I’m not at all sure what you’re trying to say.

As I said elsewhere, though, it’s not necessarily having an issue with a sibling’s spouse; it’s also a question of audience. I’m perfectly fine with my brother-in-law hearing all the personal shit I say to my sister second-hand, but the way I’m going to tell her about it is very different from how I’d tell him — not…

True! And come to think of it, my aunt and uncle actually do share an account, and have never had separate emails. But they’re also of the generation that tends to keep in touch with family through phone calls, so privacy is not an issue.

God, I fucking wish we had control of our own thermostats in our department. The university maintenance crew sets the temperature for the whole building: from October 15th to April 1st, they turn the heat on at the beginning of the week, then turn it off at the end. So Monday morning, it’s like the ice planet Hoth in…

True. I guess a part of this is whether we’re assuming these two people have only ever used a shared email account, or if they abandoned their separate accounts in favor of a couple one after getting married. If it’s the former, this all becomes a lot more unreasonable on the sibling’s part. I’ve been operating on the…

Yeah. For me, it’s the part where the sibling’s wife will reply to emails addressed to her husband that I have the biggest issue with. I’m fine with my sister telling her husband what’s going on in my life. But I do think that the way I’d tell the two of them some stuff would differ considerably. And both of those…

Based on the LW’s question, it’s clear that their sister-in-law does read her husband’s emails. It’s not being paranoid if it’s actually happening.

Well, yeah, obviously in this situation I wouldn’t just ice out my own sibling. (I don’t have a brother, but two sisters.) But that doesn’t address the primary issue here — it sounds like these two siblings do use email to communicate more personally, and it is weird for a spouse to insert themselves in that…

I wouldn’t be comfortable talking to my sibling on the phone if I knew that their partner was always going to be listening in there, either.

The letter writer puts this issue in the proper perspective, for me.

You do have an agenda. You’re just not willing to see it. And by picking at the edges of this topic, rather than engaging in what the article was clearly substantively about, you’re enacting that agenda.

You’re moving the goalposts with the first part of your comment. My entire point has been that, rather than engage in a substantive discussion about the intersection of modesty and dance and how it might affect a dancer wanting to dance in a hijab, ballet enthusiasts throughout this post decided to focus slowly on the…

And you’re an idiot if you think that the number of hyper-American casuals watching the World Cup exceeds the number of people who would watch the WC anyway, even if the US weren’t playing.

You’re vastly overstating the importance of the USMNT’s games to the marketability of the World Cup in the US.

My question wasn’t, “why do ballet dancer commenters talk so much about form?” It was, “why don’t ballet dancer commenters talk as much about social justice as they do about form?”

I’m sure errors really do bother them, and I get that. But bringing them up in a public forum that is mostly non-specialists, and then using her form to sidestep the larger questions that her participation poses, is majorly derailing.

Okay, this is exactly the conversation I was hoping that people involved in ballet could foster. This is how you (speaking in general) use your experience to deepen the discussions about what it means for a hijabi girl to dance ballet. Not by criticizing her form and leaving it there.

I empathize with your frustration and bitterness, but this is exactly the sort of derailing behavior I was talking about.

And I’d love for people with ballet experience to have initiated that conversation, about culture and costume and religion. That would have been a meaningful way for people who wanted to signal their insider knowledge to do so, while still focusing on the parts of the story that everyone else is interested in and that…

I feel like you think this intransigent missing-the-point is clever, but for your own sake, in case you try it elsewhere in your life, I really feel obligated to tell you: it’s not.