One deleted at user's request.

One comment removed as requested.

Edited OP to add Matchmaker link, and removed a comment about the change.

OP asked us to post this comment:

Thank you all for your thoughts. I definitely am getting the sense that legal marital status holds a different level of significance to different people. Talking a bit with my partner I think we both have regrets about not being clearer in our communication. A couple points to clarify:

1. I did not probe deeper into my partner's status because I genuinely thought there was nothing to ask about - I met them on an online platform where you can set your status as single/married/separated, and they were listed as "single". Me saying "I don't really want to know" was more like, I don't like to interrogate my partners about their exes, you know?

2. I am not entirely sure where the assumption from some posters that my partner is male came from, but they do in fact use they/them pronouns.

Tagged USPolitics and added to the sidebar.

Added link to FLEEP in the post. Please carry on. Edit: also corrected a word in the post as requested by OP.

Please keep in mind that this thread is not about US matters. Please stop derailing the thread.

Made link clickable in this comment.

Made link clickable in this comment.

Your Childhood Pet Rock, please stop the back to back commenting in this thread and let others participate. Further comments will be deleted.

Duplicate comment removed.

Nothing deleted, but yeah, please do not compare people with cognitive impairments to bullshit machines. The analogy there is always going to upset people and it generates way more heat than light.

Two deleted. If you find yourself repeating the same points over and over again, it might be time to let the thread breathe, just in general.

Made a small correction: Dement -> DeMent in the title and body of the post.

Leaving the comment above as it contains sound advice, but let's try to please keep making sure that comments are addressing the question being asked. ]

A few back-to-back comments removed. okayturnip, roughly 30% of the comments in this thread are yours and several of them are back to back, please take a step back by letting other members express themselves and carry on with the conversation.

One comment removed, let's try to please keep Ask MeFi comments on topic and helpful by addressing the question being asked, instead of replying with commentary related to the subject.

Another comment removed, please keep Ask MeFi comments helpful by following the content policy and addressing the question being asked, if you have feedback regarding a mod decision you may post about it in MetaTalk instead.

One comment removed. Let's avoid name calling other fellow Mefites.

One deleted. Pseudonymous Cognomen: 90% of your comment was fine but unfortunately you cannot talk to other MeFites the way you did in the other 10%. I'm happy to remove that line and undelete, or send you the text and you can repost without it, or whatever. EDIT: The comment has been restored with the problematic bit removed, in collaboration with the user.

One deleted. I kind of hated to do it; it clearly represented real effort and an attempt to be helpful on the part of the user who made it, but it didn't really answer the question. If you're the user in question, i'm happy to send you the text if you want to try to rework it some!

anoldfriend6: "Many people on the internet assume posters on the other side of the screen are straight white men by default. Well, most people here know I’m lesbian. But…am I white, black, or Bhutanese? Who knows?" Somehow i missed this one the other day, and i'm sorry. anoldfriend6, this kind of thing isn't okay; please don't do it. either talk about your own experiences with race or don't, but this kind of "am i white or not?" thing comes across as very edgelordy and gross.

Hi, folks. Some housekeeping notes:

• i made the link in this comment clickable.
• marshmallow tester, one deleted for ableism. blind programmers exist and they tend to have an excellent understanding of both UI and UX. I left up your Flowers for Algernon reference but that too verges on ableism; please be more careful.
• okayturnip's comment was not a personal attack on cortex; it was a joke and i'm leaving it. but folks, just in general, please do be mindful that sometimes tone doesn't come across in text!

One deleted as noise. Folks, i'm not gonna leave a big hole by deleting a ton of stuff, but be advised that this thread has gone … non-optimally in a number of ways.

tara city, you have been pretty hostile about folks asking clarifying questions; it's certainly okay to decline to answer clarifying questions that folks ask, but (a) it'll probably affect the quality of the answers if folks don't feel like they have enough information, and (b) it's not okay to be rude while doing so.

Answerers, please do not be snarky with Askers even when they frustrate you; if you don't feel like you can get a clear enough picture of the problem to answer, it's okay to just not answer; especially in Ask, the optimal behavior here is to flag it and move on.

Fixed missing word in OP, deleted a comment about the correction.

One deleted as noise.

One comment removed as requested.

One comment removed. Please avoid posting joke comments that do not address the question being asked.

One comment and reply to it deleted. Please do not make jokes about gender neutral language, that is not OK.

Fixed the circumflex in the title.

One duplicate comment removed.

One deleted. We are not going to turn this thread into a referendum on whether "real men" engage in sexual abuse (they do) or whether girls and women are partly to blame because they like "alphas" (they are not).

Tagged as "USPolitics" and added to sidebar.

Three deleted. ambrosen, it is not okay to speak to or about other community members like that. (One was also deleted as a response to ambrosen's comment, and the third deleted comment was a dupe.) Folks, there's now a MeTa up; if you have complaints about the subject matter of this post, the poster's behavior, or the way we moderate threads in general, those complaints need to go there.

Hey folks! No comments removed so far but just a quick nudge to bring things back on track. The thread is starting to drift into broad generalizations, “all women/all men” takes, extended arguments about Western culture in general, and a few back-and-forths that are not engaging with the article at all. That’s not super useful for anyone trying to discuss the actual topic here. Please refocus on the specifics of the post and let’s keep this thread grounded and in good faith. Further derails and back-and-forth comments picking a fight will need to be removed.

chmmr, please take a break from making back-to-back comments and provide the opportunity for others to engage in the thread. In the future, commenting several times in a row will warrant a deletion of comments. Thanks!

OP edited to put trigger warning above the fold and triggering content below it, at user's request. A few comments about the pre-change state of the post were deleted.

One deleted as noise.

Fixed link in OP and deleted correction comment.

One deleted as noise.