Sorry for the late reply but oh my gosh you know exactly how I feel about that situation then. It drove me NUTS to see her putting up with that! NUTS! I just about bit my tongue in half. But to her, that was the price she paid. That was the bargain she'd struck. It was the same price our mother had paid before us, the…

Thank you. And you are so right. I was very young when I began seeing the gender disparities women face in family life, we're talking like eight or nine years old. By 12 or 13 I knew I wasn't having kids—it was just so awful realizing how much work parenting was and how much of it my mother did compared to my dad, to…

What spoke most to me was this idea that women are "allowed" to pursue jobs, but not to take away men's prestige. That was a brilliant crystallization of what I'd heard from numerous other studies about how men and women feel about women working. That women contribute huge amounts of unpaid (and largely unnoticed and…

It'd be very interesting to hear what gay men and women think of "having it all." That said, this wasn't about gay relationships but straight ones, where men and women have to contend every day with deeply-ingrained societal expectations and qualifications for both genders.

My, my. These Christians sure do spend a lot of time worrying about gay people's gayness. Seems like putting the cart before the horse. If the person's not "saved," then it seems like it hardly matters if he or she is gay or straight. Straight people go to hell too, according to their mythology.

Yeah, because you couldn't possibly be the one common denominator to the reason why you might not be getting stellar service. I've rarely gotten anything less than absolutely superb service, and yes, I get that level of service anywhere I go. I can't even remember the last time I got even mediocre service at a…

Is it too late to call that phrase for a band name?

I taught English in Japan for a while in the 90s. I never got over the decidedly weird spiritual side of that culture—like it seemed so sterile and downright atheistic, and then BAM! You'd discover an ancient Shinto temple in the middle of downtown, or see teenaged girls writing little prayer-papers to tie onto tree…

Well said. I'm not thrilled with the savage attack on a woman's looks. Her being blonde and thin, save as a demonstration of the homogeneity of the modeling industry, is not noteworthy in and of itself. If she was black and a size 16, would it suddenly become not-okay to tear her down?

I was married to a man who embarrassed me all the time like I imagine this guy does to his wife, and it is excruciating. I've got too much dignity now to put up with that kind of a man-child.

Like they're even pretending at this point to care about babies or women.

And if those white men didn't need fetus worship to help them roll back women's rights and destroy our self-sovereignty, you can bet they wouldn't give a wet shit about them either.

Oh my, that was sweet of you to say! Thank you. She was my favorite character in the book, as you might guess. I've read my way through a few copies of the book too and can rattle off parts of it by heart. (We shall not speak of the movie.)

This, this, this, this. When over half the country is obese, there is no goddamned excuse for not carrying more inclusive sizes. Big people buy clothes too and want to look cute and sexy too. I've been morbidly obese and I'm normal-sized now, and the difference in how store personnel treat me and how product lines…

There's a great book, "Something From the Oven," that talks about how women slowly moved out of the kitchen and stopped learning how to cook (and stopped cooking too). It puts the blame for the trend at the doorstep of convenience food manufacturers trying their hardest to normalize their products and gain acceptance…

You've actually got a lot more than you think you do. You work, right? So you've very likely got some kind of EAR helpline (check your employee bulletin board, the one where they put the minimum wage poster and OSHA requirements and stuff). Call it. Or schedule an actual therapist to help you figure out why you feel…

I think it's sweet of you to help your friends like that. I'm going to second the suggestion to start at ground floor because stuff you or I might take totally for granted, your friends might not ever have heard. Simple, easy cookbooks are a good idea too—the "Cook's Illustrated" group just put out a 5- or 6-…

I knew someone who was so scared of and clueless about her sewing machine, that she'd get a downstairs neighbor to come up and thread hers for her. She was way into costuming so apparently that happened fairly often. This was about 15 years ago, so I know this current state of affairs isn't the fault of "kids today."

Remember Veronica Palmer? "I'm different from other women, Ted, and by different I mean better."

Every movie about hostile aliens/creatures needs at least one genuine ass-kicker who isn't totally on board with the program. "V" had Michael Ironsides. "Jurassic Park" had the Australian dude. "Ghostbusters" had Pete Venkman.