Boing Boing » sexism

Disney gives Brave princess a body makeover

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:42:26 +0000

Gone are the wild tight curls, relaxed now into auburn waves. Her waist is cinched, her bust inflated: skinnier and sexier is the new Merida, star of Brave. And gone, in some of the new art, is that troublesome weapon: no fit thing for a Disney princess, after all. Fans and websites lamenting the changes, chief among them A Mighty Girl, have spearheaded a change.org petition seeking to convince Disney to change its mind.

The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model ... In an interview with Pixar Portal, "Brave" writer and co-director Brenda Chapman stated, "Because of marketing, little girls gravitate toward princess products, so my goal was to offer up a different kind of princess — a stronger princess that both mothers and daughters could relate to, so mothers wouldn't be pulling their hair out when their little girls were trying to dress or act like this princess. Instead they'd be like, ‘Yeah, you go girl!’”

There seems a deliciously vile bait-and-switch element to it all: design a character that will attract parents resistant to the traditional messaging, then recast it in same old mold once they've sold it to their daughters for you.

But you can see the problem in that Chapman quote, which is never really about the character. When "marketing" is the first principle of your art, even something opposing its dictates is doomed to gravitate around it in fast-decaying orbit.

Do readers judge female characters more harshly?

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:40:37 +0000

Oh yes, writes Maria Konnikova in The Atlantic: "Work by social psychologists like Susan Fiske and Mina Cikara has repeatedly demonstrated that women are perceived and evaluated on different criteria than men. ... ">Now, even fictional females are feeling the sting."

Great dad dies (also, he was a scientist)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:59:31 +0000

Handsome Dad of the Year (a former brunette) took out the garbage without fail, did the family shopping, and is remembered fondly by his step-daughters/first-cousins-once-removed. Also, outside the home, he discovered something called "relativity". Jennie Dusheck has a great follow up to a story that Xeni posted about earlier today.

Donglegate

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:07:53 +0000

The fight against ingrained sexism in tech culture is gruelling indeed; but what do you do when an off-color joke about "dongles" leads not only to internet drama, but everyone—including the claimed victim—getting fired? Ars Technica sums up "Donglegate". Adds Amanda Blum: everyone lost.

Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day (UPDATE: called off)

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:59:38 +0000

UPDATE: Having made such a positive splash already, organizer Leigh Alexander decided to nix the day itself lest it get out of hand:

#Objectify has gotten much bigger than I expected. At first I was excited, but now I see the scale of the discussion and coverage is creating a number of valid risks -- and as a result, I'd like to call off the event. ...
The dialogue's been great, but the end result -- a day of circulating a hashtag on Twitter -- runs the risk of catching fire with people who miss the point. #Objectify is not about celebrating objectification or about making people feel uncomfortable, but I'm increasingly worried that point will be lost and that harm can be done.

The first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day brings attention to the ways, subtle and otherwise, in which female journalists are objectified and trivialized. Here's organizer (and BB contributor) Leigh Alexander, writing in The New Statesman:

The purpose of the exercise isn’t to “get revenge” or to make anyone uncomfortable: simply to help highlight by example what a gendered compliment looks like, and to get people talking in a funny and lighthearted way about how these kinds of comments distract from meaningful dialogues and make writers online feel like their point of view is only as relevant as how attractive they are.

Roll Up For The First Annual Objectify A Man in Tech Day [newstatesman.com]

Slate's "The Vault" is a great, new history blog

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:28:32 +0000

Rebecca Onion is the curator at a new Slate blog that showcases nifty finds from America's historical archives. So far, she's got a photo of the be-loinclothed winner of a eugenics-inspired Better Baby Contest; a breakup letter written by Abraham Lincoln; and this specimen of 1950s-style STEM recruitment toys for girls.

What's interesting about this chemistry set is that you can't really say it's more or less sexist than the types of science kits you see marketed heavily to girls today. Sure, it's in a pink box and heavily insinuates that the best job a woman can hope for in science is as somebody's assistant. But, on the other hand, it's apparently the exact same chemistry set sold to boys, just with different packaging. Whereas today, pink-colored science kits trend heavily toward "girl" things, like teaching you how to make your own scented soaps — but at least you're in charge of the soap-making lab.

Progress!

The set, which is preserved in the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s collection of chemistry sets, is a product of post-WWII anxiety over the nation’s lack of what was called “scientific manpower.” Having seen what a difference science made in the war (the bomb, radar, penicillin), and realizing that the amount of work to be done in labs and industrial R&D was limitless, Americans worried that insufficient numbers of young people wanted to be scientists. Some called for young women to be included in recruitment efforts. Women had been largely shut out of scientific careers up until that point. But they had a major point in their favor: They were undraftable. If girls got the right training, future wartime labs could be staffed by women, who were naturally bound to the homefront.

But all science jobs are not alike, and women didn’t get the plum ones. Historian John Rudolph, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written about postwar efforts to upgrade the science curriculum. He found that girls were recruited to science careers after the war, but only for jobs that were to the side of the main show: lab technician, science teacher.

Read the rest at The Vault

It's not okay to threaten to rape people you don't like: Why I stand with Rebecca Watson

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:45:12 +0000

Every now and then, I am reminded of how lucky I am. I'm lucky that none of my readers has ever responded to a comment I made, which they didn't like, by calling me ugly. I'm lucky that they've never called me a cunt or a whore. I'm lucky that they've never threatened to rape me and then called me a humorless bitch when I pointed out how messed up that was. In general, the worst comments I've ever had directed to me, here, were from people accusing me of being a paid shill for Big Conspiracy, which is just funny.

But that shouldn't be luck, guys. My experience should not represent a minority experience among the female science bloggers I know. (And it is.) I shouldn't have to feel like thanking you, the BoingBoing readers, for being kind enough to not treat me like shit just because I'm a lady person.

Treating people with respect should not be a controversial position. It should not be a mindblowingly crazy idea to point out the fact that women are quite often treated as objects and, thus, have to deal with a lot more potentially threatening situations than men do. It shouldn't be offensive to say, hey, because of that fact, it's generally not a good idea to follow a woman you've never spoken to into an elevator late at night and ask her to come to your hotel room. Chances are good that you will make her feel threatened, rather than complimented.

And, even if you disagree, it's still totally not okay to threaten to rape people you disagree with. Seriously. Other than the specific bit about rape, we should have all learned this in preschool. And the fact that so many of the people engaging in this behavior claim to be rational thinkers and members of a community I strongly identify with ... well, that just makes me want to vomit. I honestly don't know what else to say.

Read Rebecca Watson's full article, Sexism in the Skeptic Community

Court sets accused rapist free, arguing severely disabled woman who can't talk could still refuse sex

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 02:12:07 +0000

Your daily dose of rage: the state Supreme Court in Connecticut has decided to let a rapist go free in a case involving a severely disabled woman with limited mobility who cannot talk. Why? Because there was no evidence she could not communicate her refusal to have sex with the defendant." She cerebral palsy, cannot verbally communicate, and "is so physically restricted that she is able to make motions only with her right index finger."

(via HeratyLaw).

Update: Here's a different perspective: Part 1, part 2, and here's another.

Cory and I traded emails about this ruling, and here are his thoughts:

The judge ruled on the law the guy was accused of violating, which is a very narrow statute, and the guy was not guilty of violating the statute under which he was charged. The judge even told the prosecutor that this was the wrong statute to be using. The prosecutor -- for whatever reason -- stuck to his guns. Now because of double jeopardy, the guy gets away with it.
My guess is that the prosecutor chose to prosecute under the statute because it carried a higher penalty, and thought that he could intimidate the accused into settling with the threat of a much longer sentence. Instead, this backfired on him. But that's not the defense attorney's fault (his job is to represent his client), and it's not the judge's fault (his job is to rule on questions of law). It's not even the law's fault (there are statutes under which this guy is clearly guilty, but those weren't the statutes used in the case) Sounds like it's the prosecutor's fault for trying to shortcut the trial with a quick plea through a bogus charge.
I guess the point is that it's a different kind of problem: this isn't a case where society can't tell the difference between "legitimate rape" and some other kind of rape. It seems like the judge would have been happy to lock this guy up, if the prosecutor had charged him with the crime he'd actually committed, and it's probably good that judges aren't willing to convict people of crimes they haven't committed.

NYT-“MEN invented the internet”

Xeni Jardin — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 15:43:19 +0000

What a steaming turd of an opening line in David Streitfeld's otherwise serviceable New York Times piece about the Ellen Pao/Kleiner Perkins sexual harassment lawsuit, and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley.

Here's the opening graf (bold-ing, mine):

MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.

You guys, ladies suck at technology and the New York Times is ON IT.

Radia "Mother of the Internet" Perlman and the ghosts of RADM Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace and every woman who worked in technology for the past 150 years frown upon you, sir. Women may have been invisible, but the work we did laid the groundwork for more visible advancements now credited to more famous men.

"Men are credited with inventing the internet." There. Fixed it for you.

I ragequit this article like, 10 times, and couldn't get past that awful opening line. But eventually, I managed to put down my frying pan and unbunch my apron, and I sat down on my princess tuffet and asked a man to help me read the whole thing.

I appreciate that in this article, Mr. Streitfeld is advancing a public conversation about gender inequality in the tech industry. Reporting about a phenomenon many would prefer to deny, and including women's voices in that conversation (though many of them sound too afraid of retaliation by potential male funders to be candid)—that's a good thing. Pointing out how rare it is that this sort of sex discrimination lawsuit makes it to trial is also a good thing.

I know that headlines aren't always written by the reporter, so I can't fault Streitfeld for the abominable one used for this article in the Times print edition: "A Lawsuit Shakes Foundation of a Man’s World of Tech." Go ahead, throw up in your mouth a little. I did.

I know that photo captions aren't always written by the reporter either, so I can't fault him for the lack of logic behind this one:

Ellen Pao, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has filed a lawsuit contending sexual harassment. The suit has surprised some people in Silicon Valley because Kleiner Perkins is among relatively few such firms there to routinely hire and promote women.

Well, duh. If a VC firm does not hire any women VCs, then there are no women VCs at the firm to sexually harass.

There's a lot of other interesting but to my mind, tangential stuff in the body of the piece about the sexuality of Ms. Pao's husband, and accusations of litigiousness and sexual harassment on his part. And, a sweet but even more tangential quote from his ex-boyfriend, who sounds like a real mensch with a kind heart. I'm not sure why an accounting of the behavior of a woman's husband is so often needed to tell the woman's story. The reverse is not common.

But the unchallenged dismissiveness of this quote is, for me, the kicker:

You don’t really hear about randiness and mistreatment of women. That doesn’t prove it’s not there, but that’s not the lore.”

The LORE? Are you fucking kidding me?

I worked in Silicon Valley, and in technology startups in other regions, and have experienced sexual harassment and gender bias. It's as normal and constant a part of the landscape as the fabled foosball tables.

Where to begin with this quote, really? First, "randiness" isn't what causes sexual harassment. Men don't pressure junior female co-workers into unwanted sex because they're "randy." And the fact that it's not in the fucking "lore" doesn't mean it's not real.

I have no special knowledge about the truth, or lack thereof, in the Pao lawsuit. I know only what you and I and everyone else can read in the court documents, in the context of what I've experienced as a woman who has worked in the technology industry for about 20 years. I can't speak to the merit of this case. But, Earth to dudes: yes, this stuff is real and normal, and so are we.

Lucky for Streitfeld, and the rest of the world, that the Women in Technology conference happens to be under way today in Santa Clara. Stop by and get a clue.

Oh, and? I, too, cried when Steve Jobs died. And I still idolize Mr. Spock.

Moderator at Dell event in Denmark, on what men should say to women: "Shut up, Bitch!" (UPDATED)

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:41:58 +0000

UPDATE: Dell has issued an apology.

Christiane Vejlø writes about attending a Dell corporate event in Denmark which was hosted by Mads Christensen, a "lifestyle speaker" who sounds like Copenhagen's answer to Rush Limbaugh: a troll known for doing routines about how women don't belong in the workplace (and worse).

From Vejlø's account of the evening:

“The IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy” he says.
“What are you actually doing here?” he adds to the few women who are actually present in the room.
Dell’s moderator continues talking about his two Rolex watches and he then presents the next speaker from Intel. After the break Mads Christensen shares with us his whole “show” about the bitchy women who want to steal the power in politics, boards and the home.
“Science” he calls it and mentions that all the great inventions come from men. “We can thank women for the rolling pin,” he adds.
And then the moderator of the day finishes of by asking all (men) in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, “shut up bitch!”.

Here's his website. I do understand that some argue that schtick is self-parody in the vein of Stephen Colbert, but hey, this guy is no Stephen Colbert. And showcasing that sort of comedy material at a corporate event is a strange choice for Dell to make—unless they're in the business of alienating customers.

Dell has since apologized:

Dell apology regarding insensitive comments about women from Mads Christensen made at a recent @Dell event: del.ly/6018rX94
— Dell(@Dell) May 14, 2012

A related analysis is here.

(thanks, Nadya Lev and Mike Monteiro; photo via elektronista.dk)

Brogrammers "rage at gym to attract chicks, scare dicks!" and work "while receiving oral sex"

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:56:03 +0000

In Mother Jones, an article exploring some of the sexist excesses of Silicon Valley's male-dominant programmer culture. None of this is news to those of us (and by us, I mean women) who've worked there—but the article contains some hilarious/horrible frat-boy anecdotes. And, no, not all male programmers behave like this, yada yada yada. (via @clarajeffery)

Sex is Fun podcast: How sexism affects your sex life

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:55:05 +0000

I've been doing periodic appearances on Sex is Fun, a sex-positive podcast aimed at providing fun, informative sex ed. for grown-ups. Last time I was on the show, we talked about some funny animal sex studies and what they can and can't teach you about human sexual behavior. This time around, we talked about a couple of recent studies focusing on sociology and sex.

In particular, we focused on a study from last fall that surveyed students at the University of Kansas to find out how men's and women's internalized sexism affect their relationships with each other. If you've ever watched one of those shows about so-called "pick up artists" and wondered, "Who the hell are the women falling for this crap!?", then this is the show to listen to.

Check out the podcast at the Sex is Fun site!

Image: IMG_9459, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jon_knox's photostream.

On Booth Babes

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:12:54 +0000

Tech writer Glenn Fleishman doesn't mind attractive people trying to get him to pay attention to their products. But "companies that rely on models whose various assets are stress-testing spandex or exposed to air are trying so hard that they fail, he writes in an opinion piece at TidBITS today.

"Not all attention is good, since it highlights to women attending the show that these products are not for them, as well as driving off men who find being so blatantly manipulated distasteful.

Photo: Models pose with Nikon digital cameras during the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. (REUTERS)

Male privilege vs. women in gaming

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:21:57 +0000

Harris O'Malley takes a run at male privilege in gaming, especially how it manifests as angry refusals to accept womens' complaints about the sexual objectification of female characters in mainstream games. "If a girl wants to see herself represented in video games, she better get used to the idea of being the prize at the bottom of the cereal box. ... It's hard to feel valued or fully included when a very vocal group insists that your input is irrelevant, misguided and ultimately unwelcome." [Kotaku]