Last week I linked to the post where James Chartrand of Men With Pens came out as a woman and I commented (without knowing the situation properly) and said that what she did was great. Thankfully Poppy linked to a superb post that explains while people are upset and critical about what she did. James didn’t just change the name, she took on a whole personality including misogynistic traits!
Tash also wrote a post on females using male pseudonyms and steps that have been taken in some places to levvel the playing field. Make sex a non factor in decision making.
So it turns out that James Chartrand from Men with Pens is actually a woman! Wow. Reading why she pretended to be a man online for so long was so interesting and proves that sexism is alive and well in the world. Many now say James can’t be trusted and has negatively affected gender bias by not pushing through and making it as a woman, I say she did what she had to do and is making everyone really think about why this revelation affects them at all.
One of the tasks in my 101 in 1001 list is to complete no less than 15 photography projects. I follow sh1ft.org to get ideas and instructions and one of my favourite tasks is A Day In The Life. The next one planned is for New Years, either the 31st or 1st or both and the idea is that you take one photo each hour to show what the day was like. Who’s in?
Irony creeps! You start saying totes or lol out loud to take the piss and not so long after you just say it because you’re used to it. It’s no longer ironic, it just is. Same deal with clothes, one day your hideous knitted sweater is ironic the next it is comfy and warm.
Could you live in a van, scared of being caught, eating spaghetti cooked over a camping stove in order to save money and avoid loans? I’d much prefer to forgo education at an expensive university altogether.
The Atheist Bus is coming to New Zealand. The initial target of $10000 for advertising was reached within 48 hours and a new target of $20000 was made. 5 days in they are just over $1000 from the $20000 target. Go kiwis!
Wow. (nsfw) How’s that for trying to fit into the image a media dominated sets forth for women?
Amaze! I may have to make myself one. (right after I’ve altered those clothes I bought 6 months ago, cleaned up my office, and packed for our 3 week holiday).
Are you a hipster? Check yourself and play hipster bingo on The Thinking Man’s Take On: Hipsterism.
UCB Noteworthy – “Poker Face”
A Capella performance of Poker Face. The singing is great – the choreography is the main attraction though. Hilar.
War Zone
“Filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West believes that the streets are a War Zone for women. Armed with only a video-camera, she both demonstrates this experience and, by turning and confronting her abusers, reclaims space that was stolen from her.”
Lawyers often get it wrong when trying to protect their client’s trademarks, issuing cease and desist letters for mere mentions of a brand name and generally not understanding the laws they’re trying to protect. Copyright gets invoked incorrectly in the same manner. So how do you protect your ideas these days? Get known, and be the best, the go to gal!
Men spend more money than women. It’s true! They buy TVs and playstations and the first thing they spot in the store so they can leave, while women research and find sales and will (mostly) happily walk the shopping strip twice in a day just to make sure they’re getting the best bargain. (I don’t agree with the claim that women spend their money on making men happy though, many do but I certainly don’t!)
Best of Twilight
Piece of Me fan video. Makes me feel sad for Britney
The list of common misconceptions is a fantastic read. Putting to rest many of the uh, misconceptions, we’ve grown up with.
Bats are not blind. While most bat species do use echolocation to augment their vision, all bats have eyes and are capable of sight.
Currently rewatching the Harry Potter movies and at this very moment I’m watching The Goblet of Fire with Cedric Diggory aka Robert Pattinson aka Edward Cullen. How appropriate that this popped up on my reader right now – Harry Potter vs Twilight.
I love how with celebrity caricatures even though every feature is so exaggerated it’s still really easy to tell who it is.
Famous men crying. They all look so vulnerable! My favourite is Daniel Craig.
Buyers generally don’t care that your experience and time are worth paying for. Most only care who can do the job cheapest. That doesn’t mean the buyer is stupid, it doesn’t mean they’re a terrible person. And it’s not your place to accuse them of it.
OMFG I die. My black side zip cotton jacket is an poor substitute for this beauty.
Chickie Little has written an amazing guide on how to yum char, if you’ve always been too scared to try it because you don’t know the etiquette then you’re in luck!
Wee bit of a back story. About 6 months ago our parliament passed a bill that removed the “reasonable force” defence when disciplining children, meaning that no more horrible mothers will escape punishment when they whip their children.
Since then there has been a citizens initiated referendum asking whether people should be allowed to hit their kids (it was actually terribly worded and not at all in plain english). It wasted a whole lot of money even though it’s non-binding. A whole bunch of crazies have decided that citizen initiated referenda should be binding and there was a protest in Auckland to demonstrate their feelings.
A customers value is much more than the amount of their current purchase. So why don’t companies get this? Especially the big ones, sure my $30 a month might seem small now but what about when I have my empire and that turns into thousand per month…that you’re not going to get?
Ms Von has all the tricks. I consistently fail at using lists for productivity, and I work from home so I can’t use the first ten minutes trick, but the 20 minute timer. That sounds like gold.
The National Guard will stand outside the courthouses and force you to grow the hell up, and you will be remembered in history like those sad ugly white people yelling at the black kids coming to class.
Who you are does not have to = what you do. Most people these days realise that you may just be using your unglamorous job to pay for your hobbies, or until something better comes along, or because the economy is shit and everyone in your company was made redundant. It’s not the end of the world.
I read someone’s comment the other day that said you are not just your age, you are also all the ages that came before it. At 24 I also have the experiences of a one, two, ten, 15 and 21 year old. Which means the tactics used to sell products to a five year old will probably still work on me, just dressed up a bit. Make me want something bad enough and I will get it.
Why is it considered the height of civilization to work 8 to 10 hours a day in a mind numbing “job”, to commute 1-3 hours per day, to eat processed and manufactured food, to live in wood and steel cans isolated from mother nature and the very land base we are destroying, all to finally collapse at the end of the day in front of a brightly colored display of moving pictures and sound that feeds various violent or sexual fantasies directly into our brains, only to repeat the next day?
Michelle has turned her ongoing negative experience with a counterfeit Melissa shoe seller into a public service announcement. Some great advice if you’re looking into buying Melissa shoes, or if you’re having trouble dealing with a seller on eBay.
If you’ve spent any time at all on highly visited or commented on blogs you might have heard terms like ‘Poe’s Law’ and ‘Rule 34′ bandied about. But what does that mean, and are there any other internet rules you should know about?
Doe Deere takes us behind the scenes of a cosmetic line. Specifically the lipstick line of her Lime Crime brand. I don’t wear much makeup but I’m grateful that there are determined ladies like Deere forcing the labs and marketers to stop treating consumers like they don’t have a mind of there own. Often the only reason we buy their lipstick is because we can’t find anything we really like, not because we absolutely love it.
Jimmy Jangles made an A-Z list of his favourite NZ blogs and I’m on it. :D I love the tag line he gave me “Eats candy and makes lots of plastic Unicorns.”
As you may well know I am a big fan of microwave cooking. Jo kindly put up her recipe for microwave brownies at my request. I haven’t tried them yet as my candy stash should last me another few days. But one day soon…
Cherry picking – The act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.
A guest post on Shapely Prose addresses a very real issue that both women and men need to talk about. A woman cannot afford to let her guard down around men she doen’t know, ever, and especially in secluded or confined areas. Every guy she meets is Schrödinger’s Rapist. This is a post that every male should read – a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced.
Includes great pointers on how to read the mostly obvious signals women send.
A reversal of the roles usually assigned in rape scenarios really makes you think. Instead of thinking of rape as something that will happen to one in six women, how about realising rape is something that likely one in 60 men will commit. That means there are probably a few rapists in your area and maybe even in your circle of friends. (I don’t mean to scare monger, but it’s a very real and scary issue)
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About is a very strange site (and an ugly one too). The writing is quite entertaining but it’s about a German woman that sounds insane and a British man that sounds like an asshole and I can’t figure out why they’re together if they hate each other so much. Utterly fascinating.
