Boundaries

[stardreamer]

It took me a few minutes to realize why I was flaming mad at the end of it.

Brady doesn't realize how lucky he is. If any guy I'd ever been dating had said that to me... well, let's just say he wouldn't have had THAT problem to worry about any more.

Of course, Gray is white and male, and he hasn't spent 30-odd years living in the Deep South, so that probably makes a difference.

[Elizabeth Bear]

Cultural context really is everything.

I'm reasonably certain Gray's capable of giving it right back, when properly motivated. *g*

[Edmund Schweppe]

It took me a few minutes to realize why I was flaming mad at the end of it.

Brady doesn't realize how lucky he is. If any guy I'd ever been dating had said that to me... well, let's just say he wouldn't have had THAT problem to worry about any more.

Of course, Gray is white and male, and he hasn't spent 30-odd years living in the Deep South, so that probably makes a difference.

As a white male who hasn't spent 30-odd years living in the Deep South, I have to confess that I didn't see anything Danny said that I would find likely to leave anyone [1] flaming mad. What, if you don't mind my asking, did Danny say that infuriated you?

Also, welcome!

[1] Of the appropriate gender and sexual orientation, that is. Which, for Danny, Gray is and I'm not.

[miminnehaha]

It took me a few minutes to realize why I was flaming mad at the end of it.

Brady doesn't realize how lucky he is. If any guy I'd ever been dating had said that to me... well, let's just say he wouldn't have had THAT problem to worry about any more.

Of course, Gray is white and male, and he hasn't spent 30-odd years living in the Deep South, so that probably makes a difference.

I just went back and re-read (I love this sweet moment) and I still don't know what Gray's supposed to be angry about.  But I'm glad to say "welcome"!

Edited to add: is it the "yankee" thing?  because it's an insult down south, but we northerners don't care!

[MadGastronomer]

Edited to add: is it the "yankee" thing?  because it's an insult down south, but we northerners don't care!

My chef is learning to care. Every time she's rude by the standards of the locals, I tell them she doesn't know any better, she's a Yankee (and, in deference to Bear, I mean by this what my family generally means by this: she's a loud, brash New Yorker who thinks that her cultural norms are Right and everyone else's are Wrong; my family developed this definition after my mother and her sibs spent years being taught by New York Yankee nuns).

As of last night, I think she's starting to be irritated by it. I am contemplating whether to inform her of the impression she gives others of herself (which she generally does not care about, because other people are Wrong), to keep doing it until she says something, or to find something new to do.

[miminnehaha]

If "yankees" = "new yorkers", I now appreciate the insult!

[Elizabeth Bear]

I am a Yankee, and proud of it. In fact, I am a Connecticut Yankee. Or a swamp yankee, in common parlance. (Northern New Englanders are hill yankees. Southern New Englanders are swamp yankees.)

New Yorkers are not Yankees, whatever they have named their baseball team, and I generally roll my eyes at the ignorance of anybody who refers to them as such. (Likewise, no offense to MG.)

[Elizabeth Bear]

If "yankees" = "new yorkers", I now appreciate the insult!

You know, some of my best friends are New Yorkers. I'd prefer not to see them randomly slagged on.

[miminnehaha]

No, exactly-- that's why Gray could be upset! It really is an insult-- not a random southern-ism like "y'all".  We Minnesotans try not to be too easily offended or too offensive-- I don't know the language of insult! (If only I knew a good one for the husband-dude who took the car key into the realm of No-Signal and left me with no way to pick up the kids from school! I am stuck with "dork." ah, well.)

[Elizabeth Bear]

No, exactly-- that's why Gray could be upset! It really is an insult-- not a random southern-ism like "y'all".  We Minnesotans try not to be too easily offended or too offensive-- I don't know the language of insult! (If only I knew a good one for the husband-dude who took the car key into the realm of No-Signal and left me with no way to pick up the kids from school! I am stuck with "dork." ah, well.)

Well, I think you're misunderstanding. Because Brady's not using it as an insult. He's using it in the sense of cognitive dissonance, because by his upbringing, the connotations of "Yankee" are much like what MG describes. With a side note of carpetbaggers. And of course, his actual experience of Gray is very different.

For example, I would be exceptionally insulted if MG used "Yankee" that way in my presence, even if she excluded me from the stereotype--just as I assume she would be insulted (and very rightfully so) if I used "southerner" to mean somebody from the southeast who was prone to poisonous courtesy and hypocritical friendliness.

Those are cultural traits that are commonly perceived to be more common in southerners than in Yankees. and I know people who assign them to southerners as a general rule, but I think that's pretty bigoted and stereotypical.

[miminnehaha]

If that's even what stardreamer was talking about...!

edited to add: and now that the kids are home safely (thank you neighbors with cars-- and keys!): I've never even heard "Southerner" used in a derogatory context... sooo sheltered. 


And, of course Brady wasn't being insulting.  This interlude is such a tugging-on-heartstrings, let the folks on the team have life, have love moment...

Even though it's a "teaser/deleted scene", it is one that I think of again and again... and speaking of cognitive dissonance, "Brady" instead of "Danny" even in the love scenes?  Because it is for us, the "viewers," or because he is more Brady than Danny at this stage in life, or...?

[stardreamer]

He's using it in the sense of cognitive dissonance, because by his upbringing, the connotations of "Yankee" are much like what MG describes. With a side note of carpetbaggers. 

Yes, that. Actually, my first response to such a comment would probably have been, "Is that really an issue?" in a very neutral tone of voice, and further action would have depended on how the guy handled it. Because I haven't spent most of my life fighting the perception of me as second-class because of my internal plumbing just to walk into a relationship where I would always be perceived as second-class on the basis of where I was born! I won't play "Down in the Boondocks" for any man, no matter how sexy.

The other thing that jumped out at me is... Brady is gay, and therefore himself the subject of a lot of unthinking prejudice and stereotyping. And yet, he still thinks of "Yankees" in the equally-prejudiced-and-stereotypical Deep South mode. I'm sure this was deliberate on the part of the writer, and I'm hoping that there may be some follow-up.

[miminnehaha]

I don't think that Brady has that kind of prejudice in mind when he says "Yankee"-- remember, he's from Texas.  I think you are probably reading too much into it-- they are teasing, in a very strong-male-federal-employee-establishing-relationship way.  The opposite of insult, in fact: it's a tension-easing teasing.  I don't know if we have any PTB originally from The South...

[txanne]

Lee, you know I grew up Texan*, and I didn't get even a whiff of meanness from that remark. Brady and Gray were having an Important Relationship Talk, and Danny was having a little trouble with not-running-away. Remember how he was freaking out at the beginning? And thinking about his grandfather? Yet he still had the courage to accept that he and Gray are serious about each other. Considering how his last relationship ended, I'm surprised he only cracked the one joke.

In short: I understand how you came to your reading, but I believe you are mistaken.

*which, for the edification of the non-USians, is not quite the same thing as Southern**

**which should be capitalized in this sense, pls.

[MadGastronomer]

Brady is from Texas, not the Deep South. It is, as people in both places will tell you, very very different.
Southern and Texan experiences of what we think of as Yankees (actually rude New Yorkers, mostly) tend to be that we are looked down on by them as ignorant, backward hicks. They are right and we are wrong, and they do not hesitate to tell us so. People from many parts of the country hear a Southern or Texan accent, and immediately begin talking down to us. There are still bitter memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Yankee carpet baggers who came in and stole land that had been in families for centuries. Since Southerners have actually historically been repressed by Northerners, Southern prejudice against Northerners -- while still ugly, reprehensible and largely unjustified -- is more akin to misandry than to misogyny.
Still, I'm with TxAnne -- that's not meant as an insult, and Gray didn't take it as such. Brady is doing something he never would have pictured himself doing, and makes a comment to that effect. If it's a little rough, well, that's the way some guys do things, and he and Gray are both that sort of guy.

Bear, I actually had not known until you told me the pie for breakfast joke that Yankee properly meant New Englander. I'm still working on updating my internal lexicon.