I usually don’t read Ms. Senility, but the headline on today’s column included the magic words Lesbian and PDA, so I had to take a gander.
The gist of the letter was thus - woman in mid-30s came out to family and introduced them to her GF. Family seemed cool with it, but later, at a family party, the woman placed her hand on GF’s leg. Sister saw this, freaked, and barred woman from sister’s house. Woman has since apologized, to no avail.
Ann’s response: woman shouldn’t have placed hand on GF’s leg, should apologize again and again.
Fuck you, Ann. Would you have had the same reaction if it had been a heterosexual woman placing her hand affectionately on her BF’s/husband’s leg? Hell, I come from one of the most sexually conservative families in the world, and such behavior is commonplace.
you took the words right outta my mouth (and don’t think I didn’t enjoy the experience, too!)
I saw that column too (it’s like a train wreck, you know you **don’t ** want to see, but your eyes, damn, your eyes stray there anyhow) and thought the same thing.
When I think of all of the grope, grope, suck face stuff… hmmm where was I again? (geeze that Dopefest over the weekend has really affected my umm what was I talking about again?)
All couples have to watch themselves in front of other people and adjust their behaviour to the people they’re with (to some degree). That said, I can’t think of any situation where touching my fiance’s leg would be too forward for other people to see. I don’t see a difference between me touching my man and a woman touching her girlfriend. Ann was way way way out to lunch on this one. What she probably should have said was “Sister needs therapy to get over her issues with homosexuality.”
People! Ann Landers? Haven’t you figured out her formula yet?
What she does is give hairbrained advice then waits for an avalanch of mail to yell at her. She then publishes these in her column and apologises saying to whip her with a wet noodle. She know exactly what she is doing and it gets her what she wants. Dear Abby seems to more sincerely try.
The point is that Ann Landers condemned the conduct itself, without regard to context - “you shouldn’t have placed your hand on her knee”, not “well, some people get freaked out by physical contact between homosexuals, so it might have been best to be more circumspect.” Would she make the same judgment had it been a BF’s/husband’s knee the woman had placed her hand on? I seriously doubt it.
Hell, I would have been content (though I suspect others would disagree) if Ann had said “well, your sister’s an idiot, but you have to decide whether this is a fight worth having. Swallow your pride and apologize.” Instead, she said that woman was wrong, period.
I not infrequently “display heterosexual behavior” among groups of homosexuals (Well, OK, it is infrequent – way, way too infrequent, but that’s another thread entirely!). No one has ever been grossed out.
Sua, thanks for starting this thread. I read the column in the Washington Post, and I wanted to strangle the senile old biddy.
How dare Ann imply that homosexual affection is so shocking that it must never be seen in public. We’re not talking lascivious PDA, which I find distasteful no matter the orientation of the couple, but just an affectionate touch of one’s partner.
And where do you find homosexuals who would forbid the door to one’s sister for displaying heterosexual affection? Izzy, you’re a homophobe, and I am tired of hearing you defend bigotry.
Why the hell should she have to keep her hand off of Alice’s leg? Why should she apologize for showing affection to the person she loves? Had this woman and Alice been sticking their tounges down each other’s throat, I could see a problem (but I have that problem with hetero couples too. Get a room, dammit!)
I’d like to dry out old Annie’s wet noodle and shove it under her fingernail. That might wake the senile bird up!
(dried pasta under your nails really hurts. trust me)
That said, I think she deserves 30 lashes with a bullwhip for that answer. I was just thinking that she’s been on a roll of good advice of late, then she pulls that.
She’s gonna get crucified for this one, but her heart is gnerally in the right place.
This is weird. I read Sua’s rant this morning, before the links were posted, and thought, “He’s reading way too much into Ann’s reply.”
In my paper, her answer to “Ohio” is, in its entirety: Dear Ohio: I suggest you reiterate your apology.
Still not the best answer, but she doesn’t come out and say Ohio was wrong in her actions. I took it as meaning that, regardless of what she did/didn’t do, if she wants peace in her family, the easiest route would be to apologize.
I live in South Carolina, in an area not known for its sympathy to GLBT issues. I can’t imagine that this reply was edited so that readers weren’t offended. It could have been edited just for space purposes. Any possibility someone on the Post’s staff made some additions?
As a newspaper copy editor, I’m betting more that the newspaper edited the response. Columns like Ann’s come over the wire from the syndicate. They are not changed to reflect local mores; that would be a nightmare of organization and rewriting.
So I’m betting it was a desk editor at the Ohio newspaper that did that, most likely because they didn’t give the column enough space. Which is stupid, really. Columns like these ahere to a rigid word-count, and it doesn’t take much effort for the person laying out the pages to leave enough space for it. Especially if the column appears on the comic page. What, “Judge Parker” ran long this week so we have to cut Ann?
Consider something less “sensitive” than Gay issues. Imagine you are invited to a party and you know that many of the people attending are repulsed, for whatever bizarre reason, by the sight of people eating ice cream. You like ice cream. Do you eat it anyway, or do you maybe eat some at home and lay off at the party? (But what about the guys who like hot dogs? They don’t have to modify their behaviour at all?).
This presumes that the reaction to this woman’s behaviour was purely psycological. But even assume that it was based on moral grounds - a stance evidently not shared by many posters to this thread. I think that even in such circumstances some accomodation is comsiderate. If you are going to a family gathering, and the host and many guests are avid animal rights believers, you might consider not wearing your magnificent fur coat for the occasion, even if it is your favorite coat. If you were attending a family gathering of Orthodox Jews you might consider leaving the ham sandwich at home. See a recent discussion of similar issues here. I don’t see a major difference in this instance.
But suppose one were to disagree with all of the preceding. Suppose one were to maintain that someone offended by gay behaviour is a unique form of bigot who deserves no accomodation whatsoever under any circumstance. I still don’t see any reason to believe that there is some moral obligation on the part of the gay person to insist on engaging in this behaviour at whatever the cost. At most one could say that they may do it, not that they must. In this instance, the questioner had already indicated that she was willing to tone it down in the interests of family harmony. She was not asking for moral pronouncements, she was asking for advice on how to “resolve this”. What advice would anyone else here give on how to resolve it? Everyone seems to be saying to fight it out in the interests of the higher principle of Gay Equality. This particular woman did not seem to have this as part of her agenda.
It seems to me that this is an example of a knee-jerk reaction to a gay issue. (With the exception of Sua’s stance, but I think he is reading too much into AL’s words, as mentioned earlier.)
Ann Landers is usually pretty liberal about alternate lifestyles, especially for someone born in, what, the sixteenth century?
Look, the question wasn’t “How do I make my sister more gay-friendly,” or “How do I play this for maximum Family Strife Points.” The question was, “How do I repair my relationship with my family?” All Ann is saying is, “Your family is clearly freaked out by you being gay. If you want to maintain a relationship with your family without them constantly freaking out, don’t act gay.” Which is certainly the easiest answer to the question. Perhaps not the best solution, certainly not the one I would persue in that situation, but not an entirely unreasonable one.
PS: Anyone else notice that this happened at her nephew’s birthday party? What do you want to bet the sister’s though process was something like: “I was okay with you being gay, but I didn’t think you were going to be gay around the children!” My advice to this woman? Get a better family.
Izzy, did you even read the letter? The woman said
It seems to me she had no reason to believe that her family was bothered by her sexuality, and therefore it probably didn’t occur to her that something so simple as “resting my hand on her leg” would cause a major turmoil. Now, if her family had indicated that they had a problem with her and Alice, then yes it might be unwise to provoke them with a deliberate display of affection.
Let’s correct a flaw in your ice cream example. You like ice cream. You tell your family and friends (who don’t eat ice cream) about your preference for ice cream and they say “Hey, to each his own. If you like ice cream, go for it!” Then you eat ice cream in front of them thinking that they won’t have a problem with. Instead, they freak out and now you - the ICE CREAM EATER - are no longer welcome in their home.
You tell me who is being unreasonable here.
And as for Ann’s response:
The real question here is would Ann have said the same thing if this had been a heterosexual couple? Or would this PDA have even been noticed by or problematic for the sister if it had been heterosexual?
