Midsomer and ice cream o'clock

Seems fitting to write a blog post about a procrastination article. More time-consuming, at any rate, than just sharing it on Facebook or Twitter (although time can certainly go into deciding which of those is right for which articles). But given that the alternative activity I had lined up for 10ish Tuesday evening was finishing an episode of Midsomer Murders (an amazing one starring the actress who plays Diana Trent on Waiting for God and a whole bunch of llamas), I'm not sure this qualifies.

Anyway. Philippa Perry's advice about procrastination is... I can't decide what it is. Either it's KonMari-like in its brilliant simplicity (oof, she called out pet-Instagramming specifically), or it's akin to the health advice that begins and ends with, maybe don't eat so much ice cream during the evening Midsomer. The central point:

"When I first became a parent and only had 30 minutes of baby’s nap time to complete a chore, I found I could complete it, whereas before baby, the same task may have taken me hours. When I had a finite amount of time I somehow found the extra focus to make that time count."

This is how life should work, and sometimes does, but doesn't always. There's a way in which being a bit too busy can encourage creativity - all work that isn't the usual/daytime work feels like a break, but the mind will be sharp from having not spent the day, I don't know, riding a shuttle to a suburban US supermarket in the middle of the afternoon because you haven't yet learned how to drive, to use a totally theoretical (obscure pun intended) example. But if you only have 30 minutes to spare, and the thing you need to do is (let's stay within the realm of the theoretical) clean the bath? What if the activities that have left you with little time - professional, domestic, whatever - have left you sort of, you know, tired? What if the urge to procrastinate strikes not so much when a task seems daunting as when your body is saying Midsomer and Haagen Daaz, but some part of you thinks it's more productive to still have that computer out?

Almost-right advice

First up, Philip Galanes, answering the following:

My daughter lost her wallet on her college campus. Someone returned it to the campus police. (With all of its contents!) But when my daughter picked it up, the officer berated her for having a fake ID. Her driver’s license was in plain sight, so there was no need to rummage through the wallet. He told her possessing a fake ID was a crime, but he wasn’t going to charge her. (Is he even an actual police officer?) Instead, he would report her to the dean, who may put her on probation. I think he was way out of line; she wasn’t using the ID. You?

Galanes gets the essential right - the officer wasn't out of line. "[W]e’re not exactly talking about the march on Selma here." Indeed. It's not the job of police officers, campus or otherwise, to return illegal items to their rightful owners. I might have added an analogy - would you expect the campus police to return your lost cocaine, or whatever the kids are using these days*? No, you would not.

But Galanes also takes the opportunity to lecture the letter-writer on alcohol:

Of all the complexity surrounding the epidemic of campus sexual assault (for the “epidemic” angle, see the blunt new documentary “The Hunting Ground”; for the complexity, pick up anything by the brilliant scholar Catharine MacKinnon), one factor is really clear: booze. Rather than belittling the campus police, you should thank them. Underage drinking is not your daughter’s friend.

This, just... so many issues here. The first and most obvious is that "booze" doesn't magically start having a different impact on the body at 21 than it did at 20, and plenty of college students are drinking not just moderately but legally. Or is the idea that women shouldn't drink during college? Another: the absence of a fake ID hardly means underage drinking isn't taking place. Again, lots of college students are 21 and over - the notion that there'd be separate parties for classmates above and below the legal drinking age is one of the many absurdities of having it fall smack dab in the middle of traditional-college-age.

But the big one, of course, is the one Galanes is getting taken to task for elsewhere - he suggests that a woman who drinks is asking to get raped. I'd push this further and emphasize that he isn't just saying that getting blackout drunk is dangerous. He's saying that consumption of a non-zero amount of alcohol by 18-20-year-old adult women invites rape. It seems clear to me why this would be iffy even to those who are OK with the Emily Yoffe-type arguments against passing out at parties. That the drinking age is as high as it is may well be contributing to the interrelated problems of binge drinking and campus rape. (Lest you think that's a pro-libertine, out-there position, here's Ross Douthat saying the same thing.)

I get that in an advice column, there's a need for a life lesson. But why couldn't it have been one about how college students and their families shouldn't think they're above the law? About certain parenting choices, even of adult children, that encourage entitlement? It's like he almost arrives at that conclusion, but gets sidetracked.

Anyway, back to Yoffe. Here's a recent Prudie letter about interracial dating:

I am a black woman for whom culture, race, and politics are very important and sometimes painful subjects. I love my partner of two years very much. He is a white man in his late 30s who has very little experience with these matters, and our differing views have caused many arguments. Now we avoid the subject of my culture completely, and it is killing me that he does not understand this important part of who I am. Occasionally he will make generalizations and comments that I find worrying or insulting. He is not a racist, merely ignorant—he thinks we are all one as humans and should not pay attention to differences. If the playing field were equal between all people, I would agree with him, but it is not. Except for this, he is a sweet and gentle man—intelligent, trustworthy, and a blessing in my life. I love him, but I feel I am betraying my politics and community. Mostly, I just want to talk—but I can see why he avoids it, with all the shouting that’s happened. Help.

Yoffe, too, gets the essential correct - this guy is never going to know firsthand what it's like to be black, and if the obliviousness that's all but unavoidable in someone who hasn't personally experienced a certain form of bigotry (if, it sounds like, especially pronounced in dude) is a dealbreaker, the deal should be, well, broken. And what Yoffe says about the ability of someone who isn't Other in the same way you are to be "an oasis from the often troubling issues that you spend so much time on in the rest of your life" has more truth to it than some might want to admit. (To those who'd ask how I, a white person, could possibly know about such things, see the post below.) But there's also an aspect of this that comes up in all opposite-sex relationships - a man can never really get sexism (well, a man assigned male at birth, as the vast majority were), so the best a straight woman can generally hope for is a man who gets it when it's pointed out to him. Except... straight women are stuck dating men. This letter-writer is neither stuck dating white men nor stuck dating this white man.

Where Yoffe goes astray is in the last sentence: "Or you conclude having a partner who reflects your own views and experience is so central for you that you must let this good man go." It's there that she takes a stance that the letter-writer would be wrong to end the relationship for this reason. That's a man-shortage argument. (How much worse it is to make a man-shortage argument in reference to a black woman than to a woman whose race isn't specified I couldn't say.) Man-shortage arguments are ones that go like this: Men are so terribly hard to snag that if you've found one who doesn't beat you or drink away the paycheck, you should hang onto him for dear life. According to man-shortage theory, a woman should never dump/reject a man for reasons like, she's not attracted to him, she finds him boring, or - apparently - he holds incompatible views on a political issue with tremendous personal significance. Is this man "good"? It's advice-column cliché that a major complaint about a significant other will be accompanied by a disclaimer about how wonderful the person is. The disclaimer is there, but it doesn't sound as if she finds him all that wonderful.

*I'm trying to make sense of this article, a personal essay by a journalist, the takeaway of which is, as best as I can tell that she's simply too straight-edge (if that's still an expression) to properly report on campus drug use. Since when are journalists bragging about being too squeaky-clean for investigative reporting? Since when are newspapers encouraging journalists to confess to ineptitude? Why would you need to have used drugs to write about those who do? Why do readers need to know either way about a journalist's past drug use? And why the hedging about having never "really" been offered drugs in college? Is the issue that the author is - thank you, Google - a Kennedy, one of JFK's grandchildren, and thus someone born with a reputation to protect? (If nothing else, should that biographical detail make me feel better about having not been offered cool reporting assignments at 24 by any major publications?)

Ugly women, unconventional-looking men

Just after telling a woman that she should settle for the guy she's with because she's in her mid-30s and not getting any younger, Emily Yoffe fields a letter from a man who describes himself as "ugly." He explains that he has everything else going for him - work, workouts, clothes, hobbies - but is so unattractive that women won't date him. His question is whether he should get cosmetic surgery.

Yoffe allows that there are such things as "actual facial deformit[ies]," but doesn't seem to believe it's possible for a man to just be ugly:

There are plenty of women who would go for the guys on this list of “actors who aren’t very attractive” (I’m winking at you, Paul Giamatti). A man who is happy in his career, who is seeking a committed relationship (and who cooks and can serenade), should have had many second dates. I doubt the problem is your looks, so going under the knife for cosmetic reasons will just leave you a lonely, different-looking version of yourself. So you need to figure out what’s really going wrong.

Normally, advice-columnists take letter-writers at their word. Not here. Yoffe deems unattractiveness implausible, but suggests he might "fall somewhere on the autism spectrum"! I mean, he might, but nothing in the letter suggests as much.

Yoffe's right that plastic surgery's probably a mistake - as it is for most, male or female, if only because elective surgery, ugh. But separate from the question of whether surgery should - or could - improve dude's looks is the one of whether physical unattractiveness is possible in a man. And... why wouldn't it be? Yes, looks are subjective, and yes, most people are within normal limits. A further yes - yes, sometimes people grow into their looks at unexpected ages.

But some people - men and women - are found plain-looking by the vast majority of people they meet. It minimizes the pain the men in that situation experience to suggest that their troubles in love can't actually relate to their looks. It can.* But it also - especially in conjunction with that earlier letter - suggests that women ought to be grateful for any man who's reasonably upstanding.

I wonder how Yoffe would have answered the same question from a woman. While I doubt she'd have recommended surgery there, either, she might have advised a trip to the Clinique counter. That is, I doubt if she'd have entirely dismissed the possibility that looks were at least part of it.

*The ease with which very good-looking men succeed in dating is the subject of a really spot-on scene in "House." It culminates with Chase getting the most interest by far, despite having put on an unappealing act, and despite the well-above-average attractiveness of the men he was with. Fiction, yes, but I link to it only because of the logistical and ethical problems with linking to real-life examples of any such phenomenon.

Triage

"My therapist has told me I need to remember that I don't want to be in a relationship with him."

This, and only this, is the part of this advice-column letter we're going to discuss. The letter? It's about the lure of the aloof asshole. A classic problem, but not the question at hand.

And that question is: If you have a therapist, why are you writing to an advice column? Or: Why run such a letter? Or: If you are an advice columnist writing your own letters, why include a bit about a therapist? If you're already paying a neutral third party to discuss boy trouble, why are you taking up precious advice-column space? A second opinion, sure, but aren't advice columns for those in search of a first?

"Squirmy"

When does adulthood begin? There are the articles regularly placing it older and older, according to the latest neuroscience. The 'the human brain only stops developing at' articles, according to which I, at the tail end of 30, am probably too young to be making any major life decisions.

But the real ambiguity is the one surrounding college students. We've decided that they're too old to live at home but too young to pay their own way. If 60% of 20-somethings and early-30-somethings are getting financial help from their parents (how I read the relevant, startling paragraph), that's not a phenomenon that can be dismissed as impacting only the rich. Certainly if you consider that those not receiving help are probably clustered mostly on the older end of that range. The way the economy is now structured, it's unlikely that a 20-year-old, especially one in school, is entirely financially independent. That exceptions exist, or that many managed this in a different economy, is a distraction.

But we still have this notion of 18 as adult. And it's this tension that leads to messes like the one described in this week's Social Qs:

I am the mother of a 20-year-old college student who is still on our family health insurance plan. I was confused about a benefit statement we received regarding her visit to the gynecologist. The insurance company told me the charge was for fitting her with a diaphragm. I am not sure if this is correct, but my husband and I disagree whether it’s appropriate to discuss it with her. Thoughts?

Philip Galanes answers the question in a way that almost makes sense, until you remember that the child in question is 20:

Of course you should talk to her! What are you waiting for — your daughter to hit menopause? If you suspect the bill is incorrect because your 20-year-old is not having sex, let me assure you that you are probably wrong (statistically speaking). And whether your daughter likes it or not, it is your job as a parent, along with her father, to insist on a running dialogue about her emotional and psychological readiness for all kinds of adult activities she is on the verge of undertaking — including sex. 

As with many important talks, this one may be squirmy to start. So, whichever of you is better at intimate chatting should sidle into her bedroom one night, and ask her sweetly about her love life: “Anyone special?” And no matter what your personal views of premarital sex, let her know that you just want to help her make the right decision — for her. Feel free to wax poetic about waiting for true love, but for God’s sake, make sure she knows that a diaphragm will not protect her from sexually-transmitted diseases. Now, get to work, Mom!

A 20-year-old looking for contraception is, one would hope, informed enough to know which forms do and don't prevent STDs. If she's gone to a doctor for said contraception, seemingly the doctor would also discuss this with her. 20 seems sort of ancient to be learning the facts of life. A conversation about this with one's 10-year-old might be "squirmy," but with one's 20-year-old, it's squirmy in the same way as it would be squirmy for any adult to discuss any other adult relative's sex life. A 20-year-old should feel comfortable going to her parents in a time of crisis, but what, in this case, is the crisis? This seems like a case of an adult behaving sensibly.

More to the point: isn't doctor-patient confidentiality supposed to be a thing? Again, maybe there would be some emergency situation where that would have to be breached, but does a 20-year-old getting contraception count as such?

But it's the parents' insurance! They are paying for the diaphragm, so they have the right to... what, exactly? It *is* an awkward situation. It's now appropriate (says the government!) to stay on one's parents health insurance until 26, as well as quite possible to be employed without benefits. So the health information of generally functional 25-year-olds is open information for their parents. Should the parents happen to be writers of overshare (and who isn't these days), they're thus free to spill not only anonymously, to advice columnists, but in any public forum they desire. 'My Millenial Child Has Herpes,' coming soon to a magazine cover near you. But back to the matter at hand: 20 is at one and the same time too old to ask for a parent's permission (or owe an explanation!) for something so private as contraception, and too young to deal with this truly independently.

The answer I always lean to, for this sort of thing, is the one that will rile my libertarian readers: get the state involved. For people of limbo age, in higher education or the lowest, most precarious rungs of employment, basic living expenses and health insurance should come from the government. The parents (and non-parent adults) are still paying, yes, but in tax dollars. This would apply not to children, but to those in whichever age range we determine is both definitively adult and realistically tough to be 100% self-supporting at in our economy. Maybe 18-22, maybe 18-25. This would accomplish two things. First, it would level the playing field at a time in people's lives where this is especially key, but also especially possible to address. (An equal playing field within the childhood home is, for obvious reasons, more complicated.) Second, it would take away the awkwardness around children owing not just society but their parents specific behaviors as adults. Because it's not exactly that the 20-year-old's mother is wrong to want to pry, but that society should be structured in such a way that this would be considered outrageous.

Heteroscriptual

A Dear Prudence-type question somehow ended up in Dan Savage's inbox, although not for the first time. This one's from a 28-year-old woman who's been with her same-age boyfriend, including living with him, for respectable lengths of time. She wants to get married, and has not made a secret of this. She's told him. She's told his mother. And he... doesn't want to marry her? Or maybe he does, but the script requires a bit of kicking and screaming from the dude, a bit of will-he-or-won't-he from the dudette, and that's where we're at. It's engagement season, I suppose, or at any rate, straight women-asking-gay-male-advice-columnists-when-dude-will-propose season.

From the limited information we get, it's not at all clear which it is. If we all mine our anecdotal evidence, we'll come up with examples of stories along these lines that culminate in by all accounts happy marriages, as well as others where there was an underlying he's-not-that-into-you, and they break up. Either we're at a particular moment in the standard-issue script that leads to marriage, or she should say, as Edina Monsoon does in a different context, "Me and my ovaries are leaving," and return to the dating pool with ample time left to have the bio kids she desires.

Savage's response is basically, oy the heterosexuals, and then he urges the letter-writer to just do the proposing herself. Which is a step in the right direction - this time around, he doesn't just agree that 20-something is too young for such decisions. Problem is - as the commenters point out, and as I mentioned here in response to the similar question there a while back - the woman kinda-sorta already has proposed. Philip Galanes, addressing a slightly different question (this would-be-affianced hasn't spoken up, it seems, but assumes her dude can read her mind), urges a female proposal that's a conversation rather than an ultimatum, although then there's Savage's letter-writer, who had that conversation, kept it open-ended, and got nowhere.

Savage is right that the heterosexual proposal is heavy on the gender roles, but if only it just came down to who generally asks the question! There are assumptions about the age at which men or women have the most options on the dating market. There's biology, but there's also the way that age enters into it even independently of any specific couple's desire to have biological children. There's the bizarre pseudo-feminist performance of independence and of indifference to all that wedding nonsense that women are urged to embrace specifically to inspire a man to propose. (And it gets confusing, because there are also the women who genuinely don't want to marry, this guy or at this moment or ever.) At the same time, even men who do want to get married need to at least resist the idea a little bit, or else they seem some combination of desperate and gender-non-conforming.

Ultimately, some of this isn't gender-specific, but just the common human desire to be with someone who could plausibly appeal to others as well. It's performed in different ways in men and women, but amounts to the same.

But the problem with the female proposal isn't simply that it switches things around at the last minute. It's that, according to the script, every woman effectively has proposed... to any man she'd refer to as a boyfriend. Even if she's never brought up marriage. Even if she's said she doesn't want to get married any time soon, because, heh heh, everyone knows that no women could possibly feel like that. (Hashtag: sarcasm.) His 'proposal' is really just a yes to the one she's already given, just by being female. Which, to repeat, is a problem, because we live in a not entirely scripted world, and sometimes women who give off every impression of not wanting to get married don't want to get married, and it's not actually a clever ruse to seem less needy or clichéd. But because the script demands female passivity, there's no way for a woman to announce she does or does not want to get married until a man has broached the subject.

The ultimatum - much-maligned for its lack of romance - is, in a sense, the female proposal. It brings a relationship to the point it would be in if a man had proposed and the woman had said no. The male proposal assumes a yes, while the female one assumes a no, because every man's answer is no until proven otherwise.

It's tempting, then, to suggest a non-ultimatum female proposal - and totally understandable that those looking at bizarre hetero courtship rituals from the outside would be like, why is this not already happening? - and granted, it's not that this has never happened. But as a rule, a woman who brings up marriage is perceived of as exerting pressure, in a way that a man doing the same is not. Until all these myriad underlying assumptions remain, equality in the kneeling arena doesn't seem imminent.

Modes of transport

-Is it really a faux pas, when jogging, not to nod hello to fellow joggers? As in, not people you know, just other people who also happen to jog on the same path? Writes Matt Kurton:

If you see someone running towards you, as long as they haven't recently committed a robbery or escaped from prison, nod a quick hello. Enjoy a fleeting moment of shared humanity. Acknowledge each other's travails. Cyclists manage it without any bother, but in many places runners respond to a smile with an irritated frown, or by pretending not to notice. Come on people, share a little love. What's the harm?

I read this, had not yet seen the byline, but immediately realized this just had to have been written by a man. Women - young women especially - are not always such fans of being told to smile. Kurton's advice, though gender-neutral, would, if directed at a woman, seem of a piece with the broader message that women owe male passersby their loveliest selves.

My point isn't that the author wants women to especially to smile at him, but that he's missing why women might not go for this advice. Although the another of the author's "commandments" - that men need to wear shirts while jogging - might make readers suspect heterosexuality. (I have never known straight women or gay men to complain about this phenomenon. Straight men, however...) I mean, maybe he does want smiles from women in particular, maybe he doesn't, but that's not the issue.

Also! When a woman is jogging and a man passes her by and grins at her, she can't know what kind of grin it is, and what sort of response smiling back would inspire. We live in a world where consensual romances often begin with smiles of that nature, esp. when everyone involved (men as well as women) is scantily-clad, sweaty, and in a remote locale, so a really efficient way to demonstrate not interested, just to be on the safe side. I know that sometimes a phrase like "rape culture" is over- or misused, but this seems like a case where it's rather literally applicable. When I'm jogging, I acknowledge passersby if I know them, which I often enough do, but otherwise? I'm hoping they're not ax murderers. But then again, I grew up in pre-Giuliani New York.

-It is obvious very wrong-side-of-history to question the new NYC bike-share program. Not living in the city, I'm not too worked up about it either way, but I do have one question about it, which is what it's supposed to do. Normally, as I understand it, the idea with bike-sharing, and bike-encouragement more generally, is that bikes replace cars. People who would drive everywhere will now only drive to the big supermarket on the edge of town. Which makes sense in a Philadelphia or a Heidelberg - a city where you don't necessarily need a car, but you probably have one. Biking is better for the environment, and gets some exercise in. All things equal, I am pro-biking, and I probably do now know how to drive well enough that I can no longer justify driving to town (to avoid those two big hills) as "practice."

In New York, though, certainly in the areas where these stands are appearing, is biking replacing driving? I can't imagine it would be. It seems unlikely to replace subway-riding, nor should it - the ability to get from one part of the city to another relatively quickly, relatively safely, at all hours, is one of the best things about the place. And you will still get some exercise, what with all the stairs, and the long platforms.

Will it replace taxis? Not for the stiletto contingent and its male equivalent. Walking? Perhaps, but that's just fine for the environment and arguably better for you, and given NYC traffic, newish bike riders may find walking is quicker. It's definitely not replacing the driving wealthy New Yorkers do on weekends, to get to their second (or tenth) homes.

Buses are the only plausible transportation biking would replace, crosstown especially. But as anyone who's ever been on one of those buses knows, the people on them are not people about to switch to bikes: families or caregivers with young children, the not-so-mobile who require a bus to get from 7th Avenue to 8th, etc.

Am I missing something? Is the Manhattan depicted on "Seinfeld," where everyone middle-class drives everywhere, actually the real deal, and my 10,000 years experience of the place some kind of mirage?

"[T]otally inappropriate"

The Prudie letter in question, with some thematic overlap with this earlier post:

Q. Workplace Awkwardness: I'm in a really awkward situation here. A co-worker with whom I've had several five-minute conversations but nothing more recently sent me an email telling me how beautiful I am and wondering if I had a boyfriend. I figured it was for somebody else, so I ignored it. I then received a Facebook message with much the same content, so I know it was for me. This guy doesn't even really know me—we've only spoken a few times! I have absolutely no attraction toward him. He's a nice guy though, and I try to be a nice person as well, and I am totally unsure of how to handle this. Do I just live through the awkwardness at work and pretend nothing ever happened? I'm usually a drama-free person who can handle this sort of stuff just fine, but I am really dreading returning to work now. 

A: You need to step up and deal with it in a drama-free way. Tell him his emails and Facebook posts were totally inappropriate and you don't want to get any more such personal messages. Keep copies or screenshots of what he sent. Then if he won't stop, take the evidence to human resources and say you tried dealing with this yourself, but he's not getting the message.

So. Harassment, stalking, these are real problems, but sometimes even a creepy tone or what have you can give a woman a bad feeling about a situation that on paper sounds innocuous enough. I fully support putting a stop to all threatening attention ASAP, and involving authorities if necessary. If you're actually scared, don't worry about hurt feelings, political correctness, etc. By all means, use the tools of feminism and sexual-harassment law to defend yourself. My bias here would be to side with the woman, and not with the ogling dude.

But how are these issues relevant here? From what we know, a man who is not this woman's supervisor, at a company that presumably doesn't have a no-dating policy (written or otherwise - in plenty of fields/companies this alone would be our answer) or the letter-writer would have mentioned that, who has indeed met and interacted with this woman in real life, has expressed romantic interest in her. Awkwardly - he should have asked her to go get coffee - but perhaps his thinking was, if she has or makes up a boyfriend, or otherwise provides a not-interested, I'll have my answer. He emailed twice, yes, but the first one was ignored, and it won't immediately be obvious to sender why that was the case. Maybe she doesn't use whichever account, or maybe it's her work account and she's behind by 500 emails. As it happens, she ignored it because she didn't realize it was even meant for her, which presumably the second, Facebook approach confirmed. Again, not the best way to go about it, but dude was just asking her out. Nothing lewd. This constitutes "totally inappropriate" behavior?

It could be that Prudie mistook Facebook messaging, which is private, with Facebook posting, and imagines that dude is pulling some kind of horrible rom-com gesture. But it could also be that certain women respond to any attention from men they don't find attractive (or even ones they totally do like and will say yes to shortly thereafter) as some kind of offense to their dignity, and use the language of feminism - the right of a woman to go through life as something other than a sexual object - to back themselves up. (The connection to the Brussels-catcalling post, I suppose, is that we need to consider the possibility that some white European women object more to catcalls from darker-complexioned immigrant men than they do to equivalent attention from, say, drunken white European men, who are not exactly immune to that behavior.)

But we live in a society in which heterosexual relationships tend to form only once the man has made the first move. This means that there's a certain amount of uncertainty for the man when doing so. Even assuming a man who doesn't just ask out every woman he likes, regardless of her plausible reciprocation (and boy does this exist), a man might think a woman reciprocates his interest, only to learn that he misread her signals. The younger, prettier, nicer (misinterpreted as flirtation), and less wedding-band-having a woman is, the more of this she's going to have to fend off. But unreciprocated asking-out, while technically unwanted attention, is not a kind of unwanted attention one can ever systematically avoid. People who like you will always ask you out, and unless they don't take no for an answer (or it's your boss, etc.), they're not doing anything wrong.

Going only by what's in the letter, this guy didn't have a chance to take no for an answer and back off, because she never answered. If he'd emailed four different accounts and gotten nothing, yet pressed on, creep city. But once to her email and another time to Facebook? This sounds like he has asked her out, and in all likelihood would take no for an answer, and would in no time at all find another woman to declare "beautiful."

******

All of the above is basically standard-issue commentary. The more interesting question is why a woman would respond to getting asked out as if it's harassment (assuming we have all the relevant info.) and why an impartial observer (Prudie) would agree.