Yeah, the sheer domination by numbers of masculine voices - even when
they're not *trying *to argue from a particularly masculine perspective,
can just be draining in situations like this. *Especially* when they're not
trying to argue from a particularly masculine perspective, frankly, because
it's very hard to get across "I know you're not *trying *to ignore the
value of a slightly different perspective, but..." without making them feel
like they need to defend themselves and go on about how we're reading into
them things they're not saying, they're not biased, men are capable of
being open-minded, there's no single male perspective, etc. All those
things are true, and before any of our male allies on this list get upset,
I want to acknowledge that...but at the same time, that gender-related
invisible knapsack <http://ted.coe.wayne.edu/ele3600/mcintosh.html> can
just sort of steer male-dominated discussions in directions that a more
gender-balanced conversation might not swerve, or might not swerve so
strongly.
Commons, especially, is just completely dominated by certain viewpoints
with regard to sexual images, and Sarah, you get tons of my respect for
just *attempting *to function there, because I certainly can't do it. I
might be able to handle an inadvertent boys-zone atmosphere - I hang out on
enwp, after all - but my blood pressure just can't handle the level of
aggression Commons bring to bear on anyone who dares speak for the deletion
of potentially-damaging images.
Most days, it's hard to feel like it's worth it to join conversations that
are already immovable brick walls of a particular, usually-unconscious male
POV.
-Fluff
P.S. On re-reading the threads from my original email, I note that I was
wrong about the "100% male" thing - Beria Lima commented twice. So uh,
99.999% male?
On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
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(a)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<---…
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…
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_…,
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*
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