"parent" is an opressive class.

[Al77]

I was introduced to this peach on Twitter. He has just supplanted Katie Montgomery as my new favourite feminist wokesperson.

A straight white male with an insightful perspective on the intersection between the feminist view of the patriachy, child rearing and the porn industry. He proudly displays his queer teenage daughter like an accessory and has a very nice relationship with both his child, his child's mummy and his actual mummy, so don't go suggesting he has issues.

I would like to put his name forward for some sort of mumsnet award.

Best patriachy related messiah complex?

Philip Larkin, with a less ideological perspective:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

I love that poem! Someone quoted Larkin to him on his feed.

Oh good grief, there really are some people with not enough else to do or think about. First world issues in extremis.

Not him though, the cycle of opression and abuse ends with him. He is different, better, he can see the truth that is not clear to mere mortals. Lucky daughter. I bet she gets a really late bedtime and I bet she has an iphone 10.

You'd think he was just a random bloke talking nonsense but he's a journalist with 21,000 followers and a patreon account. There is an audience for this shit.

As many of us have worked out from the trans activists, much of this "anti-" activism seems to be based on activists being angry at their mummies.

As a result, unsurprisingly many of them see MN as one of the worst places on the Internet.

I am hearing more and more of this idea in the circles I miserably work in, sort of social sector but with a lot of tech people around (I am in a support team with zero power). I first saw this in the Scottish named person scheme which was built on the idea that the state is a better guardian of children than their parents. But I see it coming up in all sorts of little ways. If anyone looks at orphanages of the past (or that still exist in some parts of the world) you can instantly see that in most cases, parents are better guardians of their children than institutions. Of course where parents are abusive the state should step in, but that’s not what this is about, it is all about control of which ideas can be passed onto the next generation.

It's not directed at Mumsnet. He's American. It's a genuine interpretation of postmodern power analysis theory looking at opressed and opressor and applying it to parents and children. It is the same worldview that concludes that the trans community is oppressed by the "cis" community and therefore lower in the power hierachy than women and higher in the identity virtue hierachy.

Parent is an oppressive class

After the discussion row I have just had with my DDs - they will definitely agree.

but they still don’t listen...!

It's not directed at Mumsnet.

I didn't say it was. I was talking about how in general these analyses can manifest themselves in the real world. That having generated their grievances they go looking for people to exercise them against.

I'm pretty sure that on the scale of domestic tyrant, toddler quite frequently outranks mummy.

How very 'Brave New World'

Send him this.

For somebody (supposedly) condemning abuse, he is very abusive to strangers online

Takes one to know one springs to mind.

NB has been farting out guff for years.

Here's a Feminist Current takedown from 2015.

www.feministcurrent.com/2015/04/26/noah-berlatsky-is-going-to-objectify-women-straight-to-freedom/

based on activists being angry at their mummies

It's an interesting phenomenon this, and part of a wider cultural fashion that includes the appalling ageism now so common. Essentially it most often appears to be an anger against and rejection of adulthood.

My theory about the ageism is that in part it's down to the rate of societal change having been accelerated by the Internet and particularly by social media resulting in the parent-child generation gap being much wider, in some ways, than it used to be in the past.

Hm, my guess is ageism has long been a thing in our society but we tend to only notice it as we get older ourselves.

Does he @ his mum in every tweet?

I feel oppressed by my children. Nobody makes me breakfast or washes my clothes or makes my bed or tells me I’m great at singing.
I could go on with this list but it would make me depressed.

I find this so upsetting when I know 2 mums of young children battling breast cancer and another who passed away last year. These women would have done anything to be alive and well for their children. I know adults who lost parents in childhood and have never fully got over it. I know there are some messed up parents who some kids would be better off without, but in the main, the parent child bond in infancy is probably the most important thing for healthy emotional development. It is extreme gaslighting to label parenthood as abuse, who else will ever love you as unconditionally as a parent, even though they sometimes get it wrong?

It's a stupid idea. Except that sometimes, it can be true. And there is a logic to it - if we believe a class with structural advantage will always exploit a less powerful, or more vulnerable, class, then his view has a certain logic to it.

Basically, if all authority or hierarchy is inherently dangerous, this is where you end up. And, ironically, it ends up empowering the state.

Parents have the potential to be abusive, as they have more power. Doesn't mean they inherently/necessarily are abusive. I think even small children understand this quite obvious detail.

I do think that as with all power differentials, it's important that the existence of that difference is known and understood and that there are structures in place to guard against possible abuses of power.

Isn’t the power parents have over children self-limiting? If we parent right we make our children independent. And sons tend to grow taller/stronger than their mums. Most parents, knowing that at the beginning of the process, allow that “deadline” to influence our parenting.

Unlike racism, which probably wouldn’t exist if everyone knew that we’d just wait a few years & the power would be reversed..