Dear Aunt Acid, I'm an undergraduate woman participating in a summer math research program. My project team consists of me and two other students, both men. Both of them curse constantly and casually. As long as they're just swearing, it doesn't bother me enough to make it worth bringing up, but I do object to their misogynistic language -- "what a little bitch," "don't be such a pussy," and so on. (Whether or not these…

The first night of my freshman year of college, a group of fraternity guys locked me in an apartment and threatened to gang rape me. In retrospect, I realize one of the reasons I was chosen is exactly because I was a freshman. Most students had to wait two years to graduate from a dorm to a coveted spot in the two-bedroom apartments we called “the courts.” When jealous students asked me how I maneuvered…

I spent a lot of my first two years of college sick. The source of my physical unraveling had little to do with the normal collegiate vices. I didn’t experience a hangover until my senior year and I was often struck by a case of temporary muteness around people of the opposite sex. I even avoided The Great Pink Eye Outbreak that ravaged our campus during my freshman year. (How bad was that outbreak? So…

There are four notebooks living in my room. Three are in current use, filled with fashion scribbles, abandoned essay ideas, and half-finished cover letters. The fourth fell out of rotation nearly five years ago although the height of its use dates back even further. It had been less a notebook and more a journal containing a close accounting of certain events. Unlike most of my books and a considerable percentage of my clothes, I couldn’t…

The very first time, I used the worst excuse. I won’t say “the worst excuse in the book,” because that transgression in clichés would be very nearly as bad as my telling John, “I have to go to the bathroom,” somewhere between my bra falling to the ground and the faux-innocent trailing of hands along waistbands. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the lightest of touches are the least accidental. What I should…

Perhaps you have seen this: a writer at Fix the Family (which, I'm sorry, is not nearly as good a name as Focus on the Family) has come up with a list of reasons not to send your daughters to college, if you have daughters and were on the fence about letting them go, I suppose. So what's the deal? Probably the most controversial and rejected position we have at Fix the Family is…