Raising the Bar for Mobile Standards

During a break in a long research day, I was speaking to a client about a project I was working on to develop iOS standards for a global financial company. Their initial response was, “What, you’re creating something beyond the Apple iOS Standards? What else is there to it?” We ended up having a lengthy discussion about mobile standards—what they are, what they are not, and what they should be. Apple, for instance, does a great job of explaining their touch interaction model and the individual UI elements of iOS, giving examples of when and how they are used. But there’s more to it than that.

From this conversation and other experiences I’ve had with creating standards, I realized that most companies approach standards from a branding perspective. Some…read more
By Megan Geyer

UX Magazine

Announcing UX Magazine's New Jobs Board

Over the past few years, we’ve heard from a lot of business and hiring managers that they find it hard to find qualified UX professionals and UX-minded businesspeople to fill vacant jobs in their organizations. We’ve also heard from UX pros who say that, in a world where anyone can claim to be able to “do UX,” it’s hard to stand out from throngs of job seekers on high-volume sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com.

We’re therefore pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new jobs board exclusively for the UX community. We believe that UX Magazine’s strong reputation in and focus on the UX community, coupled with the very high traffic volume our site receives, will mean our jobs board will be valuable to job seekers and employers alike.

You can find our new jobs board by going to uxmag.com/uxjobs, or by clicking “UX Jobs” in the nav bar from anywhere on UX…read more
By UX Magazine Staff

UX Magazine

Cynthia Nixon Makes Gay Choices

Cynthia Nixon’s comments on being gay are unapologetic, admirable assertions of her own identity. But what is she talking about?

Cynthia Nixon, in an interview with the New York Times released last Thursday, referred to her homosexuality as “a choice.” She said:

“I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me…Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.”

Nixon received criticism for those comments, especially from articles whose headlines included the phrase “Gay by Choice?” After the work by the LGBT community to combat the idea that “being gay is a choice” and that gay people thus don’t require equal rights, Nixon’s words seem counterproductive. The LGBT community especially cringed; John Aravosis of AmericaBlog said against Nixon, “When the religious right says it’s a choice, they mean you quite literally choose your sexual orientation, you can change it at will, and that’s bull.”

Nixon’s statements are fabulous. Her obstinate assertion of sexual identity pays no attention to the right wing, or anybody else. Who cares if conservatives say being gay is a choice? It is for her! She is absolutely right that no one gets to define or label her sexuality: not her internal experience, and not her outward actions. If Nixon says that her gayness is a choice, it is.

But the problem with Nixon’s defense of her homosexuality as choice is that she doesn’t explain what that word means to her. She only says that homosexuality as choice is legitimate—but what was the choice? We don’t know whether she willed her sexual attraction away from men towards women, or whether she’s always felt bisexual attractions and only now chose to act on the ones for females. Or did she feel, or did she decide on feeling, the attraction toward  her partner of eight years, Christine Marinoni?

Of course, Nixon has no need to explain anything, especially her private sexual feelings. But her public assertion of homosexuality risks perpetuating the stigma that gayness is an unnecessary choice, which wouldn’t have been perpetuated if she’d defined what “choice” was for her. In today’s LGBT culture, words are everything—if there’s room for interpretation, they will be spun in dangerous ways. That’s not something the LGBT community, or the small number of LGBT celebrity voices, can afford.

Nixon is similar to gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris, whose affects are fairly (conventionally) straight. NPH has a mid-to-deep voice and talks very casually, and not flamboyantly. Obviously, NPH’s relative lack of flamboyancy does not make him any less of a gay man—to be a gay man is to have that sexual identity, and not to have a certain behavior. But NPH is one of the most famous LGBT celebrities, and he is a gay man whose persona radiates like the conventional straight man. His character Barney on How I Met Your Mother is a heterosexual carnivore. We haven’t attained a celebrity culture consisting of LGBT folk whose personas include the gay conventions: effeminacy and flamboyancy in gay men, masculinity and aggression in lesbians. No LGBT person should feel the need to represent any of those conventions, or to be anything other than their self (thank you). But our current gay celebrities reflect an American reservation to worship a masculine, lesbian woman, one that usually plays masculine, lesbian roles.

Cynthia Nixon, whose celebrity is steeped in the flaming heterosexuality of ‘Sex and The City,’ and whose romantic past included mostly men and a heterosexual marriage, is not that masculine lesbian. This is perhaps where the resentment towards Nixon by the LGBT community stems from—a frustration that the commentary on homosexuality is headed now by an LGBT celebrity who has not always been gay in her romances, and who hasn’t “seemed gay.” She is gay–that’s not up for debate. She is because that’s her identity and she says so. Nixon used her voice honestly: she expressed her own experience of sexuality. But we don’t have many gay celebrities who are doing this, and what the LGBT community needs—more than a gay icon who’s always identified as gay—are voices willing to explain their experiences and choices. Nixon publicly spoke about a private experience, but in a vague and thus misleading way. Now the word “choice” is being defined by everyone but her.

Is Fox Pushing A Gay Agenda? Glee Makes Network “Most Inclusive”

A Lady at Table, A Whore in Bed

Minnesota “Neutrality Policy” on GLBTQ Teen Harrassment is Anything But

Entertainment News

Nokia Sold 1.3 Million Lumia Phones in 2011: Will it Save the Company?

Nokia, once a top handset manufacturing company, is now struggling to maintain its position in the market. The Finnish company is looking to regain its lost glory with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 handsets and it seems its strategy may … [visit site to read more]

Nokia Sold 1.3 Million Lumia Phones in 2011: Will it Save the Company? is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site – Gaj-It.com

UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping

Sonali Bendre Wardrobe Malfunction

Neetu Chandra Wardrobe Malfunction

Related Posts

1. Lindsay Lohan Wardrobe Malfunction
2. Miley Cyrus Wardrobe Malfunction
3. Namitha Wardrobe Malfunction

Must Read Stuff

 

---

post a comment | filed under Magazine | tags: Chandra, Malfunction, Neetu, Wardrobe

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

» posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 3:53 pm by

 

---

Will SOPA & PIPA Actually Stop Online Piracy ?

This week you’ll have likely come across two new acronyms: SOPA (Stop Internet Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). They are new powers being … [visit site to read more]

Will SOPA & PIPA Actually Stop Online Piracy ? is a post from: UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping Site – Gaj-It.com

UK Gadget and Tech News, Reviews and Shopping

 

---

post a comment | filed under Magazine | tags: Actually, Online, PIPA, Piracy, SOPA, Stop

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.