- Margarita Manterola of the Debian project writes about Software Libre, Pasión de Mujeres, a free software event in Argentina where all of the speakers will be women
- We are all pretty WEIRD: noting that most psychological research is done on Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) subjects, and the implications for science reporting on gender and race.
- CNN reports on A day in the ‘normal’ life of a Nobel Prize winner, focussing on Carol Greider’s single motherhood.
- MMORPG News reports that Aurora Technology’s King of the World MMORPG is going to enforce character genders matching player genders by asking players creating a female character to undergo a “webcam test”. Apparently they hope that this will make female players feel respected. We just bet.
- The Los Angeles Times had an article about Brightkite, describing it as targeting “hot girls”, since “guys will go where the hot chicks are.” Brightkite CEO Jonathon Linner posted an apology to the company blog for upsetting women Brightkite users.
- Scientist Carrie: Geeks, meritocracy, and gender: a response to Skud’s meritocracy post, with some additional thoughts and examples.
- We linked to the GNOME Journal Women in Open Source issue before, but a lot of people are especially liking Cathy Malmrose’s The Un-Scary Screwdriver about her five-year-old daughter and friends installing Ubuntu and building computers.
- Mislav Marohnić listed Things I learned from iPhone and Droid ads, inspired by Skud’s post.
- Tara C. Smith has a roundup of discussion around The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins, which only features 3 pieces by women, of 83 total.
- The Globe and Mail reports controversy around a sex scene between two male elves in Dragon Age: Origins, “revealing what some experts call the homophobic underbelly of the gaming community.” See also the discussion thread at Sociological Images.
- Study: Males vs Females in social networks has a gender breakdown of users at various sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Slashdot.
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. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).
Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.
“homophobic underbelly of the gaming community” … ha! If there were such a thing as an overbelly…
Then it would turn crispy from exposure to the sun.
Re: Scientist Carrie: Geeks, meritocracy, and gender:
I have a post, Feynman was not being arrogant when he told people, “You’re wrong!â€, which fails at being applicable to all work situations, because it specifically assumes a technical/geek work situation. I discuss research showing that when the topic is stereotypically feminine, men are tentative and women are confident. I also argue, in essence, that the merit-and-confidence/pushiness-ocracy is correct and desirable, and we women need to be more uppity. (However, the confidence issue alone does not explain the gender gap, as there is the separate issue of gender discrimination in hiring due to unconscious bias. This is more about what to do if you have already been hired.)
What Skud said, ha. (Although I must confess, I find that kind of CG person kind of creepy, and moreso when they’re having sex. Their weird staring eyes! And the dialogue in that particular game is pretty hilarious.)
Aw, I’m flattered to be in linkspam!
Restructure! — I really enjoyed that post. I’ll make a fuller response over chez vous.
Anyone here know what happened to the carnival of feminist science fiction?
This is the most recent info I could find (after a short and distracted search):
http://ragnell.blogspot.com/2009/10/free-to-good-home-carnival-of-feminist.html
An awesome critique (contains description of fictional domestic violence depicted on TV as well as spoilers) of the recent turns that the popular TV show Glee has taken is here.
The whole Glee concept has the problems that the high school satire always will have, and that satire as a genre almost must have by definition. Glee, however, has for the past few episodes taken a darker tone with no satirical self-awareness evident. Meloukhia has some other posts on this re race and Deafness and sundry other things. Fail, eh?
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/12/12/iran-men-in-hijab-to-support-jailed-student/
Arachne Jericho at Tor.com on PTSD: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=52999
First in a great multi-part series.
Possibly of interest here because of the very compassionate and understandable explanation of what “triggers” are all about.