Jesus, The Video Game

WWJD?

Kill the infidels of course! If you liked the Left Behind book series, you'll love the video game! Now you and your loved ones can kill the satanic forces of the European Union...? Check out the trailers for the video game below. Then feel free to cleanse your troubled secular mind with Sarah Silverman's take on the whole Jesus/Christmas connection.

Today I learned a new word....

After writing the previous post I was looking around on the internet for more articles about women and robots, and I came across a new word: gynoid.

If you search the internets or youtube for gynoid a strange world will open before you. One in which some people painstakingly stop motion animate their lifesize RealDolls, or do other ummm things with female body type objects.

Gynoid.

It should never be for dinner......

Femme Bots

I'm not sure which is worse: the fantasy of a subservient female sexbot, or a real life mechanical assembly machine reported to have a "feminine touch".

Australian inventor Peter Hill has created machines for his factory that are modeled after the female brain:

These ‘Fembots’ are experts at multi-tasking, a skill in which women have long claimed superiority over men. But the female traits don’t end there. These robots also have a gentle touch and they talk all day as they work. And amazingly the father of the Fembots taught himself how to create these new robot brains.

Uhuh. Because we all know ladies talk more than men.....

Men's and women's brains are more similar then they are divergent. Yet, the media loves any story that feeds the myth that men and women are hard wired to behave differently. Whether it's using more words, having better depth perception, or being bad at math these stereotypes only further cement the notion of a rigid gender binary by trying to give them some sort of scientific weight. It's like trying to find the tag line "boys will be boys" written in the human gnome.

It's nice that someone is taking an interest in creating a mechanical helpmate based on a slightly different thought model. But it disturbs me that we're still carving up basic human traits that we should all posses into feminine and masculine.

You can read the full story here.

Screwfly Solution Recap

Gabe Mckee, published author, Philip K. Dick scholar, and Hampshire College alum, reviews the made for TV adaption of The Screwfly Solution. McKee hones in on an often overlooked religious aspect of Tiptree's story. You can read his full analysis here.

Creepy Robot

This doesn't have a feminist slant per say, but it's video footage, so I guess it counts as media. It's especially disturbing when the researches kick the robot to see if it can keep its balance.

Driving Miss Saudi

In Saudi Arabia women are back seat drivers, literally. It a country most Americans consider more westernized than some of its neighbors, it's illegal for women to drive. Women can buy cars, but they can't drive them. In response to the growing consumer power of the veiled sex wealthy enough to purchase vehicles, and hire a chauffeur, one entrepreneur has set up a ladies only car dealership. All the salespeople are women to avoid any awkward mixed gender interaction, and cars are viewed on large flat screen televisions.

The topic of female driving is a hot button issue in the kingdom, where some feel car ownership is one step closer to car actual driving. Which will then pave the road to female emancipation, and the decline of civilization. It's not just men who think women behind the wheel is a bad thing.

From the Associated Press Article by By Donna Abu-Nasr:

Ruqiya al-Duwaighry, in a letter to the opinion page of Al-Watan, wrote that driving "strips women of their femininity" and puts them in situations that might violate the ban on the sexes mixing.
Driving "may subject her to give up the veil or mix with strange men, such as workers at gas stations or security men at checkpoints," she wrote. "Women, by nature, cannot cope with such hard work."

Apparently, raising children is a piece of cake, but dealing with parking attendants is too much of a stress.

You can read the entire article here.

A Boob Of One's Own

Just when you start to think computers aren't just for boys anymore, you come across something like Busty Mousepads. No wonder the prospects of women in the technology field are still so dismal.

Pictures Of Us

Lauren Greenfield’s work is amazing. When I saw Thin at last year’s Boston Film Festival I was touched by its intimate portrait of women being treated for anorexia. It was real without being exploitive or melodramatic. Some women got better, others didn’t, which is the reality of many mental and physical diseases.

When a friend pointed me to Greenfield’s website I was impressed to find out she’s the photographer behind the book Girl Culture as well.

The Los Angeles Times sums it up best:

Lauren Greenfield chronicles the external manifestations of mainstream America’s compromised soul.

Check out her work here.

Sheldon Gets The Screen Treatment

One of the most fascinating and frightening short stories I've read is coming to the tiny screen.

You can read Raccoona Sheldon's story The Screwfly Solution here.

Then, check out the interview with Sam Hamm about the challenges of bringing this story to life for the series Masters of Horror.

Shocking, But Not Necessarily Surprising

Sex Abuse Of Girls Still Stubborn Scourge in Africa

The numbers are bleak, the personal story profiled in the article is disturbing, and the problem seems slightly overwhelming.

The only thing I can think of to stop me from dry heaving in the office rest room, is that rape and child abuse like this used to be much more common even western societies. Historically, life for women and children was never much of a picnic. But through changes in social norms (women are not chatel) and offical public policy (child labor laws) there has been a steady decrease in this type of totally unacceptable abuse. Things can change, we just have to try and make it happen before more kids lose their childhood and colon......