Exactly - this is hyper-controlling in any relationship structure.

Gaaahhhh... I've been practicing ethical non-monogamy for over a decade now, and this is exactly the kind of thing that sends up massive warning flags whenever I encounter it. It almost always happens when a previously monogamous couple decides to open their relationship, but one partner is either not happy about the…

I was thinking for a bit that maybe some kind of threshold system could be put into place, where if you get, say, a minimum of 50 or 100 stars on a given comment, you automatically get bumped to "followed" by the site you posted to.

Heh.. when I teach public speaking, I have a bit where I say, "There's one thing Americans have a particularly hard time dealing with when communicating with each other."

Less skin lightening, more skin lightning!

During grad school I worked in a parking booth at the university hospital. It was usually a great job, I always took night shifts so that I was basically being paid to study. Nothing ever happened, really.

This brings up an important aspect of physical abuse that we don't often talk about: that for many women, an attack that affects their appearance is also effectively an attack on their livelihood.

There are probably going to be a lot of cosmetic surgery costs that wouldn't be covered under most insurance, and the dental costs alone are probably going to be huge (I don't know about you, but I've never seen an affordable dental plan that covers much beyond routine visits).

Just adding my voice to the chorus of people that are

Is posting this story some sort of weird internet-judo "use your opponent's moves against them" type maneuver for Das UberGifTroll?

The main point you're trying to make is definitely one I agree with, and my sincere respect to you for accepting your mistakes. I know I've posted any number of things over the years that in retrospect I wish I'd put differently, the difference being I rarely really owned up to them in public. Kudos!

I teach about the complex problem of differentiating between institutional racism and individual bigotry, so I understand what you're trying to get at.

The Mass Effect style armor is huge improvement, imho. I've been happy to see Marvel quietly revising many of its more prominent female heroes with more practical outfits, I wish they'd gone all the way with that in the movie.

Make Wicca the dominant faith in numerous countries over a millennium and a half, and I guarantee you there would be Wiccans who would commit atrocities against religious minorities. Probably at as massive a scale as any other religion.

To all the people popping up saying, "Hey, he may not have put it the best way, but he's got a point," I'd like to point something out:

I did finally meet her daughter the next week. She was a great kid, insanely smart and funny. Good god, she must be almost 18 by now!

Thanks! Though it was kind of a gamble at the time - sure, the poor kid never saw me, but if she had, it would have been much, much worse for her to see me under her mom's bed than on it!

Several years ago, I was dating a wonderful woman who was eight years older than me and had a 5 year old daughter. It was her first experience dating since her divorce, and my first experience dating somebody with a kid (I was only 20 at the time), so we both agreed that we'd wait awhile before I was introduced to her…

When my parents asked me why I decided to get a vasectomy, this was one of the major reasons I listed.

With a name like "fartfuckhell," s/he's clearly a thoughtful, pleasant individual to be around and says nothing but reasonable things.