Is this just trolling ragebait?

[conuly]

or 15 years, my best friend and I have hosted a monthly dinner meant to keep the ol’ crew together as we’ve aged, married and had kids. We call it the Man Dinner — intentionally coarse and noninclusive. There are 30 guys on the list and about 10 of them show up regularly. No woman has ever been invited or attended. The wrinkle: A longtime attendee is transitioning to be a woman. I am of the opinion that we should remove her from the Man Dinner list. We can see her separately. Your thoughts?

MAN

Listen, it’s not my dinner club, and you are free to socialize as you like. But isn’t this friend part of “the ol’ crew”? And isn’t the whole point of your club that it’s increasingly difficult to keep up with old friends as we age and take on new responsibilities? So you probably aren’t likely to see her separately — perhaps at the very moment she needs support the most.

It doesn’t sound as if society would collapse if you relaxed the gender requirement at these dinners to include men and those who were assigned male at birth. And adhering to the letter of the law here — by excluding a trans woman who has been a longtime member of the club — seems to belie the warmhearted spirit of your enterprise.

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Comments

[minoanmiss]

reads contemplates summons my icon

[full_metal_ox]

LW could always, I don’t know, ask his friend whether continuing to participate in a Man Dinner would cause her gender dysphoria.

[laurajv]

actually communicating with a friend?? sounds suspiciously like lady behavior amirite

[ashbet]

SERIOUSLY.

[azurelunatic]

Thiiiiiis!

The question should probably be phrased like: "So, this has been a Man Dinner, and you're a woman. Would you like to keep coming or would you rather bow out? And if you don't want to do the Man Dinner going forward, I still want to see you -- how does Foo sound?"

[full_metal_ox]

What’s Foo?

[conuly]

A marker noting an unspecified quantity or entry - like saying X in algebra.

[azurelunatic]

It's a placeholder word, for whatever activity or meetup LW would like to do with his friend.

[full_metal_ox]

Thank you. Urban Dictionary, my mainstay when I’m out of the vernacular loop (i.e. most of the time), wasn’t being particularly informative.

[conuly]

It's more old school hacker terminology than modern slang, I think.

[azurelunatic]

Yes! It's one of the metasyntactic variables: foo, bar, and baz being three of the more popular.

[conuly]

Foo and bar, I’ve been told, coming originally from the word “fubar”.

[full_metal_ox]

There you go; my cyberhousebreaking began in middle age and has been extremely piecemeal.

[lokifan]

yepppppp

[kiezh]

Well, apparently ONE woman has been invited and has attended, since I would guess the trans woman in question has been thinking Gender Thoughts since well before her public transition. I wonder if she'd have felt able to talk about them sooner, if her male friend group were less aggressive about being MEN! who do MANLY THINGS! and don't let ICKY WOMEN into their MAN DINNERS!

I guess she decided that being true to herself was worth running the risk of losing old "friends" like LW. Too bad he decided he wants to punish her for ruining his Manly Man Mantopia, instead of reevaluating his own gender performance and letting go of some of the "intentionally coarse and noninclusive" aspects in favor of loyalty and kindness to old friends.

(I wonder if there are others among the 30 who will never voice their own Gender Thoughts anywhere near LW or the dinners, because they know their inclusion in this social setting is entirely dependent on performing Man-ness in exactly the right way. LW would want to throw out the non-binaries, too, I'm sure. And omg, what if someone who is *sometimes* a man got their non-manly gender fluid all over the table by having feelings of femaleness at the dinner? Gotta police those genders at all times! That's friendship!)

[lilysea]

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have a just-friends, no partners of friends dinner

but the gender policing is icky

instead of having a "Man Dinner"

how about having a

"Friends Who Met At Such And Such Highschool Dinner"

or a "Friends who met at Rowing Club Dinner"

or whatever it is that you are.

Also, having a Man Dinner doesn't achieve the aim of excluding partners, because one of the men could be gay, bisexual, pansexual or queer and have a male partner.

p.s. I, too, wondered if this was a troll.

[full_metal_ox]

…The Beer, Sportsball, and Bullslinging Society.

[mrissa]

What a generous answer, to assume that an enterprise that describes itself as intentionally coarse and noninclusive is warmhearted.

I agree with the commenters here who have recommended talking to your friend, but I do wonder if they're going to get a well-earned earful when they do.

[oursin]

'about 10 of them show up regularly'

That leaves 20 who do not.... I wonder how many of those are in the categories a) married b) have kids c) even heterosexual d) at all enjoy revisiting frat bro days, because it does not seem that they are keeping up with LW and his bestie on the regular. ('Damn, suppose for old time's sake ought to show up at LW's ghastly bro-fest for once rather than make my excuses'.)

[lethe1]

Yep.

[firecat]

It seems to me the LW’s real dilemma is that he doesn’t want the Man Dinner to be renamed, because to him the dinner is not about keeping in touch with old pals but about indulging the more toxic aspects of his character and excusing them by applying the label Man to them. If the dinner were renamed, he might have to admit he’s just an asshole.

[pauraque]

Bingo.

[full_metal_ox]

Is it just me, or is this club sounding an awful lot like No, Ma’am from Married With Children?