Good to know, and that’s a fair point. I can’t remember having had to show my kids’ birth certificates for anything less official than registering them for schools. I think high-end athletics do ask for a birth certificate, but even if the kid turns out to be a soccer superstar there are years and years to go before…

Sorry, but I wasn’t intentionally doing anything. (Except, I guess, being sloppy in my use of language.) I’m not even sure what point you think I was trying to make.

Nah, I just pulled it out of my ass to make the point. The actual percentage of people who are trans is more like 0.5%, though that’s growing rapidly in the youngest generations.

Incidentally, somebody in Toronto did basically the same thing in 2011. Five years later, the baby’s a she and the family looks very happy.

I personally think this is a goofy thing to do, but it doesn’t matter — 95% chance Searyl is indisputably girly or boyish by the time they turn 5. And if it means people will buy fewer nauseatingly gendered things for the baby, I can only be supportive.

Absolutely, sad either way. I personally don’t put a lot of stock in 80-year-old gossip, but I’ve never heard it from someone who was there — I might change my mind if I did.

Agreed. I honestly would love to hear why NBC is so convinced a figure you can only see in profile and from the back is female. The men are all wearing their shirts loosely tucked in the same way “she” is, which would create the illusion of a feminine waist from the back. “She” does look paler than the others, but…

He’s not their manager, but he did mostly work as a director for a good decade there. Maybe he got into the habit of keeping a polite distance from the cast as a director, and kept it up even after he went back to acting when he realized he didn’t miss the hanging out.

I’m #TeamDream. She deserves fucking none of this.

I don’t buy it. “Earhart” could easily be a teenage boy. (And even if it’s a woman, it does not automatically follow that it’s Earhart.) “Noonan” could be any dude with a receding hairline. Also, didn’t they find a bunch of their stuff on some random island a few years back?

Do you think it’s fair to say the movie crossed generations in black households in a way it didn’t for white viewers? Because in 1985 I turned seven and was still a little mixed up on how to spell my full first name. I wasn’t exactly the audience for groundbreaking feminist dramas. I read the book, but have never seen…

OK. I’m not going to argue with the poetry of that response. But I will say that if more people were making the disclaimer you just made about “nobody is arguing with her larger point,” I wouldn’t have jumped into this argument to start with. I’m happy if the need for female stories is acknowledged, and I try not to…

So, I got kind of bitchy, and then I thought abut it and edited.

The point is IT IS ONE MOVIE IN 40 YEARS. I’m seriously starting to think “she forgot The Color Purple” is one of those 4Chan trolls like free bleeding or end fathers’ day, so totally does it fail to address larger issues.

But it’s one movie in 40 years. Just like you’re annoyed that people can write off that movie or minimize its importance to black families, I’m annoyed that anyone thinks one good movie during the Reagan administration makes Spielberg’s larger record off-limits.

Three movies with female leads in 40-some years isn’t actually a good record. I feel like people getting annoyed Banks forgot Color Purple are missing the forest for the trees.

The “give attractive people alcohol and watch what happens” reality show genre is hundreds of cumulative seasons old at this point. If anything, I’m surprised it took until 2017 for something this clearly dubious to happen.

Yeah, it seems like most fancy private schools around DC have some religious affiliation. Sidwell Friends, where the Obamas and Chelsea Clinton went, is technically Quaker.

OK, this is my thing: If it really is about one incident, why is the label, etc., running away like they have the plague? I wish I thought we were so progressive that one assault could get you black-balled, but we’re so not there yet. What am I missing?

I think the references could be cut/changed, but it would add a new dynamic to the story because so much of it is about an older couple playing head games with a younger one. If the younger man, Nick, is black, you get a sort of Get Out vibe; the older couple seems racially abusive in a way Albee didn’t intend. And…