In 2007, Moira Cameron, a soldier with a distinguished 22-year military career serving in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, was named Britain's first female Yeoman Warder... a Beefeater. Unfortunately, she has also been the target of sexist workplace harassment by several of her 34 fellow Beefeaters, all of whom are supposedly mature forty+ year old veterans. This has led to two Beefeaters being suspended with an additional Beefeater currently under investigation. Equally unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch's Sun is adding to her humiliation, while Reuters has put the "Ha, ha!" in harassment by filing the story in their "humorous" Oddly Enough category.
posted by markkraft on Nov 3, 2009 - 38 comments

Filament aims to be a different kind of women's magazine. They plan to "cover a wide range of topics [but absolutely no beauty or diet articles] that inspire and engage , and [give women] gorgeous boys the way [they] like to see them." Their first issue is out and featured a mix of articles, fiction, poetry and pics of shirtless boys. For their second issue, they want to include a pic of a man with erection, but their printer bailed because the printer was afraid of a backlash. The magazine has also had issues with distributors because many of them don't want to deal with a women's magazine with a man on the cover. Via (NSFW) Erotica Cover Watch (NSFW) which is a blog dedicated to ending the preponderance of (naked) women on the covers of erotic books, and is trying to get more men and couples on the covers.
posted by nooneyouknow on Aug 13, 2009 - 82 comments

The Humanthesizer. Calvin Harris is promoting his new single by using a type of skin-safe conductive ink to "play" his song with the assistance of, ah, several assistants. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack on Aug 12, 2009 - 29 comments

Hulk-Margaret smash stupid Sony. Girls not stupid lilac people. Girls strong and awesome! AAAAARRRRR! Hulk-Marg like gems. Hulk-Marg like gem sweaters (previously). But Hulk-Marg no like pandering only to gem interests. Hulk-Marg well-rounded, has many interests and layers. Hulk-Marg give example: SMASHING. Let Hulk-Marg find PowerPoint and laser pointer. Hulk-Marg has PowerPoint here somewhere. Ahem. Hulk-Marg found PowerPoint. Made slides. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Aug 12, 2009 - 53 comments

Persuasion: Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept. Several YT commercials and a thoughtful essay.
posted by five fresh fish on Aug 7, 2009 - 147 comments

Standing out in the crowd. Kirrily Robert's keynote from OSCON. She discusses diversity in opensource communities and projects. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Jul 30, 2009 - 20 comments

Electronic Arts, the video game publisher that is no stranger to either controversy, is sponsoring a contest for its upcoming release of Dante's Inferno (Previously). The contest, taking place at this weekend's Comic-Con, requires entrants to "commit acts of lust" and take a photo of said act with an EA (or other company's) booth babes, post the photos on Twitter or Facebook, and repeat the process as many times as possible for additional chances to win. The prize is listed in part as "Dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls". [more inside]
posted by cmgonzalez on Jul 24, 2009 - 136 comments

“...the Platonic nerd is invariably male. The stereotype is flexible to incorporate women and girls on an individual basis, but few people conjure up the image of a woman when they think about nerds.” Feminist blog Pandagon reviews two books about nerdiness and geekery, Jason Tocci addresses the question of why female involvement in geek culture seems to call for a special explanation, and two feminist geeks set out in search of an egalitarian future.
posted by velvet winter on Jun 26, 2009 - 142 comments

Isaac Asimov on how to be a dirty old man.
posted by Artw on Jun 3, 2009 - 67 comments

Dell have recently opened a new sub-site called "Della" aimed at women in the most offensive way possible. Bereft of any technical information about their hardware, or indeed any information at all, the site instead includes "Tech Tips" about keeping track of your weight... [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on May 16, 2009 - 114 comments

This presentation was given at the golden gate ruby conference. The author of the talk has posted an apology of sorts, but some people still aren't happy.
posted by handee on Apr 30, 2009 - 148 comments

The Socially Conscious Gamer is just the most recent example of growing discussions about how gamer culture and problems with silencing and pushing women out, wallowing in racist stereotypes, self-fulfilling cycles of exclusion, and why these conversations are hard, if not impossible to have. Still, if rational discussions can be had about games dealing with slavery, perhaps there is still hope. Personally, I can't wait for escapism to be for all of us, and not about escaping FROM us.
posted by yeloson on Feb 16, 2009 - 159 comments

The male rejection of adulthood is now the dominant attitude in Hollywood comedy.

The center of attention is usually a guy, his buddies and his toys. He will, most of the time, be nudged toward responsibility, forgiven for his quirks and nurtured in his needs and neuroses by a woman who represents an ideal amalgam of supermodel and mom.
posted by plexi on Jun 6, 2008 - 154 comments

Miss Bimbo invites users to become the "coolest, richest most famous bimbo in the whole world". Unsurprisingly, the site, which encourages girls as young as seven to give virtual dolls breast implants and put them on crash diets, has been widely condemned by parents and children's activists. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Mar 25, 2008 - 23 comments

How women have fought, and succeeded, and celebrated their victories. [previously here, and here]
posted by hadjiboy on Mar 7, 2008 - 8 comments

WWJD? Well, he definitely wouldn't let a woman tell him what to do. At least, that's the theological position one institution of Christian learning has taken. And this isn't the first time the perhaps ironically named St. Mary's Academy has taken a "positive stand" on principle. Another take on the story here. (Via Boing Boing.)
posted by saulgoodman on Feb 14, 2008 - 72 comments

"Hello, and welcome to Mainly For Men (part 1, part 2). And, as the title implies, this is a programme, fellas, just for you." Yes, everything the BBC thought the red-blooded male back in the late 1960s would be interested in (ie women, cars and shark fishing). The result was so hideous it was never broadcast until a TV Hell themed night many years later. Possibly NSFW... some brief nudity ('artistic', naturally) and mild swearing. And rampant mind-blowing sexism.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Nov 29, 2007 - 85 comments

List of Ads Offensive to Women. Topping the list: Dolce & Gabbana: This ad is beyond offensive, with a scene evoking a gang rape and reeking of violence against women. In an interview, NOW Foundation President Kim Gandy said, "It's in Esquire, so they probably don't think a stylized gang rape will sell clothes to women, but what is more likely is that they think it will get them publicity. It's a provocative ad but it is provoking things that really are not what we want to have provoked. We don't need any more violence. [more inside]
posted by Tommy Gnosis on Oct 20, 2007 - 215 comments

Advocate or Adumbrate? Martin Amis writes an open letter to Yasmin Alibhai Brown for her suggestion that after reading everyone's favourite last living Marxist Terry Eagleton's comments on this (posted previously), Amis is 'with the beasts' on Muslim-hating. He may have been adumbrating not advocating, but is there another way to describe patronising and smug?
posted by jennydiski on Oct 13, 2007 - 47 comments

Men face jail for rape if women are 'too drunk' to consent in bed to boost convictions. Men who have sex with drunken women will be at risk of being convicted of rape under new laws to be considered by ministers. The legal shake-up would mean a woman would be considered incapable of giving consent to sex if she had been drinking heavily.
posted by IronWolve on Dec 28, 2006 - 268 comments

Harlan Ellison gropes Connie Willis at the Hugo Awards ceremony. Meanwhile, Ellison implodes on his message board, "NO grab, NO grope, NO fondle" when the evidence indicates otherwise. More here.
posted by ed on Sep 1, 2006 - 113 comments

Diogenes the Cynic sought One Honest Man. Lately we have had some wonderful examples that would seem to confirm the philosopher's most cynical suspicions. And then along come some Honest {quicktime movie} Women and it's just so refreshing.
posted by fourcheesemac on Mar 26, 2006 - 13 comments

He complained to [Kingsley] Amis in 1943...that "all women are stupid beings" and remarked in 1983 that he'd recently accompanied Monica [Jones] to a hospital "staffed ENTIRELY by wogs, cheerful and incompetent." ...His views on politics and class seemed to be pithily captured in a ditty he shared again with Amis. "I want to see them starving,/The so-called working class,/Their wages yearly halving,/Their women stewing grass..." For recreation he apparently found time for pornography, preferably with a hint of sado-masochism".
John Banville on Philip Larkin.
posted by matteo on Feb 6, 2006 - 30 comments

Women are prohibited from being assigned to combat roles, but some still find themselves on the front lines. "Before this war, people only imagined how women would react in combat roles and thought that they couldn't handle it ... Now we see that women are bonding with the men and not going to pieces." Also, an interview with Kayla Williams, author of 'Love My Rifle More Than You'.
posted by Alison on Nov 21, 2005 - 40 comments

Horrible acts of human behavior. Via: First Rule.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Nov 21, 2005 - 159 comments

The boxing day tsunami in Asia is said to have killed 3 times (3/4 of the way down the page) more women than men.
"Many of the losses are being tied to gender roles and styles--such as women's long hair, confining saris, extreme sense of modesty and selfless commitment to husbands and children--that hindered their ability to escape."
There have been reports of abuse (cache) and forced marriages in Refugee Camps as a consequence. Oxfam briefing note (.pdf) and summary.
via (previous tsunami threads)
posted by peacay on Apr 4, 2005 - 14 comments

"After all, women are fragile and delicate creatures; that is why men should lead the way to distant planets and carry women there in their strong hands," said Russian Academy of Sciences' Anatoly Grigoryev to students of the Moscow International University, by way of explaining why there will be NO WOMEN on the first flight to Mars. Ok, that sounds right. But they might at least need some swishy gay guy to wash socks and do dishes for the fellas, nyet? (Meanwhile, looks like Comrade Anatoly here is bucking for a job at Harvard.) (RIA link via NASA Watch).
posted by jellybuzz on Feb 10, 2005 - 49 comments

She's no Barbie To readers of Russian Fairy tales, the name Alyona conjures images of simple peasant girls who become princesses through modesty, hard work and intelligence. A modern day Alyona has surfaced in the cut-throat world of beauty pageants.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk on Apr 14, 2004 - 48 comments

Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them -- in the latest iteration of crude preteen fashion, some girls are sporting anti-boy slogans as part of that "faux girl power" look. Further corrosion of civility...or are boys in fact smelly?
posted by serafinapekkala on Feb 4, 2004 - 78 comments

All The Nudes That Are Fit To Print: It's no exaggeration to say La Repubblica is Italy's finest newspaper. It's liberal, modern, intelligent and independent. Along with Spain's El Pais; France's Libération and Le Monde; the UK's Guardian; Germany's Die Zeit and Portugal's Público, it's one of the mainstays of the European Left and Centre-Left. And yet its website offers calendars in the, er, Pirelli tradition of time-keeping. Imagine the New York Times being similarly... liberal. Can soft prOn and serious reporting live together? Is it an Italian thing? The only other example I can think of is Spain's Interviú, a magazine which in its heyday mixed superb (again, left-leaning) investigative journalism with politically incorrect - and photographically retouched - tits and ass. (NSFW, obviously, unless you're somewhere in Southern Europe or Louisiana.)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Oct 29, 2003 - 49 comments

On the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helix spare a thought for Rosalind Franklin the chemist who produced the data that supported the structure.
Franklin, who died before the Nobel prize was awarded, never received credit for her contribution and was on the receiving end of Watson's sexism . But with a new book let's hope in this 50th anniversary year that Rosalind Franklin gets her contribution to this great discovery recognised.
posted by stunned on Feb 27, 2003 - 4 comments

Women in the Middle Ages [er, 1969] and now. Here are funny articles on money, work, sex and some other things, from the wonderful Pussycat Magazine. Women may have "come a long way, baby" - but have men? Do some of them still secretly approve of - or yearn for - the ideal woman of days gone by? Or, given the present climate of surrendered wives and secondary virginities, are there still some women who agree? [Even though I harbour a secret suspicion Pussycat Magazine is at least partially written by men...]
posted by Carlos Quevedo on Feb 27, 2003 - 12 comments

The Street Harassment Project sounds like a pretty good thing. Street harassment has been a crusade for my girlfriend for some time now, and it looks like she's not alone.
posted by The Michael The on Oct 3, 2002 - 154 comments

I like this list of ideas how men can take sexism on as their own struggle. [via full bleed]
posted by sudama on Sep 6, 2002 - 90 comments

The brilliant Cecily Kidd put together a few URLs discussing Title IX and the funding disparity between male and female sports. "[M]ale athletes receive $133 million more in athletic scholarships than female athletes." In one of the few sports where men and women compete (against each other) on the same field and with the same (or similar) equipment: motor sports, where men are no more rewarded for being muscular or women penalized for any female physical attributes; women have not only competed, but won against men. Shirley Muldowney has won four Top Fuel championships, Angelle Savoie has won two Pro Stock Bike championships, Jutta Kleinschmidt won the Paris-Dakar rally, Shawna Robinson won the poll with a track record in 1994 Busch race at Atlanta, Sarah Fisher is the most popular driver in IRL and the cute and lovable Danica Patrick recently won at the Toyota Pro/Celebrity race at Long Beach. So why can't these women get a steady sponsorship deal and a regular ride as a driver? Why do they always have to be 'something more'?
posted by tamim on Jul 2, 2002 - 10 comments

Good news for Lithuanian girls: ob-gyn tests no longer required in order to get a driver's license. Because, after all, an equivalent test isn't required for Lithuanian men.
posted by Badmichelle on May 21, 2002 - 4 comments

During Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's visit to Crawford, Texas, this week, his representatives asked the FAA for his flights to be worked only by male air traffic controllers, according to today's Dallas Morning News.
posted by rcade on Apr 27, 2002 - 13 comments

Mom kills, dad kills: Two takes on tragedy This article looks at the differences between the Andrea Yates case and that of Adair Garcia, a Los Angeles man accused of murdering his children. The article discusses gender differences, but I wonder if ethnicity plays a role as well. (Here's another link, since the URL field on the "post a link" page seems to be cutting it off).
posted by electro on Mar 3, 2002 - 22 comments

Implicit Attitude Tests are a way to find out how biased you are regarding race, age, and gender. The results can be spooky.
posted by muckster on Aug 28, 2001 - 16 comments

Dave Winer rewrites "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" - In which he muses in an undergraduate manner about why IT is so male-dominated, offering up such gems as "Men are the artists of our species, women are the infrastructure". As you'd expect, this hasn't gone down with some. The gas is on, let's flick the zippo...
posted by GrahamVM on Aug 26, 2001 - 63 comments

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) has been advocating for women's rights in Afghanistan since 1977. The telling story is that the women are not treated any differently now than they were during either the pre-Soviet occupation, or the Soviet and their puppet governments and now under the Taliban regime. The website has some disturbing videos of the public executions mentioned in this MetaFilter thread. (I have not watched the videos.)
posted by tamim on Apr 12, 2001 - 1 comment

Video Games 'Unhealthy' for Girls, Study Says Anyone else think this is a bit overblown?
posted by SilentSalamander on Dec 15, 2000 - 16 comments

Mr. Compassion. This man sickens me. "When did you graduate?" Bush asked her, as she recalls. She told him. That's when Bush told her that Yale "went downhill since they admitted women." Your president, America?
posted by owillis on Oct 31, 2000 - 12 comments

In last night's debate, Bush reassured the American people that he has absolutely no idea what affirmative action is. If you think it's got anything to do with quotas or with hiring less-than-qualified applicants then neither do you. Someone ought to send this info on pertinent Supreme Court decisions along to the Bush campaign for the governor's edification. Yesterday's New York Times carried an op-ed which examines a critical review of 200 scientific studies of affirmative action and concludes that the facts vindicate such policies. In fact, a Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded last week to an economist who developed methods of analysis which, among other things, demonstrated the effectiveness of affirmative action in integrating the textile industry. Little-known fact: the greatest beneficiary of affirmative action has been white women.
posted by sudama on Oct 18, 2000 - 42 comments

Weak leg? A female kicker is suing Duke University because she was cut from the team. She says it was because she's a woman, the coach says she wasn't as versatile as other kickers on his roster. With colleges passing illiterates through based on football skill, I'm skeptical that a coach would make a roster decision based on sex.
posted by owillis on Oct 3, 2000 - 13 comments

Looks like this guy is using the web to spread even more disinformation about sexism. No wonder he has to GIVE his book away for free. Among the gems of wisdom, "If women really made 59 cents on the dollar for the same work as men, what business could compete by hiring men at all..."? Sheesh!
posted by murray_kester on Sep 30, 2000 - 1 comment

Does this teach any males here anything? I'm sure that it would be very useful to someone. Though I'm not sure who exactly.
posted by davidgentle on Sep 26, 2000 - 80 comments

Women in sports judged on looks more than ability. That's all well and good, but her remedy of "genuine equality in sports at all levels" rings hollow with me.
posted by owillis on Sep 14, 2000 - 16 comments

Just DON'T do it. In findings that Nike admitted were "concerning", the Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam Australia report revealed that, not only were female workers only paid $2 per day, despite legal entitlement to menstrual leave each month, they were forced to pull down their pants in front of the factory doctor to claim that leave.
posted by murray_kester on Sep 4, 2000 - 5 comments

It's nice to know that sexism still reigns at computer conventions. These are from ECTS. (It will be a sad day when the booth-babe becomes extinct. In the mean time, these women can have my soul just by asking for it.)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Sep 4, 2000 - 16 comments