sexism

Feminist burnout: the toll of continually responding to the news cycle

Late last year, writer Tanya Ashworth contacted me for my answers to some questions she had about the effects of immersing oneself in the background media consumption required to write regularly about feminist issues: the drip-drip-drip of piece after piece of anti-women incident coverage and condescending/fatuous/abusively sexist op-eds. Yesterday she finally managed to get that article published, and my answers are in fine company – Clementine Ford, Van Badham, Lou Heinrich and Viv Smythe: optimism in the face of online abuse.

How To Deny Men’s Sexism

Inspired by a conversation elsewhere… Image description: A rectangle roughly the shape of a book cover, with a sepia background. It is covered with red and black text in the style of the text of the cover of Joanna Russ’s… Read More ›

Fun with statistics and ‘splaining

When vos Savant politely responded to a reader’s inquiry on the Monty Hall Problem, a then-relatively-unknown probability puzzle, she never could’ve imagined what would unfold: though her answer was correct, she received over 10,000 letters, many from noted scholars and Ph.Ds, informing her that she was a hare-brained idiot.

And the gold goes to….

TW: Discussions of rape culture and child sexual abuse The 21st annual Ernie awards were held at NSW Parliament House last night, and for the first time I was there for the … festivities? It’s a fun night, but also… Read More ›

Today in smackdowns: Matt Yglesias rolls his eyes at Pax Dickinson’s ‘pernicious nonsense’

Pax Dickinson, whose employment as CTO at Business Insider was abruptly terminated when the board’s attention was drawn to some of his bigoted jackass tweets and the potential liability risk they could present to the company, had an interview in nymag entitled Pax Dickinson on His Regrets, the Media ‘Witch Hunt,’ and What Women Need to Understand About Men (so not doubling down in any way at all) where Pax shares his fear that “turning [tech] into a politically correct wasteland” will take away “the freewheeling nature of [tech that] leads to innovation [which is] really important to this country and to the world”.

Matt Yglesias calls bullshit…

Abbott Watch: they’re coming thick and fast

In the interests of sound record-keeping, here is a collation of some of the awful, awful things Tony Abbott has been saying since the federal election date was set. Get ready to be set reeling by the way he is capable of being offensive in so many directions at once, but also remind yourself that this is just in the past week.