Unless your profession involves flying airplanes, please refrain from using the following words:
I realize it was kind of cool when they said it on The West Wing, but, really, you should not aspire to sound like an Aaron Sorkin character.
If you’re not from the UK or one of the Commonwealth countries, please avoid the following words:
Why did you make the video?1
The video is a personal response to the frustration I feel about the fracturing of what was usually a convivial, if not cohesive, Boston kink subculture. It’s been sad and exasperating to watch my friends vilify each other.
Aren’t you affiliated with NELA or NEDS?
I’m a member of NEDS, but I think my NELA membership has expired. I have good friends on the boards of both NELA and NEDS. Aside from that, I’m not involved with either group.
In the movie you seem to be picking on a specific TNG group.
A day after I posted the movie, I got a message from Solipsistic, one of the cofounders of BTNG, complaining that I seemed to be talking about BTNG.
As I wrote to Solipsistic, I picked names that weren’t close to the names of any Boston organizations I knew of. I had used a similar name for my BOYnK group about year ago. I did not know at the time that BTNG uses “Boston’s Young & Kinky” as a tag line.
Why is there a younger and an older person in your video?
The situation in Boston seems to break along the age gap. I don’t know why that is.
Are the characters supposed to be particular people?
No. They’re general composites of people on both sides of the issue.
If you haven’t seen it, ask someone. I’m not posting a link. ↩
Whether you’re in a vanilla relationship, a BDSM relationship, or a card-carrying member of The Scene™, you absolutely need to know about consent. You need to know this whether you’re a top or a bottom.
If you’re a top, you need to know what hearing “no” means. If you’re a bottom, you need to understand what saying “yes” means. And, of course, vice versa.
But knowing about consent, or practicing consent, isn’t going to stop abuse. The protocols of consent have nothing to do with the causes of abuse.
You will never stop speeding by putting up speed limit signs.
Sometimes people use words. Sometimes people abuse them.
Charlie Glickman tweeted a link to Yashar’s post titled If Men Had Periods: Women Would Know All About It.
I agree with almost everything Yashar wrote. I don’t think women are gross for having periods. I’ve purchased tampons for girlfriends. I don’t scrunch up my nose when women talk about their bodies.
I do have a thing about blood.Whether it’s mine or yours, no matter its origin, I do not like blood.
I’ve often wondered whether I’d have this aversion to blood if I were a woman. (In fact, right now I’m listening to Morcheeba’s “Blood Like Lemonade” and it’s squicking me a little bit.)
What I have trouble with is the title of his piece: If men had periods, women would know all about it. It reminds me of Florynce Kennedy’s often-quoted remark that “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”1 Of course, if men menstruated and got pregnant the world would be nothing like it is now.
I don’t know what the point of these counterfactuals is. It seems to me that they serve only to promote the stereotype that men lack of empathy and compassion and that they are willfully blind to the experience of women.
These sorts of arguments are pointless and do nothing to help us understand each other. At best they’re silly. At worst, they perpetuate negative stereotypes in the guise of equality.
There is so much wrong with this counterfactual that it would require a complete post. ↩
These words are forbidden everywhere, at all times, in all known universes and universes yet to be discovered:
These words are silly but not forbidden. I will think less of you if you use them.
So this guy calls his mother; He says; mom, how are you? She says; I’m terrible, I haven’t eaten in 38 days. Why haven’t you eaten in 38 days? I didn’t want my mouth to be full in case you called.
From the NYTimes In Private, Wall St. Bankers Dismiss Protesters as Unsophisticated
[A long time money manager] added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.
A “constituent” is someone who lives in a representative’s district, not someone who donates to their campaign.