A linkspam stole my baby! (November 6th, 2009)
- Rikki Kite interviews Juliet Kemp and Ellen Siever (both authors of Linux books)
- ¡Bienvenidos a la Boca del Infierno! — where are the Latino/as in Buffy? Also, check out the new blog SciFi Latino for some other writing on the subject.
- A PyCon program committee volunteer reflects: Catherine Devlin on her experience reviewing, accepting, and regretfully rejecting talks for the upcoming Python conference.
- The women behind the FSF’s Women in Free Software summit have created a mailing list to encourage women speakers at free software events.
- Computer Weekly’s WITsend blog has an article, Calling all men who tech — time to speak out for female colleagues.
- The New York Times Interactive team have hired their first female developer, Jacqui Maher. The Observer reports on it (slightly skeezily).
- Amazon CTO Werner Vogels shows a gratuitous sexy lady slide in his keynote at LISA ’09. Beable reports: He didn’t remember why the slide was there, but “hey, she was hot”. Werner quickly apologises, saying “I fully support the statements you made that this is not acceptable.” Quickest, least painful conference incident ever!
- Some gaming-related posts of note: F.A.G.S (and Cole Hamel!) says random grenades are for pussies, and from the Iris Network, Mixed reactions: even progress comes with sexist dynamics.
- An interesting post on the proportion of women scientists at NASA (less than 10%, it turns out.)
- Michelle Khine of UC Merced couldn’t afford the specialized equipment used to make microfluidic chips so she made her own out of Shrinky Dinks.
- Two logs from Ubuntu Open Week’s open sessions: Women in Open Source: Issues and Women in Open Source: Encouragement. The latter is moderated by our own Mackenzie “Maco” Morgan, and GF is mentioned in both.
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 had a relative who was a woman scientist at NASA for some years; ultimately, their household found that it was just not possible to juggle having twins and the long hours necessary to maintaining two engineering careers, and her husband had seniority (and therefore the larger income), so he kept his job and she stayed home with the kids.
Sara, unfortunately your relative’s story is all too common. Hey, it was mine too! But I found a way to keep at it, and in fact there are more and more ways for women to get back into the science they thought they had to leave. If she’s in planetary science, she may want to check out what the Planetary Science Institute is doing for remote researchers. Even if she’s not, I’d love to have her visit our blog and talk about her experience and maybe help her get connected again.
It makes me sick to see talented women drop out because of flexibility issues.
I love the Shrinky Dink story – awesome ingenuity!
I just want to address the title of this linkspam. I actually think it’s quite problematic for a feminist site to jokingly make a reference to the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance. The case was rife with sexism; Lindy Chamberlain was tried with murder and her account not believed because she was deemed to be hysterical. “A dingo ate my baby” has become shorthand in Australia to refer to an hysterical woman.
It’s also full of racism in the way that the testimony of an Aboriginal man was ignored because he gave according to custom: spoke on behalf of his wife in the third person.
I’m assuming you aren’t Australian, and so might not be aware of all the implications. I just wanted to say that I found it really jarring and problematic.
Ouch. I apologize for that. We’ll definitely try to do better in future.
Actually, I *am* Australian, was aware of it, and if you look back at some of the recent linkspam titles you’ll see that others are also riffs on well known sexist comments or quotes, eg: Studies show that women evolved to linkspam, A linkspam standing on its hind legs, so we have a bit of a running joke there. But I guess it goes to show that context counts, and perhaps linkspam titles are a bit short on context to be making jokes that require explanation.
Ok then. I do remember both of those titles, but I never made the connection. (Although, Linkspam standing on its hind legs? What is that referencing?)
I still have the same gut reaction when I read it, but thank you for explaining the reasoning. It makes a lot more sense now.
It’s a quote from Samuel Johnson: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
“Werner quickly apologises, saying “I fully support the statements you made that this is not acceptable.†Quickest, least painful conference incident ever!”
YAAAAY. Way to play it.
I’ve had an article published on Screen Play (Fairfax’s (Australia) gaming blog) about gaming, gender and people of colour.
I thought you might be interested:
http://blogs.smh.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2009/11/10/yourturntheg2.html?page=fullpage#comments
And your blog rocks btw