12/02/24 - No matter how hard your life got, it’s unacceptable to toe the line.
“I gotta complain about this. One coworker brought in a folding cot and spreads it out in the corner of her office every noon break to take a nap.
Fine. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not in anybody’s way or anything.
But she’ll leave her phone at her desk, and the alarm will go off 2 minutes before work starts bak up again, and she never gets up right away to shut it off. It just keeps ringing until she completely wakes up and goes back to her desk…
She claims this is the only way she can get up to keep working…
I get pissed off every time I hear that noise now >: (“
Comments say, “Set an alarm 3 minutes before hers and once yours ring, go to the break room.”
“How could she think this behaviour wouldn’t bother other people?”
“I hate these people. The alarm wakes up everybody except them.”
[A former gold medalist gymnast, Wu Liufang, has started posting videos of sexy dances online, and went viral a week back when a different Olympic gold medalist gymnast commented underneath her videos asking her to not market herself as a gymnast, because she’s bringing shame to the industry. Their argument drew a lot of attention, and her account got banned afterwards. People kept discussing it online though, and all the takes I saw were almost unanimously in support of Wu Liufang. People were even starting to post infographics outlining how national athletes in China get completely abandoned once they age out of their sport, and they often start training at 4-5 years old and never received a proper education, with a lot of them resorting to begging or unskilled manual labour. I suppose it was enough of an embarrassment that her account got unbanned today, and she immediately gained millions of followers.]
“Her Story director Shao Yihui upvoted and supported Wu Liufang’s weibo. #Wu Liufang scared by how many fans she’s gained.”
The director’s weibo post reads, “I’ve reposted something Ricky Gervais said before, “Being woke is for us to see and reflect on ourselves, not to judge and bully others.”
The post the director was responding to reads, “Wu Liufang explained why she didn’t become a gymnastics coach, “Although I’ve suffered a lot, if I had to become a coach, I’d have to watch other little kids suffer, I have to force them to suffer, and that would make me suffer too…” She’s been doing gymnastics since she was a little kid. She’s been through a lot. And she’s at the very top of her industry, and all it’s brought her is more suffering. She knows what it means to go through this kind of suffering, and after having gone through it herself, she doesn’t want to make other people’s kids her stepping stones.
She really is a saint.”
Comments say, “The freedom to fall downwards is not true freedom.”
“I feel like anyone marketing themselves as a feminist is bound to crash sooner or later.”
“So the only job retired athletes can do aside from coaching is toeing the line?”
A compilation of English words people think are really fun to say:
“Every time I read “Congratulations” out loud, I feel like I’m some kind of British gentlemen, doing an old money laugh, good-humouredly making jokes with my friends, elegantly clapping.”
“Your team has reclaimed the crucial kill.”
“That is really fun.”
“Does anyone else get “actually?” Like, that feel of an American girl chewing gum.”
“”Question”. Who gets it? It’s so fun to say.”
“But the best word is clearly “supercalifraglisticexpialidocious.”
“I really like the sound of “San Francisco”.”
“I feel like mosquitoes don’t deserve to be called “mosquito”.”
“It sounds like some kind of really high-end cocktail.”
“Anything that ends in —tion is really fun.”
“”Especially”. Every time I say it, I feel really slick.”
A discussion on whether it’s okay to take boy kiddos into the women’s bathroom with you, underneath a tiktok video where a woman gets into an argument because she brought her 6 and 4-year-old sons with her to the bathroom.
“People are so mean these days. Women’s bathrooms all have individual stalls these days. A kid isn’t gonna see anything if you take them in. As the mother of a little boy myself, it’s really hard to take my kid out with me when he’s small.”
“He still doesn’t have to cry over it though. Nobody yelled at him or anything, they just said this was a women’s bathroom.”
“When kids are that little, they don’t understand anything. And I’m sure these two boys were trying to peek into their mom’s stall.”
“My son is 4-years-old. When daddy isn’t with us, he’ll go to the men’s bathroom by himself and wash his hands before coming out, and I wait by the door for him. If I take him into a women’s bathroom, I’m sure unmarried girls would get uncomfortable.”
“It’s not like everything’s open in a women’s bathroom. There’s stalls, right?”
“If you’re uncomfortable, go to an individual bathroom. Sometimes, girls don’t get uncomfortable because there’s a boy there, they’d be shy even if a woman walked in. In my hometown, you can bring a 4-year-old boy with you to the bathhouse. But the older one is a bit big at 6-years-old, you can’t bring him. But if I ran into someone with a 6-year-old boy, I wouldn’t overthink it or comment on anything. If daddy isn’t home, there’s not much the mom can do.”
“Don’t women’s bathrooms have stalls? What’s there to be uncomfortable over?
“Maybe they all strip naked as soon as they go in?”
“If I was taking my son out by myself, I’d bring him inside too, and he has to wait right outside my stall for me. All the toilets are enclosed anyways. What can he see? Are all the people saying this mom is in the wrong peeing with their door open?”
“I bring my son to the bathroom with me too. I’m too worried about him being outside on his own. Someone might traffic him.”
“I can totally get it. I’ve often ran into moms bringing boys into women’s bathrooms, having their kid pee first, and then peeing themselves. They’re scared to let their kid out of their sight. They won’t even close the bathroom door and just make them stand there and wait for mommy to be done. There are a lot of kidnappers these days. If you take your eyes off of them for even a second just to go to the bathroom, they could get taken away. Not letting dad take them to the men’s bathroom might just be concern that men don’t take good care of kids, like wiping them done and putting pants back on them afterwards. 6-years-old is right in that awkward stage of not too big but not really little either. I can understand a mom taking him to a women’s bathroom with doors. I don’t have kids myself but I get it.”
“As the mother of a 4-year-old, I’m really thankful for your understanding. You’ve at least given voice to my feelings as a mom. When I’m out and about, my first priority is keeping track of my kid.”
“I have a girl, and I get it too. All kinds of trivial bullshit gets turned into a parenting crisis by the internet. This is why our birth rate is so low.”
“Honestly, I’m sure this mom isn’t going to deliberately teach her son to go to women’s bathrooms and peek on people. I’m willing to be forgiving towards a 6-year-old kid, because that’s not so old that I can’t accept it at all.”
“Whether people are discussing whether or not 6-year-old boys can go to the women’s bathroom, or talking about how hard it is for moms to take kids out on their own and that they have no other option, right now, there’s no clear rules and regulations about it. But these two women are both bitches! Whether it’s the girl or this mom, I hate them both! Neither of them have an ounce of sympathy!”
“If there’s doors over every stall, it doesn’t really matter if he’s in the women’s bathroom, right? Honestly, I wouldn’t be comfortable with a 6-year-old going to the men’s bathroom by himself. Sure, there’s problems with both of them. This girl doesn’t have kids herself so she doesn’t have any empathy, and this mom is pretty unreasonable too.”
“I have a boy too and I don’t support this mom. At 6-years-old, he’s more than capable of peeing by himself. There’s no problem with him going to the men’s bathroom by himself. But I do want to say that there’s no need for this girl to make such a big deal out of this. It’s just a little kid. Just walk away. There’s no need to tell other people off.”
“People are so intolerant these days. I still remember being taken to the women’s bathhouse by my mom and being made fun of by all the aunties.”
“An author on Haitang [famous pornographic webnovel site] got arrested, and her family made a post on the internet talking about how hard her life is, that she was only writing porn because she had to, there was no other way for her to make a living.
And a lot of people supported, comforted, and donated to her.
And today, I saw an account that argued furiously on behalf of this author also flip out that Wu Liufang should go die for toeing the line, that no matter how hard your life got, it’s unacceptable to toe the line.
Scratches my head. The logic here doesn’t make any sense.”
Comments say, “They think that writing porn is less problematic than toeing the line, and yet you can get sentenced to 10 years in prison for writing porn, but you can openly toe the line and a bunch of men will defend your innocence while hounding other people why they’re not toeing the line.”
“I feel like there’s some kind of media marketing company behind this. First of all, Wu is one of those people that kept up with their image after retiring, but isn’t as influential as the top athletes. She’s easier to control, and you can easily make a sensation out of toeing the line and world champion, then step by step expose more gossip to keep up the heat and attract followers. It’s practically free money. If the hammer really does come down, that’s just a way to purify her fans. It’s money either way. And if public opinion is on her side, that’s even more profitable. That’s just my personal opinion.”
“Maybe their mindset is that gay porn on Haitang is just fiction. It doesn’t offend anybody. But a flesh and blood woman toeing the line makes them feel offended.”
Thanks as always! What does “toe the line” mean in the context of the final story?