Gretchen Zerlina Maxwell, writing for Ebony magazine, thinks so. In the bluntly titled “Stop Telling Women How Not To Get Raped,” she says: New rule for 2012: No more ad campaigns and public service announcements targeted at women to teach them how to avoid rape. It’s not effective, it’s offensive, and it’s also a lie. Telling women … Read more
Gizmodo takes ’em on: At CES last week, in addition to all the gear and gadgets, there was something else on display: women. As with many trade shows—especially ones aimed at a male audience—CES was rife with booth babes. Yet when the BBC ran a story on the practice of hiring scantily-clad models to stand around booths and draw stares … Read more
Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon writes about what she calls “Slut-shaming 2.0,” web sites that exist for the sole purpose of identifying and shaming (mostly) women for their sexual behavior: The content is submitted by scorned exes, former friends and total strangers. A typical post calls out a woman, using her full name and at least … Read more
I had a post started about a month ago about women in video games, but never finished so I’m going to revamp it now. I’ve been a gamer practically since birth, starting with a family-owned Atari 2600 (favorite game: Adventure) and continuing to present day (PC and Xbox). As with comic books, table-top games, and … Read more
…as explained quite eloquently by a thirteen-year-old girl. My friend Nick shared this with me, and I’m sharing it with you:
I’m in love with this post by Amanda Marcotte: Smart Girls Wear Short Skirts, Too, or “Why Lisa Belkin is wrong to condemn college girls for dressing sexy.” In it, Marcotte agrees wholeheartedly with some of the concerns Belkin voices in a New York Times article titled “After Class, Skimpy Equality.” Specifically, about the social environment in … Read more
…though she has been tempted. It’s easy to see why: Becoming a board member of a secular non-profit and being invited as a speaker to events has really opened my eyes. You start interacting with a diverse group of people who have been in the movement a long time, and you get a behind-the-scenes glimpse. … Read more
I have my own law, devised under the screen name Rillion which I’ve used since about 2000. The law isn’t quite that old, but it has existed at least since 2005. Rillion’s Law states: The amount of knowledge a person has about a particular subject is inversely proportional to his or her tendency to make … Read more
And here’s Jen McCreight’s take on both the Twitter argument last night (I had a resolution against taking part in those, and of course broke it. Good thing it wasn’t a New Year’s resolution) and the article itself. Jen takes more time to work through the straw men (or straw women) in the article than … Read more
I love Penn Jillette. I do, very much. But he does tend to carry the denouncement of prudes and blowhards so far that it gets to the point of practically denying that authentic assholes exist. Let me explain. Earlier this evening, Penn tweeted a link to this letter addressed openly to the “skeptical community from … Read more