Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday. Time for me to solve all the major issues of the world with the anonymous mailbag.

As always, you can send your anonymous mailbag questions to claytravis@gmail.com, anonymity guaranteed.

Right off the top here, we are excited about next week’s NCAA Tourney tip off party on Friday, March 19th, which will feature the new OutKick 360 crew, Paul Kuharsky, Jonathan Hutton and Chad Withrow, broadcasting live in downtown Nashville beginning before tip off of the games. You can sign up to join the OutKick VIP and come to our downtown Nashville event here. Details of location are on our VIP message board.

Okay, here we go with the anonymous mailbag:

“My wife started paying attention to politics about 5 years ago during the Republican/Trump primary. She’s absolutely an ‘Anyone But Trump’ person, mostly because he’s a dick, not because of his policies.

Anyway, the other day she texted our family group chat ‘Who wants to move to New Zealand? No guns and no COVID! Who’s with me?’ No one responded. A couple days later, I came home from work and she asks, ‘What if we went and visited New Zealand for a month to see if we like it?’ I asked her why she wanted to leave the US so bad and she said, ‘the US is just such a bad place to live right now’ and listed school shootings and divisive politics as reasons why.

We have a young family, 5 & 3 year olds, and I don’t want to live in New Zealand. Help me convince her America is indeed STILL the greatest country in the world.”

First, I’m not an expert on New Zealand immigration policy, but I believe it’s very difficult to become a citizen of New Zealand. Americans don’t really understand how lenient our citizenship policies are compared to almost every other country in the world. The idea that if you’re born here you automatically become a citizen is actually insanely uncommon in most of the rest of the world, for instance. So your wife is likely wrong about the ease with which you guys could permanently relocate to New Zealand.

Second, New Zealand has effectively shut down its borders to deal with COVID. As an island nation, that means they have had a limited amount of overall cases. But by the time your family could move to New Zealand, the COVID mess would be over. That knocks out one of her primary reasons for moving.

Third, maybe I’m old fashioned, but if you are upset with things in America, I think you should stay and work to make them better. The idea that you should run to another country just seems incredibly weak to me. I’m not opposed to moving for better situations, but your wife’s logic doesn’t really seem to hold up here. Plus, as soon as you got to New Zealand, you’d inevitably find many issues in that country as well.

Finally, you’d be leaving your entire extended family behind. Again, I’m not opposed to this idea in general if you have tremendous opportunities in a new location, but what opportunities are there for you in New Zealand that don’t exist in the United States? I can’t think of any.

So your wife’s idea, to me, seems akin to celebrities who always say they’re moving to Canada if their side doesn’t win an election. Then what happens? Those celebrities don’t move! Because America is the best country in the world to live in, especially if you are rich, which they all are.

I do think, however, America would be helped a great deal if every American had to live for a couple of years outside our country. Most Americans just don’t have any idea how good we have it. If you had to live in many parts of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, much of Eastern Europe or pretty much anywhere else around the globe, you’d be blown away by how many luxuries that other countries just don’t have we completely take for granted.

The poorest people in America are richer than the richest people in most countries of the world. Yes, our media spends an inordinate amount of time talking about wealth disparity here and focusing on everything negative they can find, but the bigger focus, in my opinion, should be looking at our “poor” people and comparing them to the poor people around the world. American poor people are rich compared to most of the rest of the world’s population, which is why so many people are dying to get here every single day.

Think about that for a minute. The rest of the world realizes to such an extent how good we have it that thousands of people are willing to die to get here. How many other countries in the world can say the same?

Hardly any.

I think your wife is making an emotional decision that isn’t supported by logic very much at all.

Having said that, I do encourage your family to travel around the world when everything opens back up. In addition to expanding your mind, I think it will make you realize how good we have it here, to a large extent.

“Here’s my dilemma. For the longest time my husband and I have discussed bringing a third person in for playtime. We did it while dating and want to do it again. The issue is we only bring women, and I want to try it with two men. To be clear the men won’t touch each other, but I want to experience that. But my husband says no. My friends think that I should be ok with just women but that I should add a stipulation that if women are only brought in, I get my choice of new shoes or a purse. Do you think that’s a fair trade off, or should I do it another way?”

I don’t know what you do for a living, but I think you should be able to buy your own new shoes or new purse on your own, regardless of what your husband says about these purchases. (That’s assuming your shoes and purse purchases don’t bankrupt your family or blow up your overall budget. We’re talking about new shoes and new purses WITHIN REASON.)

But the biggest question here, essentially, is what happens when a couple’s interests don’t align. In this particular case, the misalignment is in sexual pursuits. You are both fine with the idea of bringing in an additional woman to spice up your sex life. (Not surprisingly, your husband is fine with this idea.) But when you suggested adding another man to the mix, he wasn’t supportive of this idea. (Again, I don’t think this is surprising either. Most men don’t want to watch their wife with another man. Or want to worry about crossing swords with another man during sex. Or just feel insecure about the entire process in general. Your husband’s response, I suspect, is totally normal.)

So how do you solve these divergent interests? The answer is simple, even if the solution isn’t. You both have to decide how to compromise in this situation. If your husband is adamant he won’t allow any other men in your sex play, but he’s open to women, you have to decide if that’s acceptable to you. Because it’s clearly fine with him.

I can’t decide that for you, and your husband shouldn’t decide that for you either. You’re fine helping to satisfy his sexual desires — to be fair, a threesome with a woman may also be one of your sexual desires as well — but what happens when your sexual desires aren’t also his? Well, you have to figure that out with him.

One option is to say, “Okay, if you won’t add a man, I’m not adding a woman.”

That way, your sexual relationship just stays between the two of you.

Another option, at least according to your email, is you get a new purse or a new pair of shoes every time a woman joins you and your husband in a threesome. Again, that’s your right, although I think you should be able to buy your own shoes and purses.

But if that’s the bargain you work out and you like the trade, have at it.

I will say this, if every man could have a threesome with another woman so long as he bought his wife or girlfriend a new purse or a new pair of shoes, we’d never hear men complain again about their wives having too many shoes or too many purses.

A final option would be he changes his mind and agrees to your sexual fantasy.

These feel like the only three options at play here, and the two of you have to decide on one of these.

Good luck.

“I recently realized that my agnosticism is leaving me completely unfulfilled. In my spiritual journey, I’d like to attend a mainline Protestant church that holds moderate views, especially on the issues of sexuality and biological evolution. However, Wokeism has seeped into these same denominations. Conversely, the evangelical churches avoid Wokeism but are also too fundamentalist in their views (for me, anyway).

To recap: The liberal churches are too woke for me. The conservative churches are too fundamentalist for me. Finally, agnosticism and atheism are too unfulfilling for me. I’m currently leaning toward becoming an unwoke member of a more liberal mainline denomination.

Any advice?”

Attend multiple types of churches and see which sermons and/or pastors connect with you the best.

Ultimately pick the pastor and the vibe of the church that best suits you without worrying about how others define their religious breakdown.

I think you also need to presume that many of these churches are “big tents.” Meaning there are many members of these churches who have a wide variety of opinions on a variety of topics. I think you’re presuming that everyone in the congregation agrees with everything the pastor says, and I think that’s almost always untrue.

To me, your situation is a bit like politics. If you agree with everything that any one politician or political party says, you’re probably not paying enough attention to the party or the politician. The only person you should agree with 100% of the time is yourself, whether it’s politics or religion. And even then, you should be willing to challenge whatever you believe and change your mind as the facts and evidence change. Or as your lifestyle changes as well.

Plus, this isn’t a lifetime decision you’re making. If you pick a church and don’t like it, you can switch. This happens all the time.

Good luck.

“I am currently a sophomore at a big university in the South. I’m sure you won’t be surprised by this, but the leftist political agenda has crept into almost all of my classes. No matter what we’re talking about, Trump, COVID fear porn, and other issues (National Anthem, BLM) always have to be brought up. I’ve never really enjoyed academics, but I’ve always had good grades because I was taught my education is important. With things the way they are now, I have become totally disinterested. Having to do school through Zoom for the past year is not what I signed up for, and it has made my college experience a total wash.

My question is this: As somebody who runs a business, how much do you value a college degree nowadays when hiring employees? How has that changed over the years? As somebody who wants to work in sports gambling/the stock market, I just don’t see the value of wasting my time on these classes where I’m being fed leftist politics instead of actual, useful information. With where things are right now, I can probably learn more through the Internet and YouTube than I do in these classes.”

I don’t really care about college degrees at all when it comes to hiring at OutKick. In fact, I can’t even tell you where most of our employees went to college or if they even went to college at all.

We tend to hire based on work product, not on resumes.

But my business is quite a bit different than most businesses. What I want to see is your skill set. Have you done the job we’d be hiring you to do and have you done it well? We get a ton of people who reach out all the time asking to work with us with fancy college degrees and no experience.

I’d take the experience over the fancy degrees every time.

But our business is not that big. Many bigger businesses with more established hiring protocols have more stringent requirements in order to be hired. And many of those places require a college degree to get you in the door in the first place.

So I think you need to analyze what job you’d like to have and assess how you begin to make a living in those fields. You say you want to make a living in sports gambling and the stock market. Well, those are really big fields. You’d need to narrow down your focus to answer this question in a legitimate manner.

Anyone can buy stocks and bet on sports, but is that how you’re anticipating making a living? If so, where does your money come from to invest and bet and, perhaps more significantly, how will you make a living if your stocks and your bets are losers, which will certainly happen for prolonged periods of time even if you’re very good at gambling and investing? (Personally, I think anyone trying to make an actual living off gambling picks is insane. It’s virtually impossible to do well in the long term because the gambling markets are fairly efficient.)

My general answer to your question would be that a college degree matters for most jobs, but not all jobs. Most kids don’t know what they want to do for a living at 18 years old. And most kids lack the skills to make a living in their chosen field, even if they know what they want to do at 18.

As to your career choices, it sounds like your desired jobs are fairly amorphous. Until you have a direct idea of what you’re going to do and how you’re going to make a living doing it, I’d be inclined to get the college degree, even if, as you say, you often feel like you’re being indoctrinated with woke culture while receiving limited educational benefit.

Many jobs require a college degree, even if your college degree doesn’t actually qualify you to do a particular job. So I’d counsel getting a college degree for most people, not all, but most.

“The Outkick article yesterday about COVID and boners that won’t go away: COVID Can Leave You Boned Up For 3-Hours In Rare Cases, Doctors Report – was timely and funny, as my work is worried about the opposite problem. I’m a senior manager at a multinational company with several thousand employees. When our offices opened back up last summer, we were required to take our temperature when we got to the office and answer a bunch of questions. Do you have a sore throat or any of these other symptoms, have you been around anyone under investigation for COVID, etc. No big deal. Well, after Christmas, the company added a new question to the form: have you experienced new erectile dysfunction? Yes, I’ve looked it up, it’s a real symptom. I sent an email to my HR rep saying that this was totally ridiculous. To my surprise, I got a response from the head of HR saying that they debated it internally and decided to add it despite the sensitive nature.

I’m livid. My question for you, as someone who dealt with workplace harassment issues, would it be worth it to file a complaint with the state or EEOC? I’d be rightly fired if I asked any of my employees how it was hanging, why should it be any different here?”

I think you are overreacting quite a bit here, and it is definitely not worth it to file a complaint with the state or the EEOC over this question.

I also think you can just lie when you enter the building and say you’ve never had erection issues before.

This may be a flippant answer, but the subtext of your entire email, at least as I’m reading it, is you have erection issues and are ashamed of them and resent this question as a result of those erection issues. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I take from this email. I think most guys being asked these questions would either not care, because they aren’t having erection issues, or lie and say they aren’t even if they are because they don’t want to admit to erection issues as part of a COVID protocol at work.

Plus, if erection issues are a symptom of COVID — side note, is there anything that isn’t a symptom of COVID at this point? — then I suppose I can see why your company would be asking these questions as you enter the building, but I legitimately don’t understand why the question would anger you this much unless you have erection issues.

I assume most people’s dicks work fine.

But clearly there are tens of millions of men for whom that isn’t the case.

That’s why the erectile dysfunction business is so massive.

But if, for instance, breast tenderness and vaginal discharge or dryness were symptoms of COVID for women, would you consider that unacceptable to ask of female employees? I wouldn’t.

The company has introduced this questionnaire to try and protect employees returning to work. We can certainly debate whether it in any way makes anyone safer. But I don’t think starting a battle over erection questions as a part of COVID protocol is a good look for you.

Or anyone else.

…

As always, send your anonymous mailbag questions to claytravis@gmail.com, anonymity guaranteed.

Thanks for reading.

And I hope your dicks all work.