Sorry if this gets a little off topic from the actual focus of the subjects. I just need to personally vent and this gives me a chance (thanks Katherine). I assume I can't be the only one who feels this way, and it seems you might also.

I totally understand the "it depresses me" situation. I got involved in some of the discussions about the women's foo categories only to get bombarded with comments when I brought up "I don't know if anyone here is even a woman involved, from what I know, I think I might be the only woman here," and then to be snapped at "How do you know I'm not a woman?" by someone with a male user name (Jeremy). I felt like a total fail, and basically left the conversation only to get comments on my talk page. I have officially declared I'm "burnt out" on any and all gender conversations, specifically triggered by the recent category situation.

95% if not more of the people discussing all of these things are, from what I believe, identifying on Wikipedia as the masculine. It's really troubling for me, and right now I'm at the point where I just can't fight it right now. I'm feeling depressed about it, hopeless, and all of the other fun things that go with burn out. (Funny, I didn't suffer burn out this severe when I was a fellow, but I did have two minor bouts of burn out during that year, this is by far the worst)

I basically had to stop doing the painful nomination and arguing about nudity and women's images on Commons. Part of this was because it was so demoralizing and depressing, and the other was the repeated "You'll never be an admin on Commons if you keep doing this," and I always wanted to be an admin on Commons. The fact that I let this argument - being made by male Commonists - trigger me to not participate in the conversations is an entirely different psychological issue in itself! Oy vey.

Gah. :(

-Sarah

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Katherine Casey <fluffernutter.wiki@gmail.com> wrote:

Came across this kerfuffle today. I'd love to see what more gendergap-focused people think about the following progression of events (note: the image is NSFW, but each of the links I'm providing are SFW if you don't click through to the image/article):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Exhibitionism#Image_at_top_of_page <---discussion about whether to use an identifiable woman's topless photo on the top of an enwp article. The person raising the discussion notes that "I find it hard to believe that this woman wants her picture on WP, and I don't think we have a right to show her because of a momentary indiscretion in a public place."

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Mardi_Gras_Flashing_-_Color.jpg#File:Mardi_Gras_Flashing_-_Color.jpg <---Same image is nominated for deletion on Commons, with similar rationale

The image is kept.
Discussion on enwp spins off from the same issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLPN#Photos_of_private_people_doing_things_they_might_be_embarrassed_about_later , splitting between one faction saying "It's legal, so it's fine" and another saying "It's a matter of ethics, not legality."

Speaking personally, my takeaway from reading through this situation has gone through "mortification in empathy for the image subject, who was almost certainly drunk and unable to consent", "frustration with Commons's dismissive approach to the questioning of identfiable sexual images", and finally "realization that in all three discussions, I see no users who I know to be female. Not one. It seems quite likely that the issue of whether this woman's right to be protected by BLP extends to images of her breasts...is being discussed 100% by men."

I don't quite know what my point is here, other than to note that to me, this feels very, very representative of the way women and women's issues are treated on WP and on Commons, even when we're supposed to be hyper-aware of the gendergap and its effects, and it depresses me.

-Fluffernutter

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Sarah Stierch
Museumist, open culture advocate, and Wikimedian

www.sarahstierch.com