I am sort of fascinated by the way “mentally retarded” has become entrenched in legislation: In Georgia, for example, you can plea “guilty but mentally retarded.” And no one’s done much about it - and I kind of feel like, well, that makes sense, whatever replacement you come up with is going to be offensive again in a…

I would laugh my goddamned tits off.

I have absolutely had a (university-level) classroom where I felt like eighteen students were on the verge of ripping apart a nineteenth like a pack of angry dogs. It was, in essence, a miscommunication over something he said, but they wouldn’t let him explain himself until I waded in with a metaphorical cricket bat…

I read Dianetics (so you don’t have to!) and was really startled by the amount of misogyny in it. Basically, Hubbard seems to think that every woman ever probably tried to self-abort their baby, and your mom having done that to you is the reason you’re not perfect. Also the fact that she probably allowed your father…

I know!

I’m . . . well, picture Bea Arthur, only young and with shorter hair. I am an unusually tall woman with a deep rumble of a voice. I like my weird, deep voice. I’ve also been threatened because people assumed I was a transwoman being places I wasn’t supposed to be.

So, how different would this be from Dick, a film which explained Nixon’s last presidential years as a result of him being perpetually stoned?

Well . . . it’s not like this is a zero-sum game. My Brother’s Keeper is aimed at boys and young men of color - but improving circumstances for them doesn’t worsen them for their female counterparts. A rising tide lifts all boats.

I have some sympathy just because meningitis can be a sneaky disease; it can happen that you have a kid that you think is just being whiny about having a cold or the flu, and then things escalate to a shocking degree. There are LOTS of heartbreaking stories about children who died because their parents just didn’t see…

Let’s take a family member - I’m sure we all have that family member(s). The curmudgeon who speaks his/her mind, and isn’t afraid to offend with their biased and bigoted views. How do you change this person’s views?

I was going to say, this looks something like some of the Christian seder meals I dimly remember going to as a child. I was very young; mostly what I remember is tasting horseradish for the first time and being very unhappy about it.

I think it’s a thing where men fight for dominance; women fight to survive. Even if we assume that’s encultured, rather than biological, I think it explains a lot. As a woman/girl, you “don’t fight,” so when you find yourself in a situation where you’re doing so, your brain tells you that you absolutely have to keep…

That guy is going to be facing a lot of court charges for assaults on janitorial staff.

I work in a university campus building that, outside the main floor men’s restroom, has a permanent sign saying to alert campus security if you see someone who doesn’t belong there.

I absolutely understand this mindset. The justification (as is mentioned repeatedly in the article) is that much of the Honor Code is about safety, and that to change it would result in less safety for everyone. So the surface justification for the Honor Board reviews is not moral judgment, it is saying that students…

I once tried to pet a big and curious cat outside my house when I was getting home at around midnight in pitch darkness, and it screamed in rage, then ran into the sewer, because it was a fucking raccoon.

My regular 45-minute commute to a previous job in the Colorado hogbacks made me hate large wild animals so much.

FUCK NO.

Now, now. Do you know how often you have to breast-feed a 22-year-old who is still getting most of his nutrition from Mommy? It’s heroic that he gets any work done at all.

As someone who has seen every episode, let me assure you that the show is utter shit at this point and I am just watching it because every time I see Robert Carlyle I remember how awesome he was as an insane cannibal in Ravenous.