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Zuska is the kick-ass alter-ego of Suzanne E Franks. When not dispensing Zuska's wisdom, Suzanne can often be found gardening, reading, or having one of her thrice-weekly migraines.
The place where I come from...is a small town. Coalfields of the Appalachian Mountains
You will be wanting to read my excellent essay, 'Suzy the Computer' vs. 'Dr. Sexy': What's a Geek Girl to Do When She Wants to Get Laid? in She's Such a Geek! Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff.
If you have not yet figured out why you shoud not be using terms like "hard science" and "soft skills", then you absolutely need to read Telling Stories About Engineering: Group Dynamics and Resistance to Diversity in NWSA Journal v. 16 No. 1, 2004 (Re)Gendering Science Fields.
You should also read They Blinded Me With Science: Misuse and Misunderstanding of Biological Theory, an excellent critique of Thornhill and Palmer's nonsense about rape as an evolutionary strategy. You can find it in Burack and Josephson's must-read tome, Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives.
Support the Mautner Project for Lesbians With Cancer! "The Mautner Project improves the health of lesbians, bisexual, and transgender women who partner with women, and their families, through advocacy, education, research, and direct service. [The Mautner Project envisions] a healthcare system that is guided by social justice and responsive to the needs of all people."
March 26, 2010
Category: Feminist Foremothers
Your joy need not begin and end with just knowing that the craptastic manifestations you've been subjected to are (1) not your fault, (2) part of a larger system of patriarchy, and (3) mocked by many, many, many women all over the place.
Posted by Zuska at 6:20 PM • 23 Comments •
March 25, 2010
Category: (if) Elder (why) Care
Repeating these stock fables is a way of telling the story of the family itself, and of binding family members together in shared reminiscences that may also encode a set of shared values.
Posted by Zuska at 1:29 PM • 16 Comments •
March 14, 2010
Category: Gratuitous Sexism
You are not supposed to notice sexist behavior, and everything in our society is carefully designed to help you understand and accept it as natural and just the way things are and evolution and the battle of the sexes and God's will and girls like pink and boys love trucks and men are better at spatial hoo-hah and women are so verbal and boys will be boys and act like a lady and don't be a slut and men can't help themselves and blah blah blah.
Posted by Zuska at 9:05 AM • 168 Comments •
March 10, 2010
Category: Feminist Foremothers
"Leakey and the Trimates understood that their fate in the field depended on popular attention to them as iconic figures, though not necessarily as scientists. That they appeared in ways that were not only distorted but also nearly contradictory suggests yet again that consumers of their stories shared no consensus about what women in the field should represent."
Posted by Zuska at 10:39 PM • 18 Comments •
Category: Geekalicious
"Few women raised with the creature comforts of Western life would have surrendered to such unknowns. Their shared love of animals led the Trimates to water, but it was the charismatic Louis Leakey who convinced them to drink."
Posted by Zuska at 9:20 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Ludicrous Language
That mansplainer thread just won't quit - it is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, if you can call continuing recitations of the endless ways women are constantly mansplained by the d00dly mainsplainers of the world a "gift". Along...
Posted by Zuska at 4:54 PM • 23 Comments •
Category: Feminist Foremothers
The book tells the stories of women scientists, from Marie Curie to Maria Mayer, who took enormous chances and made great discoveries in spite of, and at times because of, the resistance they faced in a male-dominated field. Des Jardins compares their stories with prominent male counterparts in an exploration of whether, and how, women research, collaborate, and come to different conclusions about the natural world.
Posted by Zuska at 4:17 PM • 18 Comments •
March 9, 2010
Category: Gendering Technology
To deconstruct this myth...we must look at how white Americans have constructed the "Yankee ingenuity" myth whereby technological expertise is intimately intertwined with American democratic ideals, masculine identity, and whiteness.
Posted by Zuska at 3:01 PM • 11 Comments •
denialism blog 02.14.2012
respectful insolence 02.14.2012
uncertain principles 02.13.2012
confessions of a science librarian 02.13.2012
starts with a bang! 02.13.2012
