From Nyree: Why dogs are better than women. HAHA IT’S ONLY A JOKE.
Nawal El Saadawi talks about the Egyptian revolution.
“The Arab World Gets Real on Democracy” —> nice contrast to this article discussing ethnocentrism in discussion democracy in general.
Do you think it’s true that Obama’s presidency signaled the rise of a new American idealism?
“Real ants do not offer lessons in humanity.”
Robocop: the rise of police surveillance. Also: Inside the Killing Machine.
From Maartje:
So rather than asking, “where are the women,” we might ask:
Why does much of U.S. public discourse frame the revolution through Islamophobia logics and why has the corporate media focused mostly on images of Egyptian men?
“Inner city” ===> euphemism. Also: wrong.
Pakistan /= Egypt
Afghanistan and Democracy
IF GAYS MARRY PEOPLE WILL LOVE ANDROIDS!!!!
From SunlessNick: Why Mubarak is Out.
Ninjapenguin is challenging the Cheezburger network to be less sexist. She writes:
I know I should probably have expected this, but ugh. Usually all I look at when I periodically check the Cheezburger Network is Daily Squee, Must Have Cute, and Graph Jam, and those are pretty safe spaces. But I saw they had what looks like a new site, The Daily Geek. I consider myself a geek, despite being a woman, so I checked it out. For the most part, it seems to be fairly innocuous stuff: movie and video game news, geeky merchandise, tech announcements, space stuff: Pretty much what you’d expect. But then there are the Cosplay-mates:
women dressed in sexy, mostly revealing costumes. The (very, very) few cosplay pictures with men (or male characters), are clothed in fully covering costumes (most of them covering even the face), nothing tight
or sexualized. One of the “regular” cosplay (tagged) pictures is of a burlesque performer as Pikachu, wearing only Pokeball shaped pasties and a waist cincher on her top half. The official commentary on these pictures includes phrases such as “Who wouldn’t wanna make these sexy Bubble Head nurses shriek?” and “Sexy Blackarachnia has got eight legs to spread!” There is an official “boobies” tag, as well (alas, it is not about geeky nursing products). The sexism is also there in smaller ways too. Multiple articles assume you, the reader, have a girlfriend (who is apparently not interested in geeky activities). An article about a glitch/hack in a golfing game that shows one athlete without her shirt says “I think we all can agree tits, even virtual ones, are always a good thing.” and then goes on to state in the caption of the real athlete that she “pretends she’s not loving every minute of
this.” Ah yes, because I’m sure she won’t be receiving any harassment because of this issue. An article about porn coming to the iPad has the author talk about “motorboating” hir iPad. The only fanart that is posted about a female subject is one of Catwoman where her face is cut off above the nose and below the waist, so that the whole focus is of the torso of a woman in skin-tight black costume (without the title I would have no idea who this was supposed to be). Casting discussions about men tend to feature pictures of them in normal clothing (fully covering, not tight, not sexualized). Ones of women tend to show them in skintight or revealing clothing, in sexualized poses and to talk about how sexy or beautiful they are.
I guess I forgot that women can’t be real geeks, only trophies for geeks.
What can grammar almanacs tell us about national character?
From JJ:
An old thread I just stumbled on, but more clear admin sexism from the Starcraft guys. Arguably worse. (Warning: includes “jokes” about hitting women)
Starts off ok until the admins get involved. (Wait, what?)
What goes into imperial feminism?
Is Puerto Rico the next Egypt? Meanwhile, they were killed for being Latino and immigrants and poor… but it’s not a hate crime.
GOD HATES SHRIMP!
The US military MAY have mishandled some sexual assault cases. ……
Abusers sometimes sabotage birth control in order to maintain control over their victims.
From SunlessNick:
Not sure if trigger warnings would apply, but travesty of humanity warnings might; South Dakota legislators are introducing a bill that would legalise the murder of abortion providers. Yes, seriously.
Mother Jones takes it on here, Feministe here, and Shakesville here.
Text of the bill here.
Let’s get ! DEATH 40-FEET TALL ! to a film festival!
Extradite Dr. Phil now!
From The Other Patrick:
PZ Myers has the shocking idea that if you do a panel on getting
women involved, maybe you should listen to what women have to say
about that.
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
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Agreed! Whoever posts the stuff on Failbook seems especially sexist. Aaargh. YOU’RE NOT FUNNY.
FM(Quote) (Reply)
Well, there is no “excuse” to get an abortion. There are many and varied “reasons”, but even the word excuse has bad connotations.
Ugh. I just get so fed up with a political party that cries “big government” when it comes to unprotecting large companies and their almighty tax dollars and heaven forfend, health care for all but turns around and says it’s A-okay to control a woman’s body and take away her decision the second they get the chance.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
Hmm. Okay, well… at Shakesville, they’re criticizing him for not moderating his comments against misogyny better, and of course I support that. I guess I took his post about the Catholic schoolgirl porn as mocking the porn itself, so I’m not clear on why that upset people. It’s a ludicrously offensive image on a magazine containing a ludicrous article (which you might think of as creationist-porn), and… I don’t know. He later states he doesn’t consume porn and is joking anytime he talks about consuming it, because he can’t get past where it comes from. So, he’s definitely not perfect, but nor is it striking me as particularly anti-feminist. Did I miss something? (And I guess I took the Raquel Welch crucifix the same way. I find the crucifix such a disturbing bit of iconography – no offense to those who find value in it – that I would tend to take it as mockery of religion more than anti-feminism.)
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I pretty much reacted the same way to it. Phew.
As to the comments, Myers does have a pretty hard open policy – he is adamantly for allowing all kinds of speech, and only rarely does he even ban single trolls. Sadly, that way lie the kinds of comments he (also) receives.
I think you don’t have to allow anything on your blog to be for freedom of speech, but that’s where he comes from there.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
It’s possible she put the links into the post then, later.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
On his blog he generally criticizes men rather roundly for having that opinion – sometimes pointing out they have it when they think they are being good. I haven’t seen him speak but I would be surprised to hear him say something different in an interview than what seems to be a rather strongly held view that he expresses regularly on his blog. Perhaps he was mocking someone or explaining what they were saying rather than saying it was what he thought? He is regularly very sarcastic and mocking.
firebird(Quote) (Reply)
I get tired reading the comments. I follow his blog and usually read a few comments but he regularly has a few hundred. He gets a few thousand (or was it hundred thousand?) page views so threads like that one that was linked in LOGI had 800+ comments before I saw it later in the same day it was posted. One thing about moderation – who would have time to moderate hundreds of comments considering he posts several times a day and has a full time job and speaking engagements? And his regular commenters rip the trolls and ebul commenters a new one, usually in packs. But yeah, I read the articles, not the comments, usually – or just enough of the comments to get a little perspective on what was said from the regular commenters.
One of my favorite things he’s said is that he has an extra credit question on a final for his students to name any woman scientist – and a lot of them leave it blank, and a lot of others name Marie Curie, even though they are in a biology class and have studied the work of women scientists and should theoretically remember at least one of them. It was quite an interesting comment.
firebird(Quote) (Reply)
I only read about 40-50 comments. You are much more patient than me.
firebird(Quote) (Reply)
I’m glad you took the porn thing the same way I did. I saw that one when it came out originally and I took it as a way of talking about his shock at the strangeness of it.
As to the crucifix, how it affected me is how utterly strange a crucifix really is and how inappropriate really, whether a male or female figure is superimposed on it.
firebird(Quote) (Reply)
You’re talking about the Game Overthinker, right? Well, I went back to his blog and that bout of fail occurred fairly early in his career, and he’s more often than not really really good at calling out that kind of stuff (and really really good at calling out racist/homophobic gamer bullshit as well) so as irksome as it was to me, I’ll give him a “pass”…then again, as MovieBob he thought The Ugly Truth was a good film!
;)
(as much as I hate to admit this, I also think the Anti-Thinker is hilarious)
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
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