After Christmas, I took a bookstore giftcard and purchased a cookbook and Wikinomics. I started reading it and got to chapter 3, which is a fairly interesting discussion of how IBM came to embrace Linux (among other topics). Then, the authors were writing about a successful female computer scientist/businesswoman, explaining her accomplishments and how much she was respected. But then, they said, “. . . and her looks didn’t hurt either.” And I closed the book and I’m not going to finish it.

Look, asshats, if you’re going to write about the looks of the people you’re profiling, fine, but do so equally. You didn’t say anything about Linus Torvald’s looks or Steve Jobs or any of the other men you discussed in the preceding pages (and there were lots!). When you said that about this obviously talented woman, it became clear to me that you’re pretty shocked that an attractive woman is also smart or that it doesn’t matter how smart a woman is, but damn, she has to be attractive. And you probably have no idea why women don’t read your books or pursue careers in your field. Possibly because they don’t want to work with asshats like you.

/feminist rant