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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo fired back at a lengthy report of sexual harassment allegations, and what happened was… yikes. To get up to speed here in a slightly breezy (although hopefully still appropriate) manner, the New York Attorney General’s office released a 165-page report that detailed sexual harassment allegations from nearly a dozen women (at least 9 of which were state employees) against Cuomo. One of those women was a state trooper (who was tasked as part of Cuomo’s security detail) who alleged that he inappropriately touched her “in an elevator,” where he “ran his finger from her neck down her spine.” In another instance, Cuomo allegedly “took his open hand and ran it across her stomach.”

In response to all of the women’s allegations, Cuomo released a video statement (click here to watch the full event on YouTube) in very swift order to counter the NY AG’s conclusion that he facilitated a toxic workplace, which allowed “harassment to occur and created a hostile work environment.” In doing so, he essentially gaslighted multiple accusers (by name) on national TV while claiming that he didn’t commit any of the alleged acts, and he suggested that people were misremembering moments and assigning wrong intentions on his behalf. The most bizarre portion of the video statement, however, was a montage of him touching and kissing people. It rolls out like an ill-advised effort to defend himself as a touchy-feely-kind-of guy. Not a good look!

Via the Recount on Twitter, here’s that montage, which includes a photo of Cuomo with, uh, Bill Clinton.

Cuomo, in denying the groping of anyone, also made this declaration:

“I do kiss people on the forehead. I do kiss people on the cheek. I do kiss people on the hand. I do embrace people. I do hug people. Men and women. I do on occasion say ‘ciao bella.’ On occasion, I do slip and say ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’ or ‘honey.’ I do banter with people. I do tell jokes, some better than others. I am the same person in public as I am in private.”

Well, no one can figure out why anyone thought this was a fantastic idea. It feels like the pinnacle of gaslighting, and think of the poor staffer who was directed to put this montage together. Naturally, people were absolutely beside themselves while reacting to this disastrous idea.

You can watch Cuomo’s full statement below, courtesy of PBS NewsHour on YouTube.

(Via Politico & The Recount)

As a professional skateboarder, Jagger Eaton doesn’t fear much in his life. He’s been doing this on the biggest stage since the ripe old age of 11 when he became, at the time, the youngest to ever compete in the X Games. However, during his time at the Olympics, there was one thing he was afraid of. It was the 12-foot rail he was trying to land his best tricks on. Landing tricks on it was going to be the key to medaling this event, but while he was capturing everyone’s attention on TV because of how he jammed out to his music, that attention was drawing away from the fact that he was trying this on a busted ankle.

“[The] nosegrind I did on my third trick was a big deal for me.” Eaton said to UPROXX last week on his post-Olympics press tour through Red Bull. “That rail is really scary. That was by far the biggest rail I’ve ever done that trick on. And yeah, I mean, looking back I don’t know how my ankle survived…that was very unusual for me to see a rail that large. I know it’s the Olympic games. So I know how people get down. I know when they designed that course, they’re like ‘we’re going to make people send’ totally understand but I got to that rail. I’m like yeah, this thing is massive like it is no joke. It is a 12.”

Eaton’s nosegrind helped win him a bronze medal, but in retrospect, it may have been one of the most impressive tricks of the contest because of the circumstances. One month before this, Eaton broke his ankle competing in qualifiers in Rome. The results of that injury left him competing in Tokyo with fractures and torn ligaments in that same ankle, something that’s impossible to move completely out of your mind as you skate around one of the biggest street courses you’ve ever seen.

The 12-foot railing may have been the scariest part, but it also set a precedent for how the Olympics was going to be different from other skateboarding competitions. On a course that’s more compact, competitors like Eaton can gain some momentum, get a flow going, and string together a series of tricks to impress the judges watching them. However, the Olympics went the other direction. The course was huge which not only meant that the skaters had a plethora of options for how they wanted to skate it, but they were going to need a lot of speed to keep their momentum going. This was no problem for Eaton, minus the broken ankle.

“The Olympic course was huge but I love courses that are big.” Eaton said. “I feel like I’m a skater who skates really fast and that course was really good for that. So I mean, the only thing that kind of made the whole course stand out and really gnarly is that big section. I’ve been competing on a pretty bad ankle. I mean, I broke it in Rome only a month ago and so I still have two torn ligaments and two fractures in there. Oh my god, and skating that big section. Really tough for me.”

Despite these challenges, Eaton managed to push through and by doing so he became a name that is going to be remembered in skateboarding forever. He’s the first American to ever win an Olympic medal in skateboarding as a member of the first group that competed in Olympic skateboarding. It’s an honor that isn’t lost on Eaton, and he’s thrilled that the world got to see what skateboarding was all about.

“I feel like skateboarding deserves to be in the Olympics,” Eaton said. “I feel like people don’t really give skateboarding a lot of credit and don’t take the legitimacy of what we do and the athleticism it takes to do what we do and I feel like putting it on that Olympic platform gave an opportunity for people to see what we do.”

By putting skateboarding on the Olympic stage not only were Eaton and the rest of the competitors able to show the incredible skill skateboarding requires, but it did something else that ended up capturing the hearts of a lot of fans. Skateboarding is less about competing against others and more about competing against yourself.

“It’s all for the love of skateboarding, man, when you’re out there and you’re on your board and everything fades away.” Eaton said. “One of the biggest lessons that skateboarding teaches you is persistence and the ability to fall and get back up literally and I feel like it’s hard it’s you know, it’s hard to do that all the time but again, it’s like that’s where that passion and love shines because like I’ve been saying this a lot but it’s the truest form of how I feel about skateboarding. It’s the Olympic games, I was in the most pressure filled situation of my life. I put so much pressure on myself that contest. I trained for four years for that contest and at the same time in that final, I was in the most [high] pressure situation in my life, but I was having one of the greatest skate sessions in times of my life and I feel like skateboarding consistently reminds you that love and passion overrules. Any feeling that you have towards negativity in your sport, you know? If you love it, you really love it. You’ll go the distance with it.”

We saw this love for skateboarding throughout the street events for both the men’s and women’s events. When Yuto Horigome was running away with Gold he wasn’t met with stares of discontent. He was congratulated and praised. When two thirteen year olds, Momiji Nishiya, Rayssa Leal, and sixteen-year-old Funa Nakayama took the podium in the women’s event it was seen as an example of how skateboarding is for everyone. It’s a sport where the only expectation the athletes have with one another is the ability to skate. It’s highly competitive, but they want everyone to succeed and land tricks because that is what pushes the sport forward and pushes everyone to be better, go higher, and try harder tricks.

“The relationships between all my competitors — and you know all my competitors are my friends — that’s why they’re some of my best friend’s is because I love that my friends want to beat me in contests.” Eaton said. “Like I love that. Like if you don’t surround yourself with people that are better than you you’re going to become the medium of who you hang out with. Those are all my homies and it’s all love and I was so stoked for Yuto, that he took it in Japan and it was just, it was amazing to be a part of that moment.”

The Olympics, for all its faults, is at its best when the competitors are showing the level of respect for one another that Eaton is mentioning. Everyone wants to earn Gold and go back home as a hero to their country, but they want to do that for themselves above all else. This is why skateboarding was the perfect event. They already embody what the Olympics claim to represent and Jagger Eaton, fighting through ankle fractures to win Bronze, is an example of that. When Eaton gets out on a course the crowd disappears and the stage is gone. It’s just him, the course, his board, and the tricks he wants to nail. It’s the happiest place in the world for him. When he comes out of it, he’s holding a Bronze medal, the first ever skateboarding medalist in U.S. History.

While promoting Disney’s Jungle Cruise, The Rock told told an interviewer that he wishes the Fast and Furious crew “well” as they go on to make Fast 10 and Fast 11 movies “without me.” The comment sure made it sound like he was done playing Luke Hobbs in the main franchise films. However, the remarks were in response to a question about his long-running and still-simmering feud with Vin Diesel, so it was hard to gauge how serious The Rock was being about his future with the franchise.

Well, according to his Seven Bucks production partner and president, Hiram Garcia, The Rock was as serious as a heart attack.

While sitting down with Collider, Garcia confirmed that The Rock (or “DJ,” as he calls him) will not appear in the Fast 10 and Fast 11 because he made the decision to walk away from the main franchise films after getting into his public beef with Diesel while making The Fate of the Furious. That being said, The Rock is still committed to making Hobbs and Shaw 2 happen, which is good news for fans of the team-up film starring Jason Statham:

After filming Fast 8, DJ made the clear decision to close the Fast & Furious chapter for all the evident reasons. He wished them all well and shifted our focus on to other story telling avenues. So while he will not be in F10 or F11, that won’t in any way interfere with our Hobbs plans. Obviously all these characters exist in the Fast universe and we love to see all aspects of that universe thrive and succeed.

“For all the evident reasons” is, of course, in reference to The Rock’s ongoing trouble with Diesel. When asked to respond by The Hollywood Reporter for his thoughts on Diesel claiming their feud was simply the result of good old-fashioned, “tough love” method acting on Diesel’s part, The Rock made it very clear how he felt.

“I laughed and I laughed hard,” The Rock said. “I think everyone had a laugh at that. And I’ll leave it at that.”

(Via Collider)

This article originally appeared on 06.15.16

To a stranger I met at a coffee shop a few years ago who introduced me to what my life as a parent would be like:

My “welcome to black fatherhood moment” happened five years ago, and I remember it like it happened yesterday.

I doubt you’ll remember it, though — so let me refresh your memory.

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It was a beautiful Saturday morning in Los Angeles in 2011, and I decided to walk my then 3-month-old daughter to the corner Starbucks. That’s when I met you — a stylish older white woman who happened to be ahead of me in line.

You were very friendly and offered up many compliments about how cute my daughter was, and I agreed wholeheartedly with you. She’s cute.

But after you picked up your drink, you delivered this parting shot:

“No offense, but it’s not often that I see black guys out with their kids, but it’s such a wonderful thing,” she said. “No matter what happens, I hope you stay involved in her life.”

And then you put on your designer sunglasses and left.

Meanwhile, I was like…

GIF from “Live with Kelly and Michael.”

Here’s the thing: I’m not angry with you, but I want you to understand the impact you had on my life.

Do I think you’re a mean-spirited racist? No, I don’t. Actually, I bet you’re a really nice lady.

But let’s be real for a second: Your view on black dads was tough for me to stomach, and I want you to know a few things about what it’s really like to be me.

1. I want you to know that we have challenges that other dads don’t experience.

I know what you’re thinking: “Oh boy — let me brace myself while he ‘blacksplains’ how hard his life is while shaming me for ignoring my white privilege.”

But that would be missing the point. We all have our challenges in life, and I’m not about to bring a big bottle of whine to a pity party.

Instead, as you probably know, today’s dads are trying to shed the stigma of being clueless buffoons.

Kid, you’re gonna love this! Wheeeee … uh oh.

But black dads have an additional obstacle to hurdle in that we’re often seen as completely disinterested in fatherhood. Trust me, it gets old when people automatically assume you’re not good at something because of the color of your skin.

Our encounter was the first of many examples of this that I’ve witnessed, directly or indirectly, in my five and a half years of fatherhood, and I’m sure there will be more to come.

2. I want you to know that I’m not a shiny unicorn. There are plenty of black men just like me who love fatherhood.

During the months that followed our brief meeting, I felt a need to prove that you — a complete stranger — were wrong. I needed to prove there were plenty of black men just like me who loved being dads.

I knew a lot of these great men personally: My dad, my two brothers, and many others embraced fatherhood. But could any data back up how much black dads embraced fatherhood? Because the examples in mainstream media were few and far between.

Thankfully, the answer is yes.

A few years after I met you, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 70% of black dads are likely to engage in common child-rearing activities such as diaper changing, bathing, toilet training, etc., on a daily basis. That’s a higher percentage than white or Hispanic fathers.

Full stop.

This isn’t about black dads being “the best” because parenthood isn’t a competition. It’s about showing that we’re not even remotely as bad as society makes us out to be.

And outside of the CDC study, I saw firsthand how hands-on black dads are when I was thrust into the public eye, too, because a lot of them reached out to me to tell their stories.

We nurture our kids.

Photo taken from the Daddy Doin’ Work Instagram feed and used with permission.

We’re affectionate with our kids.

Photo taken from the Daddy Doin’ Work Instagram feed and used with permission.

And we do whatever our kids need us to do.

Photo taken from the Daddy Doin’ Work Instagram feed and used with permission.

And none of that should come as a surprise to anyone.

3. I want you to know that I believe you meant well when you praised me for being involved in my daughter’s life, but that’s what I’m programmed to do.

I will always be there for her and her baby sister.

Princess dresses at Disneyland? You bet.

Even though I just described how black dads are different from many dads, I hope the takeaway you have from this is that we have a lot of similarities, too.

Please don’t fall into the trap of saying that you want to live in a colorblind world because it makes it harder to identify with inequality when it happens. Instead, I hope you can recognize that we have the same hopes, dreams, and fears as other parents, but the roads we travel may not be the same.

And no, I don’t want an apology.

But I hope when you pick up your next latte and see a dad who looks like me that you’ll smile knowing he’s the rule rather than the exception.

This article originally appeared on 11.14.16

Tatiana von Furstenberg laid out more than 4,000 works of art on the floor of her apartment and was immediately struck by what she saw.

The pieces of artwork were submitted from various prisons across the country in hopes of being featured in “On the Inside,” an exhibition of artwork by currently incarcerated LGBTQ inmates, curated by von Furstenberg and Black and Pink, a nonprofit organization that supports the LGBTQ community behind bars. The exhibit was held at the Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan toward the end of 2016.

“I put all the submissions on the floor and I saw that there were all these loving ones, these signs of affection, all of these two-spirit expressions of gender identity, and fairies and mermaids,” von Furstenberg said.

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She noticed the recurring topics throughout the works of different artists — eye contact, desire, fighting back, alienation, and longing — and these shared struggles became the themes of the art exhibition.

“Always without a Net” by L.S. All images provided by On the Inside, used with permission.

“These artists feel really forgotten. They really did not think that anybody cared for them. And so for them to have a show in New York and to hear what the responses have been is huge, it’s very uplifting,” she said.

Plenty of people turn to art as a means of escape. But for the artists involved in On the Inside, the act of making art also put them at risk.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are incarcerated at twice the rate of heterosexuals, and trans people are three times as likely to end up behind bars than cisgender people. During incarceration, they’re also much more vulnerable than non-LGBTQ inmates to violence, sexual assault, and unusual punishments such as solitary confinement.

Not every prison makes art supplies readily available, either, which means that some of the artists who submitted to “On the Inside” had to find ways to make their work from contraband materials, such as envelopes and ink tubes. And of course, by drawing provocative images about their identities, they also risked being outed and threatened by other inmates around them.

But sometimes, the act of self-expression is worth that risk. Here are some of the remarkable examples of that from the exhibition.

(Content warning: some of the images include nudity.)

1.”A Self Portrait” by B. Tony.

2. “Rihanna” by Gabriel S.

“Rihanna is who I got the most pictures of,” von Furstenburg said. “I think it’s because she is relatable in both her strength and her vulnerability. She’s real.”

3. “Acceptance” by Stevie S.

“This series is sexy and loving and domestic,” von Furstenberg said about these two portraits by Stevie S. “A different look at family values/family portrait.”

4. “Michael Jackson” by Jeremy M.

This was another one of von Furstenberg’s favorites, because of the way it depicts a struggle with identity. “[MJ] was different, he was such a unique being that struggled so much with his identity and his body image the way a lot of our artists, especially our trans artists, are struggling behind bars,” she said.

5. “Unknown” by Tiffany W.

6. “Genotype” and “Life Study,” by J.S.

“This is the Michelangelo of the group,” von Furstenberg said. “To be able to draw this with pencil and basic prison lighting is astounding. One of the best drawings I’ve ever seen in my life.”

When the exhibition opened to the public on Nov. 4, 2016, visitors even had the chance to share their thoughts with the artists.

The exhibit included an interactive feature that allowed people to text their comments and responses to the artist, which von Furstenberg then converted to physical paper and mailed to inmates.

Some of the messages included:

“I have had many long looks in the mirror like in your piece the beauty within us. I’m glad you can see your beautiful self smiling out. I see her too. Thank you.”

“I am so wowed by your talent. You used paper, kool aid and an inhaler to draw a masterpiece. I feel lucky to have been able to see your work, and I know that other New Yorkers will feel the same. Keep creating.”

“I’ve dreamed the same dreams. The barriers in your way are wrong. We will tear them down some day. Stay strong Dear.”

Many people were also surprised at how good the artwork was — but they shouldn’t have been.

Just because someone’s spent time in prison doesn’t mean they can’t be a good person — or a talented artist. They’re also being compensated for their artwork. While business transactions with incarcerated people are technically illegal, $50 donations have been made to each artist’s commissary accounts to help them purchase food and other supplies.

“We’re led to believe that people behind bars are dangerous, that we’re safer without them, but it’s not true,” von Furstenberg said. “The fact that anybody would assume that [the art] would be anything less than phenomenal shows that there’s this hierarchy: The artist is up on this pedestal, and other people marginalized people are looked down upon.”

“2” by Blair B.

Art has always been about connecting people. And for these incarcerated LGBTQ artists, that human connection is more important than ever.

Perhaps the only thing harder than being in prison is trying to integrate back into society — something that most LGBTQ people struggle with anyway. These are people who have already had difficulty expressing who they are on the inside and who are now hidden away from the world behind walls.

On the Inside’s art show provided them a unique opportunity to have their voices heard — and hopefully, their individual messages are loud enough to resonate when they’re on the outside too.

This article originally appeared on 12.08.16

From a young age, Deddeh Howard was enthralled by fashion and its role in culture. Unfortunately, she was never really able to see herself in it.

“Something that always bothered me when you see these amazing images [was] that very rarely you ever see a black woman on them,” Howard, who grew up in West Africa but now resides in Los Angeles, wrote at her blog, Secret of DD.

“Black girls are almost invisible,” she wrote.

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So Howard created “Black Mirror,” a photo series in which she re-creates famous photos with herself in place of models like Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Gisele Bundchen, and others.

Howard’s partner, Raffael Dickreuter, shot the series. As its title suggests, it holds a “black mirror” up to the fashion world. The project’s goal is both to make people notice the lack of diversity in the fashion world and to provide inspiration to other non-white models.

Of the models featured on the fall 2016 runways, 75% were white. There’s a major need for a diversity boost.

Sometimes, that lack of diversity can be downright embarrassing. Earlier this year, one fashion show featured models walking to Beyoncé’s “Formation,” a song Essence described as a “wholly and undeniable a tribute to Blackness — particularly Black girl power.” The problem: The show didn’t feature a single non-white model.

Diversity, representation, and visibility play key roles in shaping ambition and self-acceptance in the real world.

It’s important to be able to see yourself in the world, and it’s important to know that someone who looks like you can succeed.

“The next generation can only get inspired and reach for the stars themselves if they believe they can do it too,” Howard wrote on her blog. “For that reason diversity in ad campaigns is in my opinion much more important than you might think.”

This article originally appeared on 06.27.15

In 2013, Zerlina Maxwell ignited a firestorm of controversy when she strongly recommended we stop telling women how to not get raped.

Here are her words, from the transcript of her appearance on Sean Hannity’s show:

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“I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there with prevention.”

Image from “Hannity.”

So essentially — instead of teaching women how to avoid rape, let’s raise boys specifically not to rape.

There was a lot of ire raised from that idea. Maxwell was on the receiving end of a deluge of online harassment and scary threats because of her ideas, which is sadly common for outspoken women on the Internet.

People assumed it meant she was labeling all boys as potential rapists or that every man has a rape-monster he carries inside him unless we quell it from the beginning.

But the truth is most of the rapes women experience are perpetrated by people they know and trust. So fully educating boys during their formative years about what constitutes consent and why it’s important to practice explicitly asking for consent could potentially eradicate a large swath of acquaintance rape. It’s not a condemnation on their character or gender, but an extra set of tools to help young men approach sex without damaging themselves or anyone else.

But what does teaching boys about consent really look like in action?

Well, there’s the viral letter I wrote to my teen titled “Son, It’s Okay If You Don’t Get Laid Tonight” explaining his responsibility in the matter. I wanted to show by example that Maxwell’s words weren’t about shaming or blaming boys who’d done nothing wrong yet, but about giving them a road map to navigate their sexual encounters ahead.

There are also rape prevention campaigns on many college campuses, aiming to reach young men right at the heart of where acquaintance rape is so prevalent. Many men are welcoming these efforts.

And then there are creative endeavors to find the right metaphors and combination of words to get people to shake off their acceptance of cultural norms and see rape culture clearly.

This is brilliant:

Image from Everyday Feminism, used with permission by creator Alli Kirkham.

There you have it. Seven comparisons that anyone can use to show how simple and logical the idea of consent really is. Consent culture is on its way because more and more people are sharing these ideas and getting people to think critically. How can we not share an idea whose time has come?

This article originally appeared on 02.15.16

Ever fallen into one of those Internet dating quizzes? You know, the ones that promise to categorize you? Like “what your astrological sign says about your relationship style.”

They can be fun, but we all know they’re mostly fluff.

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Those quizzes are the Internet version of this, basically. Image from Cuppysfriend/Wikimedia Commons.

What if I told you someone did find a way to “categorize” your love style but with actual real science?

Three relationship scientists asked about 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationship and how committed they felt to marrying their partner. They followed each of the couples for nine months. Not, like, literally followed them — that would be creepy. Instead, they just asked them a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were feeling over time.

At the end of the nine months, the scientists collected all the couple’s responses and delved deep into the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.

Prepare yourself for some soul searching because you might just be:

1. The Conflicted, but Passionate

Scarlett and Rhett from “Gone with the Wind.” Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This is the couple Facebook made the “It’s Complicated” relationship status for. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These folks use those conflicts to help them make decisions about the relationship, and in fact, they didn’t appear to be any more destined for a breakup than any of the other groups.

Also, as a bonus, they tend to follow those turbulent downs with passionate ups. “These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together,” said study author Brian Ogolsky.

2. The Partner-Focused

Image from Yiannis Theologos Michellis/Flickr.

If your idea of a perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of binge-watching “House of Cards” together, you might fall into this category.

Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together and share hobbies or leisure activities, and it’s that shared time that tends to propel them forward. They tended to be more careful and thoughtful about their relationship decisions — more likely to build from the inside out — and tended to be the most satisfied overall.

3. The Social Butterflies

Image from Esther Bubley, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, if your perfect evening with your partner involves grabbing all your friends and hitting the bars or breaking out Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this might be the category that best describes you. Social couples usually share a friend group and use that time spent with friends to inform and build their relationship as a couple.

“Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed,” said Ogolsky. They also tended to be pretty stable and have higher levels of love based on feelings of friendship toward each other, which can be a good indicator for long-term happiness.

4. The Dramatic

Image from Sofi/Flickr.

Unfortunately, not every couple’s path is easy. Things may start out good, but tend not to stay that way for dramatic couples. This type of couple tends to make decisions based on negative experiences or stuff from outside the relationship.

“These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly,” said Ogolsky. “You begin to see little things eroding, and you start to see the relationship in a negative light, and soon you give up,” said Ogolsky.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples tended to break up the most, twice as much as other couples.

So what’s best? Well, here’s where this article differs from a lot of those Internet quizzes. Because the answer is that there isn’t a “best” kind of relationship.

Image from Maryam Mgonja/Wikimedia Commons.

Different couples work and grow differently. These are different pathways and it’d be a mistake to assume there’s a “correct” way to love someone. Or even that you’re forever locked into a certain style of relationships. “These are not predefined, for-life patterns,” said Ogolsky.

And even in a single relationship, these patterns aren’t predictors of destiny — a dramatic couple may, in fact, outlast a social one, and a partner-driven couple may be as passionate as anyone you could ever meet.

And the researchers willingly admit in their paper that their study doesn’t cover all relationships. Many very happy couples have no desire to marry, for instance. And, it should be noted, that it wasn’t too long ago that the U.S. didn’t even allow all couples to get married!

Wait, you’re not going to tell me how to find the perfect, golden, eternally-happy relationship?! Why even study this then?

Because, in our hearts, humans are social creatures, Ogolsky explained. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships can be as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. They can even affect your health!

As for what you can learn from all this, the important takeaway is that what you use to make decisions — whether from conflict, from the inside, from the outside, or from friendship — can influence your level of commitment. It might be useful for couples to think not just about their choices but how they make their choices.

So … what’s your category?

This article originally appeared on 04.27.16

Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.

A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.

Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.

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*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they’re just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)

It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

And this.

These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.

Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League’s most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league’s top players was accused of rape.

DiCaro wasn’t writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn’t receive nearly the same amount of abuse.

It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.

The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.

Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.

Think this is all just anecdotal? There’s evidence to the contrary.

The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.

They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.

The stats were staggering.

From their comprehensive and disturbing article:

“Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the ‘top 10’, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.”

So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?

1. To start? Share things that make people aware it’s happening. Listen to the Just Not Sports podcast where they talk about it.
2. If you know someone who talks like this to anyone on the internet, CALL THEM OUT. Publicly, privately — just let them know it’s not OK to talk to anyone like this.
3. Don’t stop talking about it. Every day, the harassment continues. Don’t let it linger without attention.

There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it’s not OK to talk to anyone like that.

But how do you move on from gravity? For nine seasons Kyle Lowry has been the compelling center point of a Toronto team that has orbited, collapsed, and reformed around him. The team’s story and its style — the hard-edged, dogged, make-life-difficult default — were borrowed from Lowry like a well-loved book, pages worn soft and yellowed by the fingers passing over them, adopted like cadence, a particular lilt in a voice spreading, beloved, beyond its original speaker.

Less a history keeper than someone who delivered some worth recording, Lowry, reluctant at first alongside DeMar DeRozan, saw the shape that such a young franchise could take and rather than leverage it for personal legacy, took a longview. With DeRozan there, neither had to take the full weight — of pressure, expectation, promise — they could split and shift it, prime themselves for the eventual cast they’d share for franchise face.

How strange it must have been for someone as young as Lowry then, his baby fat hiding hard edges of physicality he’d later lean into to lead with, to be in a place like Toronto. Due north of Houston and Memphis, their heat-dazed and slow moving rhythms, crossing into a welcoming country but a cold, occasionally circumspect climate. All but assured it was a stopover, a seasonal reset, hardly expecting a soft spoken DeRozan to approach him in the locker room just weeks after Lowry’s arrival and ask, earnestly, did he want to try something, did he want to buy-in.

It was the power of pride initially, it had to be. The both of them were hardly bound to the other and only varying, light ties to the franchise. A game of chicken, then, of who would blink first, balk, admit that to try and make something out of the Raptors — the Raptors? — had been a good laugh, one they could come back to wherever it was their paths were going to split and send them. But by now you know that neither DeRozan or Lowry ever blink, so the dare never materialized and they only built on the truth of it.

In that same brave, bold, and really only one option space, they both found their games. For DeRozan, a nervy pull-up from anywhere and footwork that outworks without breaking a sweat. Cocky without the ego. For Lowry it was a saccharine sweet smirk on two indefatigable legs, body as ready collateral. Cocky with a bit of an ego — at least then. It was through the work on court, never-ending, gradual, little glimpses of joy through some pretty dark storm clouds, that they both found each other, too. Ports from, and for, each other’s storms.

It was particularly cruel then how DeRozan was dealt, abruptly and secondary to the allegiance melting call of a disenfranchised Kawhi Leonard. DeRozan could at least put up the practiced wall of “it’s a business”, while Lowry was left to bear the vacancies of heart and roster, neither quite cooperating.

To Leonard, Lowry was at first reluctant. Here was everything his outsized basketball brain could want but the cost was too close, hardly clean. He resisted through the late fall and early winter, knowing enough of the climate by then that those sun starved and bone damp days would at least mirror his mood. But through that terrible shearing of Lowry’s trust came the emergence of a new, truer self. He must have known, for how much he still was reeling but how zeroed in his sight, seeing Leonard for what he was, what he opened up: Lowry’s widest road, his straightest shot, total and absolute potential. So, Lowry did what his new role — Captain, finally, singularly — demanded, and handed over the team he and DeRozan had forged and fostered to the superstar loner and he never looked back.

Ask Lowry what he wants for the Raptors, either in their brightest championship afterglow or murkiest Tampa days, and the answer will be the same — to see his guys shine. The young core (now not so young, but frozen in the Neverland of Lowry) of Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, Chris Boucher, thriving, winning, improving, and being paid for it. It’s the measure of how far Lowry has come, that when asked about his future the scope of it shifts secondary to what he wants to the players he had a hand in raising the ceiling for. He wants their careers to eclipse his. He wants to see them move from the boundaries a nice neglected franchise imposed on him and DeRozan, if only because the attention span of the average NBA fan so rarely ventures cross-border. But watch Lowry, before the whistle of any game, and see him work like a magnet. Draw vets and rookies, temperamental stars and lunchpail role-players to him all the same. It’s hard to find more proof of Lowry’s league-wide respect than the whole of the league rolling their eyes at his stubborn body drawing charge after charge off them one minute and their arms, hands, eyes, looking for his once the buzzer has gone, pulled into his gravity.

How do you move on from that?

Like most of what Lowry has done in his maturation as a player, he’s made it look easy, bearing most of the weight onto himself. The core of the team, living so long in Lowry’s universe, understand intuitively the way its rules work, and that routine trickles down to the new faces from Toronto’s abrupt folding last season to the very freshest from this year’s Draft. Lowry has always been preparing for the eventuality of his role shifting, if not well back from the fore of the tea then lifted from it by forces greater — the will of a GM, a front office, with perception that only looks forward or else they’d be out of a job. The roster had been drilled when the conditions were right (a championship season and its fervent and audacity-propelled attempt the next to repeat), weird (the Bubble), and a complete wash (Tampa). The team that Lowry built should know by now Toronto basketball, inside and out.

So long as Lowry stayed then no real, new, next iteration of the Raptors could start. He’s intrinsic, too strong a force, running through team chemistry as much as rhythms on the floor. There was no looking past him. In his leaving, he has removed himself as the blind spot that blotted out, like so many constant bright stars do, what shape the team’s future will take. He also handed back a needed, but not necessary, jump-start into that future.

Lowry could have left without guilt, all promises kept on the power of the verbal contract he made in saying, “And if you start something? Man, you finish it.” Instead, he opted for a deal that utilized his gravity, pulled something back to lend momentum, push things forward.

To be held in Lowry’s orbit for so long was its own rare gift in a league that ratchets up its velocity every season. The Toronto he inherited to start was an outpost, a blip on the radar. The Toronto Lowry’s leaving has become the kind of place where a certain kind of player, one with tenacity, a compulsion toward work and an outlier’s tendencies is drawn to and can thrive in. A system where athletes are known to develop, improve, and don’t need to wait for the light of the superstar eclipsing them to dim before they can get started. Where the gravity can feel like two feet firmly planted, a soft place to land, the flow of a perfect pass, or, occasionally, a flipping rush that will feel like a very determined grown man going through the legs of another, just to see if it works. A malleable, hopeful universe that happens to glint like a toothy grin, but was formed to be shaped by those who mean to push it forward.