I know it's atrocious, shitty TV to begin with but I always think of Criminal Minds when this topic comes up. The main characters are all ostensibly psychologists with the ability to defuse violent situations and criminals mentally, without relying on physicality and violence — and yet nearly every episode ends with…

Yeah, I think the problematic element is the language and no one can definitively answer because we're using gay/bi/straight to encompass sexual, romantic, and lifestyle choices that are sometimes related and sometimes not. And while we can eventually put enough words on the page to accommodate all these narratives,…

I've gone gambling a few times in my life — I was with others and I didn't choose gambling as the activity, but I had a decent enough time. I've never felt a desire to go back, I've never really thought about gambling again, but I don't regret my earlier experience. Am I a gambler?

No, not at all! You're only the person everyone hates if you're not honest about those feelings with your partners.

I think the language around this is problematic because identifying bisexuality as being "exclusively interested in binary-identifying persons" isn't something that existed prior to the arrival of "pansexual" as a more-or-less agreed upon term. I don't think bisexual as an identifier was ever that closed, and I think…

Didn't they have some sort of wacky space misogyny that then got reversed into comedic space misandry, too? I may have that backwards but it was literally the conservative panic scenario of the oppressed revisiting the privation they experienced tenfold upon their oppressors.

Yes, please!

Ah, yeah — I haven't been in 10 years. Perhaps they've grown!

Absolutely. It wouldn't be the first tool to try and it wouldn't be employed in a vacuum, but especially when the consequences of the child's continued actions are serious (i.e. running into the street, running away from supervision in public) then I think a pinch or a swat to get the child's attention is not out of…

How recently are we talking? The wings are tolerable, but unless something has changed in the intervening years the other food is awful. Last time I was dragged along I got a chicken sandwich which was obviously a Tyson ChickyDisk deposited lovingly (and sauce/trimmings-free) onto a white bun.

Some children absolutely need the physical stimulus to break them out of the emotional "loop," and a swat on the arm or butt can get a tantruming child's attention when words are not coming through. I think in that case it's not really that the swat is the punishment itself, just an attention-getter so the kid will…

It's been my experience that people who hate vegetables were fed a lot of canned vegetables as kids. Beets and green beans are horrifying (although sometimes the salty-ass green beans hit the spot for me) but I think the worst offenders are canned green peas and asparagus. Both should have a little snap to them but…

"Puberty" already makes my skin crawl enough! My dad pronounced it like "poo-burty" all the time and acccccckkkkkkk

It's a pleasure to see an Anna Holmes post, even if it just a book plug.

Heh, bookie — If I ever take my books to an accountant I'll have to explain all these "Green Infrastructure" expenses. *cough*

"Balancing the checkbook" is definitely becoming an outdated term, but tracking/balancing one's finances through online banking and the like is still necessary. We should definitely re-examine how we teach that type of stuff because it's a lot less necessary to know how to mechanically do the math (since online…

Well said. It's one thing to not know, it's another entirely to be proud of not knowing. And while this stuff may be relatively harmless in and of itself, it's hard not to tie it into the larger anti-intellectual / Know-Nothing political and cultural attitude in the US right now.

Yes! The top comments calling Grandpa out for "disowning his daughter" and being "unnecessarily harsh" seem to have not read to the end of the sentence. He clearly identifies a choice she made, identifies that she's sticking by that choice, and that as long as she doesn't reverse that choice she's no longer worth…

I've met people from tremendously tolerant, liberal families who found religion in their later life and became closed-minded bigots. The desire to rebel against your family and upbringing by being whatever they're not probably plays a big role.

Let's start where we agree — cishet people passing judgment on queer folks (or any other majority/minority relation you want to set up) for being "bad advocates" is harmful and unnecessary. I don't think anyone's doing that in this conversation, but I understand where you're coming from on that. When ally voices…