AITA for walking out of a dinner after being accused of supporting incest?

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Nearby-Comfortable79

Thank you Reddit user: u/Direct_Catterpillar77 for putting this together

AITA for walking out of a dinner after being accused of supporting incest?

Originally posted to r/AmItheAsshole

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Biphobia

Original Post - rareddit  Dec 9, 2023

Hey. I’m posting on here because I need people’s opinions on this. It’s so fucking stupid and such a non-issue, (unless I’m wrong about that too) that turned into something bigger.

For reference, this happened on Thursday evening. We are all in our early 20s and all names are fake.

Thursday was our friend “Sarah’s” birthday. To celebrate, our friend group decided to go out for dinner. There were about 10 of us. Everyone was in a good mood and it was really nice to just talk to everybody about whatever for hours, especially since I kind of had a stressful week.

Hours into the dinner, we landed on the topic of movies/TV shows that we were watching. Our friend “Amy” mentioned a show that I had also watched. As soon as she brought it up, I said that I really liked the show, and that the acting, writing and directing was top notch. “Mary” chimed in and said that she really didn’t like the show and how she had been watching other things. Cool. To each their own. Mary then asked me how I felt about the main romantic pairing in the show. I responded that I liked it, and thought the romance was cute. This is where the drama started.

For context, I don’t want to get too much into it because it might be confusing, but basically, the main romantic pairing is between the male lead and the female lead. There are some people who have interpreted that these characters to be related to each other. I do not. But I know that people are free to think whatever they want, and honestly thought that this topic was harmless. Well, I was wrong.

Mary took offense to me saying that I liked the romance. She asked me if I supported incest. I said of course not, as the characters are not related. She said that they ARE related and that me supporting their pairing is supporting incest. Mary then said that I should “educate” myself before saying “stupid shit”. I was dumbfounded and thought she was joking but she was REALLY angry with me about this. She told me to rethink my values because supporting incest makes me a horrible person. I told her she was making harmful accusations over a TV show. Our other friends were telling her to stop, including Sarah, but she kept claiming that I was a disgusting incest supporter. She then claimed I was homophobic, since the male lead is bisexual but still ended up with a woman. Mary just wouldn’t stop saying shit like this.

So here is where I may be the asshole. I left Sarah’s dinner. My friends were asking me to stay but I felt uncomfortable, so I paid for what I ordered and left. Many of my friends reached out to me on Friday to ask if I was okay. Some of them, while they understood why I was upset, said that it was wrong of me to leave Sarah’s birthday dinner and that I should have just ignored what Mary was saying and stuck around. I feel like they may be right and that I may have ruined her birthday by getting up and leaving, but I felt like I couldn’t stay because of Mary throwing accusations at me over something that doesn’t matter.

VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE

RELEVANT COMMENTS

HauntedReader

NTA and Mary seems like she takes things FAR too seriously.

I am super curious what the show is though. Do you mind sharing?

OOP

Loki

HauntedReader

See this doesn’t even make sense with her argument. It wouldn’t be incest because the two aren’t related, they’re literally different variants of the exact same person.

It definitely falls on the weird side of things but definitely doesn’t count as incest.

Also I’m going to assume neither of you finished the series yet so like I’m even more confused by this take.

OOP

I finished the series. I don’t know about Mary. I know that they don’t end up together, but the point is that even in season 2 the implication is still there. But Mary was just upset that they were romantic in the first place.

TOP COMMENTS

mmiggs

Mary is a clear asshole. There’s no question here. And a very stupid asshole, if she thinks that bi people ending up in a relationship with someone of the opposite binary gender is homophobic. (Clue: half of the people that a typical bisexual person is attracted to are of the opposite gender. You might actually expect bi people to be in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender significantly more often than half the time. If you’re a bi man, then your set of possible partners are (for the sake of argument, and there’s some simplification of sexuality here) gay men, bi men, bi women, and straight women. The largest of these groupings, by quite a long way, is the group of straight women.

NTA

~

PurpleMarsAlien

NTA

Mary is acting weird. Attacking someone over fannish beliefs that are not part of current canon is being rather extra and over the top.

And even if this eventually becomes part of canon, someone who like the couple when it was not canon, were not supporting incest. They would have been misled by the creators.

Update  Jan 3, 2024 (Nearly 1 month later)

Hi everyone. First, thank you all for your comments and advice on my last post. It’s been about 4 weeks since the incident at the dinner, and I just wanted to give you guys an update if you’re curious.

First off, I just want to say that I have no hard feelings toward my friends who said that I should’ve stayed. I get me leaving was probably the best thing to do in that situation, but their intentions were purely good: to make sure that Sarah enjoyed her birthday dinner.

I reached out to Sarah and apologized for what happened, and for me leaving so abruptly. She said that I didn’t need to apologize and said that all was good between us. I took her out for drinks. We had a great time.

Now, onto Mary. Since the dinner, I have been texting and calling her, just to talk about what happened. So far, she has either ignored my texts and calls, or given me very short responses, either telling me that she doesn’t want to talk to me, or that she’s busy. Sarah told me that she also reached out to Mary, and while she was actually willing to talk to Sarah, the conversation pretty much went nowhere. Amy also reached out to her. Like many of you were wondering, she asked her if she was a victim of incest. I mean, It would make sense based on her reaction. However, according to Mary herself, no, she wasn’t. As far as I know, she isn’t bisexual either, so it just seems she’s throwing a tantrum over things that have nothing to do with her. Or it’s possible that she’s been spending too much time in online fandoms, but who knows.

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