Thorns

I keep seeing discussions about this on tumblr, and have a Theory about how it relates to age. Apologies to people over 55, I realise you are not a monolith :)

This question is on behalf of my husband Cam aka distantcam, since I thought you guys might be able to help.

The software engineering community has recently had a bunch of nasty sexism imbroglios with the same old "get harassed/belittled for being a woman, complain about harassment, get harassed/belittled for complaining" cycle seen in the geek community, atheism community etc.
See for example Stupid Question 107: Shhh… Harassment. Not a problem?.

There's currently a bunch of software engineers making noises about working together to fight against the entrenched sexism. Cam is very much on board with this, but thinks they should try and learn from other communities' experiences rather than reinventing the wheel. Also, engineers respond better to new ideas when you have links or other references to point them towards. I poked through my links but they're all focused on stuff like sexual harassment at cons rather than, say, women being ignored in professional settings.

My main advice for him as a male ally (based on my experiences as a white antiracist) is to try REALLY HARD to find female voices on the subject, and then use the microphone of male privilege to encourage all the other men to listen to those women.

So, what we're looking for:

• Female Software engineers, or other women in male dominated professional fields, talking about their experiences and offering advice on fighting sexism
  
• Explanations of why it's important to be actively inclusive not just "not really sexist"
  
• Explanations of why it's important to center the discussion around women and women's voices
  
• Ways for men to help in situations without being "white knights" or otherwise overbearing.
  
• Anything else relevant and useful
  

Cam is going to subscribe to the comments, but will probably not reply to many since he is not as chatty as me :)

Can someone give me a link to a post about why "derp" is abelist? There's a discussion on my twitter list, and there's no way I can summarise it in 140 characters.

(nb I am also pretty sleepy, so don't feel up to explaining it here either. If you're interested, I'm sure someone else will post a link eventually)

While drafting a (still unfinished) reply to Real Sex 101 I googled vaginismus to make sure I had the spelling and definition right and discovered that the Wikipedia page assumes anyone with a vagina is a woman. Below is a draft corrected version but I've never edited Wikipedia before and HATE proofreading so am a bit hesitant to post it. I haven't done any major edits beyond ungendering the language, what do people think? It's pretty clunky in places, though not all of that is my fault :)
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I'm going to mess about with my access filters a bit, is there an easy way to see all my locked posts at once? I'm SURE I remember one but I can't find it.

Also: am going to be messing about with my access filters a bit :)

The problem:

I make fanworks (fic, art, and comics) which (since they're about people) touch on issues like race, class, gender, sexuality, disability etc. There is always the danger with these works that I've inadvertently made something Very Hurtful that I won't notice until someone points it out to me. If I just chuck stuff online based on my own judgement it could do a whole lot of harm before someone points out the Fail, and then I have to figure out how to fix it. (If your response to this is that I shouldn't worry about it, this post is not aimed at you but, for example, Racefail: same shit, different day is. I do not feel like arguing with you)

One common solution offered for this problem is being beta-ed, but this doesn't work for me. (Research and mindfulness etc do a most of the time, and thus I do them, but they're not entirely reliable by themselves)
( Possible solutions )

So LJ has finally crossed the line for me by not only having pop up ads which infect people's computers with a virus but infecting one of my friends in particular.

I have thus decided I will at some point swap over to cross-posting the stuff that currently goes in alias_sqbr from alias_sqbr (yes, keeping lj comments enabled).

But before I can do that I need to know: is there any easy to switch between two dreamwidth accounts? Preferably one that works in Safari.

*Tests out the crossposting footnote thing, which I only just figured out*

I don't pay much attention to the film industry, but I've seen a bunch of people complaining (rightly) about the way that when the media talks about Kathryn Bigelow, who is apparently really awesome and might end up the first women to win an Academy Award for Directing, they keep focussing on the fact that she's James Cameron's ex and also pretty.

So, inspired by this conversation: Name some directors who in your opinion are:

• Male and attractive (regardless of talent)
  
• Female and talented (regardless of attractiveness)
  
• Not binary gendered and awesome in any way
  

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Draft program presentation

Note that there's notes available from the "Actions" menu.

So:
Any thoughts?
Anyone want to run the panel with me? (I'd prefer someone who identifies as disabled or at least has a moderate amount of experience with disability/chronic illness, but I'm somewhat open)

(nb I deleted the original lj version so I could use the "comments on dreamwidth" counter)

EDIT: But it didn't work! Clearly I need to play around with the crossposter. Anyway here is the lj post and here is the dw one (cross posted since lj is more swancon-ish and dw more disability-ish)

I thought about posting this to gynaecon but I feel my ideas are still too brainstormy and vague at this stage, also there's just not many people on that comm! I'm definitely not meaning to talk about them behind their backs, what with all but three of them being on my friends list :D¹. If I feel like I've poked at the idea enough to make a coherent point I'll post it.
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