it's like the eye of a duck

Starting off with the crunchiest and most worth reading: hrj's Sex Between Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a worthy followup to her Essay on Cross Dressing in the SCA, which I also highly recommend. It is thorough, somber research but given the subject matter it might be NSFW. Writers and RPGers might find these very useful.

A thoughtful article on privilege and losing it, via @Mactavish.

Will rap music change the face of enterprise IT? "RapGenius is a site that lets users upload lyrics. Then it lets other users annotate and explain the meaning of the words for each song.”

Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, and Billy Connolly sit down for a podcast - no really! Recommended with one caveat - I had never heard of Sophie Winkleman before, and lamentably didn’t learn much about her from this podcast, as it’s illustrative of the unfortunate fact that women speak drastically less when they’re surrounded by dudes.

An old article on the winning mindset via Fencing.net. “Being an effective competitor in martial arts (or doing any challenging task for that matter) requires that you develop faith in yourself and in your ability” - no kidding! I think this is one of my main stumbling blocks - no matter how much awesome I can pull out, I still don’t quite believe I can do it again.

"Held", Jane Fradgley, Guy’s Hospital, London, Through March 2013 - exhibit of “strong clothing” (19th century strait jackets). Sobering but fascinating, I’ve never even heard of such things being exhibited before.

How to start a hackerspace - parts 1 and 2 of a total of 7 are already up. dustdaughter, might hackerspaces be the “salons” of the 21st century?

Edited 11/15/2012: Fixed links - I won't be using that editor again!

Is there anything more smokin' hot than Tilda Swinton in a suit?

Maybe more women in suits?

Or maybe just more Tilda Swinton.

She doesn't post often, but posts well: just found another thought provoking article over at Brutal Women about the disappointment when fictional female-dominated societies turn out not to be, so much. I've not read the book in question, but she makes some interesting points - the society described reads as "female-dominant" only by virtue of there being more women than men, and the men are given great freedom to use and abuse due to their "rare" status:

Great! A female-dominated society, and girl babies are still greeted as gutter trash. One royal husband also abuses his wives and brutally rapes one of them. And guess what? Because he's a guy, he goes unpunished.

How does this fulfill the "things can be really different?" school of spec. fic.?

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional writer or gender studies student. However, I dabble in both and got to thinking - how would one create a fictional women-dominated society? I wrote a storyline once that involved a female-dominated society of evolved ants, but it wasn't that challenging - ant colonies ARE mostly female; in most species males only live long enough to mate. How to write it with people? Could women really be dominant without being a numeric majority? What would be different, and what would stay the same?

Maybe I've just not read a really good story on this theme - I am new to reading sci fi. Readers, writers - any suggestions beyond what's in the Brutal Women comments?