Tired or not, you’re absolutely right.

Americans tend to misunderstand what our version of “free speech” actually means and how it came to be part of our Bill of Rights. People see it as an excuse or opportunity to say whatever they want, but it was created specifically because people in Europe were often imprisoned for speaking out against a king. So it really only applies to the government. You can’t be imprisoned for speaking out against the government unless you are actively threatening imminent harm against specific government officials or spaces. People forget that there are real-world implications to their speech from groups that are not connected to the government. That said, I do see the erosion and dilution of these rights happening through the control of government enterprises and corporate decision-making.

I would also like to believe that unrestricted free speech is great no matter where or how it occurs and no matter who it is directed at. But, as you’ve said, and as I’ve experienced in my lifetime, completely unregulated speech often ends in a lot of undeserved hate toward “unwanted” groups with a lack of thoughtful discussion. I’m still not sure if this is because some groups end up being “louder” in terms of their reach, whether it’s through censorship, popularity, or monetary worth, or if people actually agree at the core of their selves. Either way, hate is a form of control. How dare you be different than the rest of the accepted group?

Truly free speech can only work in a place where the populace is fully educated to the best of their ability and are knowledgable enough to be able to appreciate the struggles of people who come from different circumstances. This is along with the understanding of objective research and its importance. So, I struggle with the concept also. I’m big on the idea that no one should be restricted from access to knowledge and learning, so it’s difficult to simultaneously agree with a lack of acceptance for full expression of the truth as you see it.

Fully free speech can only occur successfully in a place where everyone has equivalent access to opportunities for growth, education, and financial success. In an educated society, free speech should not need indoctrination, control, lies, or exploitation of any group to have an effective discourse. But, I doubt personal self-interest would allow the rise of ideals like this to occur in actuality. There’s always someone who is constantly looking out for what they can gain, control, and manipulate in order to amass as much power as possible. Power is a heady drug, and some people are more susceptible to its charms than others.

So I, too, am on the fence about this issue. I don’t know that we will ever be able to come to a consensus on how to manage it since it is incredibly difficult to weed out the self-interested players. Our solutions thus far have been too simplistic for such a nuanced issue. Atrocities or no atrocities, American concepts of free speech are based in situational history, and due to the understandable skepticism of the colonials, it is metaphorically written in stone in our country. As such, it is both amazing for giving us the ability to condemn and chastise governmental decisions and changes directly and without fear, but it is also terrible because it allows people to use this loophole to exploit their fellow man (i.e. creating said atrocities for money and hiding it under the guise of freedom). Unless the speech meets a very strict and difficult-to-reach specificity or you have little to no money, you basically can get away with whatever.

Society is often caught up in the whirlwind of others’ opinions, and those opinions come from a place with an obvious connection to personal self-interest, so I agree that it should not be the determining factor in this discussion. Inherently, society is going to pick whatever benefits are presented to them directly in the short term, especially if everyone involved is on board. What is good for all doesn’t matter at that point. I appreciate that some still believe in our concept of free speech, but in reality, we’re not reaching the goal that others may think we are. We continue to have the same struggles as we slog through figuring out what free speech truly means in practice.

Please don’t give too much credit to our concept of free speech. Is a beautiful idea that covers up exactly what you forecasted: we are headed down the very road we feared. Hopefully, our constitution can withstand the onslaught, but I don’t have a lot of hope left anymore in our ability to do what’s best for ourselves nationally, locally, or personally. I hope that someday we reach the ideal, but as you said, I’m not sure if it’ll ever be settled.

I’m sure you’re aware, but some people seem confused, so I’m going to post a link here to the poem that is being referenced above.

Absolutely; I agree. I appreciate your thoughtful response. There are always going to be selfish people and users in every gender, and they do give the whole group a bad rap. I’m never going to say that all women are above the description the poster I replied to gave. And, like you said, we can call these specific people out while still uplifting others who don’t engage in such behavior.

The poster that I was replying to seemed like they had been burned by a person like that, and while I understand that it must be awful to experience being with someone who uses you only for what you can provide and that it can easily make you jaded, this particular post comes off like they have extended that bitterness to the entirety of women, whether or not those women have chosen (or seek) a partner with wealth. It’s frustrating to watch so many great women be reduced to greedy users, and I don’t want to allow the continuation of someone spouting blanket assumptions toward my gender without addressing it. That’s how I ended up with a multi-paragraph response to a simple statement.

But I absolutely agree with your assessment and really appreciate the thought and effort you put into it. It’s incredibly refreshing to be able to have an actual discussion about a topic.

Okay, I’ll bite. The reason women end up choosing to be with a man of means, and I am in no way saying that all or even most women want this, is because we often don’t/didn’t have the opportunity to gain those means ourselves which thereby impacted our ability to survive and control our own lives. This is due to the oppression of the very men that you think we seek. Over the course of thousands of years, men cultivated a world where they steadily sought, gained, and ever increasingly obtained as much power as possible. In order to gain more power for yourself or your group, you have to take away power from someone else.

One of the people or groups whose power was regularly stolen is women. I’m sure this was a slow transition over a long period of time, but it ended with a world where women were rarely allowed to gain the skills or implement what skills they had in order to earn money. If you don’t have the ability to earn money yourself, you are forced to be reliant on someone else who is allowed to earn money. My point being, if you want enough money for you and your children to survive, you basically had to marry as rich as you possibly could.

Enter the modern women’s rights movement. This is where financial freedom became incredibly important to women. We collectively realized that we, much like any other human beings in existence ever, wanted to be able to have some control of our lives, our families, and our fates. This is why we entered the workforce in droves. Women who were suffering under the control of men who beat them and their children, potentially raped them, or demeaned them regularly with the full acceptance and support of society, wanted a way out. The available options were pretty bleak, so we worked in solidarity to find another way to survive with both our physical safety and dignity intact. Now, as an obligatory caveat, not every man was/is oppressive to women. But, since men as a whole created these arbitrary restrictions on women’s lives, they are the ones who have to suffer the aftermath of this system of control that was developed, especially since they are the ones who continue to experience advantages and benefits because of those exact lingering effects.

Most women would prefer to be able to support themselves and their family while having their partner contribute equally, either through earning money or doing an equivalent share of the household/family tasks. But, since something that becomes systemic is difficult to remove, we are still trying to shake the ramifications of this exertion of control. I assure you, most women would rather have less money and more autonomy when given the option.

This brings me to the point you’re trying to make. If the “primary motivator” of a woman is to choose a man who can provide adequately for her offspring, it is only because of the lingering effects of historical oppression that men created in order to exert control over women. It’s very frustrating to be in a world that constantly tells you that you should be pursuing a partner with money so you can have a stable future, but then simultaneously reprimands you for actually making that choice. Just as it’s difficult, but required, to acquiesce to the control of the man who holds your money.

I don’t think it should be presented as though this woman is shallow or terrible for making such a choice. Who wouldn’t choose a life of stability over one of chaos or continual financial stress? I know many men who would make the same choice if offered it. Like you said, I’m sure he was doing a good job of providing for their family financially, but let’s not be too reductive about her choice to have him as a partner. You say it in such a way that you are not only chastising her for her choice of husbands but are chastising all women for prioritizing their and their children’s survival and safety. That is something that comes across as offensive to the entirety of my gender because it implies that we shouldn’t consider ourselves of value or of having worth.

You may be right that this woman chose the CEO of UHC as her husband because of his wealth and ability to support their children and family lifestyle. Most likely, she knew what her husband actually did for a living and it’s effect on the lives of others and chose to ignore or not look into the deaths, horrors, and financial destruction that were created by the company her husband controlled.

But, one way or another, let’s not reduce the struggle that women go through at the hands of historical, and often modern, men to blanketly imply that we are all naturally money hungry and that we are obviously all using men for our own gain. I’m going to go ahead and assume that women, including myself, disagree with such an unfair assumption.

One of the biggest things I learned when I started working in the legal field is that the only justice you’ll get is the justice you can prove. Things like this might be true, but if you can’t prove it, you’ll get no justice for it.

Is that fair? No. But the system we created is based on the assumption that people are going to be wrongfully imprisoned or charged for actions that they didn’t commit simply because the government wants them imprisoned. We designed it that way because that used to happen often in other countries, and we didn’t want that to happen here. So, we created rules to avoid wrongful imprisonment by the government without finding a way to also protect victims who may not have enough evidence to prove their victimization.

I’m not saying that what this woman is asserting happened or didn’t happen. I have no idea what went down. I also don’t know how we fix the system. People are wrongfully imprisoned, victims don’t receive justice, etc., but this is how the system is designed, so whether or not it’s true, she is required to demonstrate it, or she will receive no justice.

Okay, I normally try not to be this guy, but in this particular situation, I believe a little pedantry is called for. You mean that you couldn’t care less. If you could care less, that means you do care at least a little bit, which is not the point you’re trying to make.

Ditto. I feel like I’m the only one who still listens to the radio in my car. The only thing I want my car to have that it doesn’t is cruise control. Otherwise, she’s perfect.

Yes! This is the exact approach a good teacher takes with students who struggle with behavioral norms. There is a reason they are doing what they’re doing. They are reacting to adults the way they have been trained to react by other, shittier adults.

Once they trust you as a person who actually cares, they seem to become a whole new person. They are no longer scared to be vulnerable in front of you. It’s a sacred level of respect that teachers and/or mentor adults need to take very seriously.

I used to be the person who specializes in working with students who struggle with behavioral problems, and I can 100% assure you that exposure to violence from or among adults they are around is what led them to my classrom.

Barbaric, weird, and ineffective. It doesn’t actually address what is causing the behavioral issue. It only punishes the kid for reacting normally to whatever stimuli they are experiencing. It’s especially frustrating when the fix would have been something simple like listening to the kid’s concerns or trying to have a conversation with them to address the root problem.

I definitely agree that there aren’t enough resources given to teachers, but the expectation of using common decency to reach the goal of educating our students is not too high of an expectation. Focus on the end goal. How you get there can vary (assuming it’s appropriate), but you are still trying to reach the goal of educating the students. If your teaching style is prohibiting people from reaching that goal, why wouldn’t you change it?

It’s nice to think that as an English teacher, I only have to worry about how well they can interpret the modern applications of the lessons in Macbeth, or whatever literature we’re studying, but in reality, teachers are teaching a whole heck of a lot more than their specific subject area. We’re simultaneously modeling how to behave appropriately, teaching how to navigate complex social situations, and mentoring students on how to achieve their goals and deal with set backs. Teachers have always worn more than one hat. It’s not only an expectation for the job; it’s an absolute requirement for success.

Should they earn more money for having to do all of that? YES! That’s why we’ve been complaining about the low pay and lack of resources for at least 40 years. The effort and skills are non-negotiable. Kids shouldn’t get a crappy education just because some politicians are using their teachers’ wages as political leverage. People go into education knowing that the pay sucks, but they actually care about other people and future generations. They don’t go into just for the paycheck, and I don’t know a single educator who wouldn’t put in some extra effort to help a student succeed.

You’re basing a lot of your opinion on the assumption that kids come to school ready to learn and healthy. The reality is that parents and home lives come in a wide variety of flavors. Some parents do exactly what you said: dump on teachers with their own expectations on how students should be handled. But others don’t get involved at all. Some don’t care about their child’s life beyond how it affects them. Some are so busy working to make ends meet that they don’t have time to be much more than an absent parent. No matter what life the student has, it’s still my job to give them a quality education, so of that means giving them a granola bar or calling Joe Suzie, then that’s what it takes.

We’re basically fighting for the same thing here: better pay, better resources, and support for teachers so that students can get a better education. The difference is that I don’t think students should get the short end of the stick for something they can’t change (i.e. low pay), whereas you’d rather a teacher not do extra because they aren’t getting paid to do extra. But my method reaches the end goal of educating students well, and yours instead basically says, “Reach the goal or don’t. I don’t really care since I did my part.”

Can confirm.

A good chunk of a teacher’s job is to build appropriate relationships with your students. Students don’t want to learn from someone they dislike, and you have significantly better learning outcomes when the students feel safe, accepted, and cared about. Appropriate nicknames, like Tim for Timothy, help in that relationship building. I don’t know what your position is at that school, but Wisconsin teachers are literally taught stuff like this in college so that we know how to manage a classroom with the best learning outcomes and the fewest number of behavioral disruptions. We are taught how to keep those relationships appropriate and healthy, although much of that is just common sense.

Yes, you should separate work and home life for both your own sanity and for modeling good boundaries and work-life balance. But that doesn’t mean you have to drop your decency at the door. At the end of the day, the goal is learning, and not being a douche is one of the easiest ways to get to that goal.

Extracurricular activities are an extension of these same principles, not an exception or something with a different set of standards. I think you might be mixing up appropriate relationship building with inappropriate fraternizing, and I’m concerned that you are having difficulty finding that line.

Whelp, Walker neutered our teachers’ unions, and the conservatives pushed for being a right to work state, so here are some unexpected consequences of that. They do not have to tell him why his contract wasn’t renewed, and now he doesn’t have a union backing his position. Plus, he wasn’t even “fired,” just not renewed.

F this teacher for creating an environment of hate.

I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for years, but I think your comment might be what makes me read it. I always thought of it as only applicable to wars or competitions of some sort, but you’re right. I live in the rat race every day, and it definitely is a battlefield, and I would like to know my enemy and myself better.

Specific, but somehow also universal? I feel like I’ve seen this scene play out at least a half dozen times in my life.

The idea is not actually about a man’s physical hands. It’s a metaphor for putting in the work. That could be volunteering, going to bat for your community, spending quality time with your kids/grandkids/family, working long hours to make sure your family has what it needs to survive, etc.

Yes, some men do manual labor and have rough hands, but OP isn’t saying that all men should do manual labor, just that they should all put in the “work” to make the world, their community, and their family’s lives better.

Yeah, me too. I’m a white woman with an Asian last name and a gender neutral first name. Honestly, I think my gender neutral first name opens more doors for me than the Asian last name closes.

Plus, now we’re not allowed to abort them even if we know we don’t have the mental, emotional, or financial capacity to take care of them, and it looks like they are trying to make contraceptives illegal again, so I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more and more stories like this.

That’s fair. I have heard of the difficulty sleeping as well. The sweating and shaking threw me so much that I didn’t make an exception for the sleeping issues that that some people have when stopping use.