I grew up in Germany. At least in the area where I lived, this was true. Staying late at work was not A Thing, everything in my town shut down at pretty much the same time. It was a small town, but a lot of the people commuted to the closest city and still managed to get home at a reasonable time.

You don't have to be a nymphomaniac to need the birth control pill. I take it so that I don't bleed to death, because although I was born female with an intact, normal reproductive system, my ovaries do not produce female hormones at the correct levels to give my body the right signals regarding the start and end of…

I'm not really sure what you're responding to here. I didn't make any claims regarding the motives for stabbing crimes, and said nothing about the legality of rape. What I did say was that rape is more comparable to other acts of personal violence than it is to something like theft, and I'm sorry that didn't come…

I know you didn't invent this analogy comparing rape to theft, but it's a really, really bad one. Sex isn't a shiny thing like an iPhone that you might expect to get snatched if you take it out of your pocket on the bus. It's not a possession that can be replaced; rape is a violation of personal autonomy committed…

Silly you! Don't you know that if your parents were crappy/abusive/criminally neglectful/otherwise awful people, you're supposed to suck it up and forget about it like magic on each and every national holiday, and pretend you grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting so as not to make things uncomfortable for those…

Thank you for saying this. "It's okay if someone hurts you, because someday you'll get to hurt other people too," is a really fucked up message to give anyone, let alone kids. You're absolutely right that it's not just about bullying. This attitude perpetuates abuse in general. Both my parents were violently abused as…

Just wanted to say, you're not alone there. I also find compliments on my physical appearance hollow. To me, they're more statements about the other person's taste in clothing/hairstyles/accessories/etc. than they are any accomplishment of mine. I'd much rather be complimented on something I worked hard at than on how…

As a biology student, I have to take issue with this part of your argument:

"...the natural way of things is male-female."

You might be surprised! Life is a little more complicated than that. Most living things are either hermaphroditic (many plants, invertebrates, and fish, for example) or reproduce asexually. Of…

This is exactly the reason I refuse to buy gendered gifts for my nieces and nephews. Gender expectations played a big part in ruining my relationship with my mother when I was a young child. She was so set on the idea of girls and girliness that when I turned out to be an androgynous-leaning person with a preference…

Genetics student here. The ant shape would have been "chosen" by whatever predator exists in these fruit flies' environment (a frog, spider, or small bird perhaps). Maybe in this case the type of ant the predator would normally encounter bites and/or is poisonous, for example, so it would avoid anything that looks (to…