But one thing that someone said really upset me:

"Sometimes I think that non-virgins attack virgins because their own first times were depressing and sad and took place at some drunken frat party with a guy who wouldn't talk to them after, so they want to inflict the same shame and humiliation on people that didn't happen to."

I'm definitely not a non-virgin, but I have "deflowered" one male virgin and turned down another. The reason why I turned down the one guy was that I knew at the time we were dating that I would not be a good first partner. He deserved a great first sex partner, someone who could he could trust both physically and emotionally. I was smart enough to know that I wasn't that girl and we stopped dating. He did finally find that girl and dated happily for several years.

Anyway, a virgin can get turned down for other reasons than inflicting shame and hurt. I say this because I was lucky enough to have had a wonderful first sexual partner...we dated through high school and for part of college and we had great horny teenage sex.

Thinking back on that, I believe that it came from having fairly open and honest parenting about sex and both being very curious kids with the freedom to a wonderful public library full of the most amazing books with sex in them!

A lot of these posts from late virgins or people with bad sexual experiences seem to be due to a lack of education about sex, not just STDs and pregnancy, but about the pleasures of sex and intimacy and knowlege of your own body and mind and how to share that with someone. Is American culture with it's puritanical background but contemporary focus on commoditizing sexuality the really problem here???

Just because I logged 7 hours vs my coworkers 8 hrs, doesn't mean that he worked harder. Perhaps I just worked more efficiently?? Okay, I actually put in about 9 hours today, but it wasn't any human's fault...it was the damn server that wasn't being efficient!

From what I've read harvesting eggs isn't as easy as it sounds, you have to take lots of hormones to produce the eggs, and then it takes a lot of $$$ to use them and you run the risk of twins+. I'd rather spend that money towards adoption or fostering. I'm 32 now and married, but we've only been married for 15months, and my husband is getting his MBA, so no, we won't be having kids for another couple of years. Yes, optimistically, I'd like to have our first kid before I'm 35, but that might not happen. But really that had nothing to do with having a career and putting off marriage, it had to do with finding a mature partner that I loved and wanted to start a family with.

but can that really come about when there are so many men like you that believe that it's "biological differences between the two genders" keeping a woman from being secretary-general?? so what is it again about the female biology that makes them not qualified to be the head diplomat?

The article we are commenting on listed at least 18 qualified women that are already serving in the UN or other high diplomatic posts, but none of them are on the short list for secretary-general. Do you think that because there's something wrong with these women's biology that makes them unqualified to be on the short list?

You can hardly claim a level playing field when you already have a preconcieved idea about how women are hard wired to act. It those biases that influence hiring decisions, votes, and promotions. If you already believe that women don't want to succeed then you have tilted the field against them. Although yours is a much more subtle form of discrimination compared to the problems women face in access to political and financial power in countries where they are denied the vote or the legal rights to own property, it's still damaging and wrong.

To the person that said "So, a young taxpayer in Japan who's never committed nor supported a crime is expected to shell out for something he had no responsibility over, no benefit from, and no way to possibly have done anything about?"

Many of these victims still alive. These aren't great grandchildren asking for cash, these are the victims themselves asking and some of the perpetrators are still alive. Since Japan has never given the victims a formal apology, it is necessary. Perhaps hitting the gov't in it's pocketbook will force the gov't to own up to what it did. Lots of people pay lots of taxes for these that they may never use, in any case, several other reparation requests in Europe are not against gov'ts but against companies that directly profited off of the war and concentration camp slave labor. There have been several cases of Jewish families trying to regain their possessions that were stolen from them by Germany, it's allies and the so-called neutral states. Recently mentioned in the news was a 80 year old woman in California trying to regain six Klimt paintings that were stolen from her family.

This is really funny because the the Sept 25 issue cover story was "Women and Leadership!"