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Laundry Day: Online Agression

April 10, 2012 – 7:17 am |

 
In August 2010, Penny Arcade posted a comic strip about that featured a character who jokingly referred to having been raped by dickwolves.” For many feminists, tired of hearing endless references to having been raped, raping, and so forth in online games, this was the straw that broke the camel’s …

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#AAAfail & Open Access (at it again)

May 17, 2012 – 8:17 am | One Comment

The other day, I took a survey for the American Anthropological Association (I’m a recovering anthropologist) that had to do with the associations’ adminstration “pushing back” (h8rs) against the idea of open access publishing (see here for back story if you’re interested). If you read their overview of open access, you see that they have no idea – fembot does not have ads, nor will it ever (except for shameless self promotion :D ).

Even more ridiculous was this was a question on the survey (I kid you not). Not sure about other social science people, but I’m pretty sure I would fail the student that turned this into me as a ‘build a survey question’ assignment. It is a blatant attempt to scare people out of looking for new routes to publication and funding, moreso than collect information about the feelings of the membership.

I’m also working on my presentation for the International Communication Association conference, where I’ll talk about the future of fembot and the Ada journal (in beta, w00t!). I think that Ada and Fembot create an alternative for publication house journals that are too pricey for associations, but have co-opted intellectual associations to the core (hence this survey question). Our contribution here, we should remember, is not just feminist scholarship on popular topics, science, and new technologies, but also serving as a model for what professional organizations can do to retake the intellectual/scholarly means of production. Fembot will never ask you to pay money (nor will we ask you stupid questions like the above).