Regarding the religion and history thing: Dayton’s book was actually a sticking point for my students when I taught it in a religious history class. They absolutely could not wrap their minds around the fact that Purtians saw marriage as a civil contract. Many of the students were fervent evangelicals who very much thought that Christian faith and practice had been pretty constant through the ages. And here they were, confronted with the notion that the Puritans weren’t as “puritanical” in their ideas on marriage as modern day Californians were…

(Of course, what really blew their minds was Richard Godbeer’s “Cry of Sodom” article. They were not ready to have a discussion about Puritans and same-sex erotic encounters.)

(I’m going to put words in your mouth, Historiann, so feel free to correct or amend what follows.)

Historiann’s blog, like many blogs written by academics, does certainly offer posts that “provoke” intelligent, thoughtful, interested conversation. Most of the time, that happens. Most of the time, everybody is respectful, engaged, and on board with the tone that Historiann sets. See, because she, in general, has a thoughtful, receptive, considerate audience.

But starting a conversation doesn’t equal being “deliberately provocative” (with all of the negative connotations that go along with that when you put that label on something a woman writes) nor does it come off as anything but pejorative when a commenter such as yourself feels the need to note how “very clever” an image is just before asking that question.

You bore me, Guez, and seriously, your tone in every comment that you’ve left here recently shows a serious lack of engagement, a lack of understanding about how conversations on this blog typically work, and a lack of interest in figuring out how they work so that you can participate in a way that is anything other than irritating.

So, to respond to Historiann’s query, what makes me see red is when people show up to comment on a blog, fail to take subtle and not-so-subtle cues about how conversations work on that blog, and then they insinuate that they think the blog’s author is being “deliberately provocative” and thus has no right to be annoyed.

I love the picture of the female matador! Very clever. It raises an interesting question, though: to what extent do you intend this blog to be deliberately provocative?