Hate to be that commenter, but the first couple words, “anyone woman” are really confusing. Did you mean “any one woman” instead? There’s a slight difference between the words, although maybe it was just a typo.

The craft itself is secular. I never said all witches themselves were secular, only that witchcraft is not tied to any one belief system, religion, or spirituality, which is the definition of secular. I know you didn’t want to bring yourself into it, but you just proved my point. If you can be religious but practice…

Coven had a rape scene in the first episode, too. Madison is gang raped after being drugged at a frat party. But I think it was framed differently. It was clearly a critique of frat guy misogyny and Madison’s immediate, violent, and emotional revenge was, I think, supposed to reflect the rage a victim of sexual…

Yes, that’s what I’m talking about, too. Modern witchcraft is secular. Again, I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but the community of witches I’m familiar with recognizes the craft as a secular practice that can be applied to any number of religions. Can you maybe provide some statistics that say…

Right, but that doesn’t make witchcraft non-secular. It’s been practiced for a long time by people of many faiths, which would mean it would have to be unaffiliated with any one religion. Also, I think you may be confusing religious with spiritual. As an atheist, I’ve met other atheists who are spiritual, but not…

Except witchcraft is a secular practice. Some witches worship gods and goddesses, some are part of the organized Wicca, but there are plenty of atheist witches.

That is fantastic! She’s so badass and the end is so cute!

Except guys did get pissed about Charlize Theron when she was in Mad Max. It didn’t matter if they thought she was attractive. She wasn’t conforming to what they beleive women in action movies should be. That wasn’t even a role that was rewritten for her - it was just a badass female role. They just got pissy because…

I guarantee there’ll be at least a little faction that had their heart set on Brad Pitt as the lead. Or, more likely, they’ll pull the “but this character was originally written as (male/white/heterosexual/able bodied/etc)! They shouldn’t change things just to satisfy stupid special interest groups!” thing again.

They’re also blissfully unaware that the vast majority of resources for male victims were set up by feminists. They get real quiet when you point that out.

If you only bring up male victims to derail conversations about female victims, you don’t give a flying fuck about male victims. You’re just using them.

That’s so true! It’s almost as if different situations call for different reactions. It’s almost as if we have to apply subtle nuances to our understanding rather than applying broad, sweeping generalizations across the board.

I don’t think it has to be so cut-and-dry. We can acknowledge that this problem has many roots - toxic masculinity, misogyny, and guns are all culpable in this case. Acknowledging more than one root cause does not diminish the role of any one specific cause. This is a complex problem and trying to get at simple…

Yeah, but regardless of wht parents do in the home, kids have other influences. The media is a big part of how we are socialized into gender roles that can be limiting. As I said, expecting more of these companies that supply our media (and yes, costumes are media) is not a bad thing.

I’m pretty sure the letter says she’ll be taking her business elsewhere. She just elected to tell them why. If customers don’t tell companies how and why they lost a customer’s business, how are they supposed to improve?

I think it’s more about holding companies to higher standards. If we say to ourselves that gender shouldn’t matter, especially for children, then it’s okay to critique companies who aren’t in line with those ideals.

That would make it so much easier to find age-appropriate costumes, too. Like if you have a three year old, you’re not going to want to have to sift through a bunch of scary costumes to find one that’s appropriate. Instead, you go straight for the cute, lighthearted ones and no little kids get traumatized.

You’re completely ignoring the racial and religious bias at play here. Ahmed has brown skin and he is a Muslim. He’s likely dealt with bias all his life. Doing something that could set adults off would be something a young Muslim child of color would avoid - because he doesn’t know how it could turn out. He could have…

All that Arken said was that, on this issue, Dawkins and Maher side with Palin. You just sided with her, too.

I’m partial to “I’d call you a cunt, but you lack depth and warmth.”