Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to [...]
Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.
The Black Girl Nerds Podcast focuses on interracial relationships. “The highest rated BGN podcast yet is about guess what? Interracial Relationships. We actually received more calls from men on this topic then women which speaks volumes to men’s thoughts on the hot button issue.”
David Haglund writes about how “Louis C.K. has been making feminism funny for years.” (The bit mentioned).
The Gutter‘s own Carol Borden wrote a review of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines for the 2012 ActionFest Blog: “I’ve seen reviews suggesting this movie is a great one to show your daughter or niece, and it is. But it’s not just about letting little girls know that they can be heroes, [...]
“There’s a reason J.K. Rowling’s publishers demanded that she use initials instead of “Joanne”: it’s the same reason Mary Anne Evans used the pen name George Eliot; the same reason Robert Southey, then England’s poet laureate, wrote to Charlotte Brontë: ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be.’” [...]
Games Industry International is publishing transcripts of this year’s rants at the Game Developers Conference. The first rant is from Tiniest Shark founder, Mitu Khandaker. “I’m 100 per cent able and willing to identify with white male characters – I don’t need characters to look like me to identify with them. That would be really [...]
The Feminism of Dr. Who Tumblr rounds up the news: “First, it suddenly seemed to strike the media this week that Doctor Who is severely lacking in female writers….Second, the sequel for ‘The Bells of Saint John’ premiered this week.” Click through for a discussion of female writers in science fiction in general and a [...]
“As nice as it must be to be that [18-25 year old male] demographic—when you’ve got everyone banging on your door, trying to court you, it must be very pleasant—what’s it like for someone who isn’t in that demographic? We know they play our games. We can see that they do. OK, there’s support for [...]
The first episode of Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women in Video Games is live. Watch “Damsels in Distress” here.
“With such a rich tapestry on and off the Oz page, it’s depressing that 2013 finds our return to Oz burdened with a reluctant hero (the dominant kind in the 21st century), and not one of Baum’s plucky young heroines. In a bitter reversal of Baum’s stories, ‘Great and Powerful’ casts the women as the [...]

When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.” –The Testament of Dr. Mabuse “[W]hatever factors come into play in the cases that we have studied, the conclusion is inescapable [...]
In a new study, written up at The Mary Sue, researchers look at gender and harassment in multiplayer online games, in this case, Halo 3. “[T]he use of gendered insults and the tripled rate of negative comments, regardless of skill level or win percentage, indicates that something more than just a proclivity for trash-talk is [...]
At Wired, Laura Hudson writes about the women of Star Wars and the dearth of female characters in film and television in general. she notes, “Criticisms about representations of gender (or race and other diversity) are often countered in fandom by analyses attempting to explain why the inequality happens according to the internal logic of [...]
Emma Vossen examines Twilight hate and anti-fans, writing: “People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie.”

Instead of raving about Satyajit Ray’s well-known-outside-of-India projects like the Apu Trilogy (Pather Pancahli/Song of the Little Road, Aprajito/The Unvanquished, and Apur Sansar/The World of Apu) or Jalsaghar/The Music Room (available through Criterion), I want to rave about his fantastic fantastical 1968 children’s film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne/The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha.
At Gutters and Panels, John Gholson shares his 3 biggest disappointments in comics this year.
““Do you play PC games?” he asked, frowning. One of the publications on my media badge was listed as PC PowerPlay. It shouldn’t have been necessary for him to ask such a question, but I answered. “Yes.” “Well, OK.” I sensed a disbelief in the guy’s voice. “But do you play shooters?” At Kotaku Australia, [...]
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes an interesting post about Philip Marlowe, masculinity, biology and misogyny at The Atlantic: “I’ve consumed art like this all my life–men claiming invulnerability, against all I know of maleness and human attraction. Misogyny is not merely a moral problem, but a problem of art. It takes half the world and caricatures it. [...]
Maria at The Hathor Legacy looks at the Paranormal Activity franchise from the standpoint of abuse, neglect and gaslighting. “It’s also a reminder that one of the franchise’s major themes is that when women and children are victims of abuse, they are not only not likely to be believed, they are also often put into [...]
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