While my mother was signing me up for kindergarten, I was apparently playing with toys on the floor nearby. I was wearing a dress that day, and at some point in my playing I must have bent over somewhat. The kindergarten director looked over at me and said very sternly, “NICE little girls wear SHORTS under their…

I don’t think it’s possible to make her look non-gorgeous (at least without, like, crazy prosthetics and movie makeup), but I do think the one and only color I’ve seen her wear where I did not think, “My god, that dress is amazing on her” was plain, solid black. She still looked amazeballs, but I thought she looked eve…

You should certainly judge cases on their individual merits, but part of that judgment has to come from the knowledge that, statistically, someone who claims that they were raped is vastly more likely to be telling the truth than lying. If they name a specific person as the perpetrator, the odds that they are telling…

Chronic and autoimmune diseases just bring all the internet “doctors” out of the woodwork, don’t they? It is amazing how many people seem to have obtained medical degrees from such illustrious schools as I’m-Pretty-Sure-I-Read-A-Thing-On-The-Internet-Once-That-Said-That-Was-Fake University,…

I don’t disagree with the idea that trigger warnings shouldn’t be the beginning and end of the discussion about how to deal with tough issues (nor with the idea that the instructor in the case I mentioned had issues beyond not providing a trigger warning, which he most certainly did), but I don’t see why they…

My cousin is a forensic investigator, and one of her occasional frustrated hobbies is to count how many different ways the people on CSI contaminate or otherwise screw up whatever crime scene they visit that week. I think the record was something like twelve different visible fuck-ups within a one-minute scene.

I’m coming to this a week late, but I still wanted to say thank you. I’m a chronic pain patient who needs opioid medication to function at all. I’ve never gotten high in any form in my life. I don’t want to get high. I’m so boring and square that I’ve never even freaking tried pot, for heaven’s sake. (Although I’d…

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true. Psychopaths are often frighteningly good at hiding in plain sight. They can seem completely normal even to the people who know them best right up until someone finds the bodies buried in their backyard.

Uh....tranquilizer darts don’t work instantaneously. I have no idea where you’re getting that. They work quite a bit less instantaneously than bullets, which was pretty much exactly why the zoo felt like they had to opt for the latter. And caretakers don’t get “sent in” to gorilla enclosures - that would seem more…

Believing that taking a long time “clearly” means it’s not an emergency suggests that you are fortunate enough never to have dealt with IBS, Crohn’s, stomach flu, or anything else that fucks with your digestive system. It is very possible to both need the bathroom NOW and need it for the next fifteen minutes straight.…

Except a divorce settlement isn’t what you earn, it’s effectively what you already own, at least in California, if I understand the law correctly. If Depp were making ongoing alimony payments, that would be taxable income, but the idea behind a divorce settlement is essentially “Party A and Party B owned this house…

The way Chelsea was treated was disgusting beyond all belief. Even if Rush Limbaugh weren’t generally an execrable piece of shit, his “White House dog” joke about a goddamn child ought to have ended his career. And yet, somehow, here we are.

If you managed not to physically throttle these people, I think you may deserve some sort of medal. Is there a military honor for meritorious conduct in the face of immense stupidity? Can we create one?

What you describe sounds like you were getting trigger warnings, even if that precise term wasn’t used. If students are being told “this play we’re going to read contains a rape scene in the second act,” they’re getting a trigger warning. If the topic is handled with a reasonable degree of sensitivity and students are…

Oh, man - I thought the one perk of having PTSD was that, unlike other mental health issues like depression, OCD, bipolar disorder, and ADHD, no one claims to have my illness because they’re sad about something/they sometimes organize things/they are capable of more than one mood/sometimes they are bored. Apparently I…

I think it makes sense to judge what constitutes a legitimate option for accommodation on a case-by-case basis. In the majority of cases, simply providing trigger warnings will be sufficient, but I don’t think it’s particularly unreasonable to think that occasionally offering alternative content might be a reasonable…

I respect where you’re coming from (and certainly agree that it would be good if more people in general would speak out against this sort of thing), but I’m troubled by how often the abuse of women turns into a reason to be angry at...women. Why is it specifically on female comedians to speak out more? How would Tina…

Okay, but...if a bunch of able-bodied students started using the wheelchair ramps at the entrances of campus buildings as skateboard ramps, and skating into people and causing problems, would you think the solution was “get rid of wheelchair ramps” or “don’t let people who don’t need the wheelchair ramps use them…

I know, right? Apparently asking people to spend two seconds saying that now entails horrible fascist oppression (and the people who think otherwise are the ones who are “too sensitive”). Go figure.

Where did the person you’re responding to suggest that people should be able to opt out of entire areas of study relevant to their major and not that people should be given a heads-up about content likely to be triggering? Because it seems like you’re arguing against a strawman here.