I'm pretty sure that Hirshman would counsel you to put out. If you mean to be serious about your career, that is.
"Do I trust my guts?"
yes. emphatically yes. do the minimum to secure the letters of recommendation etc., but don't go to paris.
I'd say that he's hitting on/planning to hit on you, but that's no reason you can't keep on being friendly but oblivious about it.
He sounds really friendly and nice. I'm sure he just wants to see another state-schooled protege do well. I think you should spend lots more time with him, so he can help your career.
Helpfully: Should the word before "many bedrooms" be changed to "Scenic Getaway"?
Passive-Aggressively: Also, should part of this very lengthy ATM be put below the fold?
"We could have this and that"?!! Yeah, not innocent in any way.
I can hear your guts screaming from here. Listen to them.
You know what nice people like that really enjoy? Backrubs! They especially like giving other people backrubs. I bet if you asked him to rub your neck, it'd be a bonding experience!
This person seems to be flirting in an entirely acceptable way, except that he has power over you (even if only that of a mentor), which makes it unacceptable if he isn't getting any flirtatious signals back from you, which apparently he isn't.
It must be hard for him to resist flirting, though.
9 is right. In other words, only go to Paris if you want: A) To be very uncomfortable after resisting his unwanted advances. Or B) To have sex with a person you think is smart but creepy.
Do not wear rufflebutt underwear. Perhaps try the ones to which AWB linked.
Sometimes you just need a lot of peace and quiet to discuss technical topics in your field! And you need to be relaxed! Nothing is more relaxing - or conducive to mentoring - than lots and lots of bedrooms.
6: Ummm.... by ATM do you mean Ass To Mouth, or am I just really fucking dirty?
14: Ask The Mineshaft, you filthy, filthy so-and-so, you.
Passive-Aggressively: Also, should part of this very lengthy ATM be put below the fold?
Why don't you put up your own ATM to determine this, miss nosybutt?
14: "Ask The Mineshaft." Totally randomly: are you single?
4 seems right to me, or at least like it could very well be right depending on the personalities involved. Someone I know well has been good friends for many years with an older mentor who would jump her in a nanosecond if given an opening, but who is also perfectly capable of not making an ass of himself in ways that would screw up a friendship that he values.
Or, go to Paris if you think you can manage turning him down in a professional-relationship-preserving and not too embarrassing kind of way. Which, given that he is professionally useful to you, might be your best move. My instinct would be to avoid him, but then you lose a helpful mentor type, and just because he's being predatory doesn't mean you should cut off professional connections.
Something like playing dumb until he makes a really unmistakable move, and then "Golly, Prof. X, this is really flattering, but I misunderstood -- I thought we were just friends. Actually, I only date attractive men my own age. But it's really sweet of you; we're still friends, right?" (This can probably be put more smoothly -- there's a rough bit in the second sentence. But you get the idea.) If you're expecting the pass, it shouldn't be too hard to handle it gracefully or deflect it before it happens.
Yes, good question in 17. I know a house with a lot of bedrooms, we could totally this and that. Just saying.
Passive-Aggressively: Also, should part of this very lengthy ATM be put below the fold?
Yes. I have to scroll to click on the comments.
Why on earth would s/he go to Paris only to rebuff an advance?
He's totally hitting on you, yes. Put a little distance between you and him by simply taking a while to respond to his emails, and then either ignore inappropriate remarks entirely or respond to them as if they had been appropriate, and of course in the negative. "I was too busy last weekend to have been able to meet you for lunch anyway." If he's as smart as you say he is, he'll get the picture soon enough, and if he's not a total ass, he'll go back to being a good mentor figure.
Because she's in a field (academia) where close relationships with seniors is terribly valuable, and he seems to be an important part of her network. If she stops associating with him because she's afraid he'll make a pass at her, then she's fucking up her career -- he's a useful friend to have.
She doesn't necessarily have to go to Paris, but cutting off contact is a bad idea, and staying friendly and close is a good one.
23: You don't watch a lot of B-movie romcoms, do you?
Further to 26: This is contrary to my instincts, I admit. My instinctive reaction would be to get icy. But professional relationships are valuable, and his flirtatiousness shouldn't screw up her networking more than it has to.
Did you just say "Paris is worth that ass"? How innapropriate.
If she stops associating with him because she's afraid he'll make a pass at her, then she's fucking up her career
Or she could go the full nine and fuck her career upward.
OR, if you really have a good friendship with him, just lay it on the line: "dude, you're flirting with me! knock it off, it's freaking me out."
Or she could go the full nine and fuck her career upward.
Is she going to marry him? Probably not. So two years down the road, who's he going to be supportive of, an ex, or the attractive mentee he never managed to nail?
It's good to have close relationships, sure, and she doesn't need to cut off contact, but going to Paris when the subtext is quite clear, without any intention of following through, seems iffy both as a practical matter (oh look, lots of new awkwardness) and an ethical matter.
So two years down the road, who's he going to be supportive of, an ex, or the attractive mentee he never managed to nail?
Interesting question. slol, Gonerill?
Mentor: But I already bought us a bearskin rug and put it in front of the fire-place!
God, Ogged, could you be more pinchbutt about this? FREE TRIP TO PARIS.
but going to Paris when the subtext is quite clear, without any intention of following through, seems iffy both as a practical matter (oh look, lots of new awkwardness) and an ethical matter.
Hrm. He invites a junior professional colleague to Paris in a friendly fashion, without identifying it as a romantic move that she can explicitly accept or reject, and she's unethical for going if she doesn't plan to put out? Dude.
If she plays her cards right, I bet he'd buy her a ticket.
35: Iffy as a practical matter, really; it's totally acceptable to bilk horndog showoffs, but unwise if it's going to make you a powerful enemy for life.
Call me old-fashioned, or call me a prude, or just wait for Emerson to show up to call me a Canadian, but I really think inviting her to visit him in Paris goes beyond "harmless flirtation."
Also, unctuous charm is not charming.
B. is right about the need for distance. This can be done without jeopardizing the professional relationship.
Are people really debating this? Don't go to Paris unless you want/are willing to sleep with him. At a bare minimum, if you're asking the mineshaft for help on this, there's a better than even chance that you don't have the (extraordinary) social skills needed to put him off in Paris without irritating him/angering him/making him feel used. Which would be counterproductive, as I understand it.
43: True, but if this were a movie she'd bilk him without ever putting out, and he'd be confused but still charmed and she'd get a trip to Paris *and* mentoring for life.
without identifying it as a romantic move
There are human social conventions, and his move means "come here and fuck me." If she responds by going with no intention of fucking, that's a not nice thing to do, as far as I can tell. This doesn't mean that I approve of what he's doing either.
Since I can't come up with any more lame French history jokes, I'll just agree with everyone saying going to Paris seems to be a trip too far.
This can probably be put more smoothly -- there's a rough bit in the second sentence.
This made me laugh: the part where you tell him he's ugly? Yes.
25 seems like excellent advice for going the non-confrontational route, except that the non-confrontational route often doesn't get the point across.
Three things seem obvious to me
1. He's hot for her
2. She doesn't want to sleep with him
3. There is no career upside to sleeping with him, because ultimately it will end in tears and awkwardness at best, and in recriminations and revenge at worst.
So the obvious solution seems to be to maintain the relationship but keep a cordial distance, not actively rebuffing his flirtation, but never giving him any encouragement either, and acting as if the relationship is one of purely avuncular interest. The net result is that he will continue to actively advance her career because he will never give up hope of getting in her pants, and even if he does he will retain fond memories of her.
It also goes without saying that she should not go to for the reasons Anmik stipulates in 11.
If this were a movie, he'd have a heart of gold and after pursuing her stalkishly she'd come around and fall in love.
Also, and just to be clear, No Guts No Glory is a grad student, right?
Seriously, though: if the Paris invite is genuinely practical from a research standpoint, then yes, I'd consider going, but I would probably advise making it clear beforehand that you're only doing so on professional grounds.
45: And she'd meet a poor, hot Bohemian guy in Paris who'd fall head over heels for her.
I really think "put out" has not been properly considered. I bet doing so has helped plenty of young academics. slol, Gonerill?
Re 34: once again LB says it sooner, better, and more succinctly.
If this were a movie, he'd have a heart of gold
If this were a movie, it be more than just his heart.
if the Paris invite is genuinely practical from a research standpoint, then yes, I'd consider going,
Oui oui, it is. We are researching - how you say - the luvvv.
46: The thing is, if he is trying to make a move, he's being a bully and she doesn't owe him anything -- the Paris trip is an attempt to put her in a position where she'll have sex with him despite not wanting to (if he thought she actually wanted to have sex with him, he could make a move with out getting her in a position where she's obligated and has no place to stay but his apartment). I don't see that placing any ethical obligation of any sort on her. If she thinks she could swing the graceful turndown, there's not a thing wrong with doing it.
If this were a movie, he'd have a heart of gold and after pursuing her stalkishly she'd come around and fall in love.
But it could be like Le hussard sur le toit when [SPOILER REDACTED].
There's just no way that this thread is going to produce a good answer to the question, assuming NGNG wants to go to Paris if she can safely (whatever that means) do so. Too much depends on the personalities. Yeah, the guy's probably interested in hitting on her if he can, but he's got something to lose, too, and it's perfectly possible that a lovely time could be had by all even if he wants more than friendly companionship and doesn't get it. Or that it could be a nightmare. But risk averse isn't always the best strategy, or so I hear.
If she responds by going with no intention of fucking, that's a not nice thing to do, as far as I can tell.
So the date ended soon after dinner, then?
53: Exactly! So she can take the arrangement as long as she can arrange to meet a young hottie in Paris who old Mr. Hornypants will immediately see is a much better mate for her. And of course, assuming she can pull off "naive young thing" so well that he'll continue to find her charming and genuinely believe that she never, ever, saw through his Humbert Humbert moves.
I really think "put out" has not been properly considered. I bet doing so has helped plenty of young academics. slol, Gonerill?
Anyone wants to put out for me, send a photo first.
BTW, Megan won the thread in 5.
I encountered a situation like this with a previous mentor. Yes, he will be charming and get you really drunk. Yes, he will make sly passes that manipulate you into going beyond your comfort zone. Seriously, if you really actually don't want to fuck this guy, don't go out with him alone, just be professional, and whatever you do, don't get drunk. (No, I didn't do anything, but I very nearly did, despite not being very attracted to him physically, and it would have been disastrous.)
Remember: professional contacts do not stay in houses together alone, and they don't really go to bars together alone. If you do develop some intimate relationship, your mentor should act exclusively as a father-figure.
If she thinks she could swing the graceful turndown, there's not a thing wrong with doing it.
Given what she's said so far, do you think she could swing the graceful turndown? In Paris, in his place, I mean?
the Paris trip is an attempt to put her in a position where she'll have sex with him despite not wanting to
David Copperfield tried this same thing, and look all the trouble he's in now.
Paris is well worth a pass.
There we go.
I guess you and just disagree, LB. I don't think his skeeziness absolves her of all ethical obligations.
Anyone wants to put out for me, send a photo first.
w-lfs-n's got a big batch. It might make sense to set up a separate Flickr account.
BTW, Megan won the thread in 5.
Why are you so mean, dude?
46: If she responds by going with no intention of fucking, that's a not nice thing to do
Fuck the nice thing to do. He should know by this point in his life that she's not obligated to do "the nice thing" because he happens to be hitting on her.
I don't think his skeeziness absolves her of all ethical obligations.
Pinch. Butt.
65: If she's braced for it, and doesn't listen to people like Ogged telling her she's being mean if she doesn't put out, sure. All she has to do is (1) not get drunk, and (2) if necessary, start talking about her boyfriend in Canada.
52: If the trip to Paris is professionally useful, it might make sense to go but stay at a hotel/hostel, which should make it pretty clear that NGNG isn't gonna go for him. It seems like an explicit 'I'm only doing this for professional reasons' would be really tough to pull off in a graceful way.
telling her she's being mean if she doesn't put out
Yes, that's exactly what I said. And it goes for all of you, men and women alike.
73: "Canada" s/b "the Russian mob"
68: Dude, I didn't suggest she set his kittens on fire, I suggested she accept an expressly no-strings-attached invitation without putting out, even though she suspects he'd like her to. That's really not a powerful ethical obligation.
w-lfs-n's got a big batch. It might make sense to set up a separate Flickr account.
OK, send money first instead. Credible signaling.
I don't see where the glory in the guts/glory setup is supposed to materialize from. To repeat myself, remember that in-house academic affairs between senior academics and grad students are generally unfair to screwed and unscrewed alike.
75: Mean, unethical, whatever. Seriously, at what point in a social encounter do you see an ethical obligation to have sex attaching? (For apo, of course, it's at the point of entry into the same room.)
LB, please don't make me defend Ogged. He's not saying she has an ethical obligation to fuck the guy.
73: You've got to be kidding. I suspect you didn't truck with enough skeevy guys, LB. There is no good ending to the Paris trip, whatever her formal (or whatever the appropriate word would be) obligations.
77: I didn't suggest she set his kittens on fire
She should only do this if he fails to buy enough drinks.
OT, this is a good one: Mitt Romney, opposed to gay marriage, advertises on gay.com website
he's being a bully
Exactly. And she's* already in this post showing strong signs of second-guessing herself. The whole thing reads like a woman who feels strong pressure to not make waves, to avoid misinterpreting or making someone else uncomfortable. That is not a recipe for someone who feels confident turning down an older, pushier guy with a lot of authority.
NGNG, he's already making you uncomfortable. I'm not an academic, so I can't speak to the professional reprecussions. But no way should you put yourself on this guy's turf feeling as vulnerable as you obviously already do.
*I am assuming the gender here -- do we actually know?
Or if the kittens are really skeevy.
80: Well, he said that it's not nice to accept the invitation, and that she has ethical obligations. I'm not clear what the ethical obligations she's supposed to be violating are.
81: She's 27, not 16. I wouldn't be telling a teenager to do this, but don't grownup men and women sometimes associate without having sex?
Seriously, at what point in a social encounter do you see an ethical obligation to have sex attaching?
I think DH Hughly said it's lobster.
80: Actually, he did use the words "ethical obligations" and pretty much imply that going on the trip without putting out would violate them. It's sort of hard to read that any other way.
Tim is of course right. Don't go, don't go.
84: Oh, if she doesn't think she can pull it off, sure. But it doesn't strike me as ridiculously impossible.
But it could be like Le hussard sur le toit when [SPOILER REDACTED].
When she dies of cholera?
There is no good ending to the Paris trip, whatever her formal (or whatever the appropriate word would be) obligations.
This is true.
You know, recently on Unfogged we have had Becks hating on Blade Runner, Ogged hating on Fafblog, and LB being subtly wrong about one or two things out of a hundred. The first two warning signs were discountable, but the last one is strong evidence that the blog has been abducted by zombies.
an expressly no-strings-attached invitation
LB, this is emphatically not the impression I get from the post. What leads you to that conclusion?
Seriously, at what point in a social encounter do you see an ethical obligation to have sex attaching?
There is no universal ethic in all sexual situations that can be referred to, you know. The point is not that he's going to violate her unwillingly at some point and yell, "But you came to Paris!" The point is whether our letter-writer trusts herself not to be manipulated by him. If you had asked me if I'd be even remotely tempted to do my previous instructor, I would have said you were nuts. But there we were, three hours later, headed arm-in-arm toward his place before I suddenly realized I had no interest and turned the other way. It's not like I violated some sexual ethic--really, I did not lead him on--but that I was shocked how convinced I was by his very sly arguments. Don't trust smart lonely people.
By that I also mean me. Don't trust me.
Well, he said that it's not nice to accept the invitation, and that she has ethical obligations. I'm not clear what the ethical obligations she's supposed to be violating are.
You're not clear? I think the ethical obligation is to not go on the trip under false pretenses. What that means is that once she's detected that the invitation is a pretext for making sweet love, she should make it clear that she feels the trip will be strictly professional and she is not interested in such activities before actually going.
86.1: The ethical obligation is, if so-and-so invites you out for a date, even without actually saying the word "date," it would be kinda crappy to accept and then, like, bring your mom.
In other words, O. has a point, if we assume Professor McSkeevyPants is really flirting in a non-skeevy, non-sexually-harassing way (which seems reasonable to assume). It's a pinchbutt kind of point, to be sure, and completely lacks a sense of humor, but hey: it's Ogged.
86.2: No, they don't, not after it has occurred to both of them.
90 is what made me remember I have actually seen that movie. Yummmmmmm.
I suggested she accept an expressly no-strings-attached invitation without putting out, even though she suspects he'd like her to.
What is this "suspects he'd like her to" business? It's pretty damn clear what Professor Lovejoy is about. He's hitting on her, and in a non-too-subtle way at that. And the invitation is not expressly no-strings-attached, but rather, comes with strings implicitly attached (nudge nudge wink wink). There is a difference. Much of human and social interaction takes place without the lawyers having first drawn up the contracts, after all.
92: I'm getting 'no strings attached' from the fact that she's (he? Could be a gay man.) emailing us asking if he's hitting on her. If she really isn't sure, than he hasn't put conditions on the trip.
Now, everyone's right that it's an awkward situation, and it probably is a bad idea to get into it. But if the trip is something she wants to do, she hasn't got any ethical obligations other than not to leave a mess in the bathroom, and maybe bring a cake or something as a thankyou for the hospitality.
80: Actually, he did use the words "ethical obligations" and pretty much imply that going on the trip without putting out would violate them. It's sort of hard to read that any other way.
Jeepers, people. If Uncle Mort invites you to dinner, but you know that what he's really hoping is that you'll play pinochle with him afterwards, and you accept knowing in advance that you'll have dinner and blow off pinochle, that makes you not nice. It's the ethical obligations of interpersonal relations. Even if Uncle Mort is rich and you're a grad student and he's enticing you with a free meal, it's still pretty heel-ish to accept without any intention of honoring the unspoken, but obvious, bargain.
Oh, if she doesn't think she can pull it off, sure. But it doesn't strike me as ridiculously impossible.
No, LB, you're going soft! You're supposed to be the voice of sober reason in these deliberations. There is no possible good outcome to her going to Paris. If she needs to go for research purpose, Paris will still be there when he's not.
Even if she's staying in a hostel, he'll want to take her out for dinner, and after a few bottles of wine, the invitation to go back to his place won't sound too bad, and then she's in a position of having to fight off his moves or else acede to them. No good can come of it.
Also, Tim is, of course, wrong. Let us assume that Professor McSkeeve is not a total Skeeve, and what he has proposed is a research trip (with flirty undertones). If the letter writer would, in fact, genuinely benefit from such a research trip on the guy's dime, or (if not on his dime) then under his intellectual mentoring and collaboration--if, that is, they'd work well together academically and the trip reflects a real research interest of hers, then yes, she should consider going. But she should, as I said, make it clear that she's only doing so for professional reasons, by, for instance, refusing all offers of shared housing and focusing any discussion exclusively on the research aspect of the trip.
If Professor McS gets the message and reframes the invite as a collaborative one, then he's a good sort and it'll be fine, and she should go. If the trip suddenly disappears, or if he gets pushier, then no.
Wait, are we actually debating this? Of course she shouldn't stay with him. He clearly wants to get in her pants, and they're supposed to have a mentor-mentee relationship.
If she wants to go, she should go, stay somewhere cheap (the lodging's not the expensive part of the trip) and meet up with him to hang out occasionally. And say "I'd feel weird staying at your house." Which is true.
Of course, what it sounds like to me, is that the writer wants to go without intending to sleep with him, and then fall into bed with the guy anyway (hence the "I don't want to sleep with him but I can see myself doing it") bit. In which case, she should just fuck the guy already.
I believe that LB is trolling for the first time ever. Resist the temptation, LB!
If there was a sexual vibe between me and a guy and said guy invited me on a trip, I would expect that accepting the invitation was unspokenly conditional on me at least considering having sex with that person. It would still be their job to woo me and I could still say no but accepting it would be consenting that their advances would be allowed and entertained.
If I didn't want to consider having sex with that person, I'd decline the invitation or explicitly negotiate the terms.
In a rare moment of weirdness, I agree with ogged and disagree with LB and Bitch. What is this blog coming to?
101: Yeah, I see what you mean. But where we replace "play pinochle" with "provide ATM," I'd argue the initial skeeviness makes the otherwise not-nice quite permissible. But not necessarily practical, mind you.
There is no, no, no way to show up with a cake or a thankyou note and expect him to be grateful and say, "How thoughtful you are, my dear! I just longed to see the smile on your face when you see the Eiffel Tower!" Please. And you know what he's going to do: the whole "I'm a man, you're a woman, Paris is so romantic, the wine is perfect, your recommendation letter is sitting on my desk, and I can't think of anything that would make this night more perfect than a little snuggle on this couch, and then, I dunno, whatever you think would make it even more perfect [like a blowjob]."
100: Ah, I see I was misled by your "expressly." Regardless, you're still wrong, IMO.
In a rare moment of weirdness, I agree with ogged and disagree with LB and Bitch. What is this blog coming to?
See 91 for the most parsimonious explanation.
Even if Uncle Mort is rich and you're a grad student and he's enticing you with a free meal, it's still pretty heel-ish to accept without any intention of honoring the unspoken, but obvious, bargain.
Okay, that's no good. Dodging a card game with a boring uncle is not at all comparable to fucking him.
Also, Ogged is now banned.
94, 95, 99: Okay, here I'm being kind of Martian, maybe. But what he's doing is, while ordinary, IMO, really not okay, and shouldn't be treated with any consideration as if it were okay.
If he wanted to fuck her, he could make a pass in the US, and she'd say no. Given that he hasn't made a clearly rejectable pass, you can surmise that he probably knows she'd say no.
So instead of making a pass, he's offering her a trip to Paris. Which she wants, and which isn't on its face equivalent to a committment to have sex. And he's hoping that she'll take it, because she wants to go to Paris, and then when she gets there, feel as though she's obliged to have sex with him, even though she didn't mean to make that deal when she accepted the invitation.
This doesn't make him a rapist, and it doesn't make him a monster. But it's not a nice game, and I don't see that she has any ethical obligation to play it. If he invited her to visit him, he invited her to visit him, and accepting doesn't place any ethical burdens on her.
Let's talk worst case scenario for a minute here. Let's say she ends up with Prof. McSkeeveypants in Paris with only the most chaste intentions. After dinner, two bottles of wine, and four glasses of Calvados, he makes a pass. She demurs. He insists. He does attempts to force himself on her, successfully or not.
Does she want the choice of accusing an eminence grise in her field of rape? Or does she want to spend the rest of her career going to conferences with the rapist that she declined to accuse?
It might be improbable, but it's a non-negligible possibility given what we've been told about the situation, and you've got to factor the enormity of that downside into your deliberations.
107: You crackhead, you're not disagreeing with me.
112: Ogged isn't claiming that the acts themselves are comparable, but that a similar structure obtains.
Structure!
The subtext is pretty obvious, and while the letter writer is of course under no ethical obligation to fuck him (come on, let's not tax the strawman factory) if she goes, it's at a minimum going to be as awkward as going on a date with someone she suspects really, really likes you when she already knows she only wants to be friends and colleagues. and needs a professional recommendation That's not the problem; it's not an ethical obligation beyond the sort you'd normally owe someone you know liked you when they didn't. The problem is she's staying at his house. There is no way to exit gracefully once it gets awkward. Drunken amorous academics == guaranteed awkward.
The best case is a really awkward Paris visit, and Witt's right; her gut is already screeching at her.
114: Oh, puhleeze. Now we're going down the "girls shouldn't accept dates with important men at all, because what if he tries to rape you?"
There is no way to exit gracefully once it gets awkward.
B and I have already figured this out. Hot bohemian Parisian boyfriend. Easy-peasy.
115: Ok, I guess I'm not. With all your "free trip to paris!" thing I mistakenly got the impression you were in favor of it.
LB, I totally agree that what he's doing is not ok. But I think you're wrong to think that she can both go to Paris and opt out of the game. Going and following your advice means that she thinks she can play it better. That's what I mean about the practical and ethical problems. Don't play, because it's skeezy and you'll lose.
four glasses of Calvados
Cheapskate.
116: Oh, pipe down, mini-me.
Every time I say you've said something incorrect, ogged gives me a food pellet.
Also, Tim is, of course, wrong. Let us assume that Professor McSkeeve is not a total Skeeve,
Well, hell, let us assume that it's her mother who asked, and it's ostensibly to visit her dying grandfather. She should feel free not to commit incest.
125: As long as you realize he expects you to sleep with him later.
Oh, puhleeze. Now we're going down the "girls shouldn't accept dates with important men at all, because what if he tries to rape you?"
Now B., that wasn't my point and you bloody well know it. This isn't a date. It's him trying to engineer a date out of a situation that she would like to engineer to be something else. Give the asymmetry of power involved here, it's a fraught situation for the woman.
Many commenters have pointed out that the situation in that house could get really awkward. I'm just saying its a short path from awkward to criminal.
Briefly:
1. Yes, I'm a female grad student
2. This is not w/in my current institution--but Skeevy Prof is one of my readers of my work. And he's still listed on my CV as a reference.
3. Yep, the trip to Paris would be basically free. It was a purely social invite, but I would have used some of the time for professional reasons (research, professional contacts). I've been invited as a house guest by profs before, but usually by a female professor friend, and always in the context of a place to stay for a conference, etc. But it was definitely "Come to Paris, stay with me, I'll show you around, we'll go from cafe to salon."
4. He already knows I'm dating someone. The skeevy remarks came anyway, so the "I have a boyfriend" (and he's not in Canada) isn't much of a deterrent.
5. Thanks, everyone. For the record, I'm not a naive dumb fuck (pun intended)--I'm sincerely uncertain as to what to interpret from the recent turn in his remarks to me, given that there's been nothing overt. I haven't been his student for so long, and our correspondence has been mostly professional. It's not like I just came from his office hour in which he locked the door behind me or cornered me against the wall.
When I decide I want to spend time with someone alone, whether it's a friend or a potential partner, I do so because I imagine there are new things I feel on the cusp of feeling about them. I look forward to a more intimate friendship, or a potential for erotic exchange, or some kind of extremely stimulating and mutually satisfying intelligent conversation.
I do not spend time alone with people because they buy me things, and I do not spend time alone with people who want things from me I can't return. At least, these are rules I've had to set for myself because I'm learning it's a terrible idea to let people be nice to you when you don't want the things they want. I'm not saying women can't be trusted to only do what they want, but I am saying I can't be trusted to only do what I want.
128: *Obviously* she shouldn't stay in his house, because it would be awkward. But in fact the path from "awkward" to "criminal" is *not* short; it's quite long. Now, women should trust their guts, absolutely; but to advise someone not to do something uncomfortable by hypothesizing "what if he tries to rape you?" is just hysterical fear-mongering.
129: It's an old story. Don't start off your career by becoming a cliché.
125: As long as you realize he expects you to sleep with him later.
No, just to play some variant of pinochle. At least I think that's what he said.
So instead of making a pass, he's offering her a trip to Paris. Which she wants, and which isn't on its face equivalent to a committment to have sex. And he's hoping that she'll take it, because she wants to go to Paris, and then when she gets there, feel as though she's obliged to have sex with him, even though she didn't mean to make that deal when she accepted the invitation.
Yes. But 104.3 sounds plausible. I mean, no one here believes that he's not trying to sleep with her (do they?), with the possible exception of NGNG herself, and I don't think it's at all sleazy to suggest a situation that gives superficially plausible deniability to all parties involved even though upon close examination it's clearly going to end up naked in bed.
That said, I think I'd be a bad idea to sleep with one's mentor, especially if they aren't incredibly desireable outside of their mentoring.
He already knows I'm dating someone. The skeevy remarks came anyway
Yuck. Skeeve factor increases by 3.
Leaving the question of ethical obligations to one side, if you want to continue to use him as a reference, I think it's pretty clearly not worth it.
129.3, 129.4, and "I haven't been his student for so long" make me think there's no real reason to give Professor Skeeve the benefit of the doubt.
I encountered a situation like this with a previous mentor. Yes, he will be charming and get you really drunk. Yes, he will make sly passes that manipulate you into going beyond your comfort zone.
And it only gets uglier from there. I encountered a situation like this, too, and naively took it as friendship. Intentions were made clear, advances rebuffed, mentoring withdrawn, much ugliness.
I'm not a naive dumb fuck (pun intended)
This is a pun?
129 -> 132 -> 140 -> See what I mean?
But in fact the path from "awkward" to "criminal" is *not* short; it's quite long.
Go into a university infirmary on any Saturday night and you'll see the human evidence that this statement is bullshit.
One man's hysterical fearmongering is another's prudent precaution. Even if it stopped at him grabbing her by the wrist and her slapping him, it would have the potential to create a dynamic that could poison her career.
131, 133: Yeah, I've been arguing 'go ahead and stay in his house, if you think you can manage it' but you're probably all right that it's practically a bad idea. What I've really been arguing against is(the little voices in my head saying) that where a woman is in a professional/social relationship and she has a sense that the man wants it to turn romantic, that she has an ethical or personal responsibility to cut off or shut down the professional/social aspects of the relationship so as not to deceive him into thinking that she's open to a romantic relationship. He's a big boy, and he's trying to use the professional/social relationship as leverage -- he can take care of himself, and she hasn't got any ethical obligation to cut herself off from something professionally desirable to avoid hurting his feelings.
141: The word "fuck" can sometimes have multiple meanings. You can see the usages at play here in the fourth and seventh words of the sentence "You fucked my fuck, you fucking fuck!"
Drunken academics can be amorous and handsy even without explicit social invitations to Paris, and while 'what if he rapes you?' would be overblown (if KR'd meant it like that) 'what if he grabs your boob and you have to see him at the [equivalent of] APA and your girlfriends giggle at his papers forever' is NOT overblown.
And also, my boob has not been grabbed, but the incident is not. Meaning: everyone will know about it. Goneril's so, so right.
143: Let is hereby be proved that Knecht Ruprecht hates men way more than I do.
He's a big boy,
That's the problem. "Ethical obligation" s/b "Prudent self-interest."
144: I guess I just don't know what you mean when you keep saying "ethical obligation." I mean, sure, no one thinks it is just that she should pay for her career with sex. And I highly doubt someone like this is going to rape anyone. Furthermore, I'd even doubt he'd make any kind of overt come-on. These kinds of guys don't have to say "I want to fuck you." They manipulate you into saying it for them, despite yourself.
144: If it were a not explicitly social request I'd agree. There's a difference between 'Hey, if you need a place to stay at the conference, you can crash in my Paris pad' and 'Come to Paris, we'll have a lot of fun and I'll show you the town IYKWIMAITYD.' The former is arguably workable. The latter is just going to be a mess.
He's a big boy, and he's trying to use the professional/social relationship as leverage -- he can take care of himself, and she hasn't got any ethical obligation to cut herself off from something professionally desirable to avoid hurting his feelings.
Not an ethical one, but "leverage" and "hurting his feelings" suggest pragmatic reasons to avoid doing this.
Go into a university infirmary on any Saturday night and you'll see the human evidence that this statement is bullshit.
WTF? You'll see raped women lying around, or what?
Or what G said in #148. I can't even imagine.
he can take care of himself, and she hasn't got any ethical obligation to cut herself off from something professionally desirable to avoid hurting his feelings.
There's no question he can take of himself, LB. The question is how best can No Guts No Glory take care of her self. "Ethical obligation" is a distraction from...oh wait, Gonerill already said it, and said it better, in 148.
More seriously, what I'm saying is that it is, and should be, perfectly sufficient to say "your gut is telling you this is inappropriate, and THAT ALONE is a perfectly valid reason to say no." When you start coming up with these "what if?" scenarios you're implicitly saying that the feeling of discomfort, alone, is not good enough; that there has to be Something To Fear.
Which there doesn't. Maybe he *isn't* flirting with her at all. Maybe this is a purely professorial and appropriate invitation. Who gives a shit? The second you start trying to second-guess someone (a man's) *intent*, you're sliding into the "what's important here is what he thinks" thing. Which is not what's important. What's important is what NGNG is and isn't comfortable with, and she's not comfortable with this guy, and that's that.
Now, given that she *is* comfortable with him as a mentor figure, my advice is, okay, treat him like a mentor figure and ignore the rest of it. If he backs off, all is well. If not, then you either just chalk it up to "Professor McS is just like that" and don't worry about it, or else you decide that he's a jerk and you stop being his friend.
I can't believe this thread didn't stop at comment 1. She should send him a DVD of Last Tango in Paris and tell him she'll be there in a week.
he hasn't got any ethical obligation to cut herself off from something professionally desirable to avoid hurting his feelings
I think the issue is practical, not ethical--the problem isn't that his feelings would be hurt if she goes and then turns him down, it's that it'd would be tough for her to go and them turn him down/do so gracefully.
Ethical obligation was Ogged's term. Seriously, I'm not arguing the pragmatics -- if, given how NGNG feels about Prof. X, she thinks a pass is likely and likely to be difficult to deflect without mutual embarrassment, it's a terrible idea to stay with him. And given what she's said, that's probably the case.
But if she wanted to go, and thought she could manage to neither have sex with nor antagonize him, she wouldn't be doing anything rude or wrong by going. And professionally, she's better off staying close and friendly than withdrawing because he's making her uncomfortable.
But if she wanted to go, and thought she could manage to neither have sex with nor antagonize him, she wouldn't be doing anything rude or wrong by going.
I don't disagree, but that's a lot of conditionals.
And professionally, she's better off staying close and friendly than withdrawing because he's making her uncomfortable.
Staying professionally friendly and not being available to come to Paris is the strategically correct move here.
Professionally I think the best think to do would be too blithely continue the mentor-protegee relationship as if he hadn't hit on her & hope he can take a hint. If there's an explicit pass & rejection that becomes a lot more difficult.
There's a small ethical issue. It's a social request, so let's cut off the practical issue for the moment (which is the overwhelming DO NOT WANT concern here.)
It's stringing him along, and even if we don't, as we all agree, think she owes him sex, it seems wrong to take up someone's romantic invitation if you don't like them romantically. It's not a major wrong in the grand scheme of things, but I think if we'd had a thread about whether it was, say, okay to take up someone's romantic overtures if we didn't really like them (you know, to make sure we weren't a virgin when we went off to college... oh wait...) we'd probably think it was a little sketchy.
Yeah, I got over-enthusiastic arguing a position that started out conditional. Mostly, I'm arguing against my own snap, and wrong, reaction: "I think he wants to hit on me. If I don't want to have sex with him, I'm therefore responsible for doing absolutely nothing that could possibly give him the impression that I might be open to the idea, including continuing to be socially friendly."
162 to 159. To 161, I really don't think there is. There would be an ethical issue if it were an explictly romantic invitation (that is, she wouldn't be obliged to sleep with him if he'd invited her to Paris saying 'I think in Paris I can finally show you how I've always felt about you, darling,' but she'd be a jerk if she accepted an invitation like that and weren't at least open to the idea). But this isn't an explicitly romantic invitation: they have a professional relationship in the context of which a trip to Paris makes sense, and he knows she's dating someone else. At that point it's not a romantic invitation, it's an attempted con, and no ethical obligation attaches.
162: Yes, I see that -- the wrongness of the snap reaction, I mean. I think we can agree that there's a wide space between "doing absolutely nothing that could possibly give him the impression that I might be open to the idea" and "spending a month in Paris with him at his many-bedroomed apartment."
I'm off to bed (but not in Paris: rather, the midwest). Job stuff looms tomorrow.
Monkey, elephant, Giblets commanded you to devour each other in a bloodbath of Darwinian proportions, not sit there eating bananas and pellets! You are boring the Arena of Doom! You are making it the Arena of Boring! Giblets is dissatisfied.
That can't possibly be real Giblets, can it?
Sadly, no. Nice thought though, wasn't it?
163: I am reading it as a lot more explicit. She's supposed to know it's a romantic invitation. (She seems to, in fact.) It's feeling a bit like whether you go out with the nerdy kid when you know you can't stand him, and that he has a massive crush on you and has all these hopes and dreams pinned on the homecoming dance. If it's a con, I agree, but I don't understand what's supposed to be the con given 129. A con--ference?
All of this is greatly overwhelmed by the practical considerations, but I think 'ethics of personal interaction' is about right.
Wow, Giblets sounds like one of my sock puppets!
It's feeling a bit like whether you go out with the nerdy kid when you know you can't stand him, and that he has a massive crush on you and has all these hopes and dreams pinned on the homecoming dance.
Who saved up $1000 over the summer that he was planning on using to buy a really great lawn-mower but instead he agrees to buy you the dress of your dreams if you'll fake being his girlfriend.
163:
LB, that's what confused me--he knows I'm seeing someone, so his invitation couldn't have been romantic, right? That's the interpretation that gives him the benefit of the doubt of honorable intentions.
And for the past 6-7 years, we've talked about missing each other at conferences or cross-country visits (I'd take a trip to the other Coast when he happened to be in Paris, etc.). So we've talked about a purely social "catch-up" visit, and hanging out now as friends and future-colleagues (which we couldn't do seven years ago when I was his college student. I have similar "we should visit each other and hang out!" conversations with academics I meet blogging. The only difference is, they don't offer to pay and put me up in their small flat.
So, his invitation is not per se untoward, which is why I wanted help interpreting the undertones.
More seriously, what I'm saying is that it is, and should be, perfectly sufficient to say "your gut is telling you this is inappropriate, and THAT ALONE is a perfectly valid reason to say no." When you start coming up with these "what if?" scenarios you're implicitly saying that the feeling of discomfort, alone, is not good enough; that there has to be Something To Fear.
You know, I spend a lot of time trying to help myself and others get past our initial gut reaction, under the presumption that that reaction is colored by a million social and personal prejudices, stereotypes, etc. So you get things like "Abortion is icky!" or "I can't hire someone who looks like that!" and then you stop and think and really carefully examine whether you actually want to operate under that belief.
But in the case above, trusting a gut reaction is exactly the right thing to do. And the social message, interestingly, is that one shouldn't.
I've probably gone done that road that KR has outlined a million times, and always in service to justifying my gut reaction. I have to come up with a reason to believe X, because it's not enough that I just believe it.
the writer wants to go without intending to sleep with him, and then fall into bed with the guy anyway (hence the "I don't want to sleep with him but I can see myself doing it") bit.
Are M. Leblanc and I the only ones who get the feeling that the letter-writer has a sneaky little crush on this guy? Or at least is kind of flattered by the attention?
169: I think you're putting too much weight on what she's expected to know. He knows she's dating someone else. (Note, in the following, I'm discussing ethics, not practicalities.) If she says, "Golly, Professor X, this sounds like so much fun. I can't wait to go to Paris and scout around all the romantic locations so that sometime Chet and I can take a really romantic trip there!" do you think he's going to withdraw the invitation or explain that he was hoping she'd leave Chet for him (or cheat on Chet with him)? No, because it's not a straightforward romantic invitation. He's hoping to get her in a situation where she feels obligated and off balance, and get her to sleep with him despite the fact that she's not crazy about the idea. That's the con.
175: It's just you. The letter sounded clear to me on the not-physically-attractive front.
The above crossed with 172, in response to which: See, if he's set up a situation that's ambiguous enough that she literally doesn't know if it's romantic, she's got no ethical obligation at all to treat it as such.
physically attractive is only one kind. Brilliance and confidence are attractive qualities.
I agree with 178. Reading the last paragraph of leblanc's 104 just left me thinking "WTF?" I then went back and read NGNG's letter again and still felt that "WTF?" was the appropriate response. If I'm being charitable I suppose that the author's pseudonym might supply some (incredibly scant) evidence for leblanc's and marcus' position, but otherwise I'm just not seeing it.
In that case, he probably keeps the invitation and quietly seethes a little bit. I don't see him as skeevy enough that he's trying a 'get her alone and lock the door' type maneuver, just really hopeful. Most romantic interactions don't take place in neat declarative sentences.
he knows I'm seeing someone, so his invitation couldn't have been romantic, right?
Ha! Ha. No.
Golly, Prof. X, this is really flattering, but I misunderstood -- I thought we were just friends. Actually, I only date attractive men my own age. But it's really sweet of you; we're still friends, right?
I can't tell if this is meant to be funny. You might as well say "I don't date old, ugly guys like you. But we're still friends, right?"
That was, in fact, meant to be funny, exactly because it comes out to "I don't date old ugly guys." Drawing attention to it as a rough spot that needed to be smoothed out was supposed to be the tip off. I guess I need emoticons. :-)
184: I think LB was going for "you're attractive, but not the right age for me".
Dude, I am terrible at picking up social signaling? But this is a seduction attempt. If you want to go to Paris, you should jump straight over ambiguity-land and say "what with the boyfriend and the mentor-mentee thing, I don't think that would be appropriate." If he is geniunely mortified and says "on I didn't mean that at all!" listen to your gut to decide whether to go.
LB, you yourself said in your first comment that you thought he was hitting on her; his intentions aren't mysterious, and what's more, they're being communicated in what's a standard way in American culture: wanna come to my place (in PARIS)?
well, OK then.
I guess the bottom line is that it seems pretty obvious that he's romantically interested, and given that, if she has no interest it also seems pretty obvious that she shouldn't accept an invitation to stay with him for free in Paris.
I guess the bottom line is that it seems pretty obvious that he's romantically interested
It seems like most people on this thread think this, but given NGNG's uncertainty and the evidence in her letter, I don't think it's so completely obvious, which is why NGNG is seeking advice in the first place. I think it's likely, and that NGNG's gut feelings about it are probably correct, but I don't think it's such a clear slam dunk.
I think what Giblets was trying to hint at was that maybe it's time for us to stop repeating the same piece of really obvious advice over and over. It's time to get a little more creative. I, for one, think she should cool his jets by mysteriously sending him bizarre pictures of wildlife, like maybe this or this.
his intentions aren't mysterious,
They are to her, and he's deliberately making them mysterious. If he wanted to find out whether they had a mutual interest in fucking each other, he could ask. In the US, under circumstances where she's comfortable saying no. He's not doing that. He's setting up an invitation that's professionally and socially reasonable (that is, if he invited a male grad student to do exactly the same thing, it wouldn't be terribly weird. It's not a dinner for two at a restaurant with gypsy violinists. And he knows she's romantically involved -- given that most people are at least serially monagamous, that gives rise to a presumption of lack of interest in other romantic invitations) in the hopes of making her feel obliged, or at least off balance enough, to have sex with him once she's staying at his place in Paris. (Or maybe he isn't, but if it really is a social invitation, than he's not injured at all.)
You're right about American culture. In American culture, once there's some possibility that he might be sexually interested, no matter how much ambiguity he deliberately creates, she's got an ethical/social responsibility not to do anything that could be construed as leading him on unless she's going to put out. That's really bogus, don't you think?
1. LB is back to being right about pretty much everything.
2. It is possible for men and women to be friends and enjoy each other's company even if one wants to sleep together and the other doesn't. It takes some degree of self-knowledge and social skills, but there's nothing inherently impossible about the idea that Professor X wants to sex NGNG but would be happy to spend a week in Paris in her company even if sex is off the table. That's not the likeliest possibility, but it's not impossible.
3. All the people saying that NGNG's gut is sounding alarm bells that should be heeded are also right.
192: I was thinking she could cool his jets by responding 'Oh, Chet and I would love to go to Paris!' But that first pic would pretty much do it for me.
193: "We could have done God knows what." This is not making them mysterious. Come on.
Perhaps she could hint that she will only put out for ridiculous amounts of [url=http://englishrussia.com/?p=851]freshly-made Russian cake art[/url].
she's got an ethical/social responsibility not to do anything that could be construed as leading him on unless she's going to put out. That's really bogus, don't you think?
No, not bogus. Reciprocal messages are being exchanged, along with (most likely) various gifts that are also messages, so neither party should be lying when they send their messages.
With the proviso that "I'm going to put out" is way too crude a realization to have at the beginning of the message-exchanging process..."romance is not off the table" would be the more relevant starting point.
What he's doing is a little bogus too though.
"We could have done God knows what." This is not making them mysterious. Come on.
Yes it is, or at least ambiguous. Because she can't reasonably say "Golly, Professor X, I don't feel that way about you" in response. He doesn't get to maintain plausible deniability in his approaches to her while still imposing an obligation on her to treat them as serious romantic advances. If he wants plausible deniability, she has no obligation to understand him. If he wants his advances to be treated seriously, such that accepting them puts her under some obligation to be open to a relationship, he can man up and make them straightforwardly. But he doesn't get to have it both ways.
198: What he's doing is a little bogus cruising for an emotional bruising though.
Or she could send him notes saying, "I've been going to some meeting, and I'm really interested in what the Reverend Moon has to say about marriage. What do you think?"
I'm surprised at the lack of cynicism. No one has said "This could be good for your career, and when will you get another chance like this? How bad could it be? You could shut your eyes and imagine Brad Pitt".
To me the two responses that might work are a.) politely saying no, with a hint that the potential advance is the reason, and b.) going and putting out. The a.) answer would allow him to say something like "Oh, no, you had the wrong idea entirely" or "Hey, too bad, but come by anyway". Being polite, friendly, and straightforward would minimize repercussions, though there's a chance he's a really shitty guy that that wouldn't work with.
But I just can't imagine showing up in Paris determined not to put out.
Besides right and wrong, realism is a factor here. Even if she has no obligation once she reaches Paris, if he thinks so, he presumably could do harm.
LB, if the question is whether his skeeviness absolves her, I think that's an interesting question and we can discuss that. But I think there's no doubt about what he's communicating (as for NGNG's question, see my 1 for my opinion of that) and my initial reaction is that it's not incoherent to talk about acting ethically even vis a vis a skeez.
201: Timbot suggested that option repeatedly.
In American culture, once there's some possibility that he might be sexually interested, no matter how much ambiguity he deliberately creates, she's got an ethical/social responsibility not to do anything that could be construed as leading him on unless she's going to put out.
Hey, look at that! I'll be back in six hundred comments and save myself the aggravation of arguing with someone's who is creating a strawman. Hey, or not. After all, LB is reasonable, precioussss.
This is not 'about some possibility, therefore we must yield to the man or be a dick tease.' This is a question about whether it's ambiguous. I am reading it as not particularly ambiguous, just not on a legal pad. If it is ambiguous, she's fine ethically. (I note none of us seemed to think it was ambiguous at first.) But if it isn't, I think she's better off with a quick 'hey I'm not interested in you in that way' than 'whee, paris was fun!'
And I had an experience like that once. A guy asked me out, having met my boyfriend. It never crossed my mind that it was a date. He'd met my boyfriend! How could he think I was available? It turned out to be really awkward. And I think if I'd suspected it was a date ahead of time, I would have been wrong just to go along with it instead of saying 'hey, wait a second', even if it would have been really fun to see the movie.
197: For my next birthday I want a cake shaped like a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills, and a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills. Just letting everyone know.
196/197: There's some amazing cakes in there, although the ones made using a printer are less impressive from a craft standpoint.
However.
I have a strong dislike of cake art due to the fact that people are then expected to eat the cake afterwards. No objections about that art-wise, but as I've noted before, fondant just doesn't taste good. I don't mind my cakes pretty, but the bottom line is they need to be scrumptious.
199 is exactly right.
202 assumes that he doesn't want her to come unless she's willing to sleep with him. That's not necessarily the case even if he does very much want to sleep with her.
Yeah, I couldn't imagine eating any of them. But I do love the idea of them. The roulette wheel cake is awesome.
Hypothetically this could be good for her career. I've heard of similar cases where it has been. In those cases the guys had a reputation for trading one kind of favor for another.
He doesn't get to maintain plausible deniability in his approaches to her while still imposing an obligation on her to treat them as serious romantic advances. If he wants plausible deniability, she has no obligation to understand him.
You're getting all law-of-the-jungle now, and in that sense what you're saying has a rough justice to it. But it's bad ethically and pragmatically. Bad pragmatically because the more she leads him to believe she might be interested, the more pissed he'll be when he finds she isn't.
199: He doesn't get to maintain plausible deniability in his approaches to her while still imposing an obligation on her to treat them as serious romantic advances.
He doesn't get to impose an obligation, period. And he has no plausible deniability in his approach. That note is as close to explicitly saying "wow, we could have totally fucked" as he could get without actually using the words.
I think there's no doubt about what he's communicating
I think this is bullshit, driven by a 'more cynical than thou' attitude. Given that he's giving her the creeps, my guess is the same as yours, but you need the creeps to get there, and giving people the creeps is not an unambiguous means of communication.
Imagine a different ATM letter:
A professional mentor who I'm friendly with has invited me to be a houseguest at his house in Paris, a location which is professionally relevant to our common academic field. We're socially friendly and I'm comfortable with him, and he knows I'm involved.
I didn't think anything of the invitation other than that it sounded like fun, but my mother says that any time a man invites a woman to be a houseguest unchaperoned, it means just one thing: SEX. That's silly, right? We're friends, and he knows I'm involved. I just wanted to check that we hadn't moved back fifty years socially when I wasn't looking. What do you think, Mineshaft?
The invitation simply isn't unambiguously romantic. We're guessing it is because we enjoy being knowingly cynical, and because she's feeling creepy about it. Given that's he's deliberately put her in an ambiguous situation, she's under no ethical obligation to interpret it as romantic -- he hasn't forfeited a right to be treated ethically because he's skeevy. But his skeevy behavior, if he is being skeevy, has created a situation where she really doesn't have the ethical obligation you're seeing.
Ethical obligations come from the actor who wants to be ethical, not from others. Viewing them as imposed by others is kind of grudging.
This is a question about whether it's ambiguous. I am reading it as not particularly ambiguous, just not on a legal pad. If it is ambiguous, she's fine ethically. (I note none of us seemed to think it was ambiguous at first.)
But she thought it was ambiguous, which is why she asked the question.
213: If that different letter were accompanied by the same type of "wow, would could we have done with all those bedrooms" note, yes, the invitation would still be unambiguous. Thoroughly so.
The invitation simply isn't unambiguously romantic.
Come on now, doesn't "older single dude invites younger grad student/colleague to his place in Paris" put us pretty firmly in the territory of "well, I guess it's not impossible that this isn't a come on."
Maybe some of the disagreement here is about the nature of the obligation. Does she "owe" him anything, at any point, no matter what she decides to do? Absolutely not. But she would still be getting down into the muck if she were to go while intending to act contrary to their implicit-but-obvious agreement.
On this specifically, "But he doesn't get to have it both ways."
I assume that's a normative statement, because it sure isn't descriptive. That's exactly what he gets because that's exactly why implicit-but-obvious norms of social interaction have come to be: for people to put themselves at risk while maintaining deniability, or a way out. Again, he's being skeezy. She shouldn't play his game.
216: Apo's made jokes like that to every woman on the site. Should we treat all social contact with him as presumptively sexual? (Apo responds: Of course!)
I think my strong response to this post is partially because I feel like this is the only way men who are attracted to me interact with me. No one says, "You seem interesting/attractive" or "I'd like to go out with you"; they encroach in ways that only give the vibe of sexual interest, always maintaining plausible deniability.
I was at the co-op tonight standing in a long, long line, and the guy behind me kept finding things to say to me, in a pointed way that made me realize he wasn't just being friendly. The things themselves were harmless, mostly comments about the slowness of the line, but there was some kind of nonverbal communication going on that I couldn't put my finger on. By the time we got to the end of the line, he would abandon his cart and stand across the narrow aisle from me, staring at me. It got creepier and creepier until finally I checked out my stuff and left.
It's not like I thought he was going to rape me. And it's not like I felt obligated to go home with him or something. It's that I got the sense that any response from me at all, the slightest nod of my head, was taken as an invitation to escalate. It wasn't flirty or attractive. It was encroaching.
A) I think a lot of men confuse encroaching for flirting. Back the fuck up, and take a hint.
B) Academics are the world's most intense encroachers.
In American culture, once there's some possibility that he might be sexually interested, no matter how much ambiguity he deliberately creates, she's got an ethical/social responsibility not to do anything that could be construed as leading him on unless she's going to put out.
I think that this kind of thing is probably less prevalent in American culture than most. I know for sure that in Japanese or Chinese culture there would be no possibility of mistaking the message, and the guy might end up being very insistent. My guess is that in Italian or Spanish or French or Russian culture the situation would also be clear. Scandinavia, probably LB's interpretation would work.
It's not just whether she has an obligation. It's whether, if she shows up and doesn't put out, the guy will be vengeful. And if she's in a job-poor PhD-rich field, she may need the guy at one level or another.
Also, never underestimate the horniness and crassness of old, ugly PhDs. At my medical school and my college there were lots of stories.
215: She asked the question about practical advice, too. And rewriting the letter to ignore the bits about how much fun Paris would be as they toured the cafes and salons, and about all the bedrooms, and the years of 'I think he has a crush on me', oddly enough makes a difference to what I think. Also, if we rewrite the Wodehouse letter to where he really likes the girl and thinks she's beautiful but is just nervous about sex, that changes my opinions, too.
As it turns out, sometimes the details are relevant.
I think this is bullshit, driven by a 'more cynical than thou' attitude.
LB, I don't pull out my McEnroe recording for just anything. There's no way you could phrase this situation that would make me think that he didn't want to get into her pants. And if you look at what he actually wrote: "it was a big mistake" "we could have done this and that" you'd have to be blind not to see it. I have no idea why NGNG had any doubt at all.
LB, don't accept the invitation to Apo's house! He's a fine man in many respects, but a cauldron of uncontrollable lust in other respects.
I assume that's a normative statement, because it sure isn't descriptive.
It's a normative statement, because people have been making normative (rather than simply pragmatic) claims about what her behavior should be. I will accept that an invitation of the form: "Let me show you Paris, darling, you and I can make beautiful music together there," imposes a social obligation not to accept unless you're at least open to the idea of moving forward into a romantic relationship. That sort of invitation imposes a social/ethical obligation.
I think it's really wrong to regard a deliberately ambiguous invitation as imposing the same type of social/ethical obligation.
I think this is bullshit, driven by a 'more cynical than thou' attitude.
You're a nut. Imagine telling that Buck you were taking a young male associate to Paris with you on your dime and on your vacation. Would he really say, "Remember to send a postcard!"
Or is this supposed to be a "willfully naive" con to pay him back in spades?
219: Okay, if there's a context of his being an extremely deft, self-deprecating over-the-top joker who has memorized the Internet, that would change the interpretation, yes.
With the existing letter I don't get that impression at all. 224 is exactly right.
That was a little bitchier than I meant, but seriously, this is sounding like the only way he could mean anything sexual is if he was following Antioch College's playbook. Most of my dating-confusion-interactions haven't been all that explicit.
Ok, now we're just niggling. I declare comity and universal love.
NGNG, you know the answer to this. What would you tell your best friend?
(in a sympathetic curious tone) How come you don't want to come to the conspicuous conclusion? What is stopping this from being a easy question for you? Do you doubt that you're really a grown-up that a professor could want to hit on? I was like that for a long time. Do you really really want to go to Paris, enough to hope that the offer is legit? You can totally have a trip to Paris, but maybe not this one. What's up?
Also, sorry for teasing you, early on.
Back to being bitchy, 226: But come on, all he said was music! If he'd said,
"....Next time you're in Paris, we should visit this nouveau jazz club where they invite the audience to play along. Since you are talented on the saxophone, and I play piano, we could make beautiful music together.
My mother thinks that's code for SEX. Am I back in the fifties, or is it impossible to enjoy an evening at a new concept club?"
I assume that's a normative statement, because it sure isn't descriptive
Gotta be jelly 'cause jam don't shake like that.
226: And yes, the invitation, despite being unambiguous, imposes no social/ethical obligation. I'm actually sort of serious in saying that if she were deft enough to bilk him without incurring his wrath, she should do it. It's just not practical is all.
Oh, you know what she should do? Start behaving like Audrey Tatou in Amelie, pulling quirky, whimsical, profoundly invasive romantic pranks. That should creep him right out.
Also, sorry for teasing you, early on.
But it was funny damnit.
Freaking Democrats, always apologizing.
'Deliberately ambiguous' is a polite fiction he's adopted because he wants to get her on his turf in hopes of relying on wine and wit and, what with the boyfriend, that's the only way to get the job done. And it's working: she wants to go, notwithstanding that the strings are obviously attached just out of sight.
How come you don't want to come to the conspicuous conclusion? What is stopping this from being a easy question for you?
That's exactly what I'm wondering.
I think 231 and also 236 get at what I was thinking when I said above that the letter writer seemed flattered by the attention. She appears to be sort of lingering in the question longer than she needs to if she had no ambivalence at all.
I have no idea why NGNG had any doubt at all.
There's the impenetrable "he can't really like me" force field, but I don't know if that is a factor here.
Freaking Democrats, always apologizing.
I know, but it isn't so fun when it is your confusing situation.
That dead (I hope) zebra photo is good, but I think if she really want to get the message across, she needs to send him this (SFW) video.
There's no way you could phrase this situation that would make me think that he didn't want to get into her pants.
You're still assuming that if a man wants to get in a woman's pants he must also prefer not to spend time with her if he can't. And that's bullshit. NGNG probably shouldn't go to Paris, but I'm going to assume that she's smart enough not to be asking the question if the situation were as obvious as you all are taking it to be.
And dammit, a woman should be entitled to assume that a professional friend respects and values her as a human being and will still want her company even if he can't have her as a lover. That may turn out to be wrong, but it's the appropriate default position.
There's the impenetrable "he can't really like me" force field, but I don't know if that is a factor here.
I'm guessing it's the "I can't put my finger on how I know he likes me" force field.
I don't think I'm assuming all that, NPH. I understand the point that a guy can be happy to have a hot young thing around, even if he doesn't get to sleep with her. That doesn't really bear on whether he wants to sleep with her, as far as I can tell.
entitled to assume that a professional friend respects and values her as a human being and will still want her company even if he can't have her as a lover
Absolutely, and there are lots of guys who know lots of polite and unambiguous ways to make this clear to their mentees. This is not one of those guys.
Absolutely, and there are lots of guys who know lots of polite and unambiguous ways to make this clear to their mentees. This is not one of those guys.
You can't be certain that he's not one of those guys until you're certain that he would still want her company even if he couldn't have her as a lover.
I'm only being pedantic with respect to you, ogged, to show that I can be a pedant to people other than B.
I don't think that's right, Ben. Aren't you assuming that a skeez who wants to sleep with her wouldn't also enjoy "just" her company?
245: How many of the people you actively want to sleep with do you genuinely enjoy the company of, even without any promise of sex? Aren't the two sort of mutually exclusive, unless you stop wanting to sleep with them?
I'm saying that it's entirely possible that this guy does know polite and unambiguous ways to make known to those mentees of his that he respects and values as human beings that he respects and values them, but that he doesn't respect and value NGNG.
At any rate, his skeeziness does not consist in his lack of knowledge of how to communicate his respect concerning NGNG.
Aren't the two sort of mutually exclusive, unless you stop wanting to sleep with them?
A peek into AWB's psychology.
Ok, gotcha, you really were being pedantic.
A peek into AWB's psychology.
God, no kidding.
I can't be sitting there with someone I know doesn't want to sleep with me, thinking the whole time "Hott. Oh fuck, hott" without feeling like either an asshole or a doormat. At least if there were the possibility of them wanting to sleep with me, it would be tolerable. But without that possibility? I can focus my affections elsewhere.
I can't be sitting there with someone I know doesn't want to sleep with me, thinking the whole time "Hott. Oh fuck, hott" without feeling like either an asshole or a doormat. At least if there were the possibility of them wanting to sleep with me, it would be tolerable. But without that possibility? I can focus my affections elsewhere.
People frequently change their minds, or so I used to tell myself.
There is frequent changing of minds, but not about us.
Yeah, constant simultaneous attraction and knowledge of rejection is a good reason for me to find somewhere else to be.
I'm not sure I could be attracted to someone who couldn't make up his mind whether he was attracted to me. Getting rejected by someone is kind of a deal-breaker for ever being attracted to them again.
Getting rejected by someone is kind of a deal-breaker for ever being attracted to them again.
Sounds about right to me. Which is why all the "nice guys" on the internets going on and on with the "why won't she realize that I'm The Man For Her instead of telling me she only likes me as a friend" seem so pathological.
250: So you're saying the only reason you can stand to be around any of us is we're all fugly to you?
246 was quite a bit broader than subsequent descriptions, in that it ruled out things like enjoying the company of a significant other's hot friends. I'll go back to thinking that you're exactly as crazy as I thought you were before, AWB.
Sounds about right to me. Which is why all the "nice guys" on the internets going on and on with the "why won't she realize that I'm The Man For Her instead of telling me she only likes me as a friend" seem so pathological.
Well, a lot of people make misguided efforts to soften the blow by making rejections seem conditional or uncertain, or continue to send hugely mixed messages because they like the continuing attention. Which I think can explain where some of the pathological behavior comes from.
I can't be sitting there with someone I know doesn't want to sleep with me, thinking the whole time "Hott. Oh fuck, hott" without feeling like either an asshole or a doormat.
+
Getting rejected by someone is kind of a deal-breaker for ever being attracted to them again.
So I'm not seeing how this precludes being attracted to someone, them telling you that they don't feel "that way" about you, and then the two of you being able to be friends. I.e they've rejected you, so you're no longer attracted to them, so you're no longer attracted to them and thinking "Hott, fuck hott" in their presence.
Crap, ignore the repetition in that last sentence. I need to get some sleep.
Getting rejected by someone is kind of a deal-breaker for ever being attracted to them again.
If only it were so simple.
257: Actively wanting to have sex with someone is different from being passively attracted to them. Don't you feel the difference? If I actively want to have sex with someone, I'm always looking for signs that they might be interested, glaring at them, unconsciously repositioning myself around them, being turned on by them. Thinking your SO's friends are pretty cute is different territory.
AWB is talking about desire in the directed-attention sense.
262: That is, if all you can think around someone is how bad you want to fuck them, and that person is obviously not returning your desire and wishes you'd concentrate on what they're talking about, you're an asshole. If that person cynically plays into your desire because they find it flattering (but ultimately repulsive), you're a doormat. Neither of these are healthy places to be, and there are always other people to focus lust on.
262: Glaring at them?
264: Absolutely.
If I actively want to have sex with someone, I'm always looking for signs that they might be interested, glaring at them, unconsciously repositioning myself around them, being turned on by them.
I just wish you'd quit doing that to me in the check-out line, AWB.
But yeah, I see the difference. But are you saying you're unable to go from actively wanting to screw someone to realizing it ain't gonna happen but you still like hanging out with that person for other reasons?
266: I've already answered that somewhere above, I think, but sure, I can be friends with someone who's rejected me, easily, by focusing desire elsewhere.
My wife got hit on the other day on the train. Her head is buried in a textbook, headphones on, etc. , specifically to avoid talking to random people. Some guy, after staring at her interminably, notices the university sweatshirt and asks her if she's a student. Follows that icebreaker with
"It's my day off. When it's cold outside I like to ride the train to Sandy and back." Sandy's a suburb, and the last stop on the light rail line. Basically saying he likes to ride the train from one end of the valley to the other.
Apparently "It's my day off" is the new euphemism for "I'm a hobo."
basically, AWB is an extremely proud person.
I guess it was this that was confusing me:
How many of the people you actively want to sleep with do you genuinely enjoy the company of, even without any promise of sex? Aren't the two sort of mutually exclusive, unless you stop wanting to sleep with them?
It seems to set up a strict dichotomy between "hott" and "pleasant to spend time with".
269: Too proud to beg, certainly. Plus, I'm aware I'm not attractive to everyone, but that's not my problem. Is my proper role to sigh and pine after people who don't want me?
270: I should have italicized the word "actively" there. I'm one of those people for whom that's a huge distinction.
I'm one of those people for whom that's a huge distinction.
Semites?
But after all the sex do you go home or tell them to go home to avoid all those non-sex related program activities like making/eating breakfast together, sharing the newspaper, etc.? Or do you grit your teeth through those parts until the next round of sex arrives?
273: You mean do I not hang out with people I fuck? Of course I do. Presumably, they haven't rejected me yet. If they rejected me, why, yes, I would go home.
The anti-wedgie underwear video is straight-up dope.
Just to clear up, AWB, you're talking about "people you are panting after" as opposed to "people you are with", nor the broader, mutually inclusive category "people you are hot for", right?
246 should not require a flowchart, people.
Do I want to have sex with him?
| |
y n
Does he Proceed as friends
want to
have sex with me?
| | |
y maybe n
Do it. Proceed flirtily. Go back, answer no.
We need a diagram! And possibly a flow chart. (I think you've been pretty clear, AWB.)
That would have been awesome had Unfogged not stolen my spaces. Fuck that noise!
274: No, I mean do you enjoy the company of the people you fuck? Because upthread you seemed to be saying that "actively wanting to have sex with" and "enjoying the company of" were kind of mutually exclusive for you, and that you could only enjoy the company of people if you no longer (or never in the first place) desired them.
Maybe a Venn diagram would work. In ASCII.
But anyway now I feel like I'm giving you the third degree, which is not my intention at all, I was just curious based on not really understanding what you meant upthread.
280: Presumably, if I'm actually having sex with them, some of that panting desire is alleviated, at least momentarily, no?
280: That is, the first part of your question is related to other completely weird shit. Yes, I have enjoyed the time I've spent with people I've dated. Am I famous for having made, like, really wise dating decisions and surrounding myself with brilliant, funny, charming, interesting, kind, thoughtful lovers? Obviously not. But yes, I've enjoyed that time.
283: Ah, I was misinterpreting "actively want to have sex with" as a category people are put into, as opposed to a state you're in that changes based on how recently you've had sex with them and other such variables.
I wonder if that anti-wedgie underwear comes in rufflebutt?
And again, sorry if I was grilling you, AWB.
Not grilling. I guess I think about people in terms of affect, not categories. My feelings about people change based on our interactions, and I guess I assume that's normal, but apparently, it's not, or at least for this crowd.
Woah. I just reread 288 in a snotty tone, to test it for potential misreading of tone, and it failed miserably. What I meant is, girls go like this, boys go like this, or something.
Well, there's no need to get all snotty about it, AWB.
It's normal, AWB, but your original statement at 246 was just confusing. If there's something distinctive about your attitude, it's that it sounds like you're on the prowl for sex partners, and if someone isn't going to pan out, you look elsewhere, whereas other people often find themselves at the mercy of their desires and keep wanting people even after it's clear they can't have them.
But anyway, I just hope that we can still be friends.
Anyhow, I have a date with my pillow. All this conversation is about how Bears go about pretending to have pride and dignity while staving off incipient multiple-pet-ownership and fantasizing about the platza guy. Goodnight.
Anyway, M/lls couldn't grill you to save his life. Bake you a little, maybe.
My feelings about people are permanently suspended in a gray mist of post-hipster irony, as I assume is normal for this crowd.
243: Dinner got in the way, which is maybe just as well because we don't seem to be communicating. What I'm suggesting is that it's theoretically possible for Professor X to: (1) really want to get into NGNG's pants and be making a moderately indecorous attempt to get there, but (2) be socially adept enough to avoid a clumsy awkward pass that would screw up the rest of the professional and personal relationship, and (3) like NGNG enough that his second choice is that she come and not sleep with him rather than not come at all. You're focused on whether he wants to sleep with her or not. I'm saying that it's also worth thinking about what his second-best outcome is.
AWB is just a different sort of animal than I am, but vive la difference.
incipient multiple-pet-ownership
It's not clear if and how animal hoarders could be treated, but the fines and jail sentences doled out by courts don't seem to work. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a convicted hoarder will almost always collect again.
292: Word.
So the next time I do some housesitting I'll definitely drop you a line. We can do god knows what.
NPH, I thought I granted your 3 in 243.
But now, to bed. In Paris.
301: OK, I'm not sure exactly where we're disagreeing, but I'm pretty sure we're disagreeing somewhere.
But now, to bed. In Paris.
Laydeeez.
Too proud to beg, certainly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfyFI-4ZsaE
133
"... Now, women should trust their guts, absolutely; but to advise someone not to do something uncomfortable by hypothesizing "what if he tries to rape you?" is just hysterical fear-mongering."
Any man is a potential rapist. And remember this would be in a foreign country with different laws and customs. The downside potential is large.
172
"LB, that's what confused me--he knows I'm seeing someone, so his invitation couldn't have been romantic, right? ..."
I hope this is a joke.
And what is his romantic history and current status?
Speaking as a one-time member of the Paris-apartment-having-community, could I point out that 99% of invitations of the form "oh you simply must come and stay with me in Paris, we'd have such a great time" are not only non-sexual, but actually non-inviteual, in that the invitation is extended in the certain knowledge and/or profound hope that it will never be taken up. In general "come and stay at my apartment in Paris" doesn't mean "come and shag me", it means "I've got an apartment in Paris, did I mention my apartment in Paris, I think this conclusively proves that I am cooler than you, what with my apartment in Paris and all, I'm living in Paris for a while, isn't that wonderful, apartment, Paris, Paris, apartment, me". I think if she shows up he will be pissed off.
The empirical evidence here is a lot more mixed than you lot think. Removing the writer's spin, the facts here are:
1. She reinitiated the contact, not him
2. He was house-sitting a couple of miles down the road from her and didn't bother to make the effort to meet up
3. In his after-the-fact email, he presumably drafted it, realised it looked like a pass, and then put the bit about lots of bedrooms in to stop it looking so.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are these the actions of a man who is desperate for sex? I think he's just being polite.
Anyway. My advice is go to Paris, don't shag him, then give up on your career in academia. Or alternatively, don't go to Paris, keep him on as a friend and give up on your career in academia. Perhaps have a frank conversation with him to inform him that you'd prefer to keep him on as a mentor and career advisor who you don't really trust, call "creepy" behind his back, but are happy to milk for advice and professional contacts (on the face of it this doesn't look like a particularly great deal for him, but he can write his own fucking letter to the Mineshaft), and then give up on your career in academia. The important thing is to give up on the academic career, because it is apparently very unrewarding and poorly paid.
306: the laws and customs of France, in so far as they apply to sexual assault, are not really all that different.
Wot 309 said. Only, in a strange reversal, I'd have used the word 'fuck' more.
308 also has a certain plausibility.
308 also has a certain plausibility.
It's the Witness for the Prosecution version where NGNG turns out to be an evil stalker and Prof McSkeevy is a decent, innocent man who dashed off the email in between making donations to orphanages and volunteering at the local shelter.
117: let's not tax the strawman factory
Genius.
Yay 234, 241, and 308 through 310. An analysis of the common factors argues that all people living in the contintental US are kind of strange.
The important thing is to give up on the academic career, because it is apparently very unrewarding and poorly paid.
While this is indeed the official spin, to be honest I make an appalling amount of money for someone who gets to write about whatever they like and take four or five months off every year.
314: The peasants with torches and pitchforks will be arriving shortly.
Speaking as a one-time member of the Paris-apartment-having-community, could I point out that 99% of invitations of the form "oh you simply must come and stay with me in Paris, we'd have such a great time" are not only non-sexual, but actually non-inviteual.
Also speaking as a one-time member of the Paris-apartment-having-community, I must respectfully disagree with D-Squared; I saw the possibility of enticing not-exactly-but-quite-possibly-willing female Francophiles to my abode as the principal reason for belonging to that community. (Tangentially related anecdote: as one of the hott girls from my HS was telling my wife at my HS reunion what a dork I was, she appended, "Of course, if I had known he was going to be living in Paris, I would have gone out with him.")
fondant just doesn't taste good
Marzipan, on the other hand, tastes divine, and makes equally beautiful cake decorations in the hands of the right confectioner. It does cost more, though.
Let is hereby be proved that Knecht Ruprecht hates men way more than I do.
Drats, BitchPhD has figured out my true identity: yes, it's true, I'm John Irving.
But seriously, folks, Mrs. Ruprecht, before she was Mrs. Ruprecht, once accepted a similar invitation under very similar circumstances, and it ended very badly. Nickel version: she arrives at the destination (Arab country), and her host/mentor informs her that the only way he was able to get her a visa was to pretend she was his wife, so she would be expected to play along with the ruse. It only got worse from there. Now I'm not saying NGNG's mentor is a psycho like this guy was, but this history does sensitize me to the occasional plausibility of worst case scenarios. For the record, she was able to escape (and I use that word advisedly) without being raped, but only through an elaborate subterfuge devised with the assistance of the psycho guy's sympathetic Indian chauffeur.
Oh, and m.leblanc, I didn't mean to imply that rape victims are literally on display in the university infirmary, but I think my point still stands.
316: hmmm, yeah, but having got such an apartment, you're not going to waste it on grad students from ten years back, are you? One might get the AIP in order to try and get a sniff of the birds who were a little bit out of your league back when you lived in Llangefni, but once you've got it, you realise you can actually do much better because hey, apartment in Paris. And as your GIs discovered when trading nylons for sex in postwar London, you can actually probably get almost as much from the promise of a stay in Paris as you can from the actual apartment itself. Hence, the convention of confining your invitations to either a) people so interesting and/or sexy that you don't mind schlepping round the fucking Monet waterlilies again with them for a week or b) people who you shrewdly assess aren't actually going to get it together to go there, but will neverthless feel sort of positive towards you for the invitation. The minute I heard that a female acquaintance wasn't very organised and didn't have a passport I would immediately be "hey wow! you must come and stay with me in Paris!". It's like a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk.
christ I'm in a childish mood today.
oh and I forgot to mention that given the analysis above, it's the height of arrogance for any invitee to assume that they're in group a) rather than group b). Therefore the polite thing to do is to never go and visit someone in Paris. Unless you actually don't like them and just fancy the free trip. Thankyou, my name is Miss Manners, goodnight.
DD, I bet if you offer to pay travel expenses, the calculus shifts pretty dramatically.
The minute I heard that a female acquaintance wasn't very organised and didn't have a passport I would immediately be "hey wow! you must come and stay with me in Paris!". It's like a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk.
No lie: In formulating my previous comment, I had originally written "I never thought I would say it, but evidently D-squared is a better man than I." And then something told me to delete that sentence. Now I know why I should trust my intuition.
I never thought I would say it, but evidently D-squared is a better man than I.
I thought we'd established in the previous couple of threads that you really do have pretty low opinion of men, based in part on your own self-history.
[P.S. less this be mistaken for nasty snark, it's gentle teasing.]
re: 320
Dsquared: you may be amused to hear that I just got an email from an academic department in Wales. The email was 2 lines of text. The official disclaimer appended to the email, in both English and Welsh, ran to nearly 30.
Gall y neges e-bost hon, ac unrhyw atodiadau a anfonwyd gyda hi, gynnwys deunydd cyfrinachol ac wedi eu bwriadu i'w defnyddio'n unig gan y sawl y cawsant eu cyfeirio ato (atynt)
If he's offering to *pay* for a plane-ticket to Paris, it is a romantic invitation.
If he wanted to find out whether they had a mutual interest in fucking each other, he could ask.
Well, not if he wants plausible deniability, and he might view it as humiliating to be turned down. 44-year-old Ph.D.s are rarely so crass as to be direct about that when they can leave a shred of ambiguity. Unfortunately, that shred may mean that he has interest in her beyond sexual and is trying to protect the friendship, or it may mean the opposite, and we don't have enough information from NGNG (and NGNG may not have enough information) to know which this guy is. So those who are saying to put the issue on the table and then reject the trip are, I think, making a mistake, unless NGNG wishes to risk the relationship to see how much she can guilt him into the trip to Paris anyway.
I also think, like many others here, NGNG is more open to the romantic invitation (and less tied to the boyfriend) than she thinks. Whether that is a good idea or bad idea depends on whether the guy is looking for a relationship or a fling, whether the guy is serious about the mentoring, how serious the boyfriend is, and how important the "not my type" factor is.
If he's looking for a fling, she might be able to fuck her way up and get a trip to Paris out of it; if he's looking for a relationship, it's potential trouble if it breaks up ugly.
If the guy is not serious about the mentoring, and only wants the sex, then NGNG is in an instable situation, and it's going to come crashing down eventually whether she fucks him or not: if she fucks him, it'll end and he'll have no further purpose for her; if she refuses, he'll resent her. Her only option is to keep juggling the polite flirtation and "keep missing" him at conferences so that his hopes are never quite crushed.
If the guy is a serious friend, and is only probing (heh) to see if that could lead to sex, and you're really hoping that he wants you to come to Paris anyway, then one possible polite deflection is "Thank you--I couldn't dream of asking you to pay for a plane ticket to Paris for me. And I also couldn't dream of going to a romantic city like Paris alone without my boyfriend, and I wouldn't want to impose the two of us in your small flat." You therefore preserve the plausible deniability (you're not turning down a romantic offer, because you're not acknowledging a romantic offer was made) and you're giving him the opportunity to demonstrate that his intentions were honorable (by saying, no, no, both of you come, please) and you're giving him an out of the awkward situation if his intentions are not honorable (by not explicitly asking for him to be a third wheel).
oooh, let's see how much Welsh I remember!
Gall y neges e-bost hon, ac unrhyw atodiadau a anfonwyd gyda hi, gynnwys deunydd cyfrinachol ac wedi eu bwriadu i'w defnyddio'n unig gan y sawl y cawsant eu cyfeirio ato (atynt)
I'm getting:
"This email message, and any attachments sent with it, may contain confidential information and is intended only for the use of the person to whom it is sent". (the bit in brackets is just because Welsh prepositions have gender).
326:
Yeah, that pretty much exactly matches the accompanying English. It goes on for quite a bit more.
Mae unrhyw farn neu safbwynt yn eiddo i'r sawl a'i hanfonodd yn unig ac nid yw o anghenraid yn cynrychioli barn [institution name]. Nid yw [institution name] yn gwarantu bod y neges e-bost hon neu unrhyw atodiadau yn rhydd rhag firysau neu 100% yn ddiogel. Oni bai fod hyn wedi ei ddatgan yn uniongyrchol yn nhestun yr e-bost, nid bwriad y neges e-bost hon yw ffurfio contract rhwymol
I have a little summer place in Elgin N.D. Any of the laydeez is welcome to visit me there. Few ever have had this kind of chance to experience that exotic town. I can show you around to the best places.
"Any opinion or view expressed is that of the sender only and does not necessarily reflect that of [the Uni/versity of Wa/les, I would guess]. [UC/NW] cannot guarantee that this email message or any of its attachments are free of viruses or 100% safe. Unless explicitly stated in the text of this email, this message is not intended to form any legal contract" (not at all sure about that last sentence.
I am glad to see that "neges e-bost" is the Welsh language's way of adapting to the 21st century.
OT: This may be of importance to some here. This happened to my old roommate's brother, who married a Japanese woman. Apparently all her relatives think he's pretending to be a 13-year-old girl.
hon yw ffurfio contract rhwymol
There's no Welsh word for contract?
re: 330
It happens to me. A lot of the Czech I know is laden with diminutives and 'cutesy' phrases. It's not specifically gendered as feminine. It's just the sort of Czech one would use speaking to a 3 year old. I was kidding with one of the Slovak girls in a local coffee place and she burst out laughing at the childishness of what I said. It was intended to be deliberately dumb Czech on my part but not that dumb.
re: 329
B/an/gor. The translation is pretty much bang on, again.
You know, I missed out on the wonderful experience of an academic career, but secondhand anecdotal experience and the reading of novels about academia, intellectual histories, and biographies have led me to conclude that the guy should be assumed to have sexual intentions (making up for the time he lost as a homely nerdy student). And also that he might well be capable of being quite amazingly mean, whether he gets what he wants or whether he doesn't.
The same data tell me that there are women (and boys) who are quite willing to play the game and some of them make it work for them, though our subject here clearly is not. For example, once in Paris she could negotiate some sort of specific payoff, or even use her charms to gain a lifelong whammy over the poor homely schlump. You have to use all the tools in your kit. (You want to know someone who slept their way to the top? Julius Caesar: "Every woman's husband and every man's wife". All of his affairs were calculated to get him something. )
On the other hand, being stuck in Paris broke with nowhere to stay does not strike me as fun at all, though I no longer am in the flower of my youth.
I guess that I'm surprised at the innocence here. Y'all still believe in True Love or some such shit. I'd never accept such an offer myself (and back in the day I could easily have wangled a few from certain gay poets), but look how I turned out. My impression has always been that academia is a Darwinian snakepit and a really wonderful place for people with the appropriate reptilian skills.
I won't pick sides on whether Professor McCreepy is in fact creepy, but I would add one additioanl bit of advice to NGNG. You rely on this guy for professional advice and support. If you haven't already line up at least one, preferably a few additional sources of professional advice and support. If this guy turns out to be a jerk, you're not left adrift at sea. If it turns out you were worried for nothing, there's still never any harm in having a little extra advice and support. I ran into issues with a mentor who had been the only serious mentoring relationship I'd developed in my field and finding myself suddenly adrift with no one to turn to for professional guidance really, really sucked.
329, 332: In Taiwan I heard of a guy who became quite fluent in Japanese by talking with his girlfriend. Japanese has a lot of gender markers (built-in ingratiation, flattery, humbleness, deference, cuteness, etc.) , though, and he couldn't use his Japanese in public because he talked like a girl.
For a brief time in college, I dated a German who seemed to have learned English by watching Some Like it Hot a billion times. He had this really old-fashioned vocabulary and way of making jokes.
Oh, I see that that was what the link was about. It's probably a common story.
"American men talk like girls".
Chinese isn't as much that way as Japanese, but I was told that one final particle (ne) was mostly used by women. It makes the preceding tentative, and it's used for suggestions, wheedling, and complaints.
re: 336
It's a bit of a cliché but I know a couple of Indian guys like that [who, oddly, I know from Prague]. In this case they've spoken English since childhood. It's not really a second language for them, but they speak it in a more formal register than Brits.
A French friend of mine is married to a Korean woman, and had the same experience. According to her, everything is gendered in Korean. Also, a man using the female-gendered formulations is presumed to be gay, as my French friend learned to his dismay.
Czech is gendered, but only in the standard way. Like German or Russian.
The constructions themselves aren't really gendered depending on who is speaking.
There's no Welsh word for contract?
yes there is; it's "contract". The Romans conquered Wales at about the same time as England. "Cytundeb" (agreement) would be a real purist or Nashie's term, but in a legal context you'd want to be absolutely clear.
Has Ban/gor opened up a new philosophy department? That would be rather jolly - I remember when the old one closed down.
re: 342
Nah, this was in my day job. The one that pays and enables me to work on the doctorate [or rather the revisions to the actually-already-completed doctorate].
338- That's interesting, John. I'm a Mandarin speaker and hadn't realized that about (ne) particle, but it's true. While I'm mostly trained by women, I've never been told of possessing any feminine phonetics (which would certainly have occurred).
When I attended a Japanese function, I borrowed a language CD, having a female instructor, and learned some phrases. I was stunned when told that I spoke these very generic phrases 'like a woman'.
could I point out that 99% of invitations of the form "oh you simply must come and stay with me in Paris, we'd have such a great time" are not only non-sexual, but actually non-inviteual,
That, as I understand it, is not the form of the invitation. It's "let me cover the cost of your trip to Paris, where you can stay with me in my place." If you think that's the same as a std. non-inviteual...well, why not save time and just post your bank account number and any necessary authorizing information here?
OT: Is it just me or has keeping up with all the comments here gotten noticably more difficult in teh last few weeks?
It's the loss of blood slowing you down, Brock.
I know we're past this now, but dsquared is so right about the non-inviteual thing. Every time I mention to someone that I'm from Cairo, they're all "oh gosh that is so very interesting and don't you know I was obsessed with mummies for approximately 10 minutes when I was six years old and also wouldn't it be amazing to visit the pyramids?"
And I say "oh yeah you should come! It's totally great!" If it's someone who's at least kind of a friend I'll say some bullshit like 'we could stay with my dad' or whatever.
Of course, when I go home I don't want to go to the pyramids, I mostly want to lay around and have people make me kofta.
Luckily, no one's ever taken me up on my faux offer.
348: Weirdly, people do this with Kansas, too. I think it's a NYC way of trying to sound down with the gente. The more bourgeois you are, the more likely you are to say, "You absolutely must let me come and stay with your charming Baptist parents in Kahnses! We'll ride horses and go fishing and eat smoked meats with sauces on them and sing hymns around the piano!"
342: Parties make agreements; courts make contracts.
Yeah. Although I actually do want to go to Kansas, but it's cause my best friend is from there and I think it would be fun to do a road trip. After you know someone long enough, you want to see their home, you know? At least I do, anyway.
Elgin, N.D. is heaven on earth, you know. You're not hemmed in by trees and buildings and mountains. Nothing but dirt as far as the eye can see!
One of my ex's tenants was a North African who kept getting sent to Kansas to give lectures, and he fell in love with it. I was sort of horrified, imagining the kinds of cultural misunderstandings they'd make about him. He's Berber, not Arab--Kansans think of Africans as divided into "black" (the kind who need missionaries) and "brown" (the kind who are lost to Satan). But he said everyone was really sweet there, and asked a lot of interested questions, invited him to their houses for dinner, and took him horseback riding. He dreams of one day moving out to rural Kansas with his Italian wife (who, of course, is all "no fucking way") and their kid.
I think it's a NYC way of trying to sound down with the gente.
Eh, it doesn't have to be insincere and condescending; it can be a genuinely touristic impulse.
it can be a genuinely touristic impulse.
It can also be a lot of fun for the tour guide, inasmuch as you can give your city mouse friends most exaggerated picture possible of how rustic your hometown is.
Whenever I had my Ivy League classmates visiting, I would be sure to take them to the honky tonks where I just barely felt safe entering, to make sure they would have a ready stock of "You wouldn't believe this redneck place we went into!" stories adequate to last out their college years. One time, we even got stopped by the sheriff--a story that my friend still tells rapturously 20 years later.
Right. Now, I can see it being kind of annoying having your hometown treated as a tourist attraction, but as long as I have to put up with it everyone else can suffer too.
constructions themselves aren't really gendered Past participles differ with the sex of the speaker, not the interesting sort of subtle difference with diminutives you pointed out earlier, explicit rather than subtle error is possible.
There's also a tone of voice that kicks in for some CZ women sometimes-- a theatrical pleading whine. To me it sounds declasse, and makes me suspicious of the speaker forever after, a sort of female equivalent of say fratboys talking black to show solidarity.
The thing that most amazed my sister's New Jersey boyfriend was the sporting good store with rifles lying out for examination and no one watching them.
I've also seen a liquor store standing open with no one behind the till while the guy ran over to get lunch. Twice.
We have lots of social capital here, but anyone's who's lived in a small town knows that there can be too much social capital.
I guess I feel like tourism itself is a pretty gross impulse, insofar as it is the seeking out of exactly what one expected. NYC tourists are disgusting to NYers because most of them have zero interest in doing anything that people who live here know might be exciting and fun. When friends visit and want you to show them around, it feels like visiting, not tourism. And when my mom and I travel around to various cities, we try to avoid having certain expectations; we just show up and ask the locals what they eat and where they go for fun.
I've gotten a similar reaction to mine about Kansas from Nigerians when I tell them I want to visit Lagos. They're like, "What could you have possibly heard about Lagos that's positive? Aren't you just going to see how awful it is?" And then they discourage me from ever going.
353- Without assigning any commentary to the incredibly complex issues US race and class relations, it's always interesting to me to see DC neighborhoods as some of the most segregated I've seen, and my Mom's Omaha hometown, while no United Nations, more ethnically diverse than most can imagine.
"If you visited my country you would not like it". Topic sentence by a Qatari for a basic writing class.
If No Guts No Glory has contacts in Paris---family, friends, institutional support, some knowledge of French, whatever---then it's just barely thinkable to chance the trip. If things went bad and she'd be stuck, lost, unable to speak the language, maxing out her credit card to find a hotel room (even the worst hostels are expensive in Paris), there's just no way she should go.
As a former member of the apartment-in-Paris-having contingent, I also issued invitations of this sort to all and sundry. But I do think it's a little different when the apartment is a pied-a-terre (ie, the trip would be a pleasure jaunt), and when the invitation (gasp!) includes travel expenses. And yeah, many of the people who came to stay with me ended up either in my bed or in my roommate's bed.
We're repeating ourselves, I guess. But there are always new people at Unfogged to laugh at our old stories!
re: 357
That's grammatically beyond me. I am at the basic 'point and use noun' stage with occasional forays into verbs and adjectives. I understand a lot more than I can actually say, though.
re: the wheedling tone. I am envisaging, "miláaaaaačkuuuuu, prosiiiiiiim".
That's it, alright, though it gets used in offices and shops for completely impersonal interactions as well. Yuck.
Generously, maybe it's a vestige of courtesy, though the women that use it associate with casual rudeness in my mind; holding up the cup with extended pinky while belching.
holding up the cup with extended pinky while belching.
Awesome.
re: 366
There's also a brusque 'kde muj pantofle?' tone used by men. Woman, fetch me things.
The Chinese ne is combined with a wheedling, whingeing way of drawing out vowels too.
CC in 321: DD, I bet if you offer to pay travel expenses, the calculus shifts pretty dramatically.
Did he offer to pay? I don't remember. Or did he just offer free lodging once there?
She showed up and identified herself as such. But you're right, the original letter was ambiguous.
I once went to summer camp in Yorkshire (on Ilkley Moor, b'ahtat) and there was a Welsh groundskeeper who tried to teach me the really long name of the lake, the one that's abbreviated "llan whar golly gotch" (pardon). I got the whole thing down, but forgot it soon after.
I've gotten a similar reaction to mine about Kansas from Nigerians when I tell them I want to visit Lagos. They're like, "What could you have possibly heard about Lagos that's positive? Aren't you just going to see how awful it is?" And then they discourage me from ever going.
Don't visit Lagos unless you're there for (very lucrative) business.
Seriously, it isn't anything like Kansas.
Don't visit Lagos unless you're there for (very lucrative) business.
Oddly enough, I got a very interesting business proposition from there just the other day.
I've gotten a similar reaction to mine about Kansas from Nigerians when I tell them I want to visit Lagos. They're like, "What could you have possibly heard about Lagos that's positive?"
That's sort of how Alif Sikkiin reacted when I mentioned that I wanted to go to Newfoundland.
I'd actually be interested in seeing Newfoundland, too. I saw a documentary sometime from the 1960s about traditional culture there and was gobsmacked how they all sounded like they were from Cork/Waterford/Tipperary and were doing the exact same traditional set dancing. Also, I arrogantly believe that Canadian author Tan/ya H/uff actually gets the "I'm after doing X" idiom wrong in her books with a Newfie character and would like to confirm it one way or the other.
378: The east coast is beautiful, and everyone does sound Irish. I stayed at a b&b/gentleman's farm/petting zoo, with ponies and goats and guinea fowl, and the neighbor's little boy dragged her over every morning. She said "He's mad for the rabbits." I can't remember anyone saying they were after doing anything.
Unfogged meetup in Newfoundland!
Only if Emerson promises not to make fun of the natives for their colourful customs and quaint speech.
It's perfect for Emerson: real estate is even cheaper than Elgin, ND. Parents of a colleague of mine bought a beachfront house for $8,000 Canadian. They're just going to sit back and wait until global warming turns it into the next Hilton Head.
I wouldn't feel safe ridiculing them face to face. Newfoundland is where even the beauty queens are two-fisted barroom brawlers.
The father of an old friend ran one of Newfoundland's national parks some time ago, and claimed that they thought of national parks primarily as places to throw their Screech bottles and other trash. Possibly a biased report.
Possibly the oldest English-speaking settlement in the Western hemisphere. It's one of those places people would leave if they could, because it's hard to earn money there, but for the same reason they can't afford to leave.
Yeah, but Newfoundland doesn't have the spectacular North Dakota landscape.
Yeah, it's the poorest province in Canada and there's a lot of (justifiable) resentment against the mainland.
Rex Murphy in response to a Margaret Wente column ("Oh Danny Boy, Pipe Down") where she called Newfoundland "a vast and scenic welfare ghetto."
If you want to meet Newfies, go to Alberta. It's not that they can't leave. Plenty live in Alberta and get jobs. It's that ideally, they don't want to. So many Newfies will live and work in Alberta for nine months of the year, then go home and fish for the other three (and collect unemployment the whole time, but that's a separate issue.)
and collect unemployment the whole time, but that's a separate issue
And they have more babies just to get a bigger welfare check! And they eat t-bone steaks and drive Cadillacs.
Or it could be that there's a loophole in the employment insurance law that doesn't count income earned in Alberta.
When I was in school the older textbooks used to show "The Nine Provinces and Newfoundland," with it in a different colo[u]r. Joey Smallwood, the Premier who arranged and led the unification, was a political figure in my childhood.
I've never been there but like every Canadian I've met lots of people from there. I think of it as a very Irish place. In WWII, Newfies served in the British, not Canadian armed forces. In the Army, this meant the food was a lot worse. In the Navy, it meant more modern equipment; six-months' delay meant the Germans probably had a detector for what the Canadians were using, like radar, not for what the British & Americans were. The submarines were taking a bigger toll on Canadian-protected convoys, a pattern unknown to the participants at the time, I think. The fighting was just offshore, in the St. Lawrence Estuary; my mom and dad would see the banged-up survivors, if there were any, within hours in Halifax. No medivac in those days.
Newfies will live and work in Alberta for nine months of the year, then go home and fish for the other three
This reminds me of a great joke about a similar migration pattern from West Virginia to the Charlotte, NC area, but it's only funny when told with the appropriate Appalachian accent, so I will have to reserve it for the next meetup.
