Thursday, December 6, 2007

Day 12/Capture Compelling Images-Posts on the Internet


Often we have to scurry through disturbing images to get to more redeeming images and sites on the internet. Some times when pursuing the sitemeter links to our blogs, we can see purient search terms that certain readers use and end up linked to our blogs-sites. We can turn around and use these terms (girls, women, mobile, sex) or a certain alleged abuser-fugitive's name on our own sites of resistance.

The Take Back the Tech folks would like to see images that disturb, annoy, amuse, or inspire you from the internet or websites.

For day 12, I want to blog about some images-posts that inspired me. Yesterday, I included a variety of positive gifs and website images about VAW (those blinking gifs are still in my eyes). Today I link to three posts from Sheril Kirshenbaum, a gifted marine biologist, writer, musician, and advocate for women in science, environment, and for people around the world and Cylone Sidr, a category 5 hurricane that devastated much of Bangladesh three weeks ago.

In one of her most recent The Intersection posts, she wrote about how young women scientists had won the top honors at the Seimens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. This post had a great picture of one of the female winners wide-mouthed in surprise, happiness? These young women scientists inspire me (a sociologist) as well as Sheril's writing and advocacy for all kinds of water-fish-environmental issues (go to The Intersection for more of these posts).

Sheril has also written a thoughtful post on how she decided to change her blog picture to the current picture and representations of women scientists, for example, marine biologists. She discusses the tension about appearances, contents, and women defining themselves and parental input on our pictures-images. I sent her post to the Nari Jibon office to inspire some of the young and future computer students.

Finally, three weeks ago, I started reading Sheril on The Intersection when I was searching for information on Cyclone Sidr as it bore down on Bangladesh, but with little international media attention. Chris Mooney and The Intersection had the horrifying radar pictures of Sidr, and then Sheryl posted her motivational blogcast on how Bangladesh needs your help. Bangladesh still needs all of our help because the relief and reconstruction efforts are still ongoing, but international media attention has drifted away to the latest news (see some of my earlier posts on how to help and Nari Jibon blog coverage). Sheril's blogcast inspired and motivated to me to continue writing about Bangladesh, disasters, the cyclone, and about how disasters can lead to women and girl children's insecurity.

I look forward to seeing more of these articles and the Take Back the Tech images!

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