Hi Björn, thanks for a very thoughtful email. I just want to point out that the problematic comment the user made was not calling another user a woman. It was that, when told they WERE a woman, the user said that "THAT clarifies it" and then, when told that that was a bit snarky, clarified that what he meant was "they can't be a woman, women don't act like that." It's the "women don't act like that" part that I (and apparently I alone?) find problematic. Think about hearing that statement if you were, say, a M2F transsexual, who has been rejected by people before for not being a "real" woman. And now someone comes along and says that since you don't act in a manner they approve of, you're not a woman? That's one more rejection, one more invalidation, of you as a person.
Invalidating someone's life experiences or gender identity is offensive. I'm very sorry that so few people seem to realize the damage that words like that can do, and I'm even sorrier than so many people seem to think that I'm a terrible, offensive person for having pointed out in public that these things can be offensive to real people.
I'm greatly discouraged by the feedback I'm getting here, the loudest of which seems to be telling me that if someone makes an offensive comment, it's incredibly rude to tell them they're being offensive.
-Fluffernutter
On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Bjoern Hoehrmann derhoermi@gmx.netwrote:
- Sarah Stierch wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Inciden...
User Medeis does not identify as female in any easily recognizable way. It is difficult to avoid gender in the english language without running into other problems (repeating the name all the time is likely seen as aggressive, for instance). When a misplaced "he" slips, getting caught would be embarassing and if you feel like responding, deflecting that with an attempt at humour is quite normal, as is making reference to the issue, so the "*That* clarifies it. :)" is quite expected.
Knowing that I would either not point the gender mixup out at all, or at the least, would make it a <small>(...)</small> top-level comment rather than a response without deemphasis, so the information is there, but people would not feel particularily inclined to respond.
If I wanted to help the blocked user to avoid this kind of remark, I'd send them a private message linking a tutorial that discusses ways to write in a gender neutral manner and other gender etiquette issues that are relevant on Wikipedia, like whether it's okay to say "she" when the name sounds very female but you cannot be certain of it, or how to react when you are mistaken, as may have been the case here. I could not find one in the english Wikipedia namespace though, it may have to be written first.
The first "unblock" statement shares the link to the joke and the
reprimand
by an admin on the users page telling them they can get blocked for
ongoing
comments like that. Fluffernutter points out that there is a "boyzone" in Wikipedia and that it's not right to mock a users gender. I do appreciate Fluffernuter speaking up about this, I know it's not always something that she likes to get mixed up with (so to say - as we talked about in IRC today).
Well, "boyzone" might not be a good word to use when you want to convey that gender should not be highlighted inappropriately. It's been some time, but I've been part of online fora frequented mostly by young women and remarks like the one here directed at me were quite normal and mutually understood as good humour in almost all cases. It doesn't take all that much, in the right context, to make a similar remark that would actually hurt whoever it is directed at, though. I got that aswell.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, an educational environment. And when people have to start questioning "Is this offensive or not? Is it sexist or not?" then clearly there is a problem with something in the culture and system.
There are actually two dimensions to "sexist". If we all agree that sexist remarks are bad and wrong, then remarks you do not find bad or wrong cannot be sexist, so you have a conflict between the intuitive understanding and the textbook definition. It's normal that our intu- itions are sometimes a bit off. Centuries ago it may have been normal to say and mean certain things about women that today everybody would readily recognize as highly offensive, or hilariously ludicrous. Such changes do not occur over night and everwhere at the same pace.
If we do not have to question whether, say, "a woman's place is in the kitchen" is offensive, that may mean we all agree that's her place. If the exchange had been "Her current age is a prime number", "*That* clarifies it. :)" we wouldn't find that offensive and don't have a word like "sexism" for the remark, we rather wouldn't understand where this is coming from. Whether it's gender or prime numbers, the two comments didn't really contribute to the discussion, and wandering into the off- topic quickly leads to communication problems (see my initial comments).
It seems obvious to me that no offense was intended here. I very much doubt that blocking a user will help him avoid communication accidents in the future. Neither would I expect an administrator leaving notes on sexist jokes on a user's pillory-esque public talk page to help much. I would be much more impressed by a brief and carefully worded private note explaining some other user's perspective on what I wrote with no expectation on me to take any action (including responding to the mail).
Next time I am about to write something similar, I would have this on my mind and would try to look at that through this other perspective I have learned about and could adapt without feeling uncomfortable with my own intuition. In contrast, if I feel like I should react to such a note, I would have to decide whether to reject the criticism, or admit to having behaved poorly, or something similar; any of that would annoy me a lot, and next time I would primarily recall being annoyed, rather than concentrate on how my communications come across. My experience is quite universally that the subtle and helpful approach works much better in cases where there is hope for a net positive change. -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de 25899 Dagebüll · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/
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