Links ahoy

Well I'm sick today, so pottering around on the internet, as usual.

Linking to some wonderful posts that make me insanely angry and leave me wondering what the hell I could do.
I had F discover this post yesterday and I might have turned her into a Shakesville devotee :) as I became recently.
Because I've found people who can actually express my feelings, call me out on my privilege without even knowing I exist, and generally just give me some kind of hope. Teaspoon by teaspoon ;).
(Posts all about rape. Yeah, that's life.)

I've never been raped. Lucky?yes. Should I have to feel lucky? HELL NO.
It's always a risk for a woman, and everyone considers that NORMAL.
It makes me so fucking angry, this culture of entitlement that exists. I've lost count of the number of times a guy has tried to kiss me if not worse when I was in a not-so-sober state. It hasn't happened in a while though. After all, I'm intimidating :D
Although I also got this kind of rep when at a friend's eighteenth, when I was sixteen, a "friend" tried to grope me and I punched him in the eye. he never spoke to me again :).

I can't stop men considering my body to be public property, although I do my best to discourage it.
What i don't get is how a woman can still be considered as "other", as not quite human. Simone de Beauvoir had a lot to say on this sixty years ago; has nothing changed since?Nothing?

I feel like I live in a culture that encourages girls to consider themselves as meat. And there's something I'll never do. I have more brains than a lot of men I know, and there's no way I'm hiding that to pander to their pathetic little egos.

I'm sort of seeing JJ at the moment, and there's definitely no limit to his brains. Counterintuitively sexy, as read on Jezebel some time back. What's inside is sexier than what's outside. Now he's not the most confident of men, but he definitely doesn't make me feel like I should change to help his ego, quite the opposite.
When we first met, over a year ago, he didn't take to me much because he found me overconfident and pretentious (I say, I was being drunkface when I turned up that day, so it's not my fault :D)and because I'd been invited along by a friend of mine, Viet, who is famously aggressive, abrasive, and can be perfectly revolting speechwise, which I find hilarious but a lot of people do not- which didn't do much for my reputation in his eyes.
But he found out I actually had a brain, and that's what he finds interesting, strangely enough.
It's so nice to have intelligent conversation, instead of getting bored listening to my ex's friends air their one-dimensional opinions on the world.