*bangs her head against the wall*

[conuly]

How do you get through to people?

Okay, let me try. Male parents are fathers. Female parents are mothers. IF you wish to claim that men have no maternal instincts, ever, but women do, please don't use the argument "they couldn't possibly have the same instincts, because men have paternal instincts, and no I can't explain how they're different, there's a whole letter different, you moron!"

That's just confusing.

And when you finally realize that you're being slow, please, the appropriate response is most emphatically NOT "how many kids did you say you had?"

That. Is. Not. Relevant.

Interestingly, this conversation would never have started if the OP hadn't broken a cardinal rule - never say "I don't mean to be prejudiced" or "No offense" or anything even remotely resembling a disclaimer before saying something prejudiced of offensive. If you feel you need to say the former in order to say the latter, don't say it. If you really must say it, please, you're less likely to seem prejudiced or offensive if you just leave the stupid disclaimer out.

Free advice. Take it.

And yes, I know, I'm IN bed, I'm going to sleep now.

Link posted at request of kinda original poster. Do me a favor, tell me when she started using the word "typical", would you?

Comments

[weemumlessmngrl.livejournal.com]

That is exactly what I meant. You were at one point trying to say that you didn't believe that maternal instincts existed, and my point was that if you've never had children, you wouldn't know. I didn't mean it to be some insult or "swarmy comment" or anything more than that.

I think I even said in a comment that when I was a kid and my dad would be talking about instincts, I thought he was just lying to guilt me into stuff. It wasn't until Lorelei was born that I realized that he might have been actually telling me the truth.

[conuly]

But I don't think *any* instincts exist - and I certainly think that most people use the word so vaguely that it's not worth discussing.

Even if I did think they existed, I'd need to see some hard evidence to accept your idea that men and women have different sets of instincts.

Swarmy comment? Do you mean snarky? You can't mean smarmy.... *is confuzzled*

[conuly]

Oh, wait, you do. I need some sleep.

Incidentally, because I *know* people take this the wrong way, I wasn't asking to say "wow, you can't spell, ur stoopid!". I was asking because I was actually confused.

[weemumlessmngrl.livejournal.com]

Hey, don't question the usage of "smarmy"... that's how one of your friends described me.

[conuly]

I'm not, actually. At first, I really didn't know what you meant, so I tried to figure it out. Then I saw that you'd been replying to somebody else who had called you smarmy, and it made sense.