it’s just so hard making appointments and keeping up with all this. Women are just BETTER at this stuff! Like you! You’re so organized.”

“I bet your dad didn’t do this organization crap, amirite?!”

These guys could learn from my dad!

Here are the things my dad would tell all of us:

1) A spouse is a PARTNER. If you want someone to cook, do your laundry, or clean your house, you hire someone to do it.

2) Everyone who lives in the household contributes by doing chores.

3) It is not automatically ONE person’s job to cook. Everyone takes turns cooking because it’s an important life skill.

4) The people who didn’t cook clean up the kitchen.

5) Pick it up even if it isn’t your mess. We don’t want a dirty house.

6) Everyone writes important dates/meetings/appointments on a family calendar (ours is on the fridge). Everyone will then write it in their individual planners.

7) If you’re forgetful, WRITE LISTS.  If it’s a routine, write it in chronological order.

8) Put your keys/wallet/glasses/meds in the same place each day so they don’t get lost.

9) Everyone does laundry. As soon as the laundry basket is full, laundry is done.

10) Say “I Love You” every day to your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, nephews, etc.  You never know when you’ll be gone from this earth.**

11) Never demean hard work. When someone is working hard at chores, at home, a paying job, or doing homework— you tell them you appreciate the hard job they’re doing.

12) Be respectful to your family members. Show this respect by being kind, firm when needed, and by keeping your household clean. It’s a team effort to make a household run.

13) My dad was a stay at home dad.  His routine: When you’re in a position to be a stay at home dad: Sweep and Mop the floors every day, do laundry every day, do dishes and wipe out the sink, wash laundry and put it away, dust, be responsible for most of the cooking, make sure all beds are made, make sure to put out kid clothes out the day before school, get kids up, get kids ready for school, get kids breakfast, get kids to school, pick kids up from school, take kids to appointments, vacuum your wife’s car because you care about her and it makes her happy, mow the lawn, and be sure to take some ‘‘me time”.

I’ve handed out so many planners to these dads. Sometimes schools order a bunch of small day planners and I hand them out like candy.

To the guys at work saying, “LOL appointment keeping is a WOMAN’S job!”

Sirs,

It’s a wonder women bother at all.

It’s a wonder that the species propagates at all.

so

mainstreaming

people love to share “Cute” videos of “DEAF BABY HEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME/DEAF MOTHER HEARS HER KID’S VOICE FOR THE FIRST TIME” and everyone lavishes praise on auditory verbal therapists and everyone is so fucking glad that we might soon Cure deafness with the wonders of science and everyone thinks that deaf people with an opposition to any of this are just a product of Barbaric Deaf Culture Bullshit

meanwhile if you’ve ever spoken to any of those kids who were mainstreamed when they were 20 and had the mental capacity to comprehend and express how they felt about it all, way after all of those cute videos were long forgotten and they were gone from any sort of public eye, you’d notice a similar narrative

unrelenting trauma

you talk to nearly any mainstreamed kid who couldn’t integrate quite as well as the wunderkind that had a hearing problem that hearing aids could help and you’ll find out that they leave linguistics classes with haunted eyes that turn to tears because they can no longer handle hearing anyone deliberately enunciate sounds without reacting like they’ve been smacked and shaking as they desperately wish they could leave the room

it doesn’t matter if their Integration was formal or not, you talk to a grown mainstreamed person and more often than not they’ll tell you they can’t handle soundless videos anymore because the impulse bred in them to never Not Hear gives them panic attacks when something like that shows up (ps if you can recognize that a video has no sound you might want to start tagging it. the only reason i don’t is because i can’t fucking tell adequately at this point)

the kids who, when their moms (#mumblr) saw them removing their hearing aids (did you know that doctors often turn those things up so high that adults have reported their ears hurt on those settings?), had their hearing aids strapped to their heads; the kids who didn’t get to have a true choice between sign language and Being Fixed because their parents would never let them (and if any hearing parents get the idea that they can get around this i hope you realize that in a society that demonizes sign language like ours actually does under the veneer of caring about deaf people a 3 year old will never not be pushed away); the kids whose parents just thought they were doing well enough as is or could try harder and that would solve it all; these kids do not come out of this emotionally unscathed. they come out of this nervous wrecks who feel like crying anytime they have to ask someone too many times to repeat themselves.

auditory verbal therapy groups aren’t smarter about deaf issues, kinder about deaf issues, than deaf people. they create actual fucking little meme images where they don’t simply talk about the “necessity” of punishing deaf kids for failing, they laugh about it amongst each other.

these people willingly use information from the foundation named after the guy whose name was deeply associated with oralism, who didn’t want deaf people to intermarry to “keep the gene pool clean”, to tell everyone about how deaf kids are fine without sign language thanks to the wonders of auditory verbal therapy. they post shit like this.

people who have been mainstreamed spend the rest of their lives regretful that they’ve been kept away from other deaf people their entire lives, regretful that they’ve never learned sign language and instead have their language skills fried because they completely rewired themselves, hyperfocusing, to be able to hear just the people around them so they’d stop being yelled at, finally. they become more and more emotionally fragile around anything that makes them feel like they’re back to being lectured about how they say things funny or don’t understand sounds.

mainstreaming is fucking evil and the only reason you consider “fixing” it to be a good outcome for us is because you refuse to listen to any grown deaf people that didn’t come out of this golden