Hello Lennart,
Thank you for your reply. You made no errors. I was explaining the feminist
take on the word 'lady'. I was not sure that you were joking by using the term,
so I attempted to eliminate the factors which would normally point to it being
a joke. Hence my examination of exclamation markings, etc. Had we spoken about
this face to face our normal body language would have clearly indicated we were
speaking lightheartedly; boasting our prowess on this matter over a glass of
wine, so to speak. Black words on white screen backgrounds lack those important
nuances. However, thank you for the extrapolation on the different words.
It is not bad phrasing; I fully understand that it is not bad phrasing. My
response to your email was simply about 'choice'; that is which words we choose
to use and their impact on society. As we are talking on a 'Gendergap' page I
thought it appropriate and reasonable to discuss this point, but in replying to
you I took my explanation to the world of the feminist thinker, and perhaps
that is not appropriate for this list.
Wow, I am stoked, thank you so much for understanding the simply put discussion
about 'male' vs 'female'. Not too many people stop to think that our
constructed formatting follows male-gendered lines, that is, in the example
given, the word 'male' always prominent while 'female' requires another click
of the drop down. Today a similar inequality is still evident in many of our
documents, for example, our own Rules of Association speak in terms of 'he'.
'She' is taken for granted as read where 'he' appears in various clauses of the
document. Another example, if I may detain you just a little longer, is our
federal and State legislation here in Australia. Up to the recent past it was
always written in terms of the male gender, and in present recent decades our
legislators introduced Acts of parliament to guide the adoption of plain speech
in legislation, and encourage the introduction of 'non-gender specific
language', in an effort, inter alia, to recognise that nowadays in legislation
it is considered to be discriminatory when the syntax uses only one gender.
Your comment: 'to make the genders equally prominent' is a commendable thought
indeed. Thank you.
Kind regards,
Anne
----- Original Message -----
From: Lennart Guldbrandsson
To: Gendergap
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
Hello,
First of all, let me explain that English is not my native language.
Sometimes that means that I make errors in grammar or spelling. In this case,
however, that is not the issue. I know the linguistic value of the term "lady".
In Swedish, we have a similar distinction between "dam" ('lady') and "kvinna"
('woman').
Then we come to the real cause: the term "find the lady" is not my invention.
It's a stock phrase, that specifically refer to a game, that is also called
"three card monte", as you can see in the article I linked to. In this context,
trying to use image galleries to point out that we have a lack of women as
editors, "three card monte" would have made a meaningless reference. I could
have used other phrases, such as "cherchez la femme" (which is more sinister, I
feel), or "OMG, there's a woman on the interwebs" (which is even less
respectful, and less common), but as an example, I think I got the point
across. I apologize if you felt that it was a bad phrasing.
I too dislike any programming designs that use male as the standard. I do not
think, though, that we should make female the standard, either. It would make
for many false positives (we know that people don't read all the instructions
before clicking "yes"), which would make it appear that we suddenly have 95 %
new female editors. What we should do is make the genders equally prominent, if
that is not the case already.
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: [email protected] / [email protected]
Användarsida: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg: http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:06:49 +1100
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
Hi Lennart,
On 22 December 2011 Lennart Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:
"..."Find the lady"?"
If you had placed an exclamation mark after the word 'lady', rather than a
question over the whole sentence, I would have got the joke about 'lady'. In
the absence of an intended irony with the use of the word 'lady' I'll take it
you really mean 'lady'. Therefore I'd like to let you know that the women's
movement (historically - first, second and third waves) have fought against
honorific titles such as 'lady' to describe and understand 'what women want'.
At the very least the term 'lady' is not meaningful across cultural lines
north, south, east, or west of our world. European tradition, particularly
English, is where it is the most meaningful in the most constricting and
negative of senses where it has been used against females - girls (children)
and women - in that rather than a nation socially growing it's female
population in all facets of life's energy and creativity, females has been kept
down over the centuries and one of the ways of penetrating the female psyche to
reinforce the necessity of this down trodden existence is to remind a female
that she much be a 'lady' and ladies don't do this and that, but must do this
and that, all decided by a masculine controlled society and reinforced over the
years by compliant females being taught to support this social construct.
So Lennart, women and girls want to decide the simple and the enormity of
their lives. A great number of females whose consciousness has been raised and
so recognise the existing inequalities over all societies will not want to be
named 'ladies' in discussions about what women want.
Here's a simple dilemma right now - for the programmers. Why do the drop down
windows on many sign up sights have in the window 'male' and if you are a
female you have to click on the down button and select 'female'. This question
is not trite by any means. It goes to the heart of how our female and male
programmers construct and think about what they are implementing. My question
is: Do female programmers use this same format? Has any female programmer been
bold enough to reverse the order? Let the 'female' word be in the static
window, and let the males have to click the drop down to select their gender.
Anne Frazer
Wikimedia Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: Lennart Guldbrandsson
To: Gendergap
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 4:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
Maybe a campaign, based on the phrase "Find the lady"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Find_the_Lady
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: [email protected] / [email protected]
Användarsida: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg: http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:38:24 +0000
Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
Yes, that is a good idea.
Here are plenty of pics to choose from:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_meetups
Best wishes,
Lennart
Lennart Guldbrandsson,
Tfn: 031 - 12 50 48 Mobil: 070 - 207 80 05
Epost: [email protected] / [email protected]
Användarsida: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal
Blogg: http://mrchapel.wordpress.com/
Wikimedia Sverige http://wikimedia.se
http://www.1av3.se
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:33:40 -0800
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Gendergap] I'm not sure which is more depressing
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Perhaps the solution is to create a gendergap template, instead of
having to
> > bring up the same points over and over.
>
> I think we should have a re-usable collage of all the photos of
> meetups attended (almost) exclusively by male Wikipedians. with the
> caption "Notice anything missing?". Sometimes pictures are more
> persuasive than text.
>
> --
> Erik Möller
> VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
> _______________________________________________
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> [email protected]
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