Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Photo by  Nandhu Kumar  on  Unsplash Saw a goat in the middle of MG Road as I was crossing it. It was a dirty white, casually resting on its hind legs, eating leaves off the vegetation grown on the divider. I saw it and thought to myself, "Somebody's goat is about to become mutton." And the goat heard me, and spoke in its turn. "Why do you assume that every goat must be somebody else's property, human, or end up as their dinner? And while we're at it, if I got myself to the middle of the road, then I have as much chance of getting off it unharmed as you yourself." I marveled at the goat's wisdom. "Well said, goat," I praised it. "Well said indeed." And as befit a creature of its stature, the goat paid me no further heed, but continued goatfully to appropriate the municipality's efforts at beautification to be its own dinner. 

There was a recent story about Ian Somerhalder and Nikki Reed's pregnancy. A story told by the couple, intended to be humorous, about how Somerhalder threw out Reed's birth control pills because he was so eager to start a family started an internet backlash.  Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder Reed later clarified with regards to the backlash, calling out writers who claimed her pregnancy was non-consensual. Now, clearly Reed's pregnancy was not non-consensual - her husband throwing away pills in front of her would not preclude her from getting more, for example. There is also a difference in how consent plays out with an established couple - couples that know each other well wouldn't require explicit consent from each other the way strangers or new couples would. But it does raise a few red flags.  Nikki Reed stressed on the fact that this was a humorous story about something that had happened between a married couple (the use of the word "mar...