Is The Slate’s “Dear Prudence” a Datalounge EST Troll?

“Prudence” is author Daniel Alavert, who transitioned from Mallory Ortleb. Good writer of gender-themed literary fairy tales.

I love the Dear Prudence column! The people who write in generally have no idea how to live any portion of their lives. This week's letter was from a guy who got dumped for being too attractive. We can all relate!

R1 I think you mean it’s written by Daniel M. Lavery, who used to use the pen-name Mallory Ortberg. Difficult when you get both names wrong.

R3, “dear prudence” is a woman pretending to be a man who is married to a man pretending to be a woman. The husband, “Grace”, is a classic AGP narcissistic predator who promotes book burning, the eradication of gays and lesbians and is trying to sue a journalist, Jesse Signal, for fact checking an article “Grace” wrote that was nothing more than a stack of verifiably false propaganda about the Keira Bell case.

The best Prudence was Emily Yoffe. She gave pragmatic, straightforward advice and looked like a WASP fantasy.

R3, Grace or whatever the fuck it is, also thinks book burning is a good thing!

Do the two of them scream mental illness?

R5, if you think that woman looks like a WASP, you need to get out more!

The readers lead eventful lives!

[quote] Dear Prudence: Last week my partner and I went for a much-needed and long-overdue stay at a bed and breakfast in Florida. The day before we left, while lying by the pool I saw the concierge/desk helper let himself into our room. Wondering why, I got up to check and found him wrapped up in our bed sheets and smelling a pillow. I got angry, and he started crying and said we were an attractive couple and that he “just wanted to feel alive again.”

^Man, that sounds like the 21st century version of Penthouse Forum.

I only read the questions. I have no patience with the banal advice.

I have written numerous fake letters to Dear Prudence that have been published. Probably like 10 or so. So I do think a lot of the letters are ESTs and Slate doesn’t care as long as they’re interesting.

What kind of idiot would take advice from someone who refuses to even be honest about which sex they are and who is willingly married to psycho misogynist?

Danny Lavery is talented, but I think this is just not the right gig for him. The commentariat over at Slate is so mean to him too. But he doesn’t make it easy on himself when he gives advice that is just bizarre. Last week this woman wrote in because she was a teacher who bought snacks for her students and the janitor kept stealing them, so she said something and the janitor got fired. Danny raked her over the coals for that and said it was irresponsible because the janitor must have had food insecurity and was probably subsisting off those Lunchables, lol. It was just ridiculous. Not to laugh at people with food insecurity, but I really doubt anyone who is stealing snacks from a classroom is doing it because they would otherwise be starving.

R4, thanks for that information, I didn’t know those details when I posted at R3. I had thought it was a pen-name, rather than anything else.

Omg the response to the snack-thief letter was one of the most awful, stupidest pieces of advice I have ever read.

There have been a few like that, was there a recent one, R15?

It is a little do DL to be real. Thanks for highlighting it OP. One of those things in the vast crap that is the internet that is intriguing and worth discussing.

R17 I agree, but for some reason the bitches on DL yell at me whenever I post something from there here. If I post it with a link to slate, they tell me that they could have just read it on slate. If I post it without a link, people post the link to slate and act like I was trying to trick them. The elder bottoms on DL can be super fucking cunty.

[quote]Q. My brother, a police officer, is getting blacklisted by my friends: My brother (he’s older by two years) is a police officer. This was his childhood dream, and he’s dedicated his entire life to making it happen. Prudie, he’s wonderful. He leads his department’s restorative justice seminars, he was fighting for anti-bias training three years ago before it was widespread, and he spends much of his free time at the local rec center mentoring at-risk youth.

[quote]But my friends who know he’s a police officer have been cruel to him since this past summer. They frequently bring up political topics that put him on the defensive. They constantly forward me articles about police brutality and how “there are no good cops.” They’ll post Instagram stories with graphic depictions of police violence, then DM me to make sure I’ve seen them. It’s awful. I genuinely believe my friends think they’re doing the right thing and that if they just push hard enough I’ll somehow get my brother to resign from his dream job. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. I feel like they’ve drawn a line between us: As long as my brother is a police officer, I won’t be fully accepted in the group. This feels like yet one more “fault line” 2020 has drawn between me and the people I love, and I can’t stand to lose any friends right now. I already feel so lonely. How can I get my friends to stop harassing me about my brother’s occupation? Am I thinking about this the right way?

[quote]A: I hardly think your friends’ objections to your brother’s job have anything to do with his volunteer work as a mentor, so I’m not surprised that response hasn’t gotten you very far. And while his seminars on restorative justice may or may not be thorough, informative, and/or compelling, they don’t change the fact that it is not the job of the police to practice restorative justice. Nor is the efficacy of “anti-bias training” well established, especially when combating intentional, conscious bias.

[quote]Obviously—and this is my own bias here—my position is closer to your friends’ than to yours, so I’m afraid you’re not going to get the answer you’re hoping for from me. I don’t think it’s cruel to “bring up topics” that make someone feel defensive, nor to want to discuss police brutality with a cop. That said, certainly there are circumstances where it’s perfectly appropriate to tell a friend to stop sharing traumatizing images of police violence in your DMs, and I can imagine plenty of your friends’ approaches leave a lot to be desired. But if your friends say, “Police brutality is widespread and wrong, and I believe the problem is fundamental to the practice of policing, not an accidental case of ‘a few bad apples’ that can be screened out or solved through a few more in-office seminars,” and your response is, “But this is my brother’s dream job, and besides, he volunteers at the Y a few days a week,” I don’t think your response has been very carefully thought out. “There are no good cops” is designed to push past this sort of reflexive response. Your brother’s individual comportment does not excuse him or you from thinking critically about the police as an establishment; the issues are structural, departmental, institutional, and cannot be addressed by individually friendly officers.

[quote]You don’t have to agree with me, of course. You don’t agree with your friends, so I doubt my word will go further with you than theirs have. It is possible to love your brother, to think well of him and his intentions, and to think critically of his chosen profession no matter how good his intentions are. But I’m not sure you can indefinitely avoid this fault line, nor would I want to encourage you to do so even if that were possible.

Judging by their hatred and avoidance towards me, I can tell nothing is worse than a creepy neighbor.

Once Emily Yoff left I stopped reading. I tried a few times for that Mallory woman was so annoying. Once she transitioned I felt vindicated.

R22 I think most people are just hate reading it. The comments are brutal. They are heavily edited.

[quote] Q. Dysphoria and the gynecologist: My nonbinary friend has really killer periods. I thought he was being dramatic, but he once told me a story of passing a kidney stone and said it felt like his period pain, just in a different location. I was helped dramatically with my own period troubles with a visit to a gynecologist and an implant covered completely by insurance, but I know my friend is afraid of doctors, and a gynecologist would be even worse. It’s difficult to see my friend of 30 years in this much pain every month, knowing that there could be a treatment, but it’s also not my life. If you think I should say something, could you help me with the words? Scripting really helps.

[quote] A: I wouldn’t over-script this one—just ask your friend if it’s OK to offer some advice, then repeat what you’ve said in your letter. Mention your own relevant experience, acknowledge his fear of doctors, then ask if there’s anything you can do to help, like researching trans-competent OB-GYNs or going with him to his first appointment. (I don’t think you should mention that you used to think he was just being dramatic, though; feel free to keep that one to yourself.)

I mean, isn’t it just kinda looking for trouble to be a non-binary dude using male pronouns who goes around complaining about how awful his periods are?

Seems like provocation to me.

[quote]“dear prudence” is a woman pretending to be a man who is married to a man pretending to be a woman.

Did you steal that from "Victor/Victoria?"

Slate has no audience anymore, who would be writing in? Reminds me of Highschool, I knew the girl who wrote the advice column for the school newspaper. Her friends wrote all the letters, usually based on a prompt she gave them.