Also, having finally watched the show, I don't think there is any narrative suggestion that Jessica has been healed by killing Kilgrave. There wasn't anything cathartic about the event, the way it was presented. Just necessary, and some satisfaction in the moment. She was still miserable and conflicted to the last frame.

Zero! I use a big-coverage sports bra like Moving Comfort and some bikini-short bottoms because nothing with stomach coverage can contain my pregnant tum.

FUCK FUCK FUCK. In a country that won't let me watch the "Common People" documentary, and Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service has just been suspended until October.

FUCK.

Just accept it. To or from the Antipodes is simply awful and not something human beings were designed to do. It's like asking for recovery tips from open heart surgery or the French school system. I've done Antipodes flights about ten times and you just have to be prepared to spend a week feeling like ass.

All the advice about going outside and moving around in the morning does help, though, especially if you can make yourself go for a run.

For future Antipodeses runs - when you switch flights, make your layover last at least 12 hours, and rent an airport hotel room or a private sleeping room in one of the lounges, and shower and sleep. Or at least lie there in the dark for a bunch of time. It makes the ultimate arrival and adjustment a lot easier. Don't tell me you can't afford it. What you can't afford is a flight to or from the Antipodes.

(Still ass though. Still a week of ass.)

I understand, and I was wrong to write mutually exclusive. But education is more than just calmly and patiently explaining to someone you reckon has good intentions about how they're being offensive and it would be great if they stopped. It's also about being open about how offended you are and being able to express anger; it's deciding to value your own self-worth over your desire to not embarass them, because damn, is embarassment educational.

Somebody at that table saying something angry like "It sounds like you're saying Asian people all look the same. Do you know how that sounds?" or even "why in heaven's name would you ask such a question?" would have been a healthy expression of anger and support for Nicole, and if it didn't educate the person who made the comments that they're racist and ridiculous, it would at least educate her to keep her mouth shut about ethnicity a little better, which is a favour for the world if not her personally.

Racism is certainly the biggest problem in this situation but I also see a problem with how little Americans seem to be allowed to get angry with each other and still carry on having a reasonably good social time with each other. As an outsider that sort of thing looks like everybody there is always getting each other mint juleps, loaning around lawn mowers, and keeping quiet at dinner parties when people say terribly racist things to them, and then suddenly cracking and voting for Donald Trump, or treating people with different politics like it's still the Civil or Cold War.

There's been an update on this DoctorB (the b is for bargain!) that doesn't involve an idiot who reckoned the pope would officiate her third wedding: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/karolinska...

Assuming everybody has good intentions and giving them the benefit of the doubt is mutually exclusive to educating. In the original event, the person who said those incredibly stupid and unabashedly racist things didn't need the benefit of the doubt or assumptions about her intentions to stop being stupid and racist in the future: she needed to get educated with a strong and angry response, because that should be what happens when you offend people. I'm not blaming you for not giving her one, because things like that can take your breath away when they happen to you, but given you were in a group of people *somebody* should have given her one, either on the spot or later.

This is great, and I feel it very personally, and on top of that I missed the "a tight vest I wear every day to flatten my breasts" on the first read and pictured someone, for the first several paragraphs, clutching a stationery binder to their chest while they tried to fix the lock problem.

Sure, it's not our fault. And it's frustrating that that the burden of change always falls on the abused instead of the abusers. But when have oppressors ever suddenly figured "well, I'm being oppressive. I'd better take some initiative and stop, because it's wrong"? What possible chain of events could lead to that conclusion? That defeats the whole purpose of oppressing.

It's everyone's job to educate. To emotionally labour. The problem isn't that women do it; it's that men don't. You can fight the fight by educating, you can fight the fight by fighting, but just walking away leaves the fight for other people, who will have to fight it eventually. And if you are stuck loving the douchebag in question for whatever reason, walking away may legitimately not be an option.

If walking away is what you need to do, then it should be done. I've done it, and will almost certainly do it again, because this shit is fucking exhausting. But the only thing it will help is your sanity. It still leaves the problem squatting on the table and shitting all over everyone's dinner, even if you've decided it's not your problem.

He was ahead of the curve, but I do think he let some hate shine through. And I'm not talking about the sadism of making so many miserable women characters: his men were clobbered, if not quite to Tess levels. He had a lot of heroes who were really awesome - with no fatal flaws except maybe being a little too nice and too forgiving - and his women were so often so simple-minded and had flaws so deep that part of the heroes' heroism (or curse) was managing to love them nonetheless.

But the only reason I notice it and it riles me more than the contemporary authors I like so much less is because I love Thomas Hardy. And it's not consistent. The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of my favourite books, and that reverses the dynamic; Elizabeth Jane may not be the most interesting heroine in the history of literature, but she's one of the loveliest and most sympathetically drawn, who manages to drum up some tenderness and forgiveness for that poor, nasty sad sack of shit Henchard.