Since I'm not dissertating today anyway...

Today, Cassie's set of Goldieblox arrived. Marketed as "Engineering toys for girls," Goldieblox teaches about simple machines with the aid of characters and a story, and bright colors and a female avatar.

She's really digging it.

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And there's voting!

ICYMI, Jim Hines has had, in the past, a series of posts subverting the kinds of ridiculous contortions women on fantasy covers are put into--by doing them himself. It's been a really clear proof of both the sexism and the anatomical wrongness involved in those poses. (See also The Hawkeye InitiativeThis month, Hines decided to ( Read more... )

For those of you who are new, here is one type of typical entry: a Cassie story. Cassie is my almost-8-year-old (omg, how did that happen). Her brother is now 3, and will have more stories as he grows more verbal, I'm sure. In fact, I'm probably going to do a post soon on Q's obsession with penguins, so stay tuned for that ( Read more... )

Last night, John Scalzi put up the most recent in his (life-long, it seems) series of incisive political posts. This time, it's Swiftian satire written from the POV of a rapist: A Fan Letter to Certain Conservative Politicians. Huge, huge, trigger warning, naturally ( Read more... )

I've been thinking a lot lately about abortion rights and how the Right has been chipping away at them. Big surprise, right? No small part of it is the fact that being Right-to-Life is a defining part of my mother's identity, and I'm always arguing with her in my head the finer points of the abortion debate ( Read more... )

There's just been so much misogynist crap in the world lately. You know what I mean. So I bring you a happy strong-Cassie-girl story ( Read more... )

I wish my mother had aborted me.

I'd like to highlight this from the comments there: "I believe in abortion because I believe every child deserves to be wanted, and the world is a better place when populated by people who know their parents made a free and uncoerced choice to bring them into it ( Read more... )

The Readercon concom (minus the board, which resigned en masse yesterday) has made a public statement, and it's pretty much everything it needs to be.

I'll definitely be there next year.

Also posted at http://kouredios.dreamwidth.org/219630.html ; feel free to comment ( Read more... )

Clearly I need to step away from the internets and get back to work on the diss. The problem is, when fandom is part of the diss, it's easiy to justify staying on LJ, DW & Twitter all day and calling it "research ( Read more... )

I didn't go to Readercon this year; it was the weekend Jay had scheduled a winery trip to the Finger Lakes with his Homebrewing buddies, and besides I was already scheduled to go to Console-ing Passions the next weekend (which I enjoyed much more than last year's Readercon anyway, tbh, but then, I'm generally more comfortable in an academic setting ( Read more... )