Well, one day I was walking around the sandy back streets of Timbuktu when I saw a crowd of women dressed in what was clearly their best homemade tie-dyed fabric. I walked up and asked in the local language (which I kind of spoke) what was going on. She smiled and laughed and brought me into her beautiful 500 year old sandstone home, where I feasted on much-needed cool sweetened yogurt and fruit. Since our languages were only partially comprehensible, I tried to be smiley and polite and hoped that would be enough. After all, I was just a strange tourist who wandered in off the streets. After some time the family rushed outside, bringing me along. They gestured for me to hold my hands up and cluck my tongue in celebration. I did. I dunno if you’ve ever heard the Middle Eastern/North African female tongue clucking thing, but it’s quite a sight. We really whooped it up. As the whole street cheered, a young girl dressed in beautiful robes and jewelry was carried by on a palanquin, smiling broadly. I asked what the heck was going on, and it came out that she was just circumsized.
Yeah, that was uncomfortable. Obviously I wasn’t going to end FGM right then and there. All I could do was thank the host for the hospitality and get back to my hotel and thank god I still had my clitoris. It was pretty tough to make sense of. When I returned to Cameroon I did some research and learned that FGM was uncommon in the area I lived in. But I did my best to be a positive role model for my female students (many of them would be subject to forced marriages) and advocate the general “fully human” status of women whenever I could. Maybe not the most decisive action in the world, but I do believe in the end I did do some good.
So yeah, that was a point where a different culture’s practices can be truly heart wrenching. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, no so much.
I’ll need a cite here for my having ignored everyone’s polite, effective suggestions for solving my problem. I haven’t accepted everyone’s solutions, such as the notion that I not attend the party, since that necessitates leaving my office entirely (I get invited into the party repeatedly if I sit in my office, and then I’m either churlish if I don’t go, as I’ve explained, or uncomfortable if I do go) but I have accepted the idea that maybe I should go elsewhere for that hour or two, like a soup kitchen or just absent myself from the office entirely, which is hardly ignoring everyone’s suggestions.
Now in reiterating the notion that I’m a douche, are you joining in the chorus of people who find that to be an effective tool of persuasion, or simply noting (redundantly) that a lot of name-calling is going on here?
I mean, you’re a professor, for pete’s sake. You’re EXPECTED to be cantankerous and eccentric. I guarantee you’re not the life of that party; your presence there is almost certainly not pleasing anybody. You’re probably being invited because people feel sorry for you and feel obligated to bring you along, because they misunderstand what’s making you so miserable. They probably think that you’d enjoy it if you just came out of your shell. It would be a relief to everybody–them and you–if you’d make it clear to them, politely and gently, that the thing makes you stressed and uncomfortable and unhappy, and that you’d genuinely be happier not attending. Do it privately, before the celebration, so you don’t put a damper on everyone else’s good time.
As for the name calling, I see no reason not to do it, since you seem impervious to persuasion in any case.
Not for nothing, folks, but calling someone a jerk in MPSIMS is a warnable offense. I’ve seen it happen before for the use of that very word outside the Pit. So, I think even sven was out of line just on that basis. There seems to be a lot of kneejerk PRR hate going on in this thread that is totally out of proportion to what the thread is about, which is calling even sven out for being rude in MPSIMS. I kind of wish that PRR had reported her post rather than Pitted her, because then the mods could have taken care of it and he wouldn’t have had to expose himself to all this abuse.
I’m not sure why PRR is a total douche, or needs to get over himself, because he’s got an aversion to the glurgey, annoying side of Christmas. Hell, there are Christians who don’t like that either, and it is totally unavoidable unless you barricade yourself in your house until the day after Boxing Day. If you try to avoid it in real life, you risk angering people who wish you’d just go along with their customs even though it makes you uncomfortable. Venting about it in MPSIMS is probably the least douchey way to handle that discomfort, as we talk about less than cosmic issues there, but the mere expression of the sentiment is enough to make people nasty. Huh. Kinda proved his point for him, didn’t ya?
No, you’re right, I didn’t respond specifically to this suggestion. I will now: My boss is actually a pretty close friend, certainly my closest on the job. Even though he is a devout Catholic and I’m not, we get along well, for the last few decades, and it would seem strange to him, I think, to have me tell him about some mysterious personal source of stress and nervousness, which I refuse to divulge further details about. He’ll be far more concerned for my well-being than this warrants. He and I share a lot personal details with each other, and I don’[t think in almost twenty years, either of us has ever told the other “That’s too personal, I can’t talk about it.” So this would be weird, and more than a little upsetting to him. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Do you want me to call you names, too, or is this a purely one-way kinda thing, Daniel? Tell me what you’d like, and I’ll try to comply with your wishes.
I’m not criticizing him for that aversion. I’ve got an even more irrational aversion: my dislike of injections resulted in a trip to the emergency room for me earlier this year. Thing is, I recognize it’s an irrational aversion, and I modify my own life to deal with it: I don’t expect society to change to accommodate me, nor do I criticize other people for not accommodating the aversion.
He’s got an easy solution. Instead of taking it, he makes contemptuous comments about everyone around him.
It’s that last bit that leads to my thinking rather less of him.
He has stated in one of the two threads that he doesn’t want to make that big a deal of it. And, in fact, his mild complaint in MPSIMS wasn’t making a huge deal of it. It was a minor complaint about a minor annoyance.
But dopers being what they are, it can’t just be a minor complaint about a minor annoyance. Someone has to get called names.
For fuck’s sake, then, tell him the truth! I can’t believe you haven’t done so already, given what you just wrote. Why haven’t you told him that you dislike these parties and asked him to make excuses for you at them? It’d be, as I said, a relief to every single person involved if he did so. Or do you think your presence would be so badly missed at these parties that you hate?
And feel free to call me warranted names–for example, if I refuse to pay attention to what folks say, if I instead treat helpful suggestions and gestures of sociability with contempt, then that’s a great time to call me names.
Some of the suggestions, granted, are unhelpful. Some of them are helpful. What I’ve seen is his responding to all suggestions with contempt (with the exception of his eventual response to me above).
Yes, he said it’s a minor annoyance. It’s his attitude that’s annoying me. But you’re right in that I shouldn’t worry about it: I don’t have to work with him, and my exposing myself to his supercilious attitude is wholly voluntary. The joke’s punchline is, “So the doctor says, ‘stop doing it!’” and I suppose I should take that advice.
Can you point me where he was given a helpful suggestion and responded with contempt? I don’t see it, but frankly I didn’t sleep well and haven’t had any caffeine yet, so my brain is at about 1/3 power.
So let me understand you better, you miserable disingenuous motherfucker: you’re suggesting that I should make a BIGGER deal of this than I have, get into a friend’s face and tell him what I really think of his holiday parties, demand that they change to be more along the lines I’d feel comfortable with, rather than just internalize my annoyance and suck it down as best I can, which basically means posting in MPSIMS about it?
You know, that still felt wrong, calling you a “miserable disingenuous motherfucker.” I don’t think that added to my argument in any way at all, so let’s forget I ever said that, okay? Maybe you’re not being disingenuous here. Maybe I just haven’t understood your point well enough.
Post 5, for example, has the debatably helpful suggestion at the end of it (I think prr’s life, and that of those around him, would be immeasurably improved by his getting over himself–but the suggestion has zero chance of working as phrased), but it has a helpful amount of information in it. His response is full of sneer, as I read it.
I guess I should have said you should ask “him to make excuses for you at them.” It’s a shame that I suggested you should “ask him to change the parties to be more along the lines you’d feel comfortable with.” What was I thinking?
I agree. I won’t even let my clerk put another coal on his meager fire–as it is I’m letting the SOB have the whole day off tomorrow. The whole day! And don’t get me started about those two fat bastards who came into my office to try to put the arm on me “for the poor.” Sheesh.
C’mon. Even sven’s post was a poison pill. It was designed to be as condescending as possible.
Ending a post “get over yourself”? That’s never going to be an acceptable way to offer advice. I don’t know anyone who would take that post as an attempt to be helpful and be all thankful for being sneered at. What advice other than that is even in there? Asking someone why they are the way they aren’t isn’t advice, and telling them about a horrifying cultural practice isn’t advice. So the advice is “Get over yourself.” Very useful.
And she admitted in that post that she was inappropriate for MPSIMS, so she’s acknowledging that the pitting, though mild, was warranted (or at least not completely, shockingly, unwarranted). She said she was wrong and then insulted him.
I think even sven behaved badly in both threads, though no worse than most of us have behaved at times. I don’t think it warranted a pit thread, but I’m more likely to ignore people than to pit them, generally.
No, he thought you should tell your friend you didn’t want to go and then not go. His suggestion would be very appropriate under some circumstances and wouldn’t work in others, but there’s no way for him to know which you are dealing with. It’s good advice even if not applicable.
