Thursday, August 25, 2011

8/25 - HA Concluding

Due to time constraints and a bad back, this will be fairly short, but we'll get right to it.

L1:  Dear LW1, the solution to your dilemma depends largely on the size of your wife.  If your wife if a large woman, you can instance her desire, consciously expressed or not, for you to gain weight so that the two of you can be bookends, a popular look among many couples.  If your wife is petite, you can express to your sister how much you envy her freedom to eat as she pleases and not to have to work out more than she chooses.  Even if your wife is exactly your size, if she has femme tendencies, you can envy that your sister is more butch than you are, or vice versa.  The idea is that there is sure to be some way to make it appear to your sister that you think her grass is greener than yours.  That should be enough to quell this outbreak of rivalry.

L2:  It was very noble of you, LW2, to become pregnant at 17 in order to bear a child for a male couple.  Naturally, assuming your nobility received the lauds it deserved from your friends and relations, your sister might resent this.  By the way, if you later reveal that you were both up for the role of Womb For Rent and you were chosen over her, then you are guilty of Lying By Omission.  There is also the possibility that your sister feared you might be turning straight.  It is one thing for people to accept and even approve of heterosexuality in others at a safe distance, but not everyone is comfortable with it in her own home.  And it must be particularly difficult for a twin, who might have had a crisis of questioning her own sexuality.  We well recall the recent scientific studies showing that identical twins in particular are far more likely to have identical sexual orientations than fraternal twins or other siblings.  It's quite natural that her searching her soul for latent signs of heterosexuality might have contributed to her general unpleasantness.  As for what to do about it now, I'd suggest matchmaking.  It means you will come in for some unpleasantness should things turn sour, but her seeing the situation as being chosen in preference to you will do much to heal a bruised ego.

L3:  Now this one is fairly easy, LW3.  Your boyfriend's twin is an Angry Breeder Type.  In fact, does he actually use the term Breeder when self-presents, in order to reclaim the slur?  Whether he does or not, it seems clear that he resents the superiour attention and approval lavished on your boyfriend for having the "right" sort of relationship.  And with cause, LW3, with cause.  Unpack your privilege, please, and you will see that it must be particularly galling to those of the straight persuasion if everything they do never measures up to the lesser accomplishments of a gay sibling.  Not that your boyfriend is necessarily less acoomplished than his twin, but it is common.  Those straights who feel how society judges them often go through a stage of acquiring extra accomplishments with the idea that people will view those as a sort of compensation.  It rarely works that way.

The Prudecutor actually almost gets this one right.  She notes that most people don't have delightful relationships with each and every member of a spouse's family.  And that this one particular family member makes you rethink the question of marriage makes me wonder.  Are you sure there's not a little element of heterophobia at the root of your reluctance?  Yes, it's unpleasant to be around people who don't try to get along, but they do have some decent cause for being antisocial, even if insufficient cause for so much action as the Angry Breeder Type often takes.  Using the F word was highly inappropriate, but it is not fair to pretend that a member of an oppressed minority using the F word is every bit as bad as a member of the oppressive majority using the B word to hurt and wound.  Given how society raises "normal" people to think of straights as just a little less than ourselves, it's quite understandable if you've absorbed a few of these messages and aren't comfortable yet with having a straight person so close in your husband's family tree.  Maybe a little visit to PFFS is in order for your 101 work, a role that Parents, Friends and Families of Straights has done to general admiration for some time.

L4:  It is admirable to want to jump in and advocate for your mother-in-law, but please tone down your White Knight inclinations.  You presumably don't really know anywhere near so much as your husband's family does about straightness and how your mother-in-law's mental health might have been impacted by negative life experiences related to her open heterosexuality.  Not all legally married opposite-sex couples have found everyone to be accepting of them.  It is admirable of you to want to change that, as you doubtless do, and you quite naturally might feel that her family's treatment of her is not right or proper.  But you are not the expert here.  Her family are the experts on how to help her get through her life.  There are few things more annoying to members of a minority than some well-meaning do-gooder riding in on the High Horse of Privilege claiming, without any knowledge of the particulars of the case, to hold the key to Enlightenment.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

8/18 - Further HA

Well, at least this week has more promising fare on Thursday, even if there was no Monday.

L1:  This one is fairly easy.  If LW1's husband's parents are supportive, which appears to be the case, all LW1 has to do to close down the background inquiries once and for all is to mention, either in person or through the husband, that LW1's mother was instrumental in getting him sent to a prototype for one of those evangelical camps run by those extremists who, fearing that they have to rely on conversion to keep the number of heterosexuals in this country at a flourishing level, convince otherwise decent parents to entrust impressionable children to them and then try to brainwash those teens into embracing the heterosexual lifestyle.  Any reasonable person hearing such a sad tale will immediately fill in the blanks of quite a marketable little tragedy, and have the delicacy not to inquire further.

L3:  As the office romance seems to be the order of the day, LW3 likely needs to make a harsh and honest assessment of his position.  Is it the sort of post, if there are two people filling it, in which it is an advantage that their be similarity of background, or variation?  If the latter, he might just have to rely on dating a younger man.  Of course, a bit of reverse psychology on the boss might do the trick.  If the boss fears office romances, then all LW3 might need do is to impersonate a chicken hawk.

L4:  LW4 need only tell her in-laws that she doesn't care for Rosie O'Donnell, who is a staple on every kid-friendly cruise on the entire Olivia line.  There are other good reasons for not liking cruises.  Many of them plan stops in countries that do not adhere to strict modern-wave feminist principles, which can be a bit of a shock to the sensibilities.  The private islands, of course, change the concern slightly, but there is surely some philospohical point one can find on which to base a viable objection.  After all, being PC at the expense of personal enjoyment is what LW4 does best.

Now L2:  Well, the Prudecutor has done her best to supply a way to spin the summer for the best.  But she completely misses the point, as so often.  The point is that LW2 thought that she was the sort of person who would not sleep with somebody partnered (barring, perhaps, a clear understanding that the fling was within the parameters of the partnership agreement and had the full acceptance of the potential Wronged Innocent Party, whom the Prudecutor conveniently omits from the equation.  Well, she has now learned something about herself.  It is unfortunate, but at least now she knows that she is the sort of person capable of yielding to temptation.  Accordingly, when she is the partnered one herself, she may be able to guard against her own susceptibilities.  But trying to drown the guilt with such ridiculous posturing as suggested by the Prudecutor (even when the genders are corrected) will only see it come back some day, redoubled.

There is another concern.  LW2 has also slept with a bisexual woman, which might have been not to her liking.  It's all quite correct and proper to support bisexual people and the practice of bisexuality, but it is perfectly acceptable not to want to date people for such a reason.  And the boyfriend might not have entered the picture until before it was too late.  There are a few bisexual people who conceal their opposite-sex activities in an attempt to pass and maintain full homosexual privilege.  There is also the consideration that it is a little unfair to all the poor straight men, for whom there are not many straight women to partner them.  Straight people need all the bisexual partners they can get as they try to keep the number of heterosexuals flourishing.


As my back wants me to retire early, I shall conclude here.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

8/11 - HA Continues

This week, Monday offers much better material than Thursday.  I shall dispose of Thursday quickly and then look at Monday.

L1:  Fear not, good sir.  There is no need to live out your days in dull and sober truth.  Many people your age think it entertaining to invent their own histories.  The idea is to make your stories extravagant.  Take for your role model Tom Ballard on Waiting for God.  Instead of making up stories about solving crimes, you gave Hercule Poirot the vital clue on the Orient Express; instead of affairs with women, you were the lover renounced by Miss Austen, etc.

L2:  Oh, good grief.  By all means speak to a supervisor, but wanting to preserve a semi-cordial relationship with someone who might well be not only evil but planning ton perpetrate that evil on other innocents is not sufficient motivation to withhold the truth.  Not to mention that allowing this bad adoption to go through unprotested will only give heterosexual adoption a black eye and run the risk of having the privilege rescinded from all the deserving opposite-sex couples, even if the jury is still out on whether OSCs raise children as well as SSCs.

L3:  Of course - what's human life weighed against the horrible crime of Appearing to Interfere with a Mother's Agency?  Be prepared to be expected to volunteer - a fitting penance.

L4:  Back to Animals 101 for you.  Dogs are pets for Single People, who use them to meet other Single People.  Those who are Married or Off the Market have Cats.  Ask any Female Couple.

Monday offers up three gems:  Lolito's boyfriend, Wife discovered friend's benefit, and Ashamed of sugar daddy.

ASD:  Your friends ought to adore your older boyfriend.  Don't worry; you at least have one thing in common given that you're all men.  And there is an advantage you have overlooked.  He can introduce your friends to his friends - prosperous friends, generous friends.  Why not?

WDFB:  The main point here is whether or not you like having a wife who is giving off signs of bisexuality.  Some women do like such a thing and some women don't.  Genuine lesbians (or gay men, for that matter) generally are able to take a past one-night stand between lifelong friends as quite typical, if indeed not to be expected.

LB:  Now, it is perfectly reasonable for LB to be furious at the seductress.  Sure, right, Lolito made all the running.  that's what she convinced him to think.  LB saved himself for the right man and was hoping he would get someone equally pure.  Alas, he has not drawn such a prize.

But LB is missing a golden opportunity, one that he already really at least half embraces.  Notice how he preens about Lolito's appeal to the older female.  One might reasonably deduce that LB is rather more plain in appearance.  The key, then, is to use Lolito's appeal to best advantage.  Pimp him out.  Set him up as a stripper for exclusive parties of female executives while the takings are good.

They can take as a role model Jacko Argyle from Ordeal by Innocence.  Although a rotter to the core, Jacko has always had charm, enabling him to cajole extra sweets from the strict Kirsten Lindstrom and wheedle a near-constant stream of cash from his adoptive mother.  Nobody is suprised that he apparently murders his mother when she cuts the supply.  His alibi of being picked up hitchhiking falls through, and he is hanged.  When the alibi, who'd forgotten the incident and been out of England during the trial, remembers Jacko and comes forward to prove him innocent, the investigation reveals Jacko's long history of stringing women along, repaying an employer he defrauded with money provided by the man's wife, and how Jacko's wife only turned up after the arrest, to the complete shock of the family.  It turns out, of course, that Jacko had connived the murder and taken the role of the obvious suspect, with the murder committed by an accomplice (another lovestruck older woman) at a time when he would be sure to give himself an alibi.  Had his wife not gone to his family after the arrest, the whole story might have come out rather earlier.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

8/4 - Beginning Homocentric August

I tried to begin on Monday, but there were just so many letters from admitt... sorry, from open heterosexuals that I just couldn't get into the mood.  Give people a few rights and before long they take over the whole place, right?  Just kidding.  (I think.)  There was the LW whose husband cheated with a woman and her circle of friends welcomed him at social events, but that just goes to show how straights are desperately eager to win bisexuals over to their side.  They show absolutely no respect for the relationships of others, especially when they can steal men's husbands and advance their own agenda at the same time.  At least, the more unpleasant activists among them are like that.  On to today, when we have to cope with even more... open straight people:

L1:  Now, there are some people who might wonder whether straights even ought to have the right to get married if they are incapable of coping with such time-honoured institutions of an extramarital encounter, especially when it is performed with another couple.  But I do not think we ought to be too quick to disparage straight couples when one half or the other of such a couple finds it to be too much with which to cope.  After all, straight couples lack the natural advantage of having both partners of the couple being of the same gender.  In a same-sex couple, any little issue relating to size will come up at once during the premarital period as soon as the couple is intimate.  By the time they are ready to have extramarital affairs, they will be quite clear about any issues one or the other might have about one partner or the other being larger or smaller, and what this might mean about any third or fourth they might acquire for a wee romp.

Even those who are fully accepting of heterosexuality instead of simply tolerant of it can surely accept that LW1 is not the brightest card in the deck.  After all, here he is writing after the fact to the Prudecutor, whose reply we could have predicted in almost perfect detail beforehand.  What he should have done was apply to Mr Savage before the extramarital adventure.  Mr Savage, through tireless sacrifice and great personal distaste, is a greater authority about straight sexuality than 99 straights themselves out of an hundred.  He would surely have been able to keep LW1 from falling into the morass that now engulfs him.

As for what LW1 can do now, there is really only one option.  And this is a solution that will please almost all readers, too.  He must divorce his wife.  Clearly he will never be able to cope with her in either a closed or an open marriage.  But for his next wife, he should select only a bisexual woman who has never had an actual male partner before (except perhaps one who transitioned after the relationship ended) and is about a good Kinsey 5, so that she will not be strongly tempted to have another man.  They can then proceed to have a number of merry encounters with multiple participants in which LW1 himself is the only male.  This should please LW1, soon-to-be XW1 who will be free to have better sex with a new husband, and, most importantly, the lesbian who would have married the future BW1 instead of him, and would be spared the heartbreak of her home being wrecked.

L2:  Another couple of open heterosexuals.  Now here, I must admit, I am sorely tempted to get on my high horse for a bit.  What is the point of opening up the sacred institution of marriage to admit straight people if they insist on flouting one of its basic tenets?  Everyone knows that marriage comes first and children come second.  Now, I shall not be an extreme left-winger on this one.  I shall not side with those would take away the children of those straights who are so irresponsible as to breed before they marry.  But it is very hard on the good straights, who follow the rules of society in an attempt to assimilate, to perpetuate such a stereotype that it is little wonder that straight rights are voted down - however bigoted such voters may usually be - so often.

Now we come to the more lasting matter of L2, and again, it's tempting.  This is the sort of thing that happens when people just insist on reproducing the unscientific way.  Who on earth is ever going to be able to prove paternity without tests afterwards?  Now, I admit that I have heard of same-sex couples who, choosing to reproduce the proper way with medical and scientific assistance, made the conscious decision not to know which partner's genetic contribution was being used for the act, but that is considerably different from sexual behaviour involving a minimum of three people.  LW2 claims she has no wish to hurt FMIL2, although her attitude is clearly not the best.  Even the Prudecutor can deduce that much.

What LW2 ought to have done would have been to ask FMIL2 shortly after meeting her who had been F2's biological father.  The blue and brown eyes would have given her sufficient cause.  Now that it is too late, however, there is only one honourable course of action open to her.  She must tell F2 that he is not the baby's natural father.  After all, F2 has been able to come to terms with his own presumed father despite the bad family history.  It should round things out nicely if he carries a similar misapprehension about the next generation.  And the main truth will still hold - that FoF2 and UB2 will have no biological connection.

L3:  Now, we are getting somewhere.  The Prudecutot gives away the solution to this letter.  She supposes that LW3 has heard about X's unsatisfactory work history from an assotment of people who have no particular axe to grind.  If one is going to assume facts not in eivdence, then one should at least back them up.  There are alternative solutions to the letter depending on the gender of Y.

If Y is male:  One wonders first why LW3 might be so willing to have X come to work at the same company.  It is not too hard to appreciate that the best motivation for such a desire would be that LW3 wants to become closer acquainted with X.  And by getting X a job LW3 would be earning X's appreciation, and appreciation can often be extended into a date or two, sometimes more.  If Y is male, then it is quite clear that Y wanted to make a nice XY couple, and invented this tale of X's poor work history (it is highly suspicious that LW3 would have been so oblivious to such a thing) and coerced a few other people into supporting the fiction.  But LW3 and X seem jolly well suited.  After all, how would LW3 have had the time to hear from so many different sources that X is not a good worker if the promised referral had been submitted in a prompt or even a timely manner?  And why has X not already inquired?  I suspect that there is a glimmer of truth in Y's story, but nowhere near enough to justify reneging on the referral.  LW3 need only add the proviso that X is every bit as competent as is LW3 himself, and let the employer take it from there.

If Y is female:  Now it gets even more sinister.  Clearly we have a case of the Woman Scorned.  Y tried to seduce X, and took her revenge on him by getting him fired.  Story Number Forty-Two - the oldest story in the book.  That would explain all the other people, many of whom might be quite sincere, coming to LW3 and supporting Y's story.

What LW3 can and should do is to prepare X beforehand by going through a practice interview, posing as the interviewer.  It should be easy to ascertain how much of Y's story is correct.  I suspect it will be little, and the referral can go through as planned.  By the way, the Prudecutor is being a bit short-sighted, is she not, in rejocing in the need for stellar references to get any sort of position?  She certainly can't count on the same when she is in search of her next position, can she?

L4:  This one is easy.  This is what happens when women who divorce their wives insist on keeping the dog because the wives gave it them as a gift.  This also happens with men, but less often.  As the dog is of the utmost importance, LW4 must reconcile with her wife at once.