The Dad refused to show his daughter how to open the can, instead getting her to figure it out herself. Photo / 123rf
It all started over a can of beans.
That's right, Twitter's biggest debate of 2021 (so far) hasn't been about politics or masks.
Instead it's been about a can of baked beans and, more specifically, what is the right way to teach your kids how to open them.
Earlier this week US man John Roderick faced a fierce backlash after he took to Twitter to share how he had let his 9-year-old daughter spend hours trying to open a can of beans in order to teach her.
Roderick, who has since deleted his Twitter account, recounted in a series of tweets how he had been horrified to discover his daughter didn't know how to use a can opener.
The Dad, who is also an indie rock musician with The Long Winters and a podcaster, instructed her to "study the parts, study the can" and left her for the next six hours to try and open the can of baked beans.
But hours later and his daughter still hadn't worked out how to use it, Roderick wrote, describing her tears and frustration in detail.
Eventually she did manage to open the tin and he cooked the beans for her.
While Roderick had intended the Twitter thread to be a funny parenting anecdote, plenty of people didn't see it that way.
Nicknaming him "Bean Dad", Roderick was slammed for his "ridiculous" lesson, with people arguing it would have been much easier for him to have simply shown his daughter how to use a can opener.
Others even accused him of child abuse.
The backlash escalated when racist and anti-Semitic tweets penned by Roderick resurfaced.
The founder of the podcasting platform Maximum Fun HQ, which hosts Roderick's Friendly Fire podcast, initially defended him, but subsequently suspended Roderick indefinitely without pay, The Seattle Times reported.
At first Roderick defended himself too, noting that six hours is a typical amount of time between meals and that his kid was fine. But as the criticism mounted under the hashtag #BeanDad, he issued an apology for his "poorly told" parenting anecdote.
He wrote on his website that in recounting the story he omitted that his wife was present, that there was a lot of laughter as well as frustration during the saga, and that they had eaten a big breakfast and shared pistachios as she worked on the can.
"I framed the story with me as the asshole dad because that's my comedic persona and my fans and friends know it's 'a bit'," he said.
But he admitted his experience as a straight, middle-class, white male who has not lived in an abusive situation caused him to misjudge the effect of his words.
"A lot of the language I used reminded people very viscerally of abuse they'd experienced at the hand of a parent," Roderick wrote. "The idea that I would withhold food from her, or force her to solve a puzzle while she cried, or bind her to the task for hours without a break all were images of child abuse that affected many people very deeply. Rereading my story, I can see what I'd done.
"I was ignorant, insensitive to the message that my 'pedant dad' comedic persona was indistinguishable from how abusive dads act, talk and think."
Roderick also apologised for using racist, anti-Semitic and other slurs in tweets years ago, saying he did so ironically to mock those beliefs but later realised it wasn't his place to appropriate such terms.
THE 'BEANCHDEL TEST'
But just when it seemed like the Bean Dad saga was all done and dusted, writer Caroline Moss decided to put his parenting lesson to the test.
"If I was 8 and didn't know how to open a can with a can opener, how would you suggest I learn," a screenshot of a text exchange between Caroline and her dad shows her asking.
"Take a can, an opener, start the opening, let you finish. Give you another can let you start yourself. Help if necessary," Caroline's dad replied.
Soon others were sharing their responses from their dads, which ranged from everything from doing it for you to throwing away the can and going out for dinner instead.
Leslie's Dad wrote that he would "Throw the can away and take you out to dinner." But she tweeted "This was a sweet answer but also weird because we never went out to restaurants."
Emily posted a screenshot of her exchange with her Dad where he said "I would do the opposite of what that a**wipe did. I would show you how to use the can opener by verbal instructions and demonstration. But I would certainly make sure the can got opened and you were eating". She captioned it: "The real news here is that my 80-year-old Dad is somehow keeping up on the Twitter drama".
So, what now? Time to text your dad and put him to the Beanchdel test.
‘You have to teach your brain to associate bed with sleep and sex. And nothing else.’