[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

Fri Oct 12 17:01:52 UTC 2007

Il giorno 12/ott/07, alle ore 18:47, Florence Devouard ha scritto:

> <random thought>
> When I was young, most references to gay people led to a city name,
> which was - apparently - a major location point for gay people to live
> in (and have fun, this was pre-AIDS time).
> AIDS crisis started when I was a pre-teen, and I remember this city
> being named over and over because of all the poor guys who got hit  
> by it.
> I am pretty sure that city I am thinking of was San Francisco  
> actually.
> </random thought>

That's a so sad chapter of LGBT history, related to the illusion that  
"being gay" means "being ruthless and with a permissive morale". We  
could open a long interesting discussion about this.

But first of all, I would like to adress another problem: we are not  
- or personally, *I* am not - making a comparison beteween USA and  
Egypt. This is not a "USA vs. Egypt war", for me.
Personally, I have no problem with the choose of Alexandria as venue  
for Wikimania08. All the bidders were the same for me.

There's no problem if the jury or the WMF or whatever say "We choose  
Alexandria, we know there were problems with LGBT and we didin't care  
about it", or "We choose Alexandra, but we didn't know about the  
problems with LGBT. We're sorry, but for this year, this is the  
choose. Next year we'll be more caring".

The problem is that I see people pretending there's no problem at all  
with LGBT in Egypt. That all the LGBT people that are complaining are  
crazy, paranoid, or just lying. This is not acceptable. *There are*  
problems in Egypt regarding the LGBT community: this is a fact.