[Gendergap] User blocked for sexist comment, many disagree - it wasn't sexist.

[Bjoern Hoehrmann]

* Sarah Stierch wrote:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_for_Baseball_Bugs

User Medeis does not identify as female in any easily recognizable way.
It is difficult to avoid gender in the english language without running
into other problems (repeating the name all the time is likely seen as
aggressive, for instance). When a misplaced "he" slips, getting caught
would be embarassing and if you feel like responding, deflecting that
with an attempt at humour is quite normal, as is making reference to the
issue, so the "*That* clarifies it. :)" is quite expected.

Knowing that I would either not point the gender mixup out at all, or at
the least, would make it a <small>(...)</small> top-level comment rather
than a response without deemphasis, so the information is there, but
people would not feel particularily inclined to respond.

If I wanted to help the blocked user to avoid this kind of remark, I'd
send them a private message linking a tutorial that discusses ways to
write in a gender neutral manner and other gender etiquette issues that
are relevant on Wikipedia, like whether it's okay to say "she" when the
name sounds very female but you cannot be certain of it, or how to react
when you are mistaken, as may have been the case here. I could not find
one in the english Wikipedia namespace though, it may have to be written
first.

>The first "unblock" statement shares the link to the joke and the reprimand
>by an admin on the users page telling them they can get blocked for ongoing
>comments like that. Fluffernutter points out that there is a "boyzone" in
>Wikipedia and that it's not right to mock a users gender. I do appreciate
>Fluffernuter speaking up about this, I know it's not always something that
>she likes to get mixed up with (so to say - as we talked about in IRC
>today).

Well, "boyzone" might not be a good word to use when you want to convey
that gender should not be highlighted inappropriately. It's been some
time, but I've been part of online fora frequented mostly by young women
and remarks like the one here directed at me were quite normal and
mutually understood as good humour in almost all cases. It doesn't take
all that much, in the right context, to make a similar remark that would
actually hurt whoever it is directed at, though. I got that aswell.

>Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, an educational environment. And when people
>have to start questioning "Is this offensive or not? Is it sexist or not?"
>then clearly there is a problem with something in the culture and system.

There are actually two dimensions to "sexist". If we all agree that
sexist remarks are bad and wrong, then remarks you do not find bad or
wrong cannot be sexist, so you have a conflict between the intuitive
understanding and the textbook definition. It's normal that our intu-
itions are sometimes a bit off. Centuries ago it may have been normal
to say and mean certain things about women that today everybody would
readily recognize as highly offensive, or hilariously ludicrous. Such
changes do not occur over night and everwhere at the same pace.

If we do not have to question whether, say, "a woman's place is in the
kitchen" is offensive, that may mean we all agree that's her place. If
the exchange had been "Her current age is a prime number", "*That*
clarifies it. :)" we wouldn't find that offensive and don't have a word
like "sexism" for the remark, we rather wouldn't understand where this
is coming from. Whether it's gender or prime numbers, the two comments
didn't really contribute to the discussion, and wandering into the off-
topic quickly leads to communication problems (see my initial comments).

It seems obvious to me that no offense was intended here. I very much
doubt that blocking a user will help him avoid communication accidents
in the future. Neither would I expect an administrator leaving notes on
sexist jokes on a user's pillory-esque public talk page to help much. I
would be much more impressed by a brief and carefully worded private
note explaining some other user's perspective on what I wrote with no
expectation on me to take any action (including responding to the mail).

Next time I am about to write something similar, I would have this on
my mind and would try to look at that through this other perspective I
have learned about and could adapt without feeling uncomfortable with
my own intuition. In contrast, if I feel like I should react to such a
note, I would have to decide whether to reject the criticism, or admit
to having behaved poorly, or something similar; any of that would annoy
me a lot, and next time I would primarily recall being annoyed, rather
than concentrate on how my communications come across. My experience is
quite universally that the subtle and helpful approach works much better
in cases where there is hope for a net positive change.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern at hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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