I just left my husband alone with our two children for sixteen days. I was not worried about anything regarding the house, their food, or their wellbeing. I put all the appointments in the family calendar and my husband checked it and kept them. I literally did not worry about them. I missed them, and I was sad that they missed me, but I didn’t worry about them AT ALL. I need to impress upon you all that I missed their company, but was not worried for their welfare.
I also did no meal prep. I don’t even think I went shopping right before I left.
This is not about apples and oranges. This isn’t even about my husband. This is about the fact that this is apparently WEIRD.
Another mum at my daughter’s school is leaving for ten days. She’s taking her youngest (who is a very small baby) and leaving her husband with their two girls. She has been cooking for days preparing freezer meals. She’s panicking and deputizing her six year old to remind him how to make school lunches. AND I AM APPALLED.
A) He is definitely not helpless. (He’s a doctor or something.) What gendered bullshit. B) THAT LITTLE GIRL IS NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HER AND HER SISTER’S WELLBEING. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. C) Why is she married to this person and creating children with him if he’s this big of an idiot?
While she was laughingly recounting this, the other mums were nodding and smiling sympathetically, like oh yes, I too have my caveman at home!! Such managing required! I was the only one who was like “Dude, he’ll be fine. Literally. He will be fine.” I said it a lot. She was not convinced. She kept bringing up her older daughter. She’ll be like a little mum!
NO.
NO NO NO NO.
NO.
Straight women, don’t do this shit. It’s gross. Don’t infantilize your husbands and then expect your daughters to pick up the slack. So fucking gross. So. So. GROSS.
The fact that so many adults think a six year old girl is more capable of learning and performing basic domestic tasks than a grown-ass man says it all, really.
This stuff is so toxic and awful. I told a car full of women one time that I refused to be in another relationship until I met a man who was capable of making his own doctors’ appointments and washing the dishes. They told me I was going to die alone.
Fuck this shit. Don’t enable men’s incompetence and label it cute.
OKAY SO I had a coworker who was otherwise a standard clueless Straight White Guy, but this dude loved his wife and he knew her real good. And his wife LOVES shitty grocery store icing. So the first thing she’d always do with any cake is shove her fingers into the corner and scoop off whatever abomination of a flower was on there and eat it off her fingers.
SO THIS DUDE GOES TO THE STORE AND HAS THEM MAKE A WHOLE CAKE OUT OF FROSTING Brings it home to his wife for her birthday She shoves her fingers into it and then they just keep going FROSTING ALL THE WAY DOWN He said the look on her face was the best thing he’d ever seen in his life It gives me hope that even a clueless Straight White Guy knew and loved his wife enough to give her the perfect birthday present cake frosting abomination
And I love to imagine the conversation he had to have with the grocery store bakery.
I agree, all men should learn about women’s sexuality by reading My Immortal.
Hi friend! Foz here. Just a couple of points:
– I’ve specified good fanfiction in literally the first tweet. While this is, obviously, a value judgement wherein YMMV, My Immortal is famous for being arguably the most terrible fanfic ever written, and is therefore demonstrably not what I’m talking about. Similarly, I’ve seen other responses to this post bring up 50 Shades, which, despite its popularity in mainstream circles, is pretty much universally regarded as being not just terrible fanfic, but an excruciatingly bad and dangerously inaccurate portrayal of BDSM that romanticises abuse. So no: these are not the droids you’re looking for.
– Here’s the thing, though: you already knew that. The decision to respond to this post with a flippant reference to a fic that’s notorious precisely because of its poor quality is exactly why I used up precious Twitter characters to specify good fanfic, even though I shouldn’t have had to. Every mode of artistic expression is composed of good, bad and mediocre works, but when it comes to genres that are traditionally viewed as less worthy or literary – like fanfiction, or romance – we have a reflexive tendency to conflate the bad with the whole, such that the good is implied to be either exceptional or nonexistant. I specified that I’m talking about good fanfiction, not because I think such fics are an exalted minority, but to pre-emptively combat the assertion that they are, and then you’ve gone and made it anyway. So, thanks for that.
– But while we’re on the subject of quality, let’s make a very important distinction. Though fanfic is a largely unmediated medium, it’s not bad; it’s amateur, in the very literal, dictionary-definition sense of engaging or engaged in without payment; non-professional. While there’s a stereotype that lots of ficwriters are teenage girls – which, why is that always wielded as an insult? oh right, misogyny, carry on – a lot of us are, in fact, grown-ass adults of varying genders, some of whom also happen to write professionally in other contexts; like me, for instance. I’ve read fanfics that are unquestionably as good as, if not better than, many professionally published works I’ve read, some I’ve simply enjoyed or felt meh about, and others where I’ve mounted up on my Nopetopus and ridden off into the sunset after the first paragraph. It’s a grab bag, is what I’m saying, but if you think that’s an inherently different spectrum of enjoyment over quality than applies to any other medium, then I’d politely invite you to reconsider the matter.
– In conclusion: fanfic might not be your bag, but it has its own culture of editing, collaboration, publication, criticism and dissemination, its own conventions and subversions of same, its own extensive history and trope awareness, and, yes, its near-unique status as a medium invested in female sexual desire. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other things straight dudes can do to learn the mystical ways of What Women Want like, oh, say, talking to them, always bearing in mind that women are not a goddamn hivemind, but given that there are a frightening number of guys out there whose first or primary exposure to any type of porn is whatever degrading mainstream het they can scrouge up for free without virusing the hell out of their PCs, then yeah: I’m gonna go out on a fucking limb and suggest they maybe balance it out with some fanfic.
This might be the best summary of the power of fan fiction and its inherent lessons about women’s sexuality that I’ve ever seen.
being touchstarved makes u absolutely buckwild when someone does smth simple like .share a chair with u
like having someone touch your hand with the tips of their fingers shouldn’t feel like So Much it shouldn’t feel like your whole body is going into anaphylactic shock but here we are. here we are.
ok 2 many of u relate
Someone gave me a compliment and reached out and squeezed my hand and I fell in love and couldn’t speak for several minutes
I was just gonna type this in the tags but I have to say this.
Growing up in North America is surreal. Every tiny little blip of physical affection is deemed as sexual interest. Boys aren’t allowed to hug eachother because “that’s gay.” Girls can’t hold hands because “are they going out?” And GOD FORBID a female friend hugs a male friend.
Having lived in the Netherlands, and reading up about shit like this, Canadians and Americans are starving.
I went to Japan for a school trip in 2012. I went to a highschool there. There were boys hugging, lounging on those blue gym floor mats, holding hands, trowing their arms around eachother. I was startled by how shocked I was.
This mentality of “if you’re touching you must have sexual interest in the other person” is so fucking disgusting. Hug your friends. Hold hands with them. Touch their hands when you want to reassure them.
God, yeah, I obviously never want to make people uncomfy but I’m really touchy and physically affectionate
“Anyone can be seduced, Y. I could seduce you, if I wanted. It wouldn’t be hard,” X says, dismissively.
“I think you overestimate yourself,” Y says. X gives xir a look, and sighs, leaning forward.
“Okay, listen. You’re lonely, insecure, desperate for approval, and have no emotional support. Literally all I would have to do is make sure to consistently be there for you, compliment you as often as I could get away with while still sounding sincere, slowly escalate how much I touched you, start sprinkling in romantic and sexual compliments, and eventually bring it to a head by telling you I loved you. Even if you didn’t like me that way, you’d probably still sleep with me out of sheer desperation to keep me around, and I’m attractive enough you’d convince yourself you felt good about it.”
Y gapes wordlessly as X props zir head on zir hand.
“Now, I’m not going to do that, because I have a functioning moral compass and that’s some abusive, fucked-up shit, but maybe think twice before blaming the victim, next time.”
I firmly believe that unless the couple has discussed and agreed to marriage ahead of time, nobody has any business making a surprise public proposal.
Okay except some people want a surprise public proposal.
Girl my husband took me to Spain and gave me a kinder egg on the beach, the ring was inside the capsule (Lord knows how he did that) if any feminist tried to take that away from me I may cut a bitch. Best surprise of my life.
I wish people were capable of analyzing larger social trends and figuring that a significant number of women end up getting pressured into engagements or marriages they don’t want bc the audience that comes along with a public proposal will think she’s a bitch if she says no – instead of thinking “i liked it when it happened to me, therefore it could never turn out badly for anyone, not ever!!!!”
I think what people are misunderstanding here is that agreeing to marriage ahead of time doesn’t need to be like, asking permission to propose? I surprised my now spouse with a proposal in Disneyland but before that we had several conversations about the future of our relationship, future plans for our retirements and how we’d have to get married eventually for immigration purposes. I didn’t go to her and say “so would you say yeah if I proposed?” or hash out deets ahead of time, but we had enough of a mutual understanding and communicated desire to get married that, although it was a surprise for when and how I proposed, it wasn’t out of left field at all.
This is exactly like conversations about consent, people get up in arms thinking that it means you have to have contracts and serious sit down conversations before doing anything when its REALLY EASY to simply COMMUNICATE with your partner so things like this are done properly, yeesh
“proposal can be a surprise, engagement shouldn’t be“ – saw that somewhere, thought it was the most accurate
is an absolutely valid reason to not want to date someone.
People had the nerve to call me shallow for this.
By the way, it’s also totally cool to turn someone down without explaining your reasons. You are not interested, no will suffice. Do not feel pressured to explain your decisions to someone else.
when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors. we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards. he wasn’t the only one. there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”
i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was
in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face. we built
block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d
turn the lights off during lunch time. one day they got in a fist fight
over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my
friendship, like it was something they owned.
in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during
free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly. everyone in
the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going
to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my
friend.
when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore
puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes
and a smile that hid hurt behind it. people didn’t like him because he
was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly. he became my
friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his
girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best
friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around.
we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home
with the sunset silhouetting us. he talked often about how he loved me,
but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on.
that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing
songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show
until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb
cunt.
in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the
bus and talked to me about manga. he’d ask me personal invasive
questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked
attention. i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one
who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how
much of an asshole he was every day. i wondered, why, why does he think
the love of my life is an asshole? but whenever i asked him, he just
told me, “girls only date assholes. there’s no room for nice guys like
me.”
i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?
he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me,
you know. being friendly. i thought we were friends. but then, how
many times had i thought that before?
how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?
how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped
being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound
into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”
there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until
the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams. beneath a
million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out
of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me.
then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained
about how he’d never get laid.
when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.
i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk
about all my favourite games with me. he was the closest thing to
support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind
and friendly. but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no
matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come
over every day and do it.
“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love
you back? don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”
when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the
girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to
just say
when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her
shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose
voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made
me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill. and i’m 18 years old, and i
still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.
but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a
bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like
me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”
they were
“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”
so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw
your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so
much:
put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful
friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex. that he just
wanted her for a relationship. a girl who was just an object to win, a
prize. a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.
maybe she friendzoned you. but you girlfriendzoned her, first.
if someone does the “fine, you’re right, i’m clearly a terrible person, i’m satan, i’m the worst person alive, i should just die” thing in response to criticism of their harmful behavior, they are trying to manipulate ppl and flip the situation around so that they look like a victim
stop tolerating this in 2k17 tbh. like really and truly, if you or your friend thinks this is okay pls call the hotline on the bottom of the screen and learn how to take responsibility for your bad behavior
The bad thing is I do this on a regular basis. Not because I want to manipulate people, but because that’s actually how I feel. I’m bad at receiving concrit. I can’t say that everyone who reacts this way feels the same as I do, but…not every case is like that.
have you considered that, regardless of your intentions, reacting in such an exaggerated way would make it very difficult for anyone to criticize you or tell you that you’re harming people with your behavior? i’m not interested in searching out people’s motives, i don’t really care why someone does or says manipulative things. being unable or unwilling to simply apologize and not make it about themselves is a solid indicator that a person is not interested in being held accountable for their bad behavior, and people, especially the injured parties in question, shouldn’t have to tolerate it.
take responsibility for your bad behavior 2k17 tbh
Okay, life lesson time.
When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept getting involved with people who would say, “Oh, I’m a bad person” any time I brought up ANYTHING that was the least bit of a disagreement.
Like, “Please don’t leave my X on the floor” would get, “Oh, I’m a horrible person!”
HERE’S WHY THIS IS A HUGELY PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR, and if you think I”m calling you out and you think you’re about to shut down, take a breath, remember that this is about learning, and keep reading.
What is important is what happened after. My boyfriend might say, “Oh, I’m just an awful boyfriend” and instead of him acknowledging the BEHAVIOR and working on fixing it, he’d get me trying to buck him up for the next half hour, telling him he was a good person. The behavior that started it all would not change.
Well, things led to things and I went back home to live for a while, and found that the same exact thing was happening… with my mother.
And then I learned about pattern arguments. Pattern arguments are the ones where you keep having the same nonproductive argument over and over again. They don’t all follow this pattern, but this is a really common one.
The trick?
BREAK THE PATTERN
First you have to know what the pattern is. In this case: 1. Grievance 2. Self deprecation 3. Ego stroking
So, with my mother, we started in on one of these, and she said, “I guess I’m just a terrible mother.”
And instead of reassuring her, instead of derailing the issue and letting it go… I said, “When you say that, it makes me wonder how terrible a daughter I could be that you would think you were a bad mother. We have this conversation this way over and over, and the problem that I have always gets pushed aside in favor of trying to make you feel better. When you’re willing to have a real conversation about this, I’m happy to talk to you, but I’m bored with this argument, so I’ll see you later if you want to really talk.” And I left the room.
Now, my mom is a reasonably self-aware person, and does a lot of hard emotional work, and so she got it, very quickly. 10 minutes later she came out and found me, and we had a real conversation about whatever the hell the issue really was, and we have literally NEVER had that particular pattern argument again in 23 years.
Boyfriend came to visit. I was upset about something, he started in on the “I’m just a shitty boyfriend” thing… and my response?
“Yep. You are.”
His jaw dropped. He blinked.
And I said, “Look, that’s what you do. You say shit like that and it means you don’t have to change your behavior, and I’m tired of the pattern we have where I tell you something isn’t working for me, you tell me you’re terrible, and I spend half an hour making you feel better. I’m tired of it and I”m not doing it anymore. If you’re willing to have an actual conversation about this, and not just the same old argument, I’m game. But this thing we do where you talk yourself down and I butter you up? Is boring. And I’m over it.”
We also did not have that argument again. (The relationship finally ended for real a while after, but it ended in a grown-up way, and not with a ridiculous meaningless fight.)
When you knock yourself down, the gut instinct for the people around you is to pick you up. But that means you’re not pulling your weight in the relationship. You’re making them do the work and you’re not actually hearing them.
So that brings us to another point:
How to deal with criticism
Okay, so if you’re not going to knock yourself down when someone says something negative about you, what DO you do? We don’t actually train people to take criticism well. But it is an art and a skill and NECESSARY to finding emotional stability in the face of a critical world.
I see it as a flow chart, but since the flow chart I made for it ended up in a book that I don’t own the copyright to (not a big deal) I’ll write out the decision tree here instead:
1. Someone offers criticism (constructive or not!)
2. Listen and think about it without immediately trying to defend yourself. You can say, “Okay, I need a moment to take that in and think about it because I want to understand it.” Or something else appropriate to the situation. It is okay to ask for time to think in most circumstances. Most people will appreciate that you are thinking about their words instead of immediately getting defensive or counterattacking. Think about whether what they are saying is valid, might be valid or is not valid.
3A. If it is valid, then you have a choice. You can try to fix the behavior or you can acknowledge that it is a valid criticism but decide you aren’t likely to fix it. Start by acknowledging the validity of the criticism, and then say what you’re going to do to fix it, or say that it’s valid but it isn’t something you’re willing (or possibly able) to change, or say that it’s a valid criticism and you’ll need to think about possible solutions. They may have a suggestion. Taking it or not is also a choice.
3B. If you’re not sure it’s valid, but it might be, tell them, “I really need to give this some more thought.” or “Can you tell me more about this? I’m not sure I understand the issue well.” Or “If you can point me at some reading material or search terms, I’d like to study this before I decide what I’m going to do.”
3C. If you know it is not a valid criticism, STOP a moment, and look at WHY they are making it. This is where Active Listening can be very helpful. “I hear you saying that X is a problem. I don’t see it that way right now but I’d like to understand better why you do.” Or if you think they don’t have enough information, “I hear you saying X, but my understanding of the issue is Y. Here’s what I know about it if you’re ready to listen.” If they’re just looking for a fight, tell them you’re not interested in fighting, and disentangle yourself.
4. If the criticism is something you are going to listen to and take action on, tell them what kind of action you’re going to take. If it’s something you’re hearing and thinking about, tell them that. If it’s not something you’re going to do anything about or it’s just wrong, thank them for their input and move on.
Literally never is it going to be helpful to say, “Oh, I’m just a terrible person.” That’s very much like a nonapology-apology in terms of how unhelpful it is to any conversation. It’s kind of worse because it actually expects emotional labor from someone who is already having to bring up something unpleasant with you.
Think about what they say Decide whether you’re going to do something about it Do the thing, or tell them you’re not going to do the thing. Don’t demand emotional labor from other people when you were the one who messed up.
Apologize if appropriate.
This is all predicated on the notion that you’re talking to someone who actually wants to communicate and isn’t just an asshole on the attack.
Because seriously, the whole “I’m a terrible person” thing?
Boring as fuck. Knock that shit off. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. But take responsibility and have a little self-respect and don’t make others pick your emotional dirty towels off the metaphorical bathroom floor.
wupacing 