this woman’s work

Thank the lord who art in heaven for the gift to the internets that is Marley! She explains everything here in this entry! Including:

• My previous bad taste in men
• My unexplained secondary infertility
• Why Noah had all those pesky colds despite the breastfeeding

See, there was a study done on 100 women and everybody knows that a study done on a small sample like that is totally irrevocably TRUE and not subject to any issues. Plus sniffing t-shirts is a really really really good measure of attraction. (You know, the smell of stale beer still brings to mind that one lovely chap I knew in my youth…)

Captain Bret has it right! Don’t let women even THINK of picking their own husbands! Studies show we’ll just screw it up. Let our dads do it! Marry us off when our fertility is at our peak — late teens, early twenties — and make us start popping out the babies! And if one of us falls off the path? Good folks like Captain Bret can take the babies (he’s already adopted a whole lot of ‘em from Eastern Europe because THAT is how good he is)!

By the way, remember this post? It’s been a little over a year and here’s where everyone stands. (This post could be a timesuck for you. Sorry about that.)

The oldest brother of family Smith is married to the oldest daughter of family Morton and they now have two kids who are about a year apart. (Video about her first homebirth. Also note that in this video? The dad says they had their first — of twelve — children 23 years ago and if Katie is the oldest, she’s 23, right? But the mom references how unhappy she was waiting and waiting for a husband and how the “long” wait was worth it.)

His younger sister (my favorite of the sisters: Kressant) married the next youngest brother of family M. They have two kids less than a year apart. (Their wedding video.)

His younger than that sister married the next youngest brother of family M. She just gave birth to their first.

Their grandparents married each other but I don’t think Dad set that up!

Here are their adoptions: first and second.

Hey, these people have nothing to do with Marley’s article — I’ve just been thinking on them since the last set of babies have been born (still reading their blogs).

And this movie just makes me laugh. Did you know that sending your kid to school is JUST THE SAME as making him sleep outside in the snow? Just ask Mr. Safeguard!

I’m just so intrigued with these people. I haven’t talked to Brett’s cousin (she’s friends with the Morton family and worships with them) in years and years — not since she emailed me something that said Christians shouldn’t hate the Jews because we’re just developmentally delayed and that they should save their real condemnation for Catholics. But I still follow what glimpses of her life I can get by visiting these other families. Pictures of her kids sometimes end up on the blogs and stuff.

Regarding the post below. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about writing this for AntiRacist Parent.

I think he’s a bully and I think he goes for what he perceives as weak points. I think he confuses sarcasm with being clever or witty.

Now I love me some sarcasm, don’t get me wrong, but in this case he’s using sarcasm as a weapon. He’s using “but it was a joke” as a cover for being hateful. Does he really hate black children? Well, as far as I can tell, only as much as he seems to hate everyone. But to tell a black 3-year old that he doesn’t like black children — he’s a white man. There’s no way to take that out of the context of his race.

The example I used in the comments to my entry was this:

If my husband — who is not Jewish but is married to a Jew — said snidely to a Jewish child, “We don’t like Jews in this house” I would think he had some serious antisemitism going on and I doubt people would argue with me. But I think white people like me are so nervous about the R word (racism) that we try to make excuses to avoid it.

The fact that this guy has immediate family members who are black is another reason some people said, “But he couldn’t have meant it that way!” You know, that racist way. But I see racism in some of his behavior (statements) to his black family members as well.

There’s a power differential in what he said to Madison that cements this for me. He is a white adult. She is a black child. “In this house, we don’t like brown skinned babies.” From an adult to a brown skinned child.

Is he just ignorant? Unable to understand that a preschooler isn’t the same as an adult? It’s an argument I’ve heard from people who care about him and I used to believe it but his actions seem deliberate to me. When he’s insulted me in the past, his actions seem deliberate. I’ve seen him chuckle over how funny it is to say things that make people angry or hurt their feelings. He takes pride in speaking outside of norms and in upsetting people. He uses cruelty to boost his self-esteem and he does it without considering the consequences to his victims.

(I’ve since talked to people who have confronted him and they say he rolls right over when someone calls him on his shit, which I think is another sign that he’s a bully — hitting people who can’t hit back.)

So yes, I think he’s racist. And sexist. And all sorts of other -ists because I think he’s a bully and he uses those -isms to assert his power over other people. In other words, an equal opportunity abuser and in this case, racism was his means to lash out at a preschooler.

Madison has none of this context; she just has a memory of someone who basically said he didn’t like her because she was black. And Madison was shaken, too, because she knows his black family members and she sees them as vulnerable, (which they are). (Ok, damn — he’s got black kids, ok? More identifying info than I meant to give but it’s important to the discussion.) That scares her — that he said that to her and he has his own brown-skinned children. So the adults (some of them) said, “But he couldn’t mean it because he has black kids” and Madison more clearly sees that the fact that he has black kids makes it that much more hurtful and wrong that he said it to her.

I really do feel better since writing this — my mood is much lighter than it was before I wrote it — but writing about it makes me cry.