Ah, I would hope that love is not a meritocracy. The prodigal son is loved just as much as the virtuous one. But maybe that's the residual catholic in me. I've dropped most of the other trappings, but I still feel that binding love to virtue kinda diminishes both. (My idea of purest love is unconditional, and my…

What we can do:
Make it easier for people to call out this stuff.
Consider giving the benefit of the doubt to the victim.
Talk less (or better not at all) what _they_ could have done to prevent it.
Don't chide them for being too cautious, don't chide them for not being cautious enough.
Don't imply that it's a fact of…

Thank you.

It would be sexist to claim that men can't take a no because of something intrinsic to their nature. So let me clarify that I blame it all on nurture, not on nature. The way men are socialized in most cultures (definitely in ours) means that they are _not_ taught to handle this gracefully (too many narratives…

I have seen those called "thought terminating clichés" (let's agree to disagree, it is was it is) and I admit, I do particularly hate the one you specified. (It's true, it's trite, and usually completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.)

I could see your point that there's no harm in the mere request if men could be trusted to handle a no gracefully. But they can't. So there's all the mental calculation that has to go into phrasing that no - too polite, and he won't get it, too blunt and he might lash out - and gone is your peace of mind for that day.…

I take all your points about McEwan's ideological blind spots, and him missing the point of Woolf's characters being fairly average. Mrs. Dalloway is not meant to be a towering genius. But I really don't see how that makes her "objectively" silly. She seems to me like a fairly perceptive person (also about other…

Only positive reviews in the German newspapers I've read so far.

I like to think Trump Voters would prefer Walder Frey. That's someone who knows the art of the deal.

My money's on abortion. This would be a strange place for this show to start pulling punches all of a sudden.

Still won't have the funds for that kind of special-effects heavy superhero-extravaganza she's talking about. The whole point about this kind of movies is that the indie approach hardly works, because it's all about the spectacle. There are a lot of other genres where you might plausible get a start with something…

I dunno. Hot babe ignoring her instinctive fear reaction to take a chance on a desperate creep? Sounds quite like a straight guy fantasy to me.

Data point: I don't listen to much music in general, and I like it a lot.

Yeah, "Don't look into his politics" was the wrong way to put it.

The Waterfalls of Slunji, Heimito von Dodero. Picked it up today on my way home from work in the bargain bin of a second hand shop. I'm in the mood for something unhurried and detached and I remember being very into The Strudelhof Steps. Austrian In Search of Lost Time, if you ask me. (Don't look into his politics…

Lucky you!

Well, allowing these kind of arguments sets a tone for the entire comment section. You're right that actually affected are free not to particpate in the debate, if its upsets them. I could imagine that most of them stay away from most comment sections out of principle for that very reason. I'm just not as happy with…

You admit that we had more than a decade to come to terms with the validity of homosexuality. I merely pointed out that in those debates, all the concerns raised by the OP with regard to asexuality were already exhaustively addressed. Is it really so unfair of me to consider someone thoughtless for not being able to…

Fair enough. But I have also have patience with people running out of patience, so I allow myself to run out of patience too.

I also answered the question: we alread had all these arguments when we fought against the stigma against homosexuality. You really don't see how it's exhausting to start from scratch again and again and again?