Boing Boing » gender

Help make Abercrombie and Fitch synonymous with homelessness

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:18:03 +0000

As you know, Abercrombie and Fitch is a horrible shitshow of a company whose owner refuses to make large sized clothes so that "unattractive people" can't wear them, and who burns surplus clothing rather than donating it to charity to keep their clothes off poor peoples' backs. So Gkarber has set out to make the brand synonymous with homelessness, by clearing out thrift shops' supply of A&F and bringing it to skid row and giving it to homeless people. He'd like you to participate by clearing out your closets and donating any A&F to your local homeless charity..

Abercrombie & Fitch Gets a Brand Readjustment #FitchTheHomeless

How Anonymous got involved in fighting for justice for rape victims

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:47:17 +0000

Mother Jones's Josh Harkinson has an excellent piece on the history of KnightSec, an Anonymous offshoot that publicized the Steubenville and Halifax rape cases, galvanizing both the public and police responses to both. The piece includes an interview with Michelle McKee, who is credited with swaying a critical mass of Anons to participation in KnightSec. The whole story is pretty incredible, especially where it spills over into the real world:

The video went viral, and the next Occupy Steubenville rally drew 2,000 people to the courthouse steps. Because MC brought the sound system, he ended up serving as the de facto master of ceremonies (which is how he ended up with his Twitter handle). As he played excerpts of the Nodianos video over the loudspeakers, he told me, people in the crowd grew so angry that he started to worry that they would riot.
When the Steubenville sheriff showed up, MC invited him up and grilled him about the case. In the end, he diffused the tension by giving the cop a hug. "I'm going to take this negative energy and turn it into a positive thing," he remembers thinking. "You've got to let the crowd vent."
And vent they did. For four hours, there was a catharsis of personal pain and grief that nobody in the small town could have imagined. Women who had been raped stood in front of the crowd, clad in Guy Fawkes masks, to share their stories. Some of them unmasked at the end of their testimonies as they burst into tears. Rapes at parties, date rapes, rapes by friends and relatives—their pent-up secrets came pouring out. "It turned into this women's liberation movement, in a way," MC recalls. "And it just changed everything. There was nothing anybody could do against us at that point because it was so real and so true."

Exclusive: Meet the Woman Who Kicked off Anonymous' Anti-Rape Operations

American Girl dolls: from adventure heroes to helicopter-parented, sheltered junior spa-bunnies

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:58:52 +0000

Writing in The Atlantic, Amy Schiller documents how Mattel has spent the past 15 years transforming the expensive, highly detailed American Girl dolls from a source of radical inspiration that signposted moments in the history of the struggles for justice and equality in the US, into posh upper-middle-class girls who raise money for bake sales. As Lenore Skenazy points out, the original American Girls were children who had wild adventures without adult oversight; the new crop are helicopter-parented and sheltered, and their idea of high adventure is a closely supervised day in the snow.

Saige is white and upper-middle-class, just like McKenna the gymnast and Lanie the amateur gardener and butterfly enthusiast, both previous Girls of the Year. Even in their attempt to encourage spunky and active girlhoods, their approaches to problem solving are highly local—one has a bake sale to help save the arts program in a local school, another scores a victory for the organic food movement when she persuades a neighbor to stop using pesticides.
By contrast, the original dolls confronted some of the most heated issues of their respective times. In the book A Lesson for Samantha, she wins an essay contest at her elite academy with a pro-manufacturing message, but after conversations with Nellie, her best friend from a destitute background who has younger siblings working in brutal factory jobs, Samantha reverses course and ends us giving a speech against child labor in factories at the award ceremony. Given the class divide, Samantha's speech presumably takes place in front of the very industrial barons responsible for those factory conditions. The book is a bravura effort at teaching young girls about class privilege, speaking truth to power, and engaging with controversial social policy, all based on empathetic encounters with people whose life experiences differ from her own.

American Girls Aren't Radical Anymore (via Free Range Kids)

Faced with excommunication threat, Irish PM explains separation of church and state to Cardinal

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:34:33 +0000

The Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny if he held a scheduled vote on Ireland's new abortion law. He responded:

Everybody’s entitled to their opinion here but as explained to the Cardinal and members of the church my book is the constitution and the constitution is determined by the people. That’s the people’s book. We live in a Republic and I have a duty and responsibility as head of Government to legislate in respect of what the people’s wishes are.

Redditor bleacliath created a great graphic for this quote and posted it to /r/atheism.

Politicians ‘have responsibility’ to legislate on abortion issue

Superheroes designed by little girls

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:38:10 +0000

Alex Law's "little girls R better at designing heroes than you" is a great, occasionally updated Tumblr that features illustrations of superheroes based on the hero costumes little girls have made for themselves.

Kids are more impressionable than you, but kids can also be less restricted by cultural gender norms than you. Kids are more creative than you, and they're better at making superheroes than you.
This is a mini art project where I draw superheroes based on the costumes worn by little girls.

little girls R better at designing heroes than you (via MeFi)

Wonderful reading of awful sorority letter sent by horrible sorority sister

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:14:14 +0000

If you haven't heard about the insane letter sent around to a sorority by its concerned and thoroughly awful social chairwoman, you're probably doing something right. Nevertheless, there is a gem of good in every wickedness, as Funny or Die demonstrates with this dramatic reading of the letter in question [NSFW]

Sexy Star Wars costumes

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:12:51 +0000

From the people who brought you the hairless Chewbacca costume, a line of "sexy Star Wars" costumes that showcase the broadmindedness and dubious taste of Disney/Lucas licensing department.

Sexy Star Wars (via IO9)

No, universal daycare doesn't destroy the national character

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:35:05 +0000

The Brit papers have been full of news about the Swedish daycare expert brought in to address Conservative MPs about the iron-clad, data-driven link between Sweden's universal daycare and the rise of teen mental health issues there. Jonas Himmelstrand was there to warn Britain that sending mothers to work and kids to daycare was bad for the family and the nation. Only one problem: he has no formal qualifications to speak on the subject, and the scientist whose research he cited says he got it all wrong.

Why men - and everyone - should speak out about misogyny in gaming

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 22:51:35 +0000

Rock Paper Shotgun's John Walker has published an excellent essay called "Misogyny, Sexism, And Why RPS Isn’t Shutting Up," making the case for games (and tech) writers of all sexes writing about sexism and misogyny in public, documenting the intimidation that writers experience when they do so, and offering some explanations for the violent, vicious response the work evokes. I particularly liked the section where he deals with accusations of "trying to get laid," and "white knighting."

Both phrases contain those truths. The accusation gets a grip because of them, causes me to hesitate, to pause as I write, to worry my motivations are wrong. And that’s their purpose. Generally the motivation for my writing any sort of polemic on RPS is because I’m angry about something – constructively angry about something a person should be angry about – and I want to see positive change. That’s what causes me to start typing, including this piece. But as I go along, those words creep in. “You’re just saying this to win the approval of others.” “You’re just trying to make girls like you.” “You think women need you to stand up for them.” And so on. They get to me. They’re getting to me right now. They’re evil spells, cast to insidiously infect.
I like it when people like me. I like it when people come up and compliment me. I like the approval of others. Because that’s normal. And I write this both to exorcise the infection those words cause, and to make it known to everyone else who feels the same that these are not words that should stop you from speaking up for what you know is right. They are words that will never silence RPS on these matters, and they should never silence you either.
It’s vital that men speak out about this subject. Mostly because it’s vital that people speak out, a unified voice with whatever genitals it may have, condemning cruelty and inequality. For some men, only another man’s voice will be heard. If you’re a fellow, and you object to the portrayal and treatment of women within gaming, start saying so. You will receive abuse. And I am sorry, because it’s not fair. It really damned sucks, and it gets to me, it weighs me down. But it’s so worthwhile.
Abuse is the natural response of anyone wishing to perpetuate a privilege that by its nature demeans or diminishes others. And receiving abuse is horrible. But so long as you surround yourself by others who will support and care for you, it’s worthwhile. The louder the united voice, the more effective it is. So long as people remain silent, they provide a safe space for the cruel and oppressive to speak. When it’s clear that such behaviour is not tolerated in a space, it’s harder for it to be heard. And look at the positive change that’s already been seen. The positive change is why there’s a fight. Things are already getting so much better.

Misogyny, Sexism, And Why RPS Isn’t Shutting Up (via Making Light)

"Free Pussy Riot" lingerie commercial

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:36:23 +0000

Blush, a German lingerie company, created a campaign that either co-opts or honors (or both) Pussy Riot, sending a scantily clad lingerie model in a knit balaclava to walk through -15C weather in Moscow holding a FREE PUSSY RIOT sign in order to advertise their clothes and to advertise freepussyriot.org, which legitimately raises money for the defense of the Pussy Riot women who have been sentenced to labor camps for singing an anti-Putin, anti-corruption song in a church.

“Free Pussy Riot” Lingerie Campaign: Appropriate or Appropriation?

Three's Company pilot with different actors

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:44:33 +0000

The rather dreadful 1970s sitcom Three's Company adapted the UK sitcom Man About the House for American TV; it ran for eight seasons and was heavily syndicated through my whole childhood, and as with many people of my age, it lurks in my subconscious.

It turns out there was an unaired pilot that used some of the same cast, but a different writing team and a somewhat smarter brand of comedy, and it's surfaced on YouTube. Here's Wikipedia's description of that pilot:

The show was first penned by famed Broadway writer Peter Stone who set the series in New York. Stone envisioned the Jack Tripper character as a successful, yet underpaid, chef in a fancy French restaurant while the characters who were to become Janet and Chrissy were to be a secretary for a CEO, and a high style fashion model respectively. Silverman felt that the treatment would not play to middle America and thus passed on the script. Silverman then enlisted the services of famed television writer Larry Gelbart, best known for his Emmy-award winning work on CBS's M*A*S*H. Gelbart initially wanted nothing to do with the show, feeling that its relatively simple premise made it substandard in comparison to M*A*S*H. Nonetheless as a favor to Silverman, Gelbart went ahead and developed a pilot episode with his son in law who named the series Three's Company. Gelbart's adaptation closely followed the British series. He envisioned Ritter as "David Bell", an aspiring film maker looking for a place to live who just happened to be a great cook. Ritter's better halves were portrayed by Valerie Curtin who played "Jenny" an employee of the DMV, and Suzanne Zenor as an aspiring actress named "Samantha". Gelbart reset the Ropers' apartment building, which he called the Hacienda Palms, from New York to North Hollywood, California. This plot of this pilot looked much like that of the first episode of the actual show. Liked by Silverman, a pilot was ordered by ABC which taped in early 1976. This format of the show just barely made it on to the fall 1976 ABC lineup but was ousted by what ABC felt were more promising series. Of all the new sitcoms that premiered on ABC for the 1976–1977 television season, only Three's Company and the summer premiere of What's Happening!! went on to a second season. While ABC was in negotiations to re-shoot the pilot, CBS became interested in the show, and made a firm commitment to TTC productions (producers Don Taffner and Ted Bergman's New York based company) to air the show as a mid season replacement in February 1977 with the Gelbart cast. However, at the last minute ABC decided that they wanted the show and made a firm commitment to air the show at midseason with a new cast.

Three's Company - Rare First UNAIRED Pilot (Part 1)

Three's Company - Rare Second UNAIRED Pilot (Part 2)

(via Super Punch)

KISS/Hello Kitty TV show in development

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 03:05:56 +0000

2010's KISS x Hello Kitty clothing line has spawned a TV show about a Hello Kitty rock band that dresses in KISS makeup:

Yes, I'm serious: Kiss Hello Kitty (working title) is now in development, and it's based on this line of Kiss x Hello Kitty products, which made its debut in 2010. The show will feature "four Kiss x Hello Kitty characters living their rock 'n' roll dreams and bringing pink anarchy to every situation they are in."
Kiss' Gene Simmons is slated to be one of the executive producers, and the band sounds pretty pumped about the project. Says Paul Stanley: "Knowing and viewing The Hub as I do daily with my three children, it is the perfect home for us to bring the Kiss Hello Kitty juggernaut to yet another generation."
You heard it here first, folks. I'll keep you posted on when the series will make its debut.

So, on the one hand, this is a delightfully weird popculture trainwreck. On the other hand, Gene Simmons is a misogynist asshole, and I can't get all that enthusiastic about his executive producer role in an entertainment project aimed at little girls.

Exclusive: Hello Kitty and Kiss team up for a TV series [USA Today/Whitney Matheson]

(Thanks, Prezombie!)

Hyper-macho, super-busy old body-building ad

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:27:39 +0000

This undated bodybuilding ad is a spectacular example of the form -- the busy, unbridled, exuberant machismo, the fonts, the repetition. I think the world would be a better place if all printed literature took this form.

Come on, Buddy!

Girl's Kickstarter to go to RPG camp brings out the horrible, horrible trolls

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:38:50 +0000

For the past several days, I've been seeing an obviously silly conspiracy theory rocket around the usual online places. It concerns Susan Wilson, whose nine-year-old daughter Mackenzie was challenged by her older brothers when she expressed an aspiration to make games, Mackenzie and her mom posted a Kickstarter to raise $800 for an RPG camp where she could hone her game-development skills.

And out came the trolls. One group was convinced that this was a scam by a "millionaire" (Wilson once attended a fundraiser where she was photographed with Warren Buffet); the other was convinced that this was a radical feminist man-hatin' exercise determined to raise funds by pitting little boys against little girls.

Both theories were silly on their face, but lots of credulous guys found something they liked in it -- specifically, evidence of a vast shadowy conspiracy of emasculating millionaire women who want to relegate men to the scrapheap of history -- and repeated it, and it refused to die. Worse, the campaign whipped up the kind of men who respond to their feelings of discomfort with death and rape threats. Keep it classy, guys.

Thankfully, CNet's Eric Mack took on the unenviable task of rebutting the rumors. And as he points out, the fundraiser has cleared $20K, and Wilson's going to use the excess money to fund girls-in-STEM causes. Victory.

Wilson also responded to other conclusions drawn by the trolls, dispelling the notion of the size of her bank account ("I don't have a million dollars in the bank, I'm not rolling in cash and I'm not a highly paid business woman. Frankly, I'm unemployed at this very moment!"); her status as a Warren Buffet buddy (it was a photo op from an awards ceremony); and those pricey shoes ( a splurge after a long-shot bet at the roulette wheel paid off years ago). She added:
"Kickstarter is about the power of the crowd and though you might not always like what the crowd says, you can't push the "It's not Fair" button when you disagree. Though I'm not in the 1% club, I do find it sad many think Kickstarter should only be used for the downtrodden and the poor because it has the power to extend far beyond. "
Wilson also took the bold move of outing the two people who made threats against her and her family, and she told me in an email that she is actively searching for a worthy cause to direct all the extra money that the crowdfunding campaign raises beyond the original modest goal.
"It's clear this campaign resonated for a reason that's much bigger than Mackenzie and ALL OF THE extra money should go to that bigger movement," Wilson writes. "I can't say I know what that is right now (it's been a whirlwind and certainly wasn't planned) but smart people are working on it with Brenda Romero (gamer in residence at University of California at Santa Cruz who's husband created Doom and Quake) being among my personal favorites."

Trolls take on 9-year-old girl's Kickstarter project...and lose

Comedy troupe loses YouTube account after viral success of "PS Gay Car," can't get anyone at YT to listen to them

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:39:49 +0000

Wil Wheaton sez,

On November 17th, 2012, New York-based comedy music group Fortress of Attitude uploaded a music video they created for their song "PS Gay Car" (using the exact words of a mean note they found on their car one day) to YouTube. The pro-gay rights video was immensely popular, garnering coverage from, Huffington Post, Out Magazine, College Humor and Queerty. The video gained 39,800 views in its first month, and then a month later YouTube took down the video, claiming they'd used bots to drive up views.
The story that unfolds is Kafkaesque: Fortress of Attitude hires New Media Rights to help them get their video reinstated, and Google/YouTube's response is to send form letters back that just restate the alleged initial TOU violation. Ultimately, Google/YouTube refuses to consider any evidence or explanation from Fortress of Attitude, and deletes the video permanently.

Google deletes "PS Gay Car"— We need your help! (Thanks, Wil!)

Gigeresque corset: "Spine"

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:33:00 +0000

Spine, an amazing, gigeresque corset, is a Shaun Leane design that was displayed at NY MOMA in the 2011 show Alexander McQueen show Savage Beauty.

Shaun Leane: He was always fascinated by the spine. So he asked me to create a corset, which was the spine with the rib cage, so that the girl could actually wear this as a corset on the outside of her body, so we would see the beauty of these bone structures on the outside, attached to the dress.
And as we were doing it, Alexander came to me and said, “Will you put a tail on this?” And where he got that idea was out of the film The Omen. When the mother of the omen was discovered—her skeleton—she was half-raven and half-dog, and he was quite inspired by this.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (via Kadrey)

Independent midwives to march in London today to protest impending shutdown of indie midwifery

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:59:53 +0000

There are apparently no insurers in the UK willing to extend cover to independent midwives, and so independent midwives and their clients operate in an insurance-free zone, which is risky, but it was apparently a risk everyone was willing to take. However, a new EU regulation mandates that midwives operate with insurance, and once that regulation is implemented locally, it will end the practice of independent midwifery in the UK unless there's some drastic action to create an insurance policy to which independent midwives may subscribe.

We had our daughter at home with an NHS midwife, and it was wonderful. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in the cachement of a hospital with midwives who'll help mothers deliver at home (especially now as NHS budgets are being slashed to ribbons across the country). If this rule comes to pass in the UK without any insurance fix, having a baby safely at home will become effectively illegal for families across the country.

A silent protest is scheduled for today at the House of Commons:

This campaign continues with a Silent Protest and march in Westminster on Monday 25 March, from 11am, to lobby Government to protect women's right to choose their maternity care and find a solution to the issues raised by an EU Directive.
Independent Midwives are registered midwives who have chosen to work outside the NHS to be able to offer continuous care and support to women who choose it. This is the kind of autonomous midwifery that you see in the hugely popular programme “Call the Midwife”. Nowadays it is mostly only independent midwives who are able to provide what David Cameron once called “gold standard care”. Due to staff shortages and budgetary pressures very few NHS Trusts are able to provide this kind of care.
Sally Randle is an independent midwife in Bristol, offering local women an alternative to NHS care. Sally says, “I was lucky enough to practise this way in the NHS in London, but local maternity services did not provide this way of working. I decided to become an independent midwife so I could continue this rewarding work. I love my job; I don't even mind getting up in the night to go out to a birth because I know the family well and feel privileged to be involved in this amazing time in their lives”.

I can't figure out why insurers can't sort this out. The actuarial data set is robust and well-established. The potential liability, though high, is calculable. If you can get insurance to juggle machetes in Covent Garden (high potential liability, small data set, massive individual variation), why the hell can't indie midwives get cover?

Silent Protest and March (Thanks, William!)

Grandmothers who are brilliant at technology

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:58:49 +0000

A wonderful site called "Grandma Got STEM" profiles grandmothers who have accomplished marvellous feats of technology, and aims to drive a stake through the heart of stupid, thoughtless phrases like "How would you explain that to your grandmother?" or "So simple my grandma could do it."

Shown above, Helen Quinn, "particle physicist, PhD from Stanford in 1967, and grandmother of three young girls."

I've never understood why geeks hold their grandmothers in such contempt.

Perhaps you are tired of hearing people say 'how would you explain that to your grandmother?' when they probably mean something like 'How would you explain the idea in a clear, compelling way so that people without a technical background can understand you?'
Here's a similar saying you may have heard: 'That's so easy, my grandmother could understand it.'
Grandma got STEM counters the implication that grannies (gender + maternity + age) might not easily pick up on technical/theoretical ideas by sharing pictures and remembrances from/of Grandmothers who have made contributions in STEM-related fields.

Grandma Got STEM

Genderswapped Zelda -- rescue Link!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:01:58 +0000

Inspired by the Damsels in Distress episode of Tropes vs Women in Video Games, and by the Dad who genderswapped Donkey Kong for his daughter, Kenna swapped the Link and Zelda sprites on a Zelda ROM, so that Zelda rescued Link:

Tiles are the blocks of pixels that make up each sprite. Animation happens when the tiles are swapped for other tiles. So, to create new animation, you just have to edit the appropriate tile.
Some tips! Make sure that tile goes back in the same place where you found it, or you might end up with random legs and arms sticking out of scenery. When you open up your ROM in Tile Layer Pro, you'll see a grid with all of the ROM information displayed as pixels. It shows *all* of the rom information, so you're going to see a flaming hot mess -- at first. Keep scrolling down until you find something vaguely sprite-shaped and use the "+" and "-" keys on the keyboard to align them. But beware -- the tiles will go back to their starting alignment when you scroll and not all parts of the code use the same alignment. We spent hours hunting down the princess tiles because we didn't realize that the alignment changed from section to section.

Kenna's made the patch available.

Zelda Starring Zelda: The Story (via Neatorama)

Tavi "Style Rookie" Gevison on strong female characters and being a young feminist

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:45:11 +0000

Here's Tavi Gevison, creator of the amazing Style Rookie site, the Rookie zine and the indispensable Rookie: Year One collection, doing a must-see TedXTeens talk about creating strong female characters and role-models, being a teen feminist, and figuring out how to grow up to be a strong, self-confident woman. This is one I'm putting in the "show to my daughter in a couple years" file.

Rookie: Yearbook One - Sassy's second coming (via The Mary Sue)

Yogurt for manly men

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:36:42 +0000

A company called "Powerful Yogurt" has shipped a line of "brogurt" -- single-serving bacteria cultures that are meant to appeal to manly men who are put off by the femininity of traditional yogurt packaging. Comedian Jessi Klein said of the product on an episode of NPR's Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me, "If male yogurt marketing is anywhere near as annoying as female yogurt marketing, you are in for a treat. Every female yogurt commercial is basically like women in a wedding dress just petting a kitten and eating yogurt."

Now NPR has a full review:

Peter: I liked the fact there was no lid. You had to smash it on your forehead to get to it.
Ian: I guess this is pretty manly, but not as manly as that Dannon flavor you have to hunt and kill with your bare hands.
Mike: This is good. Like, this is "morning after a night in a Tijuana brothel and I still have both my kidneys" good.
Brogurt doesn't taste so different than regular yogurt. We were sort of hoping for manly flavors, like "Truck" or "Mixed Berry Martial Arts."
Miles: I could really go for some "Essence of Burt Reynolds."
Mike: I like that yogurt flavor titles do not appear on bill.

Yogurt For Men: A Review [Ian Chillag/NPR]

Bedouin "solar mamas" can't get backing for solarizing their village in Jordan

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:15:03 +0000

Gmoke sez, "Two years ago, two Bedouin women, Rafea Al Raja and her aunt Seiha Al Raja (Um Bader), returned from a six-month solar engineering training at the Barefoot College in India as 'solar engineers' to start a training center for other women. Although they solarized 80 houses in their village, the government of Jordan, NGOs and international organizations have shown little or no interest in their work. Even with a documentary on their training and projects at home, 'Solar Mamas', there hasn't been enough funding to sustain their work and their dreams.

“We are still not working and the training has not started either,” Rafea told The Jordan Times in an interview on Saturday.
They came with hope, she said, but this hope is fading away. The government, NGOs and international organisations are showing little or no interest, according to FES officials, leaving the project stranded in the desert.
“Now even our fellow villagers have started to make fun of us because they see nothing is happening on the ground,” said Rafea, who with her aunt were received with festive firing and an “official” ceremony upon their arrival from India.
The situation took a dramatic turn for both Rafea and Um Bader. Although they provided solar energy to 80 houses in the village, they are now facing the darkness of personal problems that have plighted them since they completed their training in India.

Hopes fade for two bedouin ‘solar engineers’ [Gaelle Sundelin/Jordan Times]

(Thanks, Gmoke)

Dad genderswaps Donkey Kong for his five-year-old daughter

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:54:47 +0000

Mike Mika's five-year-old daughter wanted to play Donkey Kong as Princess Toadstool, so he hacked the ROM to effect the genderswap (see the Damsels in Distress episode of "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" for more). He's even posted a patch (ZIP) for the original ROM so you can play it yourself, or with your kids.

My three year old daughter and I play a lot of old games together. Her favorite is Donkey Kong. Two days ago, she asked me if she could play as the girl and save Mario. She's played as Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2 and naturally just assumed she could do the same in Donkey Kong. I told her we couldn't in that particular Mario game, she seemed really bummed out by that. So what else am I supposed to do? Now I'm up at midnight hacking the ROM, replacing Mario with Pauline. I'm using the 2010 NES Donkey Kong ROM. I've redrawn Mario's frames and I swapped the palettes in the ROM. I replaced the M at the top with a P for Pauline. Thanks to Kevin Wilson for giving me the lead on the tools and advice.

Donkey Kong: Pauline Edition (via Waxy)

Inside the awful world of RATters - the men who spy on people through their computers with "remote administration tools"

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:39:07 +0000

Nate Anderson's long Ars Technica piece on RATters -- men who use "Remote Administration Tools" to spy on others, mostly women, via their laptop cameras, and to plunder their computers for files and passwords -- is a must-read. Anderson lays out the way that online communities like Hack Forums provide expertise, tools, and, most importantly, validation for the men who participate in this "game." Anderson explains the power of software like DarkComet, which allows for near-total control of compromised computers (everything from opening the CD trays to disabling the Start menu in Windows); the dehumanizing language used by Ratters (they call their victims "slaves"); and the way that these tools have found their way into the arsenals of totalitarian governments, like the Assad regime in Syria, which used these tools to spy on rebels.

For many ratters, though, the spying remains little more than a game. It might be an odd hobby, but it's apparently no big deal to invade someone's machine, rifle through the personal files, and watch them silently from behind their own screens. "Most of my slaves are boring," wrote one aspiring ratter. "Wish I could get some more girls with webcams. It makes it more exciting when you can literally spy on someone. Even if they aren't getting undressed!"
One poster said he had already archived 200GB of webcam material from his slaves. "Mostly I pick up the best bits (funny parts, the 'good' [sexual] stuff) and categorize them (name, address, passwords etc.), just for funsake," he wrote. "For me I don't have the feeling of doing something perverted, it's more or less a game, cat and mouse game, with all the bonuses included. The weirdest thing is, when I see the person you've been spying on in real life, I've had that a couple of times, it just makes me giggle, especially if it's someone with an uber-weird-nasty habit."
By finding their way to forums filled with other ratters, these men—and they appear to be almost exclusively men—gain community validation for their actions. "lol I have some good news for u guys we will all die sometime, really glad to know that there are other people like me who do this shit," one poster wrote. "Always thought it was some kind of wierd sick fetish because i enjoy messing with my girl slaves."

Everything we do today involves computers and everything we do tomorrow will require computers. It's imperative that computers be designed to reveal themselves to their users and owners -- every program and process accessible to users and owners by design. But we continue to erode this fundamental through bans on jailbreaking and unlocking, and through the governmental trade in "zero-day" exploits intended for use in so-called cyberwar.

Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams [Nate Anderson/Ars Technica]

Old cold-cream ad touts beautifying benefits of radioactivity

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:21:34 +0000

Lakelady sez, "In an ad for cold cream facial cleanser they use 'slightly' radioactive dirt on a young woman's face to test which cleanser works the best. Complete with geiger counter clicks. Gotta love the innocence of the 50s."

Before anyone protests that the level of radioactivity is very low -- like, lower than a brick wall -- the astounding thing isn't that they're spreading "radioactive" stuff on a model's face, but rather that "radioactivity" is being presented as a health benefit and beautifying agent.

Shocking 1950's Commercial!

Tropes vs Women in Video Games part one: Damsels in Distress

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:01:27 +0000

Anita Sarkeesian has released the long-awaited first installment in her new, improved "Tropes vs Women in Video Games" series. Sarkeesian sought $6,000 on Kickstarter to produce slicker versions of her earlier, DIY series, and she was smeared by vile, angry gamer-dudes who created games where you could beat the crap out of her for the sin of identifying as a feminist and daring to question the portrayal of gender in games. The happy ending to this shameful episode is that her Kickstarter became a good-people vs goons plebiscite, and would up raising $158,922.

The first installment is "Damsels in Distress," and is a smart, well-researched, wonderfully presented history of the woman-waiting-for-a-hero trope through gaming history. It's just in time for International Women's Day, and is a wonderful kickoff for a new series.

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford accused of grabassing, letching on former election rival

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:22:12 +0000

Toronto's living shitshow of a mayor, Rob "Laughable Bumblefuck" Ford, is back in the headlines. Sarah Thomson, the publisher of The Women's Post, who ran against Ford in the last election, claims that he came onto her at a Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee affair, grabbing her ass and saying, "[she] should have been in Florida with him last week because his wife wasn't there." According to Thomson, Ford was drunk and "out of it." He appears worse for wear in a soon-to-be-infamous photo with Thomson, in which he sports a stained shirt and a rather unflattering expression.

"He grabbed my ass and I'm thinking what the heck is going on with him? I was so mad about it because this is somebody who knows how much I do for this city," Thomson told radio host John Moore.
She said she told Ford's staff to remove him from the room.
"I went to his handlers and said, 'Get him out of here,'" she said.
Thomson said Ford "completely crossed the line" Thursday night.
"He needs help if he's doing that to someone like me," she said.
"What he said to me and what he did is wrong."

Rob Ford blasted by Sarah Thomson for alleged crude comment [Don Peat/Toronto Sun]

Photos of suffragettes in Holloway Prison

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:12:23 +0000

Charlotte sez,

It's International Women's Day today and the London Feminist Network (to whom I proudly belong) have organised the most awesome fundraising event for our conference later this year, a film launch for "Banners and Broad Arrows." In 1832 the women of the United Kingdom were excluded from the Parliamentary franchise. After 71 years this injustice remained. In 1903 the Women's Social and Political Union was formed. This is the story told through their own eyes.
A lecture by writer/director Nigel Shephard, who will be presenting his work so far on the film Banners and Broad Arrows. He tells the story of the Suffragette Movement from its inception in 1903 to its demise at the outbreak of war in 1914, using original still photographs taken by the Suffragettes themselves. The really cool thing about this lecture is that there will be a whole load of pictures on display that have only recently been released from the Official Secrets Act. These never previously published photographs were smuggled out of Holloway prison by campaigners.
This is a great opportunity to discover the history of the suffragettes through their own photographs and to meet the director and share in developing ideas for the film. Please, please come along to demonstrate your support at this first fundraising event to take the film into full production. It's only £10 a ticket and all profits are being split equally between the film producer and the London Feminist Network."
THE KINGS HEAD THEATRE UPPER STREET ISLINGTON 7.30PM SUNDAY 24TH MARCH 2013

Banners and Broad Arrows - never before seen photographs of the suffragettes in Holloway prison (Thanks, Charlotte)

Dove sneaks revert-to-original Photoshop plugin into art directors' toolkits

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 06:05:21 +0000

Alan sez, "The makers of Dove have taken their 'Real Beauty' campaign against P-shopped models into the realm of hacktivism. As the video explains, they sneaked out a Photoshop plug-in (called an Action) that supposedly added a fake skin glow but in fact restored the initial appearance of a model prior to the usual sort of Photoshoppification."

Dove: Thought Before Action

Science fiction and women's history month

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 06:15:21 +0000

Nina sez, "This video features celebrated science fiction authors speaking about the role of women in their writing. The video was created as part of a celebration for Women's History Month this March."

Women Writers on Science Fiction and Fantasy