I won’t lie; I cried a little when I read your comment. It’s really validating and rare to truly be seen. I do tread very carefully to be appropriate, fair, and reasonable in my responses, but I never really expected anyone to see that. I appreciate your comment more than I know how to say.

This is a tough topic because, like you said, it affects literally everyone, no matter their gender, and everyone has different experiences and opinions. I just want everyone who is forming an opinion to see as many different sides and experiences as possible to, at the very least, make an informed decision on the state of gender politics. I know that everyone has their personal biases, and no one wants to give up privileges or power, but at the end of the day, again, like you said, the patriarchy hurts all of us.

I appreciate you. <3

You definitely have a point, and there are definitely women like the one you described in the world. Men 100% deserve to be treated with equality and respect. I’m sorry that you had that experience with your former partner. It’s a garbage, disrespectful move from someone who is supposed to have your back.

But your point does ignore the fact that a majority of women have been raised by parents and by society to be subservient to men. The person who posted this originally wanted to know why women aren’t taught how to treat men, but the fact is that we are. Constantly. Whether we want to be taught or not. Most of us have learned to do this so deeply that it’s second nature. Most of us don’t even remember learning it because that’s just the way that it is.

This is for a wide variety of reasons, but most of it boils down to men having control over the world for thousands of years and women trying to find the best way to survive and occasionally excel in a world made for and by men. Remember that we used to be (and often still are) considered property. It’s taken a really long time to get as far as we (women) have. My sex has only been able to vote in my country for 100 years. That’s not a lot of time to make major changes in public perception and major societal shifts. We’ve grown a lot, but these shifts come with growing pains.

If we lived in a world where women have to be taught how to treat a male partner well, that means that society isn’t doing the teaching anymore, and while yes, women should treat men with equivalent respect, it’s still a huge improvement societally that women don’t develop ingrained subservience. The woman that you previously dated sounds like part of those growing pains. Some people are always going to take things too far because the line had not previously been defined (even though the golden rule should be pretty common sense).

Conversely, men often have to be taught this because society doesn’t do the teaching. Society is cool with men following the status quo.

Does this give a woman a solid reason to treat another human like trash, no matter their gender? No. This is the big reason why I think feminism is so important. People hear that term and think it means pro-women only, but what it really means is equality for all genders. Full equality should be the goal even if it ends up hurting women a little. For example, one of the few privileges women have that men don’t have is in the courtroom. Women tend to have better outcomes because of biases about our weakness and innocence. Feminism would be working to dismantle something like that even if it gives women an advantage.

Equality is important, but understanding women’s historical growth and struggles is important, too. Women have been taught ad nauseum how to treat men well, but some women are going to make different choices. At the end of the day, I agree with you. I just want people to remember how hard the struggle was for women to get here, understand how far we still have to go to gain real equality, and respect the societal pressures that we deal with every day.

Dude, I hear that loud and f-ing clear. I’m also someone who left a marriage without any real hate toward my ex. We were chill during the marriage and afterward. No cheating; no drama.

So when I re-entered the dating world a decade after I had previously been in it, I did not expect the amount of bitter dudes I’ve since come across. If your profile starts with you saying you won’t tolerate a woman who does ______., I’m more concerned about how damaged you are from your previous relationship than I am about whether or not we would be a good match.

I agree. To me, money only matters as far as knowing that they can also independently afford their lifestyle. I don’t need a leech in my life, but I also don’t need someone to pay my bills or add to my financial future. If you have your life together enough to hold down a job that covers your expenditures, then you have moved into the dateable category, assuming there aren’t other glaring red flags.

I’m with you. It’s a massive faux pas for women to shit in a public bathroom. You only do it when absolutely necessary. Not sure how it goes in the men’s room though. I’m also not saying that it’s healthy, but society be like that sometimes.

Watch Cake. It’s on hulu if you’re looking to stream it.

They are different for what you’re doing with them. If you’re eating them fresh, you probably want sweet cherry tomatoes or yellow bell tomatoes. If you want them for sandwiches, you might go with a beefsteak tomato because the shape and size make the slices perfect. If you’re canning them for sauce, you’ll want romas because they have less juice in them, meaning you can shave off a good chuck of time to get the sauce to thicken. And as others have said, the flavors are different as well.

Can confirm. I didn’t notice how much it helped until pooping while traveling without it. Now I take my folding stool with me.

I feel like this is an extreme reduction of actual communication impediments and/or preferences. I, personally, have a lot of anxiety about my real-time verbal communication. I grew up in a time well before texting, and yet, making phone calls continues to be difficult for me. I do it constantly at my job, but no level of experience has taken that anxiety away. You may call that emotionally stunted, but what makes it so? It seems to me to be a reasonable reaction to the world we live in and the energy that is required to engage.

I am a great public speaker, assuming that I’ve had time to prepare. The difference for me lies in the reaction time. When I send a text or email, I don’t have the pressure to respond instantly which allows me to create a well thought-out and appropriate response that often provides an actual solution to the problem presented instead of stilted responses about how I’ll look into that and get back to you. You never know what someone is going to bring up, so you don’t always know how to prepare. Some people are better on the page than they are verbally. Personal relationships with the person on the phone make it easier, but not as easy as a text message.

You sound like an extroverted person. Do you feel energized after talking to others? If so, that’s great, but remember that for others, where you gain energy, they lose it. Communication and engagement are exhausting for many people. Some people are very good at quick responses, but that doesn’t mean that they are right. It doesn’t mean they are wrong either, but not everyone has that particular skill set, just as others aren’t as skilled at writing.

To say that people are emotionally stunted or socially immature because they prefer one method of communication over another implies that your method is the best method, and all others need to conform. Why? It’s a preference. Neither is wrong, and forcing others to conform to your arbitrary standards is both silly and impeding for many. Telling people to buck up doesn’t solve the issue, and just makes it seem like a personal failing when likely these people just actually give a crap about their social standing and don’t want to put their energy into a verbal battle with someone who thinks they are great at this aggressive version of conversation.

And no, not all conversations are aggressive, but many of us have learned that it’s more common than you’d expect and that it’s extremely difficult to participate in such a conversation.

My point here is that you shouldn’t minimalize people because they don’t prefer phone calls. Most of the time, we’re competent adults with different preferences, and an ad hominem attack is completely unnecessary, just as an attack on your grammar would be similarly unhelpful and pedantic. Success is not built on or defined by your personal preferences.

I don’t know which country you’re from, but in the US, there is a very good reason they no longer pay people for blood donations. They used to. But, they found that having it be donation based plays on people’s guilt, and they are far more likely to donate when they feel guilty or empathetic or like a hero or whatever emotion gets you up and out to the donation center.

On the other hand, when they pay you for it, people tend to ignore it, because the average person doesn’t really need the money, and since it has become a business transaction, they don’t have to feel guilty about not participating. Donation rates are much higher when the donors aren’t paid. They don’t lack funds; they lack donors, and this was a quick, easy solution to the problem.

Wow, that is a very cool concept. I, too, would like to back this.

It was my understanding that pwn mean you are “owning” them in like a winning way. Like instead of Saying “I just owned you” when you win at something, you say “I just pwned you.”

Am I way off? Does it have a new meaning? I’m so far out of the loop these days.

Yeah, my immediate thought was, “he must have eaten a lot of dairy, and lactaid wasn’t an option.”

Usually, they say it, but not directly to you. The attacking woman will tell another person in the group, and that person will usually tell the target woman what was said by the first woman just “because I thought you should know.” Very, very rarely is it said directly.

I also have seen a lot of people pull the move of talking too loud about things they hate about the target woman on purpose so that the target woman hears it, but can’t really confont the attacking woman because she “should mind her own business.”

Fair enough. Although I don’t think you’d need to bother with the songbirds in this instance seeing as you’ve been gifted a years worth of geese, French hens, and milk. Unless you’re required to feed all the other various humans you’ve been gifted as well. I guess then it would be time to crack into the turtledoves.

At least you can eat the geese. What the heck am I going to do with turtledoves and partridges?

You can get it in Wisconsin, but it’s not super common. We mostly use the plastic jugs or glass bottles.

I’m not sure what’s happening here, but I’m into it.

That was a perfect correction. I didn’t want to say anything because the joke was funny, and my thought process was pedantic, but you corrected it and kept it funny. Well done.

That has saved me more times than I care to count.