Via Heroic Women to Inspire Game Designers –

Lego NASA Women:

AMAZING NEWS: It’s official — Lego NASA Womenhas been approved by the LEGO Ideas Review Board and will soon be a real LEGO set. Everything is AWESOME!!!

Designers at LEGO are already hard at work planning the set’s ultimate look and feel. Set creator Maia Weinstock will continue posting updates as they become available, so stay tuned… As ever, THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported and cheered for this celebration of all the women who’ve contributed to NASA History!

Update: For those asking, an on-sale date is not yet determined, but will be sometime late 2017/early 2018.

From the LEGO ideas blog:

Women of NASA

Uh oh. Uh oh uh oh. A woman said a wrong thing, again. A feminist woman. A feminist woman who is an author and widely respected. Uh oh uh oh uh oh; everybody get ready to throw things.

Feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has found herself at the center of a controversy over gender identity after comments she made about transgender women during an interview, which can be viewed in the clip above, recently went viral.

I like that “has found herself” – it’s so passive-aggressive.

Speaking earlier this week with the U.K.’s Channel 4, Adichie, who is promoting her new book Dear Ijeawele Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, said, “When people talk about, ‘Are

Originally a comment by Rob on A personal and professional impossibility.

Both the BBC and RNZ (our version of the Beeb) have a long and proud tradition of long running shows that cover a wide range of issues that broadly fall within a generic header. The presenters are expected to be expert in this field, to be able to collate years, even decades long shows that maintain interest by being fresh, topical and challenging. Whatever your interpretation of the printed standards and your supposition about what is in an employment contract – let alone the interpretation of that – the practice promoted by both organisations is to expect and encourage the presenters to use their expertise to bring the … Read the rest

The Washington Post reports that the Marines-sexual shaming scandal is spreading throughout the military.

Sunday, March 5:

The Naval Criminal Investigation Service, or NCIS, said it was launching an investigation into the drive, while Marine officials said the drive had been taken offline. Additionally, the Marines’ highest-ranking officer, Gen. Robert B. Neller issued a statement calling the incident “distasteful” but did not address the investigation directly.

“Distasteful”? My god, that’s feeble. It sounds as if he’s concerned about the nakedness instead of the lack of consent, the stalking, the degradation, the loathing.

Tuesday, March 7: 

Female Marines subjected to online harassment on Marines United and other pages began to come forward, detailing that the problem was larger than any one

Katie Hopkins done for libel:

The writer and food blogger Jack Monroe has won a libel action against the Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins and been awarded £24,000 damages, in a row over tweets suggesting Monroe approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall.

…

The case centred on a Twitter exchange in May 2015, in which Hopkins confused two well-known anti-austerity commentators: Monroe and Laurie Penny, a columnist for the New Statesman. Penny had tweeted about a memorial to the women of the second world war in Whitehall having been vandalised with the words “Fuck Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.

Commenting on the graffiti, Penny tweeted from her account @PennyRed that she “[didn’t]

Further to that discussion of the BBC’s rebuke of Jenni Murray for writing a think piece about whether or not trans women are women in every sense – the BBC puts it this way:

4.4.31

BBC staff and regular BBC presenters or reporters associated with news or public policy-related output may offer professional judgements rooted in evidence.  However, it is not normally appropriate for them to present or write personal view programmes and content on public policy, on matters of political or industrial controversy, or on ‘controversial subjects’ in any area.

Does that cover their rebuke of Murray, or not? Is she a presenter “associated with news or public policy-related output”? Does that describe Woman’s Hour? Was she in … Read the rest

I never knew Krazy Kat was genderfluid, but it’s so. Gabrielle Bellot at the New Yorker has the skinny:

“Krazy Kat,” George Herriman’s exuberant and idiosyncratic newspaper comic, was never broadly popular. From the beginning, though, it found fans among writers and artists. P. G. Wodehouse compared it favorably to Wagner’s “Parsifal”; Jack Kerouac later said it influenced the Beats. The strip ran from 1913 until 1944, the year that Herriman died. It is set in a dreamlike place called Coconino County, where a black cat named Krazy loves a white mouse named Ignatz, who throws bricks at Krazy’s head. Krazy interprets the bricks as “love letters.” Meanwhile, a police-officer dog, Offisa Pup, tries to protect Krazy, with whom

That thing about closed-minded versus close minded? Whaddya know, I was wrong.

The Online Etymology Dictionary tells the story:

close (adj.)late 14c., “strictly confined,” also “secret,” from Old French clos “confined; concealed, secret; taciturn” (12c.), from Latin clausus “close, reserved,” past participle adjective from claudere “stop up, fasten, shut” (see close (v.)); main sense shifting to “near” (late 15c.) by way of “closing the gap between two things.” Related: Closely.

Meaning “narrowly confined, pent up” is late 14c. Meaning “near” in a figurative sense, of persons, from 1560s. Meaning “full of attention to detail” is from 1660s. Of contests, from 1855. Close call is from 1866, in a quotation in an anecdote from 1863, possibly a term

LGBTQ Nation reports:

Last Friday, a Maine high school raised a rainbow flag, becoming the first school in the state to do so. The flag came down yesterday as one student didn’t want to attract media attention to the school.

The Rainbow Flag went up in front of Kennebunk High School after work by the school’s GSTA (Gay-Straight-Trans Alliance, presumably) put it up. The school’s Feminist Club caught the event on video and posted it to Twitter.

It’s true, they did:

But.

The flag attracted limited local media coverage, including the short article from a radio station linked above.

KMTW, the local ABC affiliate, is now reporting that the flag was removed because a transgender student did

The Guardian reports:

Kellie Maloney hits back at Jenni Murray’s trans women comments

Hm. Perhaps not the best headline ever chosen, seeing as how Kellie Maloney, back when she was called Frank Maloney, tried to strangle her wife.

Getting undressed for bed, Tracey tells him the only time she sees him happy is when he is drinking.

The red mist descends. He snaps and lunges at her, closing his hands around her neck. He sees fear flood her face. Then their two young daughters burst into the room screaming…

Kellie takes a deep breath as the ­flashback to 2005 subsides. “Who knows what could have happened,” she says.

Oh well. That was twelve whole years ago. Let’s find out … Read the rest

The UN says Ireland’s investigation into mother and baby homes isn’t good enough.

It says the Commission of Investigation as established may not uncover all abuses inflicted on women and girls in these homes, the perpetrators of which should be “prosecuted and punished”.

In its “concluding observations” report – following examination of Ireland last month – the UN Committee on the elimination of discrimination against women (CEDAW) says Ireland has, “failed to establish an independent, thorough and effective investigation, in line with international standards, into all allegations of abuse, ill-treatment or neglect of women and children in the Magdalene laundries in order [to] establish the role of the State and church in the perpetration of alleged violations”.

The terms