Thanks for posting this, Sarah. I was hesitant to link to it while it was an active thread. My basic feeling in this case was that the user's comments weren't *particularly* terrible, and all of us who are sensitive to gender issues have probably seen way worse. A block may well have been overkill in this situation. However, I'm concerned that the way that thread played it out gave an overwhelmingly strong impression that "oh, you're not a woman" sort of comments are completely fine, and that anyone who says otherwise is a PC, tiny, reactive minority. I was really disappointed to be the only person who showed up to that thread who could understand how the comments could even be *perceived* as a problem. Just when we think gender concerns may be penetrating the wiki's consciousness, we get something like and I go, "...oh. Sigh."
There's nothing to be done with regard to this particular case at this point, and I hasten to ask that people not descend on the (now-close) thread, or the (now-unblocked) user. But I would like to see a conversation about how we can address this sort of "Of COURSE it's fine!" attitude. -Fluffernutter On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Sarah Stierch <[email protected]>wrote: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Block_review_for_Baseball_Bugs > > The first "unblock" statement shares the link to the joke and the reprimand > by an admin on the users page telling them they can get blocked for ongoing > comments like that. Fluffernutter points out that there is a "boyzone" in > Wikipedia and that it's not right to mock a users gender. I do appreciate > Fluffernuter speaking up about this, I know it's not always something that > she likes to get mixed up with (so to say - as we talked about in IRC > today). > > A dialogue takes place ranging from people thinking the joke wasn't sexist, > to Fluffernutter is being "PC". > > I don't believe that the user the joke was directed at participates in the > conversation - for all we know they might have not been offended - but, this > is just another example of how people seem to be unclear about what "sexist" > behavior is. > > Where I've worked and attended school, it was always very clear that > behavior or comments like that were/are not prohibited, but more often than > not, people don't speak up when people behave poorly (silent victims). > Unlike on Wikipedia, where people generally do speak up - the shroud of the > internet, I suppose. > > Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, an educational environment. And when people > have to start questioning "Is this offensive or not? Is it sexist or not?" > then clearly there is a problem with something in the culture and system. > > -Sarah Stierch > > -- > GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for Wikimedia <http://www.glamwiki.org> > Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American > Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch> > and > Sarah Stierch Consulting > *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.* > ------------------------------------------------------ > http://www.sarahstierch.com/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap > >
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