Guys, guys, guys!

I'm famous. Well, more like I bought myself some fame from a cool webcomic that my friends recently introduced me to, Poly in Pictures (hi PiP visitors! sorry my site's so neglected and cobwebby). (And now the recursive linking circle is complete.)

Because it's not a proper webcomic post without an example:

It Gets Better (music video)

genderfork

"I'd much rather have 'geek' as my gender. It tells you so much more about me." -Genderfork

The New Cosmopolitan

Looking for fans is about looking for people who appear to have given a great deal of thought to how they dress and what they’re doing, and who have, in the process of applying all this thought to their daily lives, concluded that they would like to behave differently from the norm.
....
Reading Patterson’s recent biography of Robert A Heinlein, Learning Curve, I was struck by how much fringey stuff old RAH dabbled in: telepathy, radical politics, polyamory (or ‘‘companionate marriage,’’ as it was called in his day), nudism, and all manner of funny business, all of which is reflected in his books, and all of which can be summed up with ‘‘all laws are local.’’

It's rather arrogant of me to claim this, but I like to believe that this is the philosophy of my entire life. I think that this is why the geek worlds tend to be much more embracing of things like "alternate" gender presentation, "fringe" sexuality, or many "nontraditional" lifestyles in general with barely a second thought.
[via Waxy Links]

addressing the real root-cause of the tech industry gender imbalance

the formative childhood years, vs the young adult years: "Why We Don't Need More Women in Tech... Yet" [via Felicia Day]
(also, DITTO FOR SCIENCE - it's actually one of the things my Mom has been working on in her museum exhibit design career a lot - science is way too marginalized in our schools and society in general and has been for several decades now)

quote of the day

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that BEING A GIRL IS DEGRADING.“

- Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden (since quoted in a slightly more high-profile context)
[via femme guy]

quote of the day

"Trying to describe the gender spectrum using only 'man' & 'woman' is like trying to describe the color wheel using only 'red' & 'blue'"

- Genderfork

'deep' thought of the day

'

gender' is a concept that doesn't exist in my mental world - it's a translation layer wedged between my brain and the outside world

[first posted to my twitter]

kickstarter project to fund a documentary on asexuality

I'm really hopeful to see how this turns out...

[via Kottke]

Blue (cool Genderfork photo)

[via Genderfork]

offensive gender-segregation propaganda thinly disguised as "safety"

I should preface this by stating that I find gender segregation of any kind to be as offensive as racial segregation. Gender, just like race, is a purely artificial social construct with no basis in science (remember, gender does not equal sex), and critically enough, IS NOT BINARY. There are not just 2 genders - there are a great many people who fall somewhere on the gender continuum that is not man or woman. Where are those of us who aren't simply 'man' or 'woman' supposed to go?? And why the hell should we have to choose in the first place?? I won't go into the additional practical issues of why I think gender-neutral bathrooms are better, particularly in a dorm setting (and don't get me started on the fact that most other schools I've been to use gender-neutral bathrooms but somehow that's just too damned scary for UMass...). Anyways, when I saw that this was included in the "safety poster" packet I got as an RA, I flipped out. If you want to discuss it as a social comfort and norms issue, fine, but don't confuse matters by trying to tie segregation to safety. It's bad enough that I am expected to enforce this offensive policy as my job...