Boring animation related stuff

Putting this under a cut; it's for my personal planning / self-debate. If anyone amongst the FL has input though I wouldn't mind suggestions / corrections!

( Planned sequence for round two. )

Thoughts about Stay-at-Home moms versus my own parents

First, check out this awesome study about pregnancy AND abortion rates dropping from 1990 to 2008 in the US. The point here is that women are actively delaying pregnancy and successfully preventing unwanted pregnancies by a very high percentage (ie, the pregnancy rate AND abortion rate dropped, which means people are trying NOT to get pregnant).

Then, I want to talk about this article about Feminism and Housewifery, because it's something I think about pretty often.

The first thing this article tackles is the problem of communicating harsh ideas in a world where people are in the habit of immediately getting defensive and trying to preach 'live and let live' as a solution to actual problems.

Basically, in the most simplistic terms, 'live and let live' means that if you use barbecue sauce and I don't like the taste, we're still cool to be friends. It does NOT mean that if you kill someone and use barbecue sauce on their cooked body, we're still cool to be friends. When something BAD happens, you report it and you do something about it. You DO NOT sit there and let it happen.

And if you do, you're doing it WRONG.

This is tough (believe me, I know) because a lot of the time, people get hung up on thinking that such efforts are a personal attack. Even if it feels personal, one has to be able to step back, look at what's being said, and parse that yes, this is a problem and it needs to be fixed. So in my hypothetical murderous cannibal friend situation, it doesn't matter that Amy and I are both friends with Jane, the cannibal. When I tell Amy 'I'm reporting Jane to the police for murdering Fred and eating him!', Amy needs to be capable of responding to that with 'Whoa, Jane murdered Fred? That's not cool!'-- NOT 'Uh, why are you being mean to Jane? I'm sure she had her reasons.'

This applies even to more minor, non-murder involving situations, of course. (Even situations that don't involve barbecue).

Anyway-- the article describes all this in far greater detail than I will. I actually want to talk about my own family, because time and again, I've been shocked as I grow up and am exposed to the gross, slimy underbelly of the real world to discover how utterly non-standard my family is.

Let me give you a little background.

My parents both worked when we were children. My mother worked nights at a bookstore, and my dad worked days as a teacher. Both of them owned small businesses doing extra work on the side. They had weekends off, which meant the whole family could be together all day on those days, but during the week, I always had either my mom OR my dad around if I needed a parent. This should just be the desired norm for society. 'If a married couple has adopted or birthed kids, both parents should work and ideally a schedule can be worked out where the children are never without a supervisor'. And if single parents are handling this all alone? Society should be trying to help them, not criminalize them.

I really, greatly respect and love and value my parents and think everybody should be given the opportunity to live in a household like mine was. I think that parents who work are happier people who have richer lives.

I think that anybody who can work, should.

This of course all ties back in to my feelings on societal fallacies with regards to what's romantic and not, but I want to be funny instead of serious for the rest of the post, so I'm going to illustrate my points with hilarious exaggerations.

ROMANTIC:

Person A: I really like blah.
Person B: Really? Let's talk about it!

[They do, and become friends. Over the next few days, weeks or months, they become closer friends. It may turn out that they are sexually attracted to each other, but it may not. However, if they both desire to become romantically involved, at some point, this might happen:]

Person A or B: Would you like to become romantically involved?

And IF the person asked responds, 'yes!' then a romance begins, replete with support when needed, shared interests, and interest in communication (as opposed to arguments where neither party is able to actually air their concerns and work out a solution). This could culminate in marriage, or not! The consent of all involved parties is the most important thing, and is valued as a construct of romance itself.

NOT ROMANTIC:

Person A: I really like blah.
Person B: I don't give two shits about blah, but I think you're hot.
Person A: Oh, I think you're hot too! Let's get involved as soon as possible!

[COOL IT'S TIME FOR ALCOHOL*, SEX, AND MARRIAGE THEN!]

* - Alcohol is a key ingredient to FORCED ENTHUSIASM! But it's not actually required for the unromance. One can be plenty un-romantic just with sparkly vampires and no liquor of any kind.