Dear Aunt Acid,

I’m an undergraduate woman participating in a summer math research program. My project team consists of me and two other students, both men. Both of them curse constantly and casually. As long as they’re just swearing, it doesn’t bother me enough to make it worth bringing up, but I do object to their misogynistic language — “what a little bitch,” “don’t be such a pussy,” and so on. (Whether or not these words can be “reclaimed,” that’s definitely not what’s going on here.)

Today Bob held out his hand, gimme-five style, and said, “Here, touch me.” When Dave reached out, Bob jerked his hand away and said, “Just kidding, FAGGOT!” They clearly don’t think any of this is a big deal, and I don’t know how to call them out without them thinking that I’m an angry feminist. (I am an angry feminist, of course, but I’ve found it’s easier to get men to behave if they don’t know this.) What should I say?

Monica

Monica:

The world is full of injustices and cruelties over which we have no power. We can yell at Republican primary debates on TV, at international news coverage, at local news coverage, at street construction, at August weather; we can go all Howard Beale and stick our heads out the window and scream, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!” So often it seems like farting on a subway platform: No one will notice and nothing will change.

Every once in a while, though, life presents you with a problem you can solve. Not just that: a problem you can yell at, where yelling might actually make a difference.

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Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected] at any time. Previous installments can be found here.

Hi Aunt Acid,

I have quite a lot of creative and artistic friends, working in various bits of fashion and art and culture and design. I don’t have such a job — I work in a mildly interesting, stable office job in a sector that is interesting and fun for me. 

Sometimes my friends are going through a bad time with their jobs — they’ve changed jobs and it’s not going well, or they’re struggling to meet their sales targets or they didn’t get the place in the exhibition they wanted. Normal things for people working those kinds of jobs I guess?

Obviously I try and be sympathetic and empathetic whenever I hear about these things but sometimes I don’t know how big a deal to make of it or exactly what the right things to say are? 

My career flow is boring and stable and I don’t have the same jumble of big wins and backslides that a lot of my friends do. When those friends who work similar jobs to me have issues I know the dynamics and what to say and find it a bit easier.

What’s the best way of being sympathetic and supportive to people that I care about but whose work lives I don’t really understand properly?

Thanks,

Struggling to support

 

You, STS, are the 20th century trying to understand the 21st. Yes, you are the not-so-recent shimmering past, when a “mildly interesting, stable office job” was something to which most white-collar workers could aspire. Have you been at the same place for more than three consecutive years? Have you risen in the ranks without undue drama or numerous horizontal jumps from one ladder to another? My God, do you have a pension to look forward to?

Please let me buy you a coffee and you can tell me how you did it.

OK, I understand that you have a problem. Or you think you do. You are somewhat mystified by and yet want to be able to empathize with today’s ruffians, we who flit from gig to gig because either we are free-spirited entrepreneurial creatives (self-starters) or self-centered, solipsistic commitment-phobes (snowflakes), depending on whom you ask.

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Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected] at any time. Previous installments can be found here.

My dear friend’s sister just passed away, suddenly, in her early twenties. They have asked people to keep in touch, but I am wondering what to keep in touch with (i.e., pictures of cats, asking how they are doing, invitations to social stuff?). We are close but I haven’t known them very long (and never met their sister) and kind of have no idea what they need/want right now. Should I ask? I imagine that everyone is asking and it might be exhausting. Our main form of communication is online, usually messages with another friend, where we (lovingly) cuss each other and laugh at white people together. Should the other friend and I still write these messages to them or is this insensitive? Also is there anything I can send to their family home apart from flowers (allergies)? I love them and want to be supportive but don’t know how. 

From, 
A very sorry friend

 

I’m sorry for your friend’s loss, and for yours. Death is a real twist of the knife because it reminds us that, despite our attempts to dance like no one’s watching, a great hand will at some point descend and pluck us out of the disco whether we are ready or not. And there’s very little apparent fairness to the order in which we are taken, we and our beloved dance partners, the ones who can brighten the room with a grin, who get us drinks before we even know we are thirsty, the ones we got dressed for in the first place and who we want to text as soon as we get home. That they are taken, will be taken, often without warning, is one of the cruelest tricks life plays on us. It is also, in this life, the only certainty we have. We have to appreciate them because one day they, and we, will be gone.

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Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected]. Previous installments can be found here.

Dear Aunt Acid, 

I’m a recent college grad who moved back home to a small town. I’m lucky that I no longer live with my parents and got an OK job fairly quickly. When I say small I mean really small; the only real social activities we have in the community are church-based and I’m not religious at all. I have no friends and I’m desperate to make some kind of social connection outside of my family. There are no bars, no coffee shops, no places where I could potentially meet people. I also have no previous experience with people in this community: my parents moved here shortly after I started college. I’ve made great strides in self-esteem and being at peace with alone time, but I still crave some kind of social contact. Moving is out of the question for few years and I’m afraid of the ever-increasing toll feeling lonely will have on my mental health.

–Down and Out in the Boonies

 

Dear DOB,

My goodness. No coffee shops I understand, but no bars? That is rough. I applaud you on your self-esteem strides, but having no friends is hard. Ishmaels needs Queequegs (“Call me Ishmael” — I just realized, over like a thousand pages, no one ever does). Abbis need Ilanas. Xanders need Willows or the world ends.

There are some ways to work with what you have, though.

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