IME, some
partners are people you can do non-monogamy with and some aren't. Unless your relationship is totally, totally casual, you need some trust between you that you like each other, that the relationship is important, that neither of you... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I think this foolish twaddle is driven by a burning and inextinguishable frustration that, no matter how he dresses or acts, he cannot make himself into a woman. But he's discovered he can temporarily assuage his consuming envy by getting women to... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
(This is all leading me to wonder how Terry Miller feels about his relationship. That seems to be rather important if we're going to talk about how awful DS is being. There's a substantial possibility that Miller could be all "Oh, Dan... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I have been wrestling with this very problem myself, since I am built like a pudgy tank and have giant bicyclist muscle legs too, thus tend to go with modest clothes.
Seersucker pants are the answer. They truly are. If you don't like the typical... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
(As I was biking home, I realized that I'd said (at least one) kind of fucked up thing on this thread, and I wanted to pop back in and apologize...Far upthread, I was all "and there was this cute girl at a dinner! And I didn't know she was trans,... [
more]
favorited 8 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Oh, and I wanted to clarify that "really femme-y transwomen are reinscribing patriarchal norms" was a line of thought I actually kind of believed for a while, until I ended up in a social circle with a lot more trans folks and realized... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
You do care if I know about your gender identity issues, though.
Not
my gender identity issues, however. The issues of people I care about a lot.
Please read this in a sincere tone of voice - I am really, truly not trying to be a... [
more]
favorited 3 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I remember watching some MTV True Life puff-doc on trans folk, and thinking that while these folks were obviously going through something incredibly painful, the trans man who was struggling with how to present really was engaging in a lot of... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I'd love to see a study on this, but it would probably never happen. People are so good at recognizing subtle gender cues that I think it's more likely that people are just being polite.
"People" do not include me, then. I know... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I think, unfortunately, part of the issue is that many (most?) transgendered people do not wish to identify was transgendered -- at least not longterm. The goal for a transgendered woman is not be a transgendered woman, but to be a woman.
Why... [
more]
favorited 10 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Sure, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But ignorance abounds in the world, so that very worthy goal doesn't seem attainable at this point.
Remember during the last presidential election when lots of white people would say... [
more]
favorited 5 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
China Mieville's [i]The Scar[/i] has a deeply unlikeable female protagonist.
If by "deeply unlikeable" you mean awesome! That's a terrific book. Although it just barely passes the Bechdel test - Bellis talks almost exclusively... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I mean, personally I don't really even fully understand what the word implies (is a "trans man" someone who is a man now? Who used to be a man? Either? Something else?) and I'm hardly the kind of crazy homophobe who beats people to death... [
more]
favorited 5 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Also, this mid-thirties person is delighted when a 39-year-old is described as "young" and "baby-faced". I know that's principal years, but still.... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Okay, so there's a
huge pile of anecdata that says first, that you often
can stop being bullied by punching the bully or in some other way hitting back; and second, that the bullied are still marked, years later, by what happened to... [
more]
favorited 13 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Wish I was running a gourmet cupcake shop.
The stuff on the third page where Kerlina says that there aren't more white students at the school because rich parents send their kids to private school, there's a competitor school across the way and... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
That’s about the size
Where you put your eyes
That’s about the size of it
That - and scrolling the thing from the OP - make me feel sad somehow, watching the people and the beach balls and the ants and the buildings get further away and... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Now that I've read the top fifty (and holy mackerel, what a lot of ads to sit through)...well, this is basically you-liberal-pansies-are-all-middlebrow. There's some obvious political intent involved. You can't really take any list on which organ... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I tend to believe that the cleverest politicians (Henry Kissinger-level clever and evil, but by no means all republicans) basically want this to happen so that they have a pliable and fearful constituency, with everyone desperate for work. It's also... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
The middle class is not fueled by greed or desire or power, but by complete and utter self-loathing.
The middle class is fueled by
precarity. That's the whole point; the working class doesn't have much too lose; the aristocracy... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I am delighted to learn from the diagram given that books, all of them, are highbrow. I won't bother shelving my ratty old YA paperbacks and cheesy Daw press seventies science fiction in the crappy bookcase anymore.... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
You know, it's interesting that there's a spate of "kids are overindulged, parents care too much, kids need to learn to fail" articles right now, during this godawful economic crisis. I don't know very many kids who are overindulged at the... [
more]
favorited 17 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
The fifties were
not an innocent era. See The Way We Never Were for starters.
Things that happened in the US 50s:
McCarthy/ HUAC - anticommunist hearings
Start of the civil rights movement
Beatniks
Pushing women back into the home... [
more]
favorited 20 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I've been thinking more about what you wrote about your family and friends...and coincidentally reading a review of Sarah Schulman's
The Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia"
I've never considered myself, you know, horribly oppressed by... [
more]
favorited 2 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
And it's easy to say "oh blah blah goths and high school poetry journals and boring english teachers"...but I enjoy lots of things I hated in high school. And I wouldn't consider it a mark of pride to say "there's this thing, and in... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
This sounds like the kind of thing that will probably end badly because we already know that ol' intimacy-phobe has some problems with boundaries and communication
and this is a situation where it's very easy to deceive yourself about what you... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Also, I will add that if you're going to talk about race, you're going to make mistakes. Even advanced triple-plated anti-racist activists say screwed up things that make people uncomfortable - partly because people of color aren't, like... [
more]
favorited 2 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I should say also that I know that if I were to realize that I want to pursue a relationship with a woman that it would cause a major problem within my family and my group of friends, and I have considered that knowing this may be playing a part... [
more]
favorited 3 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
But what
about as needed meds? And jeezum crow, I am not allowed by my insurance company to refill my prescription until 28 days have passed; I now need to schedule my prescription pick up on day 28 or my credit takes a hit? Christ, I hate... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I think you should see if you can have a couple of sessions with a counselor to try to unpick some of this stuff.
I know two people who will absolutely admit that they had kids (now in the 5-8 age range) and regret it deeply. Although they're... [
more]
favorited 9 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
You should totally listen to their first album, um,
The Modern Lovers. There's nothing quite as happy as "Roadrunner", but "Old World" and "Government Center" come close. Plus the language-drift-evidence of... [
more]
favorited 2 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
The extensive outsourcing of wartime logistics—first put to the test during the Clinton Administration, in Somalia and the Balkans—was designed to reduce costs while allowing military personnel to focus on combat. In practice, though, military... [
more]
favorited 8 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
(Oops, I see that you're working with your union. What have they advised in general? Does your union have actual clout in the workplace?)
Also, maybe sit down and make a list of goals and a list of things you like and don't like in a job and... [
more]
favorited 5 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Because this is precisely the kind of case that convinces people that [...] statutory rape is never also regular-sexual-assault rape.
The "ha ha that one case was so dumb, I bet all the others are just as dumb!" way. The... [
more]
favorited 4 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Assuming that there's no lurking reason for this to be, you know, serious - the student involved hasn't complained, there's no "she's telling people it was unwanted but won't talk to the authorities" rumor, etc - then this type of thing... [
more]
favorited 11 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
If you are union, start by talking (discreetly) to your union steward and ask him or her for their advice. (if you're ever in a union job again, maybe talk to them before you talk to management. My steward advised me not to grieve something once,... [
more]
favorited 3 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I liked the scruffy Big Bird (who looked like he just crawled out of a Dumpster) the best, but then I also liked the entire set-up and ethos of the older "Sesame Street" (and "Electric Company"!) better -- dirty, polluted,... [
more]
favorited 16 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Okay, seriously people - this whole "black and brown don't go together" thing is always framed totally wrong.
Most blacks and browns don't go together, and most brown leather things look godawful with black, but a really deep sort... [
more]
favorited 3 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Yeah... Delaney's The Mad Man... was actually kind of world-changing for me in a lot of ways. It's one of those books I'm really glad I read, and am not sure I want to read again, although I just might one of these days just to see.
I... [
more]
favorited 2 times
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
A couple of pairs of really good shoes - good winter boots, good dress shoes, good walking-around-doing-things shoes.
Can you stock up on spare things? Spare hairdryer, spare microwave, spare printer, spare fan, etc? The kind of things where... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I think that "lives with your parents" is more a heuristic for "probably creepy with no social skills" than a thing in itself. In my own case, if someone seemed together, pleasant and principled in conversation and on dates, I... [
more]
favorited 2 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Oh, I wish I hadn't read that. The real, true part about "have sex with the fattest girl you can find as a joke while on tour" (which band guy admits to) - I don't care which of the guy's bands did that, it's put me off Camper Van... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
You know what? I really wouldn't do this. I buy and occasionally sell vintage clothes (and as you know, a single item can be very profitable - prices have really spiked since the 1990s) and so I keep an eye on vintage clothing shops around town in... [
more]
favorited 1 time
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
As much as I'm glad that there's a method for reducing deaths, the bigger issue seems to be that there are vast slums and no way for the poor folks in the slums to cross the tracks easily. In a sense this
is about people being reckless, but... [
more]
favorited 1 time
MetaFilter comment -
Last year
I work at a large university. The way to get past the HR system here (except, alas, for the apparently-eternal hiring freeze) is to
make sure that your resume matches the job requirements. Someone can forward his or her resume to me,... [
more]
favorited 9 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
Give. You won't lie on your deathbed regretting that you gave $100 to an old friend in grave need from whom you had drifted apart. You won't lie on your deathbed glad that you allowed your misgivings, fears of being taken and minor resentments to... [
more]
favorited 11 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
If he has a
lot more money than you, he simply may not feel that what he'd be giving you is that much. Back when I had a good job (making a lot less than your new fellow, though), for example, I gave a friend a hundred bucks a couple of times... [
more]
favorited 20 times
Ask MetaFilter comment -
Last year
So this dude is all "fire teachers!" "continue to test a lot every year!" and, amazingly, "let great math professors develop
software to teach math, so we don't need so many teachers". Basically, bigger class... [
more]
favorited 4 times
MetaFilter comment -
Two years ago
So what is the difference between identity and orientation?
The thing is, these terms are
convention, not science.
"Orientation" is a political term - to my mind - which makes the argument that you're "turned... [
more]
favorited 3 times
MetaFilter comment -
Two years ago
