“My girlfriend, ‘Wendy,’ and I have been living together for seven years. She has a daughter, ‘Ariel,’ 18, who recently graduated from high school. Ariel and I always got along great, but I liked her more than I liked her mother, and I feel terrible about it.
A few years into our relationship, Wendy started neglecting her health and hygiene, put on weight, wouldn’t exercise, and after a while I was no longer attracted to her. All the while, Ariel started to look great, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I saved all my passions for Wendy, but honestly I was thinking about Ariel the whole time. Ariel and her mother never got along. Her mother was jealous of our relationship.
When Ariel was 15, I suggested sending her to boarding school. She loved the school, and I hate to say it, but another reason I wanted her to go there was because I wanted to have a relationship with her, and I hated myself for it.
I visited Ariel a few times at school. Wendy was very jealous and suspicious of Ariel for dressing provocatively. I was visiting Ariel at her school right after she turned 18, and she came on to me. Now that she is 18, she’s been telling me that she wants to have sex with me before she goes off to college.
I confess, I am almost ready to take her up on it. I’d be breaking no laws. If I left Wendy, I wouldn’t suffer. Would it ruin Ariel’s life or cause her trouble later on if we have this relationship now? We won’t be living together or dating, and she’s looking forward to heading out of state to go to college soon, and I expect she’ll be dating a lot when she gets there.”
—From “Not Really Stepdad” via “Ask Amy,” Washington Post, 11 September 2017
Welcome to our latest Bad Advice column! Stay tuned every Tuesday for more terrible guidance based on actual letters.
Dear Not Really Stepdad,
First of all, you deserve some major kudos for not sexually assaulting your teenage stepdaughter when you totally had the chance. You are seriously an A+ stand-up guy, and it’s important to recognize how thoughtful and responsible you were every moment that you didn’t rape a child, something almost anyone else would have done in your circumstances, especially if the child was dressed “provocatively,” which like, come on, child! Try a little harder not to get creeped on by a man whose job description literally includes parenting you, a thing almost anyone else would have confused with having a sexual relationship with you! What a lucky kiddo she was to have a man around who didn’t rape her even though she failed to bury herself in a giant burlap sack in order to shield your helpless adult man boner from the literal fact that she exists as a corporeal human on planet earth.
So, obviously you’ve got a big heart, but it’s led to a bigger problem: Should you reward yourself for not raping this child with some not technically raping this child? Good news! Everything that isn’t technically illegal can’t possibly have negative consequences, so you are totally clear to have sex with your stepdaughter!
Bad Advice On Shift-Key Mutiny And Wedding Cruelty
Since you’re attracted to her, you have no obligation to treat this girl like a member of your family whom you’ve been tasked with raising into a happy, healthy adult person who is encouraged to make good decisions and take care of herself. Guiding her away from an abusive relationship with a sexual predator might be your job in another universe, where having an orgasm in the vicinity of your stepdaughter wasn’t objectively more important than seeing her develop mutually healthy relationships with people her own age and embark upon her journey into young adulthood without the baggage of being sexually abused by her stepfather, but we don’t live in that universe — we live in this one, where if you don’t have an orgasm in the vicinity of your stepdaughter, you’ll face the awful prospect of having to find someone your own age, who isn’t related to you, with whom you can establish a consensual sexual relationship. No boner should have to endure that shame, and no man should be forced, against his will, not to have sex with literally anyone he wants to have sex with regardless of who they are or whether they are emotionally or psychologically capable of consenting to sex.
“Love your column and your advice; however, after this week’s column I had to Google the term cis-man (maybe I don’t get out enough), and when I read the definition, I thought, Seriously?! Isn’t there enough nomenclature out there that cis-people can be identified simply as a man or a woman? Am I wrong that it implies that there are more transgender people than those who are comfortable in the sex they were born into, so they need to identify specifically with cis?
Frankly, I don’t care how anyone identifies — your sexual preferences have nothing to do with whether I like you or not! In fact, I’d be just as happy not knowing, because I just don’t care. Am I wrong that it seems we are bending too far in the opposite direction to make up for persecution in the past, to the point where the majority of us will have to refer to ourselves as non-LGBTQ?”
— From “LGBTQ…BGHMNHGRESDFE?” via “Dear Prudence,” Slate, 29 August 2017
Dear LGBTQ…BGHMNHGRESDFE?
The gay trans army grows ever closer to the collective heterosexual doorstep every day. Every time someone uses a word to describe a person who identifies with the sex they were assigned at birth, the gay trans army glows with an incandescent force, ever strengthened by the cruel prospect of oppressing others with the existence of adjectives. But for the brave objections of people like you — people who nobody fucking asked but who went out of their way to publicly object to the mere existence of words that they absolutely do not care about even a little bit — we might already have been overtaken by the glittering front lines of the gay trans cavalry, thirsty to run roughshod over anyone who dares fail to loudly announce the circumstances of their birth, as all members of the gay trans army long to do.
But the gay trans army is stealthy, and it’s already swinging the big, gay trans pendulum toward the inevitable: requiring all people who don’t identify as “LGBTQ” to identify themselves as “non-LGBTQ,” the precise modern equivalent of the widespread, centuries-old social ostracization of people based on their sexuality or gender identity, the sexual assault and abuse of people because on their sexuality or gender identity, the medical abuse and assault of people because of their sexual or gender identity, and the physical assault and murder of people because of their sexuality or gender identity. It’s great that you don’t care about the fact that “cisgender” exists as a word that people can use to describe themselves and that you wrote a letter to the whole internet announcing your lack of interest in the word or what it means or anything about it, but the gay trans army does care, and they are coming — at any and all moments — to force you to use it. And also to watch Steven Universe.
“When you treat someone to a cup of coffee at an expensive coffee shop, should they choose a smaller size?”
— Via “Miss Manners,” 15 September 2017
Reader,
They should choose the smallest size that they can reasonably carry while licking your boots.
Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.
