The Problem with Female Superheroes

Cindi May Scientific American
Given that gender portrayals in music videos, advertisements, video games and other popular culture powerfully shape expectations and attitudes about gender roles, it is not surprising that the emergence of powerful, but still hypersexualized, heroine images has affected popular beliefs and self-images. But the impact has not always been what you might think.

Friday Nite Videos -- August 21, 2015

Portside
Meet the Undocumented Immigrant Who Works in a Trump Hotel. Damsel in Distress: Tropes vs Women in Video Games. John Oliver: Sex Education. Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Brief History of Everything. Bad Lip Reading of the Republican Debate.

books

100 Best Novels: One in Five Doesn't Represent over 300 Years of Women in Literature

Rachel Cooke The Guardian
The Guardian is known for it's best of laundry lists. A recent list of the 100 best English-language novels came with a demurrer from culture columnist Rachel Cooke, saying in effect: The ladies not meant for spurning - and that just 20 books by female authors in a best-of-100 list covering a 300-year period--especially in a listing of authors of fiction--is incomplete bordering on bizarre. Cooke elaborates on what should be on, and what she says can surely be removed.

Here Are Some Antidotes to Science’s Old White Guy Problem

Sophia Chen Wired
In 2010, more than half of all the people with science and engineering related jobs were White men. But—enough wallowing in disheartening numbers and bigoted language. Plenty of people are moving the conversation forward: writing, speaking, and tweeting intelligently about the lack of diversity in science.

books

The Moynihan Family Circus

Stephanie Coontz Book Forum
Looking back after 50 years at the few pros (the real lack of jobs) and the many cons (an over-reliance throughout on allegedly debilitating cultural factors) of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's explanation for high African American poverty rates in his Report on the Black Family and Poverty.

The Campaign of Deception Against Planned Parenthood

The Editorial Board, The New York Times The New York Times
Anti-abortion groups have long pushed to defund Planned Parenthood, even though no federal money is used to provide abortions. But that hasn't stopped their efforts to shut down the clinics, which provide services like contraception, cancer screening and other tests.

Save Alexander Hamilton. Dump Andrew Jackson.

Alexandra Petri The Washington Post
The Treasury has finally decided to put a woman on our currency by 2020. Fine. Great. But what cretin decided to take Hamilton off of the $10 and let Andrew Jackson stay on the $20?
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