Restaurant row who is at fault?

[Polishedshoesalways]

Out with friends in a restaurant last night - six of us in total. Two of my friends were light heatedly disagreeing about gender politics between them. They were not bothering anyone else.

Friend x suddenly shouts at them quite aggressively and loudly to ‘shut up’

Loud enough for the tables around us to stop and stare.

Would you think this is rude? She was not part of the conversation at the time.

The table sat in stunned silence after that. It’s now really awkward. She hasn’t apologised or acknowledged that shouting or shutting a conversation down like that isn’t cool. The friends in question seem offended.

What do you think? Do they have a point?
Are you okay with being told to shut up?

Well it’s not great, but tbh, talking about gender politics at a restaurant IS rude, so it’s swings and roundabouts really.

It depends on your views tbh.

I also find politics interesting to talk about, but thankfully my friends and family all vote the same way I do. So we sit and laugh about what batshit things the Tories have done recently.

I’d not sit there and ‘debate’ anything at the dinner table with one friend out of 6 though.

It is rude to shout shut up loudly like that and disturb the other people. It is odd the person doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with it.

If I were in a restaurant on a Saturday night and the topics of conversation were local elections and gender political, I would crack up too.

It's a Saturday night, I like my weekend's fun & light hearted. Plenty of other times for serious chat but I really gave little tolerance for political debate during my dinner. How utterly insufferable!

I wouldn't have told everyone to shut up but I can totally understand where your friend is coming from. It's probably just dawned on it that she really wasn't having fun & the group's idea of fun isn't hers.

I think if it was a light hearted conversation and not bothering anyone else then the shouting friend was very out of order. Wonder what prompted that response from her?

It isn’t ok to shout at people to shut up simply because they are having a discussion / debate.

It is OK to say “for particular reasons I find this subject sensitive atm so would you mind if you changed the subject?”
or “you two always start on this subject, get a room LOL”
or
”hang on, that sounds a bit rude, discriminatory/ whatever” (I.e actually join the discussion and address whatever was being said that upset them).

Not OK to shout shut up. Not in a restaurant, and not ok to shut down debating adults like that.

But sometimes we all get exasperated and lose our rag a bit…. But then apologise. Which shouty friend hasn’t.

Yes, read the room. Whether they were bothering anyone else in the restaurant or not is a separate issue. They were bothering someone in their group though.

Personally I am very keen to debate about gender, but I wouldn't take over the conversation debating it with one other person if we were out for dinner with four other people who weren't interested.

If they keep talking about it within your group and shutting out other discussions, I can imagine it gets very tedious. But, pretty obviously, the way to deal with that is not to tell them loudly to shut up. Your shouting friend could have achieved much more by diverting the subject or, if that doesn't work, saying something along the lines of "You know you never agree on this one, why not just leave it there? Have you got a holiday booked for this year?"

Yes this.

I'm also finding that as I age and have so much less time for socialising with friends (we're all in the young DC years so it's hard to get out), I have much less patience for debates over dinner. I want a proper catch up, and to hear what's going on in my friends' lives, not debate an issue du jour at length. Or even worse, have the conversation dominated by other people debating an issue I'm not particularly bothered by.

Don't talk about politics with friends. Don't talk about religion with friends. Don't talk about football with friends.

Sorry just back to the thread.

We are not planning to go away without her, we would never do that but just to postpone the trip for now as it doesn’t feel comfortable.

I asked my friend if she was okay directly. She said she was frustrated because she wanted to talk about something else. Nothing was stopping her though, as I was talking about holidays at the time. It did feel targeted at them. We are all GC so it’s not the division per se, they were talking about women’s rights and the greens/Labour - that was being discussed. Not angry but just talking about women’s rights. It really didn’t merit being shut down like that. It was shocking.

Friend x gave me the impression she just wanted to talk about other things.

Our group has always discussed this kind of thing since we were 14 years or younger. We are now just hitting 50s.

Okay, shouting loudly enough to make people at other tables turn round isn't great. But empathy-wise I'm totally with shouty friend.

People who constantly re-hash divisive debates on what's supposed to be a fun evening, are beyond annoying. I speak from experience. I've tried to change the subject and had no luck whatsoever. I wish I'd had the guts to just tell then to shut up. Clearly she'd held it in for ages and finally cracked.

Again, if this was a one-off, she does not deserve to be dumped by the rest of you.
But who knows, she might well have had enough of you all and not want to go on the trip.

Our group has always discussed this kind of thing since we were 14 years or younger. We are now just hitting 50s.

If they've been rehashing the same conversation for over 30 years I'm not surprised she told them to shut up. There's only so many times you can listen to the same conversation before you lose the plot.

Poor women probably wanted to talk about something else and whilst you say she could do that she'd obviously been trying to redirect the conversation and had zero luck in getting them to change the record.

😂 We don’t just talk about that! We talk about everything but feminism is not an unusual topic in our group. It’s normal. Much of the time we talk about work, relationships, children, holidays, it’s just one topic amongst many.

I never implied that's all you discussed but she's been listening to them discuss this topic for decades. They can't have much more to say on the subject surely.

The point is she'd clearly tried to change the subject and had no success and she finally got to the point where she'd had enough, I can't say I blame her at all for her outburst.

Sometimes being told to shut up is appropriate.
Depends what the person is saying.

Doesn't sound like this was one of those times given you say this is normal for the group.

if she doesn't like it then she should leave rather than yell at people.

She was bang out of order. Instead of trying to shut them down so rudely, she could have made her excuses and left.

The reason I can’t see whether this is in or out of character for her, as she is extremely direct bordering on being quite rude most of the time. She is very blunt, but not usually aggressive or rude.
She lives alone as kids are at uni, and she doesn’t work so spends a lot of time alone and I wonder if this has impacted her? She has a less of a filter these days noticeably so.

Not angry but just talking about women’s rights. It really didn’t merit being shut down like that.

Clearly your friend felt differently. If they've genuinely been re-hashing the same argument for over thirty years I'm not surprised she told them to shut up 😬

It’s never ok to shout like that but your friends sound absolutely tedious and she probably got to the end of her tether and decided to tell them to STFU.

She should have gone about it in a different way absolutely, but it sounds like these friends do this on a regular basis and perhaps like the sound of their own voices too much.

There could be a gender issue close to home or maybe they thought it insensitive to loudly discuss an emotive topic while laughing about it. Maybe she's heard enough and just wanted to chill the fuck out.

So you are annoyed but to shout at your friends felt a bit much. No sign or word from her today so clearly does not feel she needs to apologise. So it’s awkward. It would feel strange for the other two to apologise for a standard conversation.

i feel conflicted. Is it possible just to lose a social filter? As this feels to be the most likely reason.

It doesn't sound like she's lost her social filter - it sounds like she's sick of the same people dominating the conversation and has called them out on it.

Unfortunately women who speak up are often seen as aggressive and rude rather than assertive and confident.

People are under so much pressure now - we are all carrying so much weight. No wonder some individuals just snap under the collective burden. It's like we have a constant background noise of stress and disharmony. This country being broken by our own government. Broken voting system which disempowers us.Genocide in Gaza which we cannot prevent. Trampling of womens rights. So-called cost of living crisis. Wars, famines, economic injustice. Global warming. Destruction of wildlife habitats. And so on... plus lack of the spiritual foundations which would enable us to move forward as a species in a better way. I'm surprised that more of us aren't running around shouting 'shut up!'

To be fair we are all assertive and confident, we are older and experienced and between us have been through all life can throw at us, but we are also respectful and have manners.

It’s possible she just hated the conversation - she could have just spoken to someone else and tuned out, but she didn’t she leant across the table and said can you just shut up, for a second. It was the most bizarre moment. And then she said she wanted to talk about x, y and z.