Maybe we should dress up Science in a pink dress and heels

I groan every time I see another well-meant attempt to inspire women to pursue science by dressing it up in stereotypical femininity. There’s nothing wrong with pink, and if you want to wear high heels, OK, your choice…but we don’t improve science literacy and appeal by associating it with gender stereotypes. Kate Clancy has an excellent response to some of these errors: “Pseudoscience and stereotyping won’t solve gender inequality in science.”

Wait, you mean I voted for the right guy for a change?

The Democratic governor of the state of Minnesota gave a State of the State speech yesterday, and actually made a strong statement.

Let me mention one other cause, which is controversial, but consistent with my faith [I am biting my tongue, let’s not quibble here –pzm] and my principles. And, more importantly, consistent with this country’s founding principles and its Constitution. I believe that every Minnesotan should have the freedom to marry legally the person she or he loves, whether of the same or other sex.

Last year, Minnesotans began a conversation about why marriage matters, and we found our common belief that it is about love, commitment, and responsibility. I want Minnesota to be a state, which affirms that freedom for one means freedom for everyone, and where no one is told it is illegal to marry the person you love.

Doesn’t that just make so much sense?

See? This is why I don’t watch superbowl commercials

I guess GoDaddy had one of their awful commercials air during the show. It showed an attractive woman model next to a funny-looking male nerd, and then lingered over a long sloppy kiss, with a message:

The voice says something along the lines of you should use GoDaddy because it does this brilliant thing of combining SEXY and SMART.

After the average American Super Bowl viewer managed to hold down their Doritos and Bud Light through the endless kissing scene, they were treated to this moral at the end of the commercial:

Sexy women aren’t smart.

Smart men aren’t sexy.

But I learned something useful! I actually have one or two domain names registered with GoDaddy (they were cheap, I got them before I knew their owner was a world-class asshole), and now I know that I have to figure out how to transfer those domains to another registrar this week.

A superbowl commercial was actually good for something!

Woman is a dirty word

I left a comment at Rebecca Watson’s recent post on being objectified; I said that while I face only a fraction of the abuse outspoken women get, lately the most common insult I get is being called a mangina, or worse, a woman.

I now get email accusing me of being a woman.

Think about that. This is the horrible awful insult they want to browbeat me with; that I am a woman. Not even the creationists ever sunk to that; I think it’s part of their mindset that women are lesser beings, but they don’t use “woman” as a dirty word.

It’s bizarre; they don’t even realize that they’re confirming everything I say about sexism and misogyny by treating womanhood as the most degrading term you can apply to a man.

But maybe this will wake them up…at least, maybe it will stir the ones who don’t worship Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck chewed out Obama for having concerns about brain injuries in football.

Beck played a clip from the interview on his online show and interjected the word “girl” in between the president’s statements, before switching into a “female” voice to mock him. When Obama was finished making his rather cautious comments on the matter, Beck began his full-on attack.

“His man card has been revoked by me, and that’s saying something” Beck said. “When I’m saying you’re a girl, you are absolutely 100% girl power.” He proceeded to slam the president for getting too “philosophical” and “complex” in his answers to questions, which according to Beck was further evidence of Obama’s femininity.

Referring to Obama’s nuanced approach to the football issue, Beck continued, “You’re a full-fledged woman. I never heard anybody but a woman say that.” He explained that only women are concerned about the dangers of football and “every guy, even me, says ‘relax.’”

Taking a stern tone, Beck said, “Stop being such a chick, Mr. President. Stop it. You’re commander-in-chief. Not chick-in-chief.”

Watch the video, slimy people: it’ll be like looking in a mirror. That’s what misogyny looks like — it’s the gratuitous assumption that you can belittle someone by calling them a chick.

Tech industry stories

Another woman, another story, another example of bias. Sarah Parmenter has been getting the usual stuff: photoshopped images, sexist remarks, dismissal of her abilities because she’s a woman.

There’s many questions around why there aren’t more females speaking in this industry. I can tell you why, they are scared. Everytime I jump on stage, I get comments, either about the way I look, or the fact that I’m the female, the token, the one they have to sit through in order for the males to come back on again. One conference, I even had a guy tweet something derogatory about me not 30 seconds into my talk, only for me to bring up the point he had berated me for not bringing up, not a minute later – which caused him to have to apologise to my face after public backlash. I’ve had one guy come up to me in a bar and say (after explaining he didn’t like my talk)… “no offence, I just don’t relate to girls speaking about the industry at all, I learn better from guys”. I could write a book on inappropriate things that have been said to me at conferences about girls in the industry so much so, it’s become a running joke with fellow speakers. I know other girls who could also chip in a fair few chapters but, underneath the humour sometimes found in these situations, lies a very real problem.

It’s no great secret that girls are a minority in this industry, you only have to look at the queues for the toilets at any conference, however, it’s forgotten that it’s not about female speakers, it’s about finding female speakers who have enough of a thick skin to want to stand up in front of an audience of twitter-trigger-happy males and public speak. That’s an entirely different kettle of fish. Then on top – when you finally feel comfortable with speaking, you get put into a big black pot and tarnished with the label “same old face”. This happened to me on my third ever speaking engagement, third? I was tarnished as a “same old face”. Since then it’s become water off a ducks back – I’m not going to let a label stop me from developing and growing my speaking skills, I’m by no means perfect and still have a lot to learn. We should be encouraging anyone who shows an aptitude or love for sharing their knowledge with the community.

Yeah, and we’ll just get the usual responses, that she has to toughen up and stop being a professional victim. How about if people stop being professional victimizers, instead?

Golly

Gomer Pyle is gay? Well, that’s going to cause a few wingnut heads to explode. Jim Nabors, the actor who played the southern hick in his own show and on that classic of old-time rural Americana, the Andy Griffith show, was so happy to see gay marriage approved in several states that Nabors hopped on a plane with Stan Cadwallader, flew to Seattle, and got hitched.

"I’m 82 and he’s in his 60s and so we’ve been together for 38 years and I’m not ashamed of people knowing, it’s just that it was such a personal thing, I didn’t tell anybody," Nabors said. "I’m very happy that I’ve had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed. And, what can I tell you, I’m just very happy."

That’s sweet.

People like this actually exist?

Christian talk radio is a real swamp of idiocy. Here are a couple of hosts babbling about feminists.

They did surprise me, though. They started talking about the two kinds of feminists, and oh no, I thought, here comes that boring anti-feminist crap peddled by Christina Hoff Sommers and happily swallowed by every MRA on the planet, that there are gender feminists and equity feminists. But no! I guess there is a lower level you can reach.

Their distinction was between cute feminists and ugly feminists.

I’d like to say we were done there, but they also go on to blame gays and feminists for the decline of western civilization. They’d get along just fine with a few atheists I know.

(via The Raw Story.)