Experience: I was stung by one of the deadliest creatures on Earth

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My first thought was that a shark had taken my right leg. I knew I was in danger. I expected to see my blood billowing around

I moved to Sydney, Australia, after finishing my masters degree at Nottingham University. Iwas winging it: I just turned up with a suitcase. I got a couple of jobs, in internet marketing and as aprivate tutor, and met an Australian woman, Chloe. About ayear after I arrived, I was off work on abeautiful summers day and fancied some peace and quiet, awayfrom all the tourists who flock to Bondi. Chloe had told me about Gordons Bay, a small, secluded beach nearby, and Iwas looking forwardto listening to music, reading and relaxing.

There was hardly anybody there and I settled on some large rocks to sunbathe. It was postcard perfect: serene, azure sky and a calm, green sea. It was the hottest part of the day and, after reading for a while, Idecided to cool off and jumped into the water. It was warm and Iremember feeling happy. I swam away from the rocks and kicked back to float, looking at the sky. Thats when the pain struck.

My first thought was that a shark had taken my right leg. I didnt know what was happening, but Iknew Iwas in danger. I expected to see my blood billowing around me in the water, but there was nothing. This magnified my panic; Ididnt know what was causing the pain or which direction to swim to avoid it.

My heart was racing and every one of my muscles tensed, then went into spasm. I was in blinding pain all over. Ilost the ability to speak or think. My internal voice had stopped. I could barely breathe. Ibelieved I was going to die.

I tried to swim, but felt very tired. I thought that if I went to sleep, it would all be easier when I woke up. But I went into autopilot and somehow managed to get myself to the rocks. There were thin red lines across my right shin that looked as if theyd been drawn with a pen.

A scuba diver ran over. He said hed seen box jellyfish in the area. Iwouldnt have been able to see them in the water. I didnt know then that they are one of the deadliest creatures on Earth. Their tentacles pump venom into the skin that attacks blood cells and can lead to cardiac arrest. He told me Id been stung by one and needed to get to hospital immediately.

All my conscious decision-making facilities had left me, and I wasnt able to process what he said. I walked away. He called after me, but my only instinct was to get home. The next thing I knew, I was in my apartment with a bag of peas on my leg.

I still dont understand the sequence of events. I lay down, and for an eternity I didnt move. I didnt feel like Id been awake or asleep. Icouldnt think of what to do or how to communicate. I was a prisoner in my own body.

After a day or two, the poison began subsiding. My foot had swollen massively my little toe was the size of a big toe. Those thin red lines had started corroding, and the poison had eaten away at my skin, revealing the muscle and bone underneath. Itlooked as if someone had taken a jagged axe and tried to chop off my foot. I managed to call Chloe and show her. The next thing Iknew, wewere on our way to hospital.

The doctor asked why I hadnt come in sooner. I tried to explain. Iasked if there was anything he could do, but he said the toxins had gone through my system: there was nothing they could do except clean the wound. He told me I was lucky the jellyfish had stung me on my leg; if it had been on my chest, I would not have made it.

I left Australia pretty quickly afterthat. I have a scar, still walk with a limp and have pain in my hip.Iwonder about the long-term effect on my brain and body as a result of the toxins, but theres very little data on this. I think my delay ingetting treatment was down to the shock.

Chloe and I are still friends, although the relationship didnt work out. I now run a startupin Silicon Valley. Sometimes I think about setting up abox jellyfish survivors group Indigenous Australians say that youinhabit the power of any animal that stings you. That makes us pretty indestructible.

As told to Sophie Haydock

Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/29/stung-by-one-deadliest-creatures-earth-experience

Equity review: hotly toxic tale of women on Wall Street is a greedy treat

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This accomplished finance drama feels fresh for its gender-switch dynamics but did all the men need to be quite so dim?

Equity is likely one of the more realistic financial sector films out there because I had no idea what the hell anybody was talking about. Well, thats not exactly true. Director Meera Menon and her three leads, Anna Gunn, Sarah Megan Thomas and Alysia Reiner, extract the drama from Amy Foxs screenplay while still leaving the jargon intact. I dont know squat about IPOs (if I did, Id be on my yacht) but I do know a juicy morality play when I see it, and Equity takes us inside modern Wall Street in a unique and gripping manner.

You may have noticed that all the names listed so far are women. That this is a female look at Wall Street is more than a marketing gimmick. Like our main character Naomi Bishop (Gunn) this movie strives to make it on its own terms, avoiding opportunities to draw attention to it being any less of a corporate thriller than one starring men. Of course, when your lead is, in fact, a woman, as is her (perhaps untrustworthy) second-in-command (Thomas) as well as the old college chum now working for the government investigating securities fraud (Reiner), we are seeing this familiar world through new eyes.

New for film audiences, that is, not new for actual working women for whom announcing pregnancy is met with a steely congratulations which implies your career is over, how dare you knife me in the back this way?

The actual plot of Equity is, to a degree, less interesting than the keenly observed moments of the world of high finance. Bishop is a big shot banker who brings companies in on their initial public offerings. Again, I dont precisely know how this works, but Menon makes every scene understandable to dunces like me who will never know the difference between buying stocks or playing roulette. Bishops last deal went bust because the client decided, at the last minute, that he didnt trust her. The rumour is as simple as he didnt like her dress. But this new company, a new social network run by an obnoxious pipsqueak in a hoodie (Samuel Roukin), is going to make everyone a zillion dollars.

equity

There are, however, a few problems. Bishop discovers from a hacker (another woman) that the new company is not quite as impervious to attack as they claim. Then theres Bishops boyfriend (James Purefoy), who is some other kind of banker, but is corrupt, and tries to squeeze info out of Bishop. She wont offer it up, though. She is ruthless in business, but never dishonest. But her long put-upon assistant might be the weak link. Meanwhile Samantha the investigator (who has two children and a female partner back home) uses her female wiles with men to snoop around for illegalities.

This all builds to a sequence where everyone runs around the floor of the stock exchange shouting: Buy! buy! buy! but by this time youll realise that no matter what the outcome is, this is a toxic and irredeemable system. (Much like steroids in sports, isnt just time to assume that everyone making real money on Wall Street is using insider info?)

There are a number of fascinating themes to chew on in Foxs script, but for me nothing tops watching Bishop tussle with the knowledge that her companys product may be flawed. The implication is all about how it will effect the deal and her perception in the companys eyes, and if shell be indemnified once the service is inevitably revealed to be bunk. Not once does the issue of screwing over the consumer come up. Keep in mind, this is the good guy were talking about!

All of the performances are top notch, and if theres any justice Equity will propel Anna Gunn to A-list status. The only by-the-numbers characters, actually, are the men. Purefoy is just a boy version of a femme fatale, and Alyssa Reiners cheap suit-wearing partner is straight from central casting. Is Meera Menon so dedicated a feminist that shell intentionally make the male characters one-dimensional, to counteract that hundreds of movies with bland wives and girlfriends? Probably not, but for a movie all about deception for a bigger payoff, Id like to pretend that its so.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/28/equity-review-hotly-toxic-tale-of-women-on-wall-street-is-a-greedy-treat

Leading Women Are Becoming Less Sexualized In Video Games, Study Finds

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Playable female video game characters have become less sexualized in recent years, according to a new study that complicates narratives about how women are represented in the medium.

The paper, “Sexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games across 31 Years,” examines how women have appeared in 571 video games from the early 1980s through 2014. It found that sexualization peaked in the 1990s, when three-dimensional graphics became the norm, and has trended downward in recent years. 

Journal of Communication
A chart from the study shows how female characters have been sexualized in video games over time.

“We attribute this decline to an increasing female interest in gaming coupled with the heightened criticism levied at the industry’s male hegemony,” the study’s authors write. 

The findings are anything but straightforward, though. It’s true that playable, “primary” female characters have become less sexualized over time. But non-playable, “secondary” female characters still tend to be objectified. And the study found that more often than not, when women do appear in games, they’re secondary characters, not primary ones.

Journal of Communication
The study divided its data into four distinct “time blocks,” with the first representing 1983-1991, the second 1992-1998, the third 1999-2006 and the fourth 2007-2014. As you can see, most female characters fill “secondary” roles today.

The study also found that women are as sexualized in games rated “Teen,” for ages 13 and up, as they are in “Mature” games for people over 16 years old.

“Our findings indicate that children who play video games likely encounter sexualized imagery prior to adulthood,” the authors write. “This may indicate that video games have normalized sexualization of female characters across audiences of varying ages.”

So, all in all, the data doesn’t lend itself to easy conclusions. Sexualization may be decreasing overall, but women still aren’t represented equally in video games, and they’re commonly objectified in games targeted at younger audiences.

In-Depth Research

The analysis is remarkable in that it observes video games across genres and budgets over a substantial period of time. While you might visualize modern AAA titles like “Assassin’s Creed” or “Mass Effect” when you think of video games, the medium is much more diverse, with an extensive history acknowledged by this study.

Teresa Lynch, a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University who led the research, said the findings disrupt conventional thinking about female video game characters.

“Part of the reason that we believe previous analyses have painted such a dismal picture of female representation in games is because they’ve sampled only top-selling games,” Lynch wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

“When people think of what female characters look like in games, they’re often thinking of those found in AAA titles and on top 10 lists because these are prominent figures in games, they’re recognizable, sometimes staples of a series,” she added. “These characters disproportionately skew perceptions of the industry’s styling of female characters because they’re visible and, often, popular.” 

Indiana University
Teresa Lynch, lead author ofSexy, Strong, and Secondary: A Content Analysis of Female Characters in Video Games across 31 Years.”

Researchers established precise criteria to measure sexualization in video games, assigning variables for accentuation of a character’s buttocks, bare midriffs and so on. They collected data by watching five-minute gameplay clips on YouTube, avoiding marketing materials and non-playable cinematic sequences.

That’s not to suggest promotional images don’t play a role in how people perceive video games but such images were beyond the scope of this study.

“Advertisements, for instance, seem to exaggerate characters’ physical features in ways that aren’t always consistent with how they appear in the gameplay,” Lynch said Wednesday in a press release about the research.

Take “Tomb Raider,” for example. A 1997 “pinup” feature in the magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly depicted the original game’s hero, Lara Croft, in a swimsuit that exposed a lot of her body. While the character was sexualized in the game, as the study indicates, her actual, polygonal representation bore little resemblance to these promotional renders:

http://readingegm.tumblr.com/post/93246367226/egm-97-this-is-like-a-greatest-hits-of-things

One limiting factor to the study’s approach is that the data was gathered from observing video clips. Video games are interactive, and this approach can’t account for how players might interact with a character over time.

“This is certainly not a one-stop, be-all-end-all study,” Lynch told HuffPost. “We have limitations, and our goal was never to say that sexy characters are all bad or that there is no circumstance in which sexualization is appropriate. Given the richness of game environments alongside the potentially powerful roles these female characters fill, there are tons of ways in which the context can influence perceptions of these characters.”

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/women-sexualized-video-games-study_us_579b61cde4b08a8e8b5da7cd?section=