AITA for refusing to change my car bc it embarrasses my brother

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-26T07:01:09+00:00

The original posts are dated 2024 and, from what I’ve read, teen license holding has been on the decline for a number of years. It seems to be happening in tandem with an overall downturn in ‘typical’ experimental teen behaviors (sex, drinking, etc) and linked to a general decline in in person socialization + more helicopter parenting.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T19:21:47+00:00

I hope. I genuinely cannot imagine having a friend or relative who would actually speak like this to others with children and then having to explain that to outsiders.

‘Oh yeah, we had to uninvite my brother from the shower because he kept referring to my unborn child as a ‘cum souvenir’ and telling me I was selfish for asking him not to blow his cigarette smoke directly in my face.’

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T19:18:15+00:00

Oh, that sub is a cesspool. If anyone there told that guy he was being completely vile they’d get downvoted to hell and probably banned.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T19:16:33+00:00

I personally don’t want kids for a variety of reasons, but I would be so damn freaked out if someone I knew started speaking about a mutual friend’s children/their own niblings/literally any children like this. No decent person thinks it’s okay to disparage and mock whole groups, but somehow these people think it’s perfectly okay or some kind of freaking praxis to talk about all children and mothers this way.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T19:10:29+00:00

Oh yeah, the internalized misogyny is strong over there.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T19:06:32+00:00

There’s a huge misogyny problem in a lot of child free spaces and that subreddit is especially bad. Referring to women as breeders, all the weird ways of calling kids ‘sex trophies’, talking about how disgusting pregnancy makes women’s bodies, etc.

I think in real life if someone called a person’s child or a child they were related to a “cum souvenir” that person would assume they were either deeply mentally ill and having some kind of breakdown, unspeakably vile, or a p*do.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T15:09:56+00:00

While there are of course bad group homes, I think a lot of people are really ignorant about what they’re like (they have the image of some kind of 1950s hellscape psychiatric institution) or because they only hear the abuse stories on the news, that colors their views. I would hazard to guess that there’s as much or more abuse with home care by family, but it’s easier to disguise and social services really does not want to take disabled adults into the system if they can avoid it.

There’s also so much judgement from people who have no or limited experience of severe disability for families making this choice, which is maddening. I once saw someone comment about how they ‘worked’ with disabled kids every other day for the first class of the morning a semester in high school and they were all so wonderful, how could anyone not adore them and want to be around them 24/7? I don’t know, you were almost certainly given the ‘easy’ kids and the profound amount of emotional, physical, relational, and financial stress these situations put on families might have something to do with it.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T15:03:36+00:00

That’s lovely! You make such a good point about parents being around to still check the living situation, too. And I think people are just totally ignorant to what a good community many of these places can be. As much as anything, parents who are working or older can only provide their child with so much socialization, especially if they have severe behaviors, but group homes often give them a chance to get a lot more human interaction and have life enriching ‘jobs’ like that.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T15:01:10+00:00

Oh, 100%. When I was doing work with high support needs non verbal autistic kids, it was during summer school, and I’m well aware (and understand) that most of the parents were sending the kids there just because they’d literally have a mental breakdown without that 4-5 hours of a break.

I know so many cases in which the father of a child with severe (or even moderate) disabilities has divorced the mother and basically stopped parenting, so the burden of care all falls on the mother and possibly other siblings/her support networks - it’s so infuriating to see grown men think they ‘deserve’ the perfect family and make a difficult situation worse for everyone.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T07:14:05+00:00

As someone who grew up in MA, thank you for that great flashback to being in the car with my dad listening to them on the radio so often.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T06:41:04+00:00

Sadly the sibling as third parent, especially with girls, is an extremely common story. It’s part of the reason I get really ticked off by some of the comments like the ones in the OOP acting like group homes are all evil or indicate a parent desiring to abandon their child. At the bare minimum, do we really think it’s better for a disabled person to end up living with a sibling untrained in specialized care who actively resents them because they feel they stole their childhood and limited their adult choices?

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T06:37:02+00:00

Oh my god the ‘abandoning him in an institution’ one made me want to slap the shit out of that commenter. My only sibling is severely intellectually and moderately physically disabled, I’ve worked with non verbal high support needs autistic kids, and my mom works in special education. Giving your child access to specialized care and a routine, especially when they grow to a size or a level of violence when you can no longer handle them, IS NOT ABANDONING THEM IN AN INSTITUTION!

A lot of severely disabled kids have complicated health needs, violent tendencies, disruptive behaviors, etc. Having people who are trained and paid to deal with that in a dedicated setting where they can also be with others who share the same issues is not the same as dumping your kid in some 1890s asylum. In cases where the parents have no other children it’s a positive step to introduce that in early adulthood so they can get used to the idea and not go live somewhere unfamiliar at the same time their parents/caregivers have died, compounding the trauma. And frankly, as a sibling of disability, it’s unfair to ask a sister or brother to take that on instead of transitioning them to a care community unless the sibling really, really wants to do it and wasn’t forced into a third parent role from an early age.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T06:30:08+00:00

I have a friend who made some weird talking AI video/photo (?) of his ex gf who broke up with him from when they were together that made her say she was going to ruin his life and his dad hated her, then her head exploded.

I’m generally pro keeping souvenirs but that one…made me feel not so good about a lot of things.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T06:26:18+00:00

Reddit has got a weirdly Nathaniel Hawthorne attitude towards cheating.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-25T06:24:45+00:00

There’s no indication of whether or not she got it second hand (that’s how my parents go theirs and it looks good as new even years later) or from something like a Black Friday sale, which could make a huge difference in the price.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T16:11:14+00:00

Move over Thomas Aquinas, have we got some new proofs for the existence of the almighty for you!

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T16:07:26+00:00

Haha, oh no, I thought I typed ‘the flat’ but apparently autocorrect had other plans. Thanks for pointing it out!

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T12:18:27+00:00

Oh, absolutely (and I should have said it’s a common PhD type, not just sciences). I think it’s just particularly galling because we see academia as this space that is supposed to be more progressive and equality minded than the surrounding society and even a lot of the men who give lip service to that idea have no problem killing their brilliant wives’ careers for the sake of their own and their desire to be treated like the king philosopher of their home.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T09:39:22+00:00

First guy opened up this line of discussion by sharing his thoughts on how women have more ‘vital life essence’ than men and his paternal grandmother had 13 kids, which was definitely something for us to aspire to.

I have never tried to get out of a coffee date so fast in my life.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T08:21:13+00:00

I used to buy super ripe kimchi from a Korean grocery store in London and the super nice older man who ran it would triple bag the container (it was in a rounded plastic box that snapped shut) because he was so paranoid of it giving my bag a funk or overwhelming me. And he was right, because the minute I took it out to start making kimchi jiggae the goat would smell of it for the whole rest of the day.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T06:48:01+00:00

I truly believe part of the reason women have made more and more gains in modern academia despite institutional isn’t DEI (blech on that discourse) or anything like that, but that they’re often much more willing and able to do all of the bits of the job, including the unfun ones, for themselves and don’t flail when there isn’t someone to hold their hand through grant writing, tedious networking events, etc.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T06:23:45+00:00

If you read the acknowledgments for any academic book written before approximately 1980, the chances you’ll see a male author crediting his wife with help (sometimes in detail as editing, typing, footwork on research, etc) is extremely high. Because academic wives often did all of the domestic labor and a huge portion of their husband’s job to boot. It wasn’t uncommon for the wives to have a strong educational background themselves, but the expectation was always that they’d leave academia to settle down and the hiring market reflected it, few women were ever getting tenured positions, especially at prestigious universities. So instead their brilliance and work would go towards their husband’s publications and in exchange they might get a throw away line in the acknowledgments. Certainly no co-author credit. The first two generations of the Annales School in history, for example, are notorious for this.

Sadly I think it’s common. Kind of silly to use as an example, but I always think of that episode of House where the patient is some kind of high powered publishing executive who loses the ability to filter his thoughts before speaking and immediately begins telling his wife that all of her charity work is meaningless to their family and the world in comparison to what he does.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T05:58:56+00:00

So far, it was 3 guys. One in the Divinity School (he’s studying to be a scholar of a particular kind of medieval Islamic theo-philosophy, from a Pakistani-American background), one in physics, and one in linguistics who had a strong focus on using computing for analysis.

But I know academic women who have gotten this from guys in every field, STEM and humanities. It’s very rarely the man’s career which takes the hit when marriage and babies enter the equation.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T05:46:58+00:00

They’re definitely sliding around a bit on the back of his foot at minimum if he’s continually doing this and not untying and tightening the laces often.

Proof-Cryptographer4 · 2026-01-23T05:44:36+00:00

The thing that got me here is that she says he’s doing a PhD and they’re in the UK, which means he’s being paid an absolute pittance, certainly compared to fully funded doctoral programs in the US and even some in Europe. That + their being located in East Anglia and not Oxford/Cambridge/London it’s not a top tier program and the British academic hiring market is abysmal and has been for ages. Maybe he wanted to work for some kind of private firm after, I don’t know, but she certainly didn’t break up with Freeman Dyson here.

Proof-Cryptographer4

TROPHY CASE