The Great Diaper Debate September 8, 2013
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Food for Thought.Tags: diapers, single blog, single fathers, single mothers
8 comments
Copious Readers, I have never changed a diaper.
Is that weird?
I had a very, shall we say, impassioned discussion of this topic with a friend of mine whom we shall call ‘Trent’. (Every blogger–nay, every writer–knows that the best part of writing is making up pseudonyms.)
Fate chose for Trent to walk the married-with-children path. Result: a seven-year-old son and a sixteen-year-old daughter and lots and lots of diaper-changing experience. Fine. (Smelly, but fine.)
The argument (I’m upgrading it from ‘impassioned discussion’) happened while I was talking to Trent on the phone–he was at a beach house with some friends. (Strike one against him.) Also present in the house, according to Trent, were one male friend with two small girls and another male friend—hmm, how about ‘Derek’!–who had no children. Trent told me that Derek was good with the little girls but that he wouldn’t really be the best person to watch them alone, because he’d never even changed a diaper. Trent told me this and laughed, as if it were a funny and surprising fact.
“But I’ve never changed a diaper,” I said.
“Are you serious?” he said.
I won’t recreate the dialog here because it went pretty much along those lines, with a couple interesting twists. He said that diaper-changing was a right of passage. He said 95 percent of Americans do it. He said, didn’t I ever babysit? (No, not since I had to chase that naked four-year-old around the house with a toothbrush and pajamas.) He said diaper changing was a way to show love, to overcome the grittiness of life for a greater purpose. (I’m saying it better than he did.) He equated it to never having travelled outside the U.S. With nearly every sentence, he intimated that I had missed out, and that I was a lesser person for it.
I tried to argue back, but I argue best on paper (or on pixels, I guess) so most of my words came out “but. . but. . .I. . uh.. no. . .” So sure was he of the order of things, that he didn’t even realize he was making me nuts. He laughed harder and harder, while at the end of the conversation I was practically screaming into the phone, near tears and feeling frustrated and offended.Copious Readers, what would you have done? What would you have said? Below is a slightly edited version of the email I wrote to him once I calmed down (sorry for any bad formatting juju):
Dear Trent, (more…)
STFU Glenn Grothman, or Should We Say–Glenn Gross, Man. March 6, 2012
Posted by Onely in As If!.Tags: glenn grothman, glenn grothman single parents, Republican Senators who should be fed to the crocodiles, single mothers
7 comments
Normally we at Onely avoid using rhetorical fallacies like name-calling to make our point. But right now we have an absurd crisis on our hands, so we must say–screw our rhetorical principles.
The dungwipe nit-brained waste of quarks Republican (of course) Senator Glen Grothman of Wisconsin wants to pass a bill “requiring the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.”
Yes, single parents are abusing their children just by being single. Better they should marry whoever they can find and spend their lives screaming at each other over the heads of their non-abused children. That’s what Glenn Gross, Man thinks, anyway.
And here’s the worst part: Gross, Man is himself single. Way to hit one for the home team, buddy.
You can read more about what a narrow-minded slushflinger he is here or here.
Ok, Copious Readers. Here is the Senator’s contact information. Call or email and tell him that Onely hopes he chokes on his Senate Bill 507, An Act to amend 48.982 (2) (g) 2., 48.982 (2) (g) 4. and 48.982 (2) (gm) of the statutes; relating to: requiring the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. You can also sign this petition on Change.org.
Here is a list of members of the Wisconsin Senate Committee of Public Health, Human Services, and Revenue, to whom this socially-repressed goon submitted his pathetic attempt at legislation. We can contact them as well.
If you know anyone in that pigheaded mulch-snorter’s home state of Wisconsin, tell them to contact his office as well. Then please report back here at Onely and let us know how it went: (more…)
Pop Culture, Scourge of the Onelys part 7×777: Completely Unscientific Onely Poll for Lori Gottlieb and The Nation October 7, 2008
Posted by Onely in As If!, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, Singled Out.Tags: bella depaulo, happily single, lori gottlieb, marry him!, single mothers, singlism, what was the nation thinking??
2 comments
Christina alerted me recently to a debate between our (admittedly) favorite singles expert, Bella DePaulo, and writer Lori Gottlieb, who wrote a rather infuriating article entitled “Marry Him!” that was published in The Nation back in February/March 08. I’m not going to touch the conversation between DePaulo & Gottlieb (see below for links to the full exchange), but I do want to ask our valuable, intelligent, anti-singlist and happily single readers the question that Gottlieb seems to already have answered for us:
You say you’re happy being single…
So, are you lying or just in denial?
Onely.Org 