There was a certain grim, ironic humor to the way progressives, most of whom dislike the Catholic church on principle, gleefully participated in bashing Sinead for publicly dissing the head of that church, using very misogynist language. As far as this current pope, I am dubious about just how progressive he really…

I regularly have conversations with my Dublin-residing cousins about the differences and similarities to be found when examining US and Irish sexism. Having visited the states, their observation is that there are more pockets of alternative culture here where religious-based misogyny can be at least partly ignored.…

Obviously to leave out the many mass shootings when talking in any depth about current US culture would be ridiculous.

For the record, I'm half Irish, with cousins still living there. From my nom du screen, you can probably guess I have studied quite a bit regarding pre-Christian Europe. But I don't own a pair of blinders big enough to ignore, whether for the sake of tourism, fantasy or nostalgia, the fact that the women of Ireland…

Truth. This kind of stuff, along with the Magdalene laundries, is the context behind Sinead O'Connor ripping up the picture of the pope on SNL back in the 90s. Also for the anger any Irish woman who identifies even slightly as feminist feels for the Catholic church. Except for a few older Catholics, I've never met…

Maybe someone could set Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" to music for goth brides who happen to hate their fathers (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178960)

Open to other suggestions as far as reading/watching material to help people first perceive and then hopefully remove their blinders.

My brother-in-law says things like this all the time. I told him last weekend that I won't engage in conversation with him until he watches Elon James White's video on grey racism, and reads Peggy McIntosh's essay on "Unpacking the Invisible Backpack of Privilege." If he does, maybe he''ll grow a little bit. If he…

In both his show and his stand-up comedy he seems to bring up issues and pretend to examine them (like his use of racial or homophobic slurs), only to decide that it's really OK for him to do whatever he wants anyway, without really taking the reactions of less privileged people into account.

I lived briefly in a tiny town in the southeast US. It was both a horrifying and an educational experience. The men there were so backwards that one woman I worked with said of her verbally abusive boyfriend "Well, I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, he's the only man I ever dated who doesn't beat me or cheat on…

Sad but not surprising that the school did nothing. The dirty secret is that, unlike in films/TV where bullies tend to be portrayed as losers, in real life most bullies become bullies because they have some type of advantage—more money, better looking, physically stronger, whatever. In this case, the 5-year old…

How do you think this story would be played if it was about a woman who was a Hollywood actor marrying a man who was a London barrister? Either there wouldn't be a story at all because of course the woman is moving for the man, or, if the actress was the older of the couple as Clooney is in this relationship, gossip…

Worse than beer goggles are sex goggles, where you overlook the douchiness of another person because they get you off. Sex goggles last a lot longer than beer goggles and can contribute toward a lot of bad decisions.

Insightful critique of why Louie doesn't deserve all the cookies he's getting for this episode here:

On days when this kind of hatred gets to me, I remind myself that in twenty or thirty years, people like this (or their children, or grandchildren) will be ashamed of their words.

So tired of the protective dad routine (even when Obama does this, it's tedious, Hallmark-barf traditional family, traditional gender roles BS). If a mother wrote something along these lines about either a son or a daughter, everyone would be jumping on her for being OVER protective, a "helicopter mom" , etc.

This must have been written by adult bullies and/or the parents of children who bully others.

This kind of pseudo-scientific dissing of childless/child-postponing people is nothing new. People have been sneering about "child substitute" pets for decades now. Really it's just another means of trying to pressure people into conformity. Not everyone is meant to be parent. And honestly, given the way some people…

Not even the usual Jez cursory-make-believe iota of feminist viewpoint here. Just bland acceptance of the whole notion that all women fit into some type of bitch category? So now, just like women can be mocked for being both too fat and too thin, too slutty and too prudish, the list also includes too…

Johnny Depp has always been a poser. It's just that this facet of his being becomes more evident as his looks fade. Basically he was James Franco for the 90s. But back then with no internet, there wasn't so much scope for his phoniness to reveal itself.