[From this article at The Verge] ‘If you’re having trouble imagining why OnePlus might have just a fewfemale fans, there’s a good chance that it’s related to the wholly off-putting, condescending, and inconsiderate attitudes that this contest demonstrates. The entire contest looks like guys from the depths of the internet finally found some amount of social currency and are using it to coax women into putting on a show for them, or somehow mixing that with a strange form of advertising. OnePlus is hardly the only member of the tech industry that’s making a lack of respect for women so pervasive, but this is a truly blatant, bad, and public example of it.
OnePlus has received a few submissions so far, but it’s received about as many fake submissions from guys Photoshopping OnePlus logos onto womens’ bodies as it has actual submissions. Other comments are men leering over the womens’ photos, while others just note that there aren’t actually that many women on the forums. A few of the photos have been women standing up against the contest though, with one woman flipping OnePlus off and another woman holding up a sign that reads “This contest is sexist and insulting. Way to inflict self-esteem issues, we don’t have enough of those in our society.”‘
“The game industry doesn’t want female characters. That is allegedly the message publishers have been sending to developers…If you are the kind of gamer that legit feels freaked out if you see a female character kiss a man while at the same time refusing to buy a game unless a big muscular guy is holding his polished gleaming weapon on the cover…mwahahahahah [you know what I’m implying].”
Mez Breeze01 PM | 11 Jun
“Many female novelists, like Harper Lee, Anne Rice, Amy Tan, Donna Tartt and some 300 others, had been relegated to the ranks of “American Women Novelists” only, and no longer appeared in the category “American Novelists.”
Male novelists on Wikipedia, however — no matter how obscure — all got to be in the category “American Novelists.” In an Op-Ed article I wrote, published on The New York Times’s Web site on Wednesday, I suggested it was too bad that there wasn’t a subcategory for “American Men Novelists.” And what do you know; shortly after, a new subcategory called exactly that appeared.
But there was more. Much more. As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad they’d just taken out the useful sources.
In 24 hours, there were 22 changes to my page. Before that, there had been 22 changes in four years. Thursday night, a kind soul went in there and put back the deleted sources. The Wiki editors instantly took them out again.
I knew my page might take a beating. But at least I’m back in the “American Novelists” category, along with many other women.
![[Image Credit: The Verge]](https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/631744/dontbesexist.0.jpg "[Image Credit: The Verge]")
