Pre-Courtship Questionnaire - Pt 21 TV
The fundamentalist relationship meme of doom: http://www.stufffundieslike.com/2013/06/the-pre-courtship-questionnaire/ never bloody stops.
T.V.
401. What is your view on having Cable T.V. in your home?
Cable companies are politically dubious and often up to no good, so I'm much more in favour of freeview. Although I don' currently have a receiver and don't really know many people in my peer group who do either. I still pay for a license, though.
402. What is your view about watching Movies in general?
I'm not against it. Indeed I love a good documentary, but I just don't do it very often.
403. What is your view about Renting Movies?
I was going to subscribe to Netflix, but then they had a really transphobic and awful radio advert, so I didn't.
404. Do you go to the Movies?
It's been a while...
405. If not, why not?
I don't know. I guess I'd rather go to a gig or a play.
406. How do you respond when you see a girl that isn’t dressed right?
Well, if she has an easy ability to change or whatever, it's generally polite to tell her that her dress is on inside out, or whatever the problem is. If she's already out or has been out for a while, it's not really polite to mention it and better to pretend you hadn't noticed. I would think that if you were staying in and watching telly, you would be able to just tell her, as she could easily nip into a bedroom and fix it.
407. Would you describe for me what you think is wrong or what bothers you about a lewdly dressed woman.
Like all terrible essay writers, I just popped the word 'lewd' into a mainstream dictionary, and it says that's being sexual in an offensive way, so I would imagine this would be anything that crudely objectified people, like those Big Johnson T-shirts from the 90's. (warning: lewd link.) Or anything with text or images that minimised or negated the importance of consent. And, I hate to engage in sexual stereotyping, but I've never seen women wearing lewd apparel, only men. It bothers me because rape culture is fucking awful and should bother and offend everyone.
408. Would you have a Curse Free Unit?
Holy shit, I just googled this and it's a device that reads the closed captioning for your telly and uses it to bleep out offensive words in the audio AND in the captioning text. Since captioning is in a different format in the USA than the UK, I don't think it would work here. But also, since you're already not allowed to say any curse words on American TV, I can only imagine what sort of mild profanity this could be searching for.
This meme seems to have been written before the internet was a thing in fundie households, and so does not mention online censorship at all. For a very small child, a whitelist seems appropriate, but as they older, it does not. And filtering software seems like the wrong answer. I used to know a household that put their computer in the living room, figuring their son wouldn't look at porn in such an open location and would self-censor accordingly. However, with smartphones and whatnot, this is no longer a practical solution. While I tend to knee jerk that my kids shouldn't have things like iPads, because they're kids, I also do want them to be digital natives and able to keep up with their peers. Indeed, having an immigrant parent will mark them out enough. I want them to have the computer skills I had, so I would not only want them to have gadgets, I'd want them to understand how they work, why they work and be able to assemble and program such a device. Therefore, the way to ameliorate the possible psychic damage from the freeflow of age-inappropriate content . . . I guess the way around it would be to have a series of horrendously awkward conversations. This is the route my own mother took and I'm not sure if it was helpful in my own teen years, but in my youth, I was less vulnerable than many of my LGBT peers and was able to avoid some token attempts at inappropriate contact launched by adults who could tell I wasn't like other kids.
409. Does Cursing in a movie bother you?
No. I do get annoyed when a character should be cursing, according to the narrative logic of the situation and they say something else instead.
410. Would you set a time limit for T.V. watching?
I would be really surprised if this is even an issue for future children. Some parents try to unplug the internet at certain times of day to get their kids doing other things and this might be a good idea, but it's hard to do homework without the internet now. Kids just need to have more self-discipline these days, which seems like a potential failing point of modern life, but studies show that they do seem to be better equipped at self-restraint than my generation was.
411. What type of Cartoons are O.K. for future children?
Probably the age guidance is safe enough to follow. If I had kids in the US, I would show them Bugs Bunny cartoons, which are now considered unacceptably violent, but it seemed not to warp kids my age too badly and was really important for establishing a shared classical music vocabulary, which is now lost in America.
412. Are you open to us making these decisions together?
As always, yes.
T.V.
401. What is your view on having Cable T.V. in your home?
Cable companies are politically dubious and often up to no good, so I'm much more in favour of freeview. Although I don' currently have a receiver and don't really know many people in my peer group who do either. I still pay for a license, though.
402. What is your view about watching Movies in general?
I'm not against it. Indeed I love a good documentary, but I just don't do it very often.
403. What is your view about Renting Movies?
I was going to subscribe to Netflix, but then they had a really transphobic and awful radio advert, so I didn't.
404. Do you go to the Movies?
It's been a while...
405. If not, why not?
I don't know. I guess I'd rather go to a gig or a play.
406. How do you respond when you see a girl that isn’t dressed right?
Well, if she has an easy ability to change or whatever, it's generally polite to tell her that her dress is on inside out, or whatever the problem is. If she's already out or has been out for a while, it's not really polite to mention it and better to pretend you hadn't noticed. I would think that if you were staying in and watching telly, you would be able to just tell her, as she could easily nip into a bedroom and fix it.
407. Would you describe for me what you think is wrong or what bothers you about a lewdly dressed woman.
Like all terrible essay writers, I just popped the word 'lewd' into a mainstream dictionary, and it says that's being sexual in an offensive way, so I would imagine this would be anything that crudely objectified people, like those Big Johnson T-shirts from the 90's. (warning: lewd link.) Or anything with text or images that minimised or negated the importance of consent. And, I hate to engage in sexual stereotyping, but I've never seen women wearing lewd apparel, only men. It bothers me because rape culture is fucking awful and should bother and offend everyone.
408. Would you have a Curse Free Unit?
Holy shit, I just googled this and it's a device that reads the closed captioning for your telly and uses it to bleep out offensive words in the audio AND in the captioning text. Since captioning is in a different format in the USA than the UK, I don't think it would work here. But also, since you're already not allowed to say any curse words on American TV, I can only imagine what sort of mild profanity this could be searching for.
This meme seems to have been written before the internet was a thing in fundie households, and so does not mention online censorship at all. For a very small child, a whitelist seems appropriate, but as they older, it does not. And filtering software seems like the wrong answer. I used to know a household that put their computer in the living room, figuring their son wouldn't look at porn in such an open location and would self-censor accordingly. However, with smartphones and whatnot, this is no longer a practical solution. While I tend to knee jerk that my kids shouldn't have things like iPads, because they're kids, I also do want them to be digital natives and able to keep up with their peers. Indeed, having an immigrant parent will mark them out enough. I want them to have the computer skills I had, so I would not only want them to have gadgets, I'd want them to understand how they work, why they work and be able to assemble and program such a device. Therefore, the way to ameliorate the possible psychic damage from the freeflow of age-inappropriate content . . . I guess the way around it would be to have a series of horrendously awkward conversations. This is the route my own mother took and I'm not sure if it was helpful in my own teen years, but in my youth, I was less vulnerable than many of my LGBT peers and was able to avoid some token attempts at inappropriate contact launched by adults who could tell I wasn't like other kids.
409. Does Cursing in a movie bother you?
No. I do get annoyed when a character should be cursing, according to the narrative logic of the situation and they say something else instead.
410. Would you set a time limit for T.V. watching?
I would be really surprised if this is even an issue for future children. Some parents try to unplug the internet at certain times of day to get their kids doing other things and this might be a good idea, but it's hard to do homework without the internet now. Kids just need to have more self-discipline these days, which seems like a potential failing point of modern life, but studies show that they do seem to be better equipped at self-restraint than my generation was.
411. What type of Cartoons are O.K. for future children?
Probably the age guidance is safe enough to follow. If I had kids in the US, I would show them Bugs Bunny cartoons, which are now considered unacceptably violent, but it seemed not to warp kids my age too badly and was really important for establishing a shared classical music vocabulary, which is now lost in America.
412. Are you open to us making these decisions together?
As always, yes.