I'm impressed. As a mega-rich celebrity, the one thing she doesn't have a lot of is privacy, and she's sacrificing some of that in order to encourage others and draw attention to the issue. Well done. I've always found her slightly uncanny/annoying, but this has won my respect.

I didn't know that, but how depressing. I have a lot of sympathy with the point many SAHPs make that salary does not determine the value of work. I mean, I believe the same thing. But we live in a society that does think so, that's all too willing to discount "women's work," and so it strikes me as incredibly risky…

Funny, I thought you were talking about people who are poor, and that I was talking about people who were not. So I'm a bit confused about your reply?

Yuuuuup. I've always thought this, but now I get a front seat to the divorcing SIL show. It's even more brutal than I imagined. I think a lot of women are very naive in thinking that if they should divorce (but of course they wouldn't, that's for other people), hubby will just delightedly pull out his wallet and pay a…

No excuse for highly educated middle class or upper middle class women to make shortsighted decisions however.

People often also make that choice because they do the math as you did — childcare is subtracted from the woman's salary, rather than from the total salary of the family. You're a special case — going to grad school means you'll get a new career start, which is great. But what happens to most women in this case is…

I think it's pretty ridiculous. I mean, dude, your food is getting cold.

Haaaaaa..... I've been on the needle end of some of that.

I just know that I'm definitely stealing the line, "Doctorate. University instructor. Get off my dick," for future use.

The article drew a connection between people putting starter rifles in their kids' hands and kids using rifles to kill other kids. It's certainly playing against a background of stereotypes that obtain in the US, but it's not actually mentioning any stereotypes. I don't see what's so stereotyped about suggesting that…

No, the right metaphor would be: when you want to teach your kids about safe sex, you don't actually have them have sex with someone, using a condom.

Dude, you can teach a 5-year-old how to swim, but you still don't let them near the pool unattended. You know why? Because they're five. Life and death are not concepts they understand, and they can drown in a few inches of water. So I think maybe guns are too much for them.

I had no idea what these things were, then I looked them up, then I wondered if they'd be available here in Germany, then I realised the original is from here and can be purchased. So now I am excited, and yet feel a bit guilty at reading a blog by someone who can't get a decent one. Hm.

I read today about a medieval saint — Christina the Astonishing, in case you're wondering — who among other crazy deeds would drink from her own breasts.

I was at a conference recently where a linguist who works on impoliteness played that clip. I had such a trauma reaction to it, though I've heard it before. My father's own verbal abuse has gotten worse and worse lately, and it helped me recognize that recording for what it was. There's a certain kind of person who…

Me too! Want to moo together?

Yeah, the jury's out on whether she was wearing underwear. I distinctly remember underwear. My husband claims there wasn't any. Mom couldn't remember.

We really thought about doing that... but we did figure it was the only chance to get our friends together. Afterwards, we joked that we were never allowed to get divorced, because our friends had spent too much money to come see us get married!

I, too, am a big proponent of paternity leave for feminist reasons. The big picture reason it's really important is this: women of a certain age range are always considered to pose the danger of an inconvenient and expensive maternity leave, and are therefore less likely to get the job, or the promotion. Men, however,…

Well, we had a little help from his 'rents, so that helped. Also, some things that are usual wedding expenses we got done by relatives or friends as their gift to us — so an aunt of his did the decorations, a friend of ours did the music (though we rented the tech setup), some others played music or sang. And all the…