Funny, when I read a book, I don't care about the writer's colour, sex, sexual orientation or cultural upbringing... what I care about is the story.

#notallwhitemeninfandom , amirite?

Have you any recommended reading on this, Professor? It sounds fascinating, and I would totally un-ironically sign up to your newsletter.

I seriously never consider the race or gender or sexual orientation of authors I read, and often I don't even know anything about the author.... some of the better novels I've read seem to float to the top of my awareness by virtue of being good and getting positive exposure. Why isn't that a sufficient reason to read…

In the UK it's akin to retarded, meaning people will probably look uncomfortable and back away from you if you use the word. Here's a SAT-type analogy: Spaz is to cerebral palsy as retarded is to intellectual disability.

I posted saying the same thing and my comment was deleted. Words like "retarded" and "spaz" seem to be rather common in the US, but I expect better of Jezebel.

"Spaz out"? Please fuck off with that ableist shit.

Your sibilance is sexy.

Oof, that's awful. I wear big hats and long sleeves in the summer. I look like I'm super modest, but I'm just trying not to be assaulted by the sun. Is it possible that you don't actually bruise easier than other people, but because your skin is translucently pale everything shows?

Oooh, AND when I was 5 years old, a friend's mother took the two of us to the beach for the day. FOR THE DAY. It was the first and last time I wore a bikini. The colour difference between my stomach and my lower abdomen/chest was visible for at least 15 years.

Pfft, 6 months? 11 months ago I was at a music festival wearing a tshirt and I didn't wear my factor 50 while brushing my teeth and eating breakfast in the morning. In the space of 20 minutes I got burned on my arms, and I still have the lines. Mind you, I'm so pale I find it hard to get foundation that's pale enough…

PLUS she did it for an amazing reason, to protest the coverup of abuse within the Catholic Church. Why do people now mention it as if it was some weird trend?

Except that many women avoid or leave tech due to the chilly climate: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party…

Abortion is the big women's rights issue in Ireland, I think. Maternity leave is guaranteed, every primary caregiver receives a monthly allowance to go toward caring for their child. The World Economic Forum reckons Ireland is the 6th best country in the world in which to be a woman. Having lived in many other…

I remember the Youth Defence page used to have a donations form that only accepted USD, and some tenacious person went through their friends/fans and found the vast majority of them were from the US. That's the only evidence I can think of.

Yeah, I got flights and ferries out of Ireland for years, and as a young woman surely I would have been a prime target. Never saw these people. The only time I've seen pro life people in Ireland is at those big pro-life marches where all the coffin dodgers come in to Dublin on specially commissioned buses from the…

That's really weird, because Irish people go weak at the knees for Scottish accents! Very interesting. Perhaps when people talk about finding British accents sexy, they have a specific type of British accent in mind?

Ugh, you've brought back memories of my Catholic secondary school, where we wore short pleated skirts with either navy tights (do you say pantyhose?) or knee-high socks. So often, I would walk into a recently-vacated classroom and see these little damp lines on the plastic chairs, where people's sweaty crotches had…

I'm assuming the cookies are laced with some phyto-oestrogens, so they're like supercharged tofu. Yeah, bad idea for anyone with a family history of breast cancer.

*swoon*