So we as decent human beings have no responsibility to minimise stress and suffering of our domestic animals? Pregnancy is, by the biological definition of stress, stressful. Wild rabbits have crappy lives, and there’s nothing we can do about it. But domestic rabbits, when kept in a secure, safe environment, are sociable, curious, engaging companions. This was not a happy rabbit. An all that is without even touching rabbit overpopulation, or their destructive, invasive nature when set loose by irresponsible owners, but I can sing that song, too. I don’t believe in animal rights. I believe in human responsibilities.

Oh, and I happen to know the difference between pets and children, thanks. Don’t tell me that treating domestic animals like the sensitive, emotional, living beings that they most certainly are makes me some sort of bleeding heart flake. It doesn’t. It makes me me, and I think it also makes me a better human being than I otherwise would be.

Phew. Anyway. Carry on.

you say that like it’s a bad thing.

of course, I’m from the school of thought that a troll isn’t properly executed unless you leave just enough of a strand there that if the provokatee (it’s a word now) weren’t so self absorbed and “serious business” that they’d figure out you were just fucking with them at the get go. of course, because I’m a sport, I then proceed to make more and more outlandish claims until it’s got to be painfully obvious to anyone. I’ve had to go all the way to “Well what if they were vampires?” more times than I care to count.

What I’d like to point out, beyond this event or political slant, is that it’s in vogue now for students to treat classrooms like menus, and professors like submissive waitresses who need to be slapped around. “There’s no pickle, I hate mustard, I refuse to eat my vegetables, this wool makes me itch….” As a teacher, I hear this all the time, the preemptive, “I don’t want to learn this because it isn’t already my perfect bath temperature.”

Some college friends of mine who later TAed courses in universities…especially at the Ivy-level ones have witnessed/experienced being threatened with lawsuits from parents of students who are irate at the poor grades they received…regardless of the mountains of evidence proving the justness/generosity of that grade.

Though these suits usually go nowhere, university admins tend to back the demands of these students…especially if they come from the very upper/upper-middle class families the admins hope will become generous donating alumni once they graduate.

OT: Amanda, out of curiosity, did you purchase the applecare extended warranty for your Macbookpro? Just asking as my mother owns one and had to send it in recently for warranty repair due to a faulty superdrive after 1.5 years.

In other words, an IRL troll!

So, presumably, they knew something about sex…

First of all, I think “Fun Home” is one of the greatest memoirs written, and certainly women’s memoirs written, in decades. It is absolute genius, mouth-dropping. I am at the beginning of writing a memoir myself, and I find Bechdel’s work both inspiring, a role model, and perhaps a reason I should throw in the towel!

It belongs in hundreds of classrooms, and i hope more professors will make it part of their “canon.”

Anyway, of course, this “protest” is more religious rightwing horseshit. What I’d like to point out, beyond this event or political slant, is that it’s in vogue now for students to treat classrooms like menus, and professors like submissive waitresses who need to be slapped around. “There’s no pickle, I hate mustard, I refuse to eat my vegetables, this wool makes me itch….” As a teacher, I hear this all the time, the preemptive, “I don’t want to learn this because it isn’t already my perfect bath temperature.”

Teachers face so much of this pressure they make a lot of “dumbing down” decisions just to hedge the endless wrath and undermining.

I support the student’s opportunity to change professors/sections/classes early in a semester. That’s appropriate educational choice. But to STAY in a class, to be a “agent provocateur,” to destroy the class with your malice and bullshit, and insist that you be treated like a rajah…. It’s outrageous.

It comes from every part of the political spectrum, especially the part where the “protester has no particular point of view at all except that of a narcissist and a spoiler.

It’s… a bunny. The whole reproductive strategy of bunnies is to pop them out real fast. Its purposes in life are to eat, crap and reproduce. It doesn’t stroll around gazing at architecture; it eats, craps and reproduces. It doesn’t agitate for its rights as an autonomous bunny; it eats, craps and reproduces. It doesn’t have an unfinished novel it intends to write sometime to set the world afire; it eats, craps and reproduces. The bunny that dies with the most offspring wins - this is a winning bunny!

There was an article I read recently about how people treating dogs like children often led to actual, unintended, cruelty to the animal. Dogs are dogs, not babies. Bunnies are bunnies, not deprived mothers in need of rescuing.

And on the main topic - I’m on the wrong end of forty, and not married or partnered. I’d *better* be okay with carpet-munching if I don’t want to be a total asshole to any woman I go to bed with. In a sane world, it would be taught to all (straight) guys at high school as a simple matter of courtesy.

Susie Bright made the best comment about real men and dykes.

So, wait, it’s students trying to get this book banned? Holy mackeral. I know this isn’t a new thing but it never fails to blow my mind to see people paying for an education they refuse to receive.

As Amanda has already mentioned, the vast majority are paying for the credential….the education is looked upon as an afterthought at best and a severe annoyance/obstacle towards that goal.

Even at my college where being openly vocal about attending college for the sake of that credential was considered declasse….I estimate that only 40% of us were there to seriously learn something….everyone else was going through the motions to get the credential for professional, social, or progressive-left activist cred.

Mind you…this is much better than many universities……especially the Ivy-level ones as attested by friends who attended. They estimated that 90% of the students were there for the gold-plated degree….and paid little, if any heed to actually learning something beyond what would be applicable in the “corporate professional” context while there.