[Foundation-l] Showing the difference between the sexes

[Béria Lima]

Gerard, a girl posting here, not anymore a "male" discussion ;)

*Lodewijk and Thomas: so why change it to something causing problems all
> over the place, not only technical ones?*
>

Why? Maybe to call a girl by her real gender. The problems you both listed
are not real problems. The male version is only used if you don't know the
gender. But all wikimedia know that Sue (for example) is a girl, so why we
still need to see a male word in her "user" page?

*Lodewijk: **Gerard, this wouldn't really help to attract more new female
> users. *
>

Could you please tell me why? I can set my preferences to "male" or
"female", but i can't see my "user" page with my real gender. And yes, that
is a matter of choice, you can say that not every girl will like to be
called "usuária" or Gebruikster" or "Benutzerin", but if you guys change the
MediaWiki they can have the power to chose. And right now we don't have
that, do we?

*Austin: Like with many European languages, the masculine is the default and
> feminine suffixes are added only for emphasis, which is pretty
> anti-feminist, and it doesn't help that the feminine forms are related to or
> even the same as the diminutive forms.*
>

Anti feminist and partenalist is see several guys deciding what we want or
don't want in our user pages. We are not here to change French or German
grammar, if the feminine is made by adding a sufix, is a local language
problem (btw, in portuguese, the male version is also a "sufix", so is
"usuári*o* / usuári*a*). Again here we are not change grammar, we are only
talking about give girls the "possibility" to be called by the right form in
the MediaWiki system.

*Austin: **It seems more like an individual preference to me.*
>

It is a individual preference. But a preference you people don't seems to
want us to decide if we want of not.
_____
*Béria Lima*
<http://wikimedia.pt/>
*Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre
acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
fazer.

*

2011/2/13 Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com>

> On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>
> wrote:
> > And do you want it to be implemented :) But that question is to be
> > answered on a community level of course - but I guess there are a few
> > potential reasons why they might not want to implement it:
> [...]
> > * Although grammatically correct, I would find "gebruikster" in Dutch
> > very weird - because it is rarely used it would put a huge emphasis on
> > the fact that someone is female - this will depend per language.
>
> In English, of course, "Userette" would be even worse, being totally
> contrived.
>
> Like with many European languages, the masculine is the default and
> feminine suffixes are added only for emphasis, which is pretty
> anti-feminist, and it doesn't help that the feminine forms are related
> to or even the same as the diminutive forms. And so we're
> systematically eliminating words like "stewardess" and "usherette."
> (Though we've introduced new forms like "chairwoman" and "gentlelady,"
> so we're not exactly consistent.)
>
> As I understand it, the Dutch word for "secretary" has two different
> connotations based on the gender applied. "Secretaris" is more like
> "UN General Secretary," while "secretaresse" is "someone who does your
> typing and gets you coffee." I don't tink Dutch is unique in that.
>
> > * I'm no expert in the field, but I can imagine some issues around
> > transgender people
>
> Not touching that one, but yes.
>
> > etc. I would be a supporter of making it possible for a community to
> > make this choice, but I would not like us to make that choice for
> > them.
>
> I would have taken this for granted, but I don't think it's a strictly
> linguistic issue, and I'm not sure it's even something that should be
> determined on a wiki-by-wiki basis. It seems more like an individual
> preference to me.
>
> Austin
>
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