Seeking therapy doesn’t mean you’re mentally ill. I’m sorry you don’t understand what therapy is, but your misunderstanding does not make my suggestion an accusation of mental illness. And yes, I said he was perving. Which also isn’t calling him an abuser of children.

I can see your other posts. You told him to seek a therapist and called him a pervert. That’s over the line. Now you’re trying to say that *I’m* sexualizing children by asking that you take sexual abuse seriously. That's not what's happening, and you seriously need to re think how you speak and act towards other…

In addition to what another comment says, I think it might also possibly be to deflect anyone trying to argue they had any reason aside from her sexuality to send her away. Sometimes people will try to argue generic discipline reasons for why kids were sent to these type of facilities, especially if this is for…

Making fun of idiots with dumb tattoos is not the same thing as making fun of liberals. I have a friend who has a tattoo that says “I love hotdogs” because he got VERY drunk and made a VERY stupid decision. I make fun of him every time I see him.

I would make fun of anyone who got a tattoo of any presidential candidate. It’s fucking stupid even if they win.

Don’t get tattoos of politicians. I come from a developing country and one of our big mistakes is to aggrandize one politician and think of them as saviors they inevitably become tyrants and/or egotistical idiots. Don't aggrandize politicians ever. They already have a big ego. They don't need you treating them like…

You can police every aspect of your speech, you can wear the right things, you can get all the degrees and expertise, you can write the most fucking eloquent and heartbreaking courtroom statement and still there are men who will not hear you because they just don’t listen to women.

I read in a magazine once an interesting definition of forgiveness: getting to a point where you can hope that the other person gets better rather than hoping for their suffering.

It’s really hard, with any kind of trauma. A friend of mine lost a child a couple of years ago, and of course isn’t getting over it any time soon. I told her to stop apologizing for talking about him. I don’t expect her to get over it. Grief is normal and healthy, up to a point. If it was so bad that she wasn’t eating…

I’d be happy to slap your stepfather for you. This premature talk of forgiveness is the worst. And it isn’t just, or even mostly conservative Christians; it’s also very popular with bad therapists. I think it’s just people who don’t want to deal with anyone feeling hurt or angry, no matter how right and natural that…

“I guess we are supposed to find it in our hearts to forgive this clown... who has taken my child.”

I think that the best reason to teach women to be better advocates for themselves is that it will remove the self-doubt hindsight that the LW expressed (and that I’ve seen in threads here as well).

FWIW, I agree with you, hntergren. I will preface this by saying that I have never been raped or had a guy keep going when I firmly said “no.” But I hate thinking about how many times I’ve gone along with more than I really wanted to or when I’ve said no, but implied that maybe I would later, or whatever....just…

Maybe screaming no in his face would have stopped him.

I agree that women need to be empowered to say no when they mean it. That empowerment is not, I think, the best solution since it reinforces the idea that the onus is on the victim to resist and then to “prove” they resisted. Better to focus on changing the default settings for consent.

I love the way John Green puts it: Imagine others complexly.

I like to think it’s an age thing that it will slowly taper off. I don’t remember having this much discussion about rape when I was in high school and, although I definitely knew girls who had been raped, nobody called it that. Date rape was definitively considered the problem of the girl not making her disinterest…

Women aren’t empowered enough. Girls aren’t taught that they have a right to say no, that just because the guy wants it doesn’t mean you have to. That we need to be flattered that we are pursued, or that our actions in some way made this happen.

And this is a topic that I (granted a cis man, but assuredly a feminist) think is really important to talk about but I KNOW I will catch flak for it on Jez (which is ok, my skin is thick).