@badmutha: And Tunisia, and Yemen, and Lebanon ...

To everyone downthread who has conflated "privilege" and "having it easy":

@roodles: A major - and horrific - strategy of marginalization and oppression is to collect stories of the marginalized and oppressed and then discount and question the veracity and value of those stories. It is a special kind of abuse because narratives of marginalization and oppression are important to social…

@SheelaNaGig: "See, I'm not mainstream so I totes know what it is like to be really oppressed. Like black people and Latinos. And they don't love me either. Waaaaah."

I really try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I understand the point of view that Zack Rosen is adopting, and the reasons he feels put upon and wants to defend himself. I'm not going to attack him (even though I maybe kind of want to) because this an argument that is bandied around all the damn time.

Literally? I literally love to use the word 'literally.' I also literally don't give a shit what you all think. Literally.

@RaisinGirl: Thank you. Very well put.

@MsMannersEtc: I would say it is both SES as a dry measure of occupation, income, and education, and class as the culturally constructed thinking and behavioral norms that attach to relative power in a social hierarchy doing work here.

@PeetaMellark: I disagree that attention to the rape/incest victim circumstance is a red herring. Saying that abortion should be generally illegal except in cases where the woman was coerced into having sex is a legitimate position on abortion that has its own philosophical genesis. I think it is important to confront…

"Sometimes in the pro-choice movement [...] we get distracted by philosophical disagreements or hypothetical situations. We lose the stories of individual women seeking our services and focus on the what-ifs instead of the realities."

If I was a Stanford student participating in one of these studies, locked in the basement of the psychology department (yes, where the Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted - no windows!) and not being paid enough for my time to even buy a handle of Popov, the assessment that other people were having a shit ton…

@librariesare4lovers: It is also called a burqa, so try searching for 'bedouin burqa' or 'omani burqa' or 'gulf burqa', which I think will give you the most results.

Expect more Xolos, Lundehunds, and Entlebuchers at your local puppy mills (or your friendly neighborhood 'high volume pet breeder') - and mountains more money for the AKC!

@jemandtheholograms: The batula - also called a burqa, but not to be confused with the other kind! - is traditional to the Gulf (UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, etc). I believe it is thought to have originated as a decorative device in desert tribal communities to serve a very practical function: to keep sand out of the…

@WaffleCopter: More or less: hee-zjab (like the vowel sound from "jab that in" with a little extra sound at the front, like the "j" in "jete"), and nee-kob (like "corn on the cob")

Unwise spending by men (See Bush, George W: Iraq, FEMA, Afghanistan, Halliburton contracts, missile defense, etc. Full list on pg. 483)

@AndPreciousLittleofThat: My personal anecdote is just awesome. And it has nothing to do with this study.

"The American Freshman" survey took self-reported answers about mental health status. Moreover, it asked about mental health compared to peers, which is a bizarre - dare I say, bad? - way to ask the question. Not only is the student then assessing his or her own mental health, he or she is then comparing it to how he…

@suiterkin: This is excellent point about rhetoric and the politics of abortion.

@resplendent.bitch: But, sadly, Skinny Cow doesn't have Cherry Garcia.