1. This post on wtf_sexism (which is an awesome com and you should all follow it) talks appropriate vs. inappropriate attention to pay to a woman. I agree with the writer that a quick look (hell, even a not-so-quick look) and a smile are totally fine and may even be appreciated. Shouting, cat calls, and vulgar gestures, not so much. I've been on the ( Read more... )

Links! Mostly so that I can close tabs. My web browser's starting to look like some kind of demented filing cabinet.

1. First of all, I'm going to get this out of the way. In case you haven't heard, Diana Gabaldon (author of the Outlander series) made known her feelings about fan fiction, and some of the things she says are... unflattering and, in ( Read more... )

I have this idea: a fan-based activist group whose purpose is to lobby for strong representations of women in the media. I think there are enough feminists hiding out in fandom to make this viable, and I think there's a strong need for consumers to voice their dissatisfaction with the persistent, latent sexism in media texts. Ideally, I'd like this ( Read more... )

1. notthatheroine pointed me to this article about "real life superheroes" in NYC. I see reports like this crop up every once in a while, usually when there's some kind of buzz about a grittier super hero movie (People see these articles and immediately send them to me, which i really shouldn't be surprised about). It occurred to me just now, though, that a ( Read more... )

1. Got snark to spare? Well, you can pay someone for the privilege of being snarky on their behalf. Just further proof that you can find anything on ebay.

2. copperbadge posted a link to the article Omega Males and the Women who Hate them. He talks about the article in terms of the irrelevance of the concept, and, in a sense, I think he's right. However, I ( Read more... )

Let's talk about commercials.

If you've been paying attention, you know this means "Let's talk about gender and advertising", so feel free to skip to the bottom.

( Here there be videos and feminist rage )

A Different Way to Look at Disney Princesses. I'm sure everyone's sick of the back-and-forth about Disney's issues with race, class, feminism, etc, but I think this macro takes a different perspective on the argument about the portrayal of women and the absence of strong female characters. While I would argue that some of these summations ( Read more... )

From io9:
Is Science Fiction Feminized or is it Sexist? Both.

a great essay about the role of women in science fiction. The main post is terrific, but the comments provide some really wonderful food for thought.

I know it's not out of the ordinary for me to post long, angry feminist rants, but here's something on the brighter side from Glamour magazine.

The woman on p.194The question this raises, to me, is this: If an image like this one receives such overwhelming positive response (and not just from women in need of the confidence boost, of which there ( Read more... )