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Viewing all posts tagged "feminism"
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Etsy wants to know: Are you a woman looking to become a better developer?
New York City startup Etsy, in conjunction with New York-based Hacker School, just announced a new scholarship and sponsorship program, including $50,000 in Etsy Hacker Grants, for women in tech. The program plans to welcome 20 women pursuing engineering jobs to New York and is focused on bringing more women into engineering positions at Etsy and across the industry.
Learn more about the program and apply here. -
Beset by the seemingly insurmountable problems of raising a young family, and confined to the home most of the time, her symptons reflect a sense of inadequacy and isolation.
Serax (oxazepam) cannot change her environment, of course. But it can relieve anxiety, tension, agitation, and irritability.
You can’t set her free. But you can help her feel less anxious.
(via BoingBoing)
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In Defense of Fake Beauty
‘Natural’ beauty slyly requires us to use just enough makeup, spending just enough money and putting in just enough effort to convince people there was never any money or effort or makeup involved.
And, as it turns out, such an achievement doesn’t come particularly cheap, or particularly easy. The cult of natural beauty does not, in reality, ask us to strip away our feminine ‘fakery’, but rather to make our fakery more subtle and more convincing, which requires ever more expertise, ever more specialised products, and ever more anxiety about getting it wrong. A dress that doesn’t flatter her, an uneven streak of foundation, a dodgy hair dye job: signs of failure, mocked because they signal ineptness at mastering our image - the ultimate sin of womanhood.
We live in a culture where the natural is made synonymous with the real, the authentic, the true and, by implication, the good. We live in a culture that still persuasively naturalises inequality, and we live in a culture where deviations from ‘natural’ states of gender and sexuality are met with heavy penalties.
Society’s unnaturals are forced to constantly work at convincing it that they’re real enough and honest enough to be accepted into its fold: that they were “born this way”, that they have an authentic, immutable origin of identity (a gene, a brain structure, a hormone) and a doctor’s note to prove it. All this is demanded of them in order to validate their very existence, and still they are regarded with brutal suspicion.
What we have is not a war against fakery, it is a war against that which displays itself as fakery; we’re all supposed to be pretending that we’re naturally wide-eyed and soft-skinned and blushing and blemish-free. Women are expected to be photorealist portraits of femininity, not expressionist canvasses; lies are tolerated only in so far as they are told convincingly. But when we start being too overt about the fabricated status of natural femininity, there’s a lurking danger that we might start to question their absurdity, or realise that we can invent altogether new images in radical moulds.
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INDIAN VERSION OF “ROSIE THE RIVETER”
I have seen various photographic recreations of Rosie the Riveter - all modeled by white women. Yet I’d never seen an Indian version. And I thought to myself, “I’m gonna make one!” One of my family members, who lives in India, helped me with the translation of “We Can Do It!” in Hindi. The model is me, the photographer is me, and I wore a traditional polyester saree with a cotton choli (blouse). I modeled my look after my aunts and other working class Indian women in the home state where both my parents come from - I greatly admire them and their work ethics. I hope you guys enjoy my Indian version of Rosie the Riveter!
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Q: are you really a feminazi? Or just a militant feminist? Cuz the very def of feminazi is derogatory. i was alluding to the mudslinging present in both left and right media. -- atlas
from Anonymous
A:Hah, thanks for following up. The twitter format can be quite limiting.
I also find the term feminazi to be incredibly derogatory, and don’t think it applies to any but the most far fringe elements of the feminist bandwagon - and only then because they have adopted the term for themselves. The line of what defines extremism in any group is quite arbitrary, and referencing myself as a feminazi was just meant to call out that while you seemed to find Jessica Valenti worthy of the moniker, I find her to be quite on target for middle ground, core feminist ideals… not extreme at all. But if you considered her as such, then I would be, as well.
As for “just a militant feminist” … I’m not sure what you’re getting at there, heh. I am not a “radical” feminist in the sense that I don’t seek to “overthrow the patriarchy and rework the world order by force,” though I’m certainly an activist in the sense of being vocal (online and in the male dominated industry in which I work/play), participating in the political cloud, and keeping the dialogue open with friends, family, and the next generation to reframe the world in the way I think it should be.
To me, being a feminist is just being a woman that thinks she’s a person like everybody else, and can’t help but notice when the world seems to disagree. It’s not about finding reasons to be angry (they come up often enough without hunting for them) or tearing apart the fabric of Real America™- it’s about getting women the education they need to be able to make their own choices, and the facility and agency to exercise those choices. Oh - and getting men to think that’s a good thing.
I hope my answer helps; while you and I seem to share the same hobbies, we probably share different socio-political ideologies. And that’s fine - living in an echo chamber is boring. :)
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UnknownUnknown31plays
via Not in the Kitchen Anymore
(Click here if the audio player is acting up)
Female FPS player records random male players (RMPs) being assholes in the game lobby. Hilarity ensues.
Most are derogatory, but her first post ever is my favorite:
RMP 1: Aw man, that’s not fair. [laughter]
RMP 2: We got beat by a woman.
RMP 1: Listen yo, you don’t understand. She’s not a woman, she’s like a robot.
RMP 2: That’s crazy. We just got beat by a cyborg. -
(via atableforone)
I love the sentiment, but not the boy-swanning-into-gentleman and “other women” vs “his girl” tropes it implies. How about “A bad partner makes their lover jealous of other people. A good partner makes other people jealous of their lover.”
Better, but not entirely elegant. Other suggestions?
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But she's not **doing** anything...
DC comics recently started re-releasing some updated versions of classic comic heroes to regain some lost readership. Assuming you were a kid in the 80s, you’re a grown up now, and therefore whereas you previously liked a female superhero that was pretty and kicked ass, you now like a female superhero that is a caricature of tits and ass, and stands still in panels while musing on a complex, sex-based storyline. Sure - maybe it’s aimed at “adults,” but is it really an improvement?
As a kid who read plenty of grown-up books, I love that fantasy author Michelle Lee had her 7 year old daughter write her response to the “character evolution.”
via io9:
“Do you think the Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon is a good role model?”
*immediately* “Oh yes. She’s a great role model. She tells people they can be good friends and super powerful and fight for good.”
“Do you think the Starfire in the Teen Titans comic book is a good role model?”
“Yes, too. She’s still a good guy. Pretty, but she’s helping others all the time and saving people.”
“What about this new Starfire?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s not doing anything.”
Checkmate.
Based on Postage by Greg Cooper. Everything heavily modified by me.
*Unlikely to find your lost post using this but you can try...
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