On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Valerie Aurora <valerie@adainitiative.org> wrote:

That is, as a result of comments like these, we end up having a
discussion about something other than women's participation in
Wikimedia projects. When this happens frequently, people end up
feeling discouraged from bringing up topics like "There is a lot of
misogyny in these comments, is there anything we can do about it?"
because they know they are likely to get a response of, "Men/people of
color/other oppressed groups have this happen to them too." I know it
is not your intention to shut down discussion about women in Wikimedia
projects, but that's often the effect of comments like these.

-VAL

Hi Val,

The discussion at that point was about Internet commenters. As you may know, that's not quite how Wikimedia projects work, and certainly the discussion wasn't referring to commenters on a Wikimedia project. Emily can't be blamed for the discussion going off the gendergap topic.

When you ask someone not to comment, or not to make comments that in no way violate any behavioral norms, you make the list a less welcoming place for that person and others to express themselves. Discussion on this list (and any Wikimedia list) should be open, and civil participants should be engaged and not shushed. If you want to make the argument that anonymous comments disproportionately affect and hurt women, and contribute to gender gaps in many areas of the Internet, please feel free. You'd be right to do so, in my opinion, and you can do that without discouraging Emily from posting her thoughts.

Nathan