Tag Archives: sexism

Good reads

It’s been a loooong time since I posted some good reading.

5 Things I Learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person | Cracked.com
"I watched every avenue of social media suddenly blow up with messages of abject hatred from thousands of strangers. For the first five days, I couldn't sleep. Every time I would start to doze off, I'd be shocked awake from half-asleep nightmares about everyone I love buying into the mob's bullshit and abandoning me. The ceaseless barrage of random people sending you disgusting shit is initially impossible to drown out — it was constant, loud, and it became my life."
They Are Not Trolls. They Are Men. | Make Me a Sammich
"By calling these people “trolls,” we are basically letting them off the hook. It’s a lot like the “boys will be boys” mentality that helps to keep rape culture thriving, but it’s also different, because boys are expected to be human. By calling these people “trolls,” we relegate them to non-human status, and we make it clear that we don’t expect them to live up to the same behavioral standards as human beings." Continue reading Good reads →

Other Tip Offs That Our Industry Has Problems

A colleague sent an email to our department yesterday that opened with the line, “Other tip offs that our computers are like women…”

What followed was pretty (and predictably) contemptible; four bullet points of absurd stereotypes, ostensibly humorous, comparing computers to women.

I was… quite upset. I debated how or if to talk to the coworker, and ultimately decided to have the conversation when another colleague was like, “Hey, don’t send stuff like that!”

So we talked. I was still hand-shakingly upset, so I didn’t press the points I should have. Instead, I listened to the “ask anyone who knows me; I’m not a sexist” thing, the “I don’t do sexist things” thing, and the “actions should speak louder than words” thing. They did sincerely apologize for offending me. I did not go into the idea of feeling contemptuous rather than offended. I was pretty much all the things.

Unfortunately, I think what they came away with was, “Melissa is sensitive about these things and I should keep that in mind because I’m an empathetic person.”

I don’t think I did a good job of explaining that this wasn’t about whether they as an individual are sexist or not. It’s about the environment emails like that produce. The fact that I can be sitting at work, and apropos of nothing receive an email full of denigrating stereotypes about a category of people?

That’s a damn problem.

Tons of Videos!

Actually, like 3 videos. But they’re good ones! Plus a few miscellaneous links.

First, a video:

My question: Why can’t he pull out a chair? Turns out, home skillet has a bad back.

To offset that, a bit of cuteness: Maximumble – comic #594 – Ship. Mew.

Continue reading Tons of Videos! →

Winkage!

Winks, links, they’re all the same.

  • xkcd: Epsilon and Zeta – I don't link to XKCD much, in part because I don't read it much, and in part because everyone else in the world does. That said, this one uses real-deal National Hurricane Center advisories in it, and is really good.
  • Ann Aguirre’s Blog – Authors Against Bullying: Blog Hop – "Things were bad. People made fun of me daily. They picked on my appearance, my weight, my geeky interests. Sometimes I hid in the bathroom rather than face a cafeteria full of people who didn’t like me."
  • Utah Game Developer Jailed for Not Paying Wages – ABC News – "Hunter lasted two years before calling it quits, hanging onto promises of paychecks that appeared only erratically, with Rushton sometimes handing out checks selectively and demanding confidentiality while blaming companies that licensed games for being slow to pay for their development or royalties."
  • Beyond Minecraft: Notch On Fame, Pressure, Sequels | Rock, Paper, Shotgun – A bizarre thing for there to have been contention over: "Sometimes the fans are right, too. Like ladders. I did not want ladders in Minecraft at all. Ladders are never fun. They’re not fun in Minecraft either. But they’re a very good utility. It’s an easy way to get straight up without having stairs going back and forth."
  • On Labeling Women “Crazy” | Paging Dr. NerdLove – "I started realizing that when my friends and I would talk about our crazy exes or what-have-you, more often than not, we weren’t talking about ex girlfriends or random dates who exhibited signs of  genuine mental health issues. […] For the most part, crazy meant 'acting in a way I didn’t like.'"