Maybe it's an urban/rural thing? I can't really imagine walking barefoot down my city's streets, knowing that I'm just a misstep away from urine, hypodermic needles, and hot garbage. And urban areas do tend to trend female—although, admittedly, not at all to the point that your survey results show the difference in…

Think you're doing your friends (and your friendships) way too little justice, here. Unless you just happen to be a married mother who is also a 21-year-old in college, I'm pretty sure your friends have interests beyond clubbing that they'd love to have you be a part of.

I think the rule is that you can voice your opinion, and if she gets her back up and refuses to acknowledge it, you don't voice it again until she asks for it. If that's hard, you keep your distance from the issue altogether. Repeatedly expressing an opinion that she refuses to hear doesn't help solve her problems or…

People disappear from caring relationships all the time. Those are called break-ups, and many, many couples go through them. Friendships are no different: you love someone, you care about them, you invest years of your life with them, and, sometimes, you realize that you're no longer good for each other and they're…

Always better to use aspects of our identities as descriptors, not nouns. (Or do you not see a difference between "He was a black man" vs. "He was a gay" and "She was a gay" vs. "She was a gay woman"?)

So I've been getting a little bit into Reddit lately, and among the many, many awesome and funny subreddits, I found one that was one of the more messed-up things I've read, among many messed-up things on the Internet, and I had to share.

To clarify: I was responding to the earlier poster, who said, "Flat-out harassment from men is the rule on online dating sites, and nice men are the exception." (She was discussing online dating in a broader scope than the particular situation of men contacting lesbians for sex.)

Man, I know exactly what you mean. I used to tell people things like that ("Why do you wear all that stuff? You look way prettier without it") and think I was being empowering and flattering, when really I was just tone more person telling them how they need to look to get people's approval.

Huh? (Are you saying my comment was racist? Or are you saying something that's completely going over my head?)

Imagine a video where a thin fashion model stands in front of the camera and shows us the picture of herself at a much higher weight. "I was teased every day for being fat," she says, and tells us a heartbreaking story about how sizeism profoundly hurt her self-esteem. "But then I started extreme dieting. I control my…

Saturday, huh? I think I haven't dusted off the ol' running shoes since…

Yeah, it leads to a lot of gamesmanship on the part of colleges and universities, too: they don't want their acceptance rate to be inflated, making them look less competitive, by accepting students who applied to twelve schools and really have no intention of attending theirs. I had a friend who applied to six…

Great point. But I wonder if there were a video released where a woman said,

Totally. Simultaneously holding you up to impossible standards and shaming you for not effortlessly reaching them.

Agreed. There's a lot of discourse about how the reason we see so few women of larger sizes is because of fatness being associated with poor health—but there's an identical stereotype associated with women with skin conditions and acne, and very little effort put towards acceptance. Great point.

Am interested—why do you usually wear foundation, then? If I had makeup-optional skin, I'd never bother.

I struggle with that second point. I've seen Cassandra's makeup videos before, and it tends to be incredibly focused on minimizing flaws in pursuit of a fashion magazine-esque beauty ideal: some poreless, airbrushed, big-eyed, pouty-lipped image of a woman. Does that particularly count as self-expression? (Did I…

Agreed, but the framing as "By wearing makeup, I finally became myself" seems to be pretty shaming of the people who make the choice not to cover up their skin with makeup. What, are they less than themselves? Would they only finally become themselves if they chose to engage in the kind of time-consuming makeup…

I've honestly heard of more horrendous experiences than positive ones.

I think she wanted a nose job, liposuction, and a boob job, and the rest was her way of getting a discount by going on TV.