Items of interest come across recently in my feed-reader. What did I miss? Leave your own interesting links in comments.

• Forced Birthers Try To Narrow Definition Of Rape

– “The purpose of this is to keep as many women as possible from being able to access Medicaid funds for abortions. The whole antichoice movement is shot through with the ideology that women are either evil sluts or bubble-headed victims led astray, and this drives their wierd obsession with eliminating reasonable carve-outs and exceptions.”

• Supply-Side Rape Prevention.

– “I’ve posted quite a few times (1, 2, 3, and more) on why the commonly given “rape prevention” advice is mostly ineffective, sexist, and often cruel. I’m well covered on cursing the darkness. In this post, let’s talk about how to light a candle.”

• Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, and those who sacrifice for the stars

– In memoriam

• Casey Luskin thinks normal scientific explanations are “just so” stories

– Superb take-down

• If Mom Hates It, It’s Cool, Right?

– “It’s a great example of this social construction of child-parent relationships as at least somewhat antagonistic: what kids love, parents hate, and parents hating it proves it’s awesome. Telling young people “your parents will be disgusted by this” becomes an automatic selling point. And this idea of how people relate to their parents (in this case, mothers specifically) is presented as an essential, permanent fact: “A mom’s disapproval has always been an accurate barometer of what is cool.”

But of course, this isn’t an inherent property of family life across human history.”

• The Saddest Pink Infographic About Women In Tech You’ll Ever See

– via geekfeminism’s linkspam (mr tog’s unhelpful response was “I know this isn’t the point, but it’s more mauve than pink”)

• Should you work for free?: a quick Q&A guide By now,…

– Excellent reality check

• When we said “poor Queenslanders” we didn’t mean we’d be happy to pay to help rebuild

– “Those of us who’d happily help the flood victims voluntarily are apparently outraged at the thought of the uncharitable being compelled to do likewise, if you believe the line being fed to us.”

• Information Feudalism

– “I don’t see much hope of making a snappy rhetorical case that would break the unhealthy property = freedom link. But I think it might actually be possible to sidestep it by coming up with something like ‘information feudalism’ or ‘cyberfeudalism’ as a catchy term for IP rent-seeking or patent trolling. (Of course, ‘rent-seeking’ and ‘patent trolling’ are already pretty snappy.)”

• How to Hide the Decline (from yourself)

– “Apparently it never occurred to Albertosaurus that the scale of the y-axis could affect the appearance of the graph. Apparently it never crossed his mind to plot the data himself and check it out. Clearly he never performed any actual analysis of the data. He just assumed what he wanted to assume.”

• Annals of Hoaxes: American Enterprise Institute sends out hoax backgrounder on DDT and trade barriers

– Bookmark this one for the next time you encounter a DDT fantasist.

• Weeping Wednesday (Get out the tissues!)

– “Lynn Hirschberg asks a series of actors the question: “What movie made you cry?”
(Featuring: Annette Bening, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Michael Douglas, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, Helena Bonham Carter, Justin Timberlake, Dakota Fanning, Andrew Garfield, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Melissa Leo, Vincent Cassel, Julianne Moore, Robert Duvall, Jesse Eisenberg, Elle Fanning and Colin Firth.)

Watching the clips, obviously, makes you think about what movies have made you cry, and why. Or at least, it made me think about what movies have made me cry …”

• Spending, Priorities, and Class Divides

– “Financial planning seems like a quaint luxury to a lot of people because, functionally, it is. It should not be, but it is, and refusing to talk about this fact means that conversations about money, concentration of wealth, fighting your way to get ahead in this culture, end up fundamentally skirting over a pretty critical issue. If you start a financial planning discussion with the ground assumption that everyone has money to spare and can trim the budget to make more, you’re pretty much telling a big chunk of your readership to just not even bother.”

• Are You Better Off Buying $200 Shoes?

– “Even if the premise is entirely true, the breeziness of saying you should go spend a minimum of $200 if you want “decent footwear” (not truly amazing shoes, just decent ones) is an example of the type of class assumptions that make the poor or working class invisible while the experiences or opportunities of the upper middle class (and above) are presented as normal.”

• On Ambition and Man-bition: A Guest Post by Endora

– “Those ideas are prevalent all around the world. In Germany, a woman who puts her children in daycare so she can return to work risks being labeled a ‘Rabenmutter’, a ‘raven-mother’, a word implying that she somehow lacks a natural interest in her children.

In the face of pressure like that, no wonder so many women would prefer to avoid the hassle, guilt, and judgment that often come with working outside the home.”

• More Dating Advice from the Boobz

– “Interesting, though, how women wearing makeup is an evil act of deception, but a dude trying to conceal his retrograde political leanings is a-ok.”

Categories: gender & feminism, linkfest, Science, social justice

Tags: abortion, cinema, classism, climate science, disasters, evolution, rape, Read-ems, space program