femilicious.com

I turned in my application to the MA history program with an exciting proposal to collect oral histories from the last women to give birth on Pelee Island,Ontario, back in the 1950s. By then most women were relocating to either mainland Ontario (Leamington or Windsor) or to Ohio to give birth. I’m excited because there’s a personal connection - my grandmother was one of the last women to give birth at home on the island (to my father). Even though she died over 10 years ago from breast cancer, I feel connected to her through this project. It also means I’ll get to go to Pelee to talk to people and talking to the older generation of islanders is always a hoot. (photo credit Jonath, flickr.com. Click the image to go to the photo’s flickr page.)

I’m working on a directed study this semester, cross-listed between the Women’s Studies and History departments about how the emerging technologies of blogs and user-generated media have changed the form and content of communications between mothers and information about mothering. I’m not a mommyblogger but I’ve followed the flurry with interest since BlogHer 2005 where it was identified as a radical act by Finslippy. I’ve watched La Leche League change from a personal mother-to-mother organization for breastfeeding help to an organization with a strong emphasis on online helping and information sharing - including providing mothers and health care professionals with links to Dr. Jack Newman’s video clips for help with latch and positioning and the online Community Network for leaders, and forums for mothers. It’s still mother-to-mother, but it’s changed. Online communities help with the sense of isolation mothers can feel after having a baby, but the technology changes the style and who has access to helping. The project is still too large and it’s hard to cut out pieces of the research in order to make the project more manageable, but it’s getting there.

I’ve begun writing a summer project grant that will (hopefully) allow me to make podcasts of historical Canadian texts in the public domain. I’m excited about it and hope to work with Toronto’s Mitchell Girio for production quality and also hoping for some original music from Mitch and some local Windsor artists. I’ve had some skeptical response to the idea from traditional historians who wonder if people would actually be interested in downloading and listening to Canadian history on an mp3 player — but I see it as a great way to encourage interest in our past — and to give attention to works that maybe haven’t been included in the traditional canon of what is Canadian History. I think it’s incredibly exciting and of course, you never know until you try. I know I would do it, and I know my kids would be into it too. That’s enough for now, for me.

Actiongirls is getting busy too. We’ve planned a pile of Stitch n Bitch sessions with more to come. This project is slowly attracting community interest. There was a reporter from the Windsor Star at our meeting yesterday who asked plenty of baited/leading questions. No doubt there will be an article filled with misquotes in the paper on Monday. /sigh/

So… I’ve discovered that there are places where people with ideas like mine gather and brainstorm and plan and develop and change the world. One of the conferences I’m trying to get to is later this month: Norther Voice 2007. They’re offering a travel subsidy (deadline today, Feb 2 at 12 PST). I never considered that I might be able to go to this since travel across Canada is crazy expensive but when I found out about the funding assistance I decided I should try. With the bursary I could get there and learn and contribute my experience as a women’s-studies-history-IT-student-mom-activist-artist-geek. Without it, there will be nothing but homework and dishes and laundry for me until I save more pennies. Maybe it will help me sort out where I’m headed, trying to combine computer science, history, feminism, activism, and art. Either way I’d get to see the Rockies.

If I lived in Vancouver, was done school, and looking for work, this job opening at Social Signal would be the one for me. In the meantime, maybe this is the one for you? Here are some excerpts from the posting. For the entire job description and more about Social Signal, click through to Alexandra Samuel’s post.

Wanted: Web services consultant

Who you are: You enjoy working with technology, and want your work to have social value. You like knowing that the work you’ve done each day has made a real difference – to your colleagues, your clients, and the world. If you’ve got a free evening you’re torn between spending it online checking out a new site you’ve heard about, or heading out to meet your friends at a community gathering or demonstration.

Specific responsibilities include:

• configuring and troubleshooting web sites for socially-oriented online communities (you don’t need to be a programmer or web designer, but you do need to enjoy learning new software programs or web tools)
• advising on site strategy and design as part of a development team
• researching, writing and/or copy editing blog posts and online community contentwriting how-to guides to help community members use advanced online tools with ease and confidence
• identifying and exploring new web sites, tools and strategies

Skills:

• tech skills (Mac/Windows/Linux, software programs you know, web tools you use)
• solid writing and communication skills
• personal organization and time management

Experience:

• technology work (paid or volunteer) for community organizations, socially-oriented businesses, or government agencies
• projects where you have developed or managed a web site or blog
• professional or personal projects that have required you to learn a new software tool or technical skill
• situations where you’ve resolved a technology challenge
• situations where you’ve been the primary tech support for colleagues or friends
• writing for work or fun, on a regular basis, possibly on a blog
• volunteer work for community organizations or causes
• situations where you’ve worked independently with minimal supervision
• situations where you’ve gone the extra mile to get the job done

Interests:

• commmunity groups, projects or issues you’re involved in
• web sites you like or web tools you’re excited about

Bonus points for:

• having your own blog
• demonstrated knowledge of Drupal, WordPress, PHP, HTML or CSS
• knowledge of one or more scripting or programming languages
• a personal take on the relative virtues of open source and proprietary software

We’re looking for a progressive, tech-friendly person whose passion for social change is matched only by a fascination with technology. This sixth member of our team will have a hands-on role in developing and implementing online community projects for our diverse range of clients. We don’t need a programmer, but we do need someone who enjoys working with computers and is a quick learner. We can help you learn the tech skills you need for the job; you need to come equipped with your own communications savvy, political smarts, and love of new tech challenges.

Compensation will be commensurate with skills and experience. Please note that this is an entry-level position.

Theory and practice, geekdom and activism… what an awesome way to contribute to the world.

It’s been almost a year and a half since femilicious was born and I felt that it was time for a new look. This new theme is based on Freedom Blue by Frank Helmschrott. I chose this theme after searching off and on for a few weeks for something that wouldn’t need too much tweaking to get a look and feel I like, and in one afternoon I have something I think I can live with for awhile.

Besides changing some colours, one of the changes I made to get this theme up was to change the German text to English. I doubt it would slow down an avid blog reader but I’m not sure how many people understand the German for “submit a comment” and “email required”. I didn’t know I did until I was doing it. There are still a few words here and there that need translation to English and I’ll get to these soon. It’s just a matter of hunting down which files hold the text and editing them.

There was also an error in the Archives.php file - I had to change the id to match the other pages so that the content would wrap inside the left-hand div. The id is misnamed so if you’re trying to get this theme working on your own site change

<div id="content">

to

<div id="contentwrap">

in the fourth line of code. Once this is changed the body will sit in the left div and the sidebar will return to the right.

One of the things I like about this theme is that the divs set the main content first and the sidebar information follows. This is really important for browsing without a stylesheet. It’s not just for Naked Day anymore; people browsing from mobile devices or with a speech reader don’t want to scroll through/listen to your entire blogroll, archives, and categories before they get to your new post. If you want to see how your divs are laid out, one easy way is install the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox, then on the CSS tab select Disable Styles then choose All Styles. You can get a pretty good idea here of what your site will look like to someone with a text only browser. If things are not good you can fix it by rearranging your divs so the most important content comes first and controlling presentation with floats.

I decided to try out a random html flickr badge for some colour and life. It’s also for my own benefit as a happiness generator. It makes me happy to see pictures that I took on vacation or somewhere else fun. There were some problems finding a placement for the badge that didn’t throw the entire site presentation out of whack. I had originally thought to place it in the header but had a much easier time setting it at the top of the main style template after the call for the get_header function. Opera and MSInternet Explorer didn’t like the having CSS information in the php file so I had to cut it out and move it into the stylesheet. Now that I’ve done that it’s looking good in Opera but MSIE still needs a bit of tweaking. MSIE is a nightmare for incompatibilities. For that reason, if you’re not already using it, you might want to get firefox - it will make your life so much better, and not just if you’re developing for the web. For added browsing pleasure, install AdBlock Plus and you can take advertising right out of your life.

I still want to bring back the categories list and the blogroll but those need a bit more work so they’ll have to wait for another day. If you find a glaring mess in any browser please leave a comment.

Update: Right above the comment text box are some buttons whose labels were in German until an few minutes ago. The values for the buttons were in a separate javascript file, sitting in wp-content / themes / this theme and lo-and-behold there it was. I knew it was javascript and that it was somewhere but it took me awhile to find it. I’ve changed those to English now as well. If you mouseover you can read the German. Enjoy.

In another life I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. This was back in grade 11 physics, which I loved. My teacher recognized that and talked to me about engineering, and I was drawn in to aerospace. I wanted to make rockets. I was sure that this is what I would do until I discovered art and teenage angst the next year and it was downhill more or less from there. Over the next year and a half I took every visual art and music class my school offered. I started working for a semi-pro theatre company and after graduation I ended up in a BFA dance program in Toronto for a few months. I dropped out of that after midterms first semester, got married, was a starving artist for a few years, had some babies, got divorced, and am now almost done a Women’s Studies degree.

I hate how much I’ve forgotten. I work peripherally now in all these tech capacities without much grasp of the foundations. There is so much backbone work that I can’t do. I took computer science in high school and programmed in BASIC (wooooahhh, time warp) and was good at it - enjoyed it even, but I’m no coder now - not a hope.

Next semester I take a basic C programming course to finish an IT minor - and I both dread it and am nervously anticipating it. The anxiety comes from realizing it’s been over 15 years since I’ve done any type of programming/math - and I’m scared. I know I don’t remember how to think that way and I worry how hard I’ll have to work to catch up. My application to grad school (still undecided there) is also dependent on my last semester marks. If I blow my GPA now, there’s no making it up.

But on the other hand, I remember the thrill of an elegant proof and the excitement of geometry - I really loved this stuff. How can a brain forget how to do this? How do we just let a part of our brain fall dormant? Is it dead? Can it come back? How far could I go?

I don’t know that I can look at this the way I did in highschool. Now my time is finite. If I don’t finish something in an hour there often isn’t another hour later when I can come back to it. I don’t have the luxury of closing my bedroom door and working on problems all night - what if I can’t do it anymore? What if I lost my chance?

I wonder about doing a CS degree now, after my women’s studies is done. I don’t have the prereqs. Once I discovered ‘art’ I had to forego calculus. To get into the program I’d have to catch up the highschool credits I missed - even that makes me wonder. It would be wild to spin my brain in those circles again, but at what cost?

I added the feed from Heroine Content to my collection recently. This is from the site’s first post and welcome:

Heroine Content is a feminist and anti-racist blog about women kicking ass. More specifically, we write about women kicking ass in action films, with a side order of television and video game commentary as things catch our eye.

I’m not a frequent watcher of action films or tv (though I do play video games). I’m reading this site in preparation for a new course I’m taking this fall called “Tough Chicks” which is supposed to be about women, media representations, anger, power, etc - but I’m not really sure I have the background for it. I blunder through anything remotely referencing pop culture, haven’t seen much television or many films since the 80s. Generally I gravitate towards books about history - not shows about super heroes or assassins. I think I’m going to be at a supreme disadvantage. Last semester I ended up renting a season’s worth of Buffy the Vampire Slayer so I could participate in the Third Wave Feminisms class discussion about whether or not BVS is a feminist character/show. Many people found it shocking that I had made it this far without ever having seen Buffy or Xena (or anything much since Green Acres- definitely not a feminist show).

I appreciate that Heroine Content’s rating system include a category for pieces that are “setting us back 20 years”. ooooh yeah. I’m going to find this site very very helpful when I’m trying to sort through which (if any) films are worth watching and which ones I can just skip right over. Thank you so very much.

I don’t know if I agree with the quote from Amira Sa’id on today’s entry that the Princess Leia costume from Return of the Jedi could be empowering to women. I did some surfing around looking for more info about the costume and found (but have since lost) a convention that encouraged female attendees to wear the “slave costume” to increase their chances of photo opps. The conference was hoping to snag some photos to put on their website, not likely for a gallery of empowered women - methinks they wanted a flesh gallery of unpaid models. Note that the request wasn’t to wear a “Princess Leia Bikini of Power” - I doubt the person who posted this was thinking there main audience would be a whole lot of empowered female attendees. I think that what they were hoping for was a whole lotta flesh. Something like E3’s booth babes, only the scantilly clad women are paying to be there. How is this empowering????

I don’t know a whole lot about Star Wars but I’m pretty sure that Princess Leia was the main female character and that there weren’t a whole lot of other female characters in the series. It’s not surprising then that Amira Sa’id was thrilled by her! Given the choice of robots, blobs, monsters, and Darth Vader, I’m sure that it was a joy to identify with Leia! That alone doesn’t make her an empowering or empowered female character, but I’m not eager to sit through the hours and hours and hours of Star Wars movies that have been made since 1977 to find out (unless I have to for this course.)
This comment at the end of the Leia post:

the costume designer who created the bikini was a woman!

has me confused. What are they saying? I just keep thinking that women have created and perpetuated all sorts of cruel tortures for each other (genital cutting and foot binding are two examples). Just because the costume was designed by a woman doesn’t change what it is: objectifying. That the designer was a woman seems a betrayal even! This is a slave costume, intended to represent women as submissive and as property. The women dressed in the costume for ‘fun’, with lengths of chain around their neck makes me sad that this is the best we have for role models and female representation in film.
I really hope Heroine Content helps me learn more about action films and television. So far I’m happy just to read the feed.  I have no desire to see any movies yet but my interest is definitely piqued. It’s great to have a feminist reviewer going ahead of me.

I’m on my way home from BlogHer 2006 and realizing that there are a lot of things I am not. Mostly today I know I’m not a mommyblogger.

Mommy/parent blogging does have incredible potential to support new parents in what can be overwhelming isolation and a shocking discovery that babies are not all crisp cotton, cute bunny flannel, and eyelet lace. But there was a sense that BlogHer 2006 was a mommyblog love-in. I know mommy bloggers are plentiful and organized into communities and websites and it makes sense that many would want to attend BlogHer to meet their blog crushes, friends, etc., but… they’re a tough clique to crack - and not all women desire these things. I felt like I was crashing a party or like Hermie the wanna-be dentist elf who just didn’t fit in.

I don’t think I’ve made enough of an effort to really find a place in any blogging community in particular. I’ve been a blog hermit and a blog transient: I read daily, I write occasionally, but mostly I keep to myself. I can make a conscious effort to try to break out of my hermit ways but what about the many other non-mommybloggers there this weekend? I wish someone had organized a session that would have taken on some of the heavier issues that were only brushed upon this weekend. I thought the feminist blogger birds of a feather session might have done this but it was over before it really got going. Maybe had I attended the post BlogHer Woolfcamp…

It takes a certain amount of confidence to walk up to someone and start talking. It takes a belief that you have something worthwhile to share and/or enough courage to say ftw if no one cares. BlogHer was just too big for me. I would have done better with some smaller break-out sessions - though maybe these happened in other sessions and I missed them. How many other bloggers are introverted and have a hard time jumping in to large group discussions? The long days with back-to-back sessions wore me out. I know that many, many bloggers are insightful and intelligent and I would have loved to talk to more of them.

I also know that I’m not a Jane. I’ve done home repairs (and foresee many more in my future) but I get sweaty and I swear when it gets rough. Which, at my house happens quickly. My tools are crummy because many of them used to live outside on my grandparents’ farm. The house really should have fallen down at least a generation ago. Keeping it standing is not an exciting weekend project, it’s an ongoing struggle that I’d rather not think about. It’s far from a girls’ night pajama party but maybe that’s because I’m not staining my driveway or hanging a shelf, I’m dealing with a rotting foundation. A rotting foundation that I’m very happy to have considering the stats for single mothers in Canada.

BlogHer highlights for me: drinks on the patio Friday night and finding out Saturday morning that one of those awesome women writes arse poetica (one of the first feeds I ever grabbed!!!) and meeting the great and multiblogous Sour Duck at the Day 2 welcome.

You might be playing too much World of Warcraft when:

you see a listing on the Freecycle website for a green leather bag and you wonder how many slots it has.

Rob acquired a 14-day free trial dvd for World of Warcraft. Since we’re getting hyped up for E3 and our trip to California (next week!) we thought it would be the perfect time to get in the spirit and see what all the WoW hype is about. Four days, 3 characters, and a combined 20 levels later I think I see the addiction taking hold. The first night it took forever to install, lots of upgrades, patches, etc. By the time we got started I was already tired but somehow we got the human male up to level 6. Lots of Kobold Vermin dead. At 2 a.m. when I told Rob I was going to bed he said he’d be right there. Hmmmm. “Right there” was close to an hour later.

The next night was my turn. I created a human female character and we took turns levelling her. More Kobold vermin dead. Then Kobold workers and Rob was killing some warriors when I went to bed.

The game is on Rob’s laptop so he’s been carrying it around with him, playing with friends at lunch, playing at the coffeeshop after work. I really felt like I was starting to lag. So Saturday we worked out a deal - I would cut his grass since he has bad allergies and in exchange he would do some server work for me for some other sites I’m working on. I did the grass cutting during the day but he couldn’t get to the computer until after his daughter was asleep. Bwahahahahahahhaha. While he struggled with Gallery2 I got to create yet another character. A beautiful and talented Druid Night Elf named Daksha. A new race meant a new map, new quests, new spells. It was so much like being pregnant and giving birth. Choosing a name for a character is as challenging as naming a child. Luckily there are plenty of baby name sites. This was when I noticed the brewing addiction. I was probably ready to quit around 2a.m. but kept telling myself, “one more quest, just finish this last one.” After all, can’t leave the guy to suffer without the antidote to his spider bite. That would just be plain cruel. With Rob’s prodding I got her to level 6, found her a new home and put her to bed in the Inn. I hated the spiders - they sneak up behind you and start attacking when you’re not expecting it. I’ve got some better spells now and hope to be able to fight them off more easily the next time I get a chance to play. I’m still in need of the spider egg but the spiders freak me out too much I just can’t bare to go into their cave.

I didn’t get to play any last night since I have to prepare some photos which will be exhibited here at a conference while I’m in California and I’m having a heck of a time getting them done. I wonder what’s going to happen when the 2 weeks expire. I wonder if Rob will subscribe or if he’ll be ready to try something else. I wonder if I’ll get my own install…

So Noah wants to bring back the booth babes. He’s a 17 year old high school student (technically not even old enough to get in to E3) and he’s crying that taking booth babes out of E3 is a travesty.

/sigh/

There is more to life than booth babes. I don’t go to E3 for the booth babes. This will be my 3rd year going and I go to play games, try new toys, get warm, be a tourist, hang out with geeks, do some research, and of course, collect swag. I am thrilled with the decision to put an end to booth babes. It’s sickening to watch the geeks line up, with their state-of-the-art digital cameras no less, and take turns taking pictures of each other with their arms wrapped around one of the models. It’s sad to watch the wanna-be starlets pimped into this sort of role. According to Robin in 2004 there were women who “were also inserting candy between their butt cheeks (while clothed, but still) and asking developers to BEND OVER AND TAKE IT OUT WITH THEIR TEETH.” Barf.

It’s about time this conference applies the same standards of sexual responsibility that we apply everywhere else. Don’t like it? Don’t come. All the more swag for me.

A recurring suggestion is that we add some boothdudes to the mix to appease the women attendees.

Here’s a pic of a booth dude that I snapped last year, in front of the display for Gods & Heroes. Notice that he’s promoting this game without any problem and he doesn’t have to sell his body to do it. Go figure. I don’t need naked men at my gaming conference and I doubt I’d be seeing any. I’m all for a clothing optional lifestyle, but this is exploitation and that’s demeaning. I want to talk to the developers, try the latest stuff, learn something and have some fun. Isn’t anyone else there for that?

I’m really curious if there were more women attending last year as gamers/developers/industry pros or as boothbabes. I’d like to believe that the number of female attendees are rising and I’m hoping that this year with the new policy there will be even more women attending. I’m also hoping that the men who value women for who they are as individuals, fully complete with brains, personalities, ideas, thoughts, etc. will speak up and say they’ve had enough of this exploitation too. I’m hoping for the day when I can walk through the expo without having to see games like 3feel on larger than life screens.

Boothbabes are more proof of a patriarchal gender-power imbalance that is pervasive in our culture. Women’s bodies are exploited - discussion of it is all through this blog and many others. Evidence to see for yourself is easy to find in the media around you. Truth is, there’s a dominant group of men who have power, and they’ll do what they want. If they want bodies up there they’ll buy some. And if you’re into boothbabes then you fit with this group. If you support it you are condoning the subordination of women. No way around it. If women had other options do you think they’d honestly choose to be a booth babe? Like Wendy said in a comment of another post, also about exploiting women’s bodies, “is it that people really want to cook fries or is it that they would live in poverty if they didn’t otherwise”? There’s choice and then there’s choice. I applaud this progress. Now if only they could do something about the ERA.

I know Rob is going to say that taking the boothbabes out of E3 takes the fun out of the conference - but is that what you really think? Really really? Do you really believe it’s justified to use a woman’s body to sell a game? Would you want your daughter working there?

Hooray for Kate!

After BlogHer 2005 (which I could not attend) I got really keen for bringing it to Canada. I talked with the team at BlogHer and they put me in contact with Alexandra Samuel. Unfortunately my house was robbed right as the excitement was building and with no computer it was a challenge to keep up the momentum. Then the new semester began and here it is April…

Luckily Kate has started up with the idea and there is interest! I’m so excited - it will be a great way to meet other bloghers, and a fabulous way to share the work of planning.