Oh, you didn't ask me quite the same question — you wanted to know why I didn't do anything about their inappropriate behavior right at that point, which I absolutely could have done, not why didn't "you" (meaning you and all of you people) do an undefined "something" to stop one of the most brutal dictatorships the…

Yeah, we may have to do that! :)

That's good to hear! I wasn't really speaking to gendering within school, although that's a big part of it. Teachers who encourage the girls to play together, who do boys against girls teams, who make distinctions, do as much of the job as parents and other influences, as well as what kids see themselves in media. I…

Ha! My husband is most decidedly NOT a reader (dyslexic) so I read to him. One day I talked him into letting me read him Crocodile on the Sandbank. Since then, we've made it all the way through Tomb of the Golden Bird, and he is very depressed that we are at the end of the series. He adores Emerson and Ramses, and we…

That is a great teacher! See, that I wouldn't have had a problem with. A video filmed by an educator for a class is a different thing than snapping pics of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign (to post on Facebook later!), which might as well say "abandon hope all ye who enter here," considering how you feel when you walk…

A little bit. I was.... I don't know if you've ever been to a site like that, although you don't really need to have physically gone to understand how emotionally overwhelmed you get by it all. Just the sheer fact of walking through the gate, being in those confined spaces, and just — it hitting you — it's a lot. And…

This.

Oh, and don't let the Muggles get you down.

Most welcome. I'd heart you if I could, but alas, those days are but memories.

Our society is uncomfortable with things that can't be pigeonholed, and I think that friendship is one of the more nebulous institutions we have.

Largely, I agree with you, because status quo expectations affect what we teach our children. If we are in a male-centric society where the father figure or male authority figure is to be respected and honored at all times, then naturally empathy is expected.

For Sweden has a point — we've seen similar stories regarding female vs. male behaviour in upper tiers of business and other fields. Is it possible that women feel that they are under more stringent scrutiny per being a woman, and therefore take fewer chances with hedging their abilities via fraud? More to lose, and…

Love your handle, btw! :)

Southerner here! Still remember the first time my dad stopped at a gas station during a work day with me and introduced me to one of his favorite things: salted peanuts dropped into a can of Coke.

LaComtesse, I just have to jump in here apropos of nothing, and say that I've been reading Jezebel for years — don't comment as much as I should — but I LOVE reading your perspective and comments on things. You make this site great to be part of.

Don't feed the trolls, people! Save your energy for more important things. Like anything else you can think of, basically.

I feel like he's the kind of guy who only accepts that it was, in fact, legitimately rape if the victim is left physically unable to walk away from it. "What? She got away with just a scratch/bruise/deep lasting emotional trauma? Not rape. If it was, she'd be dead, and then we'd have proof that she wasn't just a lying…

The really depressing thing to me as a native Texan is the mentality which assumes that only a certain type of Texan woman uses planned parenthood: poor Mexicans (probably illegal, or so the thought goes), poor blacks (and not many upper ups can conceive of a poor black woman who isn't a welfare queen or on drugs) and…

Agreed. This stopped being about personal choice the minute these men set themselves up as the personal Protectors of the world from... what? Women in general, I guess?

Google's new image search runs off of meta data and tags. Basically, for any photo you upload, the meta description tag specifies what keyword the photo can surface for in search. So if the patient's name, age, address, favorite band, whatever, was listed in the meta description tag, Google will return that image for…