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People on here have been commenting a lot about women not showing up for dates, which does sound frustrating, but apparently they're not showing up for each other either. I was reminded of this phenomenon by this Substack post, about women preparing home cooked meals for each other in their homes, then having people not show up last second. So my initial theory that maybe young women are scared of men from outside their social circle is not the main thing going on.
What's going on?
I tried going to a local ACX meetup, and it was fine, but after six people initially wanted to do it, only two besides myself ended up coming. Meanwhile, my daughter's pre-K teacher has invited herself to my house. She called today, and went on about a "mandatory home visit", next week, with highly inflexible weekday hours. I did not like it. She said she was going to drop off paperwork and meet my daughter. I said that I would rather bring my daughter to pick up the paperwork. We fought about it. I was perhaps more prickly than is altogether advisable when speaking to a child's teacher. I tried researching how this could be considered an appropriate thing to, not offer, not ask, but mandate. Something, something, building trust, Head Start, maybe the norms of black Americans? Clearly, they have the wrong order of things. If I trust you, I will invite you over. If I don't trust you, I will want to meet at your office. Even social workers know this. Is this related to parents not actually coming to their appointments somehow? It's juxtaposed in literature withattendance, more than understanding.
Also, meanwhile, my older daughter hasn't been invited to anyone's house. We haven't managed to invite anyone to our house. It seems terribly fraught somehow. I mostly do things with one or occasionally two other families with a stay at home mom and a mom who works two mornings a week, respectively.
Also, just because I found it odd, here's Keturah complaining about a situation where someone invited her into the hostess's home, and Keturah came, and then they judged each other for their stance on shoes, that Keturah wanted to keep them on, and the hostess wanted her to take them off.
I liked the culture of Georgians (Kartveli) and Albanians that homes are sacred, guests are from God, and that guests and hosts have important mutual roles and responsibilities.
What's the sociology here? Why are Americans like this, despite seeming deeply unhappy about it?
Keeping your shoes on in my house after I have asked you to remove them is so incredibly rude that I have trouble taking this seriously.
I find it (1) odd for anyone to ask you to remove your shoes and (2) incredibly uncouth to put up any pushback about removing shoes if asked.
(1) is more and more popular, I think primarily coming from Asian-American cultures? It makes a lot of sense to me, after a little thought. My kids don't think twice about putting their hands on the carpet while playing. Even my nicest shoes walk outside on sidewalks where birds often poop. "Wash your hands before eating" is the obvious first line of defense here, but "don't touch the carpet with the same surface that touched the bird poop" isn't a bad backup. It's just the same thing everybody who does outdoor work/gardening/etc does with work boots and "mud room" areas for them, but for other outer footwear in foyer/entry areas.
In my culture when I was a kid it would have been rude to remove your shoes in someone else's house without asking, because don't feet smell and don't we need shoes to help cover that up, but it turns out "make sure your feet don't smell" is an acceptable alternative solution for that. The level of work and exercise that can make your feet too sweaty and smelly to walk around in bare socks is the kind that probably already merits a shower for your whole body before lounging around the house, much less social events.
I’m coming from the perspective of footwear as being formal. So I wouldn’t still expect your footwear when coming over for a social call to be muddy or dirty in the first place.
Unless a guest is coming over from an attached house or another apartment unit with direct access to your own, or unless the guest is strictly carried on something where his shoes don't touch the ground, I'm not sure it's possible for the footwear that someone wore while traversing to your house not to be dirty. Even if, e.g. this friend was your neighbor across the hall in your apartment building, he's going to take at least one step in the shared hallway, which will inevitably have some grime from neighbors stepping on it with outdoors shoes, some of which will get on his shoes before entering your home. And someone walking on the sidewalk or on the driveway to/from their car is going to expose their footwear to even more grime than that.
That level of aversion to any dirt seems wild to me. What about socks? How do I as a guest know your floors are to that level of clean?
If someone's floors clearly doesn't meet the standard that you find acceptable to walk on with socks, it seems reasonable to refuse to enter without shoes, even if you otherwise find it reasonable to take off your shoes indoors. Much like how if someone's shoes are clearly very muddy or dirty, it seems reasonable to refuse entry to them without taking off their shoes, even if you otherwise find it reasonable to allow people to keep their shoes on in your home.
In typical cases, though, I'd say the dirtiness of shoes that have been worn outside is far beyond the dirtiness of the floor of a household where everyone takes off their shoes in a way that the dirtiness of such a floor isn't far beyond the dirtiness of the socks of a typical person. The former involves bringing dirt from foreign/outdoors/public sources into a private/personal space, whereas the latter is just private/personal dirt being swapped around. Personal dirt can certainly be dirtier/more mysterious than public ones, but in typical cases where people put in effort to taking care of their homes, it tends to be the opposite.
I just think in the main where it isn’t obviously dirty one way or the other, fretting about dirtiness is obsessive.
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