I know how you feel (with the low engagement stuff layely, not the puking). I've got a lot of reading and commenting to catch up on, including your AI post.
I just discovered that you're part of the guy club, some of whom ran with the term Tonic Masculinity. One of my readers had sent me links, saying that a lot of people were scooping my term. Here's my original comment on Charles Eisenstein's I Like to Fight: Tereza Coraggio Nov 27, 2022: "This does my heart good. I think we need a world that puts children at the center, surrounded by women, who are surrounded by men. Tonic masculinity."
Jay Rollins, Writes The Wonderland Rules: Stealing "tonic masculinity."
Tereza Coraggio: Yes please! I was hoping someone would. It took me a minute to figure out what the opposite of toxic would be.
Jay Rollins, Jan 18: Me and the boys took it and ran with it. :-D
So Jay wrote Tate Modern on Jan 10, John Carter wrote Tonic Masculinity on the 14th saying "I stole that from Jay Rollins, and I’m not giving it back." On Jan 19, Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology writes "What is a man? Quality masculinity is tonic masculinity" citing John Carter and with a clever gin & tonic photo and then Luc Koch does What is Tonic Masculinity? citing all three.
I'd like to incite you to further thievery ;-) I think it's wonderful that it's taken on a life of it's own but it's become, perhaps, the opposite of how I defined it--at least for John Carter who bemoans that courts "give mothers custody to raise boys like defective girls." If so inclined, as a father of three daughters, I'd love to hear how you'd define it. I'll certainly do my own but I feel that you'd have a nuanced perspective.
Tereza, first, let me say that I didn't find out you were the origin of the term until after I picked it up from Jay and ran with it. Nice work on your part and you deserve the credit for that.
Regarding my brief comment on the family court system:
There is very strong evidence that children thrive best when they have two parents. However, if they can only have one, it is unequivocal that it is better to be raised by a single father than a single mother. Children from single-mother households have higher rates of drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, and so on.
Not saying there aren't exceptions, because obviously every individual situation must be evaluated on the basis of the specific context. However, the strong bias in the courts towards awarding the mother primary or even exclusive custody does the children no favors. That said, no fault divorce has been far worse for the emotional development of children than feminist bias in the legal system.
"I think we need a world that puts children at the center, surrounded by women, who are surrounded by men. Tonic masculinity."
This is a very good formulation, as regards children quite specifically. The one modification I'd make would be to emphasize that turning boys into men ultimately requires that they be removed from that inner circle and taken to the periphery - meaning they leave the protective nurturing environment created by women (which is essential when they're very young), and enter into an environment which is wholly male. The problem we have now is that men are not allowed to have their own world - instead, they're required to operate inside a woman's world, which keeps them perpetual boys.
Actually though now that I think about your metaphor a bit more, it seems that this is rather implicit in the proposed structure. Good stuff.
But, as Harrison notes, it's been kicked around before any of us wrote about it. There's a similar phenomenon in stand-up comedy, where jokes that are accused of being "stolen" are often merely premises that appear in a number of different heads.
Another way of putting it: "Great minds think alike." Cheers!
Whew, wow... I didn't have the energy to get up and lurch to the computer yesterday evening, but they explained better than I count have, so it worked out :D
I do hope to address the topic, although I have been planning a series on Smithean virtue ethics, and had been thinking to roll it into there. It probably is worth while to do a leading piece to map the path, though, explaining what the end goal looks like (tonic masculinity/femininity) and why developing our prime virtues is an important process to achieving that and maintaining our beneficence without veering into danger zones.
I think there is a lot of truth in the formulation of children surrounded by women surrounded by men. My general view with regards to children is that of a continuum of the Nest and the Wild Wood, the creche that is safe and sterile and the outside world that is dangerous but alive, where great things can be done. Mother stands at the door of the creche, into the larger home, where there is some little danger but some room to grow and achieve. She helps smooth the way for you to explore while you grow able to leave the house to the larger homestead, while making sure the wilder parts of the yard stay out there. As the child leaves the house, he moves into Father's domain. Father stands at the gate to the Wild Wood, keeping the outside out and keeping the inside working and productive. Where Mother smoothed the way for learning and exploration, Father's primary responsibility is to show how to deal with the rough edges, the cracks in the road, the dangers of the wood. If this often seems less soothing and more callus, it is because the Wild Wood denizens do not see us as our Mother sees us, as our Father sees us. Children must learn to face reality on reality's terms, for it is not ordered for their benefit as was the creche, the home or even the homestead. Thus the Father must support the child, help them stand up when they fall, teach them when they must stand up, teach them their duty to themselves and others, all while letting them fall, putting them in situations where they will fall, where they will fail, where they will be hurt. If the home with Mother was the padded pre-school playground, Father takes you through the Marine boot camp obstacle course. The goal isn't to hurt the child permanently, but to show them that pain and discomfort is part of achievement and can be, must be, overcome. Eventually the child must pass through the gate to the Wild Wood to make their own life, and without the training, discipline and understanding of the Father, they will have a very rough time of it.
That's the broad strokes, off the top of my head at least.
Yea, especially the irony that Badger and Otter are also mustelids, yet not so villainous, made me raise an eyebrow as a youth. For some reason I noticed that before "Toads drive cars built for humans, and get thrown in human jail, and no one sees fit to comment on this" but hey, the man could tell a good story!
Oddly, I can't get my kids interested so much. They want more action in their books I guess; animals living like people is just old hat at this point.
If you want mustelids and rodents and frogs, but more action, might I suggest the Redwall books? (Characters are split among mustelids similarly, in that Otters and badgers are good guys, while ferrets, skunks, stoats, weasels are bad guys; rodents and rodent-adjacent mice and rabbits are good guys, while rats are bad guys)
Thanks, I have been thinking about it a lot, for some time. I am very leery of staking out "men do this, women do that!" positions, but I have come to think there are very important differences in how men and women interact with others, particularly children, and both are needed to work together in raising them up to adults. I think we have erred pretty far towards trying to make them act in interchangeable ways.
Looking forward to this. Reminds me of a paragraph or page or two of something C.S. Lewis wrote. I did some googling and brain-wracking, but can't figure out what book or lecture it's from.
Hmmm... maybe I can dig it up. He's a pretty big influence on me, so I wouldn't be surprised if I am channeling something I read 5 years ago and since forgot the delivery mechanism of.
I can picture exactly where I was sitting when I read it, but I read almost all of his stuff in that spot. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest it was in either The Abolition of Man or Mere Christianity. One of my 2023 goals is to reread the CS Lewis catalog.
I will reply to myself so it goes to all of you. The first thing I want to say is that you're magnificent writers and I'm so pleased to have this somewhat accidental association with all of you. Mark, I'm looking forward to reading yours also. When I told my daughters I was an influencer, I said, "And these aren't just any blogs. These guys have put in research into the etymology, the context, the connotations and created a whole world around it, complete with sci-fi imagery. I feel like, in an odd little flip, I had the momentary pleasure of conception and they did the hard labor of bringing it to birth and nurturing it into life."
Harrison, my youngest daughter also did some digging and found it's been kicking around on Tik Tok for the last year. Later in that original thread, someone agreed with Jay but objected to the word 'steal' and I seconded that. My whole YT playlist on What is Reality? is based on exploring the possibility that if consciousness is not separate, the world could exist in our single Mind rather than our separate 'flesh-encapsulated' minds existing in the world. So I couldn't be more pleased that it's a seed that found such fertile ground (the gender reversal not lost on me).
What I'd like to do is join the conversation. When I posted my own Substack on Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles (https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/tonic-masculinity-and-feminine-wiles) unknowingly at the same time as yours, it was in response to someone who banned me for 100 yrs for commenting that I didn't think men should tell women what 'feminine intelligence' was. I thought there was work to be done in his own zone, of what men should aspire to (and not the liberal tropes he was spouting). So I've had to ask myself, is it mine to suggest to men what tonic masculinity should be?
Dr. Hammer, I like your initial thoughts, as I've enjoyed all of these. We are, I believe, all in agreement that something has gone terribly wrong with relationships between men and women, and with the core concept of family, from which the good and the dysfunctional all come. The perspective I have to offer isn't just as a woman, as in 'this is what I think we need from you guys,' it's as a mother of women who are navigating this terrain. My focus is in bringing about a feminine economy, socio-spirituality and metaphysics. It's about trying to birth a whole new metanoia.
I'm glad that you've all become real people to me through your thoughtful responses. I'd like to take some time and put together an episode giving a feminine elder perspective of what I meant by it. I hope that you'll see this as a co-parenting endeavor, with your blessing. And I will no longer give it the somewhat snarky title of "Tonic Masculinity is Not a Brofest." But thanks for letting me get that title out of my system here ;-)
Just to clarify, when I wrote that I "stole" it from Jay, that was an old joke - meme lords "steal" memes from each other all the time, and it's a joke because no one can really own a meme, and also because the entire POINT of a meme is for it to be "stolen". Basically a way of giving credit where it's due to the guy you got the meme from.
I'm not deeply familiar with your own thought, having only recently found out about you, but from reading your own tonic masculinity article and it's pitch-perfect smackdown of the male feminist you discussed there, as well as from what you've written here, I think there's a lot of overlap with how we tend to see the world ... stylistic differences aside, that is, although those are largely aesthetic preferences.
I tend to think the femininity and masculinity are both best defined by women and men, respectively. However by their very nature they require a certain degree of input from the other polarity. It's not like we don't have ideas about what's involved with the feminine traits that attract, or the toxic traits that repel us, and of course vice versa must be true too by symmetry. A long way of saying that I rather look forward to your own more detailed thoughts on the subject in the episode you propose to do.
I think that's a great idea. The topic itself is huge, encompassing what, about 50% of all human experience? I think it is very difficult to approach from any one or two directions without missing a great deal, even if one might eventually boil it down to a few clear themes. I think "virtue ethics" in general is one of those themes, but it doesn't tell us much about the e.g. division of labor happens in the cooperation of the sexes, nor which is primarily suited or hardwired to be better at what aspects. I think all of us could work on this for quite some time and not hit everything. I know I need to reread the lads' work here before I start writing mine to make sure I really absorb the ideas. I will save yours for last, if only to re-savor the smack down you handed out to a man-child who deserved it :)
I think in general mothers could go a long way towards aiding the learning by doing just what you suggest, reviewing what they do, and what they need their husbands to do. Very much a "know thyself" sort of deal. I think women have been let down by "feminist" thinkers (possibly the scare quotes are on the wrong word there) telling them that they do everything as well as men, and men do everything badly. What we really need is more honest "This is your strength, this is your weakness. Support your partner with the one, lean on them for the other" type discussion, along with "You need to develop your strengths."
I noticed that Mark, thank you! And when I looked at your archive page, I saw the Gin and Tonic piece and wondered if that might be related. What fun this is! I'm reading yours now and really enjoying it, with the origin mythologies thrown in. The pleasure is mine!
Awww ... thanks so much! You started the ball rolling and I'm having a ball with it ;-) I'm visiting a daughter in San Diego so it's great filler while she's working. And gives us lots to talk about inbetween.
I have heard that before, but I am a little skeptical of the claim. In this case, Thing 2 was vomiting Sunday night, Thing 3 Monday evening, I got sick Tuesday afternoon, my wife Tuesday evening, then Thing 1 Wednesday night. Further complicating it is that we don't really share food; I have allergies my wife doesn't feel like working around, and I don't care to eat at 6 pm (or her cooking) so she and the kids eat almost entirely differently than I do. Spoilt food would have to be either widely spread, or one we all shared, which only really covers the milk (which just finished Thursday night and I drank after being sick and didn't feel ill) or the filtered water bottle, which was replaced a few times over the week, so it should not have gotten Thing 1 sick later in the week, unless it is long term tainted, in which case it should have kept us sick as the younger girls drank it all week.
Plus, Grant Smith's family is sick with the same thing. Might be a coincidence, but I suspect there is some manner of bug that gets passed around and makes people sick to the stomach/nauseous. I have noticed that these sorts of things get passed around offices too, where one person's family will have it, then their coworkers start catching it too.
Putting on my pedantic hat, I think the point is that the sickness was not "stomach flu," in the sense that influenza is a respiratory virus, so "stomach flu" is a misnomer. "Stomach flu" symptoms are usually viral gastroenteritis. Thus, your argument that "stomach flu" is the likely culprit, vis a vis food poisoning, is probably correct in the sense that you had viral gastroenteritis, which is contagious, and not food poisoning, but wrong in the sense that viral gastroenteritis is not actually a "flu."
I'd buy that argument, although I can see why "viral gastroenteritis" didn't catch on in favor of "stomach flu". "I feel like I have the flu, but in my stomach" is a bit easier to stomach. :)
I know how you feel (with the low engagement stuff layely, not the puking). I've got a lot of reading and commenting to catch up on, including your AI post.
Feel better, Doc.
So sorry you're going through that!
I just discovered that you're part of the guy club, some of whom ran with the term Tonic Masculinity. One of my readers had sent me links, saying that a lot of people were scooping my term. Here's my original comment on Charles Eisenstein's I Like to Fight: Tereza Coraggio Nov 27, 2022: "This does my heart good. I think we need a world that puts children at the center, surrounded by women, who are surrounded by men. Tonic masculinity."
Jay Rollins, Writes The Wonderland Rules: Stealing "tonic masculinity."
Tereza Coraggio: Yes please! I was hoping someone would. It took me a minute to figure out what the opposite of toxic would be.
Jay Rollins, Jan 18: Me and the boys took it and ran with it. :-D
So Jay wrote Tate Modern on Jan 10, John Carter wrote Tonic Masculinity on the 14th saying "I stole that from Jay Rollins, and I’m not giving it back." On Jan 19, Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology writes "What is a man? Quality masculinity is tonic masculinity" citing John Carter and with a clever gin & tonic photo and then Luc Koch does What is Tonic Masculinity? citing all three.
I'd like to incite you to further thievery ;-) I think it's wonderful that it's taken on a life of it's own but it's become, perhaps, the opposite of how I defined it--at least for John Carter who bemoans that courts "give mothers custody to raise boys like defective girls." If so inclined, as a father of three daughters, I'd love to hear how you'd define it. I'll certainly do my own but I feel that you'd have a nuanced perspective.
It's a great word, Tereza. Our team of imaginary research assistants managed to find an even older reference: https://fcpp.org/2019/05/06/tonic-masculinity/
Looks like it is one of those words that has been floating in the ether. Kudos for being one of the very few to pick it out of there for everyone!
Tereza, first, let me say that I didn't find out you were the origin of the term until after I picked it up from Jay and ran with it. Nice work on your part and you deserve the credit for that.
Regarding my brief comment on the family court system:
There is very strong evidence that children thrive best when they have two parents. However, if they can only have one, it is unequivocal that it is better to be raised by a single father than a single mother. Children from single-mother households have higher rates of drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, and so on.
Not saying there aren't exceptions, because obviously every individual situation must be evaluated on the basis of the specific context. However, the strong bias in the courts towards awarding the mother primary or even exclusive custody does the children no favors. That said, no fault divorce has been far worse for the emotional development of children than feminist bias in the legal system.
"I think we need a world that puts children at the center, surrounded by women, who are surrounded by men. Tonic masculinity."
This is a very good formulation, as regards children quite specifically. The one modification I'd make would be to emphasize that turning boys into men ultimately requires that they be removed from that inner circle and taken to the periphery - meaning they leave the protective nurturing environment created by women (which is essential when they're very young), and enter into an environment which is wholly male. The problem we have now is that men are not allowed to have their own world - instead, they're required to operate inside a woman's world, which keeps them perpetual boys.
Actually though now that I think about your metaphor a bit more, it seems that this is rather implicit in the proposed structure. Good stuff.
Hey, you left me out, Tereza! I stole it too:
https://markbisone.substack.com/p/in-from-the-cold
But, as Harrison notes, it's been kicked around before any of us wrote about it. There's a similar phenomenon in stand-up comedy, where jokes that are accused of being "stolen" are often merely premises that appear in a number of different heads.
Another way of putting it: "Great minds think alike." Cheers!
Whew, wow... I didn't have the energy to get up and lurch to the computer yesterday evening, but they explained better than I count have, so it worked out :D
I do hope to address the topic, although I have been planning a series on Smithean virtue ethics, and had been thinking to roll it into there. It probably is worth while to do a leading piece to map the path, though, explaining what the end goal looks like (tonic masculinity/femininity) and why developing our prime virtues is an important process to achieving that and maintaining our beneficence without veering into danger zones.
I think there is a lot of truth in the formulation of children surrounded by women surrounded by men. My general view with regards to children is that of a continuum of the Nest and the Wild Wood, the creche that is safe and sterile and the outside world that is dangerous but alive, where great things can be done. Mother stands at the door of the creche, into the larger home, where there is some little danger but some room to grow and achieve. She helps smooth the way for you to explore while you grow able to leave the house to the larger homestead, while making sure the wilder parts of the yard stay out there. As the child leaves the house, he moves into Father's domain. Father stands at the gate to the Wild Wood, keeping the outside out and keeping the inside working and productive. Where Mother smoothed the way for learning and exploration, Father's primary responsibility is to show how to deal with the rough edges, the cracks in the road, the dangers of the wood. If this often seems less soothing and more callus, it is because the Wild Wood denizens do not see us as our Mother sees us, as our Father sees us. Children must learn to face reality on reality's terms, for it is not ordered for their benefit as was the creche, the home or even the homestead. Thus the Father must support the child, help them stand up when they fall, teach them when they must stand up, teach them their duty to themselves and others, all while letting them fall, putting them in situations where they will fall, where they will fail, where they will be hurt. If the home with Mother was the padded pre-school playground, Father takes you through the Marine boot camp obstacle course. The goal isn't to hurt the child permanently, but to show them that pain and discomfort is part of achievement and can be, must be, overcome. Eventually the child must pass through the gate to the Wild Wood to make their own life, and without the training, discipline and understanding of the Father, they will have a very rough time of it.
That's the broad strokes, off the top of my head at least.
Hey! Someone got the Wild Woods reference! :D
Yea, especially the irony that Badger and Otter are also mustelids, yet not so villainous, made me raise an eyebrow as a youth. For some reason I noticed that before "Toads drive cars built for humans, and get thrown in human jail, and no one sees fit to comment on this" but hey, the man could tell a good story!
Oddly, I can't get my kids interested so much. They want more action in their books I guess; animals living like people is just old hat at this point.
If you want mustelids and rodents and frogs, but more action, might I suggest the Redwall books? (Characters are split among mustelids similarly, in that Otters and badgers are good guys, while ferrets, skunks, stoats, weasels are bad guys; rodents and rodent-adjacent mice and rabbits are good guys, while rats are bad guys)
Holy shit that was good.
Thanks, I have been thinking about it a lot, for some time. I am very leery of staking out "men do this, women do that!" positions, but I have come to think there are very important differences in how men and women interact with others, particularly children, and both are needed to work together in raising them up to adults. I think we have erred pretty far towards trying to make them act in interchangeable ways.
Looking forward to this. Reminds me of a paragraph or page or two of something C.S. Lewis wrote. I did some googling and brain-wracking, but can't figure out what book or lecture it's from.
Hmmm... maybe I can dig it up. He's a pretty big influence on me, so I wouldn't be surprised if I am channeling something I read 5 years ago and since forgot the delivery mechanism of.
I can picture exactly where I was sitting when I read it, but I read almost all of his stuff in that spot. I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest it was in either The Abolition of Man or Mere Christianity. One of my 2023 goals is to reread the CS Lewis catalog.
Epic, Doc.
I will reply to myself so it goes to all of you. The first thing I want to say is that you're magnificent writers and I'm so pleased to have this somewhat accidental association with all of you. Mark, I'm looking forward to reading yours also. When I told my daughters I was an influencer, I said, "And these aren't just any blogs. These guys have put in research into the etymology, the context, the connotations and created a whole world around it, complete with sci-fi imagery. I feel like, in an odd little flip, I had the momentary pleasure of conception and they did the hard labor of bringing it to birth and nurturing it into life."
Harrison, my youngest daughter also did some digging and found it's been kicking around on Tik Tok for the last year. Later in that original thread, someone agreed with Jay but objected to the word 'steal' and I seconded that. My whole YT playlist on What is Reality? is based on exploring the possibility that if consciousness is not separate, the world could exist in our single Mind rather than our separate 'flesh-encapsulated' minds existing in the world. So I couldn't be more pleased that it's a seed that found such fertile ground (the gender reversal not lost on me).
What I'd like to do is join the conversation. When I posted my own Substack on Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles (https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/tonic-masculinity-and-feminine-wiles) unknowingly at the same time as yours, it was in response to someone who banned me for 100 yrs for commenting that I didn't think men should tell women what 'feminine intelligence' was. I thought there was work to be done in his own zone, of what men should aspire to (and not the liberal tropes he was spouting). So I've had to ask myself, is it mine to suggest to men what tonic masculinity should be?
Dr. Hammer, I like your initial thoughts, as I've enjoyed all of these. We are, I believe, all in agreement that something has gone terribly wrong with relationships between men and women, and with the core concept of family, from which the good and the dysfunctional all come. The perspective I have to offer isn't just as a woman, as in 'this is what I think we need from you guys,' it's as a mother of women who are navigating this terrain. My focus is in bringing about a feminine economy, socio-spirituality and metaphysics. It's about trying to birth a whole new metanoia.
I'm glad that you've all become real people to me through your thoughtful responses. I'd like to take some time and put together an episode giving a feminine elder perspective of what I meant by it. I hope that you'll see this as a co-parenting endeavor, with your blessing. And I will no longer give it the somewhat snarky title of "Tonic Masculinity is Not a Brofest." But thanks for letting me get that title out of my system here ;-)
Just to clarify, when I wrote that I "stole" it from Jay, that was an old joke - meme lords "steal" memes from each other all the time, and it's a joke because no one can really own a meme, and also because the entire POINT of a meme is for it to be "stolen". Basically a way of giving credit where it's due to the guy you got the meme from.
I'm not deeply familiar with your own thought, having only recently found out about you, but from reading your own tonic masculinity article and it's pitch-perfect smackdown of the male feminist you discussed there, as well as from what you've written here, I think there's a lot of overlap with how we tend to see the world ... stylistic differences aside, that is, although those are largely aesthetic preferences.
I tend to think the femininity and masculinity are both best defined by women and men, respectively. However by their very nature they require a certain degree of input from the other polarity. It's not like we don't have ideas about what's involved with the feminine traits that attract, or the toxic traits that repel us, and of course vice versa must be true too by symmetry. A long way of saying that I rather look forward to your own more detailed thoughts on the subject in the episode you propose to do.
I think that's a great idea. The topic itself is huge, encompassing what, about 50% of all human experience? I think it is very difficult to approach from any one or two directions without missing a great deal, even if one might eventually boil it down to a few clear themes. I think "virtue ethics" in general is one of those themes, but it doesn't tell us much about the e.g. division of labor happens in the cooperation of the sexes, nor which is primarily suited or hardwired to be better at what aspects. I think all of us could work on this for quite some time and not hit everything. I know I need to reread the lads' work here before I start writing mine to make sure I really absorb the ideas. I will save yours for last, if only to re-savor the smack down you handed out to a man-child who deserved it :)
I think in general mothers could go a long way towards aiding the learning by doing just what you suggest, reviewing what they do, and what they need their husbands to do. Very much a "know thyself" sort of deal. I think women have been let down by "feminist" thinkers (possibly the scare quotes are on the wrong word there) telling them that they do everything as well as men, and men do everything badly. What we really need is more honest "This is your strength, this is your weakness. Support your partner with the one, lean on them for the other" type discussion, along with "You need to develop your strengths."
This comment marked an instant subscription for me. Can't wait to engage with your ideas, Tereza. It's a pleasure to meet you.
FYI I've actually written twice about the subject, if you're interested. This second article took the form of a review:.
https://markbisone.substack.com/p/gin-and-tonic
Best,
Mark.
I noticed that Mark, thank you! And when I looked at your archive page, I saw the Gin and Tonic piece and wondered if that might be related. What fun this is! I'm reading yours now and really enjoying it, with the origin mythologies thrown in. The pleasure is mine!
Awww ... thanks so much! You started the ball rolling and I'm having a ball with it ;-) I'm visiting a daughter in San Diego so it's great filler while she's working. And gives us lots to talk about inbetween.
Probably food poison. No such thing as "stomach flu".
I have heard that before, but I am a little skeptical of the claim. In this case, Thing 2 was vomiting Sunday night, Thing 3 Monday evening, I got sick Tuesday afternoon, my wife Tuesday evening, then Thing 1 Wednesday night. Further complicating it is that we don't really share food; I have allergies my wife doesn't feel like working around, and I don't care to eat at 6 pm (or her cooking) so she and the kids eat almost entirely differently than I do. Spoilt food would have to be either widely spread, or one we all shared, which only really covers the milk (which just finished Thursday night and I drank after being sick and didn't feel ill) or the filtered water bottle, which was replaced a few times over the week, so it should not have gotten Thing 1 sick later in the week, unless it is long term tainted, in which case it should have kept us sick as the younger girls drank it all week.
Plus, Grant Smith's family is sick with the same thing. Might be a coincidence, but I suspect there is some manner of bug that gets passed around and makes people sick to the stomach/nauseous. I have noticed that these sorts of things get passed around offices too, where one person's family will have it, then their coworkers start catching it too.
Putting on my pedantic hat, I think the point is that the sickness was not "stomach flu," in the sense that influenza is a respiratory virus, so "stomach flu" is a misnomer. "Stomach flu" symptoms are usually viral gastroenteritis. Thus, your argument that "stomach flu" is the likely culprit, vis a vis food poisoning, is probably correct in the sense that you had viral gastroenteritis, which is contagious, and not food poisoning, but wrong in the sense that viral gastroenteritis is not actually a "flu."
I'd buy that argument, although I can see why "viral gastroenteritis" didn't catch on in favor of "stomach flu". "I feel like I have the flu, but in my stomach" is a bit easier to stomach. :)