Sometimes it takes a village...to sexually harass someone.

Internet stalking, gaslighting...I know that more often than not they are gender-targeted forms of harassment...but really, you could say that about just about any harassment. But reading this Washington Post article, describing men harassing women by pretending to be their target and trolling online for sex, it occurred to me that this wasn't just a crime perpetrated by a lone individual. Can you imagine a woman trying to harass a man by placing ads asking random women to meet him for sex? Even if women showed up, which I find highly doubtful, it would not be nearly as threatening for the target. Spurning the advances of a random woman is a lot less likely to lead to violence.

And what kind of men would travel to see a woman they have never met and expect sex? I'm guessing it's the kind who would blame the victim for not having sex with them, not the kind to feel bad for the target and embarrassed for themselves.

So this kind of crime is not just the lone act of a harasser, although they certainly deserve a lot more than they will get from our justice system. My point is, it's a crime that would be impossible if there wasn't an undercurrent in our society of treating women like mere sex toys. Without the complicity of these other men, the harasser would not be able to do anywhere near as much damage from behind their false online persona, and they would be caught much more quickly. To me, the attitude of the men who responded to the ads by showing up at someone's door demanding sex is as much the problem as the harasser themselves.

I don't know what it gains us to point this out, or what else we can do about it right now other than keep shaming and fighting harassment and bullying, but I'm hoping that the more we notice and understand societal problems like this, the better equipped we will be to eventually deal with them.

Bigger isn't better, Google...

If you just noticed your Google Chrome context (right-click) menu get bigger, then you were using the --disable-new-menu-style switch, which has very recently been disabled. You, like me, like a compact, concise user interface and got used to exactly where each line would be in it, so you could almost use the Force to navigate it blindfolded.

Well, Google didn't like that, for some reason. The rumor is that Google was "looking to create a unified experience for Chrome users across all versions of Windows." So why not also make everyone have the same start pages, and background, and only support one OS, since uniformity is so wonderful?

Anyway, if you were using the previous command line switch, try this one instead, it worked for me:

--force-fieldtrials="NewMenuStyle/Compact2/"

(If you aren't familiar with command switches, just right-click your desktop shortcut to Chrome, click "Properties", and at the end of the "Target" field, paste in the text above.)

There really is an "American Taliban"....

You know, I keep thinking that the term "American Taliban" is overblown hyperbole...and then something like this happens, and I remember how accurate it really is.

"Indiana GOP passes law making it a crime for clergy to perform gay weddings"

For those who don't want to click through, my tl;dr version: for those faiths that are in favor of marriage equality, the law clearly makes it a crime for clergy to perform a religious wedding ceremony according to the tenets of their faith. The article finds that the wording of the law considers the performing of the religious marriage ceremony, regardless of the marriage's legal status or licensing, illegal.

Overheard this morning...

“Mom, chameleons shouldn’t French kiss. Their tongues would be too sticky.”

I am Max's total lack of outrage.

OK, so I'm reading the story McDonnell lawyer says children took minimal food from mansion in the Washington Post, and for once I'm failing to be outraged. The governor's college-aged kids took food with them from the governor's mansion to their dorms? OK....I think lots of us brought food from home if and when we lived in dorms. Of course, our parents paid for our food, not the taxpayers, but if the kids were at home with their parents, they would be eating food paid for by the taxpayers. Maybe the difference is that an elected politician needs to be a lot more scrupulous about allowing people to feed from the taxpayer-funded larder...literally. But it seems pretty natural to send food from your household with your kids when they go off to college.

I suppose the McDonnell family should have made sure to make separate shopping trips and to pay for them with personal funds, but the only reason I think this deserves any attention is because there seem to be a lot of other, much worse improprieties, so I suppose that it's not a partisan assumption to think that the McDonnell parents were intentionally trying to reduce their personal expenses by using taxpayer-funded supplies.

Still, I'll admit that upon reading this story, my first thought was "So what? Who wouldn't do that?"