Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. What did I miss? Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.

• Comedy as a Masculinized, Heterosexualized Space

– SI is just looking at websites here, but the same is true of the comedy industry generally

• Sexualizing Boys: Totally OK

– “I suspect if an 11-year-old girl went on The View and said she was a good kisser already, she and her parents would be attacked in the press, people would express horror, and rumors would circulate about whether she’s been sexually abused, is already sexually active, etc. etc. But when an 11-year-old boy does it? That’s cute! He’s on his way to being a smooth-talking ladies’ man!”

• Dear Prudence, You are Fired

– Silvana just read the worst advice column, ever.

• Half-arsed feminism

– “Where I think that Badinter gets it completely wrong is that in her analysis it is the children – the babies, in fact – that are cast into the role of ‘tyrants’.”

• ‘I must distance myself from this racist complicity” Judith Butler turns down Berlin Pride award

– “In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape”

• “Hey Baby” video game shows us how irrational those women are

– “In one swoop, by presenting such a skewed reaction, the game trivializes the very appropriate reaction of women speaking out against street harassment and problems like rape which actually legally merit killing”

• Official versus fan blogs: A lesson from TheOneRing.net versus The Hobbit: The Official Movie blog

– Fresh content rules

• Male Privilege: Making Women the Butt of Jokes Since the Beginning of Time

– Bookmark for some of those 101 moments

• bookshop: Silence, consent, rape.

– Awesome set of links on Rape Culture

• Why 'Female' Science Professor? – Advice – The Chronicle of Higher Education

– “Why the extra adjective? Does it matter in my work as a scientist and a professor that I am female?

Many times it does. In fact, when I first started using the moniker, my reasons were a bit cynical. I had been so often reminded by colleagues, in their words and actions, that I was different from the “regular” (read: male) science professors, that I decided to use the extra adjective to describe myself.

Even today, being different in that way—a woman in a male-dominated profession—has often meant that my female colleagues and I are seen as less qualified than our male counterparts. “

Categories: linkfest

Tags: comedy, heteronormative, Read-ems, sexualisation