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dudence-blog · 7 years

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Dear Dudence for 26 September 2017

With a glass of Vago Elote in hand and a choice selection of Ortpru Q&A to go through, it’s off to the unwanted advice. Speaking of unwanted advice, if you have a question you need mansplained by a middle age conservative white guy whose in denial about his drinking problems you can hit me up at [email protected].

Sudden transition: My off-and-on boyfriend told me he’s going to transition. He said he let his hair grow a bit long, and then just looked in the mirror and saw a woman. I don’t want to be insensitive to whatever he’s going through, but I don’t think this is a real trans case. The trans people I know say they felt trapped in the wrong body since at least adolescence. Should I express my concerns to him?

Dear Sudden Transition, support your boyfriend as he begins to go through his transition. Eventually you’re going to, probably, need to have a discussion with him about the nature of your romantic relationship, but that is a conversation you can have at a time when you’re comfortable. No matter what you may, personally, think of his life, how he’s previously expressed his gender, etc, you really don’t know his internal workings. Unless you found a little door that lets you into his brain a la Being John Malkovich. And if you’ve done that it’s pretty manipulative and a little creepy if you’re using that power on your own boyfriend.

While BadPru says you shouldn’t express your concerns I’m going to go ahead and disagree with her. “I’m going to change my gender because I feel like a woman inside,” is not a statement with a heckler’s veto that precludes people in intimate relationships from sharing their thoughts, feelings, and concerns with their partner or friend. You can support your boyfriend, be an ally to LGBT people, and still have concerns about the well-being of a person close to you. Be sensitive, caring, and polite as you do it, but don’t allow your feelings and thoughts to be trampled upon because you don’t get to tell someone what they feel.

For the record I’m using the pronouns used by the letterwriter, which is what I intend to do for any subject related to this particular topic.

Husband in denial about baby allergy: I’ve recently come to the realization that our baby is allergic to dogs. This shouldn’t be a problem, except my husband loves dogs. We have cats right now, and when we got married it was with the understanding that when our cats die, and our kids are a little older, we would get a dog. Instead of accepting it, my husband is in denial and thinks that allowing her to play with and be licked by dogs will help her get over this issue. This causes her to sneeze, get red eyes, and break out into hives where she’s been licked.

Dear Husband in Denial, I started your question thinking “her husband says he’s allergic to babies? Why didn’t I think of that?” Thankfully I read the rest of the question, otherwise my response would have been nonsensical. Next time your kid goes to the pediatrician mention your concerns about your child possibly being allergic to dogs (a concern which I empathize with given my own Little Man). What you’re going to need to do to get this through to him is your pediatrician to discuss the extent of the allergy and possible courses of action to mitigate your baby’s allergic reaction in the future. As for your question about requesting that your relatives take some steps to mitigate the allergens, yes, it is annoying but family and friends who like one another are willing to deal with minor annoyances. You’re going to need to meet them halfway on this by either hosting them more, or doing some planning before making your visits. If you’re a sitcom family where you barge into your parents’ house unannounced on the spur of the moment you’re going to need to stop. Don’t expect them to drop what they’re doing to quickly get Fido put into the bedroom and get out the vacuum.

Blind spot: I have a close friend who, though creative and marvelously witty, has an awful blind spot about her “sensitive and kind” personality. She prides herself specifically on being forgiving, but she withholds that particular kindness for all kinds of reasons, and can hold a grudge better than almost anyone I know. While it’s her right to forgive or not forgive, is there any way to gently tell her, next time she starts harping on, “Well, I never got an apology,” that perhaps some things are also her fault? And perhaps, if she’s going to tell people that she’s very kind and forgiving, then she should perhaps bury a few grudges?

Dear Blind Spot, please, next time your grudge-holding friend says “I never got an apology,” mention to her that perhaps some things are her fault. Then follow up the reaction to that by suggesting she should see a therapist for her destructive pattern. I can’t wait to read her letter to Newdie. People are hypocrites, particularly about their own behavior. We think the best of our own intentions while attributing the worst motivations to other people. You could just accept that this is a thing your friend is going to do, and is probably going to continue doing that.

How do you tell someone they’re bad at what they love to do? I’m an avid reader and freelance writer, and I’m pretty public on social media about my passions. Because of this, I’m often asked by friends and acquaintances to read their book/manuscript/screenplay, /et cetera, and to let them know what I think. I’ve read some excellent stories this way—but not all of them are fantastic. Grammar issues and punctuation errors can be fixed, but I sometimes see plots with obvious holes, characters that are nothing but stereotypes, cliché dialogue—you name it.

Dear How do You Tell, did I ask you to read this? I’m going to defer to NuPru on this one.

The R-word: I was recently having drinks with three other friends when one of them told us about how his parked car had been bumped into by another driver earlier in the week. He concluded, “I know we’re not supposed to say this, for some reason, but the driver must have been fucking retarded.” I politely commented that he was right, a lot of people are offended by that term, insinuating that I was among them. The three of them clearly recognized my indignation with the casual use of the word and started using the word excessively for the next 10 minutes of the conversation, apparently to get a reaction out of me. I reacted by telling them that they were being ignorant assholes with respect to people with intellectual disabilities and just plain assholes with respect to me, their friend. The storyteller argued he didn’t understand why he couldn’t use the word because it’s a medical term. I forcefully told him that the word is no longer a term used to accurately describe a medical condition, but used almost exclusively as a derogatory, hurtful word.

Dear R-Word, I’m going to let Chris Rock handle this for a bit. There, now with that out of the way your friends are assholes. It’s okay, everyone is sometimes. If you’d had that same conversation with your friend alone it probably ends more positively, but because you and your friends were in a group, they decided to have some fun getting you ratcheted up. You said your bit, stick to it.

Friend is furious I contacted her family when concerned for her well-being: My friend has had many bad things happen recently. She cried hysterically via phone to one friend, and texted me that there “didn’t seem to be a point,” then stopped responding to us. My friend and I got concerned and contacted her family to see if one of them who lives close could check on her. She then contacted us, saying, “Stop contacting my family,” so we did.

Dear Friend is Furious, what I’m about to say is something I don’t say lightly, but Ms. Ortberg can go fuck herself on her response to you on this. When you read a lot of reports examining the chain of events leading to a person killing themselves you often notice that there were people who suspected there was a problem, but didn’t ask, didn’t trust their own suspicions, were worried about embarrassing themselves or the person they were asking, etc. Your friend has been going through a lot of challenges, had at least one seriously emotional response with one friend, and was leaving cryptic messages about the point of going on. That was certainly worth being concerned about and contacting people you knew could follow-up on your friend. It is far better to have your friend mad because you were concerned for their well-being than hurt or dead because you were worried you’d make the “wrong call”. Give your friend their space now, if they want to let you back into their life later it’s their call, but don’t think you did the wrong thing for taking the initiative to ask that they were okay.

Are you my auntie? When I was 5, my dad got remarried to my stepmom, whose daughter (I’ll call her Millie) was 8 at the time. We were always friendly with each other, and haven’t had much of an issue since.

Dear Are You My Auntie, I’m confused by your dad remarrying your stepmom? Do you mean he remarried and married your stepmom, or did you mean he and your stepmom were previously married, divorced, then remarried? Sorry, I get distracted sometimes.

You know when you wrote that email to [email protected] you really should have written it to “[email protected]”. Maybe she despises second-degree relative titles? Maybe she thinks you don’t want to be called “auntie” because you don’t think the two of you are close? Maybe there are all sorts of interesting bits of drama which can be generated by choosing to write to an advice columnist over writing to your own family member.

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