Good news! Miss Universe Canada reversed their decision to ban Jenna Talackova from the competition based on being born male (story via Toronto Sun).- And (story via TransGriot) Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo has reintroduced Toby’s Act in an attempt to add human rights protections for trans people to the province’s Human Rights Code.
- Risa at Clutch responds to those who attacked NCAA women’s basketball star Brittney Griner by calling her a man.
- The Mary Sue reports on a new initiative between Etsy and Hacker School to give grants to girls to pursue computer programming.
- Brittney at The Crunk Feminist Collective reflects on why she supported the Trayvon Martin Hoodie March but not SlutWalk.
- On a subject we don’t cover much here at GF, Tim at GOOD chronicles the ongoing gender segregation issues at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
- Russian activists holding signs saying “Gay is Normal” were the first arrested under St. Petersburg’s new law banning “gay propaganda” (via Towleroad).
- Raganwald shares the story of Gwen Barzey, Canada’s first woman computer programmer.
- Are you a Harry Potter fan? Check out the new Feminist Harry Potter Tumblr.
-Jarrah
Building a Feminist Comments Policy
As Gender Focus’ readership has grown over the past few years, we’ve encountered more situations where a few trolls visit the site and spend what seems a inordinate amount of time refusing to listen and/or trying to bait me or a contributor into one fallacious argument or another.
So, what do we do when we get a flood of comments like that?
Well, Gender Focus does have a comments policy, modelled after the excellent policy at Bitch Magazine blogs. My experience as a contributor there was that it always felt safe to post and comment. I could be reasonably assured that people disagreeing with me were at least hearing me out and considering their responses.
I wanted that for Gender Focus. I wanted to strike a balance between allowing for debate and ensuring contributors and commenters feel safe expressing their opinions and not being subject to silencing tactics.
To that end, here are a couple of the key items in the policy: Read more