Dear Prudence: [title goes here]

[minoanmiss]

[n.b. I can't title this because I can't take it seriously.]

I moved in with my big sister’s family after my lease expired in November because my job is transferring me out-of-state in the spring. I’m incredibly grateful for their hospitality. However, as a queer woman in my 20s, I am really struggling to relate to my brother-in-law, “Roger.” He is a good husband/father and a nice enough guy, but I’ve never known anyone so deeply stuck in the rut society has dug for cis-het white men. I don’t think Roger even has any friendships that exist outside specific (and conventionally masculine) activities, like his golf friends or fantasy football league. I know this sounds like a low-key problem, but he’s just a very different experience for me. I feel like my emotions overload around him. Honestly, I’m a little sad for Roger because his existence seems so confined by patriarchal expectations.
I wish I could help him expand himself, but he seems really uninterested in self-growth journeys. It’s also upsetting for me to be around him at times. For instance, working from home he wears a navy blue, long-sleeve t-shirt every day. I asked him why, and he said he can put a sweater on over them and look professional enough for Zoom meetings. I know I could not get away with that little care for my appearance in a professional setting, but he can’t see why coasting on a privileged double-standard is problematic.

I’m also concerned for my two niblings, both of whom are identified as boys. I wish they had a more expansive model of masculinity because, even if they continue to identify as cis-male, they should know that doesn’t mean they’re limited to fixing cars and friendships based on nothing more emotionally intimate than baseball scores. I really need help processing all of these feelings in a way that’s constructive for Roger and my niblings without shaming or seeming like I’m meddling.

— Out-Manned

Dear Out-Manned,

Assuming this is not one of those “libs gone wild” fantasias we sometimes get, I want to say this as gently as possible: You have to get a grip. You are living with this family for free. Nobody is doing anything to disrespect or harm you. Even if you are 100 percent correct that everyone would be better off if Roger were not so confined by “patriarchal expectations,” it is not his responsibility to change to suit your vision of the way a man should look or behave. And it is not your job to change him, nor is it even a reasonable goal. Would it be great if your niblings knew that men could talk about things other than baseball? Sure! But aside from stepping in to protect them from abuse or neglect, you just don’t get a vote when it comes to how they’re raised. Please keep your opinions on your brother-in-law’s need for a self-growth journey to yourself. I don’t want to get a letter from your sister complaining that her house guest is being insufferable and have to send her a script to ask you to leave.

Seriously, I know you mean well. And your values are generally admirable. But you need to redirect your energy. Let the observations you’ve made teach you something about your passion for creating a world in which gendered expectations have less power over us. But put those beliefs into action in your own career, in your service work, and in your own life, not your sister’s.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I think this is someone's audition satire for Breitbart. What do you all think?

[heavenscalyx]

The "my emotions overload around him" is really the weirdest line in a very weird letter.

[cimorene]

Yeah... that could be because the satirist has a skewed notion of the worldview they're trying to satirize. Maybe they're trying to allude to the conservative meme around "triggering" but... idk.

Anyway though yeah it sounds REALLY fake.

[cereta]

Yeah, I could almost believe LW was just a very earnest young person, but I keep running up against phrasing that just sounds a little too pat.

[beable]

It sounds totally fake and I think you’re right but … I can immediately think of at least one friend who talks like this about their “cis/hetero/white/conforming heavily to major gender stereotypes similar to described in this letter” peeps.

They’re not (as far as I know) writing agony aunts so much as doing their own processing in their own blog/social media space when life requires them to immerse themselves in said environments.

But even with literally having read all the thoughts in the letter (including the overwrought emotion) expressed by said friend at some point or other , I still think this letter smells of clumsy satire.

[melannen]

Yeah, the bit where there's always someone in real life worse than the satire applies to both sides. Unfortunately.

There's a lot in here that reads as clumsy satire but there's also a lot of stuff that I don't think is phrased the way a Breitbart disciple would do it. If it is a fake, it's a fake from somebody who actually knows people who say things like "he’s just a very different experience for me" in real life.

If I had to I'd put money on this being an average, 'non-political' type who's fed up with their actual sister-in-law who is almost this bad.

[lemonsharks]

Same. LW is either a satirist or an exhausting person to be/around

[jadelennox]

yeah, fake fake fakeity fake, queen of fake mountain and marchioness of fauxville. So fake I made a new userpic just for the fakeness.

[harpers_child]

This is satire. But also what's wrong with having friends that come with activities? Most of my friendships are maintained with TTRPGs and board games. Golf and fantasy football aren't that different.

[redbird]

Whether or not it's satire, I suspect that last bit is aimed at the angle of "he has activity buddies, but leans entirely on his wife/girlfriend/other female relatives for emotional support." But if that's an issue, I'd expect it to be the OP's sister (this guy's wife) who is asked to carry the load.

[movingfinger]

The details in this seem really off and fake to me.

If Roger wore a white or blue LL Bean button-down every single day, would LW notice? (It is entirely normal in my Yankee experience of a certain class of men (and they do tend to be the golf-playing ones) to have a dozen identical or nearly-so shirts that they wear for work. In many cases, the shirts are rotated through a cleaners weekly.) In certain tech circles, the wardrobe of identical tee shirts is used as a group identifier showing how dedicated to purpose and free of extraneous distractions the male wearer is.

[bikergeek]

Extreme example: Steve Jobs.

[laurajv]

my spouse is a software engineer. his division is considered Fairly Wild And Crazy within their company because they have about 6 male employees who have non-uniform shirt choices. this list includes my spouse, whose wild, crazy, stylish shirt choices are things like "henleys in pastel colors". so dressy! so out there! so unpredictable!

[ioplokon]

Written like someone whose never had to put in the emotional work of maintaining a friendship despite your differing views on sabermetrics!

(I agree parts of this read like a joke. If it's not, or looking for places w/ more broadly applicable advice... idk are there other problems that the interests are substituting in for? Probably it is stressful living w/ new people & not controlling your environment, esp when you just don't vibe with someone. Also I think maybe LW's experiences have maybe made her overcautious? Plenty of women throw on nicer clothes for zoom calls? I think there could be a place here for useful advice irt dealing w/ extra scrutiny at work bc of gender/race/etc without letting it mess up your expectations.)

[likeaduck]

Unpopular opinion that it could be real? I have definitely had people (and yes, usually, but not always, cishet dudes) in my life that just rubbed me the wrong way for no discernible reason/every tiny annoyance. And the exact perfect situation for that to happen to me would be being out of my home/comfort zone, living with people I'm not used to living with, having some expectation of comfort and belonging in a space (maybe it's my sister's house?), but at least one person I feel no particular connection with there, and everyone involved spending more time at home than usual (maybe there's a pandemic?). I like to think I've had more self-awareness than this, but there have definitely been people that were just nails-on-chalkboard for me for this kind of level of thing and I had to just accept that it was a me problem and deal.

Things that help for me:
-Avoidance! An underrated strategy: can you just be out of the house more? Hanging out with the kids? With your sister? How much time do you really need to spend with this dude? You won't live here forever!
-If you want to be able to tolerate him better, when you do have some energy and your nails-on-chalkboard intruder alerts are at their calmest, try having some low-stakes friendly conversation. Nothing challenging! The weather! The kids! These danishes are really great, did you try the blueberry? You don't need to be best friends, you just need to teach your nervous system that talking to him is not an emergency. Boring, neutral topics are ideal.
-Are there buffer humans that make this better? Do you hate him less when your sister and/or the kids are around? Are you able to have friends over? Who's your chattiest friend, can they hang out and carry the conversation?

[minoanmiss]

Oh I believe in the power of annoyingness. I have met people who annoyed me that much, and unfortunately suspect I annoyed a few that much as well. It was the over the top word choices in this essay, compared with the cited sin being He Wears The Same Shirt Every Day, that make me doubt it's real.

[likeaduck]

The shirt thing! It's so weird! I almost don't believe someone would make it up. It's looped back around into being credible lol.

[melannen]

Yeah the shirt thing almost hit me as the most credible part! Like, if you're the sort of woman who has internalized that you must present a certain perfect version of femme at all times, but are also deep enough into leftist ideology to parse that as patriarchy, and were also in BEC territory with somebody but didn't know how to recognize it, that is exactly the sort of thing you might not realize how deranged you sounded about.

(Dear LW, if you're real: I throw on a long-sleeved t-shirt and cardigan every day for work. If you're working somewhere than men can do this and women can't, change jobs.)

[likeaduck]

Yes! And the flavour of the letter kind of bears that out for me? Like it's leftist ideology without empathy and really rules-oriented, I guess? And I can see that sliding into this frustrated thwarted place.

[melannen]

I'm still not entirely convinced it's real but you're right that if you read it as someone who's very deep into leftist purity culture and who is also just, experiencing everything dude does as nails-on-chalkboard, mostly because of suddenly being stuck in close contact with him 24/7, and isn't self-aware enough to know that's most of the problem -- then yeah, it's not that unbelievable.

I mean this lady is still 100x more in touch with reality than the "How dare the person in the apartment below me exist in it" person.

[azurelunatic]

and honestly, hanging out with the kids and engaging with them where they're at would go some way towards them knowing that there are other ways to be (even if they don't seem relevant at the moment) and can help them go into the future with the knowledge that Odd Aunt LW is a good egg and might be able to help if someday they should find that they are not as cishet as Dad might want. Even if that's subconscious knowledge.