[Gendergap] Hardcoded discrimination

[Delphine Ménard]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 7:51 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>  On 6 February 2011 16:32, Lena ... <lenarohrbach at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree with you. It should absolutely be the users own choice. But
>> right now, you don't have a choice. If I want to get a user account,
>> it says "Benutzerkonto" (German: Account for male users)
>
> Wow.
>
> So just to make sure I'm understanding this: on for example the German
> Wikipedia, not only are all registered users identified as part of a
> male category (Benutzer, "male user"), but the actual invitation to
> register in the first place is itself also gendered (Benutzerkonto,
> "account for male users")?

Hmm. It is a bit more complicated that that. When you translate it
into English, "account for male users" sounds terrible, but in French
(or German, for that matter) having to sign up for a "Compte
d'utilisateur" or a "Benutzerkonto" does not sound that bad, at least
not to me. Maybe it's because I'm used to it, but as Naoko pointed
out, the "plural" as well as the "neutral" tends to take a masculine
form in the grammar, so I find it's ok on that level, becasue
"utilisateur" at this stage is rather a neutral thing.

However, the fact that pages display "Benutzer:Delphine" or
"Utilisateur:Delphine" is, in my opinion, more problematic. As a
matter of fact, I've had "utilisatrice:notafish" displayed on my fr.wp
page for ever, although the link is still gendered:
"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Notafish". :D

I think Debora has a point, there are lots of things that could be
done to avoid the gender in some hard coded things, without being
detrimental to the comprehension. Giving the choice between
"utilisateur" or "utilisateur" might be an option. Next I see though,
is people refusing to choose one or the other (a legitimate wish,
imho), where we'd probably get stuck :)

It is in the end a very tricky subject, in France, people have been
fighting for a long time to impose female versions of words that
didn't have one, such as "professeure", or "auteure". I personally
find these words ugly, but then, I'm rather conservative when it comes
to language :)

As for the The Screen Actors Guild example, I could never ever imagine
having the French give up the word "actrice", or it even suggesting
that an actrice is anything less than an actor. Different countries,
different gendered cultures...

Delphine
-- 
@notafish

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