Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.

• girlie jones – Open Letter to the SF Community re: Ellison/Bradford Incident

– Harlan Ellison – crotchety uncle or provocative jerk?

• What's so funny about rape?

– “how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream – which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they’re taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They’re not a taboo at all – they’re the norm, sadly.”

• Sports culture, rape, and why it’s not about being hard up

– “It’s ugly enough in these cases, but when it comes to rape, it’s particularly weird. Do people really think that rapists rape because they’re hard up? I don’t believe that for a second. Feminists are often, and for good reason in many cases, criticizing the gratuitous use of rape scenes, and other scenes of violence against women, in movies and TV, but I will say this: even the most obviously unnecessary versions I’ve seen of this phenomenon at least portray violence against women as something men perpetuate because they get a sadistic pleasure in it. So it’s not like the reality of what motivates rapists is all that hidden in our culture. Rapists rape because they like raping. Forcing someone to submit to you sexually is thrilling for some people, for the same reasons that other displays of dominance and control are thrilling.”

• I Refuse to Don Your Genderless Spandex Unitard

– ” “Equal” doesn’t mean “same.” This is not a difficult concept. “

• The Great Murkan Marriage!!!!

– “I hate badly framed debates. I also hate the kind of setup where neither of the so-called experts actually appears to know much about the history of marriage in general or how long the average marriage used to last (hint: not that long in many cases as mortality rates were rather different).”

• Keep your poverty out of my face

– “How dare you show up how much our society has failed you?”

• Linkfest! Now New and Improved, with Captions!

– from Tracey at Unapologetically Female

• There’s something about monotheism

– a fascinating meander through intolerance, polemic and charity in the big pagan-Christian conflict in 391BCE and how it corresponds to divisions now

• The second class baby

– cognitive dissonance and double standards at play

• Work-life balance; we’re doing it wrong

– “we shouldn’t be talking about work-life balance at all. We should call it work-life interference, and try to measure how much work interferes with our life.”

Categories: linkfest

Tags: blogging, Read-ems