Tag Archives: doctor who

Lost in La Linkspam (25th May, 2010)

Spoiler warning: the last part of this spam spoils a scene in a very recent Doctor Who. There thus might be spoilers in our comments too.

Two-wheel triumph: Armed with a netbook, medical supplies and a bicycle, Bangladesh’s InfoLadies are giving millions of poor people access to crucial information on their doorsteps that will improve their chances in life.
Regis Donovan has responses to a few of our recent links at nyt: why so few women in silicon valley and ssh and sexism.
Why women were shut out of Canadaâ€™s science-star search: Their report… finds no deliberate attempt to shut out women, but concludes the tight deadlines for the competition, the areas picked for research and a competition where candidates on the short list had only a 50 per cent chance of winning probably all worked against female candidates.
Ableist Word Profile: Why I write about ableist language: When someone proudly assures me that words like lame and dumb and r#tarded are never used to describe actual people with disabilities, Iâ€™m fairly certain Iâ€™m talking to one of the currently non-disabled. Currently non-disabled readers, Iâ€™m here to tell you: those words, and any similar words you think are archaic and not used anymore, are used all the time, as taunts and insults towards people with disabilities…
Punding: â€œPundingâ€ refers to repetitive, purposeless, stereotypical behavior typically induced by prolonged use of amphetamines or cocaine or by some drug therapies… a good example of gendered behavior that can look purely biochemical but which also, the slightest reflection shows, has a large social component that canâ€™t plausibly be thought to be innate.
(Spoilers be here…) Quixotess on unacknowledged sexual assault in Doctor Who: What happened at the end of Flesh and Stone was sexual assault: Q&A.

If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if youâ€™re a delicious user, tag them â€œgeekfeminismâ€ 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.

The linkspam-whore dichotomy (17th May, 2010)

Lightgetsin rants in The one where I shout about able-bodied technology privilege for a while: Also, the next person to tell me to get a Kindle . . . really shouldnâ€™t. The Kindle occasionally reads a book out loud… But the Kindle itself is not accessible… I have a handheld reading device. Hint: it cost more than a Kindle.
sqbr reviews standard tropes in Disability in Speculative Fiction: Monsters, mutants and muggles. (via FWD)
Anna talks about how incessant criticism of a blogger you disagree with is harassment.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal thinks the answer to "why are there so few girl engineers?" is in the toys. (There’s a discussion thread at Sociological Images following from it too.)
China targets online commentator anonymity: BBC News reports that China is considering forcing its citizens to use their real names when they post comments on internet bulletin boards.
Smashing Magazine has an interview with 16 Women In Web Design: Group Interview – Smashing Magazine: ‘ware, the comments are apparently a bingo card or two.
Do you know any women leading the development of an emerging programming language? It seems that perhaps O’Reilly doesn’t, so introduce them if you like.
Fannish spaces, girls, and the culture of silence. Saying sorry, I can write whatever I want, and I only want to write boys snogging is a valid individual response when it only applies to your fictional life. But when it starts to be a symptom of a cultural problem, then we need to talk.
The Penguin Trail – Cape to Cairo: a project by two women, Veera Uusoksa and Armi Korhonen, who are travelling from Cape Town to Cairo, starting January 2011, while raising awareness for free and open source software.
Cosplay, race, ability, and gender; or, who gets to dress up as whom?: I think Caitie did a good job pointing out why it’s problematic to cosplay as characters of color as a white fan, so I want to talk a little about how this conversation links to other kinds of minority cosplaying (namely, disability and gender).
People love to hear about you walking alone at night, feeling free, but there’s the obligatory rape culture ‘stay safe’ rider

Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.

a sentimental viducation

I’m not much of a night-owl but I remember as a dorktastic 80s teen propping up my eyes with matchsticks, almost, so I could watch the music videos on Rage, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s indie answer to MTV. I loved music videos then (Golden Brown! Safety Dance! Wouldn’t It Be Good! Wild Boys! Man Overboard! Big Time! Wuthering Heights! – I told you I was dorktastic) and I love them now (recent faves include Her Morning Elegance and Happiness.) At its best the three-minute pop music video is the Faberge egg of late-20th-century art forms; tiny, brilliant and exquisite.

Now a confession: despite being an avid lurker at the gates of fandom I have neglected my viducation. Oh, sure, I love the classic Closer, and I had Lisztomania on constant rotation after we lost John Hughes, but it wasn’t until Skud took me in hand the other day that I first saw Lim’s stunning Us. Fanvids combine the miniaturization of the pop video with the metatextuality and wrenching attachment of your favourite show. To marvellous effect!

So: what else am I missing? What else is there that’s accessible to the dilettante fan (Here’s Luck’s Superstar is fantastic, as long as you’re intimate with late-season Buffy/Faith power dynamics, whereas Francesca Coppa fave A Fannish History of Hotness is shiny crossover win), that marries beautiful music and apt lyrics to sharp editing and production? I like reboot Kirk/Spock and Spock/Uhura and Nine/Jack and Ten/The Master, and I will always be a sucker for John/Aeryn. And if anyone can find me high-class Hermione/Luna I will have your babies. I will. I like meta and politics and hoyay and angst and sweet emo pop and the funny. What do you like? Bring me your shinies! Otherwise I might have to do some real work…

Studies show that women evolved to linkspam (23rd September 2009)

Mentoring in Open Source communities: What works, what doesn’t? by Esther Schindler over on ITWorld.com features thoughts from Red Hat’s Mel Chua, Dreamwidth’s Denise Paolucci, and Google’s Leslie Hawthorn (among others).
toft has a great post on geeky ladies in the 40s.
dira posts about women’s writing, fan fiction, and Internet porn as vernacular
Karen Healey in defense of cheerleaders; something to remember about “popular girls” in general, I think
This month’s Cinema Journal has an issue on media fandom and vidding
Via Johanna at Comics Worth Reading, a public lecture about Wonder Woman as fetish object, crackpot fever dream, and feminist icon in Ashland, VA on October 28th.
Guy Adams, publisher of the book of interviews with all-men horror authors, has posted an apology. (Via Cheryl’s Mewsings.) [edit: we had him listed as the editor originally. For more info see the comment below]
Regina McMenomy is looking for girl gamers to interview for her research. She’s looking particularly for those around the Portland, OR area, but is open to the idea of phone/skype interviews: http://www.game-on-girl.com/
Carla Schroder on the Linux Today blog: The Linux Foundation’s “Community” doesn’t look very community
Chicks Dig Time-Lords – a celebration of Doctor Who by the women who love it, being published in March 2010 and available for pre-order.
Robogals, a programme bringing robotics to school-aged girls in Melbourne, Australia and London, UK (they’ve been round for a while, but the link seems to be doing the rounds)

Geeky things to do with bits of string

I knit. Sometimes I crochet, and sometimes I sew, but mostly, lately, I knit. My Nanna taught me when I was a kid, and I’ve done it on and off ever since.

Sometimes people look at me funny for liking textile crafts, as if it were a strangely un-reconstructed 50s housewife sort of thing to be into. I disagree, but let’s save that for some other time.

Instead, have some geeky things made out of string:

Crocheted coral reef.
Woolly Thoughts publish patterns for mathematically-inspired afghans, cushions, and more.
On a similar note, the book Making Mathematics With Needlework: 10 Papers and 10 Projects.
A hat shaped like the Tardis, R2D2, or of course the classic Jayne hat.
Space invaders socks.
Binary scarf — knit your own message in ASCII, or use Unicode for a wider shawl, I suppose.
Tetris baby blanket.
Captain Capacitor: “Heâ€™s ready to save the day with his superhuman energy storing capabilities.”
Kara Thrace sweater.
Stargate dishcloth or Star Trek potholders.
The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Brain Art including a knitted brain. “While our artists make every effort to insure accuracy, we cannot accept responsibility for the consequences of using fabric brain art as a guide for functional magnetic resonance imaging, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, neurosurgery, or single-neuron recording.”

Got any more to add to the list?

Geek Feminism Blog

Women, feminism, and geek culture