I’ve spent a lot of my adult relationships accepting bullshit apologies. Part of it is just a personal failing of my own: I find it hard to make friends because I’m picky about who I spend my time on and consequently, I will put up with a lot if I think you are cool enough. I’m working on that.

I think, however, that a lot of it is a misunderstanding about the purpose of the apology. It’s taken me a long time to realize why I accept people’s I’m Sorries and then still feel resentful about whatever it is that they did for months, even years after. It’s because many people seem to think an apology is the solution to a problem. You fuck up, you say sorry, and all is forgiven. I used to think that too, thus my massive dissatisfaction. But it ain’t.

An apology is actually just the acknowledgement of a problem that you caused.

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So there’s an article from The Atlantic going around about how under- and misrepresented the poor, poor men are in a show about a women’s prison. The bulk of it is mostly about how the show frames women as victims of misguided love to make their backstories more dramatic and sympathetic than those of the male prisoners. He complains that these male prisoners, of which we see a whole three with speaking roles, are depicted in positively stereotypical ways that give us no room to see them as victims too.

His only example of how horribly male prisoners are represented… is the single male prisoner with any real characterization at all. Darius McRae (who I might point out the author hinged this whole argument on and could not be bothered to look up his name) is a black man in prison presumably because he is also a hitman. He and two other white male prisoners are given speaking roles in the airplane scene of season two’s premiere. As opposed the white guys, whose very stereotypical depiction has them discussing what one can and cannot see in a bird’s eye view of the Midwest, McRae introduces himself by suggesting to Piper that she can ride his dick to Chicago.

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