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 shouldn’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

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.