Pink sparkly linkspam (November 16th, 2009)
2009 November 16
- Lyz Krumbach writes “Issues of Women in Open Source” for Ubuntu Open Week, and “Why?” to answer the question of whether and how women’s groups help.
- A great article about 5th grade girls visiting Yahoo! to learn what it’s like to work in Silicon Valley.
- Another take on getting women to read comics: getting men to read manga
- GF Blogger K. Tempest Bradford tells FOX Don’t worry, you did good for cancelling Dollhouse.
- Bring IT On! is a new Canadian website encouraging girls to take up technology careers.
- Over at Dreamwidth, Afuna muses on pseudonymity and open source contributions, while at Bitch PhD there’s a great post on pseudonymity and sexual shame.
- Selena Deckelmann makes timesaving suggestions for Postgres community management
- Gail Carmichael posts Quick thoughts on pregnancy and grad school
- Rape culture and superheroes at the F-Word blog (see also: women in refrigerators)
- iPhone apps for girls, Best Buy assumes all customers are male, *yawn*
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.
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whoops — you mean i should stop wearing neck ties?
The comments on the Dollhouse and Best Buy threads are epic failtrains :(
I was doing fine with the Dollhouse thread until it got to “I don’t see it as insulting, therefore you shouldn’t be insulted,” then I gave up on the debate.
The show had lots of issues, true; I’m ambivalent about it going away to be honest. But I did find the article itself to be rather gloaty and condescending. Maybe that’s just me.
I’m a little ambivalent about it too — though I’m admittedly more in the “I thought it was pretty problematic and am not unhappy it was cancelled” camp — but I found the “OMG HOW DARE YOU BE HAPPY IT’S CANCELLED I AM PERSONALLY HURT BY THIS” whining to be both irritating and uninteresting.
Grace would say that reading comments is probably not a good idea.
so much <3 for grace :)
I dunno if this has been covered here yet but here is a Google cache of a rather SurveyFailish survey, hmm, eh? Get it while it’s cached, as the original has been obliterated. I’m guessing that we should be expecting Rule 34 on the shelves any month now, give or take a year or three.
I looked at Gail Carmichael’s blog post, “Quick Thoughts on Pregnancy and Grad School,” and was immediately struck by how the women commenting on it were in general agreement, based on careful thought about the optimal moment to have children. It struck me by contrast with some “how to be a good programmer” essays I’d read lately, written by men, which emphasized the importance of discipline and concentration on programming, and eliminating all distractions from one’s life.
It’s striking me that the emphasis on monomaniacal concentration only works on an implicit assumption of privilege — that important matters other than programming will be handled by someone else.
I find it all too easy to lapse into such an attitude.
At the risk of asking a Feminism 101 question, what’s a better way to balance these things?
FoolishOwl’s question has now formed the basis of a post: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/11/17/from-comments-foolishowl-on-those-pesky-distractions/ so if you want to comment head on over.
I don’t think it’s a 101 question at all, but sadly nor do I have an answer to it. Your comment immediately brought to mind Paul Graham’s essay “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” from a few weeks back.
I’d love to read a further essay – Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, Mother’s Schedule. But I’m not the one to write it. And really, it should be Parent’s Schedule – but that lacks in alliteration :)
Gotta have the alliteration.
A couple of my gamer friends have linked the following:
A post discussing how playing a female character in Dragon Age: Origins is distinct from playing a male character: http://melindabardon.com/?p=51
added to the next linkspam, thanks!