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
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