The question you posed is a tricky one! On one hand, it's important to have spaces for people to explore their fantasies, especially when those fantasies aren't very visible in mainstream media. On the other hand, when does writing about unsafe, or nonconsensual, or otherwise "bad" sex risk normalizing those…

If there's a depiction of gay sex and someone makes a face and goes "yuck" or mocks it, a lot of people (myself included) would suspect that person was homophobic (or at least, not a very good ally). That doesn't mean all straight allies have to love gay sex, but they should be able to say "Hey, that's not my thing,…

You're right that technically, erotic fanfic is in the public domain and thus fair game for analysis, and it's not without its problems. And I'm an academic, so I'm into analyzing stuff. That said, I'd much prefer to encounter representations of non-consensual sex (or really any kind of sex) in fanfic than in…

You make some good points here, and I don't disagree:

Agreed - one of the really wonderful things about fan fiction is that it lets you combine things that turn you on while avoiding things that bug you, even when in real life those things tend to go together (for example, enjoying the idea of impregnation but being really uninterested in reading about straight…

Yes, socioeconomic status matters for child wellbeing, and yes, adoption can be pretty expensive. However, you're wrong about who the study included (maybe actually read the study before making such broad claims about it?). From their results section:

Actually, the percentage of same-sex couples in the U.S. raising children is highest in the South, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/upl…

Not all same-sex couples have their kids via adoption or assisted reproductive technologies. Some have children from previous heterosexual relationships. Some lesbians become pregnant as a result of rape. While, of course, same-sex couples aren't going to have accidental pregnancies together (unlike straight couples),…

I posted this elsewhere, but it's relevant here:

Several people on here are talking about the confounding factor of wanted vs. unplanned pregnancies to account for different outcomes among children raised by straight and gay couples, and I agree that it's something we'd want to control for.

Being a numeric majority doesn't always translate into cultural or political power. There's a huge body of economic and sociological research showing that fat people are disadvantaged in paid work (in wages and in hiring/promotion rates), their parents are less likely to help them pay for college, they're more likely…

Yes, it sometimes/often happens that people make bad decisions when they're drunk, and given two equally culpable parties, it's shitty if one person disproportionately bears the blame.

YES. In addition to the "I don't see myself reflected in the pictures on Jezebel (or other sites like it)" issue, for me there's the "I don't see the kind of people I'm attracted to" issue. I'm mainly attracted to genderqueer and androgynous gender presentation (mostly in masculine-of-center/butch/tomboyish women),…

I know it's a common saying, but "doesn't really have a leg to stand on" is an unfortunate choice of words for this particular case. :\

I don't know if people have, as you suggest, simply filed as married (I think that some people have done this as activism in past years, but I'm not sure). However, the sheer terror of getting audited for fraud (i.e., claiming to be married when the law says you're not) is what keeps most of us in line.

Except that because of Windsor, we do file joint *federal* taxes. So rather than each just filing as single, we have to do one set of forms as married, and then another set of forms as single. If you're trying to use tax preparation software like Turbo Tax, it gets even trickier (because it tries to be helpful by…

Spoken like a guy who's never gotten laid.

Wasn't trying to lecture you - I'm still figuring out how the commenting works on this new version of Kinja!

Makeup (and I'm including mascara and lip balm here) should not be the "standard," period - especially at the gym. I teach undergraduate Women's Studies classes, and many of my students tell me they wouldn't dream of setting foot outside without some sort of makeup, because people might see their actual face. It…

I absolutely agree with you that race and class (and other kinds of "Otherness") shape the type of coverage that murderers and other criminals get, but you've got ahold of the wrong end of the stick. When crimes happen—particularly horrific, seemingly senseless crimes like this one—I think it's a pretty good and…