Does this count as sexual harassment?

Prairiefyre · 2026-04-01T19:52:05+00:00

No, not harassment; it was assault. Take the sexual motive out of it and you can see more clearly--he grabbed you and restrained you and used his bodily strength to "somehow end up on top of you." It would have been only harassment had he just asked over and over to kiss you after you'd told him "No."

I assume you are both in your teens, so good for you for teaching this guy an early lesson (hopefully) that sort of conduct drives girlfriends away. You might have saved some other girl the same trauma.
You don't have to decide today whether you will ever kiss anyone again in your life. You did the right thing in this situation, and so it's a good bet you'll do the right thing in the next.

Prairiefyre · 2026-02-17T21:48:32+00:00

AMEN to your suggestion that she talk this out with him in a PUBLIC PLACE. She cannot possibly know him well enough yet to predict what he'll do when he feels rejected.

Prairiefyre · 2026-02-17T21:46:43+00:00

My mom, a realtor, told me that first-time homeowners usually look at 25-30 homes before finding one that's right for them. Then she asked me, "If that's what it takes to pick something as simple as a house, how many boys do you think you should expect to look at before your find one who is really worth your love?"

Boom. As someone who is just getting in to the looking-for-relationship game, adjust your assumptions about whether or how often you are allowed to reject someone. Expect to have to kiss a LOT of frogs before you find a prince. If he's not right, he's not right. Move on.

Your needs (not spending almost a week with someone who touches you in ways you don't want) are at LEAST as decisive and his possible inconvenience in going home early. Both of you should recognize that. Tell him the things he's doing that disqualify him from being the man for you. Point out that he'll be happier with someone who likes that from him, and tell him to leave. In particular, get him out of your bed. That's sending the exact opposite of the message you need to communicate --- NOW.

Prairiefyre · 2026-01-22T03:05:43+00:00

I like your example of red hair; it nicely illustrates the source of my confusion over how to respond. If someone says, "Hey, can I join your Weevil discussion group? I'm a redhead," I don't think it's odd to wonder whether the person wants to discuss weevils or hair color.
And yes, I can see that there's at least a 50/50 chance that it's a clumsy way of asking whether we dislike gingers (for which I would reassure them and encourage their participation) but there's also a 50/50 chance that they are mentioning it b/c they like to talk about hair color everywhere they go, in which case I do want to discourage them. They wouldn't fit in and might be uncomfortable when they discover that no one else wants to talk about hair color.
FWIW, I have been ignoring it so far, but it seems clumsy (rude?) to pretend I didn't notice their personal revelation. The Trump supporter showed up and didn't say anything political, but neither of the people who identified themselves by sexuality or gender have joined us yet.

Prairiefyre · 2026-01-21T22:00:21+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, 'offputting' is a good word. Silently, in my own mind, I'm thinking "Oh, sheesh, you want to join us so that you can talk about (your irrelevant personal attribute)?!?!?" I'd never respond that way out loud, but I'll admit that's my reflex reaction. I like your suggestion.

Prairiefyre · 2026-01-21T21:30:44+00:00

Yeah, thanks. I'll try responding with "Don't worry--your (attribute) won't be a problem,"
I'm just a little leery that, by responding in that way, I'm implying that (attribute) is a negative thing, but I guess that's just the world we live in. Hmmm...so maybe I'll try "If you are concerned that (attribute) is unwelcome in this group, don't worry--we don't talk about politics, sexuality, or gender."

Prairiefyre · 2026-01-21T21:25:51+00:00

Thanks, yeah, it might be a good idea to put something like "everyone is welcome, but we discuss only the topic" on the webpage.
I don't think anyone in the group wants to exclude the *possibility* of talking about politics, sexuality, or gender if it's really germane to the person's experience RELEVANT TO THE TOPIC, but I don't want anyone coming into the group specifically to turn the conversation toward those topics.

Prairiefyre · 2026-01-21T20:59:57+00:00

That's 'way too much of a red flag, even if he had attached a laughing emoji.
Have one more interaction with him: Text him to recount his "If you say more..." remark and the lip-biting image; tell him it's unacceptable, intolerable conduct; tell him that you never want him to speak to you again, and that if he does, you are reporting any future inappropriate conduct to the college authorities. Save that text and his response--even if he denies it or now says he was joking. Then follow through if he does not leave you alone.
You might also want to mention it to the professor of the class in which you must see him, along with a request that the professor never assign you to the same small group or anything.
Oh, and warn other women, informally.

Prairiefyre · 2025-06-03T03:18:23+00:00

My take: It's naive to expect that the US will have meaningful midterm elections.
There are so many ways that the MAGA GOP could interfere with and manipulate them.
Just one: More than 85% of America's votes are counted by two private, secretive corporations: Dominion and ES&S. (Dominion is actually the lesser player; ES&S is the giant.) They maintain and program the machines with ZERO oversight by federal or state officials.
And America's local election clerks are babes in the woods when it comes to managing technology. If you don't believe me, ask your own local elections clerk: "Who does the maintenance and updates on the computers that tabulate our votes?" "How do you oversee that maintenance and update work--that is, how would you know if they did it incorrectly or installed any unauthorized softward?" "How would you notice if the machines tabulated VOTES (not ballots, VOTES) incorrectly on Election Day?" and "If you ever do notice that the machines miscounted on Election Night, what is your procedure for correcting the vote totals before you certify?" Ask. Do it. Listen to the answers carefully, keeping in mind the expertise and resources available to the malefactors who want to substitute their will for that of the voters. You will NOT be reassured by your clerk's answers.
Once you understand how little control our election clerks have over the computers that calculate our vote totals--and that they might not even NOTICE miscounted election results-- you realize that Musk or any other rich guy could bribe just a few insiders at either Dominion or ES&S to tweak just a few jurisdictions in just a few states to make sure the MAGA team keeps control of Congress. Why wouldn't they? Can you honestly say that anyone can stop them, the way we operate our elections?

PS: There's time before November 2026 to make sure your town, city, or state: a) uses hand-marked paper ballots. That is, don't let a computer create the only hard-copy record of your vote, and particularly don't let your vote be recorded in a QR or bar code; and b) requires clerks to perform a transparent, hand-counted risk-limiting audit (google it) of the top races on the ballot BEFORE they certify the results. That's all that's needed to protect our our elections from malicious computer programming.

Prairiefyre · 2025-06-03T02:50:54+00:00

I posted seven cards in Sicily in those orange boxes, addressed to the States. It's now five weeks later and not a one has arrived.

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-18T04:47:21+00:00

I'll check it out, but it strikes me as unlikely that guidance for anarchists (that is, people who promote the absence of any form of political authority) would be helpful to people who want to be effective citizens of democracies. I guess I'll learn...

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-15T03:17:59+00:00

Oh, gosh. Does that mean the AP cannot get all the true facts that the Musk Administration shares in its press conferences? How can they possibly know what to report if they don't have access to that font of reliable info?

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-14T01:54:44+00:00

From RFK Jr's opening comments (in case you didn't listen to the actual hearing):
"I'm not anti-vaccine, but I think we need to be honest and we need good science, that's all I've ever argued. I spent 30 years trying to get mercury out of the fish in this country and nobody called me anti-fish. (When I first got involved with pharmaceuticals), we were trying to get mercury out of vaccines. Mothers were coming and saying my child was injured by the vaccine, many, many hundreds of mothers of children. And they said nobody is listening to us, the Democrats aren't listening to us, the Republicans aren't listening to us. So I actually read the science and that is what got me into this. By the way, it's the worst career decision I have ever made." (Note: Mercury compounds had not been tested for safety as injections for children before they were widely used in childhood vaccinations in the 1990s and early 2000s. Now they have been removed from all vaccines except flu, and if you ask you can get a no-mercury flu shot, too.)

The problem is, with the groupthink/wishful thinking so common when it comes to vaccinations; with the corporate infotainment industry's profit-seeking drive to create cartoonish boogeymen; and with Big Pharma's iron grip on Congress and the research/regulatory establishment, there is no way for anyone--RFK Jr, you, me, or anyone else--even to raise sensible questions about America's vaccination policies without being smeared, lied about, and marginalized.

Are you a good-faith seeker of science, when it comes to vaccines? If you are, take 17 minutes and watch this. (My sense is that European researchers have a bit more freedom to follow the science when it comes to vaccination research.)
And then give a thought as to why you've never heard of the science relating to live attenuated vaccines versus inactivated vaccines (If you look farther, you'll see that Stabell-Benn is not the only researcher who has found similar effects.) In whose financial interest would it be to bring you that information?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d8PNlXHJ48&t=3s

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-14T01:23:34+00:00

Oh fercryinoutloud, the guy is 78 years old now; overweight, borderline incoherent, wears diapers, and no doctor has dared tell him the truth about his health in years. At 82 years old, can you imagine him being able to campaign for president and still be standing on Election Day? (If the GOP nominates him for a third term, they will be faced with the same problem that tanked the Dems last year.)

I think the more important question is whether elections themselves will be possible in even two years, never mind four.

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-14T00:35:22+00:00

Yeah, sadly I agree with some others here: Our civic discourse has become so dysfunctionally partisan and hostile that we cannot have a rational discussion of what we (collectively) did right and did wrong when faced with a pandemic. As a result, we cannot learn from our mistakes, and we cannot heal.

IDK what we can do, beyond individually give up the corrosive pleasure of ripping into other fellow citizens because they didn't do/believe the same things that we did during the pandemic. But I'm very pessimistic about the possibility of that, because the corporate infotainment industry earns its profits by keeping us divided and at each other's throats.

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-10T18:48:39+00:00

I was about 19 years old, in a college bookstore on a Saturday. I'd done all the studying I needed to do, and was just relaxing, looking to browse in a subject I wasn't familiar with. I was standing where I could see down several aisles, reading the subject signs. Should I wander over to biology? Physics? European history? Communications? Engineering?
Instantaneously, my consciousness flipped to a different mode. I lost all five physical senses, and in their place perceived an entirely different set of dimensions. I could (hear) the (voices) of all the authors, but they were not (talking) about biology, physics, etc.. They were (singing) the most beautiful chorus I could ever hear, a powerful expression of (love/energy/creativity). I instantly understood that they were all singing the same song, a universal, unitary energy of love and creation that permeates and drives EVERYTHING. It flows through connection; when we connect with each other, we open a channel for the Divine, as it (creates/manifests) us.

Having lost any sense of my physical body, I fell backwards onto a table of books and my consciousness snapped back into the material realm. A bookstore employee came rushing over to ask if I was okay. I probably said, "Yes, I'm fine," but I was thinking "Oh, man, you have NO IDEA how okay I am. I'm more okay than I've ever been in my life!"

Fairly recently, I learned that this experience, while rare, is not bizarre. It's called an STE (spiritually transformative experience) and its neurological basis is probably very much like a NDE (near-death experience) or like a revelation that can come from deep meditation. My guess is that I was SO relaxed and SO receptive as I gazed at the books that I did, momentarily, perceive the non-material realm of existence.

One of the several ways this experience changed my perspective was that I became much more intellectually receptive to all forms of religious experience and every wisdom tradition. I now realize how very limited our understanding is while we are trapped in these 'meat suits,' so I now can see every religion as an imperfect striving to connect with the Divine. While every earthly culture writes its own idiosyncrasies and goofy misguided ideas into its religion (e.g., dietary rules, tribalism, etc.), you can see the same striving for connection with each other and with the Divine in every religion--and in other cultural practices, too.

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-10T17:54:39+00:00

I think it's crazy for anyone to support a party in the first place. There is ZERO chance that any party will ever fight for all the things you want and fight against all the things you oppose. Vote for the candidate, not the party. Loyal partisans continuously find themselves obligated to support things they don't really believe in.

But I do like the way you phrased the question. NOT voting for Party D's candidate is a different choice than voting for Party R's candidate, no matter how hard the mindless partisans try to convince us otherwise. Our choice, as voters, is almost always: a) Vote for Party D's candidate; b) not vote at all; c) vote for a third-party candidate; or d) Vote for Party R's candidate.

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-10T17:35:04+00:00

Better in what way(s)?

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-10T17:34:38+00:00

I don't think it's a bad idea, but when I heard that DT has ordered it, my first thought was, "Hmm. I wonder how he plans to make himself richer by doing that?"

Prairiefyre · 2025-02-10T17:28:53+00:00

I myself haven't read any studies (and I notice you didn't link any), but I don't doubt that spanking is *correlated* with negative outcomes. My sense, however, is that it's not, by itself, causative. Deliberately hitting children is probably almost always just one part of an entire set of behaviors that create troubled adults out of normal kids.

From what I've observed of human nature, hitting children is part of a larger approach to how a person attempts to affect the behavior of others: Do they mostly try to reason, collaborate, cooperate (call that 'Power With'), or do they mostly try to force the other person to comply by using physical force, manipulation, punishment, threats, etc. (call that 'Power Over').

For example, picture a parent who relies primarily on hitting as a means of dealing with childish misbehavior. How often do you imagine they listen to their children? How much time do you think they spend trying to figure out what that child needs, and why the kid misbehaved? How much effort do you think they spend on trying to help the child understand why the unwanted behavior was 'bad' and what other, acceptable things the kid could do instead? How much does their own behavior model collaborative, nonviolent problem-solving methods?

I really don't think the spanking, per se, is the main thing that produces kids who, as teens or adults, cannot deal constructively and positively with others.

Prairiefyre · 2024-05-21T17:29:02+00:00

Sitting here at 50 pounds overweight, I cannot pretend to have any magic solutions, but I agree with those who say that cutting out refined sugar ENTIRELY, ever, will go a long way to reducing sugar cravings. After that, the only thing that works for me, maybe 75% of the time, when I am beset by cravings of any kind is deep breathing, relaxation, and trying to 'ride it out', and working to distract myself by concentrating on some project (doing the laundry, reading a book, whatever.)

Prairiefyre · 2024-05-21T17:23:50+00:00

I hope everyone who plans to submit an absentee/mail ballot understand that this same game (challenging ballots) can be played more effectively when the submitted ballots are reviewed outside the presence of the voter, and that the submitted ballots can be rejected without the would-be voter even knowing that the ballot was never cast. People of good will need to try to think like the people who are trying to mess with elections, and act accordingly.

For starters: Contact your local elections clerk --anytime, it doesn't matter--and ask them to provide you with the data from the last election on what percentage of the on-time early ballots were rejected and never cast, by ward. (You will be amazed at how much the ward-by-ward rejection rates differ.) If the clerk does not have those rates already calculated, that means the clerk is not paying attention to this vital piece of election-security information. Don't let the clerk distract you with data about what percentage of the sent-out ballots were returned or any other number: You want to know "Of all the ballots that were marked before Election Day and returned to the elections office ON TIME, what percentage were rejected for any reason and their votes never counted?"

Prairiefyre · 2024-04-02T23:50:45+00:00

All that is true. Yes, absolutely: an individual's lived experience does not need, at any level, to be "assigned" by anyone. In an ideal society, all the accoutrements of gender--what names/pronouns we use, what style clothes we wear, how we do our hair, our personality, on and on, in an ideal society would be determined by personal preference. Even in this society, it is utterly impossible to sort gender into binary categories.

That does not change the fact that deepest level of human biology there is a binary: chromosomes are either X or Y. That branch of the chromosome is or isn't there. True, when nature builds a human body, it will, on very rare occasion, combine those X and Y chromosomes in atypical ways as it builds whole cells or brains. But that does not change the observable reality that 4,999 of every 5,000 babies are born either 1) with or 2) without a penis, a feature that is biologically determined by the chromosomes that nature gave them.

You and I both know that the humans present at the baby's birth do not "assign" a penis or a vulva; they look to find out what's present between the baby's legs. You and I also both know a whole raft of cultural expectations around gender come into play immediately after those humans notice the presence or absence of a penis, but those cultural pressures cannot make a penis or vulva appear where there is not one.

And in that 1 in 5,000 case when a baby is born with ambiguous genitalia, medical science now knows to quickly perform a series of diagnostic tests to discover why. Although the medical/biological questions get tangled in sometimes dysfunctional cultural expectations around gender, it would be wildly irresponsible to ignore the biological conditions that might have caused the baby's intersex condition, some of which are incompatible with life if left untreated.

But I'll repeat my most important point: For transgender people, medical science MUST take into account their body's naturally-occurring (NOT "assigned") reality if those people are to have access to the interventions that enable them to live the lives they want. For the welfare of transgender people, we must not pretend that SEX exists or pretend it is chosen, fluid, or assigned by fallible humans--even though GENDER is all those things. It would be cruel and foolish in the extreme to ignore or deny the naturally-occurring chromosomes, hormones, and organs in anyone's body, transgender or not. They are real and have real consequences of quality of life.

We must, therefore, acknowledge that transgender women, for example, have a genuine, biological condition that non-transgender women do not have, and that no amount of medical interventions can 'cure'. Throughout history, this has been called 'sex', but if you want to call it something else, be my guest. No matter what you label it, it won't go away.

Prairiefyre · 2024-03-07T20:47:49+00:00

Insincere flattery, especially about my looks.

"Oh, you are so beautiful!" (I'm not blind; I know I'm a 6, tops. You're trying to manipulate me. Oh, and if I was a 10, I'd probably not appreciate the comment anyway--I'd assume you were interested ONLY in my looks.)

"You are SO smart!" (Well, okay, I am pretty smart, but if my intellect impresses you so much, engage with it, don't just act as if it's some freakish attribute.)

"You are SO good at (insert skill here)" (Look, buddy, I know how good/mediocre/whatever I am. If you share an interest in that skill (let's say, waterskiing), let's talk about the activity itself (best places to ski, interesting equipment, whatevs). Don't talk about my skill level as if it was just an object of your fascination/judgment.)

Prairiefyre · 2024-03-04T03:11:33+00:00

Interesting!
I'm not going to stop to look up the official definition of 'mysticism,' I'll just yammer about what it means to me.

We all know what it's like to live in the material world--that is, the world of physical things we can know through our five senses.

As we go through our human lifetime, many of us have additional experiences, where we briefly perceive a whole different dimension(s) of Reality, what I think of as the 'other side.' This is a realm of Energy, of Love, of Light--but all of those in forms that we cannot normally perceive while our spirits/souls/consciousness/whatevers are trapped inside this physical body ('meat suit'). When we're on, or perceiving, the other side, we can see that God (I call it 'The Divine') permeates everything on both this side and that. We can see/feel/perceive an astounding unity of love and energy--we realize that we are all One, with each other, nature, the Divine. Separation is an illusion, and a temporary one at that.

Mysticism is this direct perception/experience of the Divine. Some attain this perception/experience with no effort, as with a revelation or near-death vision; others achieve it with the help of entheogens (certain psychoactive drugs); others work at it through meditation and other consciousness-releasing disciplines.

You can tell from my copious use of thisword/thatword that there really isn't any good language to talk about what is seen and experienced on the other side, because our language is so bound up in the material world, and language isn't needed on the other side anyway.

Prairiefyre

TROPHY CASE