Denver ComicCon's Women in Comics panel on Saturday featured... no women. Let's have the allmalepanels Hasselhoff of approval, folks: When asked about this, the convention's PR rep responded with a prime example of how not to respond to questions about your problematic … [Read more...]
Lightening up
It’s hard not to feel humorless as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things. It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The … [Read more...]
Not sure if you’re flirting or harassing?
Not sure if you’re flirting or harassing? Ask yourself if you’d be talking the same way if the woman were in a position of authority. If she were a police officer, who you knew had a gun and a badge, and happened to be off duty, at a bar, or a convention… You’re free to flirt, … [Read more...]
Background noise vs. the stuff you deal with
Background noise: An offensive joke told by two men in front of you in line at the post office. “Bitch,” said about someone else. Loud phone calls on the street, as he hopes his fucking ex died or got fat. Women’s representation in any given movie. Hearing a woman’s spent too … [Read more...]
Movies about women: There are not any
In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take … [Read more...]
“The Secret to Being Both a Writer and a Mother”
So when I see yet another bloody article that, right from the headline, demands women limit the number of children they have in order to succeed professionally – as though the universal introduction of equally distributed paid maternity and paternity leave, a collective cultural … [Read more...]
“Lady Author”
It's very telling that you'll get people saying, again, "author and lady author are just true facts," but then getting angry when you say that fine, if they want divisions, it needs to be "male and female author." No! Male is the default the norm the baseline of human experience! … [Read more...]
Why are there so many brothels in space opera?
...it seemed pretty clear to me that if there are so many brothels in space, there has to be an entire social and economic structure to support them. In most of human history, that structure was deeply entwined with sexism. -- Malinda Lo, "On Space Opera: Why so many brothels in … [Read more...]
The Fake Geek Girl problem in WordPress
Over the weekend, at WordCamp Austin, I had a conversation that I think a lot of women in WordPress will recognize. I introduced myself to a male developer, and he asked if I was speaking later in the day. I said yes, and he asked about the topic of my talk. (All normal so far.) … [Read more...]
That’s what she said
This kind of crap went on and on. It was exhausting. Exhausting to figure out how to respond to the relentless misogyny from men who are otherwise kind and educated, who would never think of themselves as chauvinist assholes. ... A big pile of reasonably aware and … [Read more...]
