A glimpse into my day: #ChildrensWorkerTraumas

In my last session of the day. The children are 3-5 year old nursery children.

Me: I see you are a pirate today.

Girl: Yes, I have a moustache.

Me: Yes you do. And I have a beard. But my beard is real. And won't wash off.

Girl: What *is* real, David?"

Me: I don't really know and it would take too long to try and explain.

Boy: Why won't your beard come off?

Me: Well it will if I shave it. What I mean is mine is attached not painted on.

Girl: Why do you wear a necklace, David.

Me: Um... because I like it.

Girl: Well you should take it off and put in in your pocket.

It feels like newsletters just appear in your inbox ready to be ignored, but actually they are crafted by teams of little elves who pour their little hearts and little souls into them. Every time you delete one without reading it an elf cries. Often they cry so much that they lose all moisture from their tiny bodies and die painful mournful little deaths.

No more Mr Not Nice Guy

Q: Would a tumblr similar to Nice Guys of OK Cupid be found acceptable if it did a similar thing but publicly exposed the prejudice and hypocrisy of the women of OK Cupid?

NOTE: I am NOT saying all women are prejudiced and hypocritical, just that one could select from the OK Cupid users examples of women who could be described this way.



Would it be funny for women to have their semi private inadequacies exposed in this way? OK Cupid is after all not public. The profiles can only be seen by other members.

Or how about a tumblr exposing things worth mocking in gay culture?

I am all for Everyday Sexism being exposed and men/women being called out on their public misogyny  But much of the material that I see on that site is sadness, loneliness, depression and ignorance, plus stuff that is taken out of context in a manipulative manner. I have seen sites set up to mock "stupid" or "slutty" women that have had a similar lack of empathy and consent. Does that make it justified since it's only doing to men what they do to women?:

Not to me, but then I'm not really down with fighting fire with fire. I do understand where the fire comes from. I get it. But I'd rather we didn't burn each other up.

The questions supplied by OK Cupid and their restrictive answers (remember in most of these examples the men are replying to set questions that have three options) seem like fair targets and the sort of thing that might be passed on to the Everyday Sexism project (which I referred to above, here's their twitter account which is also worth following.) But the anonymous posting of photos of these men in this way I find incredibly problematic, just as I find the posting of women without their consent on sites like Reddit problematic. Arguably not as problematic, but still. And it does expose these people to RL danger, anything like this is very attractive to internet trolls and groups who like to destroy people's lives. When you post stuff on the internet you have to take that into account. This site doesn't seem to. Would it be funny to discover a "nice guy" had received a "nice nail bomb" from someone as a result of the information posted on this "hilarious" site?

Also "friendzone" is something that people of both genders can get put into, not that I would really have used that word, but I think we can all get what it means. I have definitely heard women complain of similar treatment from people they are interested in.

And both genders have been known to complain about being treated wrongly when they are so "nice." Sure men do it worse. It's a totally legitimate area for satire, critique and even activism. Just not, I feel, for personal attacks. Men are constructed and restricted by patriarchy too. You are reading some of the sad results of this. I'm not sure laughing and pointing is a great response.

But yeah, I'm a man, and so no doubt will be reacted to as just an example of "menz trying to tell women how to do feminism right." Sorry about that. I understand being of a different gender would make this blog post stronger. Here is a woman saying some similar things (and more) if that helps: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2012/12/note-nice-guys-ok-cupid

For the record I am not, nor have I ever been, a nice guy.