I generally like to stay on the lighter side. Today, I’m a little torqued, just a little.
This is one of those occasions where I really cross over and get the ‘Mom’ point of view. Something happens, and you begin to understand how hard things can really be. Moms of the world, I’m sorry. You’ve been discriminated against, for a very long time. And it still happens. It happened to me.
This last week I attended a conference. I attended it for three days, and I’m not going to count how many different panels and classes I went to while I was there. For one of those days, I was with child.
Before I go on, I’m going to tell you that this Con was awesome, I fully support it, and it absolutely should not be blamed for what happened. This only happened once, and I assume it was the close minded arrogance of one particular person. In all the sessions I attended, it happened only once.
Let me paint a Picture. This isn’t a quiet room. It’s a gathering of people who will joke and laugh and have a good time. It wasn’t a religious gathering, or a business meeting. It was a SciFi convention. It wasn’t a panel on the practical effects of high gravity on a starship, it was on Romance in Fantasy, the room was filled with women. The panel didn’t consist of crusty 80 year old men, it was populated with 30 to 40 something females. This isn’t MIT, it isn’t Harvard, it isn’t Columbia, it’s BYU. It’s not 1950, it’s 2010. You can’t possibly get a more child friendly crowd. And at the beginning of this panel, the MALE moderator announced that “babies are not allowed.” Mine was sitting directly beside me.
I’m not angry. I wasn’t angry. Angry usually requires a small amount of sleep, a lack of food, and someone doing something incredibly stupid. Disappointed; yes. Annoyed; yes. Really, I couldn’t believe my ears. So, of course, I stayed. When the boy started crying, I left. I didn’t want to, but I left.
Parents are not discourteous people. We are fully aware that children make noise. We are completely aware of when it is and is not appropriate to have a child in a public place. It is not your place to inform us that we are not welcome, especially when a child at full scream wouldn’t have even phased the 90 percent of the people in the room who had been mothers at one time or another. This kind of neanderthal attitude has no place. And you never know when the ‘mother’ in the room is going to be a six-foot-three 240 pound guy with martial arts training.
I promise something more cheerful on wednesday.
The Male Mom 
