Tag Archives: medicine

The left hand of linkspam (19 April 2013)

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You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in 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.

Old Lego advertisement featuring a little girl and her lego creation

Pandering to horny teenage linkspam

  • Angela Zhang of Cupertino won a $100,000 scholarship for her cancer fighting research. In her project, Zhang aimed to design a targeted gold and iron oxide-based nanoparticle with the potential to eradicate cancer stem cells through a controlled delivery of the drug salinomycin to the site of the tumor. (…) The 17-year-old roughly estimates that the essence of her research could be available for use by cancer patients in 15 to 20 years.
  • Anti-pattern theater: how to get women to quit

    How do you piss off a technical woman so she will leave your team? It’s easy. Just go and lob a few complaints about her behavior that would never apply to a guy. The easiest one of these is to say “you’re being too emotional”. Who’s going to argue against that? All you have to do is find places where she emphasizes things instead of remaining in a flat monotone and you hit paydirt.

  • BusinessWeek asserts, Lego Is for Girls:
    Focusing on boys saved the toymaker in 2005. Now the company is launching Lego Friends for “the other 50 percent of the world’s children.” Will girls buy in?
  • I’m starting to think Lego is evil – Some musings on how lego has changed over the years, including the new “targeted at girls” line. This article’s from a dad, and I’d like to see some responses from women too, so if you’ve seen a good one (or written one!) please post in the comments. Mostly, though, you need to see this old ad he dug up:
    Old Lego advertisement featuring a little girl and her lego creation

    Old Lego advertisement featuring a little girl and her lego creation

  • @mnemosynekurai: Surprising no one, @Kotaku defends its pandering to horny teenage boys yfrog.com/mnv83p
  • 11 To-Do’s for Women In Tech – Written after a panel at LISA, this is a very nice, short, clear list of advice for those trying to improve the numbers of women in tech. This probably won’t be new advice to many readers here, but it’s a good version to keep handy for those who want a short primer.
  • Greg Wilson is starting up a course on How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students: Right now, people all over the world are learning how to write programs and create web sites, but or every one who is doing it in a classroom there are a dozen free-range learners. This group will focus on how we, as mentors, can best help them. This may be of interest to those hoping to mentor fellow women in technology!

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in 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.

Countess Ada Lovelace, by the Ada Initiative, CC Zero

Wednesday Geek Women: Moran Paldi, game designer; Leena van Deventer, gaming writing; Catriona Wimberley, medical physics student

This is a guest post by Ben McKenzie. This post appeared on his blog for Ada Lovelace Day 2011.

On Ada Lovelace Day we celebrate women working in technology and science who have inspired us. I have been definitely been inspired by women in science, from the famous like Ada herself and Marie Curie, to more recent heroes like student astrophysicist Amelia Fraser-McKelvie. But I’d like to talk about some of my friends, and in the wake of my participation in a discussion about feminism and games at Cherchez la Femme this month, specifically those working with computers and technology, like Ada did. All are inspiring to me, for their drive, their outlook, and their success, so I thought I would ask them a few questions to find about about them, and their inspiring women, in their own words.

Moran Paldi (ranpal.com.au)

Moran has over a decade of experience in the games industry; now living in Melbourne, she builds and designs video games, and teaches others to do the same. To spend even a few minutes talking games with her is to uncover an incredible depth of knowledge and passion for games in every facet of their existence, from code to controller.

How did you get into the games industry?

I studied mixed media practice at uni in London, originally planning to be an investigative journalist. I got hooked on animation at school and managed to land a job as an animator at a small indie studio when I graduated. Since then I have worked professionally as a games developer at companies like Sega and THQ,  and have now come full circle to back to my independent roots. I also teach at RMIT University on the Games Graphic Design course where I lecture in maths and games design theory.

Why video games? What do you love about this work?

I love the technical and creative challenges that making games presents. They are multilayered digital puzzles, and there’s this cycle of figuring out what you want to do, and then figuring out how to make it happen. They are fractal beasts. The more you explore them the more there is to find. Plus, the technology is always evolving, so you have to keep up with it, and that pushes you. I love exploring the boundaries of what is possible, and finding new ways to tell familiar stories. Oh, and it’s also hella fun.

Who would you be writing about for Ada Lovelace Day?

Obviously Ada! She wrote the worlds first computer program for a then theoretical analytic device. Her work is the basis of modern computing, and she deserves to be better known. Similarly, it was a group of women who built and programmed the ENIAC, which was the first electronic computer, not that you’d know that from most of the histories. Coding used to be considered women’s work, until it became high value. Now it’s perceived as a masculine pursuit. Women in tech have been made invisible for too long now. We need to break that pattern.

Leena van Deventer (grassisleena.com)

Leena is a freelance writer, both for and about games; though she only started eighteen months ago she’s already written for MMGN.com, The Age“s Screen Play blog and a whole bunch of gaming sites, and is co-host of the GamePlayPodcast and the games correspondent for Tech Talk Radio. The first game to be released with her name in the credits will be the seventh Gamebook Adventures title for iOS, Temple of the Spider God.

How did you become a games writer?

I started with a blog, just quietly doing my own thing until people seemed interested in hiring me. I then cast out a net and worked for anyone who would let me, paid or unpaid, for the experience to then make it into a proper job. I went to as many industry events as I could find and talked to as many like-minded individuals as humanly possible. Much scotch was consumed. Oh the scotch. From there I’ve been offered amazing opportunities to work in a field I’m quickly falling head over heels in love with.

Why the love affair?

I love having an opinion. It was always a negative growing up. The over-opinionated only child stereotype was in full flight and it was always treated as a personality flaw. Once I grew up and mellowed a bit I realised I could temper it to be a powerful force – and one that could be capitalised on, at that. Taking what was once considered a flaw in my personality and turning it into a positive, constructive “thing” I had to offer was extremely rewarding, and mirrored my feelings about my favourite pastime. Playing games was always either a little bit geeky, or something only the boys in the street did, or something I was scared to talk about at school for fear of scorn. I love the fact I’m “out” now as someone who loves games so much, and that I can embrace my voice and my opinions about them. The thought of utilising those strong feelings to help make great games one day is something that inspires me immensely. Working in this industry makes me feel less broken.

Who would you write about for Ada Lovelace Day?

Brenda Braithwaite is a powerhouse of a woman – a stalwart of the games industry – who inspires me greatly. She stood up when people were saying that consoles would ruin the games industry and said “That’s bullshit”. She’s now standing up when people say games on social networks will kill the games industry and says “That’s bullshit”. She’s paving the way for many great game developers to come after her and to me that’s a lasting legacy that will stick and is something to be truly proud of. We need people to stand up and say when something is bullshit. Our industry is still in its infancy, and despite that there are many issues ingrained deeply into it. The only way we’re going to move forward and improve on our weaknesses is for people to stand up and say “That’s bullshit” and stop accepting the mediocre. She inspires me to want more from the industry and ask “Can’t we do better?”.

Catriona Wimberley

Catriona is a PhD student in medical physics at the University of Sydney, currently working at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Though studying science, her career has been heavily entwined with technology, from computer programming to electronic engineering. She’s travelled around Australia and the world to present her work, and was featured in the Cosmos Ultimate Science Guide 2011 for prospective science students.

What are you working on for your PhD?

I’m working on kinetic modelling and parameter estimation in PET (positron emission tomography) imaging. In a nutshell, I take the images/data from scans and do some interesting mathematical modelling to find information about how the body/brain is working, or more importantly, not working, so that we can study how different neurodegenerative disorders (eg. MS or Alzheimers) progress.

How did you reach this point of your career?

A winding path where every opportunity was taken to explore exciting areas of research!

Before finally settling on the area of research I am currently in, I had worked in a biomedical engineering division (doing repair and maintenance of medical equipment), in a cardiology lab, a respiratory lab and a sleep lab (all doing clinical work). These placements helped me realise that I need more than a clinical or repair and maintenance job – I need to be able to think, create, analyse and innovate!

In final year uni, an opportunity came up to do a placement at the Bionic Ear Institute and I jumped at it. It was a great placement, gave me a taste of the research life, I was able to find out how part of the brain works using the computer and programming! But still… before I settled, I knew I needed to explore my other science love: physics.

I applied for the Nuclear Futures graduate program at ANSTO and was accepted into it. This program was what helped me decide that I truly did want to be a researcher. It was a rotational program so I got to work in an engineering project management role creating devices and upgrading safety systems, in the maintenance team for the OPAL research reactor; I wrote computer programs for physicists to interpret their data, I wrote reports about nuclear power for the Australian Government, I designed equipment to improve the quality of medical imaging – and from all of these adventures, I decided I wanted to specialise in medical physics – where else do you get the combination of physics, computing, maths and the end result is figuring out how the brain works?

What drives your passion for science?

I do it because I love finding patterns and meaning in data. I do it because I love programming and I love making programs that work and make life easier for people or elicit information. I do it because I get to think and discover new things about how the world works. I do it because it is fascinating and I couldn’t not do it.

I do it because I am curious and I need to figure things out. I love that I can lose myself in thinking and designing and analysing and interpreting.

Who would you write about for Ada Lovelace Day?

Marie Curie, for her ideas, her hard work and her drive to never give up. My PhD lineage can be traced back to her! Marie’s daughter Irene Joliot-Curie was also a chemist, and won a Nobel prize in 1935. Irene’s son Pierre Joliot is a biologist and was the PhD supervisor of Marie-Claude Gregoire, who is supervising me.

Also Elizabeth Blackburn [winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine], for showing people that it is possible to have a highly successful science career and have a family.

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Want to highlight a geek woman? Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

Wednesday Geek Woman: Maud Menten, medical researcher

This is a guest post by Ingrid. Ingrid looks at the entire world from an evolutionary perspective and sometimes remembers to post stuff to Dreamwidth.

Submissions are currently open for Wednesday Geek Woman posts.

Photograph of Maud MentenMaud Menten was one of the first Canadian women to receive a medical doctorate, in 1911. Women could not do research in Canada in those days, so she sailed alone across the Atlantic to work at Leonor Michaelis’ lab in Berlin. During her year there, they developed the first model and equation to describe enzyme kinetics, the Michaelis-Menten equation. She worked for many years as a teacher and researcher at Pittsburg, making more important discoveries – she was the first to separate proteins by electrophoresis, and altogether, could lay claim to being the mother of biochemistry.

She was hard-working, determined and persistent, despite lack of recognition – her contributions to medical science exceed that of many Nobel laureates, and she was only made full professor a year before she retired. She also studied languages, music and painting, and did mountaineering. Today, she is surprisingly unknown, even by biochemists (I learnt the Michaelis-Menten equation early in my undergraduate biochemistry courses but only found out that Menten was a women significantly later), and I’d like to rectify that a bit.

Wikipedia: Maud Menten
Rebecca Skloot (2000) Some called her Miss Menten
Canadian Medical Hall of Fame: Dr. Maud Menten (includes 4min YouTube documentary)

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Frances Oldham Kelsey, FDA reviewer of thalidomide

In the absence of doctors’ records, it can never be known how many babies died in the U.S. because of thalidomide’s “clinical trials”; Dr. Lenz estimated that in forty percent of cases where there was fetal exposure, the infant died in its first year. Eleven women (or perhaps more) gave birth to thalidomide babies in the U.S., but there may have been many more whose parents never discovered that their children’s malformations were caused by Kevadon. It is unbearable to speculate upon how many more might have been born but for the singular obduracy of Frances Kelsey.

All quotes are from Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Vital Medicine, by Trent Stephens and Rock Brynner.

Black and white photograph of Frances Oldham Kelsey

Frances Oldham Kelsey

This is the story of a woman who saved countless lives and protected any number of babies from grievous harm, using nothing but science and her own strength of character.

Born Frances Kathleen Oldham on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, she studied at McGill before moving to the new Pharmacology department at the University of Chicago (which accepted her on the assumption that she was a man.) At Chicago she developed an interest in teratogens and earned her Ph.D. and M.D. She also met and married Dr. F. Ellis Kelsey. When he was appointed special assistant to the surgeon general, the Kelseys moved to Washington, D.C.

Frances Kelsey worked for the AMA reading doctors’ testimonials for various drugs, and she and her colleagues could soon detect among them the well-paid hacks for Big Pharma. It turned out to be excellent training for her appointment in 1960 to the Food and Drug Administration as one of only seven full-time and four part-time physicians reviewing applications to approve new drugs.

A week after she reported for work, the application for thalidomide landed on her desk. Her first assignment! The drug had already been approved in Canada and more than 20 countries in Europe and Africa. Another person might have rubber-stamped it. Kelsey did not.

The first thing Kelsey noticed as she examined the four-volume application from Richardson-Merrell was the names of the doctors – including that of Dr. Ray Nulsen of Cincinnati, Ohio – whose testimonials were included with the application: many were the same hacks she remembered from her time at the AMA… the mere presence of those names did not bode well for the application in Frances Kelsey’s eyes. In fact, as she looked through the application, she found it wanting in many respects.

The chronic toxicity studies had not run for long enough. There wasn’t enough data about absorption and excretion. The animal studies and clinical trials were not detailed enough and there wasn’t enough documentation. What documentation there was, was troubling. Humans responded to thalidomide by lapsing into a deep sleep, but rats did not. Worse, no lethal dose could be found for rats. That made it possible that rats weren’t absorbing the drug at all, while humans were. If that were the case, the animal studies shed no light on possible toxicity to humans.

Despite all this, Kelsey had no grounds for rejecting the application. Instead, she told the company she needed more and better data before she could take any action. In fact, she stalled. She declared the application incomplete and thus ineligible for submission fifty-eight days after it was submitted. That meant it would have to be resubmitted, giving her an extra sixty days to think about it.

You can imagine how much this delighted the pharmaceutical company.

But when Richardson-Merrell pressured her, the medical officer did not budge.

Richardson-Merrell subjected Kelsey to a withering siege of professional aggravation, provocation and intimidation. Altogether she chronicled fifty-one exchanges with the company, when there should have been none.

The company’s scientific officer, Dr. F. Joseph Murray, got her name and phone number (which he shouldn’t have had) and bombarded her with calls. What data did she need? How could the patient instructions be reworded? Could he submit revisions casually, over the phone (thus leaving no paper trail)? How about if he shared data with her privately, rather than in the formal application?

Kelsey rejected the second application as incomplete.

In February, 1961, Kelsey read the first reports of thalidomide causing peripheral neuropathy in the British Medical Journal. She challenged Murray with it. He admitted that Richardson-Merrell had known of the reports, and offered to add a warning to the drug’s packet insert. No dice. Despite the nerve damage issue, Richardson-Merrell wanted to declare the drug safe for use in pregnancy. But, Kelsey argued, if thalidomide could cause nerve damage in adults, how could the company prove that it would not cross the placental barrier and cause even worse damage to a fetus?

Testing this would take years and cost untold money. Richardson-Merrell was disinclined.

Kelsey required the company to resubmit the application six times. Richardson-Merrell tried to go over her head, but she stood her ground.

On November 18, 1961, the first statements came out of Germany about birth defects attributable to thalidomide. On November 29, the drug was removed from the German market.

On March 8, 1962, Richardson-Merrell withdrew its application.

On August 8, President Kennedy gave Frances Oldham Kelsey the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest honour given to a civilian. As well he might. At least 4000 children in Europe were born affected by the drug. Kelsey’s rigour averted a similar tragedy in the USA.

Dr. Kelsey’s contribution,

wrote Senator Carey Kefauver,

flows from a rare combination of factors: a knowledge of medicine, a knowledge of pharmacology, a keen intellect and inquiring mind, the imagination to connect apparently isolated bits of information, and the strength of character to resist strong pressures.

Anyone for a Geek Feminist manifesto?

She became an American hero, gracing the cover of Life magazine, receiving and answering hundreds of letters, and then quietly returning to her job of protecting the public’s health.

In fact, for her next trick, Kelsey helped reform the FDA.

Wikipedia: Frances Oldham Kelsey

Playing the linkspam card (4th June, 2011)

  • Why White Men Should Refuse to Be on Panels of All White Men: If white, male elites started saying, I will not participate in your panel, event, or article if it is all about white men, chances are these panels and articles would quickly dry up—or become more diverse.
  • Not Exactly Avatar Secrets: A Critique of Ramona Pringle’s Research: Ramona Pringle does “research” into people finding love in online games. Flavor Text is not impressed: I think the main issue I take with this – and you addressed it earlier on Twitter – is that the whole thing just smacks of “gamers are human beings, too!” as if this is somehow news. The sky is blue! Fire still hot! Gamers capable of social interaction and forming meaningful relationships!
  • While we’re talking about Flickr groups (This is what a computer scientist looks like is now at 55 photos and counting), photogs here might like to contribute to the New Feminine group, for a diverse range of images of women that show femininity as other than submissive and sexualised.
  • Deconstructing Pointy-Eared White Supremacists: What do we know about elves? They are, generally, portrayed as the ideal: more magical, more beautiful, more in tune with nature. They are older than you but almost immortal… Elves are also very, very white.
  • A Bright Idea – Hack a Day: Our submitter writes: Woman comes up with nifty idea. Site reports about her. Comments filled with the usual She’s hot; and all important Why doesn’t she have a degree?
  • RIP Rosalyn S. Yalow, 89, Nobel winning medical physicist: Dr. Yalow, a product of New York City schools and the daughter of parents who never finished high school, graduated magna cum laude from Hunter College in New York at the age of 19 and was the college’s first physics major. Yet she struggled to be accepted for graduate studies. In one instance, a skeptical Midwestern university wrote: She is from New York. She is Jewish. She is a woman.
  • From 2008 (hey, it’s recent in academic terms…) Budden et al Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors, Trends in Ecology & Evolution: in 2001, double-blind review was introduced by the journal Behavioral Ecology. Following this policy change, there was a significant increase in female first-authored papers, a pattern not observed in a very similar journal that provides reviewers with author information
  • Tropebusting: Matriarchies in Gaming and Sci-Fi/Fantasy: The most prevalent of these tropes is that Matriarchies are Evil, like really, really super-duper EVIL. (Also, hey, bonus elves…)

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious, freelish.us or pinboard.in 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.

Wednesday Geek Woman: Barbara Burford, medical scientist, writer and diversity activist

This is a guest post.

Barbara Burford (1944–2010) was a medical scientist; a writer of fiction, plays and poetry; and a lifelong diversity activist. All these things she did with love, skill, panache and unfailing courage and good humour. It was a privilege and an inspiration to know her.

Born in Jamaica, Barbara moved in 1955 to England and subsequently studied at the University of London. She went on to specialise in electron microscopy and the work that she led at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children was central to several advances in heart and lung transplants for children in the 1980s.

At the same time as pursing her medical research, Barbara was active in UK feminist politics and publishing plays, poetry, short stories and a novella. In 1984, she contributed to the first Black British women’s poetry anthology: A Dangerous Knowing – Four Black Women Poets, and her play Patterns was produced at the Drill Hall theatre. In 1986, she published The Threshing Floor, a collection of stories including the title novella which is still a regular recommendation on school and Further Education reading lists in the UK and US. Her writing was informed not only by her lesbian identity but by her complex cultural identity “as a descendant of three different diasporas: African, Jewish and Scots.’

In the 90s, Barbara moved away from London and out of medical research, first into IT and then to pioneer diversity initiatives in the National Health Service and the Civil Service. From 1999, she served as director of equality and diversity at the Department of Health; from 2002 to 2005 she was director of diversity at the Department for Work and Pensions; and from 2005 onwards she was deputy director of the Centre for Inclusion and Diversity at the School of Health Studies, Bradford University as well as running her own consultancy. Many of Barbara’s initiatives are now well-established within the National Health Service and the Civil Service, and so have a lasting impact in the UK workplace.

And we are mistresses
of strong, wild air,
leapers and sounders
of depths and barriers.

Barbara Burford, “Women Talking”, 1984

The Guardian: Obituary
Barnes and Noble: The Threshing Floor
Amazon: A Dangerous Knowing — four black women poets
Barbara Burford Consulting: Barbara Burford’s diversity work

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Wednesday Geek Woman: Alice Stewart

Lesley Hall recently published an essay on the missing narratives of women in science in L Timmel Duchamp (ed), Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles , Aqueduct Press, 2010

My nomination is the British epidemiologist Alice Stewart (1906–2002), FRCP (Stewart was honoured with the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians when this had been accorded to very few women, and she was the first to be awarded the Fellowship while still under 40).

Stewart had a long and important career, of particular influence in the field of studying the impact of low doses of radiation. Her pioneering elucidation of the association between x-rays in pregnancy and increased probability of the offspring developing leukaemia, although the subject of considerable controversy, led to the introduction of greater measures of protection when x-raying women who were (or likely to be) pregnant and the introduction of new imaging techniques. She devised a pre-computer method of recording intricate epidemiological data which enabled it to be read in numerous ways, which she called ‘visible tape’. Her career was negatively affected by contemporary gender attitudes: for example, when she succeeded to the position of Director of the Institute of Social Medicine at Oxford, the post was downgraded.

She later (post-retirement from her Oxford post) became involved in investigating occupational health questions in the nuclear industry and was widely called upon to testify in legal cases for compensation. She was also involved with many activist groups, in the UK and internationally, concerned about the environmental impact of nuclear power, and was particularly closely concerned with the Greenham Common Women’s Camp (including, in her 80s, helping to organise a women’s rock concert in support of the camp). She remained research-active and travelled widely to speak to scientific conferences and activist groups into her 90s.

Wikipedia: Alice Stewart
The Guardian: Obituary
The Independent: Obituary
The Right Livelihood Award 1986: Alice Stewart
Wellcome Library: Go ask Alice

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Quick hit: Men, Medicine, and Meritocracy vs Affirmative Action

It was those very numbers that made me start to look at the breakdown of the applicant pool, in terms of the ratio of male to female, and the discovery of what was, I think, an over-emphasis on grade point average.

Normally we hear words like this when we’re talking about low female enrollment, but in the case of medicine, it seems that meritocracy is failing the men.

The Globe and Mail article asks, “Is affirmative action for men the answer to enrolment woes?” and the article talks about how they’ve broadened the selection criteria so the focus is less on marks so that more men meet the cutoff.

Some other choice quotes:

[Some] universities across [Canada] have been tinkering with admissions to boost the number of men in medical school – looking beyond marks to give male applicants, in particular, credit for things like community service.
[…]
While women apply to medical school in record numbers – and make up nearly 60 per cent of students admitted – men still stand a better chance of being accepted in every province but three, according to data from the entering class of 2007. They were Alberta, Quebec and Prince Edward Island.

The notion of a stealth policy of affirmative action for men is not new. It first surfaced south of the border in 2006. That year, the dean of Kenyon College wrote an op-ed in The New York Times lamenting that she had to pass over “glorious stacks of girls” in favour of less qualified boys in order to keep some semblance of a gender balance at the school. She said the trend is widespread in postsecondary schools in order to keep themselves marketable.

Dr. Cappon says it’s an image issue here too: “If it looks like a woman’s program, you’ll have trouble attracting both men and women.”

What do you think of stealth affirmative action? I’ve definitely had many a bitter male student rant that it’s happening for women in CS, but to be completely honest it’s largely been the less successful students who wouldn’t have made the grade anyhow and just wanted a scapegoat. However, this is the first I’ve heard a public admission of universities doing this sort of thing and I’m curious now if it’s been done for other faculties for any other groups other than men in medicine.

The wicked step-linkspammer (11th June, 2010)

  • tigtog highlights editorials and articles in Nature questioning sex bias in medical testing, particularly the exclusion of pregnant subjects.
  • harpers_child is angry: Batman fans asked DC Comics for a in-comic memorial for Stephanie Brown, a female Robin. And one of the DC Comics writers comes out with threats of violence over it.
  • Shelby Knox asks What Does a Feminist Wear?: So, what do you/would you wear to represent your feminism? Do you consciously choose your outfits before you go out to commit public acts of feminism? What are the fashion stereotypes of feminists that you would like to see shattered and are there some visual signifiers you’d like to keep around?
  • Hardcore Maleness: Let’s cut through the crap, shall we? The terms casual and hardcore are codes… Hardcore equals masculine. Casual equals feminine. It’s just that simple, and all the marketing-speak about core gamers won’t change that.
  • FEMINIST HULK has a big following on Twitter, now there’s more from the big green patriarchy-smashing machine: FEMINIST HULK SMASH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MS.!. Comics Alliance also introduces other feminist comic heroes on Twitter.
  • Alisa Krasnostein writes about The Invisibility of Women in Science Fiction about two recent attempts to highlight Big Names, which of all possible women candidates, included only Ursula Le Guin and Mary Shelley.
  • Moose J. Finklestein notes that despite an explicit comments policy against sexism, Comsumerist.com is unwilling to act when it happens.
  • Naomi Baker writes about how women in developing countries can be severely restricted by lack of access to menstrual products in High Cotton.
  • Kimli posts as part of a Twitter discussion of children at the Northern Voice social media conference: … it’s up to the parents to arrange something; not the Northern Voice organizers… but this year, no one arranged anything. People brought their children, and there was nowhere to put them.
  • Sumana Harihareswara interviews Elizabeth Smith, maintainer of PHP-GTK, for GNOME journal.

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.