(okay, to end this, I will just admit that I simply misread your initial "exclude" for "include" and was feeling kneejerk and sermony. Sorry for the waste of time, but then again I still stand by my praise of occasional time-wasting).

Not necessarily a contradiction.

But that's my point. Sense is overrated.

Whiskey is the Can't-fail-Christmas gift in our family. It rarely ever sees the new year and I never considered that someone might think it was supposed to. This year I got whiskey from my flatmate as well and I couldn't be happier about it. Finally something to contribute to the annual year-end-wassailing! Gotta…

Me too. I'm not terribly particular about aesthetics and smell when it comes to socks and soap. My chief requirements for a gift are "doesn't take up too much space/will be used up before it catches dust".)

Ah, but life is nothing without a little foolishness in it. I have no natural talent at all for anything related to music - fairly tone-deaf, no rhythm, etc. But mom wanted me to take piano lessons (because it's part of her idea of a well-rounded person, I guess. Also, a bit of charity project concerning our elderly…

Ah, I suspect you might have a too simplistic view of what it means to know someone. People don't become unrecognizeable in a heartbeat, true enough. I don't think that's what he meant.

Personally, the anti-semitism would bother me more than the pretentiousness.

Copy and paste. Forgot to change the formating, sorry.

(T. S. Eliot)

I suspect she just wants to insult you and can't think of anything else. Since "fat" is apparently the worst thing a woman could be, that's what people with no imagination always resort to, when their target doesn't have any obvious weak points. (Which means your MIL can't identify any obvious weak points, so…

I think it's a really good opportunity to teach children the difference between metaphors and lies. People who don't get the distinction can become very exhausting later in life.

I suspect being less easily offended might be a good start. OP totally gave you actionable suggestions how to be a more useful ally (or at least avoid the most common pitfalls of "good"-white person ally-ship), and if your claim that you don't want a cookie is honest, that should be enough.

Honestly, I have no idea. But it might well have been about race, and I'm very sorry that you had/have to deal with that. Racism is alive and well, as we can witness everyday, so it's really hard to argue with that interpretation of the situation. I certainly won't.

By realizing that they don't. It's totally possible that all your worst teachers were women. But there's no reason at all to think that this is anything other than mere coincidence. If all my worst teachers had happened to have been blond, you'd think me silly to conclude that blonds make worse teachers in general,…

Please reread the original article. Or the many other comments already clarifying these questions. At this point I doubt that me rephrasing things yet again would actually help.

Most of the Jezebel commenters I've seen sharing their wisdom in this comment section so far seem to be ones with years of academic experience teaching the classes.

Word. I used to have only gender-neutral nicknames online when I was younger. Always addressed as a guy.

That conclusion would not be supported by the study, which found that "the instructor whom students thought was male received higher ratings on all 12 traits, regardless of whether the instructor was actually male or female. There was no difference between the ratings of the actual male and female instructors."

It can work well enough and be a fairly good reason to get your children rather sooner than later, so that the grandparents are still healthy/resilient enough to do all this. But it's kinda tricky to get the timing right - parents not old enough to already be in retirement won't get you much free baby-sitting, or at…