aro

This might seem like trivial drama but it has made me feel quite anxious over the past few days and I would like to hear an outside opinion. I was sitting with my group of friends from college and out of nowhere, one of them (we'll call him James) said something to the effect of "Can we all switch seats in class, I hate sitting beside aro, it's so fucking boring, all he does is work and barely talks". Everyone looked at me, surprise and confusion on their faces. My heart dropped and I was speechless. No one really responded, there was a sense of tension but the subject was changed. After a while, one of my friends brought the subject back. He was concerned for me and said to James, "What you said about aro was harsh and uncalled for". James then claimed that it was nothing personal. How the hell is this nothing personal? He made a negative statement about my personality! I took this as an attack. No one wants to be called boring, especially in front of other people, I see it as a form of humiliation because who wants to associate with a boring person. Later on, James "apologised", but it didn't sound sincere at all, it sounded as if he was just trying to avoid any drama. He walked up to me and said "I'm sorry, are you bothered by this?" "Of course I am", I replied but then he dropped the subject and walked over to someone else. What am I to make of this? Can I really consider someone a friend when they call me "fucking boring" and make next to no effort to consider how insulted I felt? Overall, I feel really confused about this. When he said I don't talk in class, this is a flat out lie. In almost every class, James and I have a good laugh while we do the work, I don't know what else he wants, I'm not his jester.

Just a minor thought here, I don't think that an atheist is on the same level as an aunicornist or an agopherist. When a staggering amount of people believe in god(s), I think it's important that non-believers clearly distinguish themselves from believers and make their position known. A belief in unicorns doesn't carry the same weight as a belief in a god who commands you to blindly obey him (or rather, the scripture). In other words, belief in unicorns is not nearly as damaging as belief in certain religious doctrines.

That was brutal. Were there any reasons given as to why he was beating them or was he just enacting on some sort of sadistic impulse? Then again, I suppose it doesn't matter what the reasons were as there can be absolutely no justification for this type of behaviour.

I'm quite new to the forums, is this the general consensus in the FDR community?

I can't give you a definitive answer but I will say that the degree to which people are ready to have children varies greatly from person to person. I know of some intelligent and well read people in their twenties who I would consider ready to raise children. These people are financially stable and understand the importance of raising kids peacefully, keeping them out of government shools and minimising the amount of negative influence in their child's lives. However, I also know of some people in their twenties who intend on having kids and they are the furthest thing from prepared to say the least.

I completely agree with you that my father claiming that I have no authority over the situation is a non-answer, but the problem is that there is no way for me to explain this to my parents. Every single time I bring up the subject of peaceful parenting, every single statistic I show them, every single argument I present goes in one ear and straight out the other. It seems as if there is absolutely no way that I can get them to really listen to and understand the information. They always resort to "This is how I was raised and I turned out fine" (Which they clearly didn't) and "Wait until you have kids and see if you can keep up with this peacful parenting nonsense under the stress".

This is an event which occured a few months ago. I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. It was my younger brother's bedtime, which is usually quite a struggle between him and our parents but this time, my father took it too far. Firstly I heard him walking down the hall calling "Into your bed, boy!" It sounded so militaristic, as if my father was some sort of sargeant addressing his soldier. He walked into my brother's room where he was playing a video game and refusing to turn it off. Within seconds my father began shouting "Turn it off now!". No negotiating, no reasoning. Just cold commands. A few more seconds passed. "I'm going to slap you if you don't turn it off!". This is when I got out of my chair, and walked to my brother's room to face my father. You see, my father and I have talked about using aggression against children before and at the time, it sounded as though he agreed with me, that there are better, non-violent ways to deal with them. Yet there he was threatening my brother. I said to him "You are not going to hit him". I saw pure anger in my father's face. He pushed me out of the room while shouting about how little I know, "you think those books and those videos give you the moral high ground!". He then pushed me into my room and closed the door. I began formulating comebacks, "Well its more books than you have ever read on parenting" and "I may not be the parent but I am his brother" and all these other cliches I could think of in the moment. I psych myself up and just as I'm about to walk out the door to face my father...I burst into tears. I realise how little influence I have and walking out there to address my father will only make things worse. About 10 minutes pass, and the door opens. It's my father. He walks over to me and gives me a hug and says, "I'm sorry for acting snappy, I know you have the right intentions, but you don't have the authority to tell me how to raise my son". I don't say anything I just cry. My mother then walks in and basically repeats what my father said while adding, "It's that computer brainwashing you, giving you unrealistic expectations from the world". Right, beacause talking to your son with love and warmth is an unrealistic expectation

I finally sat down with my parents and explained to them why I'm becoming increasingly distant to them. Firstly, I started by showing them Stefan's video "The Facts About Spankng". I was surprised to find that they were willing to sit through the whole video, however, I was unsurprised by how they disagreed with almost everything Stefan said. My mother said things such as "This guy sounds so self-righteous" and "come back to me when his daughter is a teenager" (she believes that by not spanking her, she will grow up to become spoiled and entitled). They did admit that there were times when they punished me harshly by their standards, and they both apologised for it, but they are still unconvinced about the dangers of spanking. I'm glad I had this talk with them as it was the first time I've had a lengthy conversation with my parents about something that's actually important but at the same time, I probably should have held off this talk for another time as I don't feel I'm currently in a position where I can articulately discuss the effects of spanking as I found myself stumbling and forgetting some of the key arguments.

I want to see if they can look back and admit to their mistakes or if they'll still try to defend their aggressive style of parenting. I tend to avoid interaction with them whenever I can beacuse of how disappointed I am of them, and they are now starting to ask questions about this. However, I now want to completely open up and tell them that I can barely even talk to them because of how they raised me.

As I progress into my late teenage years, I am finding it increasingly difficult to relate to my parents. The more I look back on how they raised me, the harder it becomes for me to respect or even tolerate them. They live in a completely different world from me, my mother reads gossip magazines and my father reads red-top newspapers. They constantly watch reality tv and other unimportant drivel on the television and most of their converstions revolve around petty drama at my mother's work. I have a brother, he's ten years old and when he misbehaves they will usually just shout at him and threaten to spank him or as they like to put it, "give him something to cry about". Then when I try to intervene to prevent my brother from being mindlessly shouted at they say something along the lines of "Here comes supernanny" and "You think you know everything". When I was growing up I didn't have someone to intervene and point out the ineffectiveness of yelling and spanking and I suspect that it has had a significantly negative impact on my personality. Let me give a more specific example of how my parents would react to me acting up as a child; From the ages of around 3 - 7, when I dared to get out of my bed past my bedtime my father would shout and spank me and if that didn't work, he would take me to the utility room and lock me in there until I stopped crying. The room was pitch black and I was too small to reach up to the lightswitch so I would sit there absolutely terrified and have to force myself to stop crying so I could get out. I had nightmares about this for years and I still get chills if I go into that room with the lights off. I now want to approach my parents and talk about their methods of parenting to see if they can justify it. I know they can't, most of the time when they dealt with me they were simply trying to get me to stop crying the quickest way possible without ever reasoning and negotiating with me. Has anyone else had similar experiences with their parents? If so, how did you raise these issues with them beacuse the most likely thing that will happen is that I'll bring this up and they'll shoot it down straight away with "I was spanked as a kid and I turned out fine" or "We were under too much stress".