Thanks for this response. I feel you. This rings especially true to me: "you CANNOT put the onus on the victims to take care of their abusers' feelings." I think that Suz still has progress to make, and I just really hope that they keep going, because they're not quite there yet. It's just . . . they seem to be…

YES. I'm an abuse survivor, and my abuser was my mom. I'm also queer. When you're talking about stopping cycles of abuse, particularly within queer narratives and communities, you CANNOT put the onus on the victims to take care of their abusers' feelings. And when you're talking about abusive social roles, you need to…

I mean, I think that Lean In feminism is a real (but small) thing, but it's the brand of feminism that gets a lot of media attention. It also bears no resemblance to the kind of feminisms that the people in my life subscribe to, and I think if a person spends any time talking with actual feminists (in real life and on…

But the author seems to be directing what they're saying—all the very true things they're saying about how damaging toxic masculinity is—towards feminists. Feminist women, specifically. This is mystifying. Feminists are not the people who need to be told about toxic and damaging conceptions of masculinity. We're aware.

I have thought long and hard about this piece. The author's story is powerful. I agree fully with everything the author says about the terrible damage we do to children by enforcing the gender binary, I agree with everything they say about how the kind of conventional masculinity that our society demands of men is…

I already wrote this once, but apparently it needs to be repeated:

She usually eats in. But sometimes you just want to enjoy a meal you don't cook yourself, sometimes you don't have time to go home and eat, sometimes you want to go to dinner with your friends like a normal human. She's had the allergies her whole life, and she's pretty good at figuring out what she can and cannot eat…

I think it's interesting that you were being really careful about your food choices and yet she thinks she served you something that caused you to go Armageddon on their bathroom. Did you get ill at all? Because I think her reaction might mean she wasn't very careful about your order.

Still don't want 'em in my dessert.

Ha. I was working at an extremely popular home-style meat and three place one year as a waitress. This place was really popular with families after church and on holidays we were slammed. One Mother's Day, we had two cooks call out, a hostess just never show, and three waiters not show. It was a shit show. People were…

Would you rather we not ask questions and end up dead?

Not really standard when you sneak extra bread onto the table so you can charge more, though. That's some bullshit no matter what culture you're dealing with.

I feel really bad for people who are actually Celiac - this whole gluten free BS trend is making life much, much harder for them. At first, everyone just assumed that it would be a good thing for them, as the trend drives demand for an ever increasing array of gluten free products but, alas, the true effect has been…

During high school I washed dishes in what passed for a fancy seafood restaurant in my outer-borough neighborhood. The entrees came out with a twice-baked potato and a little mini-bowl of vegetables. The owner instructed us that if potato or vegetable came back untouched we were to give it to the cook so he could…

I'm allergic to wheat and my reaction can range from mild to life-threatening. I don't go places that have wheat based cuisine (pasta, pizza, dumplings, etc.,) and I always research restaurants to make sure there's something I can eat. But that's sometimes not enough. I am well within my rights to ask if a dish has…

These are all so good, and reminds of this time in Italy (here comes a customer perspective story):

I get that they're super annoying for servers, but sorry, I have a lot of sympathy for people who have to be very careful with their food so they don't end up horrifically sick/covered in hives/etc. I have one friend with terrible food allergies, and trust me, she doesn't enjoy bothering the waiter with a ton of…

People have a right to ask about ingredients that may cause them to be violently ill or require hospitalization. (Though hopefully they'd research the restaurant before coming to make sure they could be accommodated, which the OP seems not to have done.) The weird gluten-free trend doesn't make things like Celiac…

I used to work at a lunch place that served fancy salads and sandwiches, basic grill stuff, and soups. Customers would place orders at the counter and then we would deliver the food. It was in a touristy spot and we would get slammed on summer afternoons after the tours let out. Generally there was one fry cook, one…

This one is actually a good server/bad manager story. My sister-in-law loves to eat at this local restaurant that serves some amazing Spinach & Artichoke Dip. They are also the kind of place that is open until 11pm, but doesn't really have customers past 9. We came in around 9:30, ordered our usual, only people in the…