Monthly Archives: November 2007

An argument for feminism

I just had an attack of the 500-line comment, so I decided to turn it into a blog post instead. On her blog, Angry Black Woman has a post up called On Feminism, part 1 where she quotes from Why … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, Multiculturalism, Privilege, The Evil -ism's | 8 Comments

For male gamers and readers, something embarrassing

The backstory: Assassin’s Creed is one of the most anticipated games of the year. When Yahoo! is talking about your game on the front-page, you know the buzz is pretty significant. The producer for this game is Jade Raymond who, like the lead-producer of every other game created in the modern age, gives a good portion of the interviews with the press. That is, if you’re a producer of a game and you’re noticeably articulate, you’re the one talking about it, you don’t tell the advertising executive or the intern to do that. As the game is being released, a comic/drawing surfaces, most infamously on the Something Awful forums depicting Jade performing fellatio on male fanboys (not to be confused with the photoshopped nude photos of Jade that are floating around). This comic is seen and shared by members of the SA forums at which point Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka of SA receives a cease and desist/threat of lawsuit letter from the legal representation of Ubisoft telling them to shut it all down and to let them know everything about where they get the image, who drew it, etc. At this point, the story becomes popular outside of SA and other blogs start picking it up, forming their own opinions (yes, just like me and just like this one). The story appears on digg and with it a rash of the most sexist comments (and some countering the sexist comments) appear. Continue reading

Posted in Discrimination, Popular Culture, The Internet is Serious Business, Video Games | 20 Comments

Continuing the cultural appropriation discussion

So, a bunch of thoughts have been percolating in my mind since the last discussion on cultural appropriation. Specifically pertaining to two discussions about costumes. The first comes from one brown woman of woman of (an)other color blog: Halloween: Day … Continue reading

Posted in Multiculturalism, Popular Culture, The Evil -ism's | 18 Comments

A must read for fans of the movie Labyrinth

bellatrys has written up an analysis of Labyrinth on her LJ: “I ask for so little–”. It is a rather long piece that weaves in many different elements — everything from an examination of the tropes and themes of the … Continue reading

Posted in Gender issues, Popular Culture | Leave a comment

Lakota Sioux women's shelter needs help

All text from the Pretty Bird Woman House blog.

In May of this year, the progressive netroots pulled together to save a tiny women’s shelter on a Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. Thanks to over 680 strangers who donated a combined $27,000, Pretty Bird Woman House was able to keep its doors open for the duration and provide emergency shelter for 188 women and 132 children.

But just last month thieves broke into Pretty Bird Woman House – literally smashing holes through the walls. They stole the computers, teh television, clothing, toiletries – all donated. Then arsonists set fire to the building.

Pretty Bird Woman House remains open, without a house, in an unheated, donated office. The tribal council has done all it can afford to do. Without a house, this sanctuary will die.

Pretty Bird Woman House needs another netroots miracle to survive. There is so much in the world we are powerless over. For Pretty Bird Woman House you can make a difference, make the world a better place, right here, right now, today.

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Posted in Abuse, rape, and domestic violence, Racism, The Internet is Serious Business | 3 Comments

Exposing the hypocrisy of Unilever's targeted marketing

Dove and Axe — which send diametrically opposed messages about women to their target audiences — are both made by Unilever. This video juxtaposes the two campaigns in order to raise awareness of the connection between the two. Via The … Continue reading

Posted in Advertising, Companies Behaving Badly, Gender Cultism, Gender issues, Popular Culture | 7 Comments

WordPress hates me

So, as I’m sure you all have noticed the sidebar has gotten even uglier and harder to read than when I updated to WP 2.2. This is because whatever changes were made to the database, the hack that I was … Continue reading

Posted in Shrub.com Related | 4 Comments