On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 3:09 PM, KIZU Naoko <aphaia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In my observation, German female editors tend to (or
not care of)
using Benutzer (user as male) to mention themselves in their writing
I do believe this is your observation, but I am German, and I am
female, and I would appreciate it if I was not addressed as
"Benutzer".
Strangely, I sometimes call myself "Benutzer" without noticing it, but
if someone addresses me as "Benutzerin" (female), it feels like it's
more directed to me. So it might be that the women you observed are
just like me. Also, it might me that they want to avoid anyone knowing
their gender for fear of harassment, ad hominem argument etc.
So...
It's no simple
question if we should make it clear whether a user is male or female.
I agree with you. It should absolutely be the users own choice. But
right now, you don't have a choice. If I want to get a user account,
it says "Benutzerkonto" (German: Account for male users)
Besides that, in feminism it has been pointed out
addressing
explicitly someone female as such when their gender/sex is not a
matter is a sort of discrimination (the earliest mention was iirc
Barkoff 1968 in a study of English linguistic)
That might or might not be true, but right now Wikipedia is addressing
me as a male although my gender/sex is not a matter. And I'm pretty
sure this also is a sort of discrimination from a feminist point of
view. ;)
I strongly support Deboras suggestions. In many cases there are gender
neutral words available that could be used.
all best,
Lena
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 5:40 AM, Lena ...
<lenarohrbach(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
this is Lena, Germany. I'm one of those women Wikimedia would like to
encourage (I'm interested, but I haven't edited much more than a few typing
errors anonymously).
Like Béria, I don't think male words will push people out of Wikipedia -
that is, they won't push out the women that are already in. But I do think
that female words could encourage some of the women who are still hesitating
and unsure. It says: "Yes, we're talking to you!"
I don't feel unwanted if someone doesn't use the female words. But I don't
feel wanted either. I someone does use female words, it feels like it's more
directed to me.
(I don't want it to work like that, by the way. But unfortunately, it does
work like this for me.)
all best,
Lena
On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Béria Lima <beria.lima(a)wikimedia.pt> wrote:
Well, particulary, I have no problem with the male "Usuário" (in
portuguese). And sincerely, I don't think the fact of see a male word will
push me out Wikippedia. We are quite used to use a male word in portuguese
when we don't know the gender of someone, but yes, would be nice to see a
"Usuária" in my page :D
_____
Béria Lima
Wikimedia Portugal
(351) 963 953 042
Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que
estamos a fazer.
2011/2/5 Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
Hi,
one example of discrimination in the software we use (MediaWiki) is
the way user pages are designated and displayed. If you create a user
profile, your page is called "User:Yournamehere". This works fine in
English, but in some other languages, the default for "User:" is the
male translation. Some have aliases (but always display the male
expression), others don't.
There's actually a bug report about this for Polish:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17160
I am wondering:
- Are there people on this list affected by this? If so, how do you
feel about it - how important would it be to you to get this fixed?
- Are there other examples of discriminatory language (or interfaces)
that are built into the software?
Thanks,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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--
KIZU Naoko / 木津尚子
member of Wikimedians in Kansai / 関西ウィキメディアユーザ会
http://kansai.wikimedia.jp
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