Uncanny Magazine: Masculinity Is an Anxiety Disorder: Breaking Down the Nerd Box
David J. Schwartz’s longish read on how we understand masculinity and the damage that does to men and women is well worth saving for the weekend
When a man and a woman interact in the same spheres, the results can be much more confused and unpleasant. The woman has called into question the masculinity of the man’s interests simply by showing an interest in it. The gender binary is composed largely of arbitrary oppositions and exclusions; the extreme logical extension of this is that men and women should never share interests. Aside from being a terrible guideline for partnerships, this makes any approach into a perceived male space by a woman yet another threat to the masculinity of the man or men in question. Some men try to follow the script of the “Have you/Do you” dominance ritual with such women, but their added anxiety manifests as aggression and condescension, and their desire to demonstrate authority can clash with the woman’s perception that fandom is about shared enthusiasm.
Wired: Siri and Cortana Sound Like Ladies Because of Sexism
Interesting piece on why our technology talks to us in female voices.
The late Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass, who co-authored the field’s seminal book, Wired for Speech, wrote that people tend to perceive female voices as helping us solve our problems by ourselves, while they view male voices as authority figures who tell us the answers to our problems. We want our technology to help us, but we want to be the bosses of it, so we are more likely to opt for a female interface.
SMH: Women in tech: government alone can’t end structural discrimination
Clare Connelly attended a tech panel in Sydney last week and walked away both frustrated and hopeful
I have seen men with less experience and time-in get promoted while other women’s career trajectories plateaued. I have also worked with women who — presumably, in order to survive — turned on each other and become their own worst enemies.
On the internet, it’s worse. I’ve had my face compared to a collapsed lung and a clown’s anus. And those are just the ones humorous enough to print.
But other times my job is fun and surprising, and fascinating.
The Guardian: Australia ignored three requests from Nauru medical staff to move Abyan
Abyan’s story gets more complicated and more terrible all the time. But the most obvios issue coming out of what we know about her is that we don’t know enough about the terrible things happening on Nauru under on government’s watch.
Guardian Australia can reveal that International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) staff made the first request for her urgent transfer on 16 September in a “request for medical movement” form, with follow-ups on 29 September and 6 October.
Transfers from Nauru to Australia require the approval of the immigration department, but it failed to act on the three requests. Guardian Australia understands that Abyan (not her real name) became increasingly unwell and was found unconscious on 8 October. She was then admitted to hospital in Nauru and was found not fit to fly until 11 October.