Hi Anne,
I totally agree with your assessment, the Amish/Mennonite sense seems to be far more prominent from just a quick survey. I'm on my phone right now so I can't move things around, but I support whoever does.
Kei
Sent from my HTC One™ S on T-Mobile. America’s First Nationwide 4G Network.
----- Reply message ----- From: "Risker" risker.wp@gmail.com To: "Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Gendergap] how sewing circles became secret queer celebrity love fests Date: Mon, Jun 3, 2013 11:27 AM
Wow. I looked at that article and found masses of unreferenced allegations about people, although it appears all are dead, so BLP violations can't be claimed. Frankly, I don't think a person's sexuality should be mentioned in an article about sexuality if it isn't mentioned in the persons biographical article. One often looks at articles like these and comes to the conclusion that it's at least partly based on unsourced allegations, rumours, and urban legends. I do note that the women's sexuality is discussed in about half the articles, so that is somewhat reassuring.
On the other hand, I'm not certain that the usage of the term "sewing circles" in reference to lesbianism was common, and it's not around in a lot of references. It absolutely is not more common than the use of the term to refer to groups of women who actually sew - like that marginalized group of Amish and Mennonites who continue to have regular sewing circles even today. Of course, they don't read online encyclopedias so they don't know that our project is suggesting their activity is a fun-filled afternoon of sexual frolicking. My feeling is that the article titled "sewing circle" should refer to needlework and this article renamed to "sewing circles (lesbian groups)" or something like that.
Risker/Anne
On 3 June 2013 03:32, Sarah Stierch sarah.stierch@gmail.com wrote:
Where I expected to read about sewing circles and sewing bees...
I get an article about lesbian/bisexual actresses secretly having relationships?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewing_circles
The best part is I just linked it off of an article about Sarah Allen, the "Founding Mother" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I almost feel like I should remove the link until the article is improved.
O_o O_o
/FACEPALM
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*Sarah Stierch* *Museumist, open culture advocate, and Wikimedian* *www.sarahstierch.com*
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