A Joyous Sound

"But the Court asking her why she went in Mans Apparel, the Prisoner replyed, She went to Wooe a Widow. Upon the whole Matter the Jury brought her in not Guilty."

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

-cup empty: you will need to pee soon

in the first part he's reading it more or less casually, lying on the couch and all, only loudly commenting on details that particularly piss him off. probably the first time he's reading it. he's mad as hell, but he's still not fully spiraling. the second stage seems to be him rationalizing & scrutinizing: we can see he brought some pink stickers, highlighters, bookmarks. he's rereading the book more carefully, nitpicking on inaccuracies. he's trying to get control over the book.

You can criticize hypocrisy without making homophobic jokes or using homophobic nicknames.

And if YOU feel YOU can't, that's just a fucking skill issue.

You can talk about the fact that it's really fucked up that his frequenting of gay sex workers was an "open secret," as was his sexuality full stop, without making jokes that boil down to "hahaha look at the faggot."

He used to make good money. He quit his job to avoid child support.

Until...

One of them eventually had a giant note placed on his profile by legal saying we were not able to close any of his accounts or open new ones without clearance from legal, bc he kept cycling through account after account every time the state found the new one and submitted the garnishment paperwork.