Hello,
I certainly meant no disrespect. Indeed, that's why I am on this mailinglist. And I
look forward to the time when a larger group from this list can meet, even if I don't
drink beer myself :-)
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com / lennart(a)wikimedia.se
Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
From: frazera(a)bigpond.com
To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:15:40 +1100
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
Hello Lennart,
Thank you for your reply. You made no errors. I was
explaining the feminist take on the word 'lady'. I was not sure that you were
joking by using the term, so I attempted to eliminate the factors which would
normally point to it being a joke. Hence my examination of exclamation markings,
etc. Had we spoken about this face to face our normal body language would have
clearly indicated we were speaking lightheartedly; boasting our prowess on this
matter over a glass of wine, so to speak. Black words on white screen
backgrounds lack those important nuances. However, thank you for the
extrapolation on the different words.
It is not bad phrasing; I fully understand that it is not
bad phrasing. My response to your email was simply about 'choice'; that is which
words we choose to use and their impact on society. As we are talking on a
'Gendergap' page I thought it appropriate and reasonable to discuss this point,
but in replying to you I took my explanation to the world of the feminist
thinker, and perhaps that is not appropriate for this list.
Wow, I am stoked, thank you so much for understanding the
simply put discussion about 'male' vs 'female'. Not too many people stop
to
think that our constructed formatting follows male-gendered lines, that
is, in the example given, the word 'male' always prominent while
'female' requires another click of the drop down. Today a
similar inequality is still evident in many of our documents, for
example, our own Rules of Association speak in terms of 'he'. 'She' is
taken for granted as read where 'he' appears in various clauses of the
document. Another example, if I may detain you just a little longer, is
our federal and State legislation here in Australia. Up
to the recent past it was always written in terms of the male gender, and
in present recent decades our legislators introduced Acts of
parliament to guide the adoption of plain speech in legislation, and encourage
the introduction of 'non-gender specific language', in an effort, inter alia,
to recognise that nowadays in legislation it is considered to be
discriminatory when the syntax uses only one gender. Your comment: 'to make
the genders equally prominent' is a commendable thought indeed. Thank
you.
Kind regards,
Anne
----- Original Message -----
From:
Lennart Guldbrandsson
To: Gendergap
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:06
PM
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure
which is more depressing
Hello,
First of all, let me explain that English is not my
native language. Sometimes that means that I make errors in grammar or
spelling. In this case, however, that is not the issue. I know the linguistic
value of the term "lady". In Swedish, we have a similar distinction between
"dam" ('lady') and "kvinna" ('woman').
Then we come to the real cause:
the term "find the lady" is not my invention. It's a stock phrase, that
specifically refer to a game, that is also called "three card monte", as you
can see in the article I linked to. In this context, trying to use image
galleries to point out that we have a lack of women as editors, "three card
monte" would have made a meaningless reference. I could have used other
phrases, such as "cherchez la femme" (which is more sinister, I feel), or
"OMG, there's a woman on the interwebs" (which is even less respectful,
and
less common), but as an example, I think I got the point across. I apologize
if you felt that it was a bad phrasing.
I too dislike any programming
designs that use male as the standard. I do not think, though, that we should
make female the standard, either. It would make for many false positives (we
know that people don't read all the instructions before clicking "yes"),
which
would make it appear that we suddenly have 95 % new female editors. What we
should do is make the genders equally prominent, if that is not the case
already.
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart
Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost:
l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com / lennart(a)wikimedia.se
Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
From: frazera(a)bigpond.com
To: gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Thu,
22 Dec 2011 11:06:49 +1100
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is
more depressing
Hi Lennart,
On 22 December 2011 Lennart Lennart Guldbrandsson
wrote:
"..."Find the lady"?"
If you had placed an exclamation mark after the
word 'lady', rather than a question over the whole sentence, I would have got
the joke about 'lady'. In the absence of an intended irony with the use of the
word 'lady' I'll take it you really mean 'lady'. Therefore I'd
like to
let you know that the women's movement (historically - first, second and third
waves) have fought against honorific titles such as 'lady' to describe and
understand 'what women want'.
At the very least the term 'lady' is not
meaningful across cultural lines north, south, east, or west of our
world. European tradition, particularly English, is where it is the most
meaningful in the most constricting and negative of senses where it has been
used against females - girls (children) and women - in that
rather than a nation socially growing it's female population in all facets of
life's energy and creativity, females has been kept down over the centuries
and one of the ways of penetrating the female psyche to reinforce the
necessity of this down trodden existence is to remind a female that she much
be a 'lady' and ladies don't do this and that, but must do this and that,
all
decided by a masculine controlled society and reinforced over the
years by compliant females being taught to support this social
construct.
So Lennart, women and girls want to decide the simple
and the enormity of their lives. A great number of females whose consciousness
has been raised and so recognise the existing inequalities over all
societies will not want to be named 'ladies' in discussions about what women
want.
Here's a simple dilemma right now - for the programmers.
Why do the drop down windows on many sign up sights have in the window 'male'
and if you are a female you have to click on the down button and select
'female'. This question is not trite by any means. It goes to the heart of how
our female and male programmers construct and think about what they are
implementing. My question is: Do female programmers use this same format? Has
any female programmer been bold enough to reverse the order? Let
the 'female' word be in the static window, and let the males have to
click the drop down to select their gender.
Anne Frazer
Wikimedia Australia
----- Original Message -----
From:
Lennart Guldbrandsson
To: Gendergap
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 4:41
AM
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure
which is more depressing
Maybe a campaign, based on the phrase "Find the
lady"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Find_the_Lady
Best
wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 -
12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com /
lennart(a)wikimedia.se
Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
From: l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com
To:
gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:38:24
+0000
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more
depressing
Yes, that is a good idea.
Here are plenty of pics to
choose
from:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_meetups
Best
wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 -
12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com /
lennart(a)wikimedia.se
Användarsida:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg:
http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige
http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
From: erik(a)wikimedia.org
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:33:40 -0800
To:
gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure
which is more depressing
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 9:31 AM,
Lennart Guldbrandsson
<l_guldbrandsson(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
> Perhaps the solution is to create a gendergap
template,
instead of having to
> bring up the same points over and
over.
I think we should have a re-usable collage of all the
photos of
meetups attended (almost) exclusively by male
Wikipedians.
with the
caption "Notice anything missing?".
Sometimes pictures are
more
persuasive than text.
--
Erik
Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia
Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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