Exactly. I care about my partners' well-being and happiness, and so I make sure to understand what they want. Even more so if they are particularly vulnerable, for whatever reason (intoxication, past abuse, etc.). This has meant foregoing sex in the past, which sucks in the abstract but is in practice very easy to do…

I assume some; and some men would have preferred to have had that option instead.

Oh agreed, it totally is a situation of two wrongs not making a right. They are probably making one another worse.

I would say that you are totally right about systemic discrimination (they don't even think that they are discriminating!), but that systemic discrimination is the sort of thing that moderate people/parties do. I don't think that the CPC is any good for the country on the whole, and I do think that it's avoidance of…

As passionately as I dislike Harper and the CPC for slowly dismantling of democratic institutions and attempting to redefine what Canadian citizenship means, I have to agree with you.

Haha, yes.

Second post because it's too late to amend the first. I don't mean to be dismissive, because you have a good point and this issue is super important. I just think that it might be possible to interpret things so as to make it possible for someone to face the accusations against them without physically seeing the face…

Yes, that is also ridiculously important!

Anthro-high-five to you, then! I did like your comment and I do think that that kind of analysis is useful, but yeah, once you wade outside of the CBC/into CBC comments... the term is sadly mishandled.

I think that we should all be doing our best to prevent murders, but I don't see how Muslim Canadians/Canadians of any other faith are more responsible for doing so than we are (atheist Canadian here). The fact that there are horrible people who are Muslim and who use Islam as their excuse doesn't affect my respect…

Team Daisy here.

Yeah, the reaction to Daisy's objections seem unjustified. William is expected to sacrifice his body and life to satisfy his government, and Daisy is expected to sacrifice her body (not exactly in this case, since he is going to die before the marriage is consummated, but you get the idea) to satisfy a man whose life…

So do you hold yourself personally responsible for every wrong perpetrated by someone who shares some characteristic with you? All people of your gender, nationality, ethnic background, religious group/lack thereof, etc.? If so, under what logic, and how do you live with yourself?

It's common in Canadian courts for people who have been sexually abused to be protected (using screens, etc.) from the gaze of the people suspected of abusing them*. This is only bringing up a fuss because this woman's veil is there for a religious reason, and because she is an adult (who was abused as a child). The…

I agree with your general argument, but the fact is that the media only ever refer to this sort of crime as "honour killing" when people are from specific backgrounds (Muslim/from the Middle East or South Asia). They also use the term long before there is enough information to conclude that the motives were indeed…

My problem is with the way in which the term is used, in ways that reinforce common forms of racism/other prejudice.

This murder doesn't have anything to do with accommodating "other" cultures. It has to do with a systemic failure to help victims of familial violence, and to provide safe havens for youths in precarious positions. Seriously: how would intolerance have helped save these women from their relatives?

Lack of financial and other basic life-skills is probably a huge part of their problem. It's hard to learn to budget if you haven't grown up doing it (whether because you went from child to parent really fast, or because none of the adults around you were in a position to teach you). Many of their problems seem to…

Yeah, that's my take on the shower too. It's something that could be easily and cheaply fixed if they had the skills, desire, and time to do so. There are lots of good reasons for someone (especially a very young parent!) to lack any or all of the above, so I'm not judging her. But the problem doesn't seem to be…

I'm guessing that medical costs are probably a huge part of the problem for some of them - debt over treatment during pregnancy/birth, and in Leah's case, over ongoing treatment for her child?