[WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

Sat Nov 25 23:43:30 UTC 2006

Responses to several subthreads, all mixed up:

So, Alphax said something... ill-considered at best. If I hadn't been
one of the first to see the post, I wouldn't have responded, either,
not out of intimidation but because I don't see the need to pile on.
It was a tactless and ill-judged posting, and someone should have said
something about it; someone did and I don't see the need for
*everyone* to, particularly if it had been then left and everyone went
on talking about the primary topic of the thread.

It's interesting for me to read of the private responses kc has
received: I find it hard to think of myself feeling intimidated at the
thought of responding to that, and I normally consider myself more
timid than most. If I ever feel intimidated on the list (and sometimes
I do), it's because I think I'm less knowledgeable about the subject
being discussed or because I have a very unpopular opinion; this
feeling is not unique to Wikimedia lists, and not even different for
me on mostly-female lists. I'm surprised to hear of so many women
feeling intimidated over concerns of sexism here because I simply
haven't experienced it -- or perhaps I have and am oblivious to it.

(As for the idea that any criticism of the position that there is bias
here would be held as evidence of misogyny -- if the criticism
expressed so far were more genuine and less antagonistic it would be
better received. Responding antagonistically and then holding up the
fact that you were attacked for it does not help make the argument
that reasonable criticism also would be attacked.)

I don't know of any of our policies in particular that are unfriendly
to women, and so I don't know how they would be changed to be more
female-friendly. If I do see a problem it is with the users and their
interactions and not with the policies themselves, which seem fairly
neutral; I'd like to see examples of policies and processes that
others believe *are* harmful in this way.

If anything, I think "female" topics (whatever they may be) would be
more welcoming -- less contentious, fewer people fighting over them.
(Aside from the hot-buttons: abortion, etc.) My own areas of interest
are for the most part uncontentious; I don't know that I would have
the patience to stick around long if my primary interests were
hot-button politics or religion, where personal beliefs,
characteristics, and affiliations of all sorts are brought into the
unending arguments.

The thread has gone somewhat off the original topic in discussing the
extreme harassment against female editors, which, yes, I have
experienced as well. Everyone agrees that it's horrible and generally
that the people who engage in it should be banned into oblivion.
However, I don't think that it is Wikipedia policy or process enabling
it, save that Wikipedia is part of the internet and that sadly a woman
who reveals her gender online is probably going to be harassed; really
the only way to avoid it anywhere is anonymity. (Men have been
harassed this way on WP too, though it's indeed less common, and they
are only targeted by plain creepy jerks, not creepy jerk misogynists.)

The coverage issues that the thread started with are more interesting
to me. Why are topics that are traditionally of female interest,
whatever they are, less well-covered? My
completely-unsupported-by-evidence anecdotal conjecture is that the
intersection of people interested in those topics with the people who
spend a lot of time online and think it would be enjoyable to edit an
online encyclopedia is somewhat less than that with, say, those who
are interested in computing and military history. (I'm not one of the
people, incidentally: I have little knowledge of many traditionally
female-interest topics, which is part of why I spend so much time
online in the first place.)

And I don't know that changing the way we work is the way to change
that -- we have to bring them here first. It seems that they don't
care much that we exist, or realize that they can edit, or know what
the policies are that they might object to; if we want these subjects
covered I would suggest reaching out to the places where enthusiasts
of these topics share information (magazines, specialty forums, etc)
and helping them get started, maybe even encouraging them to adapt or
release material they've already written elsewhere. But as far as I
can tell the potential writers aren't even here to do that.

-Kat

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