I've heard about this kind of thing happening to other women in Wikipedia,
but this is the first time this has ever happened to me personally. A few
weeks ago, I got a phone call from a guy who said he wanted to talk to me
about what it was like being the parent of children with special needs. He
also said that he got my number from my church, so I told him that I was
busy at the moment (which I was) and that he could call me back later.
Yesterday afternoon, he called me back. I asked him where he got my number
and how he found out about my parenting status. He said that he read what
I had written on Wikipedia about my children, and that he wanted to talk to
me about it because he was also developmentally disabled and had some
"syndrome" that I didn't recognize. (It wasn't Asberger's, I don't
think.) He also said that he had gotten my number from "some church
thing," and that they had confirmed my phone number.
I told him that it was very inappropriate for him to call me, and he said,
"Well, you said I could call you back!" I answered that I was in the
middle of something the first time he called me, repeated how inappropriate
he was being, and that I wasn't willing to speak with him over the phone.
He said, "You said all that on Wikipedia," and I said that I didn't have my
phone number there, to which he responded, "But your email address is
there," and I said he could email me but calling me was again,
inappropriate, and we hung up.
Like I said, it was the first time something like this has happened, even
after more than four years of active participation in WP. It's somewhat
disconcerting to me. When I think about it, this guy had to actively hunt
down my phone number. He looked at my userpage, which has infoboxes
stating that I'm a parent of two children with developmental disabilities,
that I live in a small town in Idaho, and that I'm Catholic. (This makes
me want to remove those infoboxes.) He actually went to the trouble of
calling one of the the two Catholic churches in my town and confirm my
number with them, which they did quite honestly because I'm on a church
committee and active in the community. Freaky, huh?
I know that you need to tell people when something like this happens,
especially people in your life. (I haven't been able to tell my husband
about it yet; he's been working all weekend and we're coming off of a
particularly stressful family situation.) So that's what I'm doing now. I
can totally see why so many women don't identify their gender on WP now.
I'd also like to get some advice from the members of this list, and to see
if anyone else has had a similar experience and what they did about it.
Thanks,
Christine
--
Christine W. Meyer
User: Figureskatingfan
christinewmeyer(a)gmail.com