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Geek Feminism Linkspams are compiled by the Linkspam team from public submissions. Thanks for your help!

Total Eclipse of the Linkspam (22 March 2016)

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.

Linkspam I dreaming or is this real life? (11 March 2016)

  • Writer’s Round Table: Disney Princesses – A New Hope or Propagating Stereotypes? | The GWW: “Recently, the Washington Post published an article discussing the linguistics of Disney’s animated “princess” movies, focusing on the types of verbiage used by and the amount of time given to the female characters in the films. Their findings were, to me, unsurprising, but they do shine a light on a long-running issue that encompasses far more than just linguistics.”
  • This simple policy will shift social norms in the right direction for Canadian Women in STEM | Canadian Science Policy Conference: “A simple policy to require gender balance in prestigious plenaries, keynotes and speaker series would help enormously. In Canada, such policies are broadly lacking across nearly all organizational levels: from departments, to faculties, to the higher education institution, oversight bodies and professional societies. Such a policy, broadly applied, has the power to shift entrenched social-cultural norms rapidly in the right direction.”
  • Women-only spaces are a hack | Julia Evans: “Imagine you have a program, and it has a pretty serious issue. It needs some deep architectural changes to fix it, but you can alleviate some of the symptoms by just changing a few lines of code. You don’t yet know the best way to resolve the larger problem, but you need to do something, so you start with a hack. This is why we have women-only spaces.”
  • Impostor Syndrome – an analogy and pep talk | Mary Robinette Kowal: “So next time you feel the Imposter Syndrome hitting, recognize that it’s a symptom of the fact that you levelled up without noticing. It’s a crappy feature and the UI is totally borked, but you are can handle it. Impostor Syndrome means that you are winning.”
  • On Conversations | beerops: “I would love to see more conference organizers reaching out to groups and individuals who haven’t gotten a chance to tell their stories yet, rather than inviting the same repeat speakers back year after year. Even if these dudes are great speakers, those are still speaking slots that they are making unavailable for other people in order to tell their own stories again, when there are so many people who haven’t had a chance to tell a single story at all.”

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.

The Author of the Linkspams…My Brother (1 March 2016)

  • Even Mothra, Queen of the Kaiju, Has To Lean In Sometimes | Harlot (February 21): “Mothra stands (figuratively) as a symbol of the way women need to perform better, smarter, and faster than our male-counterparts (literally) to even just be part of the conversation.”
  • What Can Be Done To Address Harassment In Science? | Forbes (January 29): “Why does it make sense to identify such discrimination and harassment as scientific misconduct? Because research grants are awarded to achieve the dual goals of building new knowledge and training new scientists. Scientists who abuse training relationships to harm trainees, vulnerable members of the research community, are doing harm to the project of science. More broadly, beyond training relationships, scientists who in the course of their funded research activities engage in discrimination and harassment targeting other members of the scientific community are damaging relationships within the knowledge-building community — and, by extension, undercutting their field’s ability to build reliable knowledge.”
  • Refugee Girls Got To Dress Up As What They Want To Be When They Grow Up | Buzzfeed (February 3): “The International Rescue Committee recently sent photographer Meredith Hutchison to meet with young girls in two refugee camps in Jordan and ask them about their hopes and dreams. The project, called Vision Not Victim, saw the girls draw pictures of what they want to be when they grew up, now that they have escaped war. Each girl then participated in a photo shoot based on the drawings to pose as their grown-up selves. They were even given copies of the photos to show their families and keep with them as a reminder of their goals.”
  • The chemistry of discourse | Making Light (February 27): “What we really need for free speech is a varied ecosystem of different moderators, different regimes, different conversations. How do those spaces relate to one another when Twitter, Reddit, and the chans flatten the subcultural walls between them?”

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.

I’ll Make Him A Linkspam He Can’t Refuse (24 February 2016)

  • Only 88 tech startups are run by black women | Sara Ashley O’Brien at CNN Money (17 February): “There are a paltry number of black women running tech startups. And there’s an incredible dearth of money flowing to the few who are.
    That’s according to #ProjectDiane, a new study that examines the state of black female entrepreneurship. While big tech firms have pledged to be more transparent about their diversity stats — releasing annual reports to benchmark their progress — that same transparency is still rare in the venture capital world.”
  • What Shipping Richonne Taught Me About Racism | The Black Feminist Geek (22 February): “Last night on The Walking Dead, Rick and Michonne finally got together […] the suggestion of a Rick/Michonne power couple has been met with confusion and incredulity, not to mention outright animosity at times. And during all these years of shipping Richonne, I’ve learned an awful lot about racism as it manifests itself in fandom.”
  • Wikimedia timeline of recent events | Molly White (22 February):”The Wikimedia Foundation has recently suffered from lack of communication with the editing community, poor transparency, and sudden loss of staff members. Some of these issues center around the recent Wikimedia Discovery efforts, some seem to stem from senior leadership. Unrest and discontent has been visible both within the editing community and the Wikimedia Foundation itself. This timeline […] will be updated as more events unfold or come to light.”
  • The Signpost: Shit I cannot believe we had to fucking write this month | Emily Temple-Wood at Wikipedia (17 February): “Welcome to this new column, which highlights awesome articles and other content created or expanded to fight systemic bias in the previous month! This first column will highlight content created in the first two months of 2016, because why the fuck not. People wrote some great stuff: This month in systemic bias, we had to write a whole bunch of shit that should have been written forever ago and generally made the world a better place. Go read these articles and learn about some badass people.”
  • Does The Design Industry Need A Women-Only Platform To Promote Equality? | Diana Budds at Co.Design (3 February): “Tech and finance are frequently cited as the most notorious culprits, but virtually every industry suffers from gender inequality. Design is no exception. A recent poll from O’Reilly found that women in the design industry earned $14,000 less on average than their male counterparts, and the U.S. Census found that female architects earned about 20% less than male architects. To combat the problem, Malmö, Sweden–based Terese Alstin established No Sir, an e-commerce platform built to promote the work of female designers.”
  • Ruby, Codes of Conduct, and Integrity | Betsy Haibel (17 February): “Whenever an event or a community adopts a CoC, there’s tension between the need to respect existing work and the need to build something organic. Strong codes of conduct codify community norms; a copypastaed CoC that doesn’t reflect community leaders’ actual values will inevitably be poorly and/or unevenly enforced, which makes communities less safe.”
  • Mark Oshiro’s post about the “persistent and pervasive racial and sexual abuse/harassment [he] was the victim of at ConQuesT” [warning for discussion of racism, sexual harassment, abuse]
    • Facebook post by Mark Does Stuff (21 February): “Over the past nine months or so, the events of my weekend at ConQuesT 46 have haunted me, and recent events inspired me to finally talk about my experience.”
    • Expect More From Your Regional ConCom | K Tempest Bradford (21 February): “There are so many conversations going on right now sparked by Mark Oshiro’s report[1] detailing what happened to him at last year’s ConQuesT convention that it’s hard to just focus in on one aspect to talk about[2]. There is one thing I want to jump in and speak about right away, which is what should be expected of con staff and ConComs.”

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.

WTL (Willingness To Linkspam)

  • Open Source Gendercodes: “”Open Source Gendercodes” is a sci//art project attempting to create an open source sex hormone production platform for gender-hackers and trans people.. Such biotechnologies will enable people to grow companion plants in their homes for hormone therapy.”
  • Slack sent four black female engineers to accept an award and make a statement on diversity | Quartz (February 10): “As Slack’s founder and CEO, Stewart Butterfield has been the face of the enterprise chat app. But when the company won an award for fastest rising startup at TechCrunch’s annual tech awards show Feb. 8, it wasn’t Butterfield who took the stage but four black women: Megan Anctil, Erica Baker, Kiné Camara, and Duretti Hirpa.”
  • I think my biggest “huh” moment… | David J Prokopetz on Tumblr (January 4): “I think my biggest “huh” moment with respect to gender roles is when it was pointed out to me that your typical “geek” is just as hypermasculine as your typical “jock” when you look at it from the right angle.”
  • Why I Just Dropped The Harassment Charges Against The Man Who Started GamerGate | unburnt witch (February 10): “I’m tired. I have been trying to pick up the pieces of my life for almost two years at this point, and I’ve done a lot of healing, a lot of building what I feel like are more workable pushes to improve the lives of people being abused online, and a lot of self-improvement. I’m getting to a place where I’m kind of ok even while the abuse hasn’t slowed down. But every time I have to touch this festering part of my life, it drains the energy out of me. I have less energy to do casework at Crash, less energy to meet with tech partners to tell them how to do better and the ways they’re fucking up, less energy to make my goofy video games about feelings and farts, less energy for my friends and family and loved ones that have been helplessly watching me torn apart by this man for years.”
  • More Than Binary: Inclusive Gender Collection and You | PyCon 2016 in Portland, OR (February): “Many people identify their gender in many ways. So why do we build systems to capture accurate gender information with a dropdown that only lists “male” and “female”? This talk covers why you might want to consider alternative ways of selecting gender for your users, a brief overview of the current best practices, issues addressed by my project Gender Amender, and why more work needs to be done.”
  • Gender Bias in Open Source: Pull Request Acceptance of Women Versus Men | PeerJ (February 9):  An academic article that finds women are more likely to have their pull requests accepted in general but less likely to be accepted if they’re known to be women. Ars Technica has a writeup, but it buries the lede.
  • An Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design (CHI 2016) | Casey Fiesler (February 9): “For years, I’ve been bringing up the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) to folks in the HCI community, as a cool example of two things: (1) an amazingly successful open source project designed and built mostly by women; and (2) thoughtful incorporation of existing community norms into design. […] How did these design decisions come to be, and what makes AO3 so successful? Are there lessons to be learned for how we can build social norms into technology design? And as we unpacked these issues, what we found was that an underlying commitment to core feminist values (like agency, inclusivity, diversity, empowerment) were part of this picture – it turns out that AO3 is an amazing case study of feminist HCI in action.” More information can be found on their Tumblr.
  • The Woman Who Makes Prosthetic Pinkies for Ex-Yakuza Members | VICE Motherboard (February 9): “The woman was Yukako Fukushima, a prosthetics maker, who—aside from making regular prosthetics—has for over a decade made hundreds of fake pinkies for ex-yakuza members wishing to leave gang life behind and find regular jobs. Usually one of Fukushima’s fingers costs 180,000 yen ($1490), but she provides ex-yakuza in difficult financial situations with a discount.”

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.

Liberty, equality, linkspam (9 February 2016)

  • the problem of language | b. binaohan on Medium (February 8): “All of this, at the end, has me thinking about instruction, leaky pipelines, and diversity in tech. In a lot of ways, I represent a perfect example of the convergence of socio-economic factors that make pipes leaky. Based on my age and interests, I *could’ve* been one of those “I taught myself how to code as a teen and spent two years in college then dropped out to make lots of money” types. But I was poor, trans, gay, not-white-enough, and life got in the way”
  • Meet Marvel’s Newest Comic Series About a Badass Superhero You Already Love | PopSugar (February 8): “”I have an 11-year-old daughter. She is a huge comics nerd,” said Cain. “There are a ton of girls her age who read comics. But the industry loses a lot of them in middle school. Maybe because they’re generally mortified. Or maybe they catch on that there’s not as much for them as they thought there was.” Hopefully Mockingbird is just what they need to retain their love of comics.”
  • FilterScout | Civic Workbench: “FilterScout is a browser extension allows User to set rules for content display, muting unwanted content on the Web, including social media websites. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, newspapers, blogs can be filtered.”… “We’re mitigating one vector for abuse so that people can continue to engage with communities and (we hope) build communities where abuse isn’t normal.”
  • Library publishing and diversity values | College and Research Libraries News (February): “What are the consequences of this lack of diversity in publishing, librarianship, and faculty? We know already that privilege can bias access to material, which is part of why the open access movement exists, to alleviate the barriers that cost can create for researchers. However, one possible consequence is a feedback loop in scholarship that privileges and publishes the majority voice, which is often white and male.”
  • An R update | Adventures in Data (February 2): “what I need is the confidence that the system will work not just forme, who knows some of the R Foundation and Core folks in a passing way, but for people who don’t. That we actually have a way of handling these kinds of problems in the future, that is scalable and generalisable and not based on who you know.”
  • When life gives you lemons, make science | Adventures in Data (February 5): “If you’re going to harass people for science bear in mind that they may science your harassment. Happy browsing to all. And remember, kids: nobody likes total strangers offering their very important opinion about how you are totally wrong. So, please: don’t be that stranger.”

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.

Linkspam On. Linkspam Off. (5 February 2016)

  • Fathers: maybe stop mentioning your daughters to earn credibility on women’s issues | Medium: “We have to take our time and earn trust. We have to show up to those women’s meetings — and listen. We have to volunteer to do the busy work it takes to make diversity initiatives run. We’ve got to apologize when we mess up. We have to make our workplaces more hospitable to all kinds of people. We have to hire marginalized people. And we’ve got to read, read, read all we can to make sure we know what we are talking about and never stop because we probably still don’t. Our daughters are awesome. But at work, lets make things better for everyone.”
  • Dear White Women in Tech: Here’s a Thought — Follow Your Own Advice by Riley H | Model View Culture: “Instead of being useful to us, all I see is that white women are quite happy to talk at all-white panels and call it diversity in tech and gaming. You’re happy to use the means afforded to you for being white to play a good game and make a good face while doing nothing meaningful for women of color. You’re screaming and shouting all day about your own shallow versions of feminism while the women of color you claim to represent are trying to simultaneously hold their heads up to stay above water, and down to avoid choking on smoke.”
  • How startups can create a culture of inclusiveness | The Globe and Mail: “As a young female in a leadership position at a successful tech startup, who also happens to be visibly religious, I know a thing or two about representing minorities in the workplace. After years of hearing and reading about the lack of diversity in startups and personally encountering what seem like isolated incidents, I’ve noticed a very real pattern of exclusivity. Here are a few things I’ve learned during my career at several Toronto startups on building a workplace culture that is collaborative, inclusive, and one that can help accelerate the growth of your company.”
  • This 2014 Sci-Fi Novel Eerily Anticipated the Zika Virus | Slate: “There is a better science fiction analog to the Zika crisis: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, by Meg Elison, which was published in 2014 In Children of Men, abortion and birth control are rendered moot; in The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, birth control and a woman’s right to bodily autonomy are central to the plot.”
  • Let’s Talk About The Other Atheist Movement | Godlessness in Theory: “Over the last twenty-four hours, with media fixated on Dawkins’ absence from one upcoming convention, atheists have been gathered at another in Houston. The Secular Social Justice conference, sponsored jointly by half a dozen orgs, highlights ‘the lived experiences, cultural context, shared struggle and social history of secular humanist people of color’. Sessions address the humanist history of hip hop, the new atheism’s imperialist mission and the lack of secular scaffolds for communities of colour in the working class US, whether for black single mothers or recently released incarcerees. Perhaps we could talk about this?”
  • Computer Science, Meet Humanities: in New Majors, Opposites Attract | Chronicle of Higher Education: “She chose Stanford University, where she became one of the first students in a new major there called CS+Music, part of a pilot program informally known as CS+X.Its goal is to put students in a middle ground, between computer science and any of 14 disciplines in the humanities, including history, art, and classics. And it reduces the number of required hours that students would normally take in a double major in those subjects.”

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.

Stand by your linkspam (1 February 2016)

  • Down and out in statistical computing | Adventures in Data (February 1): “So: unintentionally offensive variable name leads to a patch and the indication that it is much more than one person finding it offensive, leads to the President of the R Foundation dismissing the concerns as “shit-disturbing” and punishing the people who surfaced said concern.”
  • The week I made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Science List | Sarah Guthals on Medium (January 10): “When being nominated or recognized for my efforts, it’s not that I’m the best, or the one that should get the recognition, but I am one of the people that should be recognized, and that recognition could allow me to highlight all of the other people and efforts that have contributed to me being able to continue making my efforts towards helping others.”
  • How to stop the sexual harassment of women in science: reboot the system | The Conversation (January 28): “we don’t need to wait for journalists and politicians to shine a spotlight on more individual cases of harassment. It’s time individual researchers, science managers, departments and institutions made the commitment to reboot science and wipe out harassment.”
  • The “Women in Tech” movement is full of victim blaming bullshit | Life Tips (January 14): “It is time to focus the work on holding the men in charge accountable- not just trying to do things to “help women”.”
  • Names and Harvard | Adventures in Renaming (January 26): “If Harvard can be so on the ball with preferred names, why can’t anyone else? Why can’t PayPal let me decide what name I want to show on Paypal.Me rather than plastering my full name? Why can’t I have my debit card show the name I’d rather overly-friendly cashiers call me? And why is Facebook still being fussy over names? Just one quick note to the administrators (maybe not even that), and done. Easy.”
  • Plug In With The DIY Tech Superstar Of Adafruit Industries: BUST Interview | Bust Magazine (January 21): “While still a student, she built an mp3 player from scratch “for fun.” And after her classmates took notice, Fried began selling her own DIY kits. Today, Adafruit occupies a 15,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in N.Y.C., and Fried hosts weekly web hangouts where she answers tech questions and interacts with makers of all skill levels.”
  • Lady Science | Slate (January 25): “sexism isn’t a women’s problem, it’s a problem for everyone. Also it helps if men speak up, because men who might be a part of the problem will tend to listen to other men more than women. Ironic, but once this idea gets traction with them that problem itself might diminish.”

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.

The Law of Conservation of Linkspam (22 January 2016)

  • RC Start: Free one-on-one mentorship for new programmers | Recurse Center: “With RC Start, if you’re a new programmer, you can now get advice, pair program, have your code reviewed, and receive other support in becoming a better programmer – all without having to quit your job or pay thousands of dollars.”
  • The NASA Engineer on a Feminist Voyage | YouTube: (Video, November 2015) “Broadly spends “A Day With” Denisse Arranda, Venezuelan transplant, Virginia Beach resident, dance enthusiast, and top NASA engineer. With a major project on the horizon, and a husband far far away, Denisse’s life requires tight choreography.”
  • Gender Bias Simulator: “The simulation projects gender ratios for a theoretical company with eight hierarchical tiers, starting at entry-level (level 1) and proceeding to executive level (level 8). Gender bias is reflected in performance-review scores, which are used to determine who stays, who leaves, and who gets promoted.”
  • It’s not your fault. | Medium: “A recent study reported that 60% of women in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed. Of those, 65% have received advances directly from a superior. These statistics caught me by surprise, though they probably shouldn’t have — I am one of them.”
  • Face-Palming Over Apple’s Diversity | Autostraddle: “Apple seems to truly believe that its vast plethora of Diversity & Inclusion efforts — and they are impressive, with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in helping NCWIT launch Latinas in Technology, providing scholarships to and hiring from public and private HBCUs, and doing their darnedest to inspire kids from an early age with unfettered access to hands-on STEM programs — gives them a pass to gloss over the severe lack of parity at the top.”
  • Hello Barbie isn’t just creepy. She is also pretty sexist. | Fusion: “Hello Barbie is programmed with eight different phrases to strike up a conversation about style, while she’s programmed with just one for computers. Sure she is also programmed to say she loves math and science, but while math is “cool,” fashion, according to Barbie, is so much more.”
  • Beware the Rule-Following Coworker, Harvard Study Warns | The Washington Post: : “In the continuum of toxic workers, there are those who are simply annoying and might just be a bad fit for an organization. At the other end are those who engage in harassment, bullying, fraud, theft or even violence in the workplace. The study zeroed in on those at the most extreme of the extreme who were fired for their toxic behavior.”
  • How One Man Tried to Write Women Out of CRISPR, the Biggest Biotech Innovation in Decades | Jezebel: “That Lander would attempt to write the definitive history of the development of a groundbreaking, potentially Nobel Prize-worthy technology, especially while in the midst of a legal battle surrounding exactly that, struck many as a bald-faced attempt at excising, in this case, the contribution of women from the scientific record.”
  • When Teamwork Doesn’t Work For Women | New York Times: “Ms. Sarsons discovered one group of female economists who enjoyed the same career success as men: those who work alone. Specifically, she says that “women who solo author everything have roughly the same chance of receiving tenure as a man.” So any gender differences must be because of the differential treatment of men and women who work collaboratively.”

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.

What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen Linkspam? (19 Janurary 2016)

  • Give teachers a physics test from a woman and they’ll give her worse grades | John Timmer at ars technica (14 January): “a Swiss researcher named Sarah Hofer provided a large panel of physics teachers with a single answer that was attached to either male or female biographical information and asked them to grade it. She found that tests with a female bio got significantly lower grades, at least from teachers who were early in their careers.”
  • The Elephant in the Valley | Women in Tech: “The inspiration for this survey came out of the incredible conversation from the Ellen Pao & KPCB trial. What we realized is that while many women shared similar workplace stories, most men were simply shocked and unaware of the issues facing women in the workplace. In an effort to correct the massive information disparity, we decided to get the data and the stories. We focused on five main areas including: Feedback & Promotion, Inclusion, Unconscious biases, Motherhood, and Harassment & Safety. We asked 200+ women focusing on women with at least 10 years of experience. The survey is largely bay area with 91% in the bay area/silicon valley right now.”
  • James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award – Welcome to Our New Website! | Debbie Notkin at Tiptree (6 January): “An award encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender” “Recommendations are now open for the 2016 awards! Feel free to recommend early and often. Recommending your own work is absolutely fine.” (The new website included the help of Frances d’Ath – they met via an ad right here on GF!)
  • What did we learn in School today? An Outreachy Retrospective | Sucheta Ghoshal (12 January): “Looking ahead, I think the practice of collective learning that Free/Open Source communities organically follow, will become indispensable in order to effectively confront dominations marked by “race”, “gender”, “sexuality”, and “class”. In a new and feminist approach towards computing, collectives, as we define them, will become the medium in which inclusive participation will take shape. And in consequence, a change in conversation shall happen, the crux of which shall be to render visibility to the invisible, make a presence of all that has been absent all this while.”
  • Gamers have become the new religious right | Jef Rouner at Houston Press (14 January): “At the heart of the movement to shut down game critique is an appeal to tradition and purity. Discussing how sexualized avatars contribute to the objectification of women in the real world or how playing games with sexist content makes sexist behavior more likely gets framed as an attack, similar to how women entering the workplace in greater numbers in the 1980s was often framed as an attack on the traditional gender roles celebrated in The Bible. Whenever women or other minorities speak up against systems that oppress them it challenges the idea that the current norm is good, and if the norm is not good, then we are bad for having supported or participated in it.”
  • What would feminist data visualization look like? | Catherine D’Ignazio at MIT Center for civic media (20 December 2015): “While there is a lot of hype about data visualization, and a lot of new tools for doing it (my colleague Rahul Bhargava and I have counted over 500!), fewer people are thinking critically about the politics and ethics of representation. This, combined with a chart-scared general public, means that data visualizations wield a tremendous amount of rhetorical power. Even when we rationally know that data visualizations do not represent “the whole world”, we forget that fact and accept charts as facts because they are generalized, scientific and seem to present an expert, neutral point of view. What’s the issue? Feminist standpoint theory would say that the issue is that all knowledge is socially situated and that the perspectives of oppressed groups including women, minorities and others are systematically excluded from “general” knowledge.”

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.