Susan Hated Literature

"We do not know for certain whether or not Septimius Severus was black. That is itself significant. One historian writing three hundred years after his lifetime claimed that he was ‘dark’, and one or two portrait statues appear to show him with African features. But the vast majority of images that survive make him look like any other Roman emperor before him – his whiteness over-emphasised by the shiny white marble in which he was so often portrayed. This was not a black man claiming the imperial throne for himself. This was the Roman imperial machine turning a man of colour into an emperor more or less indistinguishable from all his predecessors. The machine was making sure that race did not show."

I wonder how we'd vote over here. I have a feeling we'd be following California, which is a terrible thing.

"Ireland clinched a surprise place in the World Cup semi-final qualifier after a thrilling victory over Samoa."

"This conflation allows him to sidestep a hard truth: rape exists as a risk for women because there are men who are rapists. That is the cause of rape—it has absolutely nothing to do with a woman's actions in any case whatsoever. A woman cannot ask to be raped, cannot invite it, cannot, in fact, do anything whatsoever to effect a risk of being raped." - well not really. I mean you could stay inside for ever and ever and never go out, or let anyone in, and have an electro-force-field type thing around you. Seriously though, you can lessen your risk factors, just as you can reduce the risk of you being murdered, but you aren't ever responsible for it happening. Even if you walk down the dodgiest of dodgy lanes nakid, still aint your fault, although by being in that dodgy area you have increased your risk. So are you responsibly for that?