u/CandidSimple923

I am consistently let down when dating. The topic of consent has come up several times, particularly when getting intimate (or sometimes when the guy wants to just share his beliefs on the matter unprompted).

I am 28. In the last year, I have dated anyone from 22 to 45, and this isn't even an age thing. I've had many instances where guys think that just because I look a certain way, they can do something during sex that I didn't agree to, like slap me, or choke me really hard out of nowhere.

Slapping someone or choking someone, when this wasn't agreed upon, is assault. It's as much assault as if it were to randomly happen outside of sex.

I also don't drink. My mom is an alcoholic, and I never liked alcohol anyway. But this isn't respected either. I am upfront about this, guys order me drinks anyway.

I've had instances of also hugging guys goodbye on the date, and they randomly slap my butt or grab my hair.

Whenever I have brought the consent discussion up as a response, it's all "You are going to falsely accuse me!!!" and honestly, it makes me want to file a police report every time for slapping me without my consent. Not sure how serious of a crime it is, but it is wrong at the very least.

Why is it so IMPOSSIBLE to understand that you don't do these things to someone you're dating, unless you've agreed on it? It's not that hard.

Also, times have changed. When I was single at 20/21, yeah there were some bad apples, but it truly wasn't this bad – in any age group.

Why do people not understand how bad this is to do to someone?

I am European living in Europe, my family is European-American, so naturally half of them live in the US.

My cousin, a woman in her early 40s, is a very active NRA member and has been for years.

I will preface this by stating that I don't like the American gun culture. I am sure many people here would agree with me. However, I want to move that aside for a minute.

According to my cousin, in the past 2 or so years, there has been active conversation by many of the very active NRA members to actually implement gender-based gun control via arguments such as "women are too emotional and impulsive" and households with a gun should have a man, who is the only person with access to said gun. There have also apparently been active initiatives to strip female gun ownership, that surprisingly many of the NRA members support. There have even been WOMEN in my cousin's local gun clubs who have left because the husbands are starting to believe women shouldn't have guns or know how to use them.

I just thought I would share this here as there has been literally ZERO stuff about this anywhere, but the word is starting to spread.

Whether you are for gun control or not, having gun control based on someone's gender is absolutely nuts. Can you imagine a country with a ton of guns, where ONLY men are allowed to own them?

Just thought I'd share it here so people are aware. They are coming for your rights to vote, your right to own a firearm, your right to work and have your income, your right to make decisions about your own body. American women are not safe.

Basically the title.

I am substituting a high school math class at an international school, covering for a teacher who is unfortunately undergoing cancer treatment.

One student, 16 years old, has been gone for a good week. Parents aren't responding, and we had to get the police involved as he is a missing person. His peers gave the "I don't know" until we put a lot of pressure on them to get the information out of them.

Turns out that this boy just moved to the UAE. Alone. According to his peers and his social media accounts, to run his "model management company". Parents are EU citizens, he has no family in the UAE. They don't seem to care at all.

Where I live, it's completely ok and legal for him to drop out of school. I can't do anything. But this is probably truly the strangest thing to happen to me while working as a substitute. I know I did some weird stuff as a teenager, but this is on a different level.

Update/edit: okay tons of people are asking about the details. I don't know too much but here I go.

First, parents don't care. They don't. We've tried to get them involved. They don't care.

There were warning signs. this boy kept showing up to class for a long time, creating his own debate circle while wearing sunglasses indoors and giving Andrew Tate talking points about women.

According to a coworker of mine, he did previously get in trouble for trying to create onlyfans accounts to some of the girls in the class, but most of them were underaged. He was suspended for a week, no other consequences.

Before he left, he kept showing up wearing super expensive watches (which tbh may have been fake), and had hired his own chauffeur (I kid you not) that dropped him off in a luxury car.

He might be the perpetrator yes, but he's also 16. My theory is that some older dudes have brainwashed him and are having him do the dirty work for them. That's just a guess though.

I will update once I know more. Idk how long that will take.

I am sure many of you have seen this horrific piece of news.

What those 7 men did was awful, but many articles are forgetting an important piece of the story.

Tens if not a hundred of other young men saw that group chat, where they were trafficking this poor girl to each other, and did absolutely nothing. Some of them are now likely working regular jobs. They may be someone's teacher. Someone's intern. Someone's coach. Someone's manager. Someone's boyfriend, fiancé, husband. Someone's son, brother or best friend. And no one around them likely knows. This is the part that makes me genuinely scared. How many men around us have seen something like this, and let it happen, and we wouldn't even know about it?

I was really put off by her defending sharia law in the UAE as a good thing. She is really brainwashed by social media to think this is good. Shows how little education she has on this topic. It's a very TikTok way of thinking, "white people law bad, brown people law good". Her understanding of sharia seems also incredibly superficial.

While there are many absolutely lovely people I know from the UAE and other countries practicing sharia law, many local Emirati women may not say it, but a lot of them wish for more freedom. Liz may not even know it as I believe she doesn't read much, but the UAE is one of the few places in the world where the sharia law allows male guardianship over women. Fathers and husbands can ban their daughters from traveling or getting an education abroad. Sharia law also allows a Kafala system which is used to enslave many south Asian workers in the UAE.

Given how much she is defending Afghan women, I am astounded that she doesn't see the hypocrisy of defending sharia in the UAE. It's insane.

I am a teacher, but I am in Germany, so things here are a bit different. I am originally from Belgium.

My parents sent my sister to do her junior year in the US as an exchange student. She has liked it, and I occasionally tutor her on Skype, help her if she has any questions, etc. I teach math and physics, which I help her with quite a bit, but she came to me yesterday with the most bizarre assignment I have seen.

Now, we all know about the Lindsay Clancy case. Everyone in the US is talking about it. Heck, everyone in Europe is talking about it. I am not here to debate my own views on the matter.

Regardless of anyone's opinion about the case, the assignment my sister received was extremely odd. She basically had to write a guided paper on it with several open ended questions, but the questions themselves were oddly targeted, and not (in my opinion) encouraging of independent thinking.

The assignment had a brief introduction of the case, some sources, it seemed completely fine at first.

It was then followed by initial questions about the case, the trial, and the possible verdict. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. Students were encouraged to think independently, and defend their own views, which worked well.

However, there was a portion that began about half way through that started discussing the impact of the case on the legal system, where the trouble started. I will preface this by saying that I am NOT a humanities or social sciences expert, I have not taught these subjects, but something in me felt that this was... wrong.

The tone of the assignment changed halfway through. Now, instead of being asked to do their research, students were also asked about their opinions with very leading questions that were quite gender-based, such as "Do you personally think women such as Lindsay Clancy who kill their kids should receive the death penalty? Justify your answer." and "What should happen to women who commit homicide against a family member?" and "How would you prevent women from committing an act of violence against their children?", "What causes women to reject motherhood?", etc.

To me, it's pretty obvious what is wrong with these questions. Pretty much every open-ended question targeted women specifically. They didn't AT ALL mention things like "mothers and fathers" or "parents". Just "women". It just felt... weird.

Am I just being crazy in thinking that this is a little bit problematic? I think this Lindsay Clancy case opens doors to an interesting debate in the classroom where you wouldn't be allowed to even pick the side you argue, or perhaps it could serve as an assignment to a research-intensive essay on the justice system. But I feel like framing these questions around gender is so foreign to me.

Am I in the wrong thinking that this is a problematic assignment? Perhaps I am too math-brained myself, as gender is rarely if ever a part of questions I assign to the students. All of my family seems to think the assignment is strange, and my sister said that the Lindsay Clancy case is basically all her teacher has been talking about for the past few weeks.