In my INBOX today, i received two fun images:

OK. In recent months, i’ve been signing up to a million different services, testing things out or just outright curious. Sites often ask you your “gender.” Of course, this drives me batty because the question is usually asking you your sex. Then there are the options. Male/Female. Everywhere else on these sites, you are asked questions with an alphabetical listing (except for anything involving a date which is done in a month by month listing). Why is sex any different? Oh right, patriarchy and sexism and a clear reminder that tools are built by guys. ::grumble::

Because of my work with V-Day, i hear about a lot of horrifying rape and abuse stories. But it’s been a long time since one just floored me. An article came out this week describing how a grandmother, in desperate need of her crack offered her granddaughter as payment. She sat there and listened as the crack dealer brutally raped her granddaughter and then forced her to urinate and shower to conceal the evidence. When it was reported to the cops, she identified a different man to protect her dealer. OMG.

I had multiple conversations today concerning power management. In all of these, we acknowledged that women tend to use more subtle mechanisms to derive and maintain power, while men tend to just bulldoze. Backing up from this, i believe that what is relevant is not simply sex, but privilege. The more privileged an individual is, the more that power can be taken for granted and the less creative one needs to be to acquire it. Subtlety is an art, a subversive mechanism for overthrowing the norm. Thus, the more intelligent marginalized individuals consistently use subtle means to reach the top. Of course, this plays directly into my thoughts on context. Context is necessary for engaging subtlety, but not for brute force.

For the record, Palen and Dourish do an amazing job at unpacking some of the privacy concerns that researchers in the CHI community must consider.

Research at CMU and Microsoft have noted that women need widescreen to comfortably navigate virtual reality. I’m so glad to see that researchers are looking into how sex affects 3D navigation.

I love the random links that i get at work… Today: labia love, a blog about labias…

Controversial Russian lesbian duo a hit: Clad in skimpy tank tops, teenage pop stars Lena and Yulia giggle and clasp hands on a Russian television talk show as their hit music video is played for a studio audience.

A professor told me yesterday that she thought that there’s been a reduction in gay teen suicide because it’s so much more socially acceptable. I wonder how much this is true, or how much it is felt in the more rural areas of the world. I wonder how teen lesbian popstarts would be treated in the US…

NYTimes has a neat little article about the comeback of menstrual cups. Oh do i love my Keeper. Well, as much as i can love anything that indicates crampy time. I should say: oh do i love not spending oodles of money because it’s that time of the month! Speaking of that time of the month, i’m reading The Red Tent (so good btw). I wish that my monthly blood was an indication of celebration and rest.

Why would it surprise anyone that the pharmaceutical industry might make up diseases to sell more drugs?