Monday, July 21, 2014

Taking a Sick Day?

I'm usually suffering from not getting enough sleep, but when I'm also fighting an illness I've caught from my kids, it's a double whammy.

My kids always seem to be sick. I think they could stand better hygiene, better nutrition, and cleaner home environment... gee, if only they had a stat-at-home-mom. Oh wait, they do!

Anyway, one of the "advantages" of being a married father is that staying home is not restful. In the limited thought process I can muster while waking up, I realize that if I stay home, I will not be able to sleep. The kids will be fighting with each other or their mother. I will be be summoned to do some tasks. The dog will either demand to be let out of the room or let back in by constantly scratching at the door.

If I was living alone, I could take the day off from work and relax.

But I don't live alone.

Yes, yes, I realize that single mothers and mothers in general usually still have to take care of the family and home while sick. I get that. However, for lack of a more romantic way of putting it, I earn income and then, by law, I'm essentially paying my wife half of my income. I planned things out so that my children would have to parents and there would be a division of labor. I give my wife plenty of time to herself.

Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Do Good Men Project Their Problems on Others?

Dennis Prager rightly talks about Leftist hysterias – things that the Left will focus on and claim are already or pending disasters, and how the Left has been proven wrong over and over again about them. Well, my fellow religious conservatives have a couple of such hysterias. One of them is "porn addiction" or porn "use" at all. Granted, additional people join religious conservatives to jump on this bandwagon.

I want to say before this goes further that I'm not defending porn per se; rather I'm concerned about red herrings and other poor arguments being used against it, because they teach bad thinking and when people I otherwise admire use bad arguments, their credibility suffers.

Although I can't know another person's motivations for sure, I strongly suspect that when someone beats this "men need to drop porn" drum endlessly, no matter how many words they use, it really boils down to one or more of the following:

“Really, I wish I could indulge without trouble but my wife and/or my god doesn’t like it. So I have to say this. Or I don’t want you doing what I can’t.”

“I have a daughter and I don’t want to think she’s going to be showing her body to anyone or having sex.”


The Good Men Project, apparently doesn't have an official stance on porn since they regularly published pieces from Hugo Schwyzer, who was known as the "porn professor" while teaching at a community college. I can appreciate a website that appears to have an overall purpose (calling men to be better) hosting content with different opinions of how to achieve that purpose. Like I said, they published Schwyzer, but they also just published a "men are bad for enjoying porn" piece by Bryan Reeves, "5 Reasons Why Men Must Give Up Porn".

It should be noted that the headline can have two meanings. One is that ALL men must give up porn. The other is that if men have these problems, those men must give up porn. It is a very unreasonable essay if one takes the first meaning.