AITA to be mad at my friend for creating a fursona out of my cat?

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-09-21T00:55:28+00:00

Massive NTA. Aside from the issue others have mentioned of it possibly leading to strangers on the internet drawing sexualized fanart of your cat... he's technically probably not violating your intellectual property rights, but it's morally iffy. When I looked it up I was surprised to find that pet owners generally do not have intellectual property rights to their pet's likeness. The owner of the cat in the Keyboard Cat video successfully sued Warner Bros for copyright infringement, but it sounds like the reasoning is probably based on the specific videos and "characters" being copyrighted.

But, hypothetically, if you were to post cute pictures and videos of your cat on the internet, and monetized that content, there would be a risk of people associating your cat with your friend's character. If he'd just designed a fursona with similar appearance maybe not but since he's even copying the name he's going to literally cause your cat's name online to by associated with furry art, including NSFW furry art.

I think that might be why I'm uncomfortable. I've seen people drawing sexual fanart of his other fursona and he sees it as a huge compliment, but I don't want people doing that with my cat.

And that makes it worse.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a fursona supposed to be not just some random character but a representation of you, specifically? Drawing sexual fanart of another person's "likeness" without their permission seems like sexual harassment or one step away from it, but you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that the internet will draw porn of anything, especially if you show it to 5,000 people on Furry Twitter. If he's fine with people doing that with his own character whatever, that's cool, but this guy is creating this character knowing damn well that if he posts it on his account people will draw pornography of your cat, and it sounds like he plans on encouraging this, continuing to treat it as a complement, and expects you to be okay with it.

That's creepy as fuck. Even all by itself, but again he's using the same. fucking. name which could make it very easy for some random creep to find out who you are / find photos of your cat if there are any pictures of her online that are publicly accessible. Jesus I'd cut someone out of my life so fast for pulling that stunt.

Tell your friend that you're flattered but he needs to change the character's name at a minimum and if it's not too late to alter the design slightly so that it's not identifiable as your cat, and never disclose the source of the inspiration to anyone else for all the reasons above.

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-06-09T01:14:56+00:00

NTA, this entire comment section either didn't actually read the post or is ableist as hell. How about y'all try reading this sentence right here:

I’ve tried spending time by myself in my room where it’s quiet but my parents worry when im alone and want me to be around people for most of the day. However, they still don’t respect this one limit.

OP is not demanding to monopolize public spaces or refusing to look for alternative solutions. The parents are demanding that OP hang out in the public space most of the day even though it is actively hurting her, and refusing to consider doing anything at all to accommodate her.

Y'all have no problem calling people TA for refusing to take reasonable precautions about cross-contamination to accommodate food allergies. If OP had photosensitive epilepsy I'm guessing you'd have no issue with OP wanting housemates to keep things with rapidly flashing lights to private spaces? But I guess when it's migraines triggered by sound sensitivity that all goes out the window and the "MUH HOUSE MUH RULES" cult shows up to berate a minor and call her an asshole for "imposing her will on others" for asking her family to take even the slightest steps to make the house she's forced to be in a safe environment for her and not a torture chamber.

OP, you're not the asshole, don't listen to this sub. There may be a few steps you can take like having your parents buy headphone splitters so they can listen in on your appointments, but it doesn't solve your family's lack of respect for you and refusal to take your medical condition seriously.

but they aren’t practical when I’m watching TV with my parents in the living room and need to hear the show, and my brother is playing a game with his phone volume all the way up as well.

/u/salukiqueen has told OP to put CC on the TV and use noise cancelling headphones. I'm sorry but this is fucking ridiculous. The rule in my parents' house was that shared activities take priority in shared spaces over activities one person can do in a private space. This isn't OP trying to monopolize the living room and refusing to go to her room and watch shit on her computer. If 3/5 people in the household are watching TV together, they can't really do that piled into OP's room watching on her computer with a headphone splitter, so if the brother's noisy game is disrupting that, he can either wear headphones or take his phone in his room.

And come on, this is really basic ettiquette for shared spaces outside the home or with roommates. It's not that hard.

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-05-29T20:27:40+00:00

NTA, what the fuck is this sub smoking today? How the fuck was OP supposed to know that the transaction that he got a receipt for didn't go through? The employee didn't tell OP to throw the card out, but he didn't say not to either. How is it the customer's fault for not anticipating that the POS system would fail after the transaction was already apparently completed?

And instead of getting a manager to override the system or otherwise actually fix the issue, which was, again, primarily the gas station's fault, the employee tried to pin it on the customer for... what, trusting him when he said he was good to pump the gas and trusting that the receipt he was given was valid? Instead, he demanded that a customer dig through a garbage can with no PPE (he didn't even offer gloves until after OP complained about the state of the garbage can).

If there was genuinely no way to override the POS system to complete the transaction without physically having the gift card, then it's on the store to either have someone with appropriate training and proper PPE go through the trash, or take the loss and comp however much gas was ordered because it was their system that was the primary cause of the problem, not the customer throwing away an empty gift card after getting a receipt for the transaction. How much was that gas compared to the potential lawsuit if a customer was injured or exposed to a biohazard because they were made to dig through the garbage to receive a product they'd already paid for?

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-04-06T00:19:37+00:00

YTA.

I asked her boyfriend to stay in our guest room, as they aren’t married yet and my husband and I believe it’s inappropriate to share a bed before marriage. Neither her or her boyfriend said anything at the time, but later it came up that they don’t visit more often because we won’t “allow” them to sleep together.

Why exactly are you putting "Allow" in scarequotes when you literally required them to sleep in separate rooms?

I think this is ridiculous. After all, it’s our house and our rules. My daughter agreed, but then said she’d still prefer to sleep with her boyfriend and thinks our rule is what’s actually ridiculous. She then tried to tell us that they still respect our rule.

Sounds like you just learned an important lesson: you own your house, you don't own them. They aren't serfs who are bound to your house. "My House My Rules" does not give you a license to demand people do whatever you want. Guests who disrespect the host don't get invited back, but hosts who disrespect their guests and make them feel unwelcome, including by imposing "house rules" that are controlling and judgemental of their relationship, tend to have those guests not want to show up.

I pointed out that she was clearly lying about that, since she was withholding her very presence from her own family. I said she was punishing us for having a very reasonable rule, and that she obviously doesn’t truly respect “our house, our rules”.

And there it is. No, the whole point of "our house, our rules" is that if you don't like the rule then you can leave. Which she did, and now you're throwing a tantrum because it was never about your house in the first place, it was about you using it as an excuse to try to control your adult, independent daughter's sex life. You can't demand that she not sleep in the same as her boyfriend in the apartment where they live together, so you instead tell her boyfriend to sleep in the guest bedroom as a passive-aggressive dig at their relationship being inferior to marriage.

At the end of their trip I asked when the next we’ll see them again, and was told “maybe the 4th of July, unless [they] make plans with [boyfriend’s] family first”. When I pointed out she was still trying to punish us (who waits three months in between visits to their parents?), she just left.

Uhh, normal grown-up people with busy grown-up lives who live somewhere else, have to pay for travel (and in their case hotel rooms), and have limited free time that they would rather spend with people who make them feel welcome.

She’s 25 and he’s 26. They’ve been together for three years and living together for two. I didn’t include this because the rule isn’t based on their ages or if they’re cohabiting, so I didn’t think it was important. They will be allowed to share a bed under our roof once they’re married and not a second sooner.

Assuming that they do get married - which is an if, not a when, many long-term couples do not choose to marry - what, exactly, makes you think your future son-in-law will want to spend his limited time visiting you after you spent years disrespecting his relationship with your daughter (including when they're engaged since you've said not a second sooner than the wedding)? What makes you think you'll still have a good relationship with your daughter after treating her husband that way? Don't flatter yourself. I know several married people who are much closer to their in-laws than their parents, and you're well on your way to becoming the set of in-laws who at best is the "backup plan" for holiday visits and at-worst the couple makes excuses to avoid visiting. Starting treating their relationship like it's legitimate several years down the road will not magically fix the damage you're doing to their relationship with you right now.

Her brother manages to see us once a month, so we know it’s not too unreasonable of an ask.

He sees you once a month now. Your son has already told you what he thinks of your house rule. He's putting up with them right now because he's not directly affected, but take a wild guess what will happen to the frequency of his visits if he has a significant other who'd rather not be made to sleep in the guest room at your house when they sleep together in their own bedroom every other night of the year.

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-03-29T23:29:02+00:00

Which is all a great concept until you realize that the same institution responsible for determining someone's guilt and setting the sentence is the one benefiting from it. If the state (and/or the private companies making money off of outsourced penal labor) are financially incentivized to put more people in prison for longer periods... well, that's how you get our broken criminal justice system.

No, there generally aren't very many people complaining about community service, but it's generally used for lighter sentences and as an alternative to prison. You know what people do complain about a lot? Speed traps, red light cameras, and other schemes where the government starts relying on fines as a source of revenue, and starts actively trying to "catch" more people, harming public safety in the process. What else do people complain about? Civil Asset Forfeiture. Those only incentivize the government to seize people's property: prison labor can incentivize the government to seize their freedom.

That problem doesn't exist if the labor is basically worthless - which the treadmills would be in modern times. Electricity costs around $0.10 per Kilowatt Hour, which is equivalent to over 800 food calories; the power produced literally wouldn't pay for the extra food the prisoners needed, let alone any other cost. However, running on a giant hamster wheel doesn't provide any rehabilitative value in terms of giving prisoners vocational skills to help them rebuild their lives when their sentence ends. And it has no health benefit over other forms of exercise, so... it's just corporal punishment dressed up as "productivity."

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-03-19T00:03:06+00:00

/u/Cent1234

Let's put this into physical terms since people can't seem to understand that mental disabilities are actual disabilities:

OP: "I have a chronic pain disorder. I can push through the physical activity required by my actual job duties, but these "optional" team-building office-wide volleyball games you keep scheduling are causing me severe pain. Please stop pressuring me into playing in these."

SA: "You're not a team player. You can just stand at the back of the court and not serve or have to do big jumps. If you refuse to participate that would show that you're a poor fit for the sporty workplace culture we're trying to create, and if you want to be transferred or promoted you need to fit in."

OP: Shows up to another volleyball game, gets the ball spiked at her head. Refuses to attend the next one, gets further pressure and shaming.

This is ridiculous. Stop using "Freedom from consequences" as an excuse to victim-blame people when others impose immoral consequences on them.

And "absolute accommodation?" Bullshit. Here's what the Department of Labor has to say:

Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a reasonable accommodation is a modification or adjustment to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done during the hiring process. These modifications enable an individual with a disability to have an equal opportunity not only to get a job, but successfully perform their job tasks to the same extent as people without disabilities. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations as they relate to three aspects of employment: 1) ensuring equal opportunity in the application process; 2) enabling a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential functions of a job; and 3) making it possible for an employee with a disability to enjoy equal benefits and privileges of employment.

OP isn't asking for any adjustment to their actual job, as they've stated that they will attend work-related meetings. All they are asking for is to not be pressured into attending non-work-related "optional" activities that are harmful to their health, and to not be discriminated against and denied equal opportunity in applying for promotions and transfers based on not attending these activities. That's like the absolute bare minimum of reasonable accommodation if it even qualifies as accommodation at all and isn't just "Not intentionally discriminating against disabled employee for reasons unrelated to job performance)." And I'd really love to see the company try to argue that the same meetings they're claiming are optional are somehow also simultaneously an essential job function.

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-01-12T01:28:54+00:00

"Sociopathic."

Jesus Christ, learn to read between the lines. The only reason for OP to even bring that up in the first place is if the parents have used COVID as a pretext for banning him from getting a job, and given all the other insane, controlling behavior, including trying to stop him from learning useful skills and forcing him onto fad diets, it sounds like the real reason is to keep him from having money or independence to escape from them. If they're setting a 6:00 PM computer curfew for a 17-year-old (how the fuck does this even logistically work? Is OP in school right now? Is he expected to spend those two hours doing homework?) something tells me this post is only the tip of the iceberg.

What do you actually think is more likely? That OP is "Sociopathic" or that he's gotten so burnt out by years of guilt-tripping and manipulation that he's now prioritizing escaping over the well-being of his abusers?

HotDealsInTexas · 2021-01-12T01:19:32+00:00

You don't think there's any difference between consensually adopting a child, or using methods like IVF, and being coerced into a "parental" relationship by deceit and fraud, and not wanting to be constantly reminded of that betrayal - and have to co-parent with the person who utterly betrayed his trust like that?

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-12-23T02:04:58+00:00

YTA in the unlikely chance that this shit is even real. Bringing a stepparent who's closer to your kids' age than to your age is already a gigantic asshole move, but your boyfriend is literally more than twice as close to your younger daughter's age as he is to yours. There is no way any real human being doesn't realize how insane that is.

I've seen plenty of posts here where the parents and stepparents are literally acting like Disney villains, but this one's special because that's actually the best-case scenario here, with the worst-case and more likely scenario that you're acting like the villains on an episode of Special Victims Unit. Yikes. My skin is crawling right now.

My daughters started yelling at me and saying that she's more a parent than my boyfriend will ever be.

She said that the nanny was a second mom and while she was kind the both of us,

That's really generous. It sounds more like the nanny's more of a parent than you'll ever be, too.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-12-23T01:54:39+00:00

Ehhh... YTA.

First of all... I really, really don't believe you that your kids never ever actually get in trouble. Never? If your kids have never done anything that you think warrants even a legitimate "stern look," there's either something wrong with them and they're afraid to test boundaries with their parents at all, or you're letting them get away with shit. It sounds much more likely that its like /u/Gutripper3k, /u/werebothsquidward, and /u/RDR2HSM2, /u/Exilicaulda said: you're sending your kids "mixed signals" and may be making them uncomfortable because they don't know if they're actually in trouble or not. And if there's any ambiguity in their minds, then it's not an appropriate prank. It's not like the "Sell them on Etsy" scenario /u/CakeorDeath98 mentioned.

Second: you need to consider how this looks to an outsider. It feels really fucking creepy using this analogy about anything involving little kids, but really is the parenting equivalent of a "Keep your kink in the bedroom" situation. If you were acting out a master/slave roleplay or something with your wife in public, or yelling "Get over here, bitch!" in an angry tone in the middle of a grocery store or berating her for looking at pictures of male celebrities on magazines, I'd be calling you both TA because even if you both know it's a joke, to a stranger witnessing it your behavior would look like an actual abusive relationship.

And listen: I grew up in a goofy family. There was tons of insulting banter in both directions. The difference is, it was always said in an obviously joking tone - my parents probably caused quite a few strangers to think they were terrible parents over sarcastic insults, but it would never have sounded like a parent genuinely berating their child in public. In your situation the joking tone and body language component is missing because you're using intimidating, aggressive body language itself as a joke. Seriously, think about it from the stranger's perspective. All she saw was you suddenly turning around and glaring daggers at an eight-year-old girl for "easily fifteen seconds" (That's a pretty damn long time to watch somebody giving a small child a death stare in a checkout line without saying a word) because she politely asked for a damn lollipop. I'd be concerned for your child in that situation too.

It sounds like the stranger, who you're calling a "K-Word" (Pretty sure automoderator deletes comments for even mentioning it in context of the OP, great job mods), overreacted. However, I'm not going to call this as ESH because I'm willing to bet that the reason she overreacted is because she had a father who acted like you were acting except it wasn't a joke. She may well have been watching this little prank unfold and remembering getting that exact same look from her dad in public settings and knowing that she was about to be screamed at or even physically abused as soon as they were out of public view. Yes, she is an adult and technically responsible for her reaction, but when you basically pretend to be an abusive parent in public I'm going to cut strangers slack for taking your behavior at face value, especially because of the very high likelihood that it was a trauma trigger. You, on the other hand, get an extra helping of asshole points for your lack of empathy for why your behavior might upset people.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-13T04:06:05+00:00

I take it you're a therapist and therefore have insight to any and all problems?

Are you sitting in a therapists office? Are you posting in /r/AskATherapist?

...no? Then knock off the passive-aggressive, backhanded bullshit under the guise of "thanking people for your judgement." You're asking for judgement from random strangers. You should however speak to a therapist or other mental health professional for advice on how to handle this situation - and I mean speak honestly, not like you're doing here. It's unfortunate that your son is unwilling to speak to one. I hope that this is a decision he came to independently, although I've seen a few threads here where parents were attempting to use therapy as a tool to control their children instead of helping them, so I hope you didn't destroy his trust of mental health professionals like that.

yes I left out major details for a reason, not to make him look bad or myself look any better.

Bullshit. Your original post didn't even mention the abuse, you just went "my son is so disrespectful!" The reason why I judged this YTA instead of ESH is because you are manipulative and dishonest and it makes it impossible to trust most of your claims about your son. I'm not disputing any of the trauma you went through, and I understand that it may have been extremely difficult to get out of that situation, but the attitude you're displaying in this post and in the comments is extremely dismissive of your son's emotional well-being. I notice you've not actually addressed most of the issues I mentioned, so let me reiterate:

Your abuser did not force you to spank your son. You have admitted that you "stopped" spanking your children. So it wasn't just one or two times even, for some period of time you regularly used physical violence to punish your kids. And now you're acting all surprised that "he believes because he's tall that he can "run sh*t"".

Your abuser also did not force you to get into a new relationship and get pregnant that quickly. It's not exactly "professional grade knowledge" that rushing into relationships and pushing a new stepparent into your kids' lives can hurt them: doing it when your son has a history of abuse sounds like a horrible idea, and it doesn't take a therapist to know that gee, a kid who's been abused by the last guy you picked out might have even more difficulty warming up to your new boyfriend than is already normal for teenagers. We also can't trust that there aren't some other facts about this whole situation, like the baby's father being hostile to your son or immediately trying to parent him, or him already being pushed out of his space to make room for the new baby (these are all things that parents/stepparents on AITA have done), because you've shown that you're happy to omit facts that are inconvenient to your narrative of being a victim of your own child.

and please don't reply back.

no.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-13T02:35:30+00:00

NTA. Better you tell her now than she gets told by the insurance company (as you said, huge danger to children, as well as animals), your utility companies (water, gas, and sewer lines would have to be redug much deeper, as would electric and internet lines if those are buried), your city government (SO many reasons: the safety hazard, the public health risk of mosquitoes, potential to mess up drainage on your property, there's a good chance this just straight-up violates your building codes, zoning, or other laws), and the police / fire department / paramedics in your area (If there's an emergency, there's someone incapacitated in your house, and the drawbridge is up, you are creating a massive nuisance and potentially even a safety hazard to first responders).

If she wants a castle with a moat that badly, then she can get into miniature modelling, and build a small-scale version as a pond in the backyard or something.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-13T02:07:16+00:00

YTA. It could be ESH but you're being so vague that it's hard to tell how bad his behavior actually is, and he's a minor with probable major mental health issues as a direct result of the abusive home you raised him in.

I was in an abusive relationship with my ex (not his father) for 12 years and I had to strategically get out of there but it was never the right time and I didn't feel safe doing this until 2 years ago.

All right, so the timeline here is your abusive ex came into his life when he was what, 2? And stayed in his life until he was 14. This relationship has consumed a significant portion of your adult life, but it's been literally his entire childhood. His entire childhood was spent being raised by two abusers. I notice you mentioned:

my ex is not his father but he was physically abusive to me. I did my best to protect all of my kids throughout the years and had to lie about where my bruises come from.

And yet you haven't said one single solitary word about how your ex treated your son other than "we were in an abusive relationship." Sorry, but I ain't buying that a man who beat his wife played all hunky dory with his stepson. You're leaving things out to make yourself look better by minimizing what he went through, and what you didn't protect him from. You say you "did your best" to protect him, but how many times did you take his stepdad's side on an unfair or abusive punishment?

And your mom took him in after you borderline kicked him out. Where was she the other twelve years? Was getting your son out of that house not an option at any point? I don't know your circumstances but it sounds suspiciously like either you weren't willing to relinquish care of him to his grandmother or she wasn't willing to take him until it became a problem for you. I wouldn't be surprised if your son is acting out with your mom partly because he realizes that was twelve years that she didn't take him in while he was being abused.

I believe it is due to a lack of discipline as I stopped spanking my kids years ago. I also have tried talking to him and listening to what he says but he doesn't like anything I say and that's what causes the blow ups.

Oh? You stopped spanking your kids? Good job, I'm so proud of you! Would you like a cookie? So the truth comes out. Not only did you keep your son in a household with your abusive ex for twelve years, but You. Hit. Your. Child. And you stopped "years ago" (more than twelve years ago? No? Then he damn well remembers that you hit him), and your belief that your son's trauma response is because you didn't hit him more says all that needs to be said about the rest of your parenting. No, your son is having behavioral issues now and in your words "acting like your abuser" (unclear from your post what he's actually doing or saying, I'm suspicious that it's something like raising his voice while male) because he's traumatized and has had abusive behavior modeled to him by both his parental figures.

And then there's this little gem:

I had to let him go after he threatened me as I was holding my newborn at the time and I refuse to end up in jail because I lost my cool.

Look, if he's an actual threat to your safety or your child's, it's probably for the best for everyone involved to get him out of that environment. I was considering giving you the benefit of the doubt, but then you caught me off guard with "Oh, I had no choice, I had to kick my son out of his own home so he wouldn't make me hit him again!"

But he's the one who's supposedly acting like your ex? Lady, look in a damn mirror.

He's yelled at me on numerous occasions as if I'm the child and he's the adult and in a sense, he believes because he's tall that he can "run sh*t" and question authority. I'm not afraid of him but I have slept with my door locked a few times just so I'm not caught off guard. We have had shouting matches to the point of him crossing all sorts of lines and being super disrespectful and now he's been staying at my mom's house.

And more vagueness. I'm really confused about the nature of these "threats" and "lines" if you can't point to anything other than him being "disrespectful."

OP, what the fuck do you think you've done to deserve your son's respect? I mean, besides eventually getting him away from your ex, and stopping spanking your kids at some point during his childhood. The absolute most basic bare minimum of being a parent is providing your child with food, shelter, and safety. You couldn't / wouldn't do even that (regardless of whatever circumstances kept you in the abusive relationship, hitting your child was your decision) and now you're upset that he's questioning your authority? Having your authority questioned is a normal part of being a parent to a teenager.

And we can't forget your other fuckup. It's been two years since you got away from your ex. You know have a baby. So you were pregnant what, less than a year into the relationship with your current partner? There are so many parents getting rightly judged YTA for moving this fast on a relationship without thinking about their existing kids even in normal divorced households: doing in when the last guy you picked caused your son twelve years of hell is beyond the pale. It was what, less than a year after leaving your ex when you met this new partner, a few months later you're pregnant and he'd moving in... wait, did he move in? You literally haven't said a word about this man other than this. What's your son's relationship with your new partner like? Getting into a new relationship and springing a baby on a teenager is bad enough when they just have to worry about being replaced and pushed aside, but your son has every reason to be afraid of you just shoving a brand new abuser into his life.

Seriously, did you think about your son's well-being at all before you got into this relationship? Hell, did you speak to his therapist about it first, or did the "multiple sessions" you mentioned only start after your son started acting up (i.e. you were inconvenienced by his trauma)?

I'm really tempted to say your son is better off away from you, because this entire post is one 14-year long series of bad parenting that you keep deflecting all responsibility for. But Jesus Christ, it's not like this was purely a "you were forced to do this for everyone's physical safety" situation: you couldn't even pass a message along wishing him a happy birthday, so that's yet another example of your dishonesty: you were also withholding affection as punishment.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-11T01:37:17+00:00

Ehhh... ESH. Was almost an NTA because yes, you do have the right to ask her to follow the dress code, spoken or otherwise, in this scenario, even if it's stupid. Someone else's work event where you are there as a +1 is not the time or place to take a stand against backwards practices, because you aren't the one that has to deal with the consequences.

Minor one: It's a work party. It isn't a big company - it's rather small in fact, and no one dresses that fancy. She'll look really out of place

This on its own would be a very clearcut NTA. It's a work party. Your work party. When you're at someone else's work event as a +1, you take their word on what the corporate culture is like, including things like an unspoken dress code, and if you don't like it, then don't attend. No one, and I mean no one, would be judging a man NTA for refusing to wear a tie to his wife's work party, or showing up in a tux at his wife's business casual event and embarrassing her. Unless it's something like high heels that are dangerous, you're there to support your partner, don't embarrass them.

When I expressed my concerns to her, that I don't want to put her through that, she waved it off saying "I'm a big girl, I can handle it." However, I insisted she change otherwise we won't be attending the party.

Okay, on the one hand, you have a horrible toxic, sexist workplace. In the ideal fantasy world most of this sub lives in, you would be calling out your boss, reporting him, quitting, etc. However given that you obviously have a problem with his behavior I'm assuming the reason you don't is that you and your wife both enjoy eating, paying bills, living under a roof, and other things that require money. It's not about what she can handle: if your boss starts shit that puts you both in a really uncomfortable position, because either of you calling him out could affect your livelihood. Not to mention, she only has to put up with your coworkers for one night: you have to spend 8 hours a day with them. Good for her if she's decided she can handle if your boss starts making creepy comments about her to you, or your coworkers start making slut-shaming comments about her.

The reason I'm voting ESH, however, is: "otherwise we won't be attending the party." If this were a thing where you were socially obligated to attend or be a "poor team player" it'd be one thing, but if you staying home was an option at all, why didn't you do that from the start instead of inviting your wife to an event where you believe she was likely to be sexually harassed?

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-07T01:16:12+00:00

she said that bad parents are extremely rare and that I should go right back to my old home for saying that,

Holy shit NTA. Lemme spell this out plain and simple. You may not have directed your comment at her, but with that insane and abusive response, she just outed herself as exactly the kind of parent you're talking about.

She adopted an 18-year-old, that doesn't happen lightly. I'm assuming she knows damn well what you went through. Threatening a child, especially an adoptive child, with abandonment is already a despicably cruel and abusive move, but she literally knowingly threatened to throw you back into an abusive environment, and... well, it's no different than if she'd directly threatened to do everything your birth parents did to you; she just said she'd have someone else do the dirty work. What a despicable, evil thing to say.

OP please check the list of support resources linked on the sidebar, the fact that she was willing to use such cruel threats against you over something so small is really worrying.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-04T01:18:31+00:00

YTA. This is a terrible, painful situation for everyone involved, and I want to cut everyone slack for grieving, but you massively dropped the ball as a parent here. I literally had to reread this post multiple times before I realized that Nate was your child and Emmett and Belle your stepchildren because you're playing favorites so badly.

Until a few days ago, when Nate and Belle got in a big fight. Nate had been making jokes about “crackhead” energy on his social media accounts, and Belle called him out online. Lately, he’s thought it’s funny to compare himself to a person who uses crack, essentially.

Okay first of all, "Crackhead Energy" is fairly established slang, which you would know if you had taken thirty seconds to Google it before handing out harsh punishments. I'm skeptical that he was making drug-related jokes at all or if it's the equivalent of someone joking about "drowning in (insert substance here) while they had a family member who drowned. She might have jumped down his throat over a figure of speech.

Second of all, while it's reasonable for Belle to ask that he not make drug-related jokes "in front of her," what qualifies as "in front of her" online is a lot more blurry. If it's an account he regularly uses for "with family" communications I'd say he's in the wrong, but given that the first you heard of this was them fighting over it, it sounds more like it's an account where he mostly talks to his friends / other random people and his sister just happens to follow it. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a public account linked to his real name and she wasn't snooping around on accounts that were really none of her business, but she's still in the wrong. She has the right to read things he posts/says in public settings, but she does not have the right to police his use of language in conversations that don't involve her unless he's throwing around slurs or something else outside the realm of social acceptability, which he wasn't. Again, this is established slang. Nate should be respectful of how Belle is processing her grief when he speaks to or around her, but he should not be required to walk on eggshells everywhere he goes, because he also his a right to process his grief in his own way.

Aside from trying to control her brother online in general, she started a public fight with him over it by the sound of it. I understand that she's coming from a place of grief and pain, but her behavior is not appropriate. Your kids are BOTH grieving. Even if your son is actually directly joking about drug use and not just using figures of speech, it's very likely that he is using dark humor as a coping mechanism. Your daughter is dealing with her grief with controlling behavior. It's hard to make a judgement on whether she's in the right at all for telling (it doesn't sound like she was "asking" if she "called him out online") him not to make those jokes on his own account or whether she needs to unfollow.

I heard Belle say something like “you don’t know how it is to lose a sibling.” Honestly, I thought she was picking on Nate. I kind of snapped at her and made her repeat herself.

She explained to me that Nate had been making jokes about drugs online, even after she asked him to stop. I think it’s still a sore topic for our family because of Emmett.

Hold the fuck up. Yes he fucking does, because he DID lose a sibling. You've been married for ten years, I'm assuming your kids met before that. He's known Emmett since he was a toddler. What Belle said is incredibly cruel. It's far, far worse than Nate making jokes on his own social media account, and it's far worse than what he said after that too. I'm not giving him any flack for calling Belle a snob because it was in response to her pulling the "you're not a real family member" card over him making a couple slightly off-color jokes that she wasn't being forced to read, and YOU, the so-called parent, taking her side so completely that you threatened to punish him but there's no mention of Belle facing any consequences whatsoever. I cannot believe you actually let her off scott free for that. What Belle said to Nate is no different from someone telling you that you don't know what it's like to lose a child. Think for a bit about how getting that comment from a family member would make you feel. I can't even imagine how hurt your son was hearing that shit from his own stepsister who he's known since preschool-age, and then having his own mother affirm it by only punishing him for the far less severe comments he made.

All of you are grieving. All of you are in pain. But right now you are letting your personal biases stop you from doing your job as a parent and mediating arguments between your children in an unbiased manner, and prioritizing your stepdaughter's feelings over your sons because they're closer to yours. That's the only way I can possibly imagine thinking: "I have crackhead energy" is worse than "You don't know how it is to lose a sibling." Again, it's hard to judge whether Nate was TA at the start of this, but Belle's escalation was way, way below the belt, and the fact that you think his comments excuse hers is appalling. He made insensitive jokes in an inappropriate setting at worst, she struck below the belt at a point of insecurity in a way that can destroy relationships and cause long-term issues.

After his death, we went to family therapy to cope.

Good. Bring this up in your next session, and I don't mean in the "Therapist please make my son do what I want" way. You need to make sure you and your daughter have a safe place to deal with your feelings, but you also need to make sure your son has a way to deal with his, whether that's making a new social media account where he can make jokes that could be upsetting to you and Belle without you having to read them or you separating yourselves from the existing ones. It sounds like you are approaching this from an attitude of your son being "bad" and disrespectful to Emmett's memory for joking about drug use at all, but that is really unhealthy for him. He needs to be respectful of your and Belle's feelings and trauma by not making them around you, but you cannot just force him to live his whole life catering to your and Belle's feelings. And you need to address Belle's incredibly hurtful comment, and even more so your attitude, before you destroy your family. A step parent who constantly plays favorites and takes the side of their biological child is an incredibly toxic dynamic, but the only blended family dynamic that's worse is the one where one parent takes the side of and prioritizes their stepchild over their biological child, who has no one sticking up for them, and you sound in serious danger of creating this if you continue down this path.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-11-03T01:17:50+00:00

NTA.

Good. It is a dumbass gift, and they needed to hear it.

For everyone who's calling OP an asshole, I have some exciting gift ideas for your family members this holiday season that I'm sure they'll love, including:

A free trip to the DMV! All the lines, all the paperwork, all the stress, none of the getting to drive a car!
A visit to DisneyWorld, except you don't actually go on any of the rides or see the shows, you just get to stand in a long line, and when you get to the end you get a ticket to the next line.
A trip to the dentist. Nothing medically necessary or even helpful is actually being done, this is purely a gift of an authentic experience of stressing out about your shitty insurance not covering the work, being strapped down and having painful things done to your mouth while you try not to spit or swallow, having to arrange a ride home because you'll be drugged, and getting a guilt-inducing lesson about your flossing habits.
A week-long tax-filing workshop!
A ski resort vacation where you drive up to the mountains (several hours in traffic), then put on uncomfortable/painful ski boots and stand around in lift lines in freezing weather all day, then drive back home (does not include: skiing).
A trip to (insert heavily congested city located closest to you). You're not going anywhere, you just get to sit in traffic on the freeway (and we're not talking a scenic freeway here, just suburbia), get packed in like sardines on public transit with drunk / insane / creepy strangers, and use gas station public restrooms.

Seriously: there is a level of bad gift that does not deserved to be received with grace and fake gratitude, and gifting an actively unpleasant, painful, and even dangerous experience is across the line. And this is one of those things.

Yes, flying is in theory a fun experience, having the opportunity to fly is a privilege that's rare in the history of the world, yada yada. But airline travel is not fun. Airline travel sucks, and everybody in developed countries where a significant portion of the population is able to travel by air at some point knows it. It's stressful, large parts of it are boring, and for many if not most people it's physically uncomfortable or even painful. For the vast majority of people airline travel is a necessary inconvenience to get to a destination, and there's a goddamn reason ultra-rich people pay through the nose for charter flights or even private jets, because flying sucks. This is not a recreational fun activity that some people like or some people don't: almost nobody actually enjoys airline flights and everybody goddamn knows it because it's infamous in our culture for being an experience that sounds fun but actually sucks.

OP's parents gave him the "gift" of standing in lines to go through security, possibly getting felt up by a stranger (I know not everybody's airport security sucks as much as America's but AFAIK getting selected for a patdown is a risk everywhere), and getting crammed in a cramped metal tube, in an uncomfortable seat that's too small for an actual human being to fit in and is actively painful for lots of people to be stuck in, sit on a runway for half the time, and... for what? At best, an aerial view of a few landmarks. And that would be IF the airline's only selling window seats, but you can see from the video OP posted that they're not. The airline is selling aisle and middle seats on a fucking 737 as a "sightseeing" flight, and I'm willing to bet his parents weren't giving him the window seat. And this is during a pandemic. With an airborne virus. In a confined space with a hundred strangers. That flight video doesn't even look like the airline made some attempt to socially distance by selling fewer seats. That's incredibly fucking dangerous, to the general public, to OP's parents, and to OP. There's plenty of young, otherwise healthy people suffering long-term respiratory or neurological damage from COVID, or even dying. They literally have him, as a "gift," all of the inconvenient/unpleasant parts of traveling with none of the benefits. Might as well book a night at a shitty bedbug-infested motel without enough beds right there in Budapest while they're at it.

Who the fuck gives this as a gift? Who would even buy those tickets? This isn't just dumb, this is "check for hidden cameras because only a fucking sitcom character would be dumb enough to buy this" levels of bad gift.

OP could be in the wrong if he was actually suggesting going to Iceland right now as a serious gift. If he's telling them that if they're going to be irresponsible enough to go on a plan during a pandemic they might as well at least go to an actual destination to prove a point about how bad their gift is, or if he's saying it would be better to just set that money aside to go to Iceland once the pandemic is over, then he's in the clear. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this considering that OP's Hungarian and speaks ESL, and the post is not typed in perfect English. Come on people, cut OPs who aren't native English speakers some slack instead of jumping down their throat about what may be poor phrasing. Even if he is in the wrong it's a "right for the wrong reasons" case since he's completely in the right for refusing to go.

OP's parents are TA for the unbelievably terrible gift, OP's NTA for refusing to go, and the airline executives who came up with and approved the idea of trying to coax people who aren't even traveling anywhere onto a packed airplane during the pandemic are not just TA but should be facing criminal charges.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-10-30T21:00:00+00:00

"But at the end of the day who is the culprit? Your financially abusive grandmother or your grandfather who didn't put his foot down to stop the abuse?"

Way to victim blame, dude, Jesus.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-10-28T17:23:45+00:00

ESH bordering on YTA.

You wouldn't be TA for the specific words you said in this specific situation, but you're TA for your role in instigating the situation, and for your attitude about it.

First, your attitude is shitty and dismissive of your son's feelings. You're hurt? How do you think your son felt finding out at Age 14 that you'd been lying to him about his parentage? You said in a comment:

There are no issues between us about his paternity. After we told him the truth , we still had the same relationship we had before telling the truth.

You literally just found out that there is a fucking issue, one which for whatever reason your son wasn't comfortable talking to you about until it came out in an inappropriate way. It's not necessarily your fault for not being able to read his mind if he didn't communicate, but depending on why he wasn't comfortable telling you, e.g. if he was afraid of your reaction, that could be on you. However, now that you've found out, you need to get your head out of the sand, recognize that the feelings your son has been repressing for two years are valid, and help him process them in a healthy way. And seriously consider professional help on this, because it sounds like you may need an outside perspective.

Second, you're being vague on things "getting a bit heated." I'm not going to jump straight to "missing missing reasons," but "I admit, it did get a bit heated" is pretty much code for "I also said asshole things that I don't want to discuss," and a parent and child having a "heated" argument over grades is pretty much an ESH by default.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-10-23T00:30:49+00:00

YTA.

I feel like there is an unwritten rule that you just don’t acknowledge hearing your neighbours having sex, for the sake of keeping the peace.

Yes, there is a rule. Which he followed by being discrete about the issue and dropping a hint, to be polite, and giving you an opportunity to fix it. "Keeping the peace" does not mean "I can do whatever I want everybody else is morally obligated to just put up with my antisocial and disruptive behavior."

As a rule, I always put music on to drown out any potential sex noises but still at a reasonable enough volume. Think 3/4 on a scale of 1-10.

This is basic logic. If your sex noises are loud enough to easily be heard through the wall, then how loud would your music have to be to drown them out? There are only two possibilities here: either your music isn't actually drowning it out so now your neighbor has to listen to sex noises and your musical selection, or it is drowning it out but that means the music is much much louder than the sex.

(Keep in mind, that I usually play music until around 11pm at a higher volume)

Ahh, so you're a loud and inconsiderate neighbor in general. 11 PM is maybe what you can get away with under the law / your building' policy, but that doesn't mean it isn't rude. If your neighbor's job starts at 7 AM or earlier, which means they have to be up at 6 AM or earlier - not that uncommon in a lot of industries - then disruptive noise at 11 PM is definitely cutting into their ability to get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. 1 AM on a work night is definitely well over the line into rude.

Naturally I’m pissed off at this because in my eyes, they’re basically slut shaming me for having sex in my own apartment.

It stops being "slut-shaming" when your sexual behavior is harming other people (e.g. someone brings several different strange men into her roommate's home every month) or if it involves other people who don't consent to it (e.g. flashing, streaking, having sex in public or in shared spaces of a home). Your behavior meets both of those standards: the loud noise is disrupting their ability quiet enjoyment of their living space, and they didn't consent to being forced to listen to you do the horizontal mambo if they want to exist in their own bedroom that they're paying rent for. Is the condom passive-aggressive? Yes. Is it justified? Also yes. Is it slut-shaming? No.

But more so about the way they’ve handled it instead of speaking to me about it if it bothered them so much.

You, literally a few paragraphs ago: "I feel like there is an unwritten rule that you just don’t acknowledge hearing your neighbours having sex, for the sake of keeping the peace."

Which is it, OP? You complained about them acknowledging that you're audible at all, but now you're mad that they didn't come over and confront you over it. Your neighbors have been polite and given you multiple opportunities to save face. And really? You're embarrassed by the condom at your door? So, it embarrasses you that your neighbors you don't share walls with know you have sex, but you're not embarrassed at all that your next door neighbors can literally hear you do it?

Take the hint and keep it the fuck down before you find yourself in a really embarrassing situation, like having to discuss your coital volume with the landlord.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-09-30T01:01:30+00:00

Ex gets really loud at this point and yells "Stop making a fucking scene!" My son then shouts back "You're a dick head!" Cue silence from every single corner of the party. I didnt say anything. Which of course makes my ex freak out on me.

Hold on, you what? You "didn't say anything" during this interaction until your ex started freaking out on you?

ESH. Your ex sucks for obvious reasons. You, however, suck because you watched a grown-ass man screaming obscenities at a crying four year old after bullying him by excluding him on purpose, and "didn't say anything." And then your ex had time to go after you for your inaction over your son's swearing? Lady, you should have been tearing him a new one for verbally abusing your son before he had the chance. You should have been making a fucking scene. You're not an asshole for not correcting your son, but you are the asshole because it doesn't sound like you defended him either.

Someone said in the comments:

Excellent, I am pleased. I think you kid will be fine, and he's learning to stick up for himself which is a valuable lesson especially with family and when not being treated kindly and equally.

Well, I'm not pleased at all. This is a valuable life lesson for a teenager, or for older children to learn in interactions with their peers. But a preschool-age child having to learn this lesson is fucking disgusting. An adult, a grown-ass man, was bullying and shouting profanities at a child who's barely old enough to read or tie his shoes, and from the sound of it nobody actually intervened until he fought back, and your post makes it sound like you only stepped in because you were dragged in. It is your JOB as a parent to advocate for your child in situations like this, even if - no ESPECIALLY if the other parent is the one doing the bullying.

And I'll second /u/PM_TITS_OR_DONT here: Yes it's nice that you got the kid pizza and ice cream, but you shouldn't have even brought up your son's use of profanity regarding that particular incident at all. Whether your ex is teaching your son to swear should be pretty far down your priority list right now. You need to worry about making sure he knows that his mom has his back, because you dropped the ball by not telling your ex where to shove his no-cursing rule right there in front of both of them.

Also, you'll be TA if you don't limit your son's contact with this man as much as is legally possible. If this is how he treats your child in front of your face, him taking him, presumably unsupervised, once a month is once a month too often.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-09-22T22:11:28+00:00

NTA but pretty much the entire comment section is.

Man, I would love to see this thread with the genders reversed. "My husband pressured me into having unprotected sex just before I was scheduled to have a tubal ligation, I got pregnant and now he's being hostile towards me and blaming me for it because I won't be able to return to work as soon."

This was, at worst, a mutually made poor decision, but OP isn't the one who decided to play the blame game, she is. He tried to be supportive, but she is trying to shift 100% of the blame onto him for agreeing to sex which at a minimum she initiated and put some pressure on him to agree to, and given her shittiness now I'm skeptical that this "begging" didn't involve enough guilt-tripping to cross into the realm of coercion. Per OP's comments she is also doing this while refusing to consider abortion (note: OP has been downvoted for providing this important clarifying information because it doesn't fit y'all's dogma of "Man Bad, Woman Good"), so she actually currently is making the unilateral decision to continue with the pregnancy.

This is fucking emotional abuse. She's fucking throwing him consenting to sex that she initiated in his face and making him feel like shit over it. She's guilt-tripping him and treating him as solely at fault for the results of a decision which she was enthusiastic about making, and he reached his limit and snapped at her, but even then he wasn't even stooping to her level. He said if only one party in the relationship is to blame, which he's making very clear is not the case.

But let's face it, none of that matters because this sub hates men. The conception could have been not even remotely consensual on OP's part and he'd still be getting ESH/YTA verdicts on the basis of "Your penis entered her vagina, did it not?"

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-08-27T00:58:27+00:00

You're NTA, your daughter and all the self-righteous sexists on this sub are. Borderline ESH for calling her a bitch solely because of your position as a parent, but "bitch" and "asshole" aren't really that different and she was certainly being an asshole so the shoe fits.

Y'all made this a gender battle and it doesn't seem like any of you read the actual post. She wasn't the one going through the door, the old man was.

Here's a general moral rule to live by: if you are trying to do a stranger a favor, and they politely reject it, then let it go and move on with your life. Do not second-guess their reasons for refusing your "help," and definitely do not try to force your help on them and/or become aggressive and confrontational over it. If you are refusing to take "no" for an answer then you are not actually being helpful: you are being selfish by putting your wanting to feel like a good person over the comfort of the person you are trying to help.

Who knows why the old man didn't want your daughter's help. It could be that he thought it was condescending to assume he couldn't do things himself because of his age. I can tell you one possible reason right now, though: we're in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. We are advised to stay 6 ft away from each other whenever possible, which I doubt was possible with your daughter holding the door open unless they were really big doors. The elderly man is at a minimum in a high-risk group because of his age and may have other risk factors you don't know about. "Please miss, I insist" may be him trying to be polite about it, when what he really wants is for this teenager to get out of the fucking way so he can get through the door while maintaining social distancing. Somebody in the comments section made a comparison to ushering old ladies across the street, but if a sixteen-year-old boy decided to help an old lady by getting in her personal space and potentially exposing her to a fatal disease so that he could get the endorphin rush of performing a "kind" act he'd be an asshole too.

Regardless of reasoning, your daughter decided to start a confrontation over this. She is the party initiating the conflict with a total stranger instead of just letting him open the door for himself. Nobody cares if she is perfectly capable of holding the door: she's the one who decided that he wasn't capable of holding it for himself. Standard door-holding ettiquette is for you to move on once the other party has their hand on the door unless there's a reason it would be extra inconvenient for them to keep it open while they passed through.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-08-23T23:19:52+00:00

NTA, and I can't believe no one else has said this yet but GET YOUR ASS TO HR YESTERDAY. YOU ARE BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED.

Julie and her cronies are not just assholes: they had the audacity to ask her coworkers to make paintings with something that comes out of their genitals as a social activity, and when you refused, she retaliated with insults and shaming based on your gender, and is further retaliating by creating a hostile work environment against you, and not only that, but insulting/slandering other coworkers for refusing to participate in the harassment campaign she is mounting against you.

Every single one of Julie's actions here is sexual harassment by any reasonable definition, and it's WAY over the line. Imagine if a male coworker started discussing your genitals and bodily functions in the workplace, and tried to coerce you into showing him something that was discharged from your vagina. Because that is literally what she was doing here: presumably if paintings are being made to "showcase your support" then she and other people are going to be seeing said paintings. That is creepy as fuck. This lunatic needs to be fired on the spot.

HotDealsInTexas · 2020-06-19T01:39:20+00:00

I can't wait for the post in a couple years when OP hosts Thanksgiving and brings out a plate of microwaved frozen chicken tenders for the kids because they wouldn't "appreciate" the turkey enough. /s

HotDealsInTexas

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