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@hotmail.com / lennart@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@bigpond.com
To: gendergap@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@hotmail.com / lennart@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@hotmail.com
To: gendergap@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@hotmail.com / lennart@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@wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:33:40 -0800
> To: gendergap@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@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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gendergap mailing list
> Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

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