Harry is closing in on two years, and he still calls me "Mama." I've tried to work with him, but to no avail. Every now and then he'll throw a "Da-da" out there, and I always seize the opportunity for positive reinforcement: "That's great, Harry! Yes, I'm your Daddy! You know how to say 'Daddy'!" Without fail, he responds to this by smiling and going immediately back to calling me Mama. I've not been too bothered by this, but I can't say that I've not been looking forward to his growing out of it.
Then it occurred to me, this might be the silver bullet I've been looking for. An aspiring academic with the intrinsically conservative nature that I have has to be concerned about preemptively shutting doors to employment and/or tenure--particularly when your dissertation might be described (not altogether inaptly) as neo-Thomist. What I need is some kind of credential to diffuse the impact of a search committee encountering publications on my CV like "A Teleological Defense of Sarah Palin's Acceptance Speech" or "A Natural Lawyer's 5-Step Plan for Eradicating Liberalism and Incarcerating Its Leaders." (I, of course, would publish no such thing, but for many academics, what I do end up publishing might as well be thusly titled.) So what I need to lead off with, as the infantile genius of Master Harry has made clear to me, is "Harry Has Two Mommies: Ambiguous Ethical and Political Identities of the Postmodern Parent." As long as it doesn't appear in The Intercollegiate Studies Review or Focus on the Family Magazine, I think I'm golden.
It occured to me that maybe not everyone has heard of Heather has Two Mommies, which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/6kqjqw
ReplyDeleteMatthew, this is the funniest blog post I've read in a long time.
ReplyDelete... and... the very fact that I found it that humorous shows how much of an academico-nerd I am.
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain, Matt. (Not on the 2 mommies dilemma, but on the academic writing side.) But I have the opposite problem--how to keep my job and write papers that critique conservative Christian art. What's the Christianese for 'gender binaries'? :)
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