My (still alive) FIL used to be an avid golfer and had a handicap of 9 for a while. It was even fully documented by his club, and he used it to play a round at St Andrews once (apparently you have to be below a certain handicap to come play if you’re not a member). Can’t remember his score for that but I’m told it was quite respectable for an amateur. And he had two holes in one (not at St Andrews, obvs).
But he didn’t tend to brag about his golf prowess, so perhaps this doesn’t apply.
My experience has been that the more they brag, the more they cheat.
In the days when business was more done on the golf course than it is now, playing golf with your customers or suppliers would tell you a lot about how much you could trust a handshake agreement with them.
Well, when my state first passed its sex offender registry, i heard a piece on the local NPR station where they interviewed people who felt they had been unfairly added to it. One was a guy who said the he got drunk and urinated on his front stoop, and was charged as a sex offender. He said that he admits he had a drinking problem, but he’s not a danger to children. Another was a man who, when he was 18, has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend. He says, “i was wrong, and i served my time, but i don’t think I’m a danger to the public, and i shouldn’t be shunned for the rest of my life.”
My personal opinion is that if the neighbor tends to pee off his front stoop I’d just as soon not know. (And if i, or my children, happen to see him, we won’t be harmed.) So i tend to agree that the law was bad.
On the other hand, the state did modify the law, so my guess is those two guys are no longer on the public-facing list.
If you are not
black
pregnant
or a woman
then OF COURSE THEY DON’T HAPPEN TO YOU. Jesus Christ on a cracker. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s because THEY DON’T HAPPEN TO YOU. Because they CAN’T.
I need to take my blood pressure meds now.
That’s sort of what I was talking about. Now of course, I have no idea what he was actually doing - but he said he was charged as a sex offender. That can absolutely happen - but that’s not the thing I hear all the time. The thing I hear all the time is “you can end up on the sex offender registry for public urination” with no qualifications such as " if the woman passing tells a cop you were exposing yourself to her" or “if you were actually charged with and convicted of public lewdness.”
The case that seems to be mentioned most* as “you can get on the registry for public urination” is the one described here where the person was actually convicted of “open and gross lewdness”.
Yeah, this is a lot like you or I saying the common claim that guys are uncomfortable when another guy decides to use the urinal right next to him when there are others free doesn’t happen much because we’ve never seen it…
I would guess that the assumption
My friends and I would probably have approached a non-drinker with a “Oh really? That’s unusual”, and then left it at that, having the sense to realize that there’s a good chance that someone not drinking may be in recovery. If they wanted to elaborate, great. But if not, nobody would have pressed them.
And that assumption would probably be why nobody would have invited them to an evening hanging out and drinking beer. We’d have assumed that would be awkward at best. Now if someone knew that someone just wasn’t a drinker, but didn’t have any issues with it otherwise, that person would probably be invited.
I tend to think that a lot of that social judgement and pressure to drink is totally self-perceived. They feel like outsiders for not drinking, and start interpreting everything through that lens and assume that anything that could be taken as pressure to drink or criticism for not drinking is actually that, even though it’s not actually the case.
Or at worst, it’s playful questioning/teasing, not serious pressure. Someone saying “C’m on dude, lighten up and have a beer.” isn’t serious pressure or judgement, and at least in my experience, if that person sticks to their guns and says no, nobody’s going to press them any further.
Yeah, I’ve lived in Texas my entire life, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen a non-LEO openly carrying a gun. In fact, the only person not in a police/sheriff uniform who I’ve seen carrying a gun was an honest-to-God Texas Ranger, and even then, I suppose “uniform” is as appropriate as anything, as he had pressed slacks, pressed white dress shirt, tie, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat on, along with his Ranger badge.
Maybe it’s because I tend to spend my time in cities, but I just don’t think open carry is really very common, even in states where it’s legal. If I had to guess, it’s more than likely old white coots in their sixties and seventies doing it to make a political/social point, not people who think they need to roll around with a gun on their hip in everyday life.
One thing I can’t say I’ve ever seen happen very often at all is people just going home with random people after a night out. Maybe it’s just me and my group of friends/acquaintances, but what was most likely to happen was that someone in our group would run into someone they knew, and the two groups of friends would merge, and maybe (like 1 time in 20), someone would pair up with someone in the other group of friends and go home with them. But it was rare. It was FAR, FAR more likely that two people in our group who already more or less knew each other would hook up at the end of the night. Popular culture would have you believe that it’s easy and common to get laid like that, but I’ve never seen it to be so.
But you need to stand up to the peer pressure, which at best is annoying, and can be very uncomfortable for people who like to please others.
“How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.” - Ed Abbey.
If you can’t pee in your yard, you’re living too close to other people is my interpretation. And I agree.
lol, I am literally as open about my life in real life as I am here. There will be no assumption that I am in recovery as I have been using the “I got sick during my First Communion, vomited on a priest, and haven’t touched alcohol since” line since, god, 14?
The “it’s in your head” line gets used a lot. No, it’s not in my head, sorry. It may be different for the younger generations (I’m a GenXer) who seem to be more tolerant of divergent (“divergent” to a GenXer) views, but the social divide between drinkers and non-drinkers mentioned above is, in fact, a real phenomenon.
Lastly, dismissing my experiences as literal delusion (‘totally self-perceived’) while insisting we accept the validity of your experiences (‘in my experience’) is just insulting and, literally, is a perfect example of the bigotry you say doesn’t exist.
Please don’t respond or @ me. I’m not really in the mood right now and am going to unsubscribe from this thread.
I think it is becoming more common (but not common). I’m in the Kansas City area. I went to a laundromat to wash a pile of blankets/sheets, and there was a guy in there with his pistol in a holster.
My son lives in a suburb in Kansas, and his across the street neighbor is never without his gun - walking, mowing the lawn, shoveling, etc. A not particularly old, work-from-home tech type. I think (but don’t remember for certain) that his wife may also be strapped when out.
Yeah.
This is yet another instance of someone who has not experienced the pressure to drink booze (and some drinkers can be quite insistent) thinking that because it never happened to them it never happens. It sure does. Almost every person I know who has quit drinking has mentioned having to drop friends who took someone’s abstinence as a personal challenge.
I never have hung with a drinking crowd after say age 22 or so, but even so, I’ve had people be insulted when I told them I wasn’t drinking. At the time, I couldn’t drink because I had an ulcer. They thought that was a ridiculous excuse.
I don’t think anyone’s entitled to go through life without having to stick up for themselves or have nobody question their choices, especially when they’re out of the ordinary like not drinking at all. It’s sort of the price for marching to the beat of your own drum. TANSTAAFL, after all.
Now I don’t think they deserve ridicule or continued harassment about it, but someone merelly asking/suggesting isn’t a big deal.
It clearly depends on the crowd, re: booze. I quit drinking at the end of 2020 when it got too much for me and I ended up in detox. Covid excacerbated it, but it certainly was lingering in the background for years. Within my circle of friends, including some pretty hard drinkers, it hasn’t been an issue. I’ve been to parties; I’ve been to bars with them; some have even told me they were thinking about slowing down themselves, but it hasn’t seemed to effect my social life, so far as I have been able to tell so far. Most bars do have NA beer options these days, if that’s how I’m feeling (and there’s often a craft NA to choose from at the bars I typically drink at.) I do not doubt in the least that in other circles this is a much bigger deal, but among the folks I hang out with, if anybody cares, I’m none the wiser. None of my friends would ever pressure me to have a drink after knowing my situation, and I can’t imagine any of them even letting me order an alcoholic drink if I were out with them, even though I’m an adult and can make my own choices.
I hung out with a buddy who cannot drink due to a bunch of medications he is on. Just a few years ago he identified as happily alcoholic. We met last night at a bar. I asked him if it was going to bother him if I had a few beers and he told me he really wanted me to drink so he could just pretend he was normal.
Another friend of ours recently had a liver transplant and cannot drink. He also was a huge drinker before his liver failed. A group of us had a Face Time call with him. We all had drinks and were toasting his health, etc. I found out after the fact from his wife that he was pretty pissed off at us. He really misses drinking.
After I got out of rehab, my sister-in-law, with good intentions, said she would not drink anything in front of me, as a show of solidarity with my recovery. I had to thank her for her sweet and caring gesture, but that would not be necessary. She continued to kindly state her intentions to show me support, and I gently repeated that it would be nicer for me if everyone carried on their business, and that it made me feel awkward. After a couple parties at my parents’ house where alcohol flowed freely around me, she realized I meant it, and continued with her usual glass or two of wine with dinner.
But everyone is different, as you noted, and some feel quite the opposite. Our triggers are different – for me, a party is not a trigger – there’s plenty of stimulation there. It’s boredom and being alone that’s a trigger.
I’ve never witnessed sexual harassment at work. I fully believe it happens, and on one occasion where I witnessed the aftermath (my co-worker crying in the server station), I believe it did happen. I think it’s a testament to those who’ve gone before me that I’ve been spared. (That one time I saw the aftermath, the perpetrator had just started working there, and he was immediately gone after. I never even had to talk to the guy.)
I’m not surprised many guys have never witnessed street harassment. It’s happened to me a lot, but only ever when I’m alone. That’s not a coincidence.
I never once experienced peer pressure to drink or do drugs in high school or college. Since college, I usually drink when I go out, and if I’m not driving I’ll probably have a drink in my hand all night. So I may be unwittingly interacting with any number of assholes who would pressure me if I weren’t. But I’ve only had two instances of people pressuring me to drink more than I wanted to, and both times I feel like it wasn’t so much people who were fixated on everyone drinking as it was guys who were fixated on me.
The first time, I was in my late 20s at a bar with a group of friends from law school. Two guys approached us, and one of them was aggressively hitting on me. I was uncomfortable and kept rebuffing him, but my friend kept engaging him in conversation, so they stayed. And they kept trying to buy us drinks, eventually putting a shot in front of me after I’d told them “no” repeatedly. (I wouldn’t have accepted a drink from them regardless, but I was also done drinking for the night, because I had to drive home.) Pretty sure the one guy would’ve raped me if I’d passed out in his car.
The second time was at a wedding I attended in my early 30s. The wedding was on a Thursday, and it was about a 6-7-hour drive from where we all lived. I was between jobs so I was the only friend who could make it, but I couldn’t swing the cost of a hotel room in that expensive area, so I stayed with some family members about an hour away from the venue. The bride had a lot of aunts/uncles/cousins around our age in attendance, all taking a shuttle to a nearby hotel, so they didn’t have to worry about driving home. They were all doing shots all night, which was fine; I even did a shot with them at the beginning of the reception, but I told them why I wouldn’t be able to keep up. There was one guy who was really persistent about trying to get me to drink more. I don’t necessarily think his intentions were nefarious, but it was weird and creepy how he wouldn’t let it go.
Someone merely asking once in your life isn’t a big deal.
People doing that over and over and over again – even if they’re not the same people, and it happens at different gatherings – is continued harassment. And the person making the individual ask/suggestion has no idea how many others have done so during the life of the non-drinker.
Also, “not drinking at all” is entirely in the ordinary for quite a lot of people. It may be out of the ordinary for your particular social group.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Women walking with men are unlikely to be harassed on the street; it happens to women walking alone, so the men who aren’t doing it don’t see it. And women clearly accompanied by men are far less likely than women who aren’t to be harassed in other situations, for that matter. Men in groups certainly harass women – but it’s acceptable among those groups of men; men who generally hang out in groups among whom it isn’t are again far less likely to see it.
There was a guy with a pistol in a holster shopping at Costco last week when I was there. For all I know he was an off-duty cop, but he was definitely open carrying. It’s something I’ve seen occasionally here in Colorado, but rarely enough that I’m surprised when I do see it.
Particularly in my 20s I routinely saw people who didn’t want to drink getting harassed about it. Sometimes it is just an aggressive host, who is trying to be polite, but from the non-drinker’s perspective is being pushy:
“Do you want a marg?”
“No thanks.”
“I’ve got beer, too, or we could open a bottle of wine,”
“No, I’m good.”
“I think I have some rum, if you want a rum and coke.”
…
As opposed to outright harassment:
“Have a marg.”
“No thanks.”
“Come on, at least have a beer or wine.”
“No, I’m good.”
“Your hands look so empty, let me make you a rum and coke then; you won’t even taste the rum.”
…
I’ve definitely encountered both situations.
I remember noticing my friend Megan wasn’t drinking at a get together of friends. This was very unusual. Eventually I figured it out, and shouted, “Megan’s PREGNANT!!”
She was, indeed.