Sunday roundup

Let's pair Frank Bruni's column on the Mozilla CEO's resignation with the Times article on women in tech, because it's telling--Bruni makes the point that it wasn't the LGBT community that ousted the CEO, but the tech community itself, which couldn't reconcile his views with its values--that that same community, on a general level, doesn't have the same sense of disapproval for misogyny. There's another parallel (although it's a difference, and one that Bruni didn't note): the CEO was given the chance to repudiate his Prop 8 donation, and he didn't, so it's not like he was being held accountable for past beliefs. In contrast, Pax Dickinson did apologize, did repudiate his abhorrent tweets. As noted in the article, that's not enough for some, but it's huge.

Also apparently rife with misogyny (and also largely over the issue of objectification): the stay-at-home dad community.

I'm all for making science outreach largely about people and not just about the research, but I'd caution against making it too much about the peope, at the expense of the science (see my friendly critique of "Particle Fever," which I nonetheless liked/appreciated. And I get that this was an April Fool's joke and that jargon is alienating (though also useful), but you can't take out all the substance (or content, as the kids say these days).

This is so, so important: it's not controlling to have needs or express them.

Hat tip to Jezebel for the article on body agnosticism, but the best quote is in the article itself:

I come to this topic as a woman who cares about her body and her physical appearance, but is not obsessed with it—in terms of having the perfect figure, or in terms of chastising myself for every cookie consumed. Body obsession is often viewed as the privilege of the slim, healthy, and active, and thus my denigration of “obsession” suggests I’m ridiculing those who are serious about weight management and fitness. Not at all. I’m saying it may not be psychologically healthy to be obsessed with your own body, regardless of how it looks.

My point is that if you can build your character toward a goal of true self-acceptance, it ceases to matter which category you belong to, or who evaluates you as belonging to one category or the other. There are objective benefits to exercising and eating healthily, but there are also objective detriments to fostering an attitude of shame and low self-esteem.