Go to http://xkcd.com/896/ for the full comic. It’s good. It’s not exactly news that women have often been denied credit for their contributions to major scientific discoveries or inventions. Rosalind Franklin, one of the discoverers of DNA, is justifiably the most famous, and her case still infuriates. Gender bias in the classroom still raises barriers for women…
I’ve taken off the Hugo nominee pin that I’ve worn proudly on my lapel since my Doctor Who episode, The Doctor’s Wife, won the Hugo in September 2012, and, for now, I’ve put it away. It isn’t Neil Gaiman’s fault that people worship him. Heck, before deconstructing his reaction post, which I find highly manipulative, let…
I’m working on an essay about the corporate language in higher ed as a followup to the big response I got to this post on EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE in a job advertisement for a Renaissance English professor. One paragraph of my draft currently reads: Take the syllabus. Many faculty (in my experience) and some teaching…
I decided to weigh in on the Jonathan Ross/Hugos story because of what I saw as gendered discourse in the backlash to the backlash, and because Seanan McGuire is someone I know (and I make music with her girlfriend) and deeply respect for her non-fiction writing on feminism, sexual orientation, and representation in fandom and fiction. Her…
Texas A&M University – Kingsville is hiring an early modern English Professor. A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, alerted me to this. This is what the end of the world (of Higher Education) as we know it looks like. Here’s a screenshot. According to this, the most important aspect of the professor’s job,…
Lately, thanks to a long and thoughtful thread on Steve Brust’s blog (which you should read), discussions about sexual harassment in fandom, the fake geek girl issues, and so forth – I’ve been thinking a lot about online bullying, gender, power, and the speculative fiction community. Especially in the SFWA (Science-Fiction Writers of America), issues pertaining to…
Last year, as I recounted in this Chronicle of Higher Education essay, I submitted a book manuscript to a publisher, turned in my tenure file, and started writing for public media. It happened by accident, driven by the unlikely medieval relevance of the surprise papal resignation and enabled by my friendship with Bruce Schneier. CNN…
For the 100th day of school at my daughter’s pre-school, students were supposed to come as their favorite superhero or princess. My daughter is the batgirl on the left. My daughter’s teacher is the superwoman on the right. My whole theory on parenting against the grain is to try and create space for my children,…
My book is done in terms of the writing, but there are still many tasks to do until I ship it to the publisher (and then later there will be edits and proofs and so forth). Now I am dealing with the mountain obligations I let slide as I did my writing, but I hope…
In September I wrote about a mentally-ill man who was shot at by police for not listening. He ran into traffic in Times Square so they shot at him. Well, today he was charged as responsible for the people that the police shot. “The defendant is the one that created the situation that injured innocent…