Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
________________________________ From: "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:00 AM Subject: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10
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1. Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (john allyn) 2. Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (Emily Monroe)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:21:07 -0700 (PDT) From: john allyn jaddtwo@yahoo.com To: "gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org" gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 Message-ID: 1379366467.96269.YahooMailNeo@web120001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
________________________________ From: "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 6:00 AM Subject: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Archaic gendered terminology (Lane Rasberry)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 15:43:47 -0400 From: Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com To: "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation of women within Wikimedia projects." gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Archaic gendered terminology Message-ID: CAJb6Kh5SLCkCo9BFB4LHJCf+NJkAcMno6XNk+Mk0EhKUAez8qQ@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hello,
I expect that many people will continue to use the term "actress" for females in the profession. I notice that the Amy Johnson discussion raises that.
A couple of years ago I got to review an elementary English textbook being distributed in very large numbers in North India. It was an original work seemingly derived from public domain content and had a section on gendered nouns, including "negro" and "negress". I looked at the time for a style guide on best practices for gendered term and I could not find anything clear when I looked then, but obviously there is bad information to be found online among the public domain texts and it really grated on me that new print works were being distributed to teach children such things.
We might not be so far from the day when someone could publish a Wikipedia Manual of Style and expect it to be an authoritative text. I am not sure what the right answer is in this case but whatever you find please consider noting on the manual of style because this question will come up again.
Thanks for sharing.
On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Gobonobo gobonobo@gmail.com wrote:
I've been going through a lot of historical biographies lately and am surprised to see how often archaic gendered terms such as poetess, sculptress, and aviatrix crop up in Wikipedia articles. I know some of these come from the older sources such as the 1911 Britannica, but in other cases their inclusion is the result of decisions being made by editors. There's currently a discussion on [[Talk:Amy Johnson]] over whether she should be referred to as an aviatrix, for instance.
I'm wondering how this has been dealt with previously and if there are specific policies surrounding such uses. I've found the essays [[Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language]] and [[Wikipedia:Use modern language]] and note that [[WP:MOS]] says "use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision". It seems as if despite these fairly clear precepts, the use of these terms persists.
Are there any archaic terms where it has been broadly agreed that using them is not encyclopedic? I would be much obliged if anyone could point me to previous discussions about this.
~Gobonobo
______________________________**_________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/gendergaphttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
Hi John -
I'm tired so I could have just missed someting, but I'm not not really sure how you got your post out of Emily's post, or for that matter, out of the rest of the thread. A discussion about archaic gendered terminology (and face it, aviatrix is archaic) is not an attempt to define all genders as the same, and equally, it is not an attempt to invalidate anyone's gender identity. Invalidating someone's gender identity is a very serious problem; please don't suggest that someone has done so without very clearly explaining what you mean. (And by serious problem, I mean that if I see a situation occur on this list where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to invalidate someone else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM.)
Thanks, Kevin Gorman
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 8:05 PM, john allyn jaddtwo@yahoo.com wrote:
Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
*From:* "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" < gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org> *To:* gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org *Sent:* Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:00 AM *Subject:* Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (john allyn)
- Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (Emily Monroe)
Message: 1 Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:21:07 -0700 (PDT) From: john allyn jaddtwo@yahoo.com To: "gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org" gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 Message-ID: 1379366467.96269.YahooMailNeo@web120001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
From: "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" < gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org> To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 6:00 AM Subject: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Archaic gendered terminology (Lane Rasberry)
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 15:43:47 -0400 From: Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com To: "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation of women within Wikimedia projects." gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Archaic gendered terminology Message-ID: CAJb6Kh5SLCkCo9BFB4LHJCf+NJkAcMno6XNk+Mk0EhKUAez8qQ@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hello,
I expect that many people will continue to use the term "actress" for females in the profession. I notice that the Amy Johnson discussion raises that.
A couple of years ago I got to review an elementary English textbook being distributed in very large numbers in North India. It was an original work seemingly derived from public domain content and had a section on gendered nouns, including "negro" and "negress". I looked at the time for a style guide on best practices for gendered term and I could not find anything clear when I looked then, but obviously there is bad information to be found online among the public domain texts and it really grated on me that new print works were being distributed to teach children such things.
We might not be so far from the day when someone could publish a Wikipedia Manual of Style and expect it to be an authoritative text. I am not sure what the right answer is in this case but whatever you find please consider noting on the manual of style because this question will come up again.
Thanks for sharing.
On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Gobonobo gobonobo@gmail.com wrote:
I've been going through a lot of historical biographies lately and am surprised to see how often archaic gendered terms such as poetess, sculptress, and aviatrix crop up in Wikipedia articles. I know some of these come from the older sources such as the 1911 Britannica, but in
other
cases their inclusion is the result of decisions being made by editors. There's currently a discussion on [[Talk:Amy Johnson]] over whether she should be referred to as an aviatrix, for instance.
I'm wondering how this has been dealt with previously and if there are specific policies surrounding such uses. I've found the essays [[Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language]] and [[Wikipedia:Use modern
language]]
and note that [[WP:MOS]] says "use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision". It seems as if despite these fairly clear precepts, the use of these terms persists.
Are there any archaic terms where it has been broadly agreed that using them is not encyclopedic? I would be much obliged if anyone could point
me
to previous discussions about this.
~Gobonobo
______________________________**_________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/gendergap<
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap%3E
-- Lane Rasberry 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com
My thoughts exactly.
From, Emily
On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 9:47 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi John -
I'm tired so I could have just missed someting, but I'm not not really sure how you got your post out of Emily's post, or for that matter, out of the rest of the thread. A discussion about archaic gendered terminology (and face it, aviatrix is archaic) is not an attempt to define all genders as the same, and equally, it is not an attempt to invalidate anyone's gender identity. Invalidating someone's gender identity is a very serious problem; please don't suggest that someone has done so without very clearly explaining what you mean. (And by serious problem, I mean that if I see a situation occur on this list where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to invalidate someone else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM.)
Thanks, Kevin Gorman
On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 8:05 PM, john allyn jaddtwo@yahoo.com wrote:
Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
*From:* "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" < gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org> *To:* gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org *Sent:* Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:00 AM *Subject:* Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Gendergap digest..."
Today's Topics:
- Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (john allyn)
- Re: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 (Emily Monroe)
Message: 1 Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:21:07 -0700 (PDT) From: john allyn jaddtwo@yahoo.com To: "gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org" gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9 Message-ID: 1379366467.96269.YahooMailNeo@web120001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Somehow you appear to think that equality and sameness are synonymous. It is not possible to close the gender gap by defining male and female as the same. This kind of thinking will drive the wedge deeper because each will be invalidated for who they are.
From: "gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org" < gendergap-request@lists.wikimedia.org> To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 6:00 AM Subject: Gendergap Digest, Vol 32, Issue 9
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When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Gendergap digest..."
Today's Topics:
- Re: Archaic gendered terminology (Lane Rasberry)
Message: 1 Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 15:43:47 -0400 From: Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com To: "Addressing gender equity and exploring ways to increase the participation of women within Wikimedia projects." gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Gendergap] Archaic gendered terminology Message-ID: CAJb6Kh5SLCkCo9BFB4LHJCf+NJkAcMno6XNk+Mk0EhKUAez8qQ@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hello,
I expect that many people will continue to use the term "actress" for females in the profession. I notice that the Amy Johnson discussion raises that.
A couple of years ago I got to review an elementary English textbook being distributed in very large numbers in North India. It was an original work seemingly derived from public domain content and had a section on gendered nouns, including "negro" and "negress". I looked at the time for a style guide on best practices for gendered term and I could not find anything clear when I looked then, but obviously there is bad information to be found online among the public domain texts and it really grated on me that new print works were being distributed to teach children such things.
We might not be so far from the day when someone could publish a Wikipedia Manual of Style and expect it to be an authoritative text. I am not sure what the right answer is in this case but whatever you find please consider noting on the manual of style because this question will come up again.
Thanks for sharing.
On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Gobonobo gobonobo@gmail.com wrote:
I've been going through a lot of historical biographies lately and am surprised to see how often archaic gendered terms such as poetess, sculptress, and aviatrix crop up in Wikipedia articles. I know some of these come from the older sources such as the 1911 Britannica, but in
other
cases their inclusion is the result of decisions being made by editors. There's currently a discussion on [[Talk:Amy Johnson]] over whether she should be referred to as an aviatrix, for instance.
I'm wondering how this has been dealt with previously and if there are specific policies surrounding such uses. I've found the essays [[Wikipedia:Gender-neutral language]] and [[Wikipedia:Use modern
language]]
and note that [[WP:MOS]] says "use gender-neutral language where this
can
be done with clarity and precision". It seems as if despite these fairly clear precepts, the use of these terms persists.
Are there any archaic terms where it has been broadly agreed that using them is not encyclopedic? I would be much obliged if anyone could point
me
to previous discussions about this.
~Gobonobo
______________________________**_________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/**mailman/listinfo/gendergap<
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap%3E
-- Lane Rasberry 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com
On 9/20/2013 10:47 PM, Kevin Gorman wrote:
Hi John -
I'm tired so I could have just missed someting, but I'm not not really sure how you got your post out of Emily's post, or for that matter, out of the rest of the thread. A discussion about archaic gendered terminology (and face it, aviatrix is archaic) is not an attempt to define all genders as the same, and equally, it is not an attempt to invalidate anyone's gender identity. Invalidating someone's gender identity is a very serious problem; please don't suggest that someone has done so without very clearly explaining what you mean. (And by serious problem, I mean that if I see a situation occur on this list where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to invalidate someone else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM.)
Thanks, Kevin Gorman
Frankly, I'm still not comfortable about going from being a woman to be a "gender" and always was suspicious of the term as somehow down playing womens rights/feminism/ and my own philosophy of women co-creating a new world to replace that self-destructive empire of violence and ego which patriarchy (created by males/men) has wrought.
Finally I got around recently to reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender which (while surely another imperfect wikipedia article) does say a few things of interest that make it clear it's not some hard and fast ideology of how people define themselves or others define them.
It still feels to me like a phrase feminists adopted in the 1970s to make it clear their society-imposed "gender roles" should not restrict their actions in anyway has been twisted in the last decades into a phrase that says that having certain physical/emotional/social experiences as a women throughout your life really doesn't qualify you to say what you as a woman want or need in terms of rights, privacy, protection, etc. if louder voices talking about some nebulous concept called "gender" declare otherwise.
In the 1970s and 80s and even early 90s it seems that bisexuality, homosexuality, androgeny, pansexualism, cross-dressing, etc. were fun options and the most liberal and libertarian of us enjoyed associating with the very liberal types who practiced them, if we did not do so ourselves. Now it seems they've become ideological big stick, including enforced by law, which have thrown up suspicion and resentments where before their was tolerance. (One of benefits of old age is having lived through various social evolutions.)
Exactly what the ideology is, I still am not sure and I'm sure that those with even less experience of the varieties of human expression are even more mystified.
It seems that harsh criticism and even accusations of bigotry are often directed at those who may prefer not to figure out what this "gender" business is all about and simply talk about sex or being a woman or a man; or those who make innocent faux pas in language or attitude; or those who ignore one groups' definition of the ideology, much to the wrath of that group; and especially those who have genuine ideological or political questions or skepticism of some interpretation or other, including feminists.
So when I see a sentence like " I mean that if I see a situation occur on this list where I honestly feel that someone is attempting to invalidate someone else's gender identity, things are going to go BOOM." I honestly have to wonder, what the heck is the ideology being promoted for whom and by whom. What is it I am allowed to say about my gender identity or anyone elses and what is it I am not allowed to say?
And is it something that women have a say in co-creating or are we once again locked out from creating the dominant ideology that rules the world...
CM
I'll leave the rest of your post to the others on this list, but I can answer this question:
What is it I am allowed to say about my gender identity or anyone elses and what is it I am not allowed to say?
You can say anything you want about your own gender identity. What you cannot (politely) do is contradict what someone else says about his or her own gender identity.
So if someone (anyone, not just a list participant) says "I'm a woman and I always have been", you should never say "No, you aren't." Nor "That person is only pretending to be a woman." Nor "He may feel like a woman but until he's taken a legal or surgical procedure, he's a man."
It's that simple.
Powers &8^]
Powers answer is pretty much what my answer was going to be had I not fallen asleep before I had the time to compose a full response. I view invalidating someone else's gender identity as a pretty egregious violation of the safe space that this list should, ideally, be. I say "gender identity" instead of "identity as a woman" because I intend the statement to apply to all genders; I'm not okay with someone invalidating someone's identity as a woman, someone's identity as a man, or any other gender identity someone on this list may have. The context I would imagine this being most likely to come up in on this list is where someone's gender identity doesn't match their birth sex, but that's certainly not the only context I can see it being a problem in. If a situation comes up where someone is clearly attempting to invalidate someone's gender identity not out of ignorance or as a slip-up (heck, I've used the wrong pronoun for one of my housemates at least once this week,) but out of more sinister motives, then things are, in fact, likely to go BOOM. But, as has been outlined in pretty much every discussion of the moderation of this list previously, no one needs to worry about being moderated for making a mistake, or for being unfamiliar with a concept.
The only thing that moderation actions taken on this list try to promote (and there have been very few of them) is an environment where members feel safe, comfortable contributing, and don't feel like they are being viciously personally attacked or having fundamental aspects of their being brought in to question. Since you brought up the question as to whether women are involved in these decisions, I guess I might as well state that although I have often been the person actually putting people on +mod, I've never done so without consulting with at least four or five people beforehand, most of those people are women, and I typically am inclined towards less drastic action than any of the people I speak with beforehand are - and if they disagreed with me that something was appropriate to moderate for, I wouldn't moderate on it.
But... The point of my previous post here wasn't to suggest any sort of impending moderation action against anyone for anything whatsoever, but rather to point out that John was levying a rather serious accusation at a moment when it wasn't supported. I had a pretty good idea of what 'aviatrix' meant (which, iirc, was one of the initial words under discussion here,) but in all honesty I had to look it up before I was sure I was right. I feel like there's a world of difference between wondering whether or not we should be using archaic terms like aviatrix in the encyclopedia and invalidating someone's personal gender identity, and I really strongly feel that it is actively significantly counterproductive to conflate the two.
--- Kevin Gorman
On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 5:44 AM, Powers LtPowers_Wiki@rochester.rr.comwrote:
I'll leave the rest of your post to the others on this list, but I can answer this question:
What is it I am allowed to say about my gender identity or anyone elses and what is it I am not allowed to say?
You can say anything you want about your own gender identity. What you cannot (politely) do is contradict what someone else says about his or her own gender identity.
So if someone (anyone, not just a list participant) says "I'm a woman and I always have been", you should never say "No, you aren't." Nor "That person is only pretending to be a woman." Nor "He may feel like a woman but until he's taken a legal or surgical procedure, he's a man."
It's that simple.
Powers &8^]
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
On 9/22/2013 8:44 AM, Powers wrote:
I'll leave the rest of your post to the others on this list, but I can answer this question:
What is it I am allowed to say about my gender identity or anyone elses and what is it I am not allowed to say?
You can say anything you want about your own gender identity. What you cannot (politely) do is contradict what someone else says about his or her own gender identity.
So if someone (anyone, not just a list participant) says "I'm a woman and I always have been", you should never say "No, you aren't." Nor "That person is only pretending to be a woman." Nor "He may feel like a woman but until he's taken a legal or surgical procedure, he's a man."
It's that simple.
Powers &8^]
Rational people don't really care how others define themselves. What they have a problem with is people asserting such identities insulting others, saying things like: "No matter how you were born, or what your experiences are, I'm a better man/woman than you'll ever be" or "You don't (wear clothes/useaccountrements/or otherwise appear to conform to my personal stereotype of what a man/woman is so you aren't really one" or "You didn't mention my specific variation on gender identity in your generalized discussion so you are a bigot" or "We're going to close down your conference/speech/etc. because we don't like your questions/discussions of gender identity from a perspective that differs from ours."
I assume they also would be discouraged on this list, per Kevin's comments. Thanks for clarifying that. Frankly I didn't even understand john allyn's comments on equality and sameness so couldn't get too bothered about them one way or the other...
In the real world of course, comment like the above can provoke a reaction in some people like "I don't accept your identity because you insult mine or threaten me, etc." Of course, in some cases some people may provoke that kind of reaction in order to complain about continuing oppression against them. So keeping discussions cool from every perspective helps.
I really don't have a lot of energy for this issue or I'd work on the relevant articles where I see a lot of problems. But BOOM certainly got my attention :-)
CM