[Foundation-l] Introducing a new mailing list

[Samuel Klein]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Corum O' Fallamhain wrote:

> Since women have the ability to contribute here the same as men, I really
> don't see why this is needed. Surely the scepticism being shown to this idea
> from many men is proof positive of the fact that no-one is being opressed.
> How ironic to have women in this day and age proposing their own seperate
> mailing list from men, since so many feminists fought so hard for gender
> equality. This looks to me like a step backward.

Surely.  I congratulate you on your rapier wit, but I fear that most list 
readers will take your words at face value.

One of my most intrinsically NPOV friends, who had a hard time grasping 
racial and cultural differentiation as a child, despite being a minority 
in the US, spent some time at a meditation retreat here that excluded 
whites.  She commented that it was a wonderful event, with an instantly 
noticable level of comfort; which had nothing to do with skin color per
se and everything to do with shared experience; presumably the same
effect could be had in any country by excluding the dominant tribe.

SJ,
still rereading Lars's lovely post.


> On 05/12/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>>
>> Ilario Valdelli wrote:
>>
>>> I don't understand the problem...
>>
>> This is a large part of the problem, isn't it?  To take just one
>> example, white Americans feel equal and democratic, and pride
>> themselves of this, but black Americans still feel oppressed.
>> Very few whites understand the problem in full but even fewer
>> blacks understand how little the white understand.  How many white
>> men know what it is like to grow up where none of the presidents
>> in the history book has your skin color?  How many black know what
>> it is like, never to have asked that question?  It is so easy to
>> shun the difference and so hopeless to try to make a change.
>> Women, of course, are not a "minority" in real numbers, but often
>> in perceived power.
>>
>> All of us wikipedians are also a minority of this kind, underdogs
>> under the vast dominance of traditional printed, commercial
>> encyclopedias.  Perhaps Britannica, Larousse and Brockhaus feel
>> that it was sad and unnecessary to take the disruptive step of
>> setting up Wikipedia, instead of building on their existing base.
>> They were willing to listen to the young generation, weren't they?
>> Their experience in quality control and profitmaking should have
>> been useful, so why on earth didn't the wikipedians apply for jobs
>> there instead of being unpaid for reverting edit wars?  From their
>> perspective, our obsession must be plain incomprehensible.  And
>> yet there is nothing wrong with us, only with their perspective.
>>
>> Self-identified subgroups will find ways to communicate, whether
>> it is women, skin colour, or operating system preference, and this
>> is nothing we should try to stop.  Now the women have formed their
>> own subgroup within the Wikimedia Foundation.  Hey, that means we
>> have women here!  Compared to Linux kernel hackers, that's great
>> progress.  And unlike the United States, the Wikimedia Foundation
>> does have a female president.  How long will we have to wait
>> before the black people form a subgroup?  Did they have a meetup
>> at Wikimania?  (I guess not.  I heard it was an almost exclusively
>> white event.)  And will we one day see a special interest group
>> for black female Linux kernel hackers?
>>
>> Funny, perspective is what Wikipedia is all about, the NPOV.  We
>> pride ourselves of being able to see beyond our own perspective.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
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