On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Laura Hale <laura(a)fanhistory.com> wrote:
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 2:10 AM, Caroline Becker <carobecker54(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
What is the relationship with gender-gap ? Are
female children more
unlikely to contribute to Wikimedia projects if they saw some porn on
Wikipedia or Commons ?
Caroline
This was something we discussed at WikiWomenCamp during several
sessions. (On our list of why women do NOT contribute, I do not think it
even made the board.) I think the consensus most of the participants had
was this was largely a problem confined to English Wikipedia amongst a
certain subset of English speakers, most of whom are from the United
States.
I remember Robert Harris once saying to me, in an e-mail, something to the
effect that one of the main reasons Wikimedia does so poorly at curating
sexual content responsibly is its gender imbalance. He expressed the view
that the only way this was ever going to change was by Wikimedia having a
healthier gender ratio. I thought he was absolutely right.
The belief was most women were not intentionally
seeking this information
out and you could not find it as easily as some conversations suggested:
You had to be actively looking for it and actively looking to be offended
by it. These types of people were not likely to be contributing to
Wikipedia anyway. There was a real feeling amongst some people that this
was a red-herring type issue that was taking away valuable time and
resources from doing activities towards increasing female participation on
Wikimedia related projects, and that to a certain degree, the obsession
with this topic was actively derailing the ability to work on these goals.
For an example of a woman exasperated by Wikipedia's handling of sexual
content, see this post
http://www.junkland.net/2011/11/donkey-punch-or-how-i-tried-to-fight.html by
blogger Penny Sociologist, which my wife somehow came across.
This concerned a crudely animated cartoon of a woman being struck in the
back of the neck during sex, which the blogger had encountered in a
Wikipedia article. Here is a quote from her post, commenting on Wikipedia's
editorial process:
---o0o---
Let's revisit the serious, consensus-building Discussion page for donkey
punching:
Misogynist: "Just want to say that the picture with this article is
HILARIOUS!!!
Another Misogynist: "Same here. It made me laugh for a good 10 minutes."
Voice of Reason: "As this act is probably apocryphal and possibly lethal, I
would suggest the current picture is unnecessary and inappropriate and
should therefore be removed."
Another Misogynist: "And I would suggest that ur a fag who has a stick up
the butt."
Somewhere later down the page, while misogynists coldly discuss the merits
of an earlier illustration that wasn't animated, one says: "Preferably the
image shouldn't be a cartoon, but actually showing a real couple."
So there you have Wikipedia's "serious discussion" and
"consensus"
building.
---o0o---
It may well be true that women do not seek these types of pages out
generally. But what you are forgetting is that this is only one-half of the
story. You are forgetting that men and boys do seek these pages out, in
their millions – especially those who are not in relationships with women.
And finding material and discussions like those described in Penny's blog
attracts and repels different kinds of male contributors. Like calls to
like.
Now, it is my belief that those attracted to this type of stuff, those who
find it cool, funny or whatever, and who feel at home and comfortable on a
site that hosts discussions like this, are less likely to make women feel
welcome than the type of man repelled by it.
To give another example, some weeks ago, a Russian-born grandmother
complained on Jimbo's English Wikipedia talk page that in response to a
harmless search term, Commons had presented her with a masturbation video.
And she said, in somewhat broken English, that she could not see how
publicising that video helped Wikimedia's charitable mission. She said, "I
fail to see any public benefit in public mastrubation. It hurts."
The response she got was remarkable. Another (male) Wikimedian responded,
"When I masturbate in public, I don't really feel any different than when I
do it in private; can you possibly tell us why when you masturbate in
public, it hurts?"
That user is an administrator and bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons, based on
community vote. (He is, incidentally, also the administrator who kept the
donkey punch animation on Commons when it was nominated for deletion.) Do
you think this level and mode of discourse is likely to attract women
contributors?
You see, the question is not just whether a certain editorial style in
sexual articles repels women. The real question is whether that editorial
style attracts male editors that women enjoy working with. If you have
4chan discourse and content, you attract a (mostly male) 4chan crowd. If
you have Pinterest discourse and content, you attract women.
Andreas