Yep, isn’t constant emotional labor surrounding white men’s fragility the least we can do to show our deep gratitude for every fucking moment that they aren’t opening fire on us?

I get this too when I’m working on my laptop at coffee shops. The most annoying time was when a jogging group of dudes over 60 came in for a post-jog coffee in their activewear and plunked themselves down at the same long table where I was working. Every time one of them said a word like “damn” or “hell” another one…

Oh, I feel your pain too. I was the breadwinner when my kid was little and his dad was in grad school, and other mommies were not amused by my non-participation in all their stupid jokes about men’s incompetence in caring for children. Another weird thing about people’s reactions to this arrangement was that everyone…

Yeah, the lack of support for pre- and post-natal care is what most sharply exposes what a lie it all is — I mean, even if their concern was exclusively for the well-being of fetuses, that alone would make them want to give pregnant women universal access to pre-natal care so the fetus can be healthy, but they don’t,…

YES. I’ve spent about half my life in the US and about half in other countries (Germany, UK, Canada). All those other countries? They also had toxic masculinity and misogyny and racism and rape culture and large numbers of scary, unhinged white dudes with an aggrieved sense of entitlement. What they did not have is…

I was in a somewhat situation about ten years ago — wanted to cut off contact with toxic mom, but was afraid to because of the control she exerted over my access to my then-teenaged sister, who mom was placing in a lot of really bad situations (e.g. “you’re struggling at public school? I’ll just switch you to an…

And the lack of gun control is about white men specifically. Because in practice this country already has strict gun control for men of color, in the form of the police shooting them down if they’re seen with a gun. Sometimes I wish that all the rest of America could just get together and agree to stop the white men…

I’m an American who lived in Germany for a decade, and, yeah, part of the difference is that the NDP and their supporters are a small and marginal segment of the German population, everyone knows they’re fringe extremists, even they themselves kind of know they’re fringe extremists. What’s terrifying in the US is that…

Yeah, I bet for a lot of those kids, especially the ones who were homeschooled, it’s the literally the first time they’ve been exposed to the ideas Bernie is talking about — that in itself is worth something.

So many of these young fundies have a super-tense and jutted-out lower jaw, like they’re girding their faces against the Dangerous Liberal Ideas.

Oh yeah, I remember that. At least back then the trend was the result (at least in my high school) of kids shopping at thrift stores and buying actual clothes from the 70s, which thrift stores stocked a lot of in those days. It seems much worse to intentionally conjure new versions of these clothes into the world.

Yeah, that’s definitely true re. translations *into* US English, but this phenomenon is about translations *out of* American English into German and French (and possibly other languages, I don’t know). I’m talking about situations where the original *is* the American version (the German translation of Infinite Jest,…

Yeah, German translations do this too (“aus dem Amerikanischen”). The intention is to distinguish between US & UK English, but what annoys me about it is that you never see it for other non-UK variations of English. Like, a German translation of a Margaret Atwood book always says “translated from English,” not…

Too bad nobody will see this because I’m a gray. OK, so it’s the early 90s, I’m about to start eighth grade, and I want to complete my over-the-summer transition from boring girl to cool alternative girl. My flannel shirt and Chuck Taylors aren’t enough: To complete my look, I need bobbed black hair like Samantha…

Exactly! I don’t want to be told some Dove commercial bullshit about how beautiful I am in my own way, I want to be TREATED AS IF MY HUMAN VALUE IS NOT BASED ON MY APPEARANCE.

Fuck this. Yeah, it’s well intentioned, but it’s a classic example of the litany of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’ts to which women are subjected. Expect your human worth to be judged on the basis of your appearance, but never look in the mirror, because that’s vain and shallow and your mind should be focused on…

Yeah, my HS valedictorian’s a totally baffling right-wing nut job too. Dude has a fucking PhD in physics from Harvard, yet he’s a rabid climate denier because that’s the right-wing party line. I sometimes wonder how he doesn’t, like, spontaneously combust from cognitive dissonance.

She knew that he had “sinned” but most observers with experience in the Quiverfull movement doubt she was told specifically that he’d molested people - part of the whole women-are-chattel thing is that she wouldn’t have been given complete information about the situation. She’d just have been given a vague little talk…

Yeah, his spelling and grammar might be what you’d expect from a product of that curriculum, but his skills of moral reasoning are light years beyond anything he was taught. Go Anna Duggar’s brother!

Yes, outdoor festivals! They are so not fun at all and it took me so long to realize it.