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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2884 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What do you guys make of the Elon - Ashley St. Claire babymama drama?

For context, Ashley St. Claire is a conservative Twitter personality who announced on Valentine's Day that Elon Musk has fathered a child with her. This was followed-up with a vaguely threatening statement from Ashley's lawyer. There are screenshots going around that suggest a less-than-cordial relationship between Ashley and Elon, though I can't verify these. There are also potential inconsistencies.

I understand a wealthy man having a mistress or two besides his wife, and having children with all of them. I can understand having a harem of women who have his kids. I can get a man who wants children regardless of his interest in their mothers.

But of Elon’s thirteen children, possibly only one was conceived naturally. He takes no interest in the rest besides paying bills. Uh, what gives? I mean there’s an interesting point about IVF and family bonding to be made but WTF? He doesn’t have an array of beautiful women and if babies happen they happen. He doesn’t take much interest in the rearing of his deliberate children, which you’d expect to be the case if he just wanted kids. Is this just some weird autistic compulsion?

I guess I can understand wanting to have kids, and I can understand wanting to have sex. I can’t understand going out of your way to father children when you don’t want either.

I understand. It's tedious to raise children, and it makes no difference anyway.

And I'm not a natalist because I want to spread my genes either.

No, it's the Gift of Life. The more, the merrier.

As a parent, I don't get it. At all. It's not, in fact, tedious to raise children--or if it is to you, that's all right, but it isn't to everyone, and certainly isn't to me. There are really no people I'd rather be around than my own sons. Men who can just walk away from their kids, to me, aren't real men. They're something like man-boys, and I don't have any particular respect for them.

Call it a personal preference. Young parents look an act like zombies. All of feminism represents people who did not like it. But some find it fulfilling, for sure. And if they can use their hobby to give more humans the gift of life, so much the better.

I‘m not sure what I‘m supposed to do with a claim of unmanlyness. If I call a man unmanly, for being a coward, for example, I‘m referring to a shared understanding of what a man should be ; accusing him, in effect, of failing to act according to his own ideals. You and I share no such understanding on the topic of parenting.

Note I didn't intend to call you unmanly. I'm talking about dads who don't dad, who don't give a rat's ass about their own children.

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