• How Period Trackers Have Changed Girl Culture | The New York Times (November 12):  “When you see a technology that someone has developed specifically for you as a woman, it really legitimizes talking about your periods and thinking about them,” said Shuangyi “E.E.” Hou, 24, a product designer in San Francisco for apps and websites who has used a period tracker app for over a year. “If we as a society say women should be checking in on their periods, and we give them permission to talk about it, I’m convinced it will be beneficial for women’s health.””
• The hidden costs of tech diversity efforts | Adrienne Porter Felt on Medium (November 23): “Mentorship takes time that otherwise would be spent on engineering, rest, or family. Sometimes mentorship events are multi-day affairs that require preparation and travel from the speakers. Regardless of the format, it’s also typically work that requires emotional labor. And all of this work is expected to be done for free, as a favor to the community.
  What else can we do?”
• Can computers be racist? Big data, inequality, and discrimination | Ford Foundation (November 18): “while we’re lead to believe that data doesn’t lie—and therefore, that algorithms that analyze the data can’t be prejudiced—that isn’t always true. The origin of the prejudice is not necessarily embedded in the algorithm itself: Rather, it is in the models used to process massive amounts of available data and the adaptive nature of the algorithm. As an adaptive algorithm is used, it can learn societal biases it observes.”
• Your Pipeline Argument Is Bullshit | Don’t Lean In. Lean Angry. (August 2): “Your pipeline argument is bullshit. Stop using it. Spend some time on this question: Where did all the senior women go and what are we doing to increase the representation of senior women now?…Your goal is to get at least 25% in senior roles. Not overall representation. Senior roles. Because those women exist.”
• Hey White Women- Stop Championing Diversity In Tech | Lyn Muldrow on Medium (November 27): “Ask yourself — when you stand up on stage to talk about the “problem” with exclusionary practices, are you only considering yourself as the one being excluded? Are you truly, honestly thinking about the little black and latina girls who aren’t a part of the Women In Tech movement, aside from programs that have been exclusively created to cater to them? Because most times I join a thing about women in tech, I’m one of very few black women there. WHY?”
• Women, minorities, and the Manhattan Project | The Nuclear Secrecy Project (November 27): “more women worked on the bomb than worked on the program to get Americans on the Moon. Why such a disparity? Because during World War II, the need for scientific labor was desperate and spread among many projects. It’s hard to be a bigot when you need every ounce of brainpower and labor you can get, and indeed World War II is famous overall for its movement of women into spaces they had previously been excluded (i.e. Rosie the Riveter).”
• Why Hackers Must Welcome Social Justice Advocates | Coraline Ada Ehmke on Medium (November 27):  “social justice advocates are not an external force acting on the open source movement; rather, they represent the voices of people within the community who are rarely heard. They are working to improve the state of open source from the inside.”
• What is hacker culture? | Matthew Garrett (November 29): “we will win because free software is accessible to more of society than proprietary software. And for that to be true, it must be possible for our communities to be accessible to anybody who can contribute, regardless of their background.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

• Marvel’s Jessica Jones and Gamergate: How the Netflix series absorbed the anxieties of the online movement | Slate (24 Nov): “This is a show in which rape is a core theme, but one that pretty much entirely avoids feeling exploitative or male-gazey. It’s a show with a female showrunner, Melissa Rosenberg, who’s done her homework about depicting sexual assault and the associated PTSD realistically and responsibly and who knows all the standard tropes for strong female characters and deftly avoids most of them. But perhaps most interestingly, Jessica Jones is our first identifiably post-Gamergate thriller.” Autostraddle also explores Jessica Jones’s feminism.
• We Aren’t Imagining It: The Tech Industry Needs More Women | Lifehacker (Nov 20): ““You can do whatever you set your mind to” is a half-truth, because there are real obstacles—if not barriers—that keep women and minorities from truly thriving in this field. The tech industry has a diversity problem, and it’s a problem not just for these young girls, but for all of us.”
• Holigay Gift Guide 2015: Comics for Girls (and Anyone Else) Who Want to Get Into Comics | Autostraddle (Nov 24): A gift guide of comics written by women, about women, for women – including many by and about queer women.
• How Lucy Sanders tackles gender inequity: Data, research, humor | The Denver Post (Oct 4): “Do you know how many women work in IT jobs in the U.S.? Sanders does. She employs data and social scientists to review research and data to figure out why women in computer jobs have dwindled to one in five — and puts it online for the public to peruse.
• We Don’t Need Supergirl OR Jessica Jones. We Need Both. | The Mary Sue (Nov 25): “Tonally, the shows couldn’t be more different—Supergirl is notably lighter, not just in overall genre but in the way the show itself looks. And if Supergirl is the show that’s standing in the sun, Jessica Jones is the one that lurks in the shadows, dealing with the grittier aspects of superherodom. Both Kara and Jessica face their fair share of evil—but, as we already know, evil itself wears many faces. These two superheroes are fighting the same battle, but they’re each doing it in their own way, and it doesn’t mean that one is more valued or more important than the other.”
• Improving Diversity Does Not Mean Lowering the Bar | Kate Heddleston: “The purpose of this post is to debunk the idea that diverse groups in tech are underperformers. I’ll use data to refute the idea that minorities groups are somehow less capable than their majority peers, and suggest ways that companies can track data to recognize when they have created a biased hiring pipeline.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

• Somewhere in-between “opt out” and “lean in” there lies a middle path | Medium (Nov 9): “There are many ways life can make us miserable. There are also many ways it provides joy. … I do think that, until I retire fully, I will still be “in tech” in some way, working with engineers and all their flaws. I will experience more discrimination, from men and women alike, but I will also work with beautiful people who bring positive energy wherever they go.” In response to “Where Do I See Myself In Five Years?”.
• Everything I Love Is Problematic | The Mary Sue (Nov 6): “Representation matters, and the media we consume should more closely reflect the world we live in. What we see, hear, and read subconsciously influences us and normalizes ideas and language. And it takes time for respect to take root.”
• Science and sexism: In the eye of the Twitterstorm | Nature News & Comment (Nov 11): “Although it is not yet clear whether the social-media conversation about sexism in science will help to create lasting change, some scientists think that it may provide a sense of solidarity for women across disciplines.”
• The Geeky Baju Project | Charis Loke: Designs for traditional South & South East Asian outfits, particularly the Malaysian/Indonesian baju kurung and kebaya, based on pop culture (e.g. Watchmen, Hunger Games, Mass Effect). She speaks about her inspirations with Poskod.My.
• Ellen Pao: Silicon Valley Sexism IS Getting Better | Lenny (Nov 11): :”Eventually, there comes a point where you can’t just rally and explain away all the behavior as creepy exceptions or pin the blame on yourself. And the glimmers of achievement are too few and far between. You see patterns, systemic problems, and it doesn’t matter where you are or what industry you pursue.”
• New TV Show Supergirl Surpasses Meager Expectations | Feministing (Nov 6): “We have a woman superhero on the screen! I am excited to see how the show develops and despite what I originally expected, it looks promising. Of course, I expect there to be naysayers who “hate” the show, but regardless of whether or not Supergirl is good TV, it is a woman-centric bright spot in an otherwise male-dominated space, and that is what I think is good.”
• Soft Skills in Tech Mini-Rant | jesslynnrose on Storify (Nov 11): On the devaluing of soft skills in the tech space.
• Saving Tim Hunt | Medium (Nov 9): “The campaign to exonerate Tim Hunt for his sexist remarks in Seoul is built on myths, misinformation, and spin.”
• Mary Walker Would Wear What She Wanted | The Memory Palace (Oct 19): On American suffragette, abolitionist, and surgeon Mary Walker.

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

Starting this roundup with memorials to open source contributor Telsa Gwynne:

• In Memory of Telsa Gwynne | GNOME: “Telsa was a long-time GNOME contributor who began by contributing to Welsh translations. She participated in the bug squad, managing bugs in the GNOME 2 code and documentation, and she served on the release team. She was heavily involved in GNOME, and served on the Board of Directors in 2002.”
• Remembering Telsa Gwynne | puzzling.org: “Telsa was also a critical inspiration to me as an activist: in the early 2000s (and still) it was hugely controversial to either believe that open source communities could still work if they were more civil (the entire LinuxChix project was partly an experiment with that), and even more so to insist that they should be. Telsa is the earliest person I can think of who stood up in an open source development community and asked it to change its norms in the direction of civility. I don’t know how heavily her online harassment experiences played a part in her departing Free Software and some online communities — I hope it wasn’t a large part — but I’m sorry it happened and I’m angry. Telsa was a brilliant and kind and strong person, and I am sorrier than I can say that we will never be in contact again.”
• In Memory of Telsa Gwynne | Fellowship of FSFE: “Telsa was also one of our early volunteers for the Free Software Foundation Europe, lending her keen eye as proofreader to much of our English material, and supporting our early activities in the UK. For myself though, I’ll mostly remember the laughs we shared. One, where in 1999, we discovered people searching Google for “wrestling teams without clothes on” and landing on her blog.”

Other links:

• Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company did NOT have a good experience in Powder House Park | davis_square: “Erin Butcher, artistic director of Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company, posted a long essay to Facebook about her experience producing The Winter’s Tale outdoors in Powder House Park this summer. I am reposting it here with her permission, because we live here and this shouldn’t be happening to people in our community.”
• The Call of the Sad Whelkfins: The Continued Relevance of How To Suppress Women’s Writing | Uncanny Magazine: “For the past week, Natalie Luhrs and I had been discussing the book in the context of the ongoing fight for the soul of the science fiction community, most recently played out in the failed attempt to take over the Hugo Awards. In HTSWW, Russ uses an alien species called the “whelk–finned Glotolog” to illustrate the methods by which human cultures control women’s writing without direct censorship (4). These days, the tactics the so–called “sad puppies” use to paint themselves as the true heirs of science fiction, bravely holding the line against the invading masses, are the very same tactics Joanna Russ ascribed to the whelk–finned Glotolog in 1983.”
• Assistive Technology by People with Disabilities, Part 1: Introducing Team Free to Pee | Model View Culture: “Very often, specialized companies create assistive technology with little input from actual users with disabilities. These products are usually institutional in look and feel, overpriced, and only reimbursable by insurance. People with disabilities have limited selection and cannot repair or replace parts independently. Upending this relationship between manufacturers and people with disabilities, makeathons and other similar activities can incrementally disrupt this power dynamic.”
• Girl Gamers Episode 2: Why Do Women Make Games? | Fusion: “How do you start making games? From writing a graduate school term paper on public bathrooms to animating dress up dolls, this generation of creators got their start in surprisingly simple ways. In the second episode of Fusion’s five-part digital series Girl Gamers, we explore what motivated these developers to start designing their own games.”

• Thought on Diversity Part 2. Why Diversity is Difficult. | Medium: “I left that meeting wondering how I could, in good conscience, continue to work in an organization where the Sr. VP of Engineering could see himself as a technology visionary and be so unaware of this blind spot in his understanding of diversity. Leadership keeps citing the pipeline when the data does not support it. They continue to churn out ethnic and racial minorities and women but still claim a commitment to diversity.”
• Rise of the Bias Busters: How Unconscious Bias Became Silicon Valley’s Newest Target | Forbes: “The central contradiction of hidden bias training is that you can’t train something you can’t control. The classes suggest that you can become more objective just by learning about and thinking about your unconscious biases, but it’s not that easy. “Understanding implicit bias does not actually provide you the tools to do something about it,” said Greenwald, the University of Washington psychologist. He thinks there may be another reason driving companies to do trainings: publicity. “Perhaps the main value of this training to Google and Facebook is to put a desirable appearance on their personnel activities by indicating their (commendable) awareness of problems and implying that they’re doing something to effectively address the problems,” he wrote in an e-mail.”
• Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled | New York Times: “Employers appear to discriminate against well-qualified job candidates who have a disability, researchers at Rutgers and Syracuse universities have concluded. The researchers, who sent résumés and cover letters on behalf of fictitious candidates for thousands of accounting jobs, found that employers expressed interest in candidates who disclosed a disability about 26 percent less frequently than in candidates who did not.”
• Anonymous sexism in paleoanthropology | john hawks weblog: “There is absolutely nothing strange about the top candidates with archaeological experience being all women, because our students are mostly women. How could a senior scientist be oblivious to this reality? One reason is that some departments have such a history of sexism and harassment that other scientists advise women students to avoid them like the plague. Some scholars don’t have students who are women because they are driving women away.”
• Why SXSW Cancelled a Panel on Digital Harassment | Autostraddle: “I asked Caroline if she and her panelists were going to accept the offer to be a part of SXSW’s Harassment Summit, and she said they were on the fence. I asked what would have to change about the offer to convince them to accept it, and she responded: “Talks of security, where and how our panel will participate, and Save Point being moved back to its regularly scheduled programming in SXSW. It’s a journalism panel, put it where people who are seeking digital journalism will find it.” I clarified. You mean SXSW wants to include Save Point in an anti-harassment lineup? To which Caroline simply replied, “Yeah.””
• Part 1: Actually, Inside Out’s Gender Norms Are A Major Problem Turning Inside Out Upside Down | Satricalifragilistic: (Link from August) “The perception that father’s careers are central in families affects women’s professional advancement both on the family and work fronts — and Inside Out’s San Francisco setting in particular reinforces some ugly sexist patterns in the tech industry.”

• World Fantasy’s Harassment Non-Policy | Pretty Terrible: “I will note that they they had the better part of two years to come up with a policy and this was apparently the best they could do. Despite the existence of a number of other policies that they could have used and despite Geek Feminism’s sample policy, this is what they come up with.”
• Call for ideas & help : a collective blog-zine-thing about disability & brain weasel repellent &tc |lizcommotion: “I have been brainstorming with partner and some other dw folks about a potentially very cool and exciting project… A blog-zine-website type thing a la The Toast or Autostraddle, but aimed at disability-type issues or interests.”
• After Gamergate Misstep, SXSW Weighs An All-Day Online Abuse Forum | Re/code: “SXSW festival organizers are considering an all-day event that focuses primarily on combating online harassment, sources told Re/code. An announcement could come before the end of the week. The planning comes after backlash over the festival organizers’ decision to shut down two panels, one of which was set to address harassment in the tech industry, over threats of violence.”
• ACM Europe: “In Memoriam: Beryl Nelson It is with great sadness that we inform you that our friend and colleague Beryl Nelson, passed away on 23 October 2015. Beryl was a great contributor to ACM-W Europe as one of the founding executive committee members, and did considerable work to illuminate the situation around diversity in tech. Especially of note is the Tech Talk of her research The Data on Diversity: It’s not just about being Fair.”
• TrulyMadly presents Creep Qawwali with All India Bakchod | YouTube: : A Bollywood-style song about getting creepy comments and microaggressions online. Here is an English translation: Your creep is not even a legit creep | MetaFilter
• Here’s the Egregious, Mealy-Mouthed Clump of Bull**** That is the 2015 World Fantasy Convention Harassment Policy | Whatever: “I am not a lawyer, but I expect that ReedPOP, the company that runs NYCC (among many other conventions around the US) has maybe a few lawyers on its staff. If NYCC is utterly and absolutely unafraid to promulgate a harassment policy even though there is a legal statute defining what harassment means in the state of New York, I expect it might have been possible for World Fantasy to have done likewise, if they chose to do so.”
• Girls can be Geeks too! by Carrie Anne Philbin | Staffrm: “Want more diversity in your computing or coding club? Here are some tips that worked for me.”
• So here’s what you can do | The Bookland Reeve: Thoughts on what a nongendered menstruation tracking app would look like.
• The option of privacy | missbananabiker.com: “This is why a free internet is so important to me. This is why the right to privacy is so fundamental in my opinion. Because we all deserve to be free from those who would hold us captive, whether those folks are our bizarrely cruel fathers or the people who’ve built a surveillance apparatus that makes the Stasi look like amateur hour.”
• Toptal Scholarships For Female Developers | Toptal: Toptal are offering 12 scholarships worth $5000 and one-on-one mentoring, over 12 months, to girls and women aged 13 and over anywhere in the world.
• Gamergate didn’t fade into obscurity. We just stopped noticing its existence | Jessica Valenti | Comment is free | The Guardian: “It’s been over a year since Gamergate brought online misogyny to the forefront of the national conversation on women and gaming and, while mainstream circles have moved on to the next controversy and news story, women online and in the gaming industry have continued their work – and continued dealing with a regular influx of abuse and threats.”