It was definitely coherent! I think we all write rambling comments on here and think we must have completely failed to make a proper point (or I do, anyway) but it's rarely as bad as we think. Anyway, I've really enjoyed reading your comments from someone who has "been there", so to speak. With mine I was kind of…

Interesting points, thanks for this.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it varies based on experience and regional culture and I don't want to claim tomboy-ism never has negative repercussions. In my experience however I've seen far more people rewarded for that kind of behavior than derided for it, and I do think girls/ women who 'give up' certain feminine traits…

Yeah, I'm not on Twitter so I had no idea about this until now, but it reminds me of the way people talk about "white girl problems". Definitely a certain amount of humblebragging there.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think people who say tomboys have it rough are kind of full of crap. Maybe 40-50 years ago, but these days, they are rewarded. Tomboys are glorified in dozens of young adult books, television shows and other media. Girls who play sports in their high schools are rewarded with social cache.…

I think the basic point of the article was that men are *not* inherently brutal and toxic. Society teaches them to be this way. If it really was inherent, changing their socialization as the article advocates wouldn't make it go away.

Those people are dumb. Weren't they paying attention in book 4 when Viktor Krum was instructed how to pronounce it?

2000 <3

I just got some new formal sweatpants, which is basically the same thing because we must be living in a space age if formal sweatpants exist.

Ours were always Kate, Katie, Julia, Sarah, Allison, Emily, Lauren, Jeremy, Justin, Josh, Andrew, Alex, Kevin and Jeff. Still waiting to see what their kids' names will be. I predict some Caras and maybe some Stephens and Damons.

This exact thing happened with my name as well (the thinking it was the boy version part). I didn't actually mind it though, I thought it was funny when a substitute teacher would say the boy name and the whole class would correct them at once. I was a pretty quiet kid so those times were some of the few times I felt…

It's weird how some pop culture phenomena inspire new popular names and some don't. We're overloaded with Isabellas and Jacobs now but I have yet to meet a kid named Hermione or Luna.

Haha well for me it was partly about exploring because I knew I wouldn't be living there very long, I wanted to make the most of it. I would totally still do it if I was a native, though :)

This. When we don't stand behind them it reinforces the idea that women are weak and need protection from rape because we can't defend ourselves, while men are strong and should have been able to prevent their own rape, therefore it must not really have been rape. I am guilty of these destructive thought patterns too…

Oh, that sounds awesome. I used to walk quite far along the length of it when I lived there, and I loved it, but never what you did. I remember reading that Lana Del Ray used to walk the length of Manhattan while coming up with songs which made me laugh a bit, because it turned out I had something in common with her…

Interesting. I never really experiences this 'dolls as characters' thing; when my siblings and I played games with characters, WE were the characters, usually dressed up in costumes made by our mom. I suppose I always did think of dolls as just something to dress up/ carry around. Weird how different kids find such…

Dammit, when I read that I thought it meant a rich couple were literally offering to pay Jolie a bunch of money to have her cloned in embryo form, or something. You had me all excited!

Yeah, I am skeptical of authors who publish a book every single year (or sometimes even more often). It's just not enough time to...anything. You are not going to create a masterwork in 8 months (which is about how much time they would get to spend actually writing it).

I don't mind the term chick lit but to me it should be confined to books that are genuinely intended to be light and fluffy and are written in that whimsical, chatty-over-cocktails tone , like the Shopaholic series or Plum Sykes' Bergdorf Blondes. It's kind of weird to apply it to authors like Picoult who I would…

Maybe she's referring not to his critical reception but to the fact that he keeps getting movie deals? I dunno.