Link: “Actually, You Shouldn’t Offer Help in Someone Else’s Kitchen”
Super relatable piece. Earlier in our relationship, Viv and I had a few arguments on this general topic. In my family, people never just barge into the kitchen of someone whose house they’re a guest at. They might ask if they can help, but if the answer is “no” (which it usually is), they never push and insist on doing so anyway. Doing that, actually, would be considered really rude, like a power play, telling everyone the host is so bad at being a host that they’re forcing the guests to do all the work.
Conversely, in Viv’s family, the women specifically are expected to run around like kitchen hands and serving staff while the men sit around doing fuck-all. Viv used to get annoyed with me that I never just leapt up to do shit, and always “had to be asked”. When I pointed out that none of the men ever got “asked” to do things, and that aside from Viv himself not a single one ever volunteered either, he backed off a bit. Just a month ago I had a conflict with one of Viv’s aunts (who wasn’t even the host of that particular gathering, tying it back into this article’s message of “let hosts host and everyone else back the fuck off”) barking orders at me and treating me like her maid. Just a totally unacceptable, disrespectful way to treat others.
Posted by 
Jessica Smith on .