- Does anyone know if a new carnival owner was found for the Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans? There was a call for help up at Free to Good Home: The Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans
- Natania at Geeks Are Sexy posts Never assume anything about a geek girl debunking some common assumptions
- Women Women Blah Blah Blah: Tara Hunt is hearing that talk about gender balance at tech conferences is boring, and she agrees… but it’s also necessary.
- The Atheist Movement Ladies’ Auxiliary and Sewing Circle: Greta Christina hears that the atheism movement needs more women so as to be less confrontational… and proceeds to be confrontational.
- Nobel winners call for gender balance in science: Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider addressed gender balance in science while in Stockholm to accept their Nobel Prize.
- The Discovery Channel: “Not for Women’s Eyesâ€: The Discovery Channel is marketing itself as “Not for women’s eyes. Discovery Channel has television men want to watch. Exciting, smart, interesting, adventurous, and most of all real. Watch for yourself.”
- Revolution is knocking on the door. About FSCONS and feminism again: Christina Haralanova draws out similarities between the Free Software movement and women's movement.
- Prejudice vs. biology – testosterone makes people more selfish, but only if they think it does: female subjects given either testosterone or a placebo adhered to stereotypes… if they believed they’d been given testosterone.
- Is the mixing of personal and professional a creative class luxury?: Rachel Hills writes about being “free to be me” on the web: "As an editor, I can wear the same clothes to work as I do on the weekends, but a lawyer or an investment banker can’t do the same…"
- Feynman was not being arrogant when he told people, “You’re wrong!â€: More meritocracy discussion. Restructure! discusses research showing that when the topic is stereotypically feminine, men are tentative and women are confident. She also argue, in essence, that the merit-and-confidence/pushiness-ocracy is correct and desirable, and women need to be more uppity.
- (trigger warning) Glee: Mattress: meloukhia strongly critiques an episode of Glee that used domestic violence as a plot device to portray an abusive character as sympathetic.
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Fiction, Part 1: The first part of a series in which Arachne Jericho talks about portrayal of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in fiction: getting it right and getting it wrong.
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.
Geek Feminism Blog 
It’s not really news as such, but I came across this store Mind Candy Clothing which has glittery-lettered women’s t-shirts with geek-suitable slogans.
Grr. I used to joke that if I had cable I’d never be able to pry myself from Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Little did I know that, as a woman, I cannot possibly be interested in anything “exciting, smart, interesting, adventurous, and real” (the DC, real? Ahaha. If only educational TV programs were as accurate as I would like, with my dull, pedantic, accurate, reality-based ladybrain).
I’m really baffled by all these companies who are trying to sell their products to men by saying they’re not for women. Wouldn’t it be better to have a potential pool of customers consisting of 100% of the population and not less than 50%?
Re: Never assume anything about a geek girl:
I find it ironic that being stupid with computers is a stereotype of a “geek girl”… it makes absolutely no sense. However, it reminds me of a really annoying blog called Geek Girls Guide, which is actually a blog by geek girls, but the blog’s name sounds like it’s a blog for geek girls. The guide is for people who are bad with computers. One post is an answer to the question, “What is a web browser?”
Some people are geeks about things other than computers. Maybe the assumption is that you might be geeky enough to like scifi, but no way could a girl also be a computer geek. Two types of geek, in one girl? Yeah right!
To paraphrase and modify an Eddie Izzard quote.
“What? Two types of geekdom in one head? No one can live at that speed!”
Excellent collection of links this time around, especially the PTSD-In-Fiction, which I found fascinating both as a writer and somebody with PTSD.
I wanted to drop the following link off for you here because it’s not really the kind of thing I’d normally bookmark. Note that UbuntuGeek is just posting a long excerpt from a corporate blog’s post, with a link to the full story:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/is-ubuntu-ready-for-a-non-tech-savvy-girlfriend.html
I’m pointing to UG’s post because IMHO it says something very sad about the Linux community that UbuntuGeek (one of the larger blogs, I believe) offered no commentary whatsoever on how unbelievably wrong the assumptions involved are. I think it would’ve been far more interesting if they’d spent the post itself tackling the issue, since the original wasn’t all that exciting past making my blood boil.
Hmm that was about a month ago. Didn’t see that, since it’s not on Planet Ubuntu. I tend to forget there are Ubuntu blogs that aren’t on either Planet Ubuntu or UbuntuWeblogs.org. Still, I think it’s important that “non-tech-savvy girlfriend” and not just “girlfriend” was the heading. It acknowledges that there are other sorts of girlfriends.
A friend got “that was sexist!” comments when he mentioned in a blog post that he always says his girlfriend is his perfect usability test-case. Well, he was referring to his last girlfriend…who was indeed not tech-savvy. He asked me what to do, and I told him to edit it saying “non-technical girlfriend” since that’s what he really meant. We both know that if he was dating someone like me (ie “technical”) his usability tester would change rather quickly (though really, I can find plenty of usability WTFs in normal KDE usage, even as a programmer/geek).