tim | Entries tagged with links

'Ladies' Is Gender Neutral, by Alice Goldfuss (2016-09-15). "I hope this has opened some people’s eyes to what it feels like to be excluded, and how something so simple as a shirt that fits can make an impact."

My Childhood Was Appropriate For Children, by Annalee for The Bias (2016-09-23). "Bisexuality is perfectly appropriate for children, because many children are bisexual. Treating bisexuality as an ‘adult’ topic? As if it’s a deviation kids couldn’t possibly understand? That’s what’s not appropriate for children."

Valuing chronically ill graduate students, by Sarcozona for Tenure, She Wrote (2016-09-22). "None of my colleagues would ever say to me that they think I shouldn’t be a scientist or that chronically ill and disabled students should be barred from academia, but when there isn’t (adequate) funding for sick students, chronically ill students are effectively excluded from academia."

ADHD Tipping Points: Why people with ADHD suddenly seem to fall apart, and what you can do about it, by Emily Morson for Mosaic of Minds (2016-09-15). About why people with chronic illness (whether that illness is categorized as mental or physical) often seem to function normally up to a point, then fall apart during adulthood -- writte about ADHD, but I think it can apply just as well to C/PTSD and probably many other illnesses.

[CW: rape] Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now, by Thomas MacAulay Millar for Yes Means Yes (2013-10-20). Lots of good points in this, including the importance of noticing boundary-pushing, and this: "What can people do with unsubstantiated accusations? Quite a lot, actually."

Two pieces on the trash fire that is Out magazine's decision to profile professional harassment campaign organizer Milo Yiannopoulos:

Out’s editor-in-chief: controversial Milo Yiannopoulos story is ‘a great, top-notch profile piece’, by Sam Stecklow for Fusion (2016-09-22). "Charges that Yiannopoulos has been given space in Out over queer people of color or queer women reflect the magazine’s persistent problems when it comes to representation. Out, founded in 1992, was initially targeted at both queer men and women, but it has since become squarely aimed at the profitable niche of style-conscious young white gay men."
This is the problem with the profile of internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos in 'Out', by Gabriel Arana for Mic (2016-09-22). "In fact, you do not have to profile a white supremacist as if he were Jacqueline Kennedy showing off the White House. You don't have to profile a white supremacist at all."

Occupy Wall Street, five years on: fire in the dustbin of history, by Laurie Penny for the New Statesman (2016-09-17). 'Being on the left is, in some ways, an exercise in learning how to fail. Of course, all resistance movements eventually fail, because those which do not succeed in overhauling the existing order invariably become the existing order. Wilson, writing as Bey, reminds us that the Temporary Autonomous Zones are, by their nature, ephemeral. “Such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. You can't stay up on the roof forever — but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred — a difference is made.”'

Take the Cake: Fat Fury, Fat Love — Claiming 'Fat Space' In Activist Communities, by Virgie Tovar for Ravishly (2016-09-08). "I too feel intense pressure to be perpetually kind, patient, and educational whenever I write or speak about fat discrimination and body image. Often, I do genuinely feel kind and patient and educational. The problem is that when I don’t feel that way, I am expected to bypass feelings of anger or disappointment in favor of sublimation, with the idea being that this sublimation benefits me/all people (since I am a subset of all people)."

Why I Quit My Job To Live Off My Private Wealth, by Fiona Pearce for Reductress (2016-09-20). "Life is about choices, and you only get one life to live. The only way to take control of your destiny is to decide how you really want to spend your time—which is why I chose to quit my job and live off my vast personal fortune."

I thought I would make a list of my favorite Geek Feminism Blog posts, since it's a bit hard to find some of the great older posts there. I omitted my own posts as well as most cross-posts. (Excluding cross-posts excluded some of my favorite posts, alas, but I wanted to focus on content originally published on the GF blog.)

2009

Why We Document, by Mary Gardiner. "But what makes it worth it for me is that when people are scratching their heads over why women would avoid such a revolutionarily free environment like Free Software development, did maybe something bad actually happen, that women have answers."

Questioning the Merit of Meritocracy, by Skud.

2010

But Women Are an Advanced Social Skill, by Mary Gardiner.

Is requiring Open Source experience sexist?, by Mary Gardiner.

Self-confidence tricks, by Terri Oda.

Geek feminism as opposed to mainstream feminism?, by Mary Gardiner.

How to Appear Incompetent in One Easy Step, by Amber Baldet.

When You Are the Expert in the Room, by Mary Gardiner.

Meritocracy? Might want to re-think how you define merit., by Terri Oda. "It’s not the intelligence of the group members that matters; it’s their social sensitivity."

"Why don't you just hit him?, by Mary Gardiner. "Harassment is not a private matter between harasser and victim, and it’s not the victim’s job to put a stop to it."

Letting down my entire gender, by Terri Oda. "You feel like changing the world rests in your hands, and you let the world down because you had to say no. You had to quit. You had to hide."

2011

On competence, confidence, pernicious socialization, recursion, and tricking yourself, by Sumana Harihareswara. "It’s as though my goalposts came on casters to make them easier to move"

Impostor syndrome and hiring power, by Mary Gardiner.

in memory of nina reiser, by mizchalmers

Geeks as bullied and bullies, by Mary Gardiner

Online harassment as a daily hazard: when trolls feed themselves, by Mary Gardiner.

On being harassed: a little GF history and some current events, by Skud. 'I didn’t quit because I couldn’t handle the technology, or because I had a baby, but because I had become fundamentally disenchanted with a “community” (please imagine me doing sarcastic air quotes) that supports the kind of abuse I’ve experienced and treats most human-related problems — from harassment to accessibility to the infinite variety of names people use (ahem ahem Google Plus) — as “too hard”.'

2012

What she really said: Fighting sexist jokes the geeky way!, by Jessamyn Smith.

How I Got 50% Women Speakers at My Tech Conference, by Courtney Stanton.

I take it we aren’t cute enough for you?, by Mary Gardiner. "I want to get this out in the open: people love to support geek girls, they are considerably more ambivalent about supporting geek women."

Pipeline Guilt, by Jessamyn Fairfield. "It’s a heavy burden to want to be the best example for women in your field, at the expense of your own happiness. And it’s easy to hear about the leaky pipeline and see it as prescriptive, implying that individual women have to choose to stay in the pipeline in order to help solve the problem."

How do you look for jobs in an industry known for biases against women?, by Terri Oda.

2013

Dear male allies: your sexism looks a bit like my racism, by mizchalmers. "Here’s what I want to tell you, dear male allies. It is such a relief. Listening to other peoples’ voices? Is incredibly moving, and humbling, and endlessly interesting. Shutting the hell up while I do it? God, how I love the sound of not-my-own-voice. Going into battle against racists and so forth? So much easier, now that I have a faint clue what’s actually going on."

Book Club: Three times a Geek Feminist walked away from Omelas (and two times she didn’t), by mizchalmers. "Now I think the best we can do is practise vigilance. To watch out for people who might be locking children in rooms. And to refrain from locking children in rooms ourselves."

Tech confidence vs. tech competence, by Alex. "This is in stark contrast to communities where tech competence is valued above all else: where people feel they have to hide their mistakes. In such settings we routinely observe low volunteering rates from people in marginalised groups, with low retention from beginning volunteers, because people are too scared to ask for help or too scared to admit that they don’t know how things work."

2014

It is easier now that I look like a guy, by Fortister. "Instead of spending my weekend hacking open source I spend my weekend figuring out how to defend the notion of my humanity."

Dropping the F bomb, by Skud. "Women in tech groups are not necessarily feminist. Some actively work against feminist ideals."

Adult Film Site XHamster Buys Alexis Arquette Sex Tape, Immediately Destroys All Copies, by Don Crothers for Inquisitr (2016-09-18). Good.

White Woman at Her ‘Most Authentic’ When Appropriating Other Cultures, by Taryn Englehart for Reductress (2016-03-08).

To find Hillary Clinton likable, we must learn to view women as complex beings, by Caroline Siede for Boingboing (2016-09-15). "So why is Clinton critiqued for raising her voice like Sanders, speaking hard truths like Biden, and making an awkward Pokémon Go reference we almost certainly would have dubbed a “dad joke” had Kaine said it? Why do we find their flaws likable and Clinton’s flaws off-putting? Why isn't she seen as America's awkward aunt or nerdy stepmom?"

26 Things Emotionally Strong People Do, by Jeremy Radin (2016-08-25). "Emotionally Strong people have four emotions: strong, abundance, no I am not having a panic attack I’m just tired from being so busy manifesting what I am blessed about every day, and hashtag."

The lasting impact of white teachers who mispronounce minority student names, by Clare McLaughlin for Quartz (2016-09-07). '...it’s okay to make an error, “but it is not okay to ignore the mistake or not learn from it.”'

All 314 Bruce Springsteen Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best, by Caryn Rose for Vulture (2016-09-13). I feel personally attacked by this list in all sorts of ways, but I enjoyed reading it.

Mansplaining: how not to talk to female Nasa astronauts, by Laura Bates for the Guardian (2016-09-13). "In the meantime, here is a good rule of thumb for overenthusiastic men on Twitter to follow: if she’s wearing a Nasa spacesuit, take a minute to consider whether you really want to tell her how to do her job."

Why You Shouldn’t Label People “Low Performers”, by Ryan W. Quinn for the Harvard Business Review (2016-09-14). In general, labeling is a cognitive distortion. In specific, this article talks about why labeling employees as "good" or "bad" workers undermines an organization.

The Collective Gaslighting of the Trigger Warning Debate, by Miri (Brute Reason) for The Orbit (2016-09-13). "If people are telling you that they are trying to engage with trauma-related material and you insist that they’re actually saying that they want to avoid it–or literally ban it from being taught–you are gaslighting them. You are insisting that you know better than they do what’s inside their own heads. You are pretending that they said something other than what they actually said, making them doubt their own thoughts and words."

Real Talk: Women in Tech and Money, by Cate Huston (2016-09-15). "...if you know that part your career is likely to be over within ten years, you (if you are sensible) factor that into your financial planning. Looking at the data, it makes sense for women in tech to do the same."

One Tweet Shows What Silicon Valley Really Thinks of the People It's Crushing, by Jack Smith IV for Mic (2015-08-03). "Washio doesn't create or provide goods — it's really just a middleman. It doesn't replace laundromats, it just takes your laundry to other laundry facilities and "third-party providers" and does it for you." (The free market doesn't work) "If we stop sharing risk and responsibility, only those who already hold wealth and privilege will benefit."

HSAs are the worst new hotness in healthcare, by Amy (2016-08-29). Health insurance sucks.

Trauma, Trigger Warnings, and Making a Little Space, by Emily C. Heath (2016-08-27). "But that’s not what trigger warnings are about. They’re not “get out of hard conversations free” cards. Rather, they are conscious ways of telling the people involved in a conversation what they are about to see and hear." If you're a hospital chaplain warning a family about what their loved one who's been in an accident might look like before they go in to see them, that's a form of trigger warning. When not contextualized as "trigger warnings", somehow a lot of people have an easier time understanding why they're needed.

Teaching with Trauma: Trigger Warnings, Feminism, and Disability Pedagogy, by Angela M. Carter (2015). Suggested by

jesse_the_k. So many good quotes from this, including:

"Whether or not we consider the affect and effects of trauma on pedagogy is a choice only for those whose lives are not already shaped by trauma. For us, there is no choice; our experiences of trauma shape how we move through the world. "
"...experiences of re-traumatization or being triggered are not the same as being challenged outside of one's comfort zone, being reminded of a bad feeling, or having to sit with disturbing truths."
'When this occurs, the triggered individuals often feel a complete loss of control and disassociation from the bodymind. This is not a state of injury, but rather a state of disability. Because others understand this lost of control and the other related affects as emotionally disproportionate, the traumatized individual is no longer seen as reliable, or as having the ability to "make sense."'
"Throughout their report, the AAUP repeatedly equates trauma with being offended, made to feel uncomfortable, or responding negatively with a claim of injury. As noted above, being triggered or re-experiencing trauma entails a fully embodied shift in affect wherein any number of psychosomatic responses may occur without one's cognitive control. This is not the same thing as, for example, the discomfort that comes with confronting one's white privilege, or the feeling of personal injury that may come when someone challenges your belief system. With this fundamental misunderstanding grounding their response, it is no wonder the AAUP argues against trigger warnings."
"Those in opposition to trigger warnings in classroom reinforce the individual model of disability, suggesting that the traumatized or triggered individual seek help on their own from the proper medical establishments. It is the responsibility of the traumatized to deal with their excessive bodymind, not the society that produces and then pathologizes it as such."
'Margaret Price argues there is a "popular conception that unsound minds have no place in the classroom" and that the academy is driven "to protect academic discourse as a 'rational' realm, a place where emotion does not intrude (except within carefully proscribed boundaries), where 'crazy' students are quickly referred out of the classroom to the school counseling center"'
'In the most basic sense, accommodations are not about "safety," but about access to opportunity for a more livable life.' [I'd note that this is a bit dismissive here of the concept of safe spaces, but it's true that safe spaces are a different different concept from TWs/CWs.]
"...trigger warnings do not provide a way to "opt out" of anything, nor do they offer protection from the realities of the world. Trigger warnings provide a way to "opt in" by lessening the power of the shock and the unexpectedness, and granting the traumatized individual agency to attend to the affect and effects of their trauma. Traumatized individuals know that trigger warnings will not save us. Such warnings simply allow us to do the work we need to do so that we can participate in the conversation or activity. They allow us to enter the conversation, just like automatic doors allow people who use wheelchairs to more easily enter a building."
"A college classroom, or campus, that adequately accounts for the material realities of diverse bodyminds is almost inconceivable within an institution built on awarding individual merit over acknowledging structural privileges and inequalities." [Emphasis added]
'nothing is "wrong" with person who is experiencing a moment of re-traumatization, or any other kind of disability-related affective experience.'

The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, by Audre Lorde (1981). A classic.

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

The ignorance aimed at Caster Semenya flies in the face of the Olympic spirit, by Katrina Karzakis for the Guardian (2016-08-23). I get furious every time I think about it.

Two more posts on enabling narcissists and why we should stop doing that: The Blood-bag: Cutting the IV line (2016-08-23) and
The Blood-bag: Patterns of Blood-bags and Narcissists in Tech
(2016-08-24), by Marlena Compton and Valerie Aurora. "We learn all of our relationship patterns in our families of origin and bring them to work or to our chosen communities every day."

Those Trump Statues Aren’t Funny, And They Sure Aren’t Progressive, by Marissa Jenae Johnson for The Establishment (2016-08-19). Body-shaming isn't the way to fight fascism.

Stop Devaluing Black Women’s Labor, by Kronda Adair (2016-08-18). If you want something, it's worth paying for. Especially emotional labor.

The Comedy World Can’t Handle Rape Allegations, by Emily McComb for The Cut (2016-08-18).

[CW: child abuse, medical abuse] Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered, by Michelle Dean for Buzzfeed (2016-08-18). An incredible piece of writing about a survivor of a parent with Munchausen's by proxy who gets revenge.

Assimilation, fetishisation and the problem with white queer activism, by Muhammad Taha for Archer (2016-09-02). About the problems that happen when queer movements are dominated by the most privileged (i.e. white peopl).

Why do evangelicals think everyone is addicted to porn?, by Dianna E. Anderson (2015-08). "...the pathologizing of everyday human interaction with their own bodies and their own sexuality is a further example of purity culture and the evangelical fear of our own bodies. "

[CW: police violence, domestic violence] Officers who abuse their partners are a greater threat to public safety, by Jarvis DeBerry for the New Orleans Times-Picayune (2016-09-02). Cops are more likely to abuse their partners than the general population is, and abusive cops also pose more of a danger to their partners than abusers who aren't cops do.

So You Think You Should Respond to That Facebook Post About Race/Gender/Etc, by thespanofmyhips (2016-09-01). On why you might not just want to jump into any conversation even if it's public, especially if it involves experiences you haven't had.

The Woman You Want to Be is Rich, by Chelsea Fagan (2016-09-01). On how the goals that get sold to us are usually only attainable by rich people.

[CW: abuse, trauma] Kaleidoscopes of Chaos – How Traumatic Boundary Violations Destroy The Capacity for Self-Care, by Heidi Hanson (2016-08-12). On how cPTSD can leave you not knowing what self-care is. Hit home for me.

Prefer Narratives with Hope, by

sonia (2016-09). 'Whenever you find yourself thinking that you are crazy and wrong and bad, try a new narrative: “My perceptions and responses make sense. I am intrinsically good. I am doing my best with the resources and knowledge I have.”' So good!

The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle Loves Amy Grant, Rich Mullins, and the Book of Jonah by Kate Shellnutt for Christianity Today (2016-09-01). A great interview with a great artist, talking about the relationship between religious belief and his work.

Participation Awards Don’t Suck. You Suck by Jef Rouner for the Houston Press (2016-08-18). I love this! "There is absolutely nothing wrong with the best player getting a trophy, but there's also nothing wrong with everyone getting a little medal that says, "You were here with us. You didn't quit. You tried, and that matters." The only people who hate participation awards are those who feel like losers because they didn't even participate...

Political correctness isn’t the problem. The assholes who made it necessary are, and they want you to see them as the good guy, just like all bullies."

This week, the dean of students at the University of Chicago released an appallingly ignorant and anti-intellectual letter sent to incoming first-year undergrads that decried "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces", assuring students that he would make sure professors weren't free to use these concepts in their teaching. I'm linking to two articles related to this attack on academic freedom and on disabled students, though neither article recognizes that content warnings (or trigger warnings) are disability accommodations:

University of Chicago dean declares war on student autonomy, by PZ Myers (2016-08-26)
Straw Freshmen: Why the War on Campus PC Culture is Bullshit, by Vann Newkirk (2015-09-24). Yes, this is from almost a year ago, but the status quo warriors' tactics are so predictable that every word applies to the UChicago situation.

Neither author really seems to understand what PTSD is, either, and I wish I had an article by someone who actually has PTSD about the recent events to link to -- particularly one who thinks in a disability rights framework -- but alas.

Other links:

How Nextdoor reduced racist posts by 75%, by Kashmir Hill for Fusion (2016-08-25). Moderating racism isn't rocket science -- anyone with a site featuring user-generated content can do it if they care.
Straight White Men, by Chloe Reeson for Scum Mag (2016-08-25): "How can you explain to evidence-obsessed men that the reason you’re afraid of them is simply because you’ve experienced a space without them? It’s a tree falling in the woods type situation. They’ll never know because they’ll never see it. It’s hard to talk about the impact of straight white men because it is so pervasive, so quiet and insidious. The effect is so constant that it’s difficult to break it up into stories or reason. That’s why it so easy for some men to ask us to explain ourselves, to offer evidence that they immediately shoot down as petty or weak or specific. It’s easy for them to shoot holes in our evidence because they are snippets out of an experience whose toxicity is in its wearying constancy."
Two articles on grad student unionization at private universities (it's about time): Are they students? Or are they employees? NLRB rules that graduate students are employees. by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel for the Washington Post (2016-08-23) and Ruling Pushes Door to Grad-Student Unions ‘Wide Open’ by Peter Schmidt for the Chronicle of Higher Education (2016-08-24).
'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result, by Susan FitzGerald for the Philadelphia Inquirer (2013-07-22). Old, but it's still worth repeating that the "crack baby" moral panic of the '80s was a lie and that it's poverty, not drugs, that hurts kids.
The Central Park Five Ad Told Us Who Donald Trump Really Is, by Jamil Smith for MTV (2016-08-23).
Political Strategy and Buzzfeed’s analysis of “the Twitter problem”, by Flavia Dzodan (2016-08-18). Dzodan comes to a similar conclusion to the one I did in "The Democratization of Defamation": harassment continues on social media because it's a feature, not a bug.
The Right’s Favorite Anti-LGBT Doctor Strikes Again, by Samantha Allen for the Daily Beast (2016-08-23). On the right-wing disinformation campaign targeting trans kids for abuse.
I Got Hit In The Face With A Fish On The G Train, by Martin Bergman for The Awl (2016-08-24).

[CW: rape] I Anonymously Reported My Rape for the Anonymous Attention, by Nicole Silverberg for Reductress (2016-08-17). See, you can write humor that deals with rape and that's actually funny.

The Blood-bag: Co-narcissists and Narcissists in Tech, by Marlena Compton and Valerie Aurora (2016-08-22). On people who enable narcissists (i.e. most people who work in the tech industry.) The "blood bag" metaphor is so good.

How To Make a Real Commitment to Diversity, by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (2016-08-17). The description of professors who give lip service to diversity in their programs but refuse to take the slightest risk to encourage it (or even to, you know, discipline predatory people) is so familiar.

“You Do Not Exist To Be Used”: Dismantling Ideas of Productivity in Life Purpose, by Gillian Giles for The Body Is Not an Apology (2016-08-17). "You do not exist to be used."

Shameless plug: buy a "San Fran Trans Co" shirt from my friend's collective!

What It's Like to Have 'High-Functioning' Anxiety, by Sarah Schuster for The Mighty (2016-06-27). In general I don't find "high-functioning"/"low-functioning" typologies to be useful, and I don't find everything in this article rings true for me, but some of it does.

Meeting the Free Speech Crusaders Who Want to End Political Correctness, by Sam Kriss for Vice (2016-08-17). This line is brilliant, about why Internet trolls love citing the notion of "debate": "It's not hard to see why: only in a formal debate do you have to give stupid and boring ideas a hearing they don't deserve."

The Troubling Trendiness Of Poverty Appropriation, by July Westhale for The Establishment (2015-11-23). "It’s likely, from where I sit, that this back-to-nature and boxed-up simplicity is not being marketed to people like me, who come from simplicity and heightened knowledge of poverty, but to people who have not wanted for creature comforts. For them to try on, glamorize, identify with. "

I, Racist by John Metta (2015-07-06). "But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings."

Activism, Language, and Differences of Opinion, by Julia Serano (2016-07-19) -- links to some of Serano's greatest hits re: language, politics, and social justice.

Clean Eating and Dirty Women, by Flavia Dzodan (2016-08-03). "...the marketing of 'clean eating' is an extension of historical associations of womanhood with dirt, fear of female sexuality and a desire to control it."

Worthless Intent, by Cate Huston (2016-06-23). "The thing about intentions is that they are the start of conflict resolution, but we often talk like they are the end of conflict resolution. This is completely wrong. Believing that someone means well might get you to the table to talk to them, but it does not get you to agree with them."

“A Honeypot For Assholes”: Inside Twitter’s 10-Year Failure To Stop Harassment, by Charlie Warzel for Buzzfeed (2016-08-11). "On Twitter, abuse is not just a bug, but — to use the Silicon Valley term of art — a fundamental feature."

A massive new study debunks a widespread theory for Donald Trump’s success, by Max Ehrenfreund and Jeff Guo for the Washington Post (2016-08-12). Suggests Trump's popularity is due to racism more than economic insecurity.

Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation (a follow up), by Julia Serano (2016-08-11). Followup to Serano's essay on trans kids and "desistance" from last week.

[CW: pregnancy, childbirth, blood/gore] Monstrous Births, by Sarah Blackwood for The Hairpin (2016-08-10). "Fuck empowerment! Children are little death machines, they rip through your body. They chew on you. They are animals. We are animals, left bloody and with vulnerable bellies sliced after a good fight."

Fascinating Photos from the Secret Trash Collection in a New York Sanitation Garage, by Dylan Thuras (2016-03-17). Lovely pictures of well-organized things.

How MSG Got A Bad Rap: Flawed Science And Xenophobia, by Anna Maria Barry-Jester for FiveThirtyEight (2016-01-08). I share this every time it comes around. MSG sensitivity doesn't exist, yet even doctors believed it did for a long time because of racism.

[CW: description of experiences with childhood trauma and transmisogyny] Lack of abuse isn't enough, by Amy Dentata (2016-08-08). This quote stood out to me: "Now I feel more real when my girlfriend is around than when I’m by myself. I realize my life is full of negativity and emptiness. The war is over, but that’s not the same thing as being at peace." When abuse ends, that doesn't redress the void that comes from the absence of memories of being seen and heard.

Trust Yourself Despite Everyday Gaslighting, by

sonia (2016-08-01). Not just how to deal with gaslighting, but how to support people who are targeted by it.

The Abuse of 'Feel-Good' Cop Videos, by Ijeoma Oluo for The Establishment (2016-08-02). Speaking of gaslighting: 'Watching this video I understood what these “feel-good” video and picture campaigns put on by police departments really are—abuse. They are designed to remind us that they are in charge, and that they are capable of taking our lives in an instant—but if we are good and they are feeling benevolent, they won’t.'

Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates, by Julia Serano (2016-08-02). The definitive debunking of arguments for withholding medical care from trans kids.

"Normal America" Is Not A Small Town Of White People, by Jed Kolko for FiveThirtyEight (2016-04-28). It turns out that the towns white people think of as being representative of the US are more like those that would have been representative 50 years ago, and the most representative cities given current American demographics are coastal urban areas. Who knew?

How Trump Happened, by Jamelle Bouie for Slate (2016-03-13). How white fragility, and backlash against President Obama, brought us the nomination of Donald Trump. Obama's election didn't end racism, but rather, sparked a reactionary resurgence of it.

Telling white people the criminal justice system is racist just makes them like it more, by Dara Lind for Vox (2014-08-07). From two years ago, but I doubt anything's changed.

How We Pronounce Student Names, and Why it Matters, by Jennifer Gonzalez (2014-04-14). I know from a lifetime of experience that somebody refusing to pronounce your name right is an act of bigotry. Try not to be a bigot.

People resort to violence because their moral codes demand it, by Tage Rai for Aeon (2015-06-18): Violence isn't the product of mental illness. It's the result of the same, very mainstream belief system that frames morality in terms of coercion and punishment, from parenting to prisons. So long as we keep teaching people that violence is what must be done to people who transgress social norms, supposedly-senseless (but actually quite explicable) mass shootings and terrorist acts will continue. Tage Rai explains in detail how violence serves to "regulate social relationships":

Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory. They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should. Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.

Internet trolls are even more hostile when they’re using their real names, a study finds, by Michael J. Coren for Quartz (2016-07-27). A good companion piece to Rai's article, this one about online violence. Coren writes, "People are actually trying to enforce social norms against a perceived violation by a public figure or group," and they are so eager to enforce social norms that anonymity or lack thereof has little if any modulating effect on the desire to regulate others' behavior.

Donald Trump Is a Republican, by Tom Scocca for Gawker (2016-07-29). Trump isn't an anomaly, but rather, the logical conclusion of the past four decades of Republican politics:

Donald Trump is the product of half a century of Republican strategy and ideology. Republican voters nominated him because he’s what generations of Republicans have been guided by and encouraged to vote for.

Nothing about Trump is outside Republican mainstream precedent. It’s just that it’s never all been assembled so blatantly in one package before.

[CW: suicide, ableism] The Effects of Stigmatizing Language on Suicidal Autistics, by M. Kelter (2016-07-30). When you talk about people as if they're burdens, or if people like them should be wiped off the face of the earth, or as if they have no empathy, it turns out that that has an emotional effect on them: "I don't buy that the topic of autism compels us to denigrate autistics. You can tell your story ... and you can refrain from using stigmatizing language. Both of those things are possible, at the same time."

[Content seems to have been removed] ~~It looks like Russia hired Internet trolls to pose as pro-Trump Americans, by Natasha Bertrand for Business Inside (2016-07-27).~~ Ever wondered how some Internet trolls could be that awful? Maybe they're getting paid to be.

"i was asked by @misfitreindeer to make a post about skeletons and debunk a lot of typical transphobic myths about how, y’know, females look like X and males look like Y and that everything works in 100% black in white but it doesn’t actually...", by

werewolfxo on Tumblr (2016-01): turns out that you can't ascertain how somebody would have been placed in sexed or gendered categories based on their skeleton.

A poem about Silicon Valley, assembled from Quora questions about Silicon Valley, by Jason O. Gilbert for Fusion (2016-04-28)

Dog Whistles and Insults, by zvi LikesTV (2007-07-30). Yup, this is nine years old, but every word of it still applies as far as language and power: "Sometimes people have a problem when it comes to stopping using offensive language. They think that once they explain that they didn't mean to use the word 'that way' the offended party should change their feelings instead of trying to get the white person to change their behavior."

On a technicality, by Eevee (2016-07-22). About the need for both rules and trusted leadership in communities.

Firing Roger Ailes and exiling Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t going to fix much of anything, by Sady Doyle for Quartz (2016-07-22). "The truth is that harassment and abuse are never about individual people; they’re about structures. When we help the victims of harassment, the solution should not be to deal with a single offender; it should be to deal with all the people who enabled the problem to exist and refused to solve it until it reached a critical mass."

Reddit is still in turmoil, by Kate Conger and Megan Rose Dickey for Techcrunch (2016-07-21). Reddit is a trash fire, as a business and not just as a community.

What Science Says To Do If Your Loved One Has An Opioid Addiction, by Maia Szalavitz for FiveThirtyEight (2016-07-19), and for a somewhat different take, a Tumblr post: "...drug addiction, across the board, actually has the best prognosis of any mental illness without any treatment whatsoever."

How about some mixed corgi puppies? The Australian shepherd and golden retriever mixes are my faves.

How ‘Political Correctness’ Went From Punch Line to Panic, by Amanda Hess for the New York Times Magazine (2016-07-19). "In [Trump's] campaign, 'P.C.' is no longer just a joke, or a slick rhetorical tool for riling the base. It’s the shrewd recognition of a dark aspect of white American psychology: That many experience being told not to use certain words as a kind of violence."

I’m With The Banned, by Laurie Penny (2016-07-21). On Internet trolls and "weaponized insincerity": "Milo is the best player here. Like Trump, and like a lot of successful politicians in this postmodern circus, they channel their own narcissism to give voice to the wordless, formless rage of the people neoliberalism left behind. They offer new win conditions for the humiliated masses. Welcome to the scream room. There’s a cheese plate."

Your pipeline problem is that you’re not doing anything to reach the pipeline., by Kieran Snyder (2016-07-21). "If you’re looking in the same places, sourcing and talking to candidates the same way year after year, and not getting the results you want, it doesn’t mean that there’s a pipeline problem. However, it does unequivocally mean that your particular approach has roundly failed at tapping into whatever pipeline exists."

The Coming War on ‘Black Nationalists’, by Yohuru Williams for The Nation (2016-07-20). Everything old is new again: "To be clear: The black lives movement unapologetically focuses on the dignity and worth of black lives. The careless and dishonest way Duffy, Giuliani, Clarke and others chose to frame that movement creates a context that shifts attention away from the very police practices that nonviolent protesters are demonstrating against. "

Republican Convention 2016 Attendees Are Searching for Hot Gay Sex on Craigslist, by Nicolas DiDomizio for mic.com (2016-07-19). Of course, eh?

An open letter to the author of the "I'm a closeted trans woman and I'm not coming out" essay, by Katelyn Burns (2016-07-13). "How many times will a closeted trans person read your essay and convince themselves again that not transitioning is the correct move?"

Not your feminist dream girl, by Raquel Rosario Sanchez (2016-07-13). "Like men, women are multifaceted people who can simultaneously support terrible policies and empowering ones. They are political candidates whose personal and political lives may make us cringe at points and cry with emotion at others. Feminists have pushed for more strong, complex, imperfect female characters on TV and in film, in order to get away from the one-dimensional women we are usually presented with in media. In Hillary, we have an influential woman who is just that: she is not the easy-to-figure out stereotype we expect women to be."

Invisible Talent, by Kaya Thomas (2016-07-14). On the frustrations of being a Black female computer science major and being told by an industry desperate to pretend its cultural failure is a "pipeline problem" that you don't exist.

Evidence, by feministkilljoys (2016-07-12). "My proposition is simple: that the evidence we have of racism and sexism is deemed insufficient because of racism and sexism." Long, meaty article about the function of demands for evidence of racism and sexism.

"The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek", by Rosa Lyster (2016-07-14):

My advice is intended only for special occasions. It is for when you have an itch to scratch, and that itch is called, “a puerile desire to get on other people’s nerves.” All you do is stonily deny any knowledge of a person or cultural touchstone that you should, by virtue of your other cultural reference points, be aware of. These will of course be different for everyone, but my favorites include:

Žižek, John Updike, MORRISSEY (only for experts), Radiohead, Twin Peaks, David Lynch in general, Banksy (only for streetfighters), Withnail and I, Bauhaus (movement), Bauhaus (band), Afrika Burn, the expression “garbage person,” A Clockwork Orange, Steampunk (this one is really good), Jack Kerouac, “Gilmore Girls,” Woody Allen, the expression “grammar nerd,” the expression “grammar Nazi,” cocktails, bongs, magical realism, millennials, Cards Against Humanity, trance parties, bunting, many comedians, William Gibson, burlesque, the Beats, The God Delusion, sloths, anarchism, Joy Division, CrossFit, “The Mighty Boosh,” and Fight Club.

A White Male Led Revolution Against American Inequality, You Say?, by D Frederick Sparks (2016-05-22). "This blind spot, not being able to see these things because they don’t have to, is why I find it highly unlikely that white male left progressives are going to be the ones who identify and anoint the messianic figure in American politics who will lead the revolution against inequality. And if I had to wager, I wouldn’t put my money on said messianic figure being a privileged white male from the Northeast. I’d put my money on a black woman from the south or a Latina from the Southwest, someone who on an ontological and inter-sectional level understands the various power paradigms that contribute to unfairness in this country and can competently speak to and address all of them, and not just get fixated on one."

Dissociation is scary. Dissociation is safety, by Sarah Gailey for the Boston Globe (2016-05-08). CW: firsthand discussion of having PTSD and being triggered. This article describes what it's like for one person to have PTSD -- it's only somewhat close to my own experience, and if it isn't like this for you then you shouldn't assume it means you don't have PTSD, but more stories are always useful.

Martin Luther King’s hate mail eerily resembles criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement, by David Matthews (2015-08-18). Title says it all.

Baby Storm five years later: Preschooler on top of the world, by Jessica Botelho-Urbanski for the Toronto Star (2016-07-11). Remember the news story from five years ago about the Canadian family who declined to assign a gender to their newborn? Storm is five now and she's doing great.

Processing, by Erica Joy (2016-07-06). About the alienation of being Black and working in a white-dominated workplace with people who don't seem aware of what you have to be aware of.

"my best employee quit on the spot because I wouldn’t let her go to her college graduation", by Alison Green (Ask a Manager) (2016-07-05). Look, who knows if this letter is real or not, but bosses are scum and it well could be.

Is The New York Times Collaborating With Anti-Trans Lawmakers?, Chase Strangio (2016-05-22). When all the media coverage of an issue uses the same tropes, you have to start asking questions.

Stop Talking about Men in Women's Restrooms, Chase Strangio (2016-05-17). 'You might believe that a person’s genitals define their “biological” sex but that does not make it so and continuing to put forth that narrative without challenging it as an ideological position as opposed to a fact is extremely harmful.'

What To Do Instead of Calling the Police: A Guide, A Syllabus, A Conversation, A Process, by Aaron Rose. A compilation of links on that subject, which I plan to work my way through.

Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism–from Ferguson to Charleston, by Jon Greenberg (2015-07-10). Likewise.

If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention, by Rachel Thomas (2015-07-27). Seriously, stop blaming "the pipeline" for your inaction.

"Managing Assholes", by Jess Rose (2016-06-27). "I don’t care what kind of skills your toxic team member brings with them, you can afford to remove them from your team. "

"Euthanasia as a Dutch Neoliberal Success Story", by Flavia Dzodan (2016-06-29). Raises some troubling questions about what it means to choose to end your life in a capitalist society where few people actually get to make free choices.

"The Puzzle Box of Shame", by

sonia (2016-06-01). "If the adults around us do not provide soothing touch and welcoming delight, we learn instead that we have to earn our place in the world by being quiet enough, or strong enough, or unemotional enough. We believe, before we have words, that there is something terribly wrong with us. We question our right to exist. We feel ashamed to the core."

"Buying Coffee Every Day Isn’t Why You’re in Debt", by Helaine Olen for Slate (2016-05-26). Speaking of shame, we all get taught to feel ashamed of not having any money and taught that it's our fault for wasting it on things we enjoy. The article debunks that pernicious lie.

"Killing Dylann Roof", by Ta-Nehisi Coates for the Atlantic (2016-05-26). A look at which people are socially pressured into forgiving, and which ones are socially sanctioned for committing violence.

"US nuclear force still uses floppy disks", BBC News (2016-05-26). Title says it all.

"This may shock you: Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest", by Jill Abramson for The Guardian (2016-03-28). Criticize Clinton for her policies, but most of what she's actually getting criticized for is baseless.

"Hillary Clinton isn't progressive. She's just the lesser evil in the general election", by Kiese Laymon for the Guardian (2016-04-27). The best piece I've read about the election so far.

"There's a gender divide on nuclear power, but it doesn't mean what you think it means", by David Roberts for Vox (2015-05-27). 'What looked like a gender divide on nuclear power is in fact mostly a function of the "extreme risk skepticism" of "white hierarchical and individualistic" males. (In the US, "white hierarchical and individualistic" males generally go by the more economical "conservatives.")' If you want to claim that everyone who opposes nuclear energy is just unscientific and stupid, then you need to be prepared to argue that white men are more likely to be scientifically educated and smart than everybody else is. (Spoiler alert: there's no evidence for that.)

"White Supremacy and Magic Paper", by The Rancid Honeytrap (2015-03-27). "My main objection is to the doctrine of free speech absolutism. In addition to directing the attention, resources and goodwill of decent people to organizations and individuals that would imprison and murder them if they could, it perniciously minimizes the genocidal and avaricious politics with which it makes common cause; it promotes a view of power and social change so ahistoric and infantile it qualifies as magical thinking; and it promotes libertarian as opposed to communitarian values and politics. "

"The Self-Storage Self", by Jon Mooallem for the New York Times Magazine (2009-06-06). Storage units as "our last national commons — places where nearly every conceivable kind of American still goes." (I find storage units endlessly fascinating, and this article feeds my love for the topic.)

First of all, some shameless bragging: my friends Jamie and Marley were on the front page of Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle, making out at Trans March!

I was also proud to witness Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Scott Wiener getting booed off the stage at Trans March. You can't support trans people while supporting police and criminalizing homelessness.

Unrelatedly, here's an adult capybara booping a baby capybara.

Orlando shooting: It’s different now, but Muslims have a long history of accepting homosexuality, by Shoaib Daniyal for scroll.in (2016-06-27). A cool trick that Western white supremacists pull is to attribute blame for homophobia exported by Western countries onto the Asian and African countries into which they exported it. You don't have to fall for it.

"No more rock stars: how to stop abuse in tech communities", by Valerie Aurora, Mary Gardiner, and Leigh Honeywell (2016-06-21). I'm very proud to call the authors of this article my friends; they offer a comprehensive analysis of tech communities' handling of abuse and harassment, as well as many actionable suggestions.

"Patching exploitable communities", by Tom Lowenthal (2016-06-21). A great, succinct summary of the aforementioned article.

KatieConf - if you can write an entire conference lineup consisting only of women named various forms of "Katherine"/"Catherine"/"Katie", then what's your excuse for not being able to find women speakers?

"Who Gets To Be The 'Good Schizophrenic'?", by Esmé Weijun Wang for Buzzfeed (2016-04-07). When we talk about mental illness in an attempt to destigmatize it, we need to go further than drawing a line between nice, friendly mentally ill people who are "only" anxious and depressed, and scary, dangerous mentally ill people who are schizophrenic.

Lecture by John Darnielle at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing (audio, 2016-04-14). I would listen to John Darnielle talk about pretty much anything for 47 minutes, so I don't really know how to sell you on this if you wouldn't.

I'm going to try doing a weekly linkspam post, because why not? Maybe it'll motivate me to get through my Pinboard backlog.

"Parents, right? Psh, who needs em!", by Talia Jane (2016-06-20). A hot personal take on the silencing of people who were parented incompetently. "Why would you care about the rocky nature of my personal life? Well, why do you think I’d care about how healthy your personal life is? Why would you think I’d enjoy seeing happy photos of you with your parents, outside of the fact that I might be happy you’re not curled up in a ball crying for six hours?"
Unsuck It: A bullshit-business-jargon-to-English translator (occasional ableism but on the whole pretty on-the-mark). "wellness: A notional substitute for a decent health insurance plan. Frequently includes chipper admonishments to do obvious things, such as get off your ass and walk or eat more vegetables."
"creativity and responsibility", by graydon2 (2016-06-17). On "creativity" as applied to software development: "I think 'creative' also serves as a rhetorical dodge about expectations, or perhaps more bluntly: responsibilities." Tangentially, this post reminds me of a quote from Samuel Delany that I love:
The sad truth is, there’s very little that’s creative in creativity. The vast majority is submission – submission to the laws of grammar, to the possibilities of rhetoric, to the grammar of narrative, to narrative’s various and possible restructurings. In a society that privileges individuality, self-reliance, and mastery, submission is a frightening thing.

(I think the software industry could do with a bit more submission to models, and there's probably something to be teased out here about why some people are so resistant to type systems and other forms of static verification.)
"To Keep The Blood Supply Safe, Screening Blood Is More Important Than Banning Donors", by Maggie Koerth-Baker for FiveThirtyEight (2016-06-18). We've all known for a long time that the ban on MSM donating blood is based in homophobia and not science, but it's always nice to see more evidence of that.
"The Myth of the Violent, Self-Hating Gay Homophobe", by Cari Romm for New York magazine (2016-06-16). No, homophobes aren't all (or even mostly) closeted self-hating queers. Hetero people really do hate us that much.
Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks, by Jia Tolentino for Jezebel (2016-06-15). Long, harrowing interview with a woman who had a very late-term abortion. Makes me feel glad that there are still a few doctors courageous enough to provide this care, and sad that so many have been terrorized out of doing it.
"How Bernie Sanders Exposed the Democrats’ Racial Rift", by Issac J. Bailey for Politico (2016-06-08). "To minority voters, Trump’s candidacy feels like an existential threat. It’s one thing for Republicans to either ignore or embrace his racism; the party already seems unwilling or incapable of making the kinds of adjustments it must to attract more non-white voters. It’s quite another for white Democrats to not appreciate how liberal minorities feel about the possibility of a Trump presidency and what that would say about the state of racial progress in America. It would be a slap in the face, the latest sign that a kind of white privilege—throwing a temper tantrum because they don’t get their way despite how much it hurts people of color—is deeply rooted within liberal, Democratic ranks as well."
"The Ethics of Mob Justice", by Sady Doyle for In These Times (2013-11-08). Unfortunately, relevant again. "So we’re left with upholding structural principles, and this brings me to the Internet’s other poisoned gift to social justice: Even as it enhances our ability to censure those who violate the social contract, it makes the individual members of that society more visible, warts and all. Where the radicals of previous generations could spout high-minded rhetoric about the Common Man, Womankind or the Human Spirit while interacting mainly with the limited circle of people they found tolerable, we contemporary activists have to uphold our principles while dealing with the fact that actual common men, women and human spirits are continually being presented to us in harshly lit, unflattering close-up..." (I don't read this article as being opposed to public shaming, and I'm certainly not. Just as taking a skeptical eye to the targeting of women for having unacceptable feelings in public.)

I find myself looking for this collection of links so often (and I just assembled it for a comment elsewhere) that I'm going to put it here in one place:

Edited to add, 2018-09-15: ScienceVet, "Biological sex is a spectrum" -- this thread, from a biologist who studies sex differentiation, uses slightly different wording than I would, but the point is the same. He says that biological sex is a spectrum and that anything other than "each individual has a different biological sex" is an approximation. To me, that's equivalent to saying that the sex binary (or even the sex binary with a few exceptions for common ways of being intersex) is a social construct, because any partitioning of the spectrum is arbitrary and socially mediated. This is a slightly easier-to-read rendering of the same Twitter thread, but it's missing some of the points from the original thread.
- '...any decision about how to select sex classifications is inherently projecting subjectivity onto a complex situation regarding "which features matter"' -- @Chican3ry (a reply to the above thread)
Amy Dentata, “An Introduction for Biological Women/Warning for Non-Biological Women” (This one has the advantage of being funny, so if you just want one link, take this one.)
Natalie Reed, "Bilaterally Gynandromorphic Chickens, And Why I’m Not 'Scientifically' Male"
Mey (for Autostraddle), "It’s Time For People to Stop Using the Social Construct of 'Biological Sex' to Defend Their Transmisogyny"
kaberett, "Terms you don't get to describe me in, #2: female-bodied"
Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello, "The Phalloclitoris: Anatomy and Ideology"
Annetta Gaiman, Annetta's Trans 101
Kinsey Hope, "Male/Female: Broken Language?"
EmilyEmilyEmily, "Sex Is Also a Social Construct"
Unpitchable, "Language Tips for Cis Feminists Speaking on Trans Issues"
Samantha Allen, "No, Kevin D. Williamson, sex is not a biological reality"

Insistence on the objective truth of the culturally mediated ideological construct called "biological sex" is anti-trans, anti-intellectual, and anti-science. It is indistinguishable from misgendering -- in fact, it's a form of misgendering clothed in ersatz scientific terminology -- and as such, it's violence against trans and gender-non-conforming people, but especially against trans women and other people who were coercively assigned male at birth but reject that designation.

When I say Portland is segregated, this is what I mean. Unfortunately -- and contrary to my intuition -- Boston is only somewhat better. The two cities I'd most like to add as adopted homes, New York and LA are... somewhat better still, I guess that's all I can say. Thanks to

techstep for the link.

Tim's journal

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[Linkspam] Monday, September 26

The best of geekfeminism.org (according to me)

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