Haha it's all good, that's a reasonable assumption! I'd only seen it and bits and pieces on TV before it came on Netflix, so I never paid attention to who was dating who and stuff. I'm more flabbergasted because I'm only in Season 4 and it seems like they're setting up Ross and Rachel to actually get together for…

Yeah, it's kinda like. . .so many shows and movies rely on characters not being good at communicating their feelings to each other to create an interesting plotline, but it just turns them into terrible couples. After a few seasons of this you're just like 'OK, you should go find someone who you are actually…

Hahaha oh god I did not know that there was going to be a Rachel/Joey plotline. That strikes me as pretty ridiculous.

Seriously. I feel like it's a common trap that sitcoms fall into, where they get a lot of momentum out of the leadup to characters getting together, but they have no idea what to do with them once they are together. So they create a weird reason for them to break up and then kill time with other relationships, then…

Nowhere near as handsome as that guy they've got Jess dating. I'm sad that he's clearly only been introduced for a short time to kill time before Jess and Nick get back together.

This is totally paranoid I know, but I swear they brought Coach back right after a couple of articles criticized the show for tokenism, as they did one episode with a black guy in the main cast and then switched him out with another black guy by the next episode. It kinda felt like "Did not! Look, here he is again!"

That and now it's so painfully obvious that they're just killing time with other relationships before they get Jess and Nick back together (they broke up, for totally nonsensical reasons, in case you missed it).

Haha I had the same reaction— are they really going to have a storyline where Jess gets pregnant with Coach's baby? Because that would be. . .odd.

Eh, I don't think Nolan is actually suggesting mass civil disobedience over this, and I don't think it's actually necessary. The perfect response to bullshit questions is exactly what they've been doing— rolling your eyes, calling it out as sexist and refusing to answer.

And a lot like the advice "If you don't want having a baby to hold your career back, don't have one!'

Wow, fuck you Hamilton Nolan. 'If you don't want to deal with sexism in your industry, just don't do the things you need to do to succeed in it!' Because that works REALLY REALLY well for women in general, right?

Hahah I musta missed the ISIS invasion cause of the liberal media coverup.

As someone who works in nonprofit fundraising, this sentence cracked me up:

There are people who identify as agender, genderqueer, and a variety of other things that don't fit into "male" or "female". It would be indeed BS to say that transgender people are not included in the gender they identify as, but pansexual is wider than that.

I had planned to make a joke about how the main message I got out of this was continuing to consider 'militant veganism' a red flag, but felt it was too flippant. Now that you've highlighted this bit I see that it was just accurate.

Huh?

Oh geez, this is a tough one. Maybe you can tell her that when hair is all tangled it's harder to keep clean? Because that's pretty much true. And maybe you can suggest that she get a much shorter haircut that she doesn't need to brush? That would reinforce that it's really about hygiene/manageability and not just…

I love this piece a lot and totally relate. But— I don't want this to be a criticism of the author's experience because she is getting at this, and I do love the piece— I worry sometimes about how quickly we latch on to the idea that exercise helps us conquer obsession with our bodies. It CAN, and I think connecting…

I don't mean that we should change the overall consensus on the wording, just that, as things currently are, when a man says he's allied with feminism that may tell me that he's been listening thoughtfully to what women say about male feminists. It's a good sign that he's been listening more than talking.

I don't mean that we should change the overall consensus on the wording, just that, as things currently are, when a man says he's allied with feminism that may tell me that he's been listening thoughtfully to what women say about male feminists. It's a good sign that he's been listening more than talking.