• Kate Beaton Talks Superheroes and Brontë Sisters | Vulture: “Beaton soldiers on, and this month, she’s releasing a new strip collection called Step Aside, Pops. It shows her moving into new territory, such as riffs on superhero comics… We caught up with Beaton to talk about giant robots, Tumblr arguments, and historical topics that are just too damn sad for comics.”
• Outreachy Expands to People of Color Underrepresented in U.S. Tech | Software Freedom Conservancy: : “Outreachy’s expanded program will now include residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.”
• Coping Mechanisms and Unlearned Skills | Accidentally in Code: “One of the things I’ve been meditating on since escaping the tech industry is what skills do you not acquire when the main skills you are learning are how to cope in a bad situation? And do you have to unlearn them to go back?”
• The (Final?) Cost of Ben Radford’s Libel Bullying: About $5K | Skepchick: : “I think there’s a huge public interest in understanding exactly why libel threats are so often successful at censoring speech. In my experience, it comes down to two reasons: the enormous potential cost (both financial and psychological) of going to court, and the slightly lower enormous actual cost (both financial and psychological) of what happens before you even get to a courtroom.”
• Why the ‘Kitchen of the Future’ Always Fails Us | Eater: “Around the corner, in the kitchen, our lovely future wife is making dinner. She always seems to be making dinner. Because no matter how far in the future we imagine, in the kitchen, it is always the 1950’s, it is always dinnertime, and it is always the wife’s job to make it. Today’s homes of the future are full of incredible ideas and gizmos, but while designers seems happy to extrapolate far beyond what we can do today when it comes to battery life or touch screens, they can’t seem to wrap their minds around any changes happening culturally. In a future kitchen full of incredible technology, why can we still not imagine anything more interesting than a woman making dinner alone?”
• How Gamergate’s earliest target came to empathize with her abusers | The Verge: “In the months since, Quinn — an indie game developer known best for her cult hit Depression Quest — has spent a lot of time investigating why people who have never met her have devoted so much energy to harassing her. The more she considered the problem, she says, the more she recognized herself in her attackers. And that gave her a new insight into why users of social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are so quick to pick up pitchforks when they perceive an injustice.”
• Ellen Pao Can Still be a Feminist Hero | Elle: “Maybe somewhere there is a CEO who will really promote women and minorities rather than just talk about it, or a whistleblower who vows not to be chilled by it all. We already know there is discrimination—unless you believe that white men are just better than everyone else, which I don’t. Regardless of any minor victory Pao may have scored here, let’s not forget that it is in the context of conceding defeat. We still have a long, long way to go. Is this the end of the Ellen Pao saga? No—because it’s ours.”
• Party Like It’s 1995: The Rise and Fall of the Girl Game | Autostraddle: “Once there was a whole movement that wished those same things. The girl game movement was a briefly lived golden era of pink-wrapped PC games made for, and marketed to, young girls… Game developers realized they were missing out on a share of the market, so they went pink and purple (those are the only colors girl children see, you know). Girls’ games were almost all available on CD-rom, based on the idea that girls did not own the consoles that were available in the late 90s.”
• Kiera Wilmot arrest: Florida teenager reacts to Ahmed Mohamed story | Slate: “I spoke with Wilmot—now 19 and a sophomore at Florida Polytechnic University majoring in mechanical engineering—this morning about Mohamed’s predicament. She said that her first reaction was anger: “I honestly thought, ‘How could this happen to somebody else?’”

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.

• How female coders are shaping the future of fashion | DailyLife (September 10): “When Coco Rocha sashayed down the runway at ZAC by Zac Posen’s show at New York Fashion Week, she lit up the entire room – quite literally. Her black nylon mesh dress was embedded with over 500 programmable LED lights that had been coded by a team of teen girls.”
• “Picture yourself as a stereotypical male” | MIT Admissions (September 3): “It is true that men score higher on spatial reasoning tests, though you might have caught on that there’s a little bit more to this picture (why would a female MIT student publicize stereotypes that actively work against her?).”
• Everybody Hurts: Content for Kindness | Sara Wachter-Boettcher (September 10): “How can we take our users’ vulnerabilities, triggers, and touchy subjects into account when we don’t even know what they are? What would it mean to optimize not just for seamlessness, but for kindness?”
• The Sims 4: My Nemesis – Character Creation | Rock, Paper, Shotgun (September 10): “I don’t want to go into huge personal detail but parts of depression and anxiety can incorporate body issues. I used to be (and at times still am) bad at assessing what I actually look like. (…) it had never occurred to me that it might affect character creation until I was asked outright how I could be so bad at making an avatar of myself and fine with creating one for a friend.”
• Twitter Bias: We Listen When Men Talk Tech and Women Talk Diversity | Re/code (September 8): “I write quite a bit about women in technology. I’m also an enterprise startup CEO, a linguistics PhD and a fan of astronomy. I regularly tweet about all these things. One day a few months back, I had a hunch: My tweets about women in tech seemed to get significantly more engagement than the others.”
• If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism | The A.V. Club (September 14): “The idea that a movie can be good despite its weaker elements is one of the most basic tenets of film criticism. Yet when it comes to dissecting films from a feminist viewpoint, we seem to have trouble keeping that in mind.”
• Five Books About Inconvenient Women | Tor.com (September 8): “Women aren’t often allowed to be unlikable—and that’s especially true for fictional women. (…) look at all the asshole geniuses and Byronic heroes lauded in fiction and adored by fans. But the common denominator among these assholes about whom so much ink is spilt, and to whom so much screentime is devoted, is that they’re invariably male.”

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.

• Silicon Valley’s 91-year-old designer | BBC News: “Imagine doing your dream job at the age of 91 – that’s what Barbara Knickerbocker-Beskind, a designer in Silicon Valley, is doing. She talks about her life long passion for inventing.”
• The demo for the iPad Pro involved a man Photoshopping a woman’s face to make her smile more | Tech Insider: “Why is that a problem? A man telling a woman to smile or “smile more!” is highly and widely-regarded as a form of harassment, and a line many women find uncomfortable and inappropriate.”
• OS4W: Open Source for Women: “Together we can make things better. OS4W aims to be a resource for connecting all women, including women of color and transgender women, to open source projects that are welcoming, inclusive, and appreciative of diversity in their contributors.”
• The queer masculinity of stealth games | Offworld: “There’s a certain secret cartography to navigating the world as trans that imbues things with different pitfalls and possibilities, where I’m asked to see the world as a series of puzzles more than a place I get to live.”
• Inclusion and Diversity at Slack | Several People Are Typing: “Our primary goal is to avoid becoming yet another place where underrepresented groups exit the technology industry. We don’t want to be a place where people give up on their ambitions. All kinds of people should be able to be successful at Slack. While much focus has been on the pipeline, we understand that increasing the diversity of applicants and new hires will not result in any significant change if people from underrepresented groups cannot thrive at the company. Workplace policies that foster inclusion are equally important.”
• Ellen Pao Speaks: ‘I Am Now Moving On’ | Recode: “I have a request for all companies: Please don’t try to silence employees who raise discrimination and harassment concerns. Instead allow balanced and complete perspectives to come out publicly so we can all learn and improve. I and many others are eager to hear more stories being shared by women and minorities. I turned down offers to settle so I can keep telling mine. We need to keep telling our stories and educating people on how it can be that women and minorities form such a small fraction of our investor base, our tech workforce and our leadership.”
• Insurance and Feelings | This is Hard: “I talk a lot about diversity, but I’m learning that without an environment that encourages being good humans, without leadership that champions empathy, kindness, communication, and compassion, all diversity efforts are for naught.”

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.

• GenCon Follow-Up: Mike Mearls and D&D Consulting | Go Make Me a Sandwich (August 5): “In the end, I wound up doing research and writing that culminated in the creation of a (somewhat) brief document on guidelines designed to aid in the creation of positive depictions of women in D&D products.” Features the backstory and an excerpt with Dos and Don’ts.
• Black Girls Are Magic Lit Mag is a new literary magazine featuring speculative fiction by and about black women.”
• Some Jerks Used a 56-Year-Old Anti-Discrimination Law to Shut Down “Women in Tech” Group | The Mary Sue (September 4): “Chic CEO is a free online platform geared towards female entrepreneurs, which enables them to do things like network or find helpful resources for starting a business. CEO Stephanie Burns regularly secured space for these female entrepreneurs by organizing networking events and mixers for women. That all came to an end when two men, Allen Candelore and Rich Allison, tried to enter one of the female-focused events.”
• Women in Comics – Back To School Edition | The Hub (September 4): “Sad as it may be for some, summer has come to a close and the new school year is upon us. In honor of this time of the year, here is a list of great comics by women that focus on back to school, whether this means starting college, transitioning to middle school or starting over at a new institution.”
• The Problem With Trillian: Hitchhiker’s Guide and Me | The Toast (September 1): “Maybe figuring out Trillian’s failures can point the way to a new age of sci-fi women as distinctive and indelible as Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox, women whose strength will lie not only in their smarts but in the way they stand guard against laziness and cliché.”
• You literally cannot pay me to speak without a Code of Conduct | Rachel Nabors (September 1): “Recently I was approached by the User Experience field’s illustrious Jared Spool about giving a workshop and speaking at his spring conference UX Immersion in San Diego. At first I was delighted. (…) But there was a problem: Jared refused to have a Code of Conduct at his event.” Rachel Nabors, award-winning cartoonist turned digital storyteller, on why she refused to speak at UX Immersion.

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.

• Black Girls Are Magic Lit Mag: New magazine Black Girls Are Magic launches – featuring speculative fiction by and about black women.
• Libraries’ tech pipeline problem|Coral Sheldon-Hess (September 2): “I’m going to focus on what you, as an individual organization, or leader within an organization, can do to help; I acknowledge that there are some systemic issues at play, beyond what my relatively small suggestions can reach, and I hope this post gets people talking and thinking about them.”
• For Black Girls who considered Esmerelda Black when Cinderella wasn’t enuf: The Importance of Race-Bending Fan-Art | Black Girl Nerds (September 2): “In recent years, artists introduced their own takes of Disney princesses, allowing representation through their artistry. Black and brown Cinderellas, Rapunzels and Elsas are constantly relieving Black girls restrictions on validation. Taking white representing characters and making them WOC is incredibly empowering.”
• But What Did the Daughter Think? | Medium (August 31): : “I’ve heard the story recounted as ‘Target knows you’re pregnant before you do’ – but that’s not quite accurate. The reader has no idea what the daughter thought about her pregnancy. […] Women’s bodies are so often the battleground for privacy, but rarely is the discussion framed in terms of what the woman in question wants or needs.”
• [Trigger warning: video game depictions of slavery]Teachers and Gamers Agree: ‘Slave Tetris’ Isn’t How You Educate Kids About Slavery | TakePart (September 1): “Math facts, chemistry and biology, or coding—nowadays those are just a few of the subjects students can learn about through interactive online computer games. But educating 11- to 14-year-olds about the horrors of the slave trade through a video game that allows them to earn points by stacking bodies, Tetris style, in the hold of a slave ship?”

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.

• SF Women of the 20th Century: Introduction | tansyrr.com (18 August): “[W]hile 20th century science fiction is so often framed as a masculine genre, as a sexist genre, as a boys club, and as a hub of male geekery, male childhood, male second childhood and a world peopled by old white men, it was always a place where women existed, and worked, and played, and created wonderful things.”
• No, I don’t trust your conference without a Code of Conduct | Perpendicular Angel Design (14 August): “A clear, transparent, well-written code of conduct is step 1 of winning my trust. Enforcing that code of conduct *with the biggest burden affecting those who do wrong* is step 2. If there is a step 3, it’s that you communicate to the industry what you did, why, and what you might do differently in the future.”
• Signal Boost: GG attacks SXSW panels on online safety, harassment, and VR. | Jacqueline Wernimont (18 August): “[T]he South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin uses a crowdsourced approval method for its panels, taking into account online voting to see which proposed panels get approved. Three panels proposed for SXSW Interactive — about gaming and interactive media — are being attacked by GamerGate right now. One of them, a panel about VR, isn’t even related to feminism or social justice issues but is being targeted anyway because Brianna Wu is on it.”
• [Trigger Warning: Examples of harassment discussed in detail] Almost No One Sided with #GamerGate: A Research Paper on the Internet’s Reaction to Last Year’s Mob | Superheroes in Racecars (17 August): “The results of this project suggest that the vast majority of people do in fact equate GamerGate with online harassment, sexism, and/or misogyny. More people see GamerGate as a toxic mob rather than a legitimate movement worthy of respect.”
• Teen girls play video games, but they minimize their contact with other players. Boys, on the other hand, use games to socialize. | Slate (18 August): “No one should blame women and girls for choosing to play games in a way that renders them invisible to the larger gaming community, but an unfortunate side effect of this is that many guys who play are under the impression that it’s therefore a male hobby.”
• [Trigger Warning: Brief description of harassment]How To (Accidentally) Build A More Female-Friendly Game | Medium (18 August): “In Ingress, by the time you learn someone’s gender, you’ve already seen how they play. Eventually as you get into hangouts and communities, people are going to learn you are female — but they are also going to be meeting you in real life at the same time and also see you as a valuable contributor. It humanizes that interaction. So the would-be trolls don’t have that time period where the only piece of information they have about you is that you are a woman, which makes it harder to troll. ”
• [Trigger Warning: Brief description of harassment]Why Stack Overflow is a Good Workplace for Women | Medium (11 August): “Be careful with “Cultural Fit”. This is often a catch-all for a vague sense of “would not fit in”, which can come to mean “is like me”. If you feel someone is a good or bad cultural fit, you must explain what you mean.
  Valid “Cultural Fit” things: self-motivated, passionate, gets stuff done, cares about open source / giving back to the community, likes “default open”, hates office politics / meetings, pragmatic attitude towards tools / best practices, etc.
  Invalid “Cultural Fit” things: obvious stuff like race, gender, sexual orientation, religion but also softer things like age, personality or hobbies (does not have to like Magic the Gathering to be a good dev). Assume that your bias is to hire people you “like” and be very careful of that.”

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.