At the risk of totally pissing off my boyfriend, I love this picture.
Via Jezebel
About Marci
I am a New York-based user experience designer. Here you'll find my musings on everything digital (and some things that aren't).
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And the villian still pursues her…
The Long-Suffering Ladies of Prime-Time TV
The long-suffering ladies of prime-time TV
Interesting article about the fun prime-time TV has in victimizing women.
Via Jezebel.com.
An upcoming web conference has only 1 woman speaker out of 48 total
Cafe Cougar
A new “schoolboy cafe” in Tokyo has waiters who look and act like teenage boarding school students as they flirt with the customers, mostly “office ladies in their twenties and thirties,” reports Reuters.
Hot.
“The worst kind of cretin: a cretin who is afraid of vaginas.”
The worst kind of cretin: a cretin who is afraid of vaginas.
Radar Online : Radar Rounds Up the Decade’s Most Misogynistic Movies
Girls and games
Just read a good article on recent efforts by gaming companies to appeal to women, and how they often completely miss the mark. I’ve been into video games ever since the first Nintendo came out (I was obsessed with getting it after passing the first level of Mario at a friend’s house on her brother’s game system. I saved up my allowance for a year — bear in mind that my allowance was $1 a week — and when I had $50 saved, my parents took pity on me and sprung for the rest), and I’ve never once thought that the available section of video games was somehow not available to me because of my gender. I think that the one thing that has opened up video games to women (traditionally non-gamer women, that is) over the past few years has been Nintendo’s development of alternative interfaces (Wii, DS) as well as an emphasis on more open-ended gameplay (Nintendogs, Brain Age, Wii Sports). But it doesn’t seem like these improvements are enjoyed exclusively by women — boys like them too.
Moral of the story: by focusing on improvements to the overall user experience, Nintendo has made games more accessible to everyone who isn’t a gamer, including many women. Contrast this approach with that take by Ubisoft, as described in the above article, and you’ll see what I mean.
And if you ever catch me playing a game about raising a baby? Shoot me.
Via Jezebel
Women in technology
Interesting post over at zeldman.com regarding the underrepresentation of women in technology.
Much more interesting than the article itself is the lively comment thread below it. I think few women with experience at more than three positions would disagree that misogyny still exists in the workplace. I’m not prepared to say that it’s more so in IT than in any other industry, as I don’t have experience working in other fields. However, judging by the looks I get when I offer up unsolicited code suggestions or mention my terabyte server in front of people who don’t know me, I’d say that it’s a little unusual to be a “nerdy” female.
With this experience — which I don’t believe is uncommon — I find it a bit bewildering to read all the men who post things like “there’s two women on my team, so there’s no sexism in the workplace.” I understand that it can be frustrating to read about bias towards a demographic that you’re not a part of, particularly when you don’t notice any prejudice around you. But I find it to be an incredibly naive argument to say “since I don’t see a problem, there must not be a problem”. We all know that attitudes about gender are something that have evolved drastically over the last 100 years. Is it really so surprising that some people who are part of older generations might retain some prejudice? That some young people might have been raised by prejudiced parents?
The number of generations that have passed since women gained the right to vote in the United States can be counted on one hand. Of course people aren’t used to girls who kick ass at Nintendo.