I don't, as a rule, top post. But in this case, since it is a response to both of these messages, it seemed appropriate, There was a time, many, many, many years ago; before there was any defined structured social or political group; there was a female, a male, and their offspring. And the female was, in fact, the center of this grouping. She gave life, kept the "home" and nurtured the offspring on a daily basis. While the male, on the other hand was gone most of the time hunting and gathering. As these individual "family groups" began gathering into tribes, then groups of tribes into villages etc., etc. to today, these groups soon required some sort of "leadership". That was when the man said to the woman, "You stay at home, honey, and tend to the hearth, and I'll tend to the business outside, as I have always done". That was when the most insidious transfer of importance and power in the history of humankind took place. Pity. Men began making and enforcing the rules, starting and fighting the wars, writing the books deciding, and defining, what deities we must worship, and generally making a worldwide nuisance of himself. Progress? Marc Riddell on 2/12/11 5:47 AM, Oliver Keyes at scire.facias(a)gmail.com wrote: I'm going to go with "because it's a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation of a [positively recurse 50 times] of a translation of a book written by humans, who are fallible, specifically male humans, in a period where gender equality was occasionally allowing your wife to talk, oh, and there's absolutely no evidence the subject of said book existed in the first place". Satan crops up twice in the bible. In the mean time, Jezebel, Delilah, Eve and almost every other female character who isn't meek and mild as milk is depicted as being single-handedly responsible for the fall of humanity, the betrayal of Sampson, David's inability to keep his man-parts in his underwear, and everything else that goes wrong with the world. It's no surprise equality has taken so long to even appear on the horizon when people are treating guff like this as an infallible or immutable document. On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Miguelinito <miguelinito(a)gmail.com> wrote: Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ³After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?² Then the LORD said to Abraham, ³Why did Sarah laugh and say, ŒWill I really have a child, now that I am old?¹ Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.² Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, ³I did not laugh.² But he said, ³Yes, you did laugh.² There's a couple of questions here: 1) Why Almighty God chose to be a man? 2) Why did Almighty God get angry with the laughter of a simple female mortal? Would he have gotten angry if she, just for *ignorance*, wouldn't have even made herself that question? For all of you who read the Bible, this could be a nice topic for reflection. :) Regards Miguel Ángel _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

What I wanted point out is that one of the causes of the gender gap, specifically in the United States, is that there is a lot of people who read the Bible. The Bible is, obviously, sexist, and in fact makes women in general be submissive. While ideas are separated, they survive unless they are wrong (that's why Conservapedia was born). What I propose is to promote catholic women participation, so they can share their ideas too. Once all ideas are together (catholic and scientific), the thruth goes without saying, as believing is not in our human nature, but reasoning. That's my opinion. P.S: I don't drop my jaw about the gender gap in the US when I see that women automatically get their surname *replaced* by the married name. Sorry for not being expressive enough. Miguel Ángel -- Saludos, Miguelinito mailto:miguelinito@gmail.com

A Dutch insurance for alternative version of the Genesis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3yUr0ah370  --- On Sun, 2/13/11, Miguelinito <miguelinito(a)gmail.com> wrote: From: Miguelinito <miguelinito(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] The Book of Genesis To: "Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects" <gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Sunday, February 13, 2011, 7:42 AM Re: [Gendergap] The Book of Genesis (A correction in my former post: unless = although, that's the problem of trying to think in English when you speak Spanish :)). With all respect, I'm atheist, and my best friends are gay, I suppose there's no problem with that. I didn't say that *all* the people in Wikipedia are "gay atheist Jews", what I said is that a lot of women who don't edit Wikipedia (and also don't participate in men's roles) are bound to a classic cliché, which is in turn highly related to the catholic beliefs brought by the first European colonists. Anyway, I admit that the problem is probably not only due to the catholic religion, since the first indigenous women in North America were, as far as I know, in the same situation. So, maybe, it's just human nature: men liked power and were more aggressive and physically stronger than women, so in the beginning they just used to take women by their hair and drag them into the cave (it's just a way to express the idea, I don't even know if these stereotypical image is true), and nowadays we have a refined version of the same thing: men created a system which, at first glance, gives the same opportunities for men and women, but, when scrutinized, reveals subtle obstacles which, all together, compound a big obstacle for women to succeed. The best solution, in that case, would be to completely destroy the system and construct a new one taking into account men's and women's needs, although that seems to be -by now- an utopia. Women who get by themselves an active role in today's society are just reinforcing a system with the shape of men's mentality's. In other words, they're fighting against men with men's weapons. Is that really what we want? In my opinion, women should create their own roles, some of them would probably be the same as men's, but some not. Women can break men's rules, can't they? So, after all, maybe it's not so crazy as I first thought the idea of improving articles about friendship bracelets and "Sex and the City". And maybe things would be better if, instead of trying to make things easier for renowned users (with reputation systems and the like), we tried to focus on the real problem: ego. Ego (low self-esteem) is the main problem in today's society, and, in my opinion, the origin of evil in the world. And that leads me to this proposal: what do you think about creating a forum in Wikipedia? I'll post this in my next thread. Best regards, Miguel Ángel So you think the problem with the participation of women is that a lot of our readers are bible-thumpers, and by getting lots of women (specifically Catholic women) involved, we'll destroy the misogynistic parts of faith? Ignoring that as it happens, raw belief is in our nature, and that the vast majority of Americans, bible-thumper or no are not Catholic, you seem to be misunderstanding our community somewhat. You know Conservapedia exists because apparently we're all gay atheist Jews, right? :p Trust me, Misogyny from leftover religious teachings is not going to be a big problem for a large chunk of us. Most of us are atheists, agnostics, or the harmless kind of religious person. On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Miguelinito <miguelinito(a)gmail.com> wrote: What I wanted point out is that one of the causes of the gender gap, specifically in the United States, is that there is a lot of people who read the Bible. The Bible is, obviously, sexist, and in fact makes women in general be submissive. While ideas are separated, they survive unless they are wrong (that's why Conservapedia was born). What I propose is to promote catholic women participation, so they can share their ideas too. Once all ideas are together (catholic and scientific), the thruth goes without saying, as believing is not in our human nature, but reasoning. That's my opinion. P.S: I don't drop my jaw about the gender gap in the US when I see that women automatically get their surname *replaced* by the married name. Sorry for not being expressive enough. Miguel Ángel -- Saludos,  Miguelinito                            mailto:miguelinito@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap --  Saludos,  Miguelinito                            mailto:miguelinito@gmail.com -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

on 2/13/11 1:23 AM, Pharos at pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com wrote: Pharos, are you saying that these posts have nothing to do with gender gap? Marc