Stompy Boots Linkspam, 12 February 2010
2010 February 12
- From the subverting stereotypes file: In an interview with Sherry Turkle, Christine Alvarado credits playing with My Little Pony for fostering her love for mathematics… (edit: was Christine, not Sherry as I originally published. oops, sorry!)
- … And JJ explains how playing with Barbies keeps the boys at bay.
- (slightly NSFW) A computer mouse shaped like a vagina, and from the same designer menstrual pad shelves and a tampon USB drive. Amusing, but the former seems like it could reinforce the wrong ideas somewhere along the lines. What do you think?
- FOSDEM was last weekend. In related news some folks really can’t grasp simple concepts.
- After a discussion on the topic at She’s Geeky, Sarah Dopp discusses gender in forms and offers some advice.
- Signalboost: The GNOME project’s outreach programme for women contributors is kicking off for the second time. The first was back in 2006.
- Two fortnights’ worth of juicy feminist reading up at Feminist Carnivals No 12 and No 13. As always, submit this fortnight’s goodness for the next carnival.
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.
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It’s not Sherry Turkel who was inspired by My Little Pony, it’s Christine Alvarado, who is a CS prof at Harvey Mudd College.
Whups. Corrected, thanks. :)
WRT the My Little Pony thing: I used to do that as a child! But with my mum’s hair, not My Little Ponys (mine were too small for that). I used to love find recursive patterns in things too (or any patterns for that matter). Maths is awesome.
Regarding the vagina/vulva shaped mouse: Yeah, just push the button and you’ll get where you want… While I like the idea of displaying female genitals in order to break up taboos I don’t like the public discussion about the G-spot – at least how it was discussed in my country. It didn’t help women to find out what they want but created another formula you have to follow to “produce” sexual pleasure, which doesn’t work in my experience.
This is a pretty peripheral suggestion for the next roundup (or general pondering), but I read with interest the argument by an ACM chap that open source could have a negative impact on computing education, in part because open source has less diverse participation than general business IT.
Here’s a link you might like:
“Information Security D-List Interview: Erin Jacobs” (aka SecBarbie)
http://www.andrewhay.ca/archives/1349
With a lot of the discussion about women in tech fields, thought you might find this interesting:
http://gizmodo.com/5480177/androids-dude-problem