The "Britisher" remark/excuse is the kind Gawker staff and commenters would normally make. There is a strong strain of self-abasing Anglophilia in East Coast media. Thus, when a racist from the UK reveals his true feelings, it's OK. The excuse is that somehow, whatever a person from the UK does is acceptable, because…

Your coworker was being an asshole. She would have also been an asshole if she used that situation to talk about the death of her grandfather. Piggybacking on someone else's loss is incredibly thoughtless and self-centered.

Sorry, but you sound like a terrible person. You can't blame the parents one bit?

You sound very, very impressed with yourself and the fixation on your partner's IQ giving you a right to reproduce or something is pretty creepy, to be honest.

In an ideal world all surrogates would go over this stuff, but seeing as the woman was in debt she may have been made to feel (from the unscrupulous agent) like she was "lucky" to get this contract. Thailand is a country where sex work and human trafficking is endemic - women have few rights over their bodies, and she…

She's an asshole? She's 21 and seems to have pretty much no education. She was desperate for money. The less educated you are, the more likely you're going to think abortion is murder. They shouldn't have been exploiting her and trying to get around Australian laws (that are quite obviously, there for a reason).

i feel like in general that the under educated and poor surrogates being exploited in this situation have little say in what happens, other than to not surrogate and not make the money they are in dire need of to care for their own families.

So this is the kind of day I'm going to have. :-)

Yes, you said African. I am telling you that "African" include a vast variety of phenotypes that the Western world, of which we are part, is conditioned to ignore, and this is harmful. Please do not insult me, I have not questioned your intelligence.

Exactly. Some spaces are POC only for a reason: white privilege that still exists today, based on hundreds of years of white colonialism and supremacy.

The same way women don't need to hear men's opinions on their appearance, POC don't need to hear white people's opinions spoken from an outside perspective and position…

Question for you: Are you white?

If so, do you think it your God-given right to tell POC what they should and should not be doing and whether they should be "engaged in a open and honest discussion about their shame?" Do you also think you as a white person can speak over the lived experiences of POC who tell you that,…

Are these women creating or actively perpetuating the harmful social requirements for skin color and employability, or are they just trying to find their way in the system that was already in place? Because if it's the latter, then you would do better to aim your (completely justifiable) rage towards the power…

"Actually I see black people claiming Asians are trying to look white more often. And then they get angry when white people respond like you just did."

It can be true that women who get these surgeries and do not attribute that to Western or white beauty standards are making choices to modify their appearance, but we make choices in line with norms just as much as we make choices out of line with norms. Just because they choose it doesn't mean that it is independent…

What you mention, but don't focus on, is that a defining feature of East Asians is their eyes, according to outsiders. When you're surrounded by Asian people in most Asian countries, you see that features like double eyelids are actually pretty common. So taking eyelid surgery as an example, someone choosing to…

I think she would have said "Canadian teen" or "Canadian student." Definitely not schoolgirl.

Doubtful. This seems very caricatural and incredibly inappropriate given the subject matter.

Is there a reason this can't read "Japanese Student" or "Japanese Teenager"? This isn't a fucking manga, it's a real human being who was horribly murdered. Jesus.

I remember reading a book set in a matriarchal society where one character commented to a foreigner, "We trace lineage through the mother's side. One can never be certain who the father is." It was a throw-away line, but it's stuck with me for decades.

That being said, I kept my name when I got married because I'm…

Ultimately, the act of naming a child after yourself as a woman is an act of preserving your own name. But that name is probably your father's name.

Also, you're hardly in a position to rail and whine about people being "judgmental assholes" based on the last paragraph of your post.