I did this (I wear a wedding ring but didn't have an engagement ring) and I continue to be amazed by the people - often people who barely know me - who feel the need to comment on it. A few months ago I was at the gym and a complete stranger came up to me and asked if I was married. I told him I was. "But you don't…

Really, it's common for black people to fly Confederate flags in Tennessee? I'm a native New Yorker who has spent a lot of time in the South (mostly Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia - I'm in the military), and although I've met many Southern black people and seen many Confederate flags, I've never seen the two in…

I'm Jewish and I'm not at all bothered by continuing Hindu/Buddhist use of the swastika - I lived in South Korea for a couple of years and there are Buddhist swastikas all over the place there. I think displaying the Confederate flag is much worse. If you display a Buddhist or Hindu swastika, you aren't indicating any…

Hmmm. I thought it was the other way around - that the giant skirts were actually a fire hazard because they could so easily sweep into a fireplace or other open flame, and once they caught fire it was very difficult to quickly remove the dress.

Yes, absolutely. It's not a coincidence that so many of these douchey guys love the idea of finding a wife in an impoverished country - because they can't attract women with their inherent personal qualities, so they have to find one who needs a husband in order to survive economically.

This. I'm white and female, married to an Asian guy, and nearly all the weird, racist comments I've heard about our marriage have been from white men. Some white guys really can't deal with the idea that one of "their" women might prefer a non-white man.

That's not how employment law works. In general, no one is holding a gun to anyone's head to make them work - that would be slavery. However, the fact that you've chosen to work for a particular employer does not give that employer the right to exploit you.

Based on my completely anecdotal experience, I think it's not uncommon for socially anxious people to prefer very mannered forms of conversation. My father, who is white, lives in a community where there are many older-generation
Japanese-Americans, and he loves it, partly because their relatively formal ways of…

Awesome! There aren't enough of us running around out there. :)

I agree that her comments are kind of eye-rolling, but I also really don't think that telling teenage girls to shut up is a feminist statement. I don't want teenage girls to shut up, however annoying they are. I want them to get into the habit of speaking their minds, and as they get older it's more likely that…

Wait, you mean that the half-billion Indian guys who exist in the world are not all the same? That's just crazy talk.

Haha, I'm glad my inability to recognize a joke was helpful to someone.

Ah. Sorry!

Ah. Sorry!

Erm... Cressida was one of the heroines of the Trojan War. Shakespeare wrote a play about her, and she pops up regularly in the Iliad, the Metamorphoses, and other classical literature.

I have the opposite issue with my parents. They lived in the apartment where my sister and I grew up for more than thirty years, and we also owned the house where my dad grew up, which was full of family photographs and other treasures (like my late grandmother's beautiful watercolors). When I was in grad school they…

Facebook just allows humans to communicate. It isn't the problem here. Getting rid of Facebook will not rid you of
obnoxious people unless you also become a hermit.

My husband is also fourteen years older than me. Even if he were sick I would rather be with him than be having "a fun and exciting sex life" with anyone else.

She's not speaking "ineptly." She's speaking in dialect.

I don't know if this is what you're thinking of, but I really liked this article: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opi…