I think often about culture because I’m so often outside it. I am in a culture that is a guess culture (Midwestern) and one that is even more a guess culture (Taiwanese). When my parents were here, my father would ask me I wanted to eat whatever they were eatting–like special delicacies such as mooncakes. Which I love, but cannot eat. I would explain this to him, but he did not seem to grasp it. He would sit there with a stony look on his face, then say, “You don’t want it?”
It was rude for me not to eat it in Taiwanese culture, but I can’t eat it. I can’t eat gluten or dairy. I was reading a thread on Ask A Manager about food and someone said that if they were offered something they couldn’t eat (because of allergies), they would eat it to be polite and just suffer later.
The askers in the crowd just could not understand it. In this weekend’s thread (or maybe the weekday open thread or even an old thread), someone said that they were glad when people said no and meant it. That kicked off this whole thread about ask vs. guess culture. And it reminds me of an incident in my Taiji class. One of my classmates was a pastor’s wife from, I want to say Alabama. She was talking about a church social she planned that everyone was enthused about, but only one person showed up. She voiced her frustrations, and my teacher who is also very ask culture commiserated with her. I interjected and asked my classmate what her parishioners actually said when she told them about the get-together. She said, “One said yes, a few said they had to check their calendars, others said they had to talk to their husbands. But they all said it sounded interesting!”
I told her that a straight-out yes is a yes, but anything else is a no. “I’ll ask my husband” is a no. “I’ll check my calendar” is a no. “That sounds great!” without a yes is a no. That’s the culture where I live, and while it can be frustrating to outsiders, it’s not any more mysterious than ask culture. Once you realize this simple truth, it can make life much easier.
I am a weird hybrid of the two. I can handle the ‘anything but a yes is a no’, but I really don’t like the ‘you have to demur three times until you can say yes’ bit. In part because I can eat what I can eat, and I can’t eat what I can’t eat. I’m not going to make myself sick because of culture.
That’s where my anarchy streak kicks in. I don’t hate all rules. I don’t even hate most rules. But I don’t like rules that harm, and these kinds of rules do harm people–usually thoes with the least social capital. I do get that there is lubricant to be had for eating together, but the problem is that anything that is a social norms can go from being a welcoming thing to a gate-keeping thing.
That’s the problem with rituals and traditions. It’s easy to go from what they are supposed to mean to a rigid expectation of how things have to be. Then you lose the meaning of the tradition itself. There were two questions on the weekend thread at AAM about wedding invites. The first was about an evite from someone she didn’t really know. She wanted to know if she could just ignore it. She said it felt like a cash grab (later in the thread). One person agreed with her (that it felt like a cash grab), but other people admonished her for being too cynical. They said she should just say no and move on with her life.
I agree that she should give a polite no and move on with her life, but I also agreed with her that it probably was a gift grab. Or a polite thing. Like someone who thinks they have to invite everyone within their realm (online and off) no matter how tangential or tertiary.
I will just say that I don’t get weddings. The actual event, I mean. And, yes, I understand what a wedding is and why it happens. I jsut don’t understand how it became warped into the day to end all days. Even when I was little, I hod no desire to play wedding or to plan mine. I found out when I was older that this was a thing. Little girls planning their weddings, I mean. In fact, I gather that’s a big part of Bridezilla behavior–women who had a rigid idea of what their weddidng day should be, something they’ve nurtured since they were little girls.
The second wedding invite question was–well, there was actually three. The second was from a woman who was invited to a cousin’s wedding–without children. The LW and her sister were invited. They both have children. They didn’t want to leave their kids at home overnight with someone (they had to drive several hours to the wedding), and they didn’t know anyone where they were going who could watch the kids. Someone suggested the LW and her sister have their partners watch the kids while the sisters went. That made the most sense to me. The LW said the partners would be sad to be left behind. I mean, yes? But the alternative was that nobody went. Was that better?
The third wedding invite issue was someone who prefaced her comment by saying she and her friends had done a big splashout for a couple when they had their first kid. The couple were older. Then they decided to get married (living in a different city than the LW). Which, fine. But then they decided to have an after-wedding party at a nearby bar, which also fine. Until the LW and her friends realized the couple expected them to go to the after-wedding party, even though it was TBD and in a popular city. The LW asked if she should tell the ‘hard truths’ (for the group) when she says no to the invite.
Across the board, people said she should just decline without saying anything for the group. More than one person said she should just say no. One person, though, said that would be rude if she wanted to keep relations with the person and should fluff it out with something like, “Becasue of how late it starts and the travel situation. I can’t make it.” Other people countered, saying it’d be ruder to make up excuses or that it opened up a way for the couple to try to change things for the LW’s convenience.
I could tell that the one saying it was rude just to say no was from the Midwest. I completely agree with the others. Just a no was all that was needed and ignore the subtext.
I don’t get the wedding thing at all. I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. I know I already said that ,but I wanted to reiterate it. I have a big issue with the wedding industry complex, and I don’t want to give them one red cent. Even if I ever wanted to commit to someone for the rest of my life, I would not have a wedding.
There are so many things about society that I just don’t get. I’ll talk more about them later.