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The Women's Media Center (WMC) and Girls Learn International are collaborating to launch Girls Investigate: Our Views on Media, a four-part multimedia series that explores girls' ideas about popular culture, social media and the intersections between the two.

Check out the first one:

A transcript wasn't provided, but you can read more about the 17-year-old producers' perspective here.

Apparently, Apple's App Store has a category called "Apps for Girls." Among the iPhone's "essential" Apps for Girls are MASH, Fashion Fix, and lastly, Math Flash Cards, because girls are bad at math. To quote Barbie: "Math class is tough. I love shopping!"

The link and the list:

Thanks to Mike Healy for the iPhone screenshots. iTunes screenshots are here.

This is the kind of story that makes you wonder about the basic goodness of people.

A group of past and present University of Sydney students set up a ''pro-rape'' page in the sports and recreation section on Facebook, describing themselves as ''anti-consent''.

The male students, mostly from the elite, all-male St Paul's College, initially ensured the ''Define Statutory'' group had an open, public profile, and proudly displayed their membership on their personal Facebook pages.

Both the commander of the NSW Police sex crimes unit and the head of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre condemned the site, describing it as ''grooming perpetrators of sexual violence''.

And people have the nerve to argue rape culture doesn't exist...

Outside of the general horribleness of this story, Hortense at Jezebel asks a really great question: Why would Facebook allow this group to exist for so long?

This is a social networking site that refuses to let women post pictures of themselves breastfeeding, mind you, but it's okay to make a "hilarious" pro-rape group in the "Sports and Recreation" category? The group was public, by the way, accessible to anyone and visible to all. Interesting, isn't it, that in the eyes of Facebook, a woman shouldn't be allowed to show her breasts while feeding her child, but it's perfectly acceptable for men to make a highly public "sport" out of rape.

There's a new iPhone App for the Tucker Max types who think that hooking up with women is a matter of having the right height of popped collar and tired pick-up line. It's called "Amp Up Before You Score," and it's made by PepsiCo. In short, it gives men pickup lines and strategies to use with a variety of specific types of women (women's studies major, by the way, is a category), and a bulletin board to brag about their "scores." More on this brodude blasphemy:

Hortense, over at Jezebel, had this gem on the topic:

It's going to be so easy to score with AMP energy drink on your breath and a list of incredibly generic "types" in your pocket. All you need is a fresh Ed Hardy shirt and a spritz of Axe body spray and you are good to go! There's a reason why I go after bro culture as often as I do: things like this, which are completely unacceptable and ridiculously offensive. This is a program sponsored by a major corporation that encourages men to look at women as objects to be won, used, and tossed away after a "victory" is obtained, and the more normalized things like this become, the worse off we're all going to be.

Pepsi, perhaps recognizing that they are pissing off a lot of ladies and some enlightened fellas, tweeted this on Tuesday: "We apologize if it's in bad taste & appreciate [your] feedback." Mmm...doesn't feel like much of an effort, does it? Feel free to give the national HQ a call and tell 'em what you think: (914) 253-2000.

In other iSexism, check out this app that assumes tween girls want nothing more than to memorize outfits while watching inane flirting. Ugh.

Thanks to Jesse and Jezebel, and many others, for the heads up.

For a feminist policy wonk who also has an interest in how technology interacts with policy, it seems that all the goodies are hidden in the business section of the New York Times. This week's Sunday edition featured an article on how government agencies are squelching inefficiency by entering full-fledged into the digital age. A part of me is glad that some government officials are now aware that computers can crunch numbers and summarize data. But it seems that a little advancement here and there may have to be weighed against possible disadvantages.

I, for one, am a little concerned that in all this technology talk, particularly with respect to government agencies moving information online, not a word was mentioned about the Digital Divide. It's not news that low-income people of color and women are devastatingly impacted by decreased access to technology. But as states and state agencies experience budget constraints, activists must keep an eye out to insure that these creative measures are sensitive to the needs of these communities.

Data consolidation is one thing, but how will "automated government services" impact consumers? More specifically, how much computer literacy will be needed to interact with these agencies? I'm not saying that agencies should stay in the Stone Age per se; But, before these agencies pull a George Jetson, they should assess the technological literacy of their communities through surveys or other methods. Also, they should use some of the savings from implementing these new high tech programs to invest in more free Wi-Fi hotspot locations and free technology education workshops--that run at night and provide childcare.

Along with the issue of access is the issue of privacy. The image of giant technology companies salivating at the increasing demand for tech services from government agencies makes me cautious. When government agencies make business deals with corporations such as IBM, city dwellers and privacy activists should be vigilant about these deals being compliant with the Principles of Fair Information Practice. That is, in the case of Dubuque, Iowa, it should be clear to constituents how much consumer information IBM, as an investor for their initiative, has access to and how this data will be used. In the end, efficiency in government shouldn't make it harder for low-income Americans to participate or cost Americans their privacy.

Back in March, we mentioned that the FDA had recently approved a new female condom (FC) for distribution in the U.S.

Well folks, that new female condom has officially hit U.S. markets, and is now available for our all-American consumption. The FC2 is made of a new, thinner, material, is less likely to squeak during use, and is about 30% cheaper than the original FC.

My colleague Audacia Ray has a post up on Akimbo about why this news marks exciting progress for US women's access to safer sex materials.

Now, I know that the FC often gets a bad rap. Previous commenters have touched on some of the many criticisms it often faces- it's not readily available, it's too expensive, it squeaks, it looks funny, the materials' unfamiliar, it's uncomfortable, it's unnatural, it's inconvenient, it's not effective enough, etc. And part of this criticism is understandable because the FC is a relatively new form of contraception and- let's face it- not many of us use FCs on a regular basis, or even know someone who does. How many of us have even seen an FC for sale in a drugstore? Or seen women carrying around FCs in their wallets the way men often do with the male condom?

This week's Time magazine shed more light on the fact that women make up only 13 percent of Wikipedia contributors. Sue Gardener, Wikimedia Foundation's E.D. noted:

The average Wikipedian is a young man in a wealthy country who is probably a graduate student -- somebody who's smart, literate, engaged in the world of ideas, thinking, learning and writing all the time.

It should go without saying that if women make up 51 percent of the population, 13 percent representation at Wikipedia is a DISGRACE!

The graduate student reference also surprised me. It seems odd that women are drastically underrepresented at Wikipedia when women in graduate school outnumber men. This means that there is more to the story, possibly more issues -- cough, sexism -- which Wikipedia must investigate to figure out what gives when it comes to their lack of women contributors.

Our own commentators have testified to sketchy posts on violence against women and the overall frustration with the "Wikipedia Gods." Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the go-to source for everyday information, and women of all status -- and men for that matter -- should have a space there. Wikipedia should step up to ensure that.

In the Time article, it seemed that affirmative action was the unspoken answer to the gender gap. I, for one, don't think affirmative action is perfect. But where woman are concerned, it has had significantly positive outcomes in various sectors. And the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented. The Wikipedia rep in this article came off as unapologetic and without a concrete plan for diversifying, even in the face of stunted growth.

Cause this email freaked all of us out:

Hi,

My name is Chrissy and I'm a high school guidance counselor. We had some issues in the school last year with a lot of the female students becoming pregnant. That problem, so far, seems to have carried over to this school year. I was doing some research for different ideas and I came across your site: http://feministing.com/archives/006141.html and I noticed you're currently linking to http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/mifepristone/default.htm which doesn't appear to be working. I found some really good info at another site and I thought maybe you'd be interested in linking to that site instead of the broken one. The address is: [redacted anti-choice site with dating url] which is a bit different but has really good information. Thanks again for the info and help I received from your site. I hope you'll also find my suggestion informative and helpful.

Sincerely,

Chrissy Compton

Cree-py.

No, I'm not having sex in the bathroom, but I am blogging from 30,000 feet. Virgin America has wireless internet these days so I'm trying it out. I'm titillated at the whole scenario--staring out at the clouds, having my little cup of coffee, and blogging away. Another part of me is resistant. I do a lot of traveling and plane rides have always been one time when I'm disconnected. I get great reading and reflecting done.

Reminds me of an interesting issue that came up, both this weekend at the Omega conference and yesterday when I gave a talk at the Girls Scout Research Institute: information overload. In a world where there is way more access to news and opinion than ever before, how do we protect ourselves psychologically and lead healthy lives?

I think so much of it comes down to self-awareness. We can't act like media or technology are happening to us, but instead be tuned in to how we feel and intentional about how we consume. For example, if I knew that I needed an internet break to be a balanced person, I wouldn't have logged on. (As it is, I had a computer coma on my hands the past few days so it feels great to have a working laptop and wifi again.)

I'm also confident that we're entering a new phase in the internet when the focus will be on curating all this volume we've come to produce. Pat Mitchell, facilitator of the panel I was on at Omega asked a great question: "How do we make sure the curators are at least 50% women?" I don't have an easy answer (other than support the women curators already working on making the internet a less sexist environment), but I'm excited to continue to explore it.

Since we already have the iPhone's Purity Ring application, the Wobble, the iGrope and the obnoxious "I Am Rich" app, why not throw some good old-fashioned lookism in there while we're at it?

This doesn't seem nearly as bad as the others, but is still a reminder of how technology can depress me as much as it can excite me. Are there any iPhone apps folks have that are actually doing some good for the world?

You may have noticed that the bottom of our posts now includes a a "retweet" button for those who have Twitter accounts. Basically, this retweets the post from our @feministing account - so please make use of it! We want our stories out there. (On a related note, you can also share posts in any other number of ways - like through Facebook - on the larger button.)

And if you'd like to follow us individually, you can do that too: Vanessa, Samhita, Courtney, Shark Fu, Ariel, Chloe, Jos, Miriam, Lori, Ann, Jessica.

Charming. Dirty Tats is a promotional flash app for the racing game Dirt 2, that lets you tattoo words and designs on women's breasts. Enter at your own risk.

File this under creepy, sexist and misogynist. via Boingboing.

Thee Wall Street Journal reports on a new study that shows only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are female.

So long, farewell?

Yes, my headline is wishful thinking. But this is definitely a step in the right direction. (Ignore the article's headline if you can, ugh.)

A Manhattan judge ruled yesterday that a blogger can't hide behind a web of anonymity while flinging the ugly words "skank" and "ho" at somebody online.

The sternly worded ruling orders Google to give up the identity of an anonymous blogger-assailant who inexplicably devoted an entire blog -- titled "Skanks in NYC" -- to maligning beautiful blond model Liskula Cohen.

Once Cohen knows the name of her harasser, she can serve them with a defamation suit.

Now, how I feel about anonymous trolls - anonymous misogynists, specifically, is no secret. But Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet has a point: "I am a true child of the Internet and a libertarian at heart, so I'm not all that enthused by the prospect, repugnant as these characters may be." What could a case like this mean for anonymous bloggers who aren't harassing creepsters? It's a tough one - I value the anonymity the Internet gives to people who are using blogging and online activism for progressive ends.

When it comes to the harassment and threats that so many people face online, the answer is clear - there should be some accountability. (And no, before anyone says it: Maligning people, calling women "whores," and issuing online rape and death threats aren't "free speech.") Sometimes that accountability comes in the form of a blogger outing a harasser. Sometimes it means that said harassers will face consequences they never expected.

Most of the time, however, there isn't any accountability - and the victims of online harassment and threats are left with no recourse except to live with it. I certainly know how that feels - having been the target of harassment ranging from bloggers calling me a slut from the way I looked in an innocuous picture, to rape and death threats in emails, to a website Photoshopping pictures of me to look pornographic. And let me tell you: that shit changes you. It changes your sense of safety, sense of self and any idealism you may have had about people being generally good.

And as I wrote in this 2007 Guardian article, battling online harassment should be part of feminist activism - because often the harassment is based on the same power structures and privileges that allow for real life racism, sexism, homophobia, you name it:

Is this what people are really like? Sexist and violent? Misogynist and racist? Alice Marwick, a postgraduate student in New York studying culture and communication, says: "There's the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home."

That doesn't mean I know what the answer is. The truth is, I really don't. But I do know that this is something feminists need to keep on their radar, keep talking about, and keeping fighting against. Because online or off - we all deserve to live free from harassment and fear.

Net Neutrality, while not an issue I'm extremely educated about, could have serious repercussions for all internet users, but especially alternative websites like Feministing. Check out this video below and see what free press is doing to support this new legislation.

Find out what you can do at www.savetheinternet.com.

A new study out of Michigan State suggests that the fact that women in college have less leisure time than men may be the reason why they don't play video games as much. Another reason they looked at was straight up disinterest, possibly due to the fact that 88% of video game developers are men and creating games that are not women-friendly.

Then again, after my post on Wired's reviews of the over-feminized and esteem-killing games marketed towards girls, it seems all the more obvious that it may be just much as about the gendering of the industry than it is about who is creating the games.

Via.

I don't know I shouldn't be surprised that there's a iPhone "purity ring" application - after all, I'm all too familiar with the various ways virginity fetish reveals itself. But this still managed to skeeve me.

For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.

Because nothing "proves" chastity like an iPhone app. Henry Bennett, director of the company who created the app says, "If you've taken the pledge, you're likely to follow it through."

As we all know, however, the only thing virginity pledges are more likely to make teens follow through will is oral, anal, and unprotected sex. As someone replied to me about the app on Twitter, "Girls who download it are less likely to practice safe texting."

*Headline stolen shamelessly from Ann.

Check out Wired's take on new games for girls released in 2009, in which all but one ("The Daring Game for Girls") is about fashion, boys, princesses, modeling, and more fashion. Well, there is a detective game, but you solve mysteries using your "feminine sixth sense," so I wouldn't necessarily put that in the feminist-friendly category. In the post, Tracey John compares games targeted towards girls with typical "boys' games":

Some parents worry that videogames might cause their children to become violent and antisocial, but what if the opposite were true? What if games could make kids exceedingly likable and fashionable?

...

The weird thing is that you can view these "wholesome" games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto's random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA's influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS' upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?

While it's an interesting comparison, I don't know if I would say the problem is that the games are making girls more likable; it's that they're pushing narrow and damaging standards of what they need to be or look like or who they need to like to be liked.

When I was a kid, Super Mario Bros. and Tetris were the games I played. Not to say Mario Bros. didn't have issues, but still - what the hell happened? Folks finally realized female gamers were marketable and had to feminize the shit out of it? Does anyone know of new games targeted towards younger girls that aren't completely warped?

Danah Boyd gave a thoroughly thought-provoking presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum this week about how the politics of class play out online -- and thoroughly debunked the idea that the Internet is a Utopian paradise in which we are "all equal."

To get specific, Boyd looks at the divide between Facebook and MySpace users. She quotes Kat, a 14-year-old from Massachusetts:

"I'm not really into racism, but I think that MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever, and Facebook is all... not all the people that have Facebook are mature, but its supposed to be like oh we're more mature."

That's right, a "ghetto." Boyd goes on to note that teenagers from wealthier backgrounds are more comfortable engaging in "adult" environments than teenagers from poorer backgrounds -- hence wealthier teens are probably more likely to favor the "mature" social networking site, Facebook. And here's the part where I am just going to quote from Boyd's analysis extensively, because she is so freakin' smart:

The fact [is] that MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population. Only a month ago, I was doing fieldwork in Atlanta where I found heavy usage of MySpace among certain groups of youth. They knew of Facebook but had no interest in leaving MySpace to join Facebook.

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat's point: MySpace has become the "ghetto" of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.

The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there. And if we think back to the language used by teens who use Facebook when talking about MySpace, we should be truly alarmed. Those who are from privileged backgrounds tend to be far more condescending towards those who are not than vice versa. Many of us in this room come from privileged worlds where we want to "help" those who are not well-off. Here is where a privilege-check is necessary. How often do our language and mannerisms reflect a problematic level of condescension? Perhaps we should look at our teens. They are certainly speaking in a manner that reveals distrust and condescension.

I wish I was shocked by this.

A prominent South Carolina Republican killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla.

Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."

When taken to task for the racist comment - and after killing his Facebook page - DePass said, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

Yeah - ha fucking ha.

Via Michelle Obama Watch.

*Possible trigger warning*

While we haven't been the biggest fans of Amazon as of late and their history of selling a rape simulation game (which they did end up banning), it looks like another game involving violence against women seems to have"slipped" past their radar. "Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love" is a game that allows the user to experience,

"...a terrifyingly vivid exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which a captive falls in love with her kidnapper. And you play the part of the kidnapper. With a limited number of options, you must figure out how to make her fall in love with you."

This includes using poison gas on the victim, sexually assaulting her and using psychological abuse against her in efforts to make her "love" you. Unbelievable.

Contact Amazon and let them know that profiting off of sexual and psychological abuse is completely unacceptable.

h/t to Jennifer for the heads up.

And voilà! A women's laptop is born.

This isn't the first time we've seen Dell market their products to women in a ridiculously cliché and sexist way, but their newest product was worth noting. Meet Della, the new Dell mini netbook that is being pitched to women as cute, compact and in colors with lady adjectives like Promise Pink (which actually donates $5 of your purchase to the Susan G. Komen Foundation - a good thing) and Cherry Red.

As Kristen Shoemaker at Liliputing says, it's not so much the references to everything cute to draw women that's so insulting, but when the "Tech Tips" section suggests you use the Della to manage your diet and exercise program, we have a wee problem. What's interesting is the note at the top of this section saying that editors have changed the article in response to some "feedback," which I believe (and hope) may be because of some of the complaints that women tech bloggers like Kristen and Nicole Price Fasig have made.

But regardless of what they've omitted, marketing a product to a woman by dumbing down the language and making it cutesy and fashionable isn't good marketing - it's insulting. The very pitch on Dell's homepage website featuring Della says, "Find out how technology fits your lifestyle." I guess in this case, "lifestyle" seems to be your gender.

This is not to say that there's anything wrong with accessorizing your laptop or finding a netbook adorable - it's when you assume that only women will have interest in it is when a line is crossed.

If you want to chat with me about The Purity Myth feel free to hit me up directly or use #puritymyth to talk to me or others about the book. (Not sure what a hash tag is? Check out Deanna's great post, A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter.)

I know, I know. Everyone is talking about Twitter. So many people are tweeting and talking about tweeting, it's nearly jumped the shark. But I don't care - I love it. Mostly because I love following fabulous feminists. I can see what Sarah Haskins is up to, or what Latifa Lyles (running for NOW president!) is thinking. I can even follow the bloggers I like.

How about you, do you tweet? Who is your favorite person to follow? (And of course, if you'd like to follow your friendly Feministing bloggers, our twitter profiles are listed after the jump. /self-promotion)

I mean, I could have told you that. But not because I think that women are what ruined the country, specifically women's right to vote. Peter Thiel a very rich silicon valley libertarian who used to be the CEO of Paypal and is currently one of the main investors at Facebook. He has put forth an essay that suggests that women are in fact who ruined our country. Or at least women's right to speak for themselves and not vote like their husbands tell them to.

In his essay at the Cato Institute blog he writes (excerpted by Valleywag),

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

I guess he didn't get the memo. Women and gays are supposed to be friends!

As someone who is often called an aggressive driver, I take personal offense to this stupid piece via Yahoo News Canada in the "car research" section listing 10 inarticulate and sexist reasons women supposedly can't drive. The piece is from Askmen.com, which means it is actually not humor, even if to us that website is hilarious since it is drenched in the cowardly spirit of men that are afraid of vagina.

One of the reasons women can't drive,

No.4 - They have no interest in cars

Another reason women can't drive is a matter of interest -- or rather, a lack thereof. You can't do well at something when your give-a-damn meter reads zero point zero. Women have no interest in cars beyond them serving as appliances of transport. As long as it starts, all is well. So when dash lights flash, components make ugly sounds or smoke appears, it may or may not resonate with the female driver that these are less than ideal operating characteristics.

Right, just like women don't like trains, airplanes, computers and any other modern technological marvel that helps us get somewhere.

Joking aside, I do think there is something to be said about women feeling secure in their driving abilities, since they are told that they are bad drivers and that driving is a manly thing to do. One of the first things you internalize when coming of age as a teenager is that women (along with some ethnic groups) are not good drivers.

Before we start the convo with, "but women really don't have depth perception" I know some really really good female drivers that are aggressive, confident and rarely if ever get lost or in accidents. So, based on my own empirical evidence and recognition of the sexist expectation that women aren't as good of drivers, I call bullshit on the premise of this article. Shame on Yahoo Canada for running such a sexist piece of crap.

A study from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that health websites that have sexual health information for teens are often "riddled with errors and omissions."

Lead researcher Sophia Yen, MD, said, "Even widely trusted sites like WebMD are not that accurate when it comes to adolescent reproductive health...Teens should be cautious about finding sexual health answers on the Web."

About half of the Web sites, including such highly trafficked destinations as Wikipedia and Mayoclinic.com, failed to provide accurate, complete information about emergency contraception, also known as "the morning-after pill." For instance, sites often failed to say that minors can buy emergency contraception from authorized pharmacists in nine states, and many sites did not correct the myth that emergency contraception causes an abortion.

So where can young people find accurate sexual health info? The research team found that the most reliable sites are Go Ask Alice, the Center for Young Women's Health, TeensHealth, and Planned Parenthood's Teen Wire.

Community blogger Lynne C. had a post that she wrote for Feministing reprinted in the Toronto Star. And yesterday we got a radio interview request for another Community blogger to speak about the issues she's been covering.

I think this is totally bad ass - and part of the reason we wanted to start the Community site. The idea was to highlight all of the amazing feminist voices out there and to try and get more mainstream attention paid to more feminist perspectives - and that's happening. Woot!

Sociological Images has a great short post about Facebook's default avatar - which appears to be a white male.

Lisa makes the interesting point that when Facebook wants to represent people globally, they use avatars that look markedly different:

So when Facebook wants to represent global humanity, the avatars are orange and of mixed sex; when Facebook is charged with representing an individual, the avatar is white and male. This is not random or accidental. Globally, as Facebook, ironically, reminds us, people are not "white." Representing people in this way centers men, Western countries, and whiteness (because there are non-white people in Western countries, too) and marginalizes women, non-Western countries, and non-whites (though one might argue that at least ALL of the avatars aren't white and male).

Normalizing white men (while Othering everyone else) isn't exactly a new phenomenon, but I think it's really fascinating to see the way this plays out online. It reminds me of an interview I did with Alice Marwick for this Guardian article about online misogyny.

"The promise of the early internet," says Marwick, "was that it would liberate us from our bodies, and all the oppressions associated with prejudice. We'd communicate soul-to-soul, and get to know each other as people, rather than judging each other based on gender or race." In reality, what ended up happening was that, online, the default identity became male and white - unless told otherwise, you would assume you were talking to a white man. "So people who brought up their ethnicity, or people who complained about sexism in online communications, were seen as 'playing the race/gender card' or trying to stir up trouble," says Marwick.

Thoughts?

Thanks to Samantha for the link.

*Trigger Warning*

A young woman in Detroit, Asia McGowan, was shot and killed by someone who had been leaving her nasty comments on her Youtube account and also had been stalking her on Facebook. This was someone she knew in real life-it was one of her classmates.

This story is really upsetting me, but I am trying to keep my head straight about the issues at hand. It is stressing me out for two reasons. One, almost every woman I know that has an internet identity has received some sort of threatening, stalker-ish, troll-ish email, comment, forum posting, death threat, blog post or shit even a vlog. This story is chilling and it is important to remember the stalking and murder of women happened before the invention of social networking technology, but this story is chilling nonetheless. As Miriam just said to me over IM, maybe these cases are just more visible now because of technology.

Two, why isn't this story on any of the national news networks? Because black women getting stalked and killed isn't worthy of national news coverage?

For more on this story check out What About Our Daughters, she has all the youtube videos up.

Thanks to Tiffany for the link and reminding me that this type of thing happened even before the internet.

One of the best panels I went to at the Women, Action and Media Conference was about the state of non-profit media models and how to sustain and thrive as a non-profit magazine in a competitive marketplace, where you can get material for free on the web, you are not supported in investigative endeavors and you are already marginalized for being lefty. Yeah, the conversation was a little bit depressing.

According to Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon in the article "Spare Change," about non-profit media models, things are looking grim for business media, so many local papers are looking for alternative types of funding. The question is, is this a viable solution.

But newspapers have been driven to the brink by the expectation of making the kind of double-digit profits that large corporate owners demand, and by the financial shenanigans, including loading up on debt, that corporate ownership has brought. That's why some observers, notably financial experts, believe the future of the news business is not business at all.

On the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst, argued that newspapers should operate through endowments, like universities. San Francisco investment banker Warren Hellman convened a meeting about possibly taking the San Francisco Chronicle nonprofit in an attempt to save it from extinction.

The challenge for nonprofit journalism is both daunting and exciting. Long before the current recession and radical cutbacks, many newspapers had lost their community watchdog function, no longer bothering with the expensive and time-consuming work of investigative reporting. A 2005 survey by Arizona State University of the 100 largest U.S. dailies found that 37 percent had no full-time investigative reporters, and the majority of the major dailies had two or fewer.

As many of our readers who work in non-profit funded magazines can tell you, it is a daily battle to stay afloat and many, many good magazines have shut down over the last few years due to an inability to find consistent funding sources. I have even heard of editors and publishers working for no salary for months at a time in an attempt to keep their magazine open.

We have multiple issues here, from the variations in different types of magazines and newspapers, to the dearth of investigative journalism, to the corporate take-over of media, and the increase of new media and blogs that have changed the media game as we know it, but the underlying issue of access remains the same. The American public has the right to news in its varied, complex and multiple incarnations and one of the side effects of corporate takeover of media has been an increase in independent news sources (monetizing and non, ahem) to bring the truth to the people. The problem isn't trying to figure out if the non-profit model will work on a theoretical level. It should work, but it is generally not sustainable. The problem is that when media became corporate-owned and corporate-driven, it became commodified and the basic belief that access to media and fair representation in all aspects of media from production to reporting-is as fundamental a right as education, health care and housing-went out the window.

Hey, if you can get your newspaper to stay afloat by using a non-profit model I am all for it, but we must critically think about the role of the news in the life of the American. The representations of women and people of color in mainstream corporate owned media based on stereotypes and non-truths as opposed to evidence and investigative methods have had detrimental impacts on our communities, and we have a unique opportunity to organize around that while we risk losing even more control of public media.

Thanks to Neela for the link.

Via Foolish Gadgets

Thanks to curvyglo for the link!

Not just want. Need.

Via Shakesville.

Hey folks, we know folks are having problems with comments and are working to get it fixed. We'll have comments back up and working as soon as possible, thanks for your patience!

UPDATE: Comments are now working!

Having an Iphone has made these last few days in Austin a lot easier. Between the GPS and the scheduling function that SXSW has set up, I haven't been lost (unless I don't have service.) I understand I am very, very lucky to have an Iphone. I saved up for it and didn't splurge on other things, along with having a phone with an antenna (!) until a few months ago. Needless to say, similar to Nezua, I really love my Iphone.

If you are a nerd, like me, you have heard that the Iphone has released a new version of their Iphone software. It is going to add a whole new list of features that the current software fails to have. I am really excited about these new features. But as much as I love my Iphone, I have never thought seriously about having sex with my Iphone. I am going to be totally honest with you. Sometimes I want to make-out with my Iphone-it is just simply a divine piece of technology-but I haven't personally thought about using it as a vibrator or as device to have phone sex with someone.

These authors disagree. Both, My Sexy Professor and Gizmodo are discussing different ways you can have sex with your Iphone. Last year at SXSW I wrote about a panel that discussed the ways that humans interact with technology to have sex. I think this brings up really interesting questions about the role of technology in our sex lives. Generally, discussions of the role of technology (and by this I mean in the geek world, not dildonics) is generally skewed towards male sexuality (teledildonics, pornography, etc) but does the Iphone allow for a new more female centric form of sex via technology that the geek world has ignored until now?

I think it can be said that the Feministing/Pandagon Happy Hour was the best party at SXSW Interactive. We schmoozed, boozed, talked feminism and technology and more importantly got DOWN with some karaoke. Here are some pics from the party and sorry for the slow posting, our internet access has been spotty. Thanks for everyone that came out and note the picture of Amanda Marcotte singing "Lola" and Cecily singing "Heartbreaker" after the jump.

Sitting in the panel right after ours at SXSW, "Can Social Media End Racism" and all of the panelists have agreed that social media cannot end racism, but is in fact a powerful tool to support in our overall goal to end racism. The panel is full of heavy hitters including, Kety Esquivel, Latoya Peterson from Racialicious, Jay Smooth from Illdoctrine and Phil Yu from Angry Asian Man. Latoya breaks it down that social media can help end racism by 1) spreading knowledge, 2) creating refuge, 3) mobilizing communities.

The audience seems deeply engaged with the content matter which is critical for SXSW. I am really happy this panel is following ours creating a deep and complex narrative around different ways that we as cultural and political workers and thought producers counteract narratives of race and gender.

Check the live twitter stream here.

If you identify yourself as a lesbian on your profile in Microsoft's X-Box, you are banned from the game. Why? Because your sexual orientation is offensive to others. Yeah, you heard it right.

via The Consumerist.

UPDATE: X-Box bans anyone that writes anything about orientation, they made a statement here. And one of our commenters explains how exactly someone gets banned.

OK, whoops, my fellow blogger ninja Miriam already covered this. I got a little too ambitious today. Or, not ambitious enough to, er, search my own site to see if we had written about it. Carry on if you want, just thought I would update.

I am a huge fan of TED. I watch their videos every week. One of our readers sent this in and I thought it was really interesting. Brenda Laurel did years of research to design a game for young girls. She discusses that two types of people were her opposition. Male gamers and feminists. And what we have in common is we don't listen to children. Well, I know she isn't talking about me, hehe, but it is really interesting. It is from 10 years ago and things have changed in terms of video games and young girls since then, so even more interesting.

How do you create video games for girls?

via TED
Thanks to Colleen for the link!

Ann and I are traveling to Austin next week for the annual SXSW conference. We are presenting at SXSW Interactive on panel titled, "That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny." If you are going to be at the conference, please come check us out!

And for those of you both that will be at the conference and those of you that are in the Austin area, we are joining forces for one night with Pandagon to have the ultimate feminist blog extravaganza. This event is before the music festival starts so you do NOT need a badge to get in.

Don't sleep on this. Come say hi, have a drink, talk feminism, technology and whatever else you want. And if you *really* want to party, stay after for the karaoke that starts at 10pm.

Monday, March 16, 2009
7:00pm-12:00am
Beerland
711 Red River ST
Austin, TX

If you are on Facebook you can RSVP here.

PS: Ann and I are also staying for music and plan to be at the Bitch/KRS party on Wednesday. Let us know of any other feminist friendly events we should show up to!

This isn't directly related to feminism, but we just had to give props to our tech grrlfriend Deanna Zandt who recently posted "A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter," and I highly recommend checking it out.

Twitter is a beautiful thing for it not only gives you the opportunity to self-indulge shamelessly, but has become a critical tool for networking, resource-sharing and is the most immediate and direct way you can offer your thoughts and/or work to the world. Check it.

Remember the Pink Chaddi campaign? Well they put together a facebook group called, "the Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women" and unfortunately not surprisingly, it was hacked. They are not quite sure by who, but are surmising it is a group of hacktivists in the US.

Feministing hosts multiple groups on social networking sites and we are all too well aware of the threat of hacking, trolling and general disrupting of our online communities. These folks get their kicks from making us "feminazis" upset. But we don't get upset. Trolling feels like a virus. You gotta get the right software and good implementers and you are golden. Also, hacking like this reminds us it is so important we all continue to do what we do, both online and off.

This is the 4th time they have been hacked so go show them some love and learn more about their work.

Thanks to votes from many of you, some of the Feministing ladies (myself and Ann) and Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon and moderated by Cecily Walker will be on a panel at SXSWi, called "That's Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny." If you are going to be in town please come through and say hello!

Needless to say, online misogyny is a topic we deal with regularly and it is a condition that we face online. Despite our ability to move towards a more free space where we can voice our opinions, we are consistently threated by emails, commenters and on other blogs and videos, with sexualized violence or we are just plain ridiculed for speaking in ways that disrupt sexual imbalances of power.

Our panel is going to focus not only stories of our own experiences with online misogyny but ways we have overcome it and best practices for other political and feminist bloggers on how to maintain your identity and politics in a hostile climate.

I am on this week's RH Reality Check podcast talking extensively about this topic. Check it out!

There's a new information-sharing project with a whole lot of potential called Wikigender. The founders explain it:

Wikigender is a project initiated by the OECD Development Centre to facilitate the exchange and improve the knowledge on gender-related issues around the world. In particular, Wikigender tries to gather empirical evidence and identify adequate statistics to measure gender equality. In this respect, Wikigender serves as a pilot project for the OECD Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. Based on the work of the OECD Gender, Institutions and Development Data Base, Wikigender aims to highlight the importance of social institutions such as norms, traditions and cultural practices that impact on gender equality.

As a feminist I believe that the personal is the political. In other words, what you do is political, and yes, it is complicated. All of us at Feministing have bore our personal lives on this blog and they have been picked apart, reprinted, chastised and cherished. But instead of writing a really personal post about how difficult this process is (I will save that for another post), I want to focus on another internet phenomenon that is about sharing. Specifically, the "25 things meme," on Facebook where you share 25 random facts about yourself and tag people to do the same or at least read the ones you put together.

Last week there was an article in the NYT and TIME magazine about the 25 things meme. I specifically found the Time piece to be powerful. The author really hates the 25 things meme.

But it's just so stupid. Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much. Facebook is a loose social network; a "friend" on Facebook might translate to someone you'd barely recognize in real life. I don't care that my college roommate's sister is anemic or that my stepcousin's boyfriend gets nervous around old people (apparently he's afraid they're going to die)

My immediate reaction was pity for this woman, because it sounds like her friends are super boring. I had a completely different experience with sharing 25 things and reading those of my friends. Most of my friends are amazing, actually all of them are, they are interesting and amazing to me, and I found that reading about their lives gave me more insight into who they are and why they do the things they do, are passionate about the things they are passionate about. It was a story-telling tool.

But maybe, I have a different relationship with these lists. I have lived a very public internet life for the last few years. Who I am is what I do in many ways, that is how my identity plays out. I blog under my own name and you can easily find pictures of me. I have also had to make personal sacrifices with knowing that people that I know from all walks of my life have probably read about what I do, so I can't pretend to you know, not be a feminist or something. So my sense of personal privacy is different then someone who has a boss that might read their list.

But given that Facebook has really effective privacy settings, I find this hatred for 25 things really interesting. I find it an honor to be tagged in someone's note, that they wanted me to read these things about them. But other's find it to be a chore, embarrassing and difficult to manage. They would prefer to get to know people as they chose and in the real world.

I find criticism of oversharing to be complex. I think as women and as women of color it is hard enough to speak truths on our lives, so if we are doing it, we should be supported in doing it and say fuck you to internet standards and etiquette. I have never been one for etiquette.

On the other hand there are a lot of things I do not share on the internet. What is your experience with sharing on the internet? When is sharing, oversharing?

Check out one of the bullet points:

8.9" screen does not affect the overall weight of the Eee PC™ 900A, which remains below 1kg - allowing children and women to carry it with ease.

Ya huh.

Thanks to Ashley for the link.

This is the point in the day when I go hide under the covers, and pretend that technology doesn't exist.

Via TechCrunch.

The Center for Emerging Media's Marc Steiner Show aired a talk with our girl Jill from Feministe, the amazing Latoya from Racialicious and Danielle Citron from the University of Maryland (whose research is on online harassment) to discuss the ways that the blogosphere has been extremely hostile to female bloggers and what can be done to create a safer environment.

I'd bet every blogger who is a woman has experienced some form of online harassment. This is definitely a necessary discussion to be had. Click here to listen to the show, I'm waiting on the transcript.

Woot!

Jen Nedeau at Change.org's Women's Rights blog breaks it down.

This headline certainly made me pause when it popped into my inbox so I had to share, even if it is for a laugh. According to this study of over 2000 adults, 46 percent of women said they would forgo sex for internet access as opposed to 30 percent of men.

The U.S. survey, which queried 2,119 adults last month, found that the gap grew even wider for both men and woman who were 18 to 34 years old. For woman, the percentage of those willing to skip the sheets in favor of the Web rose to 49 percent, while it climbed to 39 percent for men.

And for women 35 to 44 years old, the figure jumped to 52 percent. (Results as of Monday from CNET's related online poll showed that 30.5 percent of respondents would give up sex for one year, while 26.1 percent would do without Internet access for a year. Almost 40 percent of voters didn't want to sacrifice either.)

For many of us the internet is how we work, so it is not really an option for us to "give up" the internet. Also, many women get sex from the internet as do many men, along with the increase in long distance relationships that also lead to sex via internet. So basically, if the options ain't looking good in your "real life" the internet functions as an excellent way to not only meet people but have sex with them.

And what was the sexual activity of the people questioned? Were they in relationships? Were they single? I think all these have to do with how long people are willing to give up sex. Hey, some women would rather have internet than have sex with the people they can possibly have sex with at any given time.

Thoughts?

While community poster toomey posted on this a few days ago, we've been getting too many emails from readers to not cover it. And it's also really fucking disturbing.

I don't know what's more unsettling: the fact that she expresses pain and distress when you assault her, or the way inventor Le Trung dresses them. (See pic after jump.)

Last week I wrote about an article run by Salon about "upskirting" and "downblousing" using a quote from John Morris at the Center for Democracy and Technology that certainly set off some alarm bells.

From my post,

Unfortunately, the debate that ensues is a question of whether or not your privacy is being violated since you are on the street and as a public place is free to be photographed with all participants or as John Morris, from the Center for Democracy & Technology, says in the article, "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street."

I have a friend that works at CDT and felt this was a bad characterization of the goals and values of their organization and brought it to the attention of the Director and CEO Leslie Harris, who has released this statement.

The recent Salon article, "Porn in a Flash," contains a quote from our General Council John Morris that was taken out of context. John's quote: "If you don't want to be photographed walking the street, don't walk down the street -- it's a public street," spoke to the broader, general question of whether someone has an expectation of privacy in a public place. Placement of the quote, however, made John sound unsympathetic toward "upskirting" and "downblousing." Of course these practices are wrong, and of course there is a difference between a snapshot on the street and this sort of invasive voyeurism.

CDT is a strong advocate of personal privacy and commends the steps states have taken to criminalize these nefarious practices. Federal privacy laws were passed before the majority of today's portable technologies existed outside of Dick Tracy comic books. That's why CDT is pressing Congress to rewrite the privacy laws and bring them up-to-date with today's technology and provide the sorely needed protections missing from the law as it stands today. We fully believe that state invasion of privacy laws can, if carefully drafted, adequately address these upskirting and downblousing practices.

Leslie Harris
President & CEO
Center for Democracy & Technology

This is just so unbelievably disturbing. A new Japanese augmented reality (AR) software program features a "virtual girlfriend" that literally allows you to hit her with a paddle her until she cries.

All she seems to do is sweep the floor until you undress and paddle her until she cries herself into a fetal position, in which then you give her a teddy bear so she'll become happy again.

(Possible trigger warning)

This isn't a virtual girlfriend at all; this is a virtual torture victim.

h/t to reader Trish

In honor of Google's 10th birthday, they have made their oldest available archive from 2001 available once again. So go here, google yourself, and find out if you had an internet presence way back at the beginning of this century.

One fun prepost-debate exercise: google all four of the nominees on the two presidential tickets. Can you guess which one of the candidates had no internet presence in 2001?

Via DCist

This is too neat. Blogs can now embed books available on Google Books for readers to peruse. I hope Feministing can use this to highlight awesome feminists texts... So in honor of Samhita's recent post, check out Barbara Smith's great book, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, after the jump. (And don't forget to support feminists by buying their books!)

It doesn't look much like a breast, but apparently this new application for the iPhone lets users simulate touching a boob. (If your boob was two-dimensional and malleable like a mofo.) You can also find the simulation here.

It never fails to amaze me how fascinating people find breasts - especially breasts that you can change the size, shape, and firmness of with the click of a mouse. Ick.

Thanks to Garret for the link.

I'll admit it, I get a little weepy before my period. Even snippy at times. But I'm pretty sure that the dudes in my life don't need an email alert to warn them of this. But PMS Buddy disagrees.

PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on "that time of the month" - when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all.

For women, this is a great way to give people in your life a heads-up of when you might be feeling a bit irritable without having an awkward conversation.

Right, because sending an online notification about menstruation is much less awkward than just...not.

Via Shiny Shiny.

Variety has recently released their 2008 "Women's Impact Report," which profiles influential women in movies, television, music, business and technology. Apparently there are only a handful of influential women of color...ugh.

Being from this neck of the woods, I had to post on this hogwash. Apparently a Wyoming police officer shamed young women in a high school assembly by analyzing their MySpace profiles as "slutty" and fodder for inmates' masturbation sessions.

The officer, John F. Gay III of the Cheyenne Police Department, picked out six or seven Windsor High School students' MySpace page and began to criticize photos, comments and other content until one student left the room crying

"He told the entire student body that he had shared her info with a sexual predator in prison," said Ty Nordic, whose daughter Shaylah Nordic's MySpace page was put on display.

I imagine Officer Asshole thought he was utilizing one of those scared straight approaches. Instead he demonstrated what an insensitive and sexist person he really is. When the adult who is both in a position of authority and charged with "protecting" teenagers manages to blame them for their own vulnerability, sexually harass them, and, even more, elicit (or at least pretend to) sexual predators...well, it just seems like grounds for firing and a major re-education effort among fellow police officers.

Has anyone seen non-sexist interventions that educate teenagers about online safety? I imagine a lot of the current curriculum on this stuff tends towards the "blame the victim" mentality.

Thanks to Erin for the heads up.

Anything that's going near your delicates shouldn't have any razor-like abilities. Seems pretty logical to me. But don't tell that to the creators of the Womaniser, the sex toy that opens up to reveal it's a shaver. *Shudder*

If a vibrator is going to be a transformer, there has to be something better it can change into...any ideas?

Story and pic via Shiny Shiny

So this might be a little bit shameless, but hey it is for a good cause. I have submitted a panel to the annual interactive conference in Austin called South by South West. It is where creative tech people, bloggers and other web folk get together and share some of the brightest, newest and innovative ideas in technology and how to apply it to the work we do. I have gone before and it was great, but it was also clear that there needs to be more conversations about the way that women are treated online. So I put a panel together about best practices of beating down online misogyny and you can go vote for it so it is approved. It is pretty competitive so the more votes we get the better. Support women's voices! You know we should be there!

You can vote here!

/shameless promotion

Let's say it for Dell, all at one time now: Women + technology ≠ pink products.

The recent marketing push for the new colored Dell laptops is pretty unreal; I saw this new commercial yesterday and nearly spit out my cereal.

Lovely how literally the only woman in the commercial who doesn't have a pink laptop (red is close enough) puts on lipstick to match the color of her computer. I don't know about you, but my new Dell laptop is just the perfect substitute for a compact mirror!

h/t to Tracy.

I know we generally reserve our "fuck you"s for Fridays, but this one can't wait till the end of the week. (Especially since I'm already coming late to this one!)

From Mighty Ponygirl at Feminist Gamers:

A new game about to be released for the PSN called Fat Princess is a TF2-like capture-the-flag game where the point is to feed your princess enough cake so that she grows really fat so that the opposing team can't carry her back to their castle.

...Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry.

Oh, but that's not as "cute" as cake and fat chicks. Right.

Fuck you, "Fat Princess." And fuck you, Sony for putting out this garbage and perpetuating fat-hating. Seriously. Fuck. You. Sorry I can't be more articulate on this one, I'm just too pissed.

Holly and Melissa (who had a awful but oh-so-telling influx of trolls) has more.

via community blogger x364173.

I am sitting in the panel "Totally Wired Hip-hop: Reaching Urban Youth." Lynne D Johnson is moderating this panel that features MC Hammer, Adisa Banjoko from the Hip-Hop Chess Federation and Jesus Lara from MTV Latin America. I guess you are wondering why I am sitting at a panel on how to market to the hip-hop youth. Since my job is supporting strategic communications in disenfranchised communities, I am interested in how marketing is important in the hip-hop urban youth community.

Lynne asks "when we talk about hip-hop youth, we mean black and Latino youth, how is this relevant?" Panelists respond discussing how hip-hop is a lifestyle and culture along with a form of musical expression. Hip-hop is global and always mixing with other forms of music and reproducing new and unique sub-cultures.

I think it is very important to think about and strategize how to reach youth of color, but I have more questions about what kind of content we are pushing and what behaviors we are asking of youth. How is simply reaching youth effective or important if they are being hand fed content that is ignorant, racist, sexist or merely marketing product?

But this is not a call for increased censorship. I completely support the flow of diverse forms of content. As Lynne just said, "sometimes the only way to get your message across is by using profanity." I definitely do not fall in the camp of "turn off that profane rap music!" I think the bigger question is what does the messages in mainstream hip hop tell us about lived conditions about urban youth of color? What marketers don't care about is the images that sell the most are glamorized visions of "ghetto life" which is not that glamorous in real life.

MC Hammer smartly asks, "How do we change the conditions and environment that are producing these songs?"

My bigger question is what is the role of gender in marketing to youth via hip-hop? Why is sexist and homophobic music the most popular and what does tell us about current conditions for youth of color? And finally, how does feminism need to broaden to understand how to address the representation of women of color in mainstream hip-hop that is heavily marketed to youth?

Image by Drew Burrows

NYU student Drew Burrows showed off his new girlfriend at the Tisch School of the Arts show, in which she was the art, via the Daily Intel:

It's simple to behold — a single mattress, tucked into a dark, curtained back room of the showcase space. On it: a lithe brunette. She's perfectly quiet, but once you sit or lie down, she responds to your every move. Lie on your back, she snuggles up right next to you in a log position. Curl up in the fetal position, she spoons. The only hitch: She's 2-D. 'Yeah, you can't feel the girl. That's the thing,' Burrows explained as he demonstrated his invention, an "infrared sensitive" light projection (meaning it reacts, and the projected woman moves, based on an infrared sensor) called INBED. 'Still, it's so nice if you're tired and worn out to have someone to curl up with.' (Emphasis mine)

Shudder. And that's just the tip of the iceberg:

Burrows suggests his new alternative to a full-body pillow or (ugh) blow-up doll could provide late-night comfort for traders, lawyers, or any other single guy in Manhattan who simply works too hard to keep a girlfriend.

Just...wow. Some are defending this as a simple art project addressing intimacy and loneliness, but Burrows seems to have created this - and is blatantly pitching it - not as art, but seriously as an adequate substitution for a woman. Not okay.

Via Boing Boing. (h/t to reader Austin)

Can we please stop calling every attempt at analyzing pop culture "outrage"? Kthx, moving on.

Annalee Newitz's piece from the San Francisco Bay Guardian last week embarks on the task of justifying the violence and misogyny in Grand Theft Auto 4.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is lobbying to get the video game rated "adults only" (effectively killing it in the US market, where major console manufacturers won't support AO games) because there's one scene in the game where you have the option to drive drunk. Apparently none of the good ladies of MADD have ever played GTA, since if they had they might have discovered that when you try to drive drunk, the video game informs you that you should take a cab. If you do drive, the cops immediately chase you down. Which is exactly the sort of move you'd expect from this sly, fun game, which hit stores last week.

I actually stand at a different point than MADD and I don't necessarily support the censorship of the game, I don't really think censorship works. The more ratings and labels you put on something, the edgier and sexier it becomes. Censorship doesn't change the fact that violence and misogynist sex scenes make up the bulk of edgy popular culture or that violence is a serious problem for youth today and so is the sexualization of women, along with violence against women.

On some level, I do agree with proponents of GTA 4. Several of my friends have said, "but it is just fun." I don't deny that advances in video game technology are in fact mind-blowing and down right incredible and the they are fun. Hello, I am a blogger, I get the nerd new-cool-fun-fangled-technology thing.

What I can't get down with is justifying blatant misogyny by calling it art.

If GTA4 were a movie, it would have been directed by Martin Scorsese or David O. Russell, and we'd all be ooohing and aaahhing over its dark, ironic vision of immigrant life in a world at war with itself. But because GTA4 is a video game, where players are in the driver's seat, so to speak, it freaks people out. Earlier installments of GTA-inspired feminist and cultural-conservative outrage (you have the option to kill prostitutes!), and concern over moral turpitude from Hillary Clinton (you can beat cops to death! Or anybody!).

I think it is really problematic to lump all criticisms of GTA4 together. I believe at some point, I was written about along with a conservative writer (shudder to think) and that is not giving the full range of view points space to air their concerns. I am pretty sure if a movie had prostitute killing in it, I would write about it, but that is besides the point. GTA4 is not a movie, it is bigger than a movie. In fact, movies switched around their release dates for the release of GTA4. In the first week out it has grossed 500 million dollars. Furthermore, it is played, repeatedly and it is a role playing game, where you are the person engaging in violent acts. It is a fantasy, your fantasy. Perhaps there is a moment of identification like this with movies, but it is different then actually acting something out yourself.

Facebook is on a roll today. Reader Adrienne alerted us to an ad for a crisis pregnancy center on Facebook, so I decided to do a little more research on the site’s advertisements.

Sure, there’s a range from shoe brands to social justice organizations, but pretty offensive weight loss ads are more common. And then we find the ad for “A Woman’s Concern,� a center that, according to their website, provides a variety of services including “pregnancy testing, ultrasound testing, information on abortion procedures, mentoring…� You can guess what the "information" on abortion is.

Another ad I found was a pitch to recruit egg donors. Not to say that egg donation is necessarily a bad thing, but the egg business has become one of many ethical and political questions. The Center for Genetic and Society, Choice USA and the Pro-Choice Public Education Project have been conducting research on egg donation and reproductive justice, make sure to check it out.

These should serve as a reminder that we need to pay attention to what's being marketed to young women online. In the meantime, Facebook may not strictly moderate their ads, but you can; report an ad you think is offensive. And as a first step, let’s get deceptive CPC advertising off of Facebook.

(And join our Feministing group!)

Several readers wrote in to tell us about this horrific "piece of flair" that you can send to friends on Facebook through this application. Now, users can create their own buttons so I'm going to assume that the creators of this application didn't make this - a user did. But that's not excuse. Contact the developers of Facebook's "Pieces of Flair" and let them know that rape isn't funny.

UPDATE: The developers of this application have emailed us to let folks know that they've taken the button down and are committed to their program being free of offensive, violent buttons like the one above. Kudos to them.

Except totally not cool, because they decided to link to someone who thought that the best way to counter-act my argument about patriarchy and Grand Theft Auto, was to make fun of the fact that I think patriarchy exists. Huh?

The girls at Feministing weren't having it: "It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular?" (Jesus Christ, if this is what degrees in gender studies hath wrought, polysyllabic bloggers still carping about the patriarchy, please fucking stop handing them out.)

I don't think polysyllabic is an insult. And yeah omg, patriarchy is SO ten years ago. . . except these stories (among the many many others posted on Feministing and around the feminist blogosphere, this was just a quick google search) are testament to this assertion being false.

But Reverse Cowgirl continues (and ya know some feminists like doing the reverse cowgirl too, you don't have to shed feminism to enjoy different sexual positions, but I digress and sorry mom) with a very common anti-feminist argument about political correctness being outdated.

This guy wants to feel your boobs.

So apparently at a software convention called ConFusion, a bunch of guys were standing around and talking about how awesome the world would be if they could just reach out and grab any woman's boobs. And a woman near them piped up that they could touch her breasts, and they all proceeded to grope her. Then, according to a post by some dude who calls himself the Ferrett, pictured above, they asked other women:

"It was exciting, of course. I won't deny it was sexual. But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.

Emboldened, we started asking other people. And lo, in the rarified atmosphere of the con, few were offended and many agreed. And they also felt that strange charge. We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable - you didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress - and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.

Did you catch that? "The ones who'd dressed to impress"? Almost as if they were "asking for it"? That because they were wearing a tight shirt, their breasts were practically public property, anyway?

By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry."

Because what could be more intoxicating than the approval of a room full of tech dudes?

We talked about this. It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks. (Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.) And we wanted a signal to let people know that they were okay with being asked politely, so we turned it into a project: The Open-Source Boob Project.

For those of you not technologically inclined, "open-source" software means the code is available for anyone to use. All-access. Everyone has a right to it. Just like women's bodies! (Get it? They're so clever!)

Oh, but it doesn't stop there...

Miki Fujiwara, aka Urban Envy, is a self-employed visual artist/community activist based in New York City.

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Miki is known to be one of the original members of the New York Tributary Art Movement. The majority of her work, mostly paintings, has been categorized as "Cultural Surrealism," often said to be in the "tradition of Cynthia Tom and Frida Kahlo."

Urban Envy's works can be seen in local galleries of New York City.

Here's Miki...

The New York Times had an article yesterday about the rise of teen girl bloggers, which is great news. But it doesn't come without some predictable stereotyping.

According to a study done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, only 20 percent of boys blog, compared to 35 percent of girls aged 12 to 17. Plus that doubled increase in blogging activity from 2004 to 2006 by teens was mostly attributed to female bloggers. Awesome, right?

Yet the article focuses on the lack of girls and women interested in computer science and technology, and seems to argue that girls' interest in blogging is purely to express their own "girly" selves, and that they probably won't contribute much of an increase to the current 27 percent of women in computer and mathematical occupations:

It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

'Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,' said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

'This would be called the feminization of the Internet,' she said. (Emphasis mine)

And so this build-up continues with the cattiness between blogs by teen girls (equating hotlinking with showing up at a party with the same dress on), that their content includes mother's day cooking recipes and even refers to those who make money as "would-be Martha Stewarts." Of course they happen to leave out that the same site is currently featuring a post on sexual harassment.

Am I saying there's something wrong with the trend of glitter graphics or a primarily pink website for girls? Absolutely not. But saying girls are dominant in blogging because of "cultural expectations" and assuming that the only reason girls like blogs is because they're naturally more "creative" and want to express their feelings seems to moot the amazing fact that not only are teen girls possibly becoming more blog-savvy than boys, but also that they're creating far-reaching online communities. In other words, why should the "why" matter?

Either way, it's awesome to see female teen bloggers kicking ass. Link to your own in comments!

According to a recent survey, the wage gap between men and women in the tech industry is growing.

Men are making more money than women in technology jobs, about 12% more than they did last year, according to a salary survey by career site Dice.com.

The survey found that salaries for men increased by 2.4% in 2007 but stayed flat for women. The average salary last year for men was $76,582, and for women, it was $67,507, according to Dice. The gap widened last year: In 2006, the difference between salaries paid to men and women was 9.7%.

The gap was highest for workers in retail, mail order and e-commerce industries - where men make 15 percent more than women. Yikes.

Anyone in the tech industry want to weigh in?

Tiara included!

We should be excited that there's a new book coming out specifically reaching out to young female gamers, but not with this cover and pitch:

Do you want to take on the boy's at their own game and beat them every single time? You want to prove that games AREN'T just for the guys anymore! Are you, your daughter, your niece or your best friend a Nintendo DS or DS Lite girl gamer? Tired of other gaming publications ignoring all your favourite games in favour of the latest big boy's toys? So you want all the latest gaming gossip and the hottest hints and tips especially written for you? So do we, and its about time. The Girl's Guide To Gaming! is the must have accessory for all Nintendo DS and DS Lite gaming girls, just like you. (Emphasis mine.)

It doesn't get much worse than this.

While it's no big shocker to most of us that women feel patronized by pink gadgets marketed to them, this is the ultimate blood-boiling "girly" gadget I may have ever witnessed.

Marie Claire's October issue asked PopGadget's founder to create the most "dream" cell phone for women -- yes, the shePhone. (Look below the jump.) So according to this Phone of Fabulousness, women are drug and sex-addicted, neurotic (yet tanned, fragranced and flossed) alcoholics. Regardless of whether this is supposed to be humorous or not, it's not.

Via The Underwire.

The New York Times reports that NARAL Pro-Choice America has been banned from using their text-messaging program to communicate to their activists because their messages are "controversial or unsavory."

Text messaging has been increasingly used by political organizations and groups as a means of sending alerts or information to their members, yet Verizon has chosen to discriminate against the organization for sending messages such as "End Bush’s global gag rule against birth control for world’s poorest women! Call Congress. (202) 224-3121. Thnx! Naral Text4Choice.� How unsavory.

Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson says they're (of course) "neutral" on the issue of abortion and their decision wasn't because NARAL is pro-choice, but claims “It is the topic itself that has been on our list.�

So I have a request to all of you with Verizon cell phones: text all of your friends with Verizon cell phones, "Abortion should be legal and uncensored." Then have them forward it on and cancel their account.

Huffington Post has more.

Full disclosure: Jessica has a working relationship with NARAL.

So I am on my way to Cortes Island, off the coast of British Columbia for the annual Web of Change conference to talk about technology, politics, and social movement building. But really I am going because I hear there is a hot tub on the beach.

I will be presenting on how to build and maintain integrity and political credibility in developing technology projects. What this means exactly, I am going to have to get back to you (LOL), but if people have initial thoughts, please let me know.

So anywayz, wish me luck and expect some live blogging!

How sexism keeps women from participating in the YouTube vlogger culture.

Via Slashdot, I read an article today in Computer World summarizing the experience of four women and how the thrived in IT. It was definitely interesting, but I have some issues with the framing of the issues.

The first profile about Monique McKeon who eventually worked for the Chubb Corp ( a woman friendly place apparently where she is happy) experienced in her early career in IT a struggle between her home life and having a flourishing career.

At the consultancy, her travel schedule kept her out of town more than she was comfortable with. Then, when her first child was born, the bottom fell out. “I heard through the grapevine that one of the partners said I wasn’t as committed as before I had children,� she says. “That was the day I started looking for a job.

Please don't tell me the work place doesn't discriminate against working mothers. If a male employee showed affection or interest towards one of their children, would they be called out for a lack of commitment to the job?

At the end of every profile there is a little bit of advice:

You can balance an IT career with your home life, but it means making choices that are true to your priorities and understanding the trade-offs. “Having it all� is a fantasy.

That's right ladies, get used to it. You will not have the same choices, so be happy with the ones you have. I am sure the author of this piece did not intend for this article to denigrate the success of these women in anyway, but actually wanted to highlight some of the experiences of women in IT. However, it is clear that thriving doesn't mean actually beating boys at their own game. It means learning how to balance home and career, which is not something that men have to do.

It appears, at least to me, thriving means making strategic choices that may not always be the most career savvy, but allows you relative peace and minimized discrimination. I guess in order to thrive you have to forget that you want to get to the top and "refocus" your energy to where a woman's energy ought to be, on her family! I mean imagine you were a woman that didn't care about having kids and just wanted to make it to the top? What are you then?

There is a lot more to the article I am not getting into here, but really grim aspect for me is the significant decrease in the number of women that are going to college for computer science. I guess in light of Cara's excellent analysis of sexism in tech culture, why am I NOT surprised?

Coping strategies to make it in any workplace are great, but let's not cover up the deeper issues here.

A case is hitting the California Supreme Court about whether doctors can refuse to provide IVF or other fertility treatments for single women or lesbians for religious reasons.

Guadalupe Benitez filed a lawsuit against San Diego two doctors who refused to artificially inseminate her because, she alleges, she is a lesbian. Those doctors worked at the only facility covered by her insurance plan. So it wasn't like she could easily find another clinic after their refusal.

The doctors are now claiming they did not deny services based on Benitez's sexual orientation (which is illegal in California and several other states), but because she's not married. (Never mind that she lives with her partner of 11 years.) As if it's somehow better to discriminate on the basis of marital status than on the basis of sexual orientation? Yes, sadly, in most states, marital status is an acceptable reason for denying people medical services. Seriously. Ugh.

The court is being asked to decide how to accommodate a physician's religious views without violating California's anti-discrimination laws. [...]

What distinguishes the case of Guadalupe Benitez is that the physicians involved refused to provide a medical procedure to one patient that they readily provide to others, says Jill Morrison, legal counsel to the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy group that works to protect women's rights in the workplace, schools, sports, and health care. "Usually, providers who object to certain services object to them for everyone: 'I won't provide contraception.' In this case, they don't object to the service, just the patient. You can't pick and choose. You can't say, 'I will perform it for white people, but not for black people.' "

I disagree somewhat. I know Morrison wasn't saying that refusing to provide contraception is ok, but that's sort of the implication. (Which is unfortunate, because the NWLC does a lot of good work around pharmacy access issues.) Of course, we can all agree it's bad to provide a service to one group of people that you refuse to provide to another group of people. But pharmacists who refuse to dispense contraception to women, then happily ring up condoms for men, are doing the same thing. Providing services to one group but not another. If that fairy-tale day ever arrives when they start selling hormonal contraception for men, I'd be shocked if there was the same level of pharmacist resistance to dispensing it.

Mother Jones has a more in-depth look at the Benitez case, and the larger issues it brings up. It asks, "Should there be a right to reproductive assistance?" And, following from that, "Should infertility be viewed as a medical problem?"

Says University of Wisconsin Law School bioethicist Alta Charo, “For many years infertility was not regarded as something sufficiently serious that it necessitated care. Treatment was discretionary, not necessary.� RESOLVE and other infertility rights groups have worked hard to change this, as have [Assisted Reproductive Technology] clinics. Yet defining ART as a medical treatment is a bit forced, because “if you use the classic situation of a fertile woman with an infertile male spouse, she never had a fertility problem to begin with,� notes Charo. A more logical line of reasoning might be to view her as having a social, not a medical, dilemma. She does not want to have sex outside her marriage -- that’s why she can’t get pregnant. Should society step in to help her? Should this be covered by insurance?

To get around this dilemma, those in favor of greater access to ART like to position infertility as a disease of a couple -- a rather unconventional diagnosis. But even if “an infertile couple� gets under the umbrella of medicine, there’s no guarantee of particular services. “You have to start with the fact that in the United States of America, in terms of health care, with certain limited exceptions, you have a right to nothing,� says [Northeastern University legal scholar Wendy] Parmet. “If I want a hip replacement and I don’t have the money� -- be it through insurance or otherwise -- “I don’t get a hip replacement.� And, except for “certain no-no reasons,� Parmet notes, all doctors, including fertility clinicians, are free to choose whom they want to treat. “Anybody can deny me care because my name is Wendy, but they can’t deny me care because of my religion or my race.�

In some states, like California, where Benitez was seeking care, doctors also cannot turn patients away due to sexual orientation, even if the doctor’s objection stems from her own religious beliefs.

But that's the issue that the California Supreme Court will be examining shortly. The excuse that providing treatment violates the doctor's religious beliefs is one that's not only used against gay men and lesbians, but also single women. I love this quote from Benitez, which puts the whole religion angle into perspective,

"People ask me, 'Why are you doing this? You have your kids,' " she says. "I want to make a difference. These doctors are not God. They cannot manipulate who can have children and who cannot."

Amen to that.

The New York Times has a piece today about how a number of typically male-played video games are now featuring options which allow them to "dress" their characters. And the boys are absolutely loving it.

Of course, this has to be cloaked in what some would call hypermasculine games like World Wrestling Entertainment and even the oh-so-controversial Grand Theft Auto. But nonetheless, it's nice to see men being portrayed in the media as fashion-conscious for a change.

This one totally passed me right by, but today is a "Day of Silence" to save internet radio. Why should we care about the corporate takeover of web radio? Because people that can't get radio stations on the airwaves anymore and folks (community run women and people of color stations) that have been put out of business by companies like Clear Channel, have gone to internet radio. But now internet radio is at risk as well.

via Wired News.

Barring Congressional intervention or the success of one of the many appeals of the Copyright Royalty Board's decision, Internet radio will die on July 15th, when payments under the new scheme are due, though SoundExchange recently back-pedaled a bit by exempting small webcasters until 2010. (It's worth noting that SoundExchange collects royalties for all artists and labels, so webcasters can't even stay online by refusing to webcast music from RIAA bands.)

However, no music doesn't mean that all webcasters will go offline completely. For instance, KCRW plans to air a loop of an hour-long discussion of the copyright royalty situation called "D-Day for Webcaster (there was talk of me appearing near the beginning of the show to introduce the situation, but the timing didn't work out -- bummer).

Also according to the Media Action Center at YMC:

The new rates mean fewer outlets to get the music and diversity we don't hear on broadcast radio. Putting webcasters out of business will only hurt artists more. They depend on Internet radio to get their music out to fans and build new audiences. When the webcasters go off the air, so do artists.

This is particularly alarming for youth, women and communities of color that have been pushed out of any meaningful participation in broadcast radio. A recent study by Free Press found that despite compromising 51% of the U.S. population, women only control 6% of commercial radio stations. Racial or ethnic minorities make up 33% of the population but own just 7% of radio stations. For our communities, saving Internet radio is a matter of maintaining power in a media system wherein we have so little already. It means making sure we have choices and control over who and what we hear. It means radio belongs to everyone, not just who can afford it.

You can take action here.

A ring of web based pedophiles have been busted. This is so disturbing that I won't write anymore. This article contains very explicit and disturbing information. Click at your own risk, because this story will completely fucking ruin you day.

This week the FDA approved Lybrel, contraception designed so you don't get a monthly period. Some of the reactions to the pill have been really revealing as to just how little many women know about how hormonal contraception works. As Ema writes, "Imagine the women's surprise when they find out (hopefully) that, since the 1960s, every single Pill brand allows them to avoid their monthly menstrual period indefinitely." She also links to this gem from ABC News:

It's unclear whether women will embrace this new pill, which contains the same formulations of estrogen and progestin used for birth control pills for decades, but its arrival marks yet another step toward the blurring of the genders.

Panic in the streets! How will women know they're women if they don't have to ride the cotton pony once a month? You've got to be kidding me.

And speaking of condescension, (via Ann Bartow) in a post that should be titled, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Eugene," Eugene Volokh seeks to understand the mysteries of biological womanhood by requesting "input from people who have actually menstruated":

When you menstruate, do you feel that you're part of the "in crowd"? If you chose to stop -- not because of menopause, which is a marker of age and of lost fertility, but voluntarily and reversibly -- would you feel "out"? Do you smile and talk to your friends about the cramps, the mood swings, and the like? Do you feel you derive meaning from the fact that you share menstruation as an experience with other women? Would you feel meaning subtracted if you stopped menstruating, because menstruation is so "central" a "female experience"? Do you find menstruation to be similar to pregnancy in any emotionally positive way?

CNN's Reliable Sources featured Arianna Huffington, Joan Walsh of Salon and Mary Katherine Ham from Townhall talking about online misogyny. Ham was predictabley wack, but it's worth a watch anyway.

Crooks and Liars has the video.

Check out my latest in The Guardian, "How the web became a sexists' paradise," which talks about the Sierra craziness, misogyny online, and my own experiences. Lemme know what you think.

Salon’s Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh discusses the Kathy Sierra madness. Here’s a snippet:

"Attitudes toward women have improved dramatically just in my lifetime, but still the world has too many misogynists, and the Web has given them a microphone that lets them turn up the volume on their quavering selves, their self-righteous fury, their self-loathing expressed as hatred of women. And yet, mostly, women on the Web just have to ignore it. If you show it bothers you, you've given them pleasure...

But it coarsens you to look away, and to tell others to do the same. I've grown a thicker skin. I didn't want skin this thick. And what does it mean that women writers have to drag around this anchor every time they start to write -- that we reflexively compose our own hate mail, and sometimes type and retype to try to avoid it? I can honestly say it's probably made me more precise and less glib. That's good. But it's also, for now, made me too cautious. I write less than I would if I wasn't thinking these thoughts. I think that's bad. I think Web misogyny puts women writers at a disadvantage, and as someone who's worked for women's advancement in the workplace, and the world, that saddens me."

This particularly reminded me of the conversation we had yesterday at the WAM! conference about this assumption that women threatened on the internet should be thick-skinned and just deal with the trolls that come our way rather than talk about the seriousness of the issue, that violence can actually exist on the internet.

I've been looking forward to this panel all weekend, maybe because Samhita is on it, as well as Deanna and the lovely Jennifer Pozner, director of Women in Media and News (WIMN).

Jenn discusses the efficacy of blogging in breaking stories, Deanna makes sure to tell us that women need to start editing sites such as Wikipedia in order to create more of a presence on the web, and Samhita questions the stakes that feminist bloggers take when they begin their journey into the blogosphere.

They also discuss the "new boys' club" that has seemed to have transferred from mainstream journalism to political blogs, the ways that power and inequality replicate themselves in this way, and how can we, as feminist bloggers, approach this problem. (One way -- for women in tech, at least -- is BRA Camp. Sweet.)

Also, what is a women's blog as opposed to a feminist blog? What are the problems that feminist bloggers have as opposed to bloggers that are women, like the severity of sexist trolling for feminist blogs as opposed to blogs written by women, etc. At the same time, if you're a woman blogging about a typically male field, like in Kathy Sierra's recent case, shit often goes down just as badly, to the point where you're life is actually threatened.

Intense stuff, but certainly a productive conversation. Intense weekend, but certainly a great one. Time for an excruciatingly long, hungover ride home.

The panel is actually titled New Media Distribution 202: Empowering Communities Through Online Tools led by the fabulous Deanna Zandt, and girlfriend knows her shit. (Which is exactly why she's working with us.)

Here is a del.icio.us (indeed) resource list of some of the tools she went over.

I've been charged with helping Feministing evolve into the wonderful world of Web 2.0, and you might notice a few changes that we are just pleased as punch to share with you all.

First, there's a set of links at the end of each post now where you -- yes, you! -- can save your favorite Feministing items and help spread the word to the rest of the world. Second, there's a link to a service called "Spotlight" where you can send posts right to local and national media outlets.

What? Why? How? OK, here's a little primer...

One of the most embarrassing Sex and the City scenes was the one in which Carrie enlists Samantha's help to remove her diaphragm. Not because the situation seemed a little intimate, even for two close friends, but because it revealed that Carrie's chosen birth control method was the diaphragm. I mean, how retro was that? Despite conversations about ticking biological clocks and complaints about twentysomething women, the characters had always seemed pretty young to me. Until this talk of a retro method of contraception that doesn't even prevent most STDs.

Or could it? Last week at TAP Online, Beth Schwartzapfel wrote about how the diaphragm is being re-designed using more flexible materials so that one-size-fits-all. This might make it a more convenient option for women who can't or don't want to use hormonal birth control. But perhaps more promisingly, it could help curb HIV infection rates in Africa:

Because the cervix is much more susceptible to HIV infection than the vagina, cervical barrier methods like the diaphragm could be of great help. Beth writes,

Not only could it offer American women yet another contraceptive option, but it could prove a powerful tool in reducing HIV infection rates both at home and abroad. In a large-scale clinical trial that's the first of its kind, researchers are currently testing the impact that diaphragm use has on HIV infection rates in Africa -- where methods of protection that women can initiate without requiring their partners' consent are badly needed.

That's enough for me to consider the diaphragm on its way back to cool again.

Here's some cool news to start your weekend off with:

One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the $100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman Wednesday for the first time in the award's 40-year history.

Frances E. Allen, 74, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another.

Allen started working at IBM in 1957, around the time the company was recruiting women by using a brochure called "My Fair Ladies." Awesome.

Via Women and Tech News.

This is your technical maven reporting in: we're in the processing of moving our RSS feeds to the Feedburner service, so you might experience some weirdness over the next few hours. This is should eventually improve the quality of RSS life for all of you who've been experiencing errors and whatnot. If you don't see new posts in your feeds by the end of the day, or are getting error messages, please let me know! (My email is below.)

Not sure if you're using RSS? (hint: you use Google Reader, Bloglines or some other website or software on your computer to read the news.) Don't know what RSS is, but desperately wanting to find out? Ever see those little orange buttons all over webpages and wonder, "WTF?" MediaShift has a great explanation about the wild, wild world of feeds.

Problems? You can always drop me a line at sitehelp AT feministing DOT com (sorry that email address looks weird, it's a spam-blocking technique. Shazam!)

... please stand by. Typekey is giving out an error when yas try to sign in; I'm working with our hosting provider and Typekey to get them to play nice. We'll update you when it's working again.

So very sorry for the inconvenience!

Ugh. Online virtual game Second Life allows you to purchase a rape. Options include "hold victim," "rape victim" and "get raped." Gawker reports that a sexual assault costs 220 Lindens (the Second Life currency) which, from what I can tell, is less than a dollar.

This is different from games like Grand Theft Auto, namely because Second Life is, for many players, really more like an alternate life than a video game. There have been several articles about the real-life implications of Second Life, noting how players are emotionally and socially affected by their virtual selves. So while the idea of rape fantasies in general is certainly disturbing to me, I'm even more troubled that it's even offered by Second Life as an option, as if this is one of a range of activities to make your virtual life more "real." You know... the "virtual you" can get a job, attend some social events, go to the supermarket, and then rape someone in an alley. This is a game that people get so absorbed in that they use it to help kids overcome social anxiety disorders. Now it's normalizing the idea of rape. I'm disgusted.

[UPDATE: Jess just sent me the link to RapeLay, which is truly a new low.]

Which seems like a natural segway to this post from Thinking Girl. In response to an entry she wrote on sexual assault, a reader recently wrote in and asked her for advice on how not to become a rapist:

The New York Hall of Science is hosting an exhibtion on artificial women, Alluring Androids, Robot Women, and Electronic Eves.

Lara Croft, the Japanese robot Repliee Q2, and the Stepford Wives are a few of the artificial women pictured...Exploring artists’, filmmakers’, and photographers’ long-time fascination with images of artificial women that seem alive, Alluring Androids, Robot Women, and Electronic Eves contains large images of female robots, androids, automatons, dolls, mannequins, and other artificial women. These include images from films, photography, intermedia art, animation, and video ranging from early automatons to the life-like female androids in today’s video and computer games.

I'm all for exploring the fascination with the dehumanization of women--but positing the exhibition as "alluring" and sexy truly disturbs me.

What is it with all of these studies on women and cell phones? The most recent has apparently found that 75% of women don't know how to use them.

Seven in 10 women ask partners or even their children for advice on how to operate gadgets, including having others download music to an MP3 player for them.

Wondering about the relevancy of this blatantly incorrect data, I found that the retailer who did the study has formed their very own "GadgetAngels," an all-female team of experts who will basically teach us dum dums how to use cell phones in order to break down this gender-based "technofear."

While the study is obviously part of a marketing strategy to seem like this "women-friendly" company that will save us from our idiocies, it also perpetuates the whole idea that women are technologically incompetent.

At the least, they could have thought of a better name than "GadgetAngels." Barf.

It’s not my usual time to post, (I will post on Saturday, too) but I spoke with Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org yesterday afternoon on the issue of “Net Neutrality� from her Berkeley, California home. And she said Friday might be the day when the internet changes for all of us.

Here’s Joan…

According to this new study, people who have traditionally female usernames in chat rooms receive 25 times more threatening and sexually inappropriate messages than people with traditionally male or even ambiguous usernames.

Damn.

I must say this is pretty funny. UCLA is conducting a workshop on gender in computing, and this is their ad for it. While I don’t doubt the workshop itself will kick ass, what better exemplifies gender in computing than Barbie and Mortal Combat?

Via Nerve, who says, “Isn’t this ad for it just so sex-and-death?�

A new study from Consumer Electronics says women gamers who are between 25 to 34 years-old outnumber men.

The CEA study found that 65 percent of women in the 25-34 age bracket play video games, while only 35 percent of men in that group said that they play video games. Apparently, the key factor involved with these findings is the increasing popularity of casual games, especially among women.

Women were found to be slightly less likely than men in the 25-34 bracket to play traditional console games on systems like the PlayStation 2 or Xbox, while they gravitated more heavily towards simple types of games like Tetris or other puzzle games and card games like solitaire. These casual titles are typically found on web portals like Yahoo!, AOL Games, PopCap Games, EA's Pogo.com and elsewhere.

Ok, now I have pretty much zero knowledge about gamers and video games and that whole area. But what is all this “casual� video game stuff? Women don’t like “real� games?

A senior analyst at CEA went on to say that women like casual games because they are "nonviolent, and are not necessarily supercompetitive against other players."

Again, I don’t know much about gaming--but this women-aren’t-competitive argument seems to crop up everywhere. Any girl gamers want to fill me in? Is this bullshit sexist stereotypes or do the ladies really not want to get their hands dirty with big-boy games?

I was going to respond to Annalee Newitz’s Alternet piece, The Down Side of Slashdot, which deals with sexism in the tech world. (It has the best subtitle ever: Slashdot has become the hub of the tech world. So why do many of its users seem like sexist dicks?) But I’m not really familiar with the tech world, so I figured I’m better off pointing to someone who is. Alice Tiara, who has a blog on feminism and technology, goes past the arguments of the article and goes straight to the comments section--which is where shit gets truly revealing. As expected, it’s of the sexism-doesn’t-exist-get-over-it variety.

Alice's argument--and it’s something I think about a lot--is that there comes a point where you just can’t engage in that kind of conversation.

I’m not interested in debating whether sexism exists. We live in a patriarchy. Sexism is a dominant force. I am not going to engage in any dialogue to the contrary, because it’s not productive. I’ve been studying gender politics for more than a decade, and I want to talk about feminist issues on a fairly high level, which is not possible when you are constantly having to repeat yourself to men who don’t see sexism because of male privilege. (One of the privileges of male [white, straight] privilege is not having to see sexism [racism, homophobia].)

That’s the problem with trying to analyze sexism in the tech industry. (Obviously it’s not all sexist. Blogs like BoingBoing and Wonderland are explicitly feminist and really awesome.) But very, very frequently, if you try to point out sexism, you are told that it doesn’t exist, that you are imagining things, that you are trying to create trouble and piss people off, and that there is no subject position in the industry because it is based on merit (skills, whatever criteria you use). I am not interested in this discussion. Let’s accept that sexism does exist in the tech industry, like it exists everywhere else, and move on to how to change that.

I couldn’t agree more. I used to spend a lot of my time talking to brick walls--and it's just a waste of time. But I have friends who say that engaging people like this is integral, that these are the people who need to hear it most. But is it my job to talk to people who will never get it in the hope that a little something manages to resonate with them, or should I be focusing on working towards something bigger and more productive? Thoughts?

Scottish researchers are developing a new-and-improved birth control pill. It sounds positively dreamy: Non-hormonal! Prevents cancer! No PMS! Lower risk of blood clots!

While the Pill is the most effective form of contraception, many are put off by side-effects from the female hormones on which it is based... The new Pill works on a completely different principle, using a chemical called mifepristone to block the action of progesterone, which the body needs to ovulate and support a pregnancy.

But wait! Before you get too excited, note that the new Pill is an extremely low dose of mifepristone, which is the main drug used in medication abortion. So scientists are expecting anti-choice opposition to the pill's approval.

"If it was decided just on scientific grounds, and the pharmaceutical industry did not respond to all sorts of irrational factors, it could be developed within five years," he said. "As it is, I would expect it to be within five to ten years."

In other words, don't hold your breath. If everything were decided on scientific grounds, we'd have Plan B over-the-counter and a male birth control pill by now.

While we’ve covered a number of weird Playboy spreads of women from a number of different places ranging from the Olympics to McDonald’s to even video games, this is one feature that’s going to cause some controversy. Playboy.com is entering an enormous online community to search for their next models: “The Girls of MySpace.”

Considering the significant number of teenagers as young as 14 on MySpace.com, people are not going to be happy. Additionally, MySpace is being investigated in two open cases in which teen girls were possibly murdered by online predators.

While Playboy has purchased an ad on MySpace, the site has not agreed to partner with Playboy.com on the feature. Apparently, Playboy's “Girls of” feature usually doesn’t require any consultation with the business or group.

I can’t say that I’m shocked about this new "project." Thoughts?

Forget The Rabbit. There’s a new bunny in town. A Montreal designer has created a video game that uses a blue bunny, Lapis, to demonstrate how to make women orgasm.

The prototype teaches how to reach orgasm by simulating the affect of pleasurable sensation on the cartoon. Players tickle, touch, tap, and stroke Lapis using the touch screen of the Nintendo DS, a hand-held video game device. They can also talk, sing and blow on the bunny's fur using the device's built-in microphone.

The more they stimulate the bunny, the happier he becomes until eventually he begins flying through the air. But Lapis is also an unpredictable creature who needs a variety of sensations. Sometimes, no amount of stimulation is going to work.

"Sex is a perfectly natural part of the human experience and there has to be a way to handle it meaningfully and tastefully in games," said [creator Heather] Kelley, who took first prize for the prototype at the Montreal International Games Summit last month.

Pretty cool stuff, but there’s something a bit creepy about bringing a bunny to orgasm by whispering sweet nothings into her floppy ears.

And by the way, I was joking about forgetting the original Rabbit As if such a thing is possible...

Via SugarJoy.

This is just crazy.

While New Line Cinema has its history of some really good and really bad movies (I won’t even get into "The New World"), it looks like its new Paul Walker movie, "Running Scared," is featuring quite a treat (no pun intended) on its website.

Yes, a game on the site lets you go down on Paul Walker’s wife. And it doesn't end there; click here to check out the details and a crazy-ass photo of what it says when you "win." While I feel like I should be glad that she's the one getting head, the shit is pretty trashy. And let's not forget, this is New Line Cinema!

Thoughts?

As an update to our posts on the sex “mod” that has been found in the popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, we find that LA is now suing the company for selling pornographic games to children.

While the video game was recently rated “Adults Only”, LA attorney Rockard Delgadillo (And possible former porn star himself? That name is crazy) is accusing the game publisher of failing to disclose the modification to retailers.

In result, the lawsuit is asking Take-Two and Rockstar Games (the subsidiary behind Grand Theft Auto) stop marketing the games to children, pay fines and return $10 million in profits. Consumers in New York are suing as well, seeking class action status.

While I'm glad this controversy raised some questions regarding gender issues within the video game industry, it still aggravates me that it was okay before when the game merely alluded to sex. More importantly, the excessive violence that these kids were subjected to was never an issue, but when a tit comes out, it’s all over.

A new survey by Podtrac says that 78 percent of people who have ever listened to a podcast are men. But women aren’t far behind--the 12 percent of women who had listened to podcasts were more likely to have listened to them recently.

Podtrac CEO Mark McCrery says “the fact that so many women who have listened to podcasts have done so recently signals the beginning of a trend toward a more balanced gender composition of the podcast audience. It's also reflective of the ever-increasing variety of podcast content with broadening appeal.”

Another recent study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that women are using the internet more than men, particularly young women.

The report, "How Women and Men Use the Internet," examined use by both sexes, looking at what men and women are doing online as well as their rate of adopting new Web-based technologies.

“I think the real interesting story is the young women, because that is the one age cohort where there are many more women online,” said Deborah Fallows, who wrote the report based on findings from surveys conducted over the past five years. “The younger women are just much more comfortable with the Internet.”

The study reports that 86 percent of women 18-29 years-old use the internet, compared to 80 percent of men the same age.

I have to admit, I don’t listen to podcasts more than a couple of times a month. Anyone know any good podcasts dealing with women’s and gender issues? (Besides the much-missed Sex Talk, of course. Sigh.)

In order to weaken your opponent in this game, you apparently have to take a picture of her underwear. I wonder how many real photo-snapping pervs this one will produce.

I am just all about the local today. But Women in Games International announced that they are having a women gamers conference in San Francisco.

Scheduled on Saturday, February 18 from 1 pm to 6 pm at the Fort Mason Conference Center in San Francisco, this conference addresses the myth that women don't "do" games by discussing statistics, game genres and careers in game development.

The San Francisco Bay Area is a hotbed for gaming technology companies, making this an ideal venue to bring together the best in the business. This seminar will provide useful information for women and men, as well as new and veteran game developers, with topics including marketing to women and designing games that appeal to both genders.

via gamesindustry.biz

I think the fact they have to have a conference like this (which assumes a Gamer Conference is gendered male) says enough. This is cool, even though a huge part of it is marketing to female audiences. It is just always about capital flow. I mean imagine they had someone come in and have a discussion about sexist content in the games themselves! Maybe they will. If you know more, spill it.

Bluetooth technology has come to sex toys (and all of a sudden I want to become more tech-savvy).

“The Toy” is controlled by text messages sent to your vibrator.

From Gizmodo:

Basically, it’s “worn internally” (let’s leave that one alone, shall we?) and when an SMS is sent from the phone it’s linked up to, it turns into vibrations, depending on what has been written (each letter has a different effect). Again, I’m going to leave that to your imagination. Oh, and in case you’re worried that your Bluetooth Vibrator is going to show up on everyone’s list of bluetooth devices, don’t fret. It will only show up on the one phone it’s linked to.

That’s too bad, I was hoping for some risqué three-way calling action.

I have recently become interested with the issue of male domination in the field of technology and quite frankly in the blogosphere. Three women however in the Bay Area are getting recognized for their contributions to technology and its application to the betterment of the world (well the technology world i guess).

via Business Wire...

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) will honor the recipients of its first Women of Vision Awards at a gala reception and dinner for more than 500 attendees to be held this evening at San Jose's Fairmont Hotel. Three prominent individuals -- Radia Perlman, Sun Microsystems; Pamela Samuelson, University of California, Berkeley; and Janie Tsao, Cisco Systems -- will be honored for their accomplishments and contributions as women in technology in the categories of Innovation, Social Impact and Leadership, respectively.

Yeah for them! But you know me with this Hall of Fame kind of crap. The fact that they have to honor women just highlights that the assumption in tech is that males dominate technology and doesn't critique that women work in all sectors of the technology industry, but are never recognized for their contributions. So adding women to the list is good on some level, but doesn't target the mechanism that creates the inequity in the first place. I doubt they call the regular awards the men of achievement, it is just assumed.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the game industry as of late, a new online multiplayer game in the works caught my eye.

Next Generation is scheduled to release their newest project next year, Republik’s Spend the Night, where online players will meet, woo, and eventually act out their fantasies in their own private virtual room. Oh boy.

Due to the sexual (and sexist) graphics in so many games, we all saw this coming. However, Next Generation’s CEO Robert Coshland is claiming that “every marketing cent” of the game will be spent towards targeting women:

“There is little to nothing with erotic content, that has been developed specifically targeted to women either in the game industry or in the adult industry. For whatever reason, women tend to be written off as people who have no interest in sexual content. We don't believe that to be true. We have found, just in talking to people and focus tests, that women respond better to our concept than men. That's not so say that men aren't interested but women are truly intrigued by this idea because it's geared towards them and it involves them."

Should we be skeptical? Fuck yeah. Marketing is one thing; we need to see who the actual content appeals to. But maybe, just maybe, the industry is finally becoming more woman-friendly. My second question is, which industry am I talking about?

UPDATE: The Women's Game Conference next week is scheduled to have a talk on sex in video games. Hopefully they'll be able to shed more light on where women stand in all of this.

This shit is weird.

BT futurology has thought up of a new master plan to revolutionize technology. How would they do that, do you ask? Insert a computer chip of music into breast implants. Whaa?

Apparently, one breast will be able to hold an MP3 player and the other the music collection. (Ladies, time to throw away your CD racks!) A signal would be relayed to headphones, while they could control the music with a panel on their wrist.

Why would they think of this ingenious invention? A BT Laboratories’ analyst Ian Pearson answers, "It is now very hard for me to thing of breast implants as just decorative. If a woman has something implanted permanently, it might as well do something useful." Ha!

While I didn’t think this shit could get any worse, they threw in one last random fact:

“The sensors around the body linked through the electrical impulses in the chips may also be able to warn wearers about heart murmurs, blood pressure increases, diabetes and breast cancer.”

Nice prioritizing. Sigh.

Thanks to Kyle for the link.

According to the Washington Business Journal, XM Satellite Radio will launch a talk radio station solely for women in October 2005. XM, for those who don't know, is the largest satellite radio company in the world. Its most recent statistics showed 4.4 million subscribers, and the company expects to reach 5.5 million by the end of the year.

According to the article, "this new channel, called Take Five, will broadcast audio from 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It also will air a new syndicated show hosted by Tyra Banks and programming from the Food Network and Home and Garden Television (HGTV)... [and] produce its own programming...including a talk show hosted by Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, a New York Times best seller."

This could be cool - I love the idea of a station dedicated solely to providing women with helpful information and comedy. But I can't help but worry it'll end up like Lifetime. If Take Five ends up broadcasting radio shows about a bulemic cheerleader who kills her alcoholic boyfriend, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

Stay tuned...

I just don't get it. This is the tenth article I’ve seen on sex differences in cell phone use this month, and in my irritation I felt the urge to point out its meaninglessness.

“The first national study of mobile phone users has found 34 per cent of Australian women bought ringtones in the past year compared to 27 per cent of men.

As for games, 15 per cent of men had bought them in the last 12 months, compared to only 10 per cent of females.”

Astounding! Not only are the differences pretty insignificant, but who gives a fuck anyway? Jeez.

While we’ve been posting for quite some time on the prevalence of women gamers and other gender issues that exist in the interactive entertainment industry, a new organization was unveiled yesterday for women gamers across the globe.

The organization is called Women In Games International, and is being run by a number of game industry leaders. Co-founder Kathy Schoback made a statement yesterday:

"We are committed to the promotion and sponsorship of events such as conferences, workshops and seminars that help women break into and thrive within the game development world. We are also identifying and promoting collaborations and connections between industry and the academy that can help us better understand the industry, our games, and women's vital role in both. We are also searching for new methods to increase and retain qualified and talented women in the industry."

Game on!

Thanks to the recent Grand Theft Auto controversy, a closer look is being taken at the gender dynamics that undercut the video game industry.

According the A.P., only 4% of software engineers in the video game industry are women. Tammy Yap, a game programmer for six years, told the AP that she had never worked with another female programmer.

Why so low? Anthony Borquez, director of University of Southern California's Integrated Media Systems Center, hypothesizes that: "A lot of women think that there isn't much video game content for them. The perception is that video games are just shoot-em-ups with half-naked women running around." Yapp also notes that: "Game magazines have women wearing bikinis on the cover. They are obviously targeting men. There's nothing wrong with that, but that approach isn't going to attract many women."

Hmmmm...but if this is the case then why are more than more women playing video games? The AP estimates that women now comprise more than 30% of the video game market.

So here is the $10 billion question -- what would women like to see in a video game? If it isn't Lara Croft's DD's, then what is it? Any requests?

As an update to Samhita’s recent post on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the growing investigation on whether Rockstar Games (the producers of the game) actually placed a modification of the game allowing users to download graphic sexual acts, we found that the game has recently been given an adults-only rating by the video game industry.

While Rockstar’s parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., previously denied being a part of the modification, they have recently admitted that the sex scenes were built into the retail version.

"The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it's not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc," said Take Two’s spokesperson. Riiight.

A variety of retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Circuit City has pulled the copies from their bookshelves.

Senator Hillary Clinton took the incentive to call the Entertainment Software Rating Board to action and start cracking down on sexually explicit content built into video games. She also stated she was surprised that the rest of the game's content was allowed on bookshelves in the first place.

I actually have to agree with that. We can let the characters steal, slit throats, and have sex with prostitutes, but once a boob is out, get that game out of our children’s hands!

A large media watchdog, the Parents Television Council, has called on Rockstar to recall the game and actually give refunds. Net sales could drop by more than $50 million this quarter, and its financial expectations has lowered for the year to set aside funds for returns.

Is this new “porn policing” of video games necessary, or is it even going to make much of a difference? Or do we need to attempt to alter the violent and sexist content of these games altogether?

Thanks to Erin for the link.

Wow. I don’t even know if you could call Tetka a game, since it doesn’t seem to have a point. What you can call it however, is terrifying.

The user can manipulate a limp, seemingly-dead, half-naked woman through a maze of bouncy bubble-type objects.

Glad to know someone thought this was amusing.

Via Nerve.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas a very popular and controversial game on Sony Playstation can apparently be modified by a download from the internet to simulate the women (already pretty objectified in the game) engaging in graphic sexual acts. This has raised a few eyebrows, and there is an investigation to figure out if Rockstar Games, the folks that released the game, put the mod out there.

The game's plot was already objectionable to many: its main character seeks bloody vengeance on gang-filled streets, firing automatic weapons and picking up women along the way.

Within the game's official storyline, the main character earns the chance to have "coffee" with "girlfriends." Wildenborg says his "hot coffee" patch merely toggles a single value in the game's main script — a "censor flag," he calls it, that appears to have locked up several hot and heavy scenes.

Walsh said the "hot coffee" scenes are pornography by anyone's definition, and called on Rockstar to "come clean" on whether they programmed the scenes into the game.

Does this really make THAT much of a difference? The issue is that it is 12, 13 and 14 year old boys are the target consumers of this game. Understanding the implication of this, the game already has a very clear and comfortable message of robbin, stealin, aggressive behavior and picking up prostitutes to relieve stress (literally).

So someone tell me why is it okay to objectify women and "allude" to sex while engaging in excessively violent behavior in a very very realistic video game, but we draw a line when we can actually SEE the sexual acts? Why the arbitrary line? The hidden pedagogy within this game is clear and is ALREADY affecting the minds of young (and older) boys. Not to mention the effect on young girls that play the game (because some girls DO play video games!)

A bit of a rant, but what do you think? And the above quotes are from this article.

Ew ew ew.

Ensign Games has just released a new game, DreamStripper 3D, where you “totally control the dancer.” Just check out this lovely language from Ensign’s press release:

You decide how she dances, what she wears, even the music she dances to! Have her writhe or spin just when and how you want or create an erotic and exotic dance program. You are in control.

...Total Control mode allows you to customize all the outfits without playing the stripper game. You can change all the outfits and put together any combination you want. Either nude or in your favorite type of nurse, student, g-string, leather or other outfit, you can have her do any dance move you want. The Game Mode is a stripping game where you make money by having the dancer dance.

Total Control mode? This press release sounds like a love letter to stalkers and abusers, not video game players. Can’t make your girlfriend do whatever you want? Don’t worry, you can take out your freakish controlling behavior on a virtual woman! You can even take her hard-earned money!

So disturbing.

Thanks to Colleen for the link.

While we’ve found that the percentage of female video game players in the U.S. has increased to an all-time high, an article by BBC News discusses how the impact of girl gamers is showing across the globe.

The 2005 Women in Games Conference is due to be held next month in Dundee, Scotland, where the aim is to examine why games generally appeal to a male audience (Um, it’s not obvious?). They’re also scheduled to discuss the recent growth in women players, and analyze women’s participation in computer games.

The U.S. Entertainment Software Association reported that there are presently more female players in the U.S. than there are teenage gamers. Additionally, a study by the UK’s Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association (ELSPA) found that women make up a quarter of the gaming population. In Korea, women make up 69% of the practice.

While the conference begins its preparation, Gamestation (a popular game store) has invited the PMS Clan, the 40 best female gamers, to visit the stores across the UK for the summer. You must check out their site, these girls kick ass. Here’s their clan profile:

“PMS was born from the camaraderie of finding other girl gamers in a male dominated online gaming community. Because of the sparseness of our gender in the online gaming community and the amount of harassment female gamers are submitted to, PMS XBOX banded together to form a competitive clan at the launch of XBOX LIVE. In November of 2004 PMS PS2, was formed for the same reasons, calling out to the female gamer community for a safe and competitive environment. PMS XBOX and PMS PS2 merged in January 2005 to create the first and largest multi-platform female gaming clan.”

Fuck yeah. Keep up the good games, ladies!

Big fucking shocker:

USA Today reported that:

Women and some racial minorities are "significantly underrepresented" in the U.S. technology industry, according to a new study from the industry's trade group. Women made up 32% of the tech work force in 2004, a drop from 41% at its peak in 1996. That's largely because of the shrinking number of administrative jobs in the tech industry, the Arlington, Va.-based Information Technology Association of America said.

Niiiice! It wasn't depressing enough that women are underrepresented in the tech industry -- we now have the glorious explanation of a decrease in "administrative" jobs. I HATE being reminded of how many women hold secretarial positions while the men think and make it big.

Grrrrr.

An “Aware Alarm” created by security company ADT for domestic violence victims is being distributed for free in Maryland.

“By pressing the button, it sends a signal to the control panel, the control panel then sends a silent alarm to our national center,” said Peter Gioe, from ADT.

“It really helps create security and a sense of normalcy in a life that is just torn apart by domestic violence,” said Debra Young, a victim’s advocate, from the Jefferson Co. Prosecutor’s Office.

I don’t know how normal it is to have to carry around an alarm 24 hours a day just to be a little safer. But I suppose it’s better than nothing.

ADT is footing the bill for the device.

My only question is: does the Aware Alarm bring police to victims’ homes, or do they have GPS technology (like this one) to find women wherever they are?

A study done by eMarketer Inc. concluded that girls and women represented 51.6% of all online users in the United States. This is a change from when the internet first emerged, wherein as recent as 1997, boys and men made up 75% of internet users. The study also predicted that by 2008 women and girls would make up 52.6% of internet users.

An article in Information Week gives a few reasons why so many women are online (for reasons other then feministing of course!).
"Cultural, societal, and Internet business trends are combining to shift the balance toward women," said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson in a statement accompanying the release of the report she authored, Women Online In The U.S..

According to eMarketer, women have long embraced the Internet as a communications medium, and have shown a strong interest in online games, health content, and music. Traditionally, women have been the dominant offline shoppers, but they're shifting more of their shopping online.

Of course, eMarketer's conclusions were that the upcoming challenges facing the internet community was how to make shopping more interactive for women online. Not too shocking, since this was researched by a marketing firm, but I think this is an interesting statistic. Why do you think there has been such an increase of women using the internet? What does it mean? More online product obsessed shoppers or a hidden community of clandestine activists/gearheads?!

The New York Times has a piece today on a potential new fad in dating—don’t. Just get yourself a virtual girlfriend for your cell phone. Ick.

Feministing reported on this more than disturbing invention from Hong Kong software maker Artificial Life Inc. last year.

“Vivienne” (yes, she has a name) behaves in varying ways depending on how much money you spend on her.

Users eager to advance quickly toward a virtual kiss or even marriage should know that she has a faintly mercenary appreciation for gifts, from flowers and chocolates to cars and diamond rings. Some virtual gifts are free, but others will require users to make real charges against their monthly phone bills of 50 cents to $2.

What an innovative way to promote a tired stereotype of women!

But it doesn’t stop there:

If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right.

As Feministing pondered when we first reported on this—where is the virtual boyfriend who doesn’t return your calls and cheats on you?

Whether it’s academia, science or blogging, it seems that the question is always the same: “Where are the women?” So it was only a matter of time before someone took on women in tech companies.

Wired reports that the lack of women’s representation in tech companies is widespread, but counterintuitive—companies with more women in higher positions make more money.

Companies with the most women in senior management had a 35 percent higher return on equity than those with the fewest, according to a study (.pdf) by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that studies women in business. It also found those companies paid their shareholders 34 percent more than companies with the fewest women in top management.

"I think almost without question that all of the companies we work with know they are able to offer better technology if they have a more diverse group of people," said Telle Whitney, president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute, a nonprofit that promotes women in technology companies.

Is sexism so rampant among the higher-ups in tech companies that they’re disregarding the financial incentive of having more women in their ranks? Any thoughts?

As cnn.com reports, Merriam-Webster Inc., the famous dictionary publisher, said on Tuesday that the word "blog," defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," topped its list of the 10 words of the year, as it was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Awh yeah. We're famous.

Japan just doesn’t stop coming out with female-friendly products!

The “Sound Princess,” installed in Japan’s public toilets, makes it possible for women to take a noise-free pee.

When Naoko Ito uses a public bathroom, she cringes in embarrassment at the thought that other patrons can hear the sounds coming from her stall. That's when she turns to the "Sound Princess."

Ito, like a rapidly growing number of Japanese women, presses a device installed in public toilets to simulate the sound of water flushing - and mask the cruder noises of nature.

Apparently the leading toilet producer Toto Ltd. has sold 500,000 of the “Sound Princess." A spokesperson for the company said, "Japanese women are very embarrassed by the sounds they make in a toilet."

And I’m embarrassed by the sounds the American president makes. I wonder if we could rig up a Sound Princess for the debate tonight…I think the sound of flushing water would be strangely appropriate.

A recent federal grant bestowed upon New York City police officers a new kind of cell phone – one with access to a 24 hour translation service. The move was made to help non-English speaking victims of domestic violence overcome the language barriers that so often keep them from reporting. By pressing a button, police are now able to reach translators in 150 languages, allowing victims to make immediate and articulate complaints against their assailant.

The need for translators in these cases is large. According to the New York City Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence, “challenges faced by immigrant victims of domestic violence are especially relevant in New York City where 36% of the population is foreign born, and over 120 different languages and dialects are spoken. Immigrant women may be less likely to report abuse than non-immigrant women due to language barriers, cultural differences and a fear of deportation if they are not legally documented to live in the U.S.”

An article in yesterday’s Times reported on the success of this service in allowing non-English speaking victims to communicate with police, and in helping police speak with possible witnesses. The article did not, however, mention any potentially harmful aspects of this arrangement.

To begin with, many translators lack experience in dealing with crime victims. This becomes especially harmful when victims rely solely on translators’ advice for information about rights and actions. Translators may omit words or ideas that they do not think are important, just to convey the “gist” of a conversation. There are myriad confidentiality issues; translators are not legally bound to the same standards as medical and police personnel.

As Lynn Hecht Schafran, a Vice President of Legal Momentum, has written, a victim may feel inhibited about speaking freely to a male interpreter, who may be an authority figure in her culture. Interpreters may lack training on sensitive issues, especially in cases involving domestic violence, rape and emotional trauma. They may purposely undermine women charging men from their own communities with domestic violence or sexual assault because they either dismiss the seriousness of the offense or do not want the community's dirty linen aired in public

The INS Gender Guidelines recommend that women with gender-based claims be interviewed by female officers, and if possible, have female interpreters because “some applicants may have inhibitions about disclosing past experiences to an interviewer of the opposite sex.” This is obviously hard to achieve in the understaffed and low-resourced NYPD, but isn’t it crucial?

Finally, based on cost, these cell phones are a short term solution to a much larger problem. Why aren't there more people on staff in the department with these skills? In a city as diverse as New York, why do we have to outsource this job at $2.00/minute?

Translation services can be enormously helpful to non-English speaking DV victims, and I'm happy that this issue is finally getting some attention. As long as we keep our eyes on the potentially harmful aspects, and keep searching for a broader solution, we’ll keep making progress.