I remember my first day of high school I accidentally left my Star Wars paperback in math class. I would hold it under my desk so no one could see me reading. It was a really good book. The next day the teacher starts off class by asking if anyone left their book behind. I was terrified I had written my name in it or…

Good lord, that Bono quote. It reminds me of the following apocryphal story a friend of mine used to have on her Facebook profile. It went something like this:

Everyone in the past was a real fucking size queen, apparently.

There once was a lass from Gdansk,

I work in newspapers and it constantly depresses me how, even though our company is basically split 50/50 men/women, upper management is all male. It has been like this at every paper I’ve worked at. You’d think the media would be a little more open-minded, but it’s such an Old Boys’ Club.

Sigh. Every publishing company/news organization I have worked at, except for one, was like this, where senior management was a total boys’ club. At my last job, which was a much bigger company, I was interviewed by a female publisher and saw that the vice president of the entire company was a woman and was completely…

It it book or magazine publishing?

I worked at a relatively well known (but small) magazine and noticed a silent sexism within the first 2 weeks. We worked in a big communal warehouse space, but the “important” people at the company had pseudo walls around their offices. Like these brick and glass walls didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling and there…

"Oh, are you the paralegal?"

I just found out a guy I know in a professional capacity and had always assumed was a few years ahead of me is, in fact, a few years younger without relevant professional experience! But, he talks like a Dad, like he’s got all this relevant life experience, you know what I mean? So here I’ve been listening to…

No, Turtle.

She's trying to tell us that she was the brain behind HorseEbooks all along.

There can be earnest questioning when the story being told is so far outside of common experience. People who are having sex with their best friend generally do not wordlessly and out of the blue just start punching and choking and committing forcible anal rape. People who have just been punched and choked and raped…

I read this here and it's my daily mantra now: "Blame is easier than empathy."

This is one of the most important pieces I've read in a really long time.

I know - like, I was raped (by coercion and threats) in college, and it took me years to understand what happened. It was my boyfriend, and we stayed together a little while after that. I felt bad but wasn't sure why, exactly. Emma felt close to him - she had confided in him - why is it out of the question that she…

Really? You read her context and thought forcible anal rape? That didn't come across in my read.

Let's figure out WHY in addition to HOW. Why do men rape? It's not an anomaly of the human condition; it's an ugly but real part of it. Why do women continue to say "I love you" to someone after they have been raped by that person? Also not an anomalous experience/reaction. Why does rape persist in our species,…

That "gotta hear both sides!" (copyright @Desus) mentality is the worst. Like with politics: Dems say x, Republicans say z, so the truth has to be somewhere in the middle at y. No! It doesn't! One side could just be full of shit.