Sunday linkdump

No preamble. Let’s do this.

• “Bigots, Bullies, and Enablers.” A Thing happened with Locus on April Fool’s Day. Jim Hines has a good summary, as well as a good argument for why it’s really not a small deal when this kind of shit happens.
  

  The backlash against the Locus article isn’t about someone taking cheap shots at Muslims and women. It’s about yet another person taking those shots, lining up to bully those who are already a popular target for abuse. And it’s about everyone else who stands around, encouraging and enabling that bullying.

• “Barbie, Burquas, April Fool’s Jokes, Writer’s Advice: Small Failures Hurt Us In Big Ways.” Carrie Cuinn’s take and a related take on some additional ways in which the SF&F community is utterly failing, gender-wise.
  

  You know what I have seen? Comments from people telling me that I am overreacting, humorless, a radical feminist, and that I shouldn’t choose to be offended. I got an email telling me that while the SFWA author was probably wrong to say what he did, he’s not a bad guy and didn’t mean it in a bad way.

  This is the community I’m supposed to feel safe in. This is where I’m supposed to feel at home.

  Tell me how I do that if nothing is going to change.

• And I just basically call the guy an asshole for about 800 words.
  

  Making jabs at marginalized people from a position of power and privilege is not “edgy”, “dangerous”, or brave. It is the status fucking quo. You’re the Man. I know you don’t want to be, but you are. You don’t live in a world where you are likely to be emotionally and physically abused, where you are likely to be disenfranchised, where you are likely to be raped, where you are likely to be fucking killed. You unbelievable asshole.

• Roger Ebert Hails Human Existence As ‘A Triumph’.
• “Project Bendypants: Practicing Yoga While Fat.” This was heartbreaking and also really uplifting to read.
  

  Of all the sports and athletics I have participated in as a fat person, yoga has sadly been one of the most judgmental and the least emotionally safe. This is particularly painful given the principles of compassion and reflection that yoga is built around. I’m not entirely sure what to do with this.

• Surprising no one, there is a major wage gap in the game industry and it falls along gendered lines.
• Jenny Davis offers a defense of the “red sea”.
  

  Though a profile picture change is a small and quiet act, it was amplified through collective action and the interplay between personal and public media. I have argued before that memes are the myths of augmented society. In this way, small personal acts, connected to a larger movement, shared interpersonally and reported internationally, become part of the story that we tell ourselves, about ourselves.

• I wrote a thing on Pinterest and gender.
  

  The experience of first beginning to use the site was bizarre. It was unlike anything else I had experienced in a social media site; it was like putting on a digital dress. I could feel my gender shifting. And it was strangely liberating, as if I was – once again – in a space that was affording me the opportunity to play with an aspect of my gender that other digital spaces had not.

• Catherynne M. Valente – “Fade to White”. Not new, per se, but I assigned this to my students this past week when we covered gender and cultural representation, and it is every bit as amazing as I remember. It’s been nominated in both the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novelette.
  

  Finally the dress. The team at Spotless Corp. encouraged foundational garments to emphasize the bust and waist-to-hip ratio. Sylvie wedged herself into a full length merry widow with built-in padded bra and rear. It crushed her, smoothed her, flattened her. Her waist disappeared. She pulled the dress over her bound-in body. Her mother would have to button her up; twenty-seven tiny, satin colored buttons ran up her back like a new spine. Its neckline plunged; its skirt flounced, showing calf and a suggestion of knee. It was miles of icy white lace, it could hardly be anything else, but the sash gleamed red. Red, red, red. All the world is red and I am red forever, Sylvie thought. She was inside the dress, inside the other girl.

  The other girl was very striking.

  Sylvie was fifteen years old, and by suppertime she would be engaged.

Play us off, Glitch Mob.