I live in Cincinnati and I love it here. There are a lot of wonderful things happening in Cincinnati and it's becoming more progressive every day, but it has a long history of conservativism that still rears its ugly head (especially in the suburbs). There's a massive disconnect in Cincinnati between the city…

Agree. So much. The Nice Guy™ mindset seems to be that women are things to be pursued, and when you see one you like you should just be nice to her and she will give you sex or a relationship. You know, rather than thinking of all women as people with different situations, contexts, sexualities, and histories. Also,…

Generally it helps not to think of "girls" as a thing to "get" rather than as a person to respect. The whole "Nice Guy as currency" thing is directed at getting sex or a relationship like that's the only way to interact with someone of the sex you prefer. The Nice Guy™ routine is self-serving even when the person…

I've heard a lot about the "castration" thing, too, which is what makes the psychoanalysis thing so funny. I guess as a genderqueer person born with a penis I fit into the definition of "feminized" "man?" If so, maybe more people should try it out. It's working quite well for me. :P

Oh, totally. It's kind of like how a handful of people confirming a stereotype can overpower a mass of people defying it. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. So is falling back on the rhetorical strategy of "research" which you can't quite recall (my relatives don't try this with me anymore because I went into…

Oh, I totally agree with you there, it's hard as hell to be compassionate with people who don't give you any dignity. I also want to say I'm not judging you for your stance or trying to say I somehow "know better." I'm quite prone to snarking in private with people who agree with me, too.

If someone has no desire to come to a mutual understanding, what's the point of even attempting to talk to them? Isn't it a waste of time to interact with them at all if your goal is to convince them of a different position? My experience has been that treating people like people, even when I think of them as racist…

Assuming there's a "universal right" to which we can objectively and unanimously compare standards then yes, a vindication would be unequivocal proof that he's right. I was thinking of vindication in subjective terms, not universal terms. You can feel justified by society for holding beliefs that are "better" than…

I think part of the problem comes from the existence of multiple feminisms as well as a media image of "feminism" which is inaccurate and propagandist but nonetheless believed by a considerable number of people. It's hard enough to convince people that "feminism" isn't a monolithic thing, but to convince them that…

My worry is just that history *will* vindicate them in the future and they'll mistake vindication for proof that they were right. It's unfortunately possible that MRA will actually be successful to some point because, after all, they're really just working at a "re-appropriation" of misogyny which they clearly already…

Maru is pretty much my favorite thing that ever came out of YouTube. There are few videos I'll watch multiple times and every one of Maru's makes the short list. SQUEE!

I'm more worried about the culture of violence in the United States than the gun laws. The gun obsession is a symptom of something bigger. We have incredibly high levels of violent crime for a high income society. We dwarf other wealthy countries in the amount of violence perpetrated on our soil. Restricting access to…

Michel Foucault once said of biopower (in the lecture series "Society Must Be Defended") that the modern state made the transition between the "right to take life and let live" to the right to "make live and let die."

I don't think it's because "sex should only be used for conception." I think all the other responses pretty much nailed it down: it goes back to the very male-centered arena of politics. Patriarchy is still the order of the day, especially in the political right. When you have a technology that allows women to have…

Oh, I agree. I just think it comes out a lot better when people think of their conversation partner as not socially judgmental, not human, and the conversation as generally uneventful in the long run. I'm just finishing up a Master's thesis on how ideologies shapes online discourse even in pseudo-anonymous contexts…

There's research on internet interactions that shows people interact with others on the internet like they're responding to a machine, not a person. It's obviously not a universal pattern of behavior, but it's one of the more consistent trends in that kind of interaction.

*Soft olympic commentator voice*

"She sounded like a walrus attempting to turn itself inside out," is the funniest thing I have read this week.

Every sad/enraging story on Jezebel needs a picture of David Tennant doing *anything* afterward. My heart still skips a beat...

I don't know about you, but as long as I have my cat I'm not lonely.