hannahbanana

First off, I'm glad to hear you're finally starting to feel comfortable with your sexuality...it really is a sliding scale, and sometimes it just doesn't quite feel right to call yourself completely straight or completely gay. So congrats Like Austin said, it seems like you already know what to do with your family, and regardless of what they think, you want to stay true to who you are. I think that's a very admirable thing to do

I don't think it'd hurt to pursue it. It's a form of social media directed towards people posting art, videos, poetry, etc. If you want to get your work out there, I think that this would be a relatively pain-free option

Great artwork! Do you have a deviantart account? It's a great way to share your work and talent with others, without the pressure of deadlines or anything.

I think it's important, to me personally especially, to remember what you said about guilt being the feeling that you've broken YOUR OWN moral standards. The most insidious forms of guilt manipulation, I think, are when someone makes you feel guilty for a value that isn't really your own. For example, saying something like "you don't want to see your mom? Your OWN MOTHER? How selfish!" Even if the person knows that familial connection doesn't mean anything to them, the other person is making them feel like it's wrong to think that...so then in a way I guess you'd feel doubly guilty.

Hi Jamesican! I can relate, I also went to Catholic schools for 15 years. I was on the fence/agnostic starting my 3rd year in high school, and only felt able to fully call myself an atheist 3 years later. What are the most difficult things for you to face? For me, it was hard to let go of the idea that there was something more than what you just see, some "higher power" or "spiritual energy." There was also the difficulty of getting my parents to accept the fact that I didn't want to go to church anymore. What about you?

I've heard the exact same things from people I've spoken to as well. But they never like to answer a question like "if these people clearly aren't fit to call themselves feminists, why do you and so many others allow them to continue spoiling your ideals?" or "if these people 'aren't really feminists,' why is it that they teach feminist theory in universities?"

So they're absolutely mortified to even THINK of it touching the ground, but they were completely fine with letting this flag, which is so sacred to them, get into that condition in the first place?? Makes no sense...

If confrontation isn't a synonym of seriousness, what is it? How is it wrong to say confrontation is serious? Also, it's true that you don't have to choose between total seriousness and total joking, but isn't it up to us to decided which way to react in different situations? If you found the video funny, that's fine; if Kevin didn't find it funny, that's fine too, and there's nothing wrong with saying so either way if it's just a preference. It's not like there's a "right" way to have a subjective opinion.

Hmm...so either the father really did rape his daughter, or the daughter is somehow messed up enough to falsely accuse someone of sexual assault. Either way, not a very good reflection of how she was raised. Also, he and his ex-wife "never stopped being a team," but the ex-wife had no problem getting a restraining order on him without confronting him first. It sounds like there's some dishonesty here...

These people aren't just bad parents...they are complete psychopaths.

I saw this article that someone posted on my facebook feed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/spenceralthouse/male-survivors-of-sexual-assault-quoting-the-people-who-a In part I'm glad it was shown, especially on buzzfeed which is very feminist. Some thoughts that I had while reading: -how sad and angry I am for what the participants went through, in both the experience itself, and the way that it was received by others -I noticed that many of the people in the article were transgendered - and does that make a difference? It sounds like many of the transgendered people were women when they had their experience, which makes me feel like the article was still implying that rape is more of a female-oriented issue in general. But that may not be accurate, since I don't know if they include female transgendered individuals in similar articles about women, who were raped when they were still physically men. Either way, I think I would call it a good thing that this article attempts to show that men are also victims of rape, and that they require empathy too. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts.

I just found this thread, because I wanted to check if there already was one before making a new one My boyfriend and I just watched this movie, and we actually thought it made sense, and was emotionally difficult to watch. It's already been addressed about the totally shoehorned happy ending, but it wasn't just that; to me, the characters themselves seemed shoehorned. This led to confusion for me, because whenever I thought I had the characters figured out, they did something that threw me off. I also felt bad for Pat, because even at the end I thought he was in a really toxic environment (which I think the movie tries to say otherwise). The New Yorker actually does a pretty good article about how I felt about the movie: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-book-on-silver-linings-playbook It's strange, because I saw this movie two years ago and had a completely different attitude about it...then again, I was much less aware at that time.

I've been slowly phasing out my t-shirt dress to nicer clothes as well, through small trips to the thrift store now and then...It's really great. I do this mostly for public appearance, especially since I'm getting older and closer to a professional career. IMO, I think that dressing more nicely makes me feel more serious and work-oriented, but sometimes it's still nice to dress down into something more comfortable (especially when things get stressful ). I don't see why you can't do both. In regards to clothes reminding you of your past, I understand...it's a very similar thing for me with music; sometimes I'll hear a song I listened to when I was in a sad time of my life, and I feel an echo of that sadness...is it something like that for you?

I have a good friend who moved here from Venezuela...she said that the government encourages people to move into and create slums on other people's private property...this all done without saying anything to the people who own that land, of course. Needless to say, she is very glad that she got out, before things got even worse....and things were already pretty bad when she left.

Issues like this are, imo, aspects of the bigger problem of violence towards others in general. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, since everyone here is perfectly aware of how the treatment of children and models of dysfunctional relationships with others are so detrimental to how people treat each other in the future. I find it troublesome how popular social groups refuse to focus on the big picture, and instead fixate on a tiny part of it. I also wonder why feminists are so willing to make women the victim (because they want to make themselves the victim), but they are unable to extend that to revealing the victimhood of children (because I'm sure that many of them were, as many people in general were, victimized at some point in time as a child). It's not a gendered issue; it's a human issue. People just manifest this violence in different ways.

I find this sort of situation invalid and to no purpose, because (so far, probably always) time travel is impossible, and no one knows how it would work if it was possible at all. How can you base an entire argument off of a nonexistent premise, which you can only speculate how it works?

I hope we can do one on Saturday...although that may be too much if others also like to listen to the call-in show

Here are some thoughts I've had from personal experience... My parents aren't big drinkers, they might have one beer after work or a glass of wine with dinner a couple times a week (although much less when I was little, they would only have non-alcoholic drinks or only have drinks at parties). Whenever I asked about beer, they were open about it, but made sure to model behavior like having a DD. I don't drink a lot at college, but that just may be due to my aversion to big parties. One thing that I personally notice, and I'm not sure if this is something you need to think about, is that now that I am older my parents are more likely to get tipsy/drunk at parties, and this is a source of discomfort for me since I never saw them act like that growing up. If you ever get tipsy near your child when they are older, they may want to talk about that with you. Smoking marijuana around your kids may be different, because it's not like you can have a couple of hits and not be affected, as compared to alcohol where 1 drink may not do much. I personally wouldn't do it around a child, but I wouldn't keep it a secret. I just think it wouldn't be good to be in an altered state when you have to be responsible for a child.

As a simple answer to the question of why poor people go to college, it's probably because they believe it's the only way to get out of their financial status...whether that's true remains to be seen, but I that many jobs look for some sort of degree on resumes. I've seen stats on how college tuition has gone up something like at least 100% in the past several decades (not sure if including inflation), and textbook prices up to 200%. That's not counting the cost of room and board. I think that this massive price hike is due to that fact that people are able to take out loans for the full amount, back by (you guessed it) the government. It would make sense, because if people were unable to pay the prices and therefor not go, schools would need to adjust prices accordingly, like any other business. This article also doesn't take into account the fast-growing number of online schools and classes, which are of course a much cheaper alternative.

I've noticed multiple times that there is just no winning with many feminists - even if you say you're on their side and try to improve many of the dangers that are touted by feminists, they will still find *something* wrong with it (like your example of the nail-polish). I've asked many times, "just what do feminists want from me, and from society?" and I honestly can't find an answer, short of someone to demonize and blame. For example, there are sex-positive feminists, who think women should be prostitutes or strippers if they want, and then there are sex-negative feminists, who call that objectification. And that's just one example. I bet if you asked a feminists what a perfect world would be for them, they would have either no answer, or it would be so far removed from reality that it's just dogmatic babble. Anyway, I know that was off topic from this thread, but seriously it's been bothering me for so long.

I used to think (for some reason) that the whole "don't teach girls how not to get raped, teach boys how not to rape." thing sounded good. Then I thought about it for 5 seconds, and realized how offensive that is to men. It implicitly states that the normal state of boys and men is to rape women...even though a small percentage of men actually rape, and it can almost always be attributed to some sort of violence or power imbalance in their lives growing up. Ugh, it makes me so frustrated.

wow, that's not an interaction you have every day. How did you feel afterwards?

True, I believe I have let my negative experiences of teasing bleed into my argument, but I still hold by what most of what I said, specifically in the part that when looking at the actual definition of the word "tease," it clearly uses negative words to describe it (provoke, make fun of), which as you said, I see as different from joking. I'm also thinking about whether it's even a good thing to joke about real problems or criticisms (not sure yet, just a thought here) because right now, I'm thinking of podcasts where people will laugh and joke about serious mistakes or bad things that happen in their lives. And it's pretty much agreed upon that that isn't a good approach, since it avoids connection to the emotions associated with such events. Would such joking be similar to a situation where someone doesn't really want to address a criticism, or someone has a criticism but makes a joke out of it instead?