Americans are as unhealthily obsessed with sex as they are with food, caffeine, drinking, shopping, you name it. There are so many other wonderful things in the world.

You don't need sex to survive. So relax. Most of the time the earth doesn't exactly move anyway. It sounds like you have built up some unrealistic expectations about it. The truth is a large subset of people always find it to be boring, and all of us sometimes do.

So quit giving yourself a hard time. You aren't missing all that much. Where this gets in the way is in terms of having a boyfriend/husband/marriage. It doesn't even really get in the way of having kids. Do you really want the husband/boyfriend/relationship/marriage? If you do, you better learn to put out and at least pretend to like it. Those are the cold hard facts.

If you can get along without the man in your life, you're home free. Congratulate yourself.

BTW men will continue to traumatize you over sex, running the gamut from raping you to just being inconsiderate users and assholes. Better get used to it if you plan to pursue being with one. Trauma is par for the course. Sex gives men that same grunting chest-beating rush of euphoria they get when they kill something, and the two things are not unrelated in their minds. If they decide they want sex with you, they won't give a damn about you. They won't care if they hurt you, physically or otherwise. They won't care.

You will need to get used to that, too.

Good luck and line up that good therapist. You may decide, after dealing with men and sex for some time, to drop the whole project as not worth the pain. You would join legions of women in that decision. Don't worry about it.

Don't sweat it. Like I said, the world is full of things that are a lot more wonderful than sex. Find some of them.

I know people who say all those things exactly, esp. the last panel. "Oh yeah, how can there be global warming when it was freezing in January? Har-de-har-har".

Well, poco and ehill are here passing around the Kool-aid so I guess we can see the TT nailed it exactly.

Oh, yeah, Poco, those "poor people who will lose their homes and will always be poor no matter what 'cuz they're just DUMB"? You know what? Why don't you run along and kick in the teeth of somebody smaller than you and completely defenceless like a good little neocon? I hear your neocon brethern calling you. They're beating the crap out of a little old lady with baseball bats and they need your help.

Go on, now. We'll be fine here.

She didn't know she could vote, but she "chose" to wear the niqab?

Sure, right, I believe that.

She'd fail her citizenship application in the States, too. I mean c'mon, if you don't even know about suffrage. It wasn't just about the niqab. Sounds like she was kept in ignorance on many levels. Even a victim of systemic psychological abuse and control may be allowed to drive to the supermarket and back, so I'm not convinced by those details. The human mind is a funny thing, and it's scary how easy it is enslaved.

Who held back all this information anyway? Probably the same men--in her family or community--who put the black tent over her head in the first place.

women sticking up for their own oppression--gotta love 'em.

Men who have no intention of being monogamous marry so they will have someone to make the beds and raise their children for them. Simple.

Most women intend to be monogamous but then, to my knowledge, a few end up cheating because they are very miserable or, reproduction having been accomplished, the marriage is sexually dead anyway. At any rate women still cheat much less than men do.

But I personally know different men who have married chubby women they aren't attracted to because these women keep house and are willing to get preggers and raise babies. Then these men cheat, sometimes almost blatantly. They brag about it to everyone who will listen.

But the men want to get married, would never think of not getting married. The inbuilt nanny/servant arrangement is very convenient for them.

That's why people who have no intention of being monogamous marry and lie about their intention to the insecure fatties who ignore the warning signs just to be a bride.

...we can't consider self-defense?

Abusive men often very explicitly threaten death if their partner tries to leave. The partner knows the threat is real.

Men who abuse do kill their partners with alarming regularity either in the relationship or when they leave. The partner thinks, why wait to be just a number?

The partner may have good reason to mistrust the effectiveness of the courts, the shelters, and the police in terms of protecting her.

She may have children involved.

I would give these women the lightest sentence possible. Actually my gut tells me society owes them an apology, not punishment at all.