A linkspam standing on its hind legs (9th October, 2009)
2009 October 8
- The Finding Ada blog says an upcoming biopic of Ada Lovelace needs support from people willing to publicise the film, especially inside the United States.
- There’s been discussion on feminist blogs about the interpretation of the xkcd comic Creepy, and related issues about women and harassment, see Nerd Assertiveness and Blindness to Privilege at Sociological Images and Would It Kill You To Be Civil? at Shapely Prose. Shapely Prose has a followup about how to approach women in a non-threatening way.
- Research Digest introduces some recent research about stereotypes of women lacking science ability affecting women’s performance in science.
- The Australian Insitute of Physics is looking for the 2010 Women in Physics lecturer to tour Australia.
- In comments on CrunchGear, Jessica Gottlieb relates an incident where a Microsoft evangelist made a joke about women hot flashing.
If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if you’re a delicious user, tag them “geekfeminism” to bring them to our attention. Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.I hope it’s OK not to credit the sources individually: a large number of links here are now coming in from readers.
3 Responses
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I cannot tell you how happy I am that I’m not the only person who thought Mr. XKCD totally missed the point in that comic.
I was upset by the egregious sexism in the discussion of the strip on xkcd’s forums, but until I saw this post, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a problem with the comic itself.
Part of the trouble, I think, is that there’s this pervasive myth that, not only is it appropriate for men to approach women and try to initiate flirtation in random places such as buses, but that that is the only appropriate way for men to meet women. I’ve read it specifically pointed out that this is not true, but I’m afraid it’s easy for me to forget. Most of the posters in the xkcd forum thread on this comic, for instance — including some of those who were actually criticizing sexist comments by others — apparently accepted that the only way for people to meet is in encounters between strangers, without introduction by mutual acquaintances.
That’s an interesting observation. I haven’t seen it in the discussion (although there is a truly formidable number of comments on those blogs that I haven’t, and won’t, wade through).