Toshiro:

"At the very least, they have no basis to lump her treatment in with the treatment of the rest of the women in this country when she's dealing with the lowest of society on a daily basis. By the way, I'm not justifying the behavior of the men, I'm just saying that if you're not ready for an uphill battle living in those areas then you need to move.

Now in your case, being on an university and all, yeah I can sympathize with that and you have a point in that instance. You would think that men attending college would be civilized enough to conduct themselves with a little bit better decorum. What would you suggest in fixing that problem?"

So wait, intimidating women is the sole province of low-class men? Are you kidding, clueless, or just willfully ignorant? Threatening women is a pastime for certain men of all classes, regardless of their income or education. The answer isn't for women to contort their lives around some men's hateful, bigoted behavior (assuming they can even afford to) or for women to "fix" any problem. The answer is for men to realize that women are human beings and treat them accordingly. You might want to start with yourself.

"Things unexpectedly change, making a fair situation unfair"?? HUH?? Things didn't "unexpectedly change," Cary. Having a kidney fall out is an unexpected change; deciding that it's more convenient to spend the night at your fiance's apartment rather than wake up 45 minutes earlier is not an unexpected change but a conscious choice. I'm 100% on the best friend/roommate's side, and think the fiance's roommate has truly gotten the shaft in this situation.

Also: do you really need to spend every single night with the fiance? Doesn't love also grow in the spaces between people sometimes? No matter how much I loved a guy, I'd relish a little time off, and I kinda wonder what's going on in the relationship that LW feels compelled to spend every single night with the fiance. There's time enough for that when you're married; enjoy the chance to hog the bed while you can.

Cary's words on how hard it is to live in a big city, especially when you're young and un(der)unemployed, really resonated with me. As much as I bitch about life in the suburbs, as much as I grumble that there's only one good movie theater in town, I still feel nothing like the sheer *exhaustion* I felt living in New York. Maybe I just hate crowds; I don't know. Either way, I loved Cary's thoughts on city life.

But I say "Wangles."

My beloved and I met through eHarmony. For the one quality he valued most in a mate, he chose a sense of humor. The quality I listed as most valuable was kindness. He got a funny woman with a pretty big kind streak; I got the nicest man alive with a great sense of humor. To read the studies quoted in Broadsheet and the (pretty disturbing) comments posted to these articles, you'd think he and I weren't of our own genders, or weren't human or something. Imagine! A man looking for something other than a hot body or a conduit for children, and a woman looking for something besides prestigious accomplishments or a big wallet!

I don't have anything to add to the debate except my own profound relief over finding someone who's as far outside the apparent norm as I am, and to suggest that women who are smart and funny not settle for guys who are so easily threatened. Yeah, you might wind up alone, but isn't that so much better than winding up with an insecure dumbass?

What self-respecting college would want a student who sued his or her way into a good GPA?

"When it comes down to it, any honest person will admit that life (biological life, saying nothing about the soul) starts at conception and that abortion kills a human baby."

Don't apply your own, technically inaccurate, philosophy to anyone other than yourself. An abortion does not "kill a human baby." It removes tissue that could become a baby, or could become a stillbirth or a miscarriage. That's honesty.

Elizabeth: You apparently cannot read your own posts correctly. I wasn't disputing the "human" part of a fetus's standing, but whether or not it is a baby. Medically, it is not. Logistically, it is not. By its very definition, it is not. It is a *potential* baby. Say it with me: POTENTIAL. It is also a potential miscarriage and a potential stillbirth. A fetus only becomes a baby when it leaves a woman's body, not one moment sooner.

Of course, people refer to fetuses as "babies," but they generally do this because they are eagerly anticipating the birth of the fetus in question, or they feel that referring to a fetus as a fetus is too clinical (like calling a penis a penis), or they're deliberately trying to equate the removal of a fetus with the killing of a baby, even though the two are not the same thing at all.

You're free to believe what you want to believe in terms of the romance of the fetus, but don't kid yourself in terms of medical reality, and please stop posting falsehoods and proclaiming them true.