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Continuum 6: Future Tense
I woke up this morning completely drained of adrenaline, which is what I have been operating on for the last couple of months. BUT IT WAS WORTH IT.
C6 was a great con and I will write more about it once I regrow my chewed-out brain.
Let me just leave you with this. DJ Omega and I conspired to bring about the highlight of the Saturday night Maskobalo.
Who Needs Money When You Can Work for "Prizes and Rewards"?
So back to Beth's post--what I loved about it was that here was basically the exact same pitch mom bloggers are being fed every day--and finally someone is pointing out just how ridiculous it is for companies to expect something of value for nothing. Here is part of Nestle's pitch:Next week, we are a launching a unique, invitation-only online community called The Digital Think Tank and would love you to be part of it. It is an online collaborative space in which you will be able to shape the future digital communications strategy of one of the world’s leading organisations; Nestlé.Participants will have a unique chance to create the perfect brand for our new digital world, exchange knowledge and expertise with peers.And of course the clincher--because it works with mom bloggers:Receive prizes and rewards: our way of saying thanks for joining in!Hey--can't blame Nestle for trying, right? I mean, you've got millions of mom bloggers out there willing to work for "prizes and rewards"--why not assume that others may well be willing to work for the same level of compensation?
Just in case you're wondering how I know this stuff--it's because while I would never call myself a mom blogger because I think the term is demeaning, I am a mom and a blogger. I belong to mom blogger networks. I receive pitches. I read mom blogs and recoil at all the meanness and the competition. I belong to BlogHer's ad network (hence the lucrative ad in the sidebar of this blog; I've earned almost $30 running those ads for 7 months now). I know that lots of money is changing hands in the name of mom blogging--and that the mom bloggers are barely receiving any of it. Companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to agencies to do "mom blogger outreach." The agencies partner with high-profile mom bloggers, who in turn, present the "opportunities" to their eager networks of bloggers. Write a post about X and you'll be entered to win a drawing for a gift card. You can receive a FREE product if you'll blog about it, take photos of it and share on Flickr and Facebook, tweet about it--all by 5 pm tomorrow--and be sure to mention x, y and z about the product. Or my favorite--giveaways. Brand X will give you this product and you write a post about it, run an elaborate contest on your own time, then mail it to the winner--on your own dime, of course. If you're lucky maybe they'll give you one to keep for yourself and one to give.
Here's the good news: more and more women seem to be speaking up about this issue lately, both as it applies to mom blogging and just business in general:
- No. You Can't Pick My Brain
- I Work for Me. Not for Free
- Are Companies Taking Advantage of Bloggers?
- Why Mom Bloggers Aren't Flipping for Just a Sample of Your Product
Bell delivered glitch-free Games
They came, they broadcast, they streamed video, they watched online, they emailed, texted, shared videos and photos and chatted on the phone.
And the task of keeping some 250,000 visitors, almost 6,500 athletes and participants, 50,000 staff and volunteers and more than 10,000 visiting media connected fell to Bell, the exclusive telecommunications partner for the 2010 Games.
By the time the Games wrapped up Sunday, Bell had tallied up:
- · 90 million minutes of people chatting on their Bell mobile phones
- · 65 million text messages sent and received
- · 30 million megabytes of mobile data delivered (that includes everything from those up-to-date event results you could pick up on your phone to the video an Olympic fan shares with Facebook friends)
- · 750,000 calls made from 6,000 landline Voice over Internet Protocol phones Bell installed as part of the dedicated Olympic network, for phone service for everyone from Vanoc staff to the media.
It all must have added up to a collective sigh of relief at Bell headquarters when the Olympic flame was extinguished Sunday night.
With billions of people watching and with the outcome of the competitions relying on the network to deliver instantaneous and accurate results of each athlete’s performance, there was no room for technical glitches as Justin Webb, vice-president Olympic services for Bell, the exclusive telecommunications partner for the Olympics said before the Games commenced.
The network performance had to be flawless and unlike a lot of technology that can leave us tearing out hair in frustration at just what can go wrong, Bell’s Olympic network delivered.
“The expectation for an event watched and enjoyed by so many people is that it’s delivered flawlessly and we delivered on that promise,” said Bell spokesman Jeff Meerman.
And with that comes the seal of approval from Olympic organizers.
“Bell has been a superb telecommunications partner, formulating a detailed and innovative plan, continually meeting its commitments and successfully helping VANOC deliver the 2010 Winter Games to the world,” John Furlong, chief executive officer of the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. “Bell truly lived up to our expectations and to its reputation as Canada’s communications leader.”
It was an enormous undertaking. Along with keeping Games participants and fans connected, there was more than 24,000 hours of broadcast coverage with 3.5 billion viewers worldwide, a 50 per cent increase over the 2006 Torino winter games and a 25 per cent increase over the 2008 summer games in Beijing.
The job took 285 kilometres of fibre optic cable between Vancouver and Whistler – that’s 2,800 football field lengths of cable and enough fibre capacity to run all of Canada’s telecommunications needs.
There’s another 1,200 kilometres of cabling that Bell installed to connect 31,000 ethernet ports – basically the cable that connects to the plug that delivers Internet service to your computer - to deliver Internet service for Games venues and technical support sites.
Games broadcasters got 24 billion bits per second (bps) of capacity to broadcast the Games to the world, a capacity that exceeded Beijing by 23 per cent.
Online vs Offline Marketing
Friend, colleague, and dude-who-never-comes-to-my-birthday-party-cos-hes-always-doing-something-for-his-own-birthday-on-the-same-day Myles Eftos of Madpilot Productions is running a little competition with his co-working-office-mate Alex Pooley of Brown Beagle Software. Essentially Myles is only doing offline marketing (word of mouth, print ads, telephone, real world networking etc) while Alex is only doing online marketing (social media, web, email etc) for the next month. They’ve each got $250 to spend and the one with the most jobs at the end of the month wins.
It’s interesting, because while I do both online and offline marketing in a kind of passive way, it’s word of mouth that gets us almost all of our work. If I wanted to keep expanding Clever Starfish, taking on new jobs and generally becoming a big wig, I would probably spend time and money on marketing of both kinds. But world domination is not in our current plans, we are turning away jobs at the moment and let’s be honest, it all sounds a bit like like hard work, doesn’t it?
The boys have a site to track their progress and I notice that at the moment, Alex is in the lead with two jobs to Myles’ one. The prediction on the Port80 forums was that Myles (offline) would win in the short-term but that Alex (online) would do better long term.
It’s an interesting idea. Who would you back? Maybe I should set up a betting pool…
Posted from kay lives here
Online vs Offline Marketing
jo’s Lifestream Daily Digest!
All Walks Beyond The Catwalk at London Fashion Week
Being Happy
Laura posts on the industry that’s grown up around “happiness.” One of the latest books in this industry is The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I’ve been reading Gretchen’s blog for a while now, since before the book came out. I actually have a small collection of similar blogs that I label “Personal Development.” I don’t agree with everything in Gretchen’s or any of these blogs, but they often have posts that give me interesting ideas or help me to refocus. I told my dad about The Happiness Project book and he immediately downloaded it onto his Kindle. He likes it so far. After going through a tragedy like he has, I think it helps to remember the little things that bring you joy. We’re cut from the same cloth, me and my dad. We’re always trying to improve ourselves, our minds or our bodies or both. Trying to be happier or healthier is, for me, about taking things to the next level.
Laura references a TED talk that she had referenced before and that I watched when she did. It focuses on the relationship between cultures where people live a simple life surrounded by friends and family and longevity. To live longer, it suggests, we need to do more physical activity, like farming and laundry and walking to the market and spend time with people we care about. As Laura suggests, we’ve gotten a long way from this kind of life. Like her, I sometimes fantasize about moving away to a farm. But I figure I’ll be as isolated there as I am here. Here, I’m isolated in part by the technology that takes people to jobs far away or jobs online. Leisure time is spent inside in front of the tv or again, via car, to places elsewhere. As I’ve been trying to simplify my life, I’ve tried to moderate my use of those technologies. Yes, the Internet keeps me connected, but being online all the time doesn’t always make me happy. I recognize at times that I’m filling a gap with mindless online activity rather than finding something more productive to do. I’ve been without the Internet all day. I wrote in the morning, then I worked out, called about the Internet outage, and then spent over two hours cleaning the kitchen. I mean really cleaning the kitchen: wiping down cabinets, scrubbing walls, mopping the floor kind of cleaning. I listened to music and sang out loud while I did it and it actually made me happy.
No, I don’t always know what makes me happy, and cleaning the kitchen wouldn’t always make me happy. But I like books and blogs that prod me a little to pay attention to what does and doesn’t make me happy. Too many people plod through life, going to work, trying to get ahead, and not thinking at all about what they’re doing. I follow Socrates: the unexamined life is truly not worth living.
Related posts:
What We Missed
A really great organization, Queers for Economic Justice, is in a serious crisis. A grant they had been promised from the State of New York has been delayed due to legislative hurdles and they are in a cash flow bind. If you can donate to the organization today, they need it to keep the doors open and pay their staff.
A Judge in Tennessee grants asylum to a family of German immigrants because they want to home-school their children, a practice which is illegal in Germany. I don't want to discredit this families' situation, but it brings up questions about the consistency of our immigration policy when many who are in fear of violence and other types of persecution are denied asylum.
A Washington State teacher was shot and killed outside her school by a man she had recently filed for an anti-harassment protection against.
Another sad story of a trans woman who was sexually assaulted by a police officer in San Antonio. To add insult to injury, she was misidentified by the media in the first few days that news reports were written.
I'm speaking on a panel at Barnard College in NYC on Wednesday called Reproductive Justice in Action. Check it out if you're in the area.
Tooling Around with Handy Manny
Sponsored by Nuffnang.
I have to admit, when I first saw Handy Manny, I thought looked like a cross between Bob the Builder and Dora the Explorer. Handy Manny is a Playhouse Disney animated preschooler program about the title character Manny, a bilingual handy man, and his tool box full of talking tools including the humorously named Pat the Hammer, Turner the slotted screw driver and Squeeze the Pliers. The tools have various personalities that sometimes leads to problems in the toolbox, but they are soon sorted out as the tools learn various lessons about problem solving, teamwork, friendship and community.
There are various other characters in the town who appear regularly throughout the show as well, such as Kelly who owns the Hardware Store and Mr Lopart in the Candy Store next door who always tries to fix things himself, usually with disastrous consequences.
The “Tooling Around” DVD has five episodes of approximately eleven minutes each: Squeeze’s Day Off, Amigo Grande, A Sticky Fix, Pat The Screwdriver and Supremoguy. Manny and the tools attend to tasks from fixing broken trophies and steps to putting up a new flagpole and helping to build a new house … and they even learn the value in having a rest and not working sometimes.
The show is not overloaded with singing, but has a couple of songs repeated in each episode such as “Hop Up Jump In” when the tools hop into the box on the way to a job, and “We Work Together” while they are making .
Handy Manny incorporates some basic Spanish, and sure, Spanish is not as culturally relevant here in Australia as it is in America, but like any kind of bilingual program, it’s helpful for kids to learn how language works.
The adults in our house find Handy Manny a nice little show without the annoying shouting, irritating constant repetition, and sometimes just plain old weirdness of some preschooler viewing. Manny’s gentle accent is very easy to listen to, and every time I see Mr Lopart’s cat with a comb over I giggle. If I judge preschooler television by my ability to be in the same room as the television while it is on, without actually wanting to throw something at the television, then Manny is a winner.
The kids really enjoy watching Manny (even the ‘big’ school boy), and will grab the toy tool kit to play and sing along as they watch. And I can hope that they are absorbing some of the team work and problem solving lessons as they watch.
I love the convenience of DVDs for trips, or for when there’s nothing appropriate on television at the time, and Tooling Around is already on the favourites list in our house.
Notes from a bitch...reflecting on the "punishment from God" claim...
Shall we?
Mr. Marshall has since tried to clarify his remarks, which were first reported by Capital News Service (produced by students at the Virginia Commonwealth University), but has only succeeded in lodging his foot more firmly into his mouth.
The issue is not what Mr. Marshall said...
"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.
"In the Old Testament, the firstborn of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord," he added. "There's a special punishment Christians would suggest -- and with the knowledge that they have in faith, it's been verified by a study from Virginia Commonwealth University -- first abortions, of a first pregnancy, are much more damaging to a woman than latter abortions."
...but what he meant by what he said.
Marshall has since made clarifying statements that claim that what he really meant was that women who have abortions (particularly if it's a "first born") will be punished because the Old Testament says so. Marshall goes on to say that he did not mean that disabled children are a punishment, even though I don't see how that works and I suspect his reluctance to follow his own inaccurate logic to completion has it's roots in the fact that doing so wouldn't be consistent with his traditional family values brand identity.
Sadly, this "punishment from God" rhetoric ain't new and it shows a resistance to eradication not unlike a MRSA infection.
I grew up with the ramifications of this mess, so I'm particularly disgusted by it.
As most of you know, my older brother is profoundly autistic. Even before he was diagnosed, doctors and my parents knew there was something wrong with him...extreme hyperactivity, hyper-sensitivity to sounds and light and so forth and so on led them to believe he was dealing with "something" long before that something was identified as autism.
Way back in the early 1970's, some doctors still blamed mothers for developmental disabilities in their children. My mother was told her son would never "thrive"...would never tell her he loved her or be able to "suffer her touch"...and she was advise to institutionalize her 18 month old child immediately.
My mother was also told that all of this...every part of it...was her fault because she didn't touch my brother enough, or she must have left the fridge door open...or she breast fed him too long, didn't breast feed long enough, or that she picked him up too much or didn't pick him up often enough. While trying to come to terms with a diagnosis that was, at the time, defined as the absence of a diagnosis my mother was forced to defend herself against accusations that she was emotionally distant or she was too emotionally dependent...she was told a laundry list of reasons why she was at fault and all right on top of being told her son, my brother, was a "lost cause".
Being a person of faith, my mother turned to her church for comfort and support after the doctors turned on her.
Her church responded with an indictment of their own that pretty much mirrors the statements made by Mr. Marshall. Her preacher tossed accusations at her...she denied each specific sin...and he tossed out more accusations. The conclusion was that my mother had sinned at some point in some way and that my brother was her punishment for that...but, if she could "get right with God", my brother would be cured.
Even the "cure" was on her shoulders...and those shoulders began to fold under the weight of all those accusations and absolute responsibility.
I watched my mother struggle with the guilt leveled on her by idiots like Marshall and misguided doctors for years...and it left permanent emotional damage to her and my family. We eventually found fantabulous doctors who cleared up all that bullshit and eased some of the guilt my parent's were feeling...but many in the religious community never came correct. As demonstrated by Mr. Marshall's verbal malfunction, many people of faith still cling to the belief that disabilities are punishments for past sins and "cures" or "healthy" kids are God's way of rewarding a purpose driven God fearing natural birth control method using and one man + one woman married life.
Obviously, I disagree.
My brother is a lot of things...fantabulous, loving, caring, a great friend, amazing brother, he's loyal, forgiving and a hard worker...but he's not a punishment or a curse.
My mother didn't bring autism down upon my brother and our family through her reproductive health care choices or poor parenting.
As my brother's advocate and guardian, I reject the "punishment from God" rhetoric because it is insulting at best and it attempts to absolve society of our responsibility to respect difference at worst. Many of the same so-called family value politicians who spew that mess are the same fiends who turn around and vote against autism insurance legislation and reject funding social programs that benefit older autistic folks like my brother.
I reject this rhetoric because of the woman hating inaccuracy of it...because the claim causes emotional distress and perpetuates a lie that has hurt generations of women.
It is long past time the rancid insults of the "punishment from God" and/or "refrigerator mothers" charges die a painful death and stay dead.
I can only hope I live to see a time when women don't have to suffer and defend against this shit...
...but me and mine will always have the scars to remember it by.
In praise of Johnny Weir
We had a lot of fun at the Feministing retreat this weekend. For me, one of the many highlights - and there really were very many moments when I looked around and thought, "this has got to be the best moment of the weekend," only to have the very same thought an hour or two later - was standing behind Vanessa and laughing uncontrollably as she watched Bryan Safi of "Infomania" give his cutting analysis of how the media has treated American figure skater Johnny Weir during the Winter Games.
Weir won US Nationals in 2004, 2005 and 2006, but famously did far worse than expected at the 2006 Games in Torino, placing fifth after not completing some of his jumps. This year, he placed third at Nationals and went on to Vancouver, where he finished in sixth place. He is, without a doubt, a world class athlete. But as Safi notes, "athlete" is a word that's never used to describe Weir. He's described as "controversial" or "flamboyant": the mainstream media seems to have a different vocabulary for talking about Weir than for talking about his American rivals and his international competitors.
You can understand why Johnny Weir makes commentators, even figure skating commentators, so very uncomfortable. He's an especially elegant skater who wears formfitting and sparkly costumes (yes, even more formfitting and more sparkly than one usually sees in figure skating) and who really emotes on the ice. He has his own reality TV show, "Be Good Johnny Weir," he's posed for fashion magazines and modeled at NY Fashion Week and in non-competition exhibitions he skates to Lady Gaga. He seems unconcerned with trying to make men's figure skating more appealing and accessible to the mainstream by making it more "macho," and unlike Vancouver silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko, he seems uninterested in participating in the figure skating equivalent of a pissing contest over quadruple jumps.
Weir also makes mainstream commentators - from whom we can expect sexist and homophobic remarks - nervous, too. Last week, two Canadian radio personalities questioned Weir's sexuality and gender identity, saying that "we should make him pass a gender test at this point." They also argued that Weir's flamboyance would deter other young men from taking up the sport, because "they think all the boys who skate will end up like him. It sets a bad example," and suggested that Weir should be competing in the ladies' competition. Weir, when asked by "Access Hollywood" for his reaction, said "every little boy should be so lucky as to turn into me." And given that Weir is a three-time National Champion, two-time Olympian and personal friend of Lady Gaga, I have to agree - we should all be so lucky.
One of the real reasons that Weir makes people so uncomfortable, I think, is his refusal to fit neatly into a category - gay, straight, man, woman. Weir famously does not speak on the record about his sexuality: in 2006, when asked by a fan on his blog if he was gay, Weir replied,
I don't feel the need to express my sexual being because it's not part of my sport and it's private. I can sleep with whomever I choose and it doesn't affect what I'm doing on the ice, so speculation is speculation. I like nice things, and beautiful things, so if that is the only way people are determining that I swing one way or the other, then to me, that's sad. You can't judge a book by its cover, ever. . . . I am who I am, and I don't need to justify anything to anyone.And Weir is right; people do speculate. People do want to know if he's gay or straight. It maddens us that he blurs the lines our culture has drawn, that he refuses to play by the rules.
But at the end of the day, those lines are arbitrary. Those rules are constructed, and they're constructed to serve the interests of some groups and to disadvantage other groups. Johnny - you gotta love him - totally gets this. In a press conference that he held last week to respond to gender-based criticism of him, he said,
"I think masculinity is what you believe it to be. To me, masculinity is all my perception. And I think that masculinity and femininity, it's something that's very old-fashioned. There's a whole new generation that aren't defined by their sex or their race or who they like to sleep with. I think as a person, you know what your values are and what you believe in, and I think that's the most important thing."He also said that the commentators in question were more than entitled to hold and voice their own beliefs, but that he hopes that more kids can grow up the way he did, with the freedom to express themselves. It was an intelligent, classy and spot-on response to the kind of bigoted comments Weir must hear about himself all the time. It was also an example of what it looks like when athletes take it upon themselves to be role models, not just for young people in their sport, but for people everywhere who feel excluded or oppressed by our culture's insistence that rules are rules, that categories are concrete, and that life must always be lived between a set of arbitrary and ultimately limiting lines.
The Feministing Five: Heather Corinna
Heather Corinna, a writer and activist, is the founder of Scarleteen, one of the internet's best sex ed resources for young people, and the author of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide for Getting You Through High School and College. Scarleteen, which Corinna started in 1998, tries to fill the gaps left - whether intentionally or unintentionally - in sex education provided by teachers and parents. Scarleteen is for and by young people, aims to equip young people with all the information they need to make the best choices they can make. It also provides a space for them to talk, in an honest and safe way, about issues that they might not otherwise be able to explore, like bisexuality, coming out and abusive relationships. I particularly like this post, about men, masculinity and breakups.
Corinna is also one of the founders of the All Girl Army, a blogger collective for young feminists (some as young as 10, and who doesn't love a 10-year-old feminist?). Each of their bloggers was asked to define what feminism means to them. Check it out - it'll put a smile on your face.
Corinna, whose writing has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Bitch and Bust, among many, many others. She also writes erotica, and publishes her erotic photography online at her site Femmerotic. Those of you who read RH Reality Check will recognize Corinna from her Get Real! series, answering readers' questions about sex, sexuality and sexual health. In this week's column, about sex and guilt, she writes: "I have yet to see any sound evidence that people enjoying pleasure, sexual or otherwise, in ways that do not hurt anyone -- that everyone involves wants and engages in with basic care and respect for themselves and others -- has anything but positive benefits for people and the world as a whole." Amen to that.
And now, without further ado, the Feministing Five, with Heather Corinna.
Chloe Angyal: What led you to sex and sexuality education and activism?
Heather Corinna: I've been a general educator since college: I started out working with developmentally disabled adults, then went into Montessori and alternative early childhood and elementary education, while at the same time still working on my arts, including my writing. I grew up with a father who was a political activist, and a mother who worked in healthcare. In a lot of ways, my sexuality and sexual life was a lone place of real freedom for me in my teens during the 80's, a notion that stands so counter to so much of what people say about young adult sexuality but which was so true for me. That given, I was often the unofficial sex expert in high school and college, so while I'm sure my advice back them wasn't as informed as it could have been, I got started in this early. I've also been writing for the whole of my life, so when you put all of those ingredients in the pot, I think it's tough to see how I would have wound up anywhere BUT in sexuality education and activism.
When I first started publishing online in the mid-late 90's, I was working centrally with adult women's sexuality and sexuality in the arts, as well as writing erotica for anthologies, and young people began to send me advice questions, likely because a) there just wasn't much on the 'net to choose from at the time (so finding my stuff was mighty easy), and b) most of the sexuality spaces there were around then were some skeevy BBS' (which seemed primarily to be manned and used by adult men who got off on teenagers talking about sex and offered very little actual support or factual information) that I don't imagine felt like safe spaces for young people. There wasn't anything for young people I could refer them to, so we just gradually built Scarleteen as we went, until it got to the point where it became my full-time job.
At this point, most of my week is based on directing and operating Scarleteen and doing other kinds of written sex ed/sexuality articles, but I also direct an in-person sex education outreach program in Seattle. At the current time through that program, I serve both homeless or transient youth as well as patients or clients at abortion clinics under 25 who can get an in-depth one-on-one sex education consult with me on the day of their procedures.
CA: Who is your favorite fictional heroine, and who are your heroines in real life?
HC: It's crazy tough to pick just one, but Oothoon in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion would have to win it if it was just one. It's a short piece, but in but a few pages, mostly composed of Oothoon speaking and telling her own tale, she does those most magnificent telling-off on everything from how crazy it is for anyone to suggest that a woman raped is somehow "tainted" or "impure," to what's really at the core of sexual jealousy to what sexual freedom and women's sexuality could really be like in a better world. It also contains Blake's concept of what innocence is, which is radically different from how we usually hear it defined. For Blake, innocence was simply where we are at without experience, less about purity and more about an open wonder, then we get life experience, and the ideal state -- unlike the one we often see, which is this perpetual state of innocence or "purity" -- is to return to innocence informed and deepened by experience.
On the whole, it's a giant rant about so many of the things that infuriate and frustrate me the most, and I don't know that I've ever seen a better one. (And goodness knows I rant enough about it myself to have personally made the attempt many times over.) This from 1793, no less, and from a male writer and artist, too. The first time I read it, it blew my socks off so much that my professor at the time allowed me to skip class for several days so I could read and reread it over and over again and just let myself drown in it. One of my fave passages in it is:
Infancy! fearless, lustful, happy, nestling for delight
In laps of pleasure: Innocence! honest, open, seeking
The vigorous joys of morning light, open to virgin bliss,
Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty, child of night and sleep?
When thou awakest wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys,
Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclos'd?
Then com'st thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble,
With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy
And brand it with the name of whore, and sell it in the night
In silence, ev'n without a whisper, and in seeming sleep.
Religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires:
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn.
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty,
This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling hypocrite?
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys
Of life are harlots; and Theotormon is a sick man's dream;
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness.
CA: What recent news story made you want to scream?
HC: This piece, about Utah potentially criminalizing women who abort and miscarry.
Not only does it infuriate me as a feminist and as someone in reproductive health including abortion, but also as an educator. By no means do I think that people really being educated about sexuality, our bodies and the whole process of reproduction will magically fix or prevent the kind of ideology and dynamics really at the heart of this proposal. However, barely a day passes where I don't read someone, including the media, legislators, magazines in the market, saying or suggesting something really freaking ignorant about women's bodies, reproduction or sex which makes clear that their own sex ed was sorely lacking.
Miscarriage is often totally unavoidable (and in some ways is actually about our bodies being very smart, and doing things to help to try and protect our own health). It is not, as it is often suggested to be, often about women doing something wrong, something being wrong with women, or women being "careless" with their pregnancies. A great many pregnancies, potentially as many as half, end in miscarriage, many before women even knew they were pregnant. These are the indisputable facts of our bodies and how they work. The idea that pregnancy is certain or guaranteed to end in a birth unless a woman mucks it up or doesn't do all the right things not only is inaccurate, it clearly comes from the notion that anything unwanted or bad that happens to women must be our fault or doing.
Criminalizing any reproduction choice is heinous enough. But seeking to criminalize women's own bodily functions -- and doing so based on a few cases which are not representative of most women or most miscarriages -- outside of our control is beyond the pale many steps further. The worst part is, folks like this may even know these facts and simply act like they don't on purpose, but so much of the general population doesn't know the facts that snowing people is all too easy. There is a substantial segment of people in the world who aren't as outraged over things like this as I think they would be if they got that it isn't just the ideology that's horrifying, it's an ideology held up in part because of a collective (and often purposefully sustained, such as by abstinence-only sex education) ignorance about something no one should be ignorant about: not even being educated accurately about the bodies we inhabit and live your lives through is an outrage to me.
CA: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge facing feminism today?
HC: The idea that we don't need it anymore, that everyone is all equal and equitable and there aren't any more gender disparities. Not only is that either a tremendous falsehood or a very deep ignorance, it is often either said by people who either have a ton of privilege or by those who clearly need feminism the most because they're so deeply disempowered that it seems like they need to say that to try and protect what little agency they have.
We don't have gender equality or gender equity. Certainly not globally, and we don't have it yet in the states, either. Women still do not have pay equity. Women's right to full autonomy over our bodies, something the majority of male-bodied people have, is still not complete and is often tenuous at best, particularly when we're talking about reproductive choice and health and full sexual freedom. Marginalized women in particular -- either by virtue of race, immigration status, age, gender identity or sexual orientation, economic class, what have you -- still usually have far less rights than men of those same marginalized groups.
The saddest thing to me in the espousal of the idea that we're post-feminist is how many women who suggest as much are doing so (I think Ariel Levy speaks very well to aspects of this) for their own personal gain on the backs of their sisters. Of course, it's nearly as sad to me how many women think that where we are at with equity isn't about having made progress, but about still needing much more, but that this is either as good as we can expect, or worse still, that we should be grateful for being given any crumbs of equity at all.
CA: You're going to a desert island, and you get to take one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you take?
HC: Pistachios. And water. I have so many other beverages of choice I'd earnestly prefer, but I am really bad at drinking enough water and feel like being on a desert island might be just the thing that finally motivates me to care for myself properly in that regard. Victoria Woodhull, if dead feminists count. If we need someone living, bell hooks.
Geeky Women In Design: Govindaraman & Gandhi on USB 3.0
In the 02.11.10 issue of Electronic Design, Ashwini Govindaraman and Sonia Gandhi summarize “USB 3.0 - The Next-Generation Interconnect”.
USB is enviable in its ubiquity. (Perhaps someday, we’ll see that kind of universality in some remaining troublesome software - say, video file and electronic book formats - as well.) The authors begin by briefly recapping the history of USB and the evolution from Hi-Speed to SuperSpeed (3 Gbits/s). What follows is an admirably simple discussion of USB architecture and power management, followed by a comparison with other interfaces and a tabular view of differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0.
Wondering how long it will be before USB 3.0 is on the market? Not long at all - at least one device with USB 3.0 is already slated to be revealed at CeBIT 2010 in Hannover this week.
Both Gandhi and Govindaraman are employed by Cypress Semiconductor, whose “offerings include the…PSoC programmable system-on-chip families…CapSense touch sensing and TrueTouch solutions for touchscreens.” Gandhi is a senior applications engineer, and Govindaraman is a product marketing manager currently hacking on an MBA at the Wharton School of Business.
Related posts:
- Geeky Women Love Electronics *And* Football!
- How Geeky Women Spend Their Time
- GeekSpeakr: Where Geeky Women Speak
Biased NY Times article covers racist anti-choice campaign
This weekend, the New York Times had a front page article about the racist Atlanta billboards that Samhita covered a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately, the entire article is a detailed explanation of the Right to Life group's opinion, analysis and tactics. Loretta Ross, National Coordinator of Sistersong, is quoted in response, but her arguments barely make a splash on the piece. This doesn't seem like fair and balanced reporting to me.
Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check has more on what was wrong with the article:
Second, it failed to provide context for the widespread support among African-American leaders in Congress and in the public health community for expanding access to services.
And third, the Times gave inordinate amounts of space to truly questionable characters in the anti-choice movement without exploring how these groups themselves are at fault for the problem about which they profess to be so worried. In fact, it failed to ask any questions at all about what the so-called right-to-life groups cited were doing to address the causal factors behind high rates of abortion. Nor did it really question the validity or credibility of these groups in any real way, or ask what they've done to address poverty, social isolation, or broader health concerns among African American women. The answer? Nothing.
RH Reality Check has been running a series in response to this campaign for a few weeks now. It includes Shark-fu's great response to the campaign. I also wrote a piece for the series last week, which Courtney linked to, but I wanted to re-emphasize it.
While this campaign targets African American women specifically, we've seen these arguments used to target other women of color. I argue that it is a classic divide and conquer strategy, an attempt to pit women of color against reproductive justice activists. Here is an excerpt from that piece:
Latinas and other women of color don't need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We're working in those clinics you attack, we're helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don't need limits on what services we can access. And we don't need your ideological bullying.
The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of "sex and race selection" legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families--we'll talk.
Update: SPARK Reproductive Justice Now has a campaign to urge CBS Outdoor to bring the billboards down. Click here to take action.
Only 7 days to our Virtual Event!!!!!!!
BizSparkCamp Dublin – March 8th
Everything is locked and loaded for BizSparkCamp Dublin on March 8th at the Radisson Hotel on Golden Lane.
As part of the local BizSpark programme, Microsoft Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and TechLudd are delighted to announce BizSparkCamp 2010 featuring Innovate! PitchSlam – an event designed to help accelerate Irish Startups’ businesses and provide the opportunity to be identified as one of the world’s most promising technology start-ups. This day-long conference will run on Monday, March 8th (doors open 9am) in the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Dublin’s city centre. Entrance is free of charge.
Register here: http://techludd.com/events/bizsparkcamp-registration/
BizSparkCamp Sessions/Speakers include:
- Julie Sinnamon and Colm MacFhionnlaoich from Enterprise Ireland will be providing advice for getting access to funding and new markets (UK, US and further abroad).
- Brian Caulfield will be joining us once again to give some key insights into the local VC landscape with tips on how to maximise your chances of securing VC funding. He will be joined by Shay Garvery from Delta Partners and Diane Roberts from HBAN.
- Mike Sigal from early stage analyst firm Guidewire Group, organisers of Innovate!, will be giving an overview of the Guidewire Group’s G/Score Assessment Methodology, an analytical tool to help you understand your competitive strength and market position.
- Caroline Egan and Nigel Turner from The Open Borders Group have worked with many Irish companies helping them to enter the UK market and partner successfully with the Microsoft UK channel. They will speaking on how to expand your business internationally and the best ways to build partner strategies.
- Through the new BizSpark EUGA program, Microsoft Ireland are providing support for BizSpark companies interested in accessing local and EU grants, providing a facilitated application process to make applying for these funds easier. Grants covered by EGUA include ICT infrastructure, training, R&D and recruitment. Nicky Martin from Affect Network will be covering how BizSpark can help you access these grants.
- Caelen King (RevaHealth), Ray Nolan (HostelWorld.com), Aidan Gallagher (InishTech), Alan Coleman (GetItKeepIt.com), Ciaran Dynes (Progress Software), Siofra Flood (Legal Consultant) and Brian Moroney (Mercatus) will all be sharing their stories from the trenches and giving their best advice on how to access capital and new markets in today’s challenging climate.
Innovate!100 PitchSlam
In addition to the planned BizSpark sessions, we have invited local Bizspark companies to participate in Innovate!2010 – a global competition to identify and accelerate the Innovate!100: The World’s 100 Most Promising Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Startups. Microsoft BizSpark has partnered with early stage analyst firm Guidewire Group to bring you opportunities for expert feedback & validation, global exposure, cash and in-kind prizes, qualified introductions to potential partners and investors, and the possibility of being named one of the Innovate!100: The World’s 100 Most Promising Startups.
The schedule is below – it’s a very full day, followed by a drinks reception in the evening.
Start
End
Track 1 - Access to Capital
Track 2 - Access to Markets
09:00
09:20
Registration
09:20
09:40
Welcome and Introduction
Cliff Reeves - Microsoft Global GM, Entrepreneur Community
09:40
09:50
Room Change
09:50
10:30
EI Funding & Best Practices
Julie Sinnamon - Executive Director, Global Business Development, Enterprise Ireland
Stories from the trenches - Breaking into New Markets with Web Business Models
Caelen King - CEO RevaHealth
10:30
11:10
EUGA - BizSpark Service to help Startups get grants
Nicky Martin - Affect Network
Stories from the trenches - The new opportunities with SaaS
Aidan Gallagher - CEO Inishtech
11:10
11:30
Break
11:30
12:10
Stories from the trenches - Best Practices for Getting Funded
Brian Caulfield
Building effective partner strategies and routes to market
Caroline Egan - The Open Borders Group
12:10
12:50
Stories from the trenches - Saving Time and Money on Due Dilligence
Siofra Flood - Legal Consultant
International Expansion - Best Practices
Nigel Turner - The Open Borders Group
12:50
13:30
Stories from the trenches - Get the 'boring stuff' right!
Brian Moroney - CEO Mercatus
Stories from the trenches - Operating Abroad (From Product Development to Sales)
Alan Coleman - GetItKeepIt.com
13:30
14:20
Lunch
14:20
15:00
Your G-Score & BizSpark Exchange - Maximise your chances of getting funding from BizSpark VC Network Partners
Mike Sigal - Founder and CEO of The Guidewire Group
Stories from the trenches - Accessing New Markets
Ray Nolan - Founder of HostelWorld.com
15:00
15:40
Panel Discussion - Entering new markets
Ray Nolan, Colm MacFhionnlaoich (EI), Ciaran Dynes (Progress Software), Caroline Egan (TOBG)
15:40
16:00
Break
16:00
16:50
Panel Discussion - Best bets for Funding in Today's Economic Climate
Shay Garvey (Delta Group); Diane Roberts (HBAN), Brian Caulfield, Caelen King, (RevaHealth)
16:50
17:00
PitchSlam Set-up
17:00
18:00
PitchSlam (1)
18:00
18:20
Break
18:20
19:10
PitchSlam (2)
19:10
+
Networking
Overheard talking about fuel cells
Mark Fontecchio, Google using Bloom box to power data center
According to Eric Shonfeld over at TechCrunch
Each fuel cell, which is made from sand essentially (zirconium oxide), is a square wafer about the size of a CD box. Each wafer can produce about 25 watts of energy, enough to power a lightbulb. Stack them together and you get a box that could power a house. Group them into larger units, and you get enough energy to power a building or an entire campus. He calls them energy servers because they are modular like servers in a data center. Need more energy? Add more boxes.
Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is fuel cell.
8.8 magnitude earthquake rocks Chile this weekend
There was a massive earthquake in Chile this weekend, actually much stronger than the recent Haiti earthquake. While it looks like the deaths from this quake will be much fewer than in Haiti, the devastation is serious. Here is a round up of links about the situation in Chile:
Death toll jumps to 708 from Chile earthquake (LA Times)
There were worries this weekend about tsunami's that could spread as a result of the earthquake. Most of those warnings have been lowered after smaller than expected waves reached Hawaii and other Pacific nations. (MSNBC)
The Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, declared a "state of catastrophe" after the quake on Saturday. (ABC)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was set to begin a tour of Latin America today, will now be dominated by this recent disaster in Chile. (NY Times)
The Nation has more on how you can help in Chile.
Today in Feminist History: Thirty years of Women's History Month
Today marks the first day of Women's History Month 2010.
Women's History Month saw it's beginnings thirty years ago, when Women's History Week was instituted by an act of Congress. It wasn't until 1987 that the week was expanded into the entire month of March.
Before the 1970's, the topic of women's history was largely missing from general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration in 1978 and chose the week of March 8 to coincide with International Women's Day.The celebration was met with positive response, and schools began to host their own Women's History Week programs. The next year, leaders from the California group shared their project at a Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Other participants not only became determined to begin their own local Women's History Week projects but also agreed to support an effort to have Congress declare a national Women's History Week.
In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) cosponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution proclaiming a "Women's History Week."
In 1987, the National Women's History Project petitioned Congress to expand the celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women's History Month Resolution has been approved every year with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.
This year's theme is "Writing Women Back into History." For more resources on the month, check out the National Women's History Project.
Bunch of Links
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