https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10216050605595463&set=pcb.10216050608755542
It's just a series of "tweets." So I'll transcribe it...
Hey everyone I'm a clown and I just got back from facepainting at a picnic and here's my take on male violence in America:
It starts young. And it's more than just letting boys play with guns, it's how we shame them for feeling anything that isn't anger.
A 4yo boy asked me to paint a blue butterfly on his face. Then his mom told me, "no, he doesn't want that."
"Butterflies are beautiful, he said that's what he wants, shouldn't I paint what he wants?"
"No give him something for boys"
She turns to dad, a big guy in a jersey, and says accusingly, "Do you want your son to have a butterfly on his face. He says "No."
Which, cool, let's bring your husband's masculinity into it too. Because your 4yo kid needs to know that his father would be ashamed too
I really tried you guys, but this woman was so scared of her son wanting a butterfly she made me paint a skull and crossbones on his cheek.
When I finished the skull I said to kiddo "You want a little blue butterfly too?" He nods. Mom interrupts "You didn't ask me."
I say in my kindest fuck you voice "Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was for HIM."
"I'm his MOTHER. You need to ask me." She says.
"SORRY." I say and wave goodbye to the kid. And I am. I'm sorry that he is not allowed to love something as beautiful and miraculous as a ☒
I'm sorry that he was shamed for wanting to share in the joy that is the miracle and wonder of nature.
I see this all the time. And I feel really bad for these boys, because the girls don't get it as bad. Being a tomboy is slightly more normalized
And when girls want skulls or sharks the parents shrug and laugh like "haha she's a kooky kid!" Because maleness and masculinity isn't a sin
But when a boy wants to enjoy something for its beauty, they are told it's not for them. Not in this house. Not in this family.
We are teaching them that anger and violence r the only things they are allowed to experience. That to value beauty and elegance is shameful
I know that it was just facepaint, but that's sort of my point. Why in the hell are these parents shaming their boys over FACEPAINT
Honestly don't even get me started on the balloons.
So the next time you are incredulous about how the govt could shut down our national parks, or build the pipeline, or nuke the planet...
Think about what this four year old boy asked for ☒
And what he got [pictured here is what looks like a yellow ISO hazard sign with a skull and crossbones, something Twitter apparently uses as an emoji or whatever; don't ask me because I'm not tech-savvy]
Epilogue: the mom complained to my boss ☒ [pictured here is a pink box with the symbol for Venus inside]
About halfway through this, I had the sinking realization that I was probably going to make another "Crap from Facebook" post here, and I tried to just dismiss that and tell myself that this wasn't worth my time. By the time I got to the "nuke the planet" part I had shifted to thinking that this crap is totally worth my time because it's surreal in its confident stupidity. This is the sort of crap that motivated me to start doing "Crap from Facebook" posts in the first place.
I've tried to accurately preserve all the typographical mistakes in my transcription, but I'm out of practice at that sort of thing and caught myself repeatedly typing what I interpreted as the correct versions of the original. I went back and un-fixed what I did catch, but I can't be sure that it's 100% transcribed. Anyway, the inconsistencies in punctuation drove me crazy. But let's try to be a mature adult and look past that. I guess if the link keeps working, you can just use that. I've noticed that a lot of these posts have broken links when I go back and look at them later, so I tried.
There are several issues here. There's the fact that the author thinks her experience painting kids' faces gives her some profound insight into grave social ills such that this warrants broadcasting her anecdote and her analysis of it to everyone on the planet. There's the fact that the author believes she can connect her own story involving no violence whatsoever to violence all across the country. There's the fact that the author, in her own version of this story, relates her own rude behavior and use of a "fuck you voice" at a customer, and then expresses derision at how the customer complained to her boss about it. There's the conflation of shutting down parks or building a pipeline with "male violence." But I want to move past all that and zero in on the big issue here. That other stuff is bad, but mostly it just displays a lot of cues about the author's personality and way of thinking.
What we have here is a banal anecdote related entirely by the author. She was in full control of the narrative. She could have changed or emphasized whatever details she wanted. Or if she wanted to be entirely truthful and this particular story didn't suit her purposes, she could have chosen a different anecdote. This was her choice. Everything written here was hers. And for "male violence in America" she chose a story about the behavior of a woman. No violence took place in the story. The kid's father was present and basically didn't even do anything. The mother is 100% the antagonist of the author's narrative.
At the risk of being repetitive, I want to make sure this sinks in, how surreal it is. I was expecting another "toxic masculinity" rant about the behavior of some man. Instead, I found out that the only villain in the story was a woman. It was all a woman. And the author didn't even acknowledge or account for that. She managed to write a little story about behavior by a woman, and just connected it to "male violence." I was waiting for it like a punchline, some inkling of a realization. It was right there in front of her.
- Premise: male violence is caused by the stunted emotional growth of young boys.
- Premise: bad mothers stunt the emotional growth of their boys.
- Conclusion: ???
And of course, she never got there. Oh well. Never send a clown to do a lepidopterist's job.
