It’s a little long and subject-specific, but it’s a good explanation of the mostly unconscious bias that permeates our society.
Male privilege — again — is about what men can expect as the default setting for society. A man isn’t going to have everything about him filtered through the prism of his gender first. A man, for example, who gets a job isn’t going to face with suggestions that his attractiveness or that his willingness to perform sexual favors was a factor in his being hired, nor will he be shrugged off as a “quota hire”. A man isn’t expected to be a representative of his sex in all things; if he fails at a job, it’s not going to be extrapolated that all men are unfit for that job. A man who’s strong-willed or aggressive won’t be denigrated for it, nor are men socialized to “go along to get along”. A man can expect to have his opinion considered, not dismissed out of hand because of his sex. When paired with a woman who’s of equal status, the man can expect that most of the world will assume that he’s the one in charge.
Facebook now has a page describing their advertising. I’d not realised quite how underhand they are being with their advertising schemes.
It starts:
From the beginning, the people who built Facebook wanted it to be free for everyone. It now costs over a billion dollars a year to run Facebook, and delivering ads is how Facebook pays for this.
Translation: “we need to make money using you guys somehow, cheapskates”.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” a young man in a black parka said to a police officer in Zuccotti Park, on the evening of the day after the police had cleared it. The officer, identified by the yellow letters on his jacket as a member of the N.Y.P.D.’s community-affairs team, was telling people that it wasn’t safe to sit on the ledge of a granite planter, but the young man didn’t want to get down. “I can’t believe you’re saying this to me in the United States of America,” the young man continued. The risk seemed minimal, and he believed he had the right to take it.
Divided 1.2 has been approved for sale on the App Store. It’s a tiny bug fix release, so no need to rush to download!
Divided 1.1 is now available, with a new, more fun user interface and several bug fixes. I can assure you it’s just a pleasure to use.
However, a bug crept in as a gradient drawing routine differs in behaviour between iOS 4.3 and 5. Pah! So I submitted 1.2 today, and it will hopefully be approved quickly.