Which would be an outcome I would welcome, and might actually be the point.

Well, I get why "more words" are not your solution (they aren't mine either, mostly, because there's litte that I find less enjoyable than drawn-out debates about definitions), but what's the problem with other people trying that approach?

I mean sure, you _can_ act all gender-nonconforming and still identify as unambiguously male or female, but you don't have to. Some people don't want to, so they don't. That's really all that is to it. It's not a question of "discarding" gender, but rather of not embracing it in the first place, because you just don't…

You know, I'm not a native speaker and there was a split second where I didn't immediately realize that "subbing" probably means "substitute teaching"….

I think there are several ways to deal with rape in narratives in a meaningful manner and that it's even important to do so on occasion. I just feel like it's a topic where there's less margin for error in getting it right and where the damage is greater when it's done cheaply and I definitely see why people would…

I'm sorry that happened to you.

People have spilled lots of (internet)-ink on why rape is different from other atrocities in certain regards (mainly it has to do with rape being much more likely to hit closer to home to larger segments of the audience), so if you're really interested in this aspect, there's a lot of reading for you out there.

Can you afford therapy? Having an opportunity to air it all out with a paid professional might help you to avoid over-burdening new acquaintances.

Nah, if those PUA clowns were self-aware enough to admit that any success they might have it just blind luck and mere statistical probability, they couldn't make any money selling their comically elaborate strategies and mental coaching to the desperate and easily misguided.

The drama is the point. It's a distraction, at the very least. From whatever they perceive as worse. Lords knows, I did stupid shit in my twenties to distract myself from certain issues (still do, I guess). But I do hope their won't be any kids involved down the line.

My problem with message art is not that I mind a bit of an agenda (thinking yourself free of any -isms is nothing but the mercy of a small vocabulary), but that I'm not impressed with the efficiency. The most powerful message is usually the implicit one. Gotta be sneaky about that stuff. I couldn't pull it off (cursed…

“We die to each other daily.

David Faster Wallace could even make the hoary "it was just a dream/or was it?"-ending work in Oblivion.

Insane? That's a bit dramatic, no? The usual convenient go-to-dismissal for that kind of consideration is "over-thinking a plate of beans/relax, it's just a movie." Why bring out the heavy guns when good old salt-of-the-earth anti-intellectualism should do?

Joyce, The Dead. Had to read it for a class, was feeling mostly dutiful about it (in the sense that, yeah, I get why someone would put it on a reading list for that kind of class, and that's pretty much the extent of my involvement). But something about that finale image of the snow falling, outside the window, in the…

Truth. Which is why I really hope for instance that G.R.R.Martin won't make too much of the R+L=J-thing, even though I accept it as pretty much fait accompli based on the forshadowing. But I guess I still hope it just won't turn out to be all that plot relevant; like only we readers (and maybe Jon himself) ever find…

Love is not a meritocracy.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that women are more prone to celebrity worship than men? I've been on this site for a while now, and I've certainly seen my share of guys getting downright evangelical about their idols.

If biographical avatars for men in music come less readily to mind, I suspect that might have something to do with the fact that society is slightly less obsessed with reducing men to a couple of easily processable mapped out archetypes. No equivalent of "maiden-mother-crone" for men either, because men are allowed to…

One tends to fill in the details as needed, when making an effort to recall. Doesn't mean they're accurate. Still, people can be quite convinced of false memories, because they seem so vivid.