And before we take you seriously, let's be mindful of the cowardice of an author who won't sign his/her real name.

...said the pot, calling the kettle black. (pun not intended)

I'm glad it's not my job to interpret the evidence.

And yet that is exactly what you're doing here. Unless you know what the doctors are using as indicators for her "psychotic" condition, you really have no idea what the decision was based on. Do you think it would be the first time that psychiatrists took a person's refusal to agree with them as evidence of mental illness? What do you think accusations like "defensiveness" are all about? If a person disagrees with a psychiatrist, ESPECIALLY if the disagreement is heart-felt and vehement, there's a very good chance that person will be slapped with a label and recommended for "treatment".

I'm not judging one way or the other. Just saying that a psychiatric diagnosis isn't necessarily an indication of illness.

I see you've run out of your meds. Better call for another refill.

She's right. They ARE patronizing, fake and useless. I've never understood why anyone reads them, they're so obviously geared to keeping women confused and self-hating. Is Broadsheet really arguing for them? Hm. So much for feminism.

Literally. I'm reading these comments and am Utterly. Fucking. Appalled.

What the hell is wrong with you people? Revenge and payback are understandable? The Nazis killed millions, therefore their women deserve violation? What kind of disgusting hate-filled shit is that?

I have to assume there aren't any Christians leaving comments here. Because I seem to remember him saying something about how to treat your enemies. But nobody ever remembers that stuff, especially when anger and hatred are more convenient to the prevailing culture.

Primates. Feh. *spits*

Lucky they weren't killed, eh? Spoken like someone who will NEVER have to face the same fate.

Think your mama's proud of you now, son?

*g* Well, it was the 70's, after all.

How depressingly typical. This man writes an article about our rights and how they have been abused for centuries (actually millenia, Mr. Carter, but we'll forgive the understatement), and all you can do is crow about how the Republicans who've ruined this country got you a nice house. How completely representative of everything that's been wrong with this country for the last 30 years.

Your daddy must be damn proud o' you.

He is, and always has been, so damn cool. I've always felt that he didn't succeed as President simply because he was too decent for the job. There is a streak of ruthlessness that is required of national leaders, even the really good guys, that Carter never seems to have had. That's okay in my book - he's doing way more good now than he could ever have done in the White House.

Felinelover says many women avoid religion because of the ugly biases that Carter references. But many of us don't want to abandon religious thought, feeling and practice; we just want no truck with the ones that shit on us. I found my way to a concept of Divinity that not only gives me internal and personal power, but that also dovetails very well with my lifelong love of science and the arts. It takes some study and some re-thinking of the world, but it is possible. For me, the rewards have been unexpectedly rich. (There's always Buddhism for those who would miss spiritual practice but really can't stomach the idea of gods/goddesses. Gautama was a damn fine teacher, and had many things to say that are relevant today.)

I totally understand the problem, but the fact is...I don't want to go into a bathroom with guys. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. No matter how much we sympathize, some of us are just not going to do it. Blame society, blame our conditioning, blame the ugly reality of sexual violence, but the fact remains that most women will not go into a restroom if some guy might be in there. That's just life. (Not to mention the whole problem of being able to void waste matter at all in an uncomfortable situation. I've been told more than once by guys that they literally can't pee if I'm in the bathroom with them.)

When they think of a way to reverse everyone's conditioning about sex and violence and privacy and peepee habits (which will be pretty damn hard given that we learn that stuff about the same time we learn to talk, if not before), then perhaps the road won't be so rough. But until then, it's going to be tough to pull this off. And those unisex bathrooms will stand empty most of the time.

Self-pity is the "latest" national trend? ROFLMAO Really, Mr. Lyons - where the hell have you been living the last thirty years? Americans have been puling and whining and crying since the 80's, when all that self-help, recovery, pseudo-psychology horseshit started gathering steam. OH PITY ME MY LIFE HAS BEEN SOOOOO HARD OMGWTFBBQ!!! This is NOT, by any means, new at all.

And it's not surprising that people like Palin are lionized. There has ALWAYS been a thread of hostility towards intelligence and expertise in this country. The whole "wisdom of the common man" thing - that goes back to the 19th century, and the whole opening of the frontier, where "book-learned" people were few and far between, and things got done by cowboys and roughnecks and gandy-dancers. All them eggheads back home didn't know NOTHIN' 'bout real life, you can betcha!

Really, it's hard to take a writer seriously who has apparently been so blinkered about the country he lives in.