Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 7.2
Good morn… errrr, afternoon folks in the Skepchick-verse. Hey, you all know I’m an astronomer, right?
I am belatedly taking over the Quickies for a bit while Mary goes off saving the universe from hostile aliens bent on enslaving the human race. Seriously, our work is never done. Hope you enjoy your fresh, hot serving of quickies!
- A mass exodus of sorts from the Mormon Church over issues of gay marriage, science, and polygamy. From Will.
- Awful story of a graduate student attacked by a chimp in the course of his research. We’re thinking about you, Andrew. :-(
- “Figures released to Lateline from the Australian census shows the Church of Scientology’s membership is in such decline, that it is outnumbered by people who identify as Jedis and Wiccans.” I second Amy’s LOL.
- Don’t be a tweeting dick, especially if you are going to diss Felicia Day. From scribe999.
- I just had to include this. Help Anthropologist Underground with a survey!
Featured image CC by PhillipWest.
. . . while Mary goes off saving the universe from hostile aliens bent on enslaving the human race.
That would be the MRA, right?
That… or I’ve been watching way too much X-Files.
It is interesting to see the parallels of the development going on in the gaming sphere and the skeptic sphere – it’s the same problems, but it would seem that the gamers are slightly ahead of the skeptics when it comes to changing the environment for women.
ZOMG! Thank you!!!
I did your survey, but a couple of those questions seemed to be specifically aimed toward women. Is that inadvertent or are women your preferred demographic?
Thanks, and sorry for that. It’s meant to be lighthearted and sort-of fun, just to get a general overview of current attitudes. I was actually hoping for a lot of responses from men, so thanks again!
Also took the survey…and based solely on the given options for the personal habits and preference in partners questions, one would have to assume a target demographic of lesbian women, but then again there are the “other” textboxes, so all is well.. ;-)
It might also be interesting to ask for geographical location.
Thanks! I tried to make the questions pretty broad. I think the people who are willing to respond to a survey like this are a fairly self-selected group to begin with. I was hoping to get a variety of answers from a lot of different types of people. I hadn’t intended to drill down to lesbian women, so I’m glad you made use of the “other” options!
I’m really interested in seeing the responses! I’m trying really hard not to peek until this weekend when I will have some time to obsess over the responses and attempt to write an article. I’ll drop a link into the comment thread here once that’s published somewhere.
Well, as science fiction goes, Star Wars makes for a better story than Scientology does.
Dude who would diss Felicia Day?!! She’s one of the queens of grassroots and youtube filmaking!
Apparently she’s a bad person because she hasn’t created a ground-breaking video game or something. Also, she’s a popular woman.
Well, that was certainly a substantive Nuh-uh from the Church of Happyology.
Seeing as how Scientology and Mormonism are both having troubles hanging on to members it makes one wonder why older religions aren’t bleeding congregants, other that longevity.
Except for the Catholic Church of course, I understand exactly how they are holding onto their members.
I guess for the big mainstream religions it’s economies of scale in the childhood indoctrination department that helps keep their numbers up.
Why did I read the comments about Felica Day?
Apparently, people seem to forget that she wrote, starred in, directed, produced, and distributed her very own internet show, perhaps THE MOST POPULAR internet show to have ever existed, and she started in her damn garage.
Yet, because she’s cute and female, she’s just a glorified booth babe who has contributed nothing to the industry.
I mean, we didn’t see an influx of similar-type shows on the internet or anything after it became clear hers was popular. Nope. Not at all.
WTF?!
She works incredibly hard, does it with a great deal of her own resources, and still manages to try for a mainstream acting career at the same time.
Even if people don’t like her stuff, dismissing her as a “glorified booth babe” is way off base. Also, these are probably the same guys who bitterly complain whenever a convention bans booth babes.
Also, apparently, this writer has contributed nothing to anything, yet he thinks he is the shit. Oh, and I guess he got fired. LOL
If you looked at his Linkedin profile, he pretty much disses his previous place of employment, the PR firm, in his profile. So, not good with keeping bridges intact behind him.
I am noticing a pattern of extreme douchiness.
Who wants to guess he was fired from his PR job?
I didn’t read the comments on the Felicia Day story because none of them had contributed anything to gaming. (seewhatididthere?)
Geez, good luck to that idiot ever getting a PR job again.
Seems he got off at the Slauson cutoff and cut off his Slauson.
Ok, he made bad comments, but i don’t think he should lose his job over this. Just sayin. I mean he didn’t even get a chance to apologize or anything.
Did you see his tweet from nearly a day later? About how he should have made fun of religion instead? He had a chance to apologize.
Yeah, he had a chance to apologize and didn’t. Also, people don’t generally get fired for just one thing. I imagine this is either not the first time he’s said something stupid, or there are other reasons. Maybe he sucks at his job and they were just looking for a good reason to can him.
To clarify some things, he did actually apologize to Felicia Day who graciously accepted. But he also became quite defensive for a time before he settled into damage control following the blowup. Much of this was due to the efforts of Wil Wheaton and Veronica Belmont, who I believe became incensed on behalf of their friend because there’s been a great deal of history in the gaming community of a backlash against Felicia Day, particularly using gendered insults. While this happens to almost every “celeb” in that niche, the problem was his use of the term “glorified booth babe”. His snarky tweets before that were rude and undignified, but what started the fire was the use of that term.
Much like when Rush Limbaugh, when he was on the NFL on Fox, decided to say that it was clear the media was favoring former Philadelphia Eagles player, Donovan McNabb, because “they” wanted to see a black quarterback do well, this kind of comment crosses a line in acceptable “opinions” broadcasted by one’s employees. Destructoid had to issue an apology themselves at first.
Even so, according to Perez, he claims he told Destructoid that they should part ways due to the furor, which is possible since he figured his dismissal could be forthcoming anyway.
Also, I think it’s clear that everyone using the term “white knight” to describe her defenders is probably a serious douchebag.
Was there something that Ms. Day had done recently that brought this on (i.e. but her in the spotlight, that funny music video maybe) or was this completely out of the blue?
Not that it makes much difference, but I would think attacking someone for absolutely no reason (as opposed to a half-assed reason) would make the whining about being called out for being a dick just that much more ridiculous.
It was just a random series of tweets. As far as I could tell, Perez wasn’t actually directing it at anything specific.
Nicole,
I never thought the Church of Scientology was a major religion to begin with, so I’m really not that surprised by those findings.
First pass of the pubic grooming data is here: http://open.salon.com/blog/anthropologist_underground/2012/07/24/bare_curious
Thanks again to Nicole and those of you who responded to the survey! Some of the responses were hilarious. It’s going to take some time to sort out all the lovely written detail that’s difficult to quantify into a more ethnographic format. I’m deeply honored by how willing many of you were to share such personal information.
Glad to hear it!