(cross-posted at Maya’s Meanderings

Yes, I know — I haven’t posted in ages. I’ll start catching up before long, but this was just too good to not link.

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Mary P. wrote a post that I wish I’d written — about parents’ attitudes toward their children and sex.

When I was a young married with a baby girl, our daughter’s father would joke that she wouldn’t be allowed to date until she was 35. Well, 30 if the prospective boyfriend was a member of the royal family. I’d laugh at his little joke, but it always annoyed me just a bit, though I wasn’t sure why. (The fact that it was feeble and repeated waaaaay too often didn’t help, but it was the actual content of the joke which bugged me.)

Not too long ago, some commenters on a blog I was visiting were speaking of the future dates of their infant girls. A couple of the daddy-types came out with the typical Big Protective Daddy comments. “The first guy to stick anything in her,” said one, “and I’ll stick something bigger into him.” (Charming, no?)

Here’s a thought that most parents of very small children don’t really understand:

One day, you will be the parent of an adult.

Go read the rest. Really, just go read it.

Still not wanting to? Okay, then I’ll tell you what sums it up for me:

Okay, now we’re coming to the crux of this post. Why did that stupid joke, why do those ‘protective daddy’ comments exasperate me so? Because they are based upon the assumption that females are passive recipients of sex. Females have no drives of their own, they have no sexual volition. They make no choices. If they are having sex, it’s because someone required it of them.

“My daughter couldn’t actually want to indulge with her boyfriend!” these parents wail. “It must be his idea, the filthy creep.” Well, I hope for your daughter’s sake that this isn’t true. I hope that the sex she has, happens when she’s ready, that it is joyful, respectful, mutually desired and mutually satisfying.

Just like you want for yourself.

***applause***

You’ve probably already noticed that my posts are rather spotty — busy some days, then nothing for a week. This is likely to continue for the next couple of months. The first reason for this is obvious: I’m freakin’ busy. I’m moving in less than two weeks (hooray!), and at the same time, I’m trying to get everything possible done that requires my presence in Colorado Springs.

The second reason is much cooler. In the Before-Mike Era (BME), I often needed a space where I could vent the sorts of thoughts and frustrations that one can’t really share with a toddler. Now, I have this other adult in my life, someone whom I trust, and who provides me with immediate and thoughtful feedback. Which do you think is more rewarding, blogging and perhaps getting two comments, or carrying on an in-depth conversation with an intelligent man who listens and considers what I have to say?

Right. So, as I said, posting will continue to be light and sporadic.

We’re off for a few days while I take my boy-dog to his breeder down in southern Arizona. It’s a sad trip, but we’ll get to see family and friends along the way, so that eases the sting a bit.

Here it is, early in the AM, and I’m finishing packing. Now. Oh, coffee. My lifeline.

Why so tired? Instead of finishing my packing lika any sane human being would have done, I spent 2-1/2 to 3 hours on the phone last night. Did I mention how much I hate long phone calls? It’s fabulous to meet someone who’s the exception to the rule…and I’ve kicked the others to the curb to give myself a little time to figure out where this may lead.

That’s the problem about setting a date so far in advance. The anticipation just might kill me. I’d tell you that I’m holdling back until then (to ease any potential heartache), but who am I kidding? I’m totally into him, and holding back nothing.

Anyhoo, I’ll be back Monday night. See ya then!

First:
Via the Progressive Blogger Network, I found The Mindful Mission. I haven’t had time to delve into much of his writing just yet, but if his bio and reading list are a hint, I will soon add him to the daily reading list.

Next:
From Mindful Mission, I found this post. Wow…just, wow.

“christians” taught me…

to fear what is different
to attack what you fear
to validate deeply held cultural values while critiquing surface “values”
to live with the hypocrisy of it
to deny the hypocrisy of it
to have an allergy to honesty
to resent this list because the shoe fits
to label as “liberal” anything contrary or critical of Christians, especially when it’s deserved
to downplay any and all legitimate criticism
to wrap our cookies in barbed wire and then excuse it by saying “the Gospel is offensive”

That’s only the beginning. Man, it reminds me of church from while I was growing up. Take a look at the rest.

I’m baaaa-aaaack!

This time, I have no one except yours truly to blame for the temporary outage. While I mangled K2 until it looked like it was “mine,” I did so online. With repeated reloads on my test blog.

Oops. I’ll be installing WP locally now, thanks.

Pardon the dust.

I’m remodeling.

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Okay, I’ve given up on K2 for the evening. We’ll try again tomorrow, and until then, it’s back to the happy layout (you know, the one that functions) without all the bells and whistles.

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Update: Hacking can be a very. good. thing. So can Google’s cache — I found the answer to my photo/Firefox issue on a cached page that doesn’t exist anymore! I *think* the layout issues in IE are fixed now, too. If you happen to see anything that seems off, let me know. For now, I know my bullets aren’t displaying properly in IE, but I think that’s it.

God bless Statcounter.

Or was that, “ignorance is bliss?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Someone’s been stealing my bandwidth, grrr!

Maya’s Meanderings is down, and I’m not sure how long it will take for it to come back up. My host will be available later today, and will help me address the issues then. It would appear that someone with a busy website *really* likes my background images — images that I CREATED.

Get a camera. Buy some fabric. Make your own damned backgrounds, people. At the very least, please have the decency to right-click and save the file to your own server instead of linking to mine! Harumph.

Oddly enough, MM lists as running at 71% of my monthly bandwidth allowance, yet it’s down. FTLOG shows as hitting 135%, but it’s still up. What the…?

Comments

Thanks to a plug-in included with v 2.0.2 of Wordpress, I’ve been able to turn off moderation. I have, however, added a request for people to sign in before posting. Since no one’s posting here anyway, this probably doesn’t matter one whit.

Links

I’ve (finally) done some housekeeping on my links list — take a look if you like, and find a mish-mash assortment of sites about religion, parenting, politics, feminism, and academia. I’m finding myself increasingly intimidated by the idea of entering that last world; can I really cut it? That’s a post for later…

Site Design

I will be in the process of redesigning the site’s look/feel/functionality over the coming days and weeks (not sure which), so if things look a bit “off” every now and then, that’s why. I plan to use the K2 template as a starting point; anyone have suggestions for plug-ins I should use?