> On 30 March 2013 22:39, Daniel and Elizabeth Case
> <
dancase@frontiernet.net>wrote:
>
>>
>> >Thank you for sharing this Jane. It's amazing that it's still such an
>> issue but yeah, a great example of how deeply >rooted our presumptions
>> are.
>>
>> This actually happened to me, in a way, with one now long-departed
>> Wikipedia editor. Despite a female-suffixed username*, I assumed this
>> editor was a male because she was a flagrant asshole in some AfDs in a
>> way
>> that (in my experience) only men ever are. I was actually stunned to find
>> out she was indeed a she.
>>
>> Daniel Case
>>
>> *As most of us know, username-based gender assumptions cut both ways.
>> Users Hersfold and Nancy (see the explanation on his userpage) are both
>> men, yet regularly deal with new editors assuming based on their names
>> that
>> they’re female. And I know they’re not the only ones.
>>
>>
>>
> Hersfold and Nancy aren't the only ones. I've almost come to assume that
> if a username "sounds" feminine, it's probably attached to a man. Almost
> every editor I know whose username ends in an "a" is male. And many
> female editors have "male" sounding usernames.
>
> If Wikipedia has taught me one thing, it is never to assume anything about
> the identity of the person on the other side of a username: not age, not
> gender, not orientation, not geographical location, or a million other
> things that we tend to use to categorize people.
>
> Risker/Anne
>