- I was drugged by a stranger – “One night at a music festival, someone put something in my drink. What happened next was humiliating and taught me how common these incidents are, and how easy, and wrong, it is to blame the victim.”
- Honoring female pioneers in science – “Florence Nightingale, a statistician? Marie Curie, driving to the front during World War I to X-ray wounded soldiers? Yes, and yes. Many such tantalizing and little-known details are part of an exhibition about the lives of 32 women who made major contributions in physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, computing and medicine, from the 17th century through the 20th.” From nowoo.
- Mavis Batey, one of the last Bletchley Park survivors, passes away at 92 – She worked to crack Axis codes during WWII, including the Enigma code. From Buzz Parsec.
- Men and women, they talk like people! – Why would you make that chasm wider! I love it.
Being doped by a stranger? No one shrieks about victim blaming. But if a 14 year old is incapacitated with alcohol by an acquaintance? NO, NO. Alcohol must be protected from blame and any hint of it’s hazards buried under pious ‘defense’ of the victim.
Giving alcohol to a 14 year old is morally indistinguishable from ‘roofying’ a stranger’s drink. That some 14 year olds WONT be subject to black-out or incapacitation is no excuse. Especially when the goons pressing the drinks onto those children are hoping for just those effects.
Also note that the author has a heavy family history of alcoholism, but refuses to recognize that she might be at special risk from alcohol alone. This wall of denial about the toxicity of alcohol, and the special risk it represents to women—being a ‘normal’ part of adolescence and an almost obligatory accompaniment to sexual exploration—is inexcusable.
The Mavis Batey link is to s story behind a paywall.
Here’s a link to the Washington Post story about Mavis Batey. (I don’t subscribe to the Post and was able to access it.)
Sorry about that, no one’s ever mentioned any problems with Boston Globe links before, so I didn’t think to check it.
FYI – Mavis Batey is featured in the “the Bletchley Park Podcast” (E28 extra) and can be found on iTunes. I have not listened to it yet, but I am a fan of the podcast, the topics and interviews are quite interesting.
re Mavis Batey podcast interview – a very engaging interview, i highly recommend it. The interview reveals her part in breaking German and Italian Cyphers, plus many a humorous story in those very different times.
FYI again – the very next episode (E29) of the Bletchley park podcast is called “Women in cyber security”.
E29 of the Bletchley park podcast, “women in cyber security” interviews a number of women in the cyber security jobs, almost all state they are the only women at work in that discipline yet say the job opportunities are very good.