Society and Culture
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The Geek Social Fallacies of Sex.
With all apologies to the original , which all geeks should read... I think geek sexuality is an awesome thing. God knows it's the only sexuality I've ever known. Geeks are tinkerers who constantly try to improve and innovate, and geeks are not bound by many mainstream social rules, and these two things combine to create some fucking hot sex . Also for some semi-mysterious reason the overlap between "geek" and "kinkster" is, like, 90% of both groups. But geeks also are prone to weird social thinking, some of it a reaction to the ungeeky mainstream, some of it their very own invention.
When I first decided to apply for a call-center job, I headed to Gurgaon, a commercial suburb of Delhi. Gurgaon was built 30 years ago by a corporation, for corporations. It was fallow farmland until 1979, when DLF, India's biggest developer, began buying up property. Gurgaon is a non-city . In my time there, I saw no sidewalks, convenience stores, or public parks—only stray cows foraging in the sun-baked dirt between office towers. A makeshift market in Gurgaon.
Article: My Summer at an Indian Call Center
Parable about Priviledge
Today I’m feeling 101-y, I guess, so let’s talk about privilege. It’s a weird word, isn’t it? A common one in my circles, it’s one of the most basic, everyday concepts in social activism, we have lots of unhelpful snarky little phrases we like to use like “check your privilege” and a lot of our dialog conventions are built around a mutual agreement (or at least a mutual attempt at agreement) on who has privilege when and how to compensate for that. But nonetheless fairly weird, opaque even if you’ve never used it before or aren’t part of those circles.
Why “Yes, But” Is the Wrong Response to Misogyny
This is a guest post by Greta Christina and was originally published at her blog on Free Thought Blogs . Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is on the speakers’s bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. She is editor of the “Best Erotic Comics” anthology series, and of “Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients.”
Last week, Linda Henneberg, a young science communication intern at CERN in Switzerland — best known these days as the home of the Large Hadron Collider — wrote a blog post about her experiences at the laboratory as both a woman and a non-PhD physicist. Haltingly, timidly, even a bit apologetically, she confessed, “I’ve never felt more constantly objectified, hit on, and creeped on than while at CERN.” She was careful to say that she has not encountered blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, although she has endured unwelcome awkward flirting: a wink and a hand on the knee, lame attempts at playing “footsie” with her under the table during meetings, and of course, tacky double entendres. Even then, she cut the guys a lot of slack; it’s just social awkwardness, she rationalized, not a malicious attempt to make her feel uncomfortable — and yet, she does feel uncomfortable. (There may also be cultural factors at play, given the international diversity at CERN.)
The "Chilling" Effect
What is a "Nice Guy?" Ah, the Nice Guy®. Pity the Nice Guy®. No, please, pity him. He desperately wants you to.
Explainer: What is a "Nice Guy®?"
How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the U.S. Economy?
(Photo: Srikrishna K) Supporters of stronger intellectual property enforcement — such as those behind the proposed new Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills in Congress — argue that online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem truly dire: a $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010. The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains .Hermione Granger: The Heroine Women Have Been Waiting For
Back in the day, I thought Belle was hardcore. Before you make your judgments, let's take a look at some of the only other women role models I had to choose from at the time: Behind door number one: Snow White, the beautiful princess forced into exile by her jealous evil stepmother, who decides to live with seven strange men, spends her spare time cleaning a house with stray animals, is dumb enough to eat food from a creepy stranger, and is saved only by a prince, who for some reason thinks kissing a sleeping girl is totally acceptable. Behind door number two: Sleeping Beauty, another beautiful princess who did nothing wrong, but still suffered from the jealousy of another woman (I'm seeing a theme here), pricks her finger on an "irresistible" spinning needle (sewing is really just so irresistible to us), and falls into a deep sleep (again with the themes!).
Aug. 15, 2011 — Four new studies by researchers at the University at Buffalo have found that when a woman's goal is to be romantically desirable, she distances herself from academic majors and activities related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The studies, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, were undertaken to determine why women, who have made tremendous progress in education and the workplace over the past few decades, continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM. The research is described in the article, "Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women's Attitudes toward Math and Science," to be published in the September issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin . Lead author Lora E.
Women's Quest to Be "Romantically Desirable" Can Conflict With Scientific Pursuits, Study Suggests
