Replying to this bit as an agender editor:
Furthermore, How do we build a place where a-gender non binary persons
feel accepted and welcome?
I partially addressed this issue in my presentation at WikiConference
North America last fall:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Transgender_Gap_-_October_2016.pdf
After seeing much deliberate misgendering of nonbinary subjects, I also
just created (after posting a draft for feedback) a MOS-NB talk page
template, to complement the MOS-TW and MOS-TM templates for trans women
and men:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:MOS-NB
I also encourage editors to submit new or improved biographies of
nonbinary (and other trans) people to Wiki Loves Pride 2017, which
started today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Pride_2017
- Pax aka Funcrunch (hoping this post gets approved by the list
moderators before Wiki Love Pride is over!)
On 5/26/17 11:55 PM, Natacha Rault wrote:
Hi Pine,
Thank you for your detailed answer. In fact what you mentionned in the
second part of your mail, the fact that such events might exclude
certain class of people and suggest gender favoritism is what fuelled
remarks in the first place. This is what surprized me most, because
this is what women experience when contributing: being faced with an
environment that is essentially male represented. But that does not
prompt aggressivity from the underepresented part does it?
Research has shown that things become easier for an underrepresented
community when it achieves a representation of 30% within a group.
Then things change "naturally". However there is not only the question
of women : how do we become more inclusive with communities that would
never make it to a 30% reprensentation level?
There is also an ambiguity here: to adress gender gap, identified
along gender based criteria, we apply gender bases approaches : more
articles on women, designing more women friendly events, designing
gender targeted projects... There is the risk to be assigning women
further to a specific gender segregation, and to exclude non binary
persons.
But how do we increase the participation of women without implicitely
applying gender criteria? It is not possible, we need to start somewhere.
Furthermore, How do we build a place where a-gender non binary persons
feel accepted and welcome?
To me it would seem natural to start with an editathon with non
binary- only persons, to make sure my biaised approach does not impact
the result... But I am not going from the outside to impose a way of
doing things. If an agenda is set, it needs to be done by themselves,
trying to be inclusive means listening to what people are asking for,
not trying to impose a way of doing things from another perspective
which would not be representative.
In this the word "start with" is important, we are speaking of
building confidence in a secure space where one can build a
contributing capacity before being thrown in the vast melting pot of
contributors.
To me, trying to deal with women representation, it felt like
difficult to try to understand the whole thing from the trans
perspective which was brought to me. But I must admit that I learnt so
much, that the experience was worth it. I still consider myself as
biased, but willing to try hard to be more inclusive. This also goes
with starting things by bringing an agenda in my practice that is not
mine.
So this is why the project "les sans pagEs" (without a page) does not
include the word woman. We can then focus on people and subjects which
are not represented. A contributor proposes articles on female horses,
and there was one on the irish X case (on the subject of abortion).
People then can move away from biographies and start thematic articles
(harder to write but helping to link orphan articles, another aspect
of the gender gap). We even have a section for articles translated in
other languages, because we area global movement. A young italian
contributor participating to our group discovered he could not
translate "LGBT swiss history" in italian because of the use of
"explicit language" (probably the word "sodomy" used in the article,
which is based on historical facts).
I have more questions than answers to these issues. One thing I am
sure of, is that we need to do things with a learn-and-try agile
method with an open mind. I hear too often "we need more research" and
I dont think so: I think we need more action and feedback from active
contributor groups. We need to share experiences, we need to travel
and see how things are done elsewhere. I was happy to meet the mexican
women group in Geneva and hear from their experience: we changed our
workshops after that. I was happy meeting Rosie in Esino Lario and
copying her concept of Women in red in the francophone wikipedia. This
brought more than the hundred of research papers I read because it
dealt with "how to" instead of "why is it". Reading about the constant
underrepresention of women can be very depressing, starting to get
things moving is more motivating (poke to the Kaylana effec).
And what I feel we need most of all is a certain lattitude to explore
different ways of doing things without being constantly criticized and
harrassed. Harrassment is time consuming and destroys all positive
energy.
Have a nice week-end!
Natacha
Le 27 mai 2017 à 06:44, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com
<mailto:wiki.p...@gmail.com>> a écrit :
Hi Natacha,
I just now got this email (perhaps it was held for list moderation)
but thought I would note that there have been gender-specific events
before. I'm aware of the WikiWomen's lunch which seems to be held
yearly at Wikimania, and I believe that Wikimedia Mexico has
women-only editathons.
As a male I have no objections to gender-specific events happening on
occasion. I think that it's fine to have those kinds of sessions so
long as they are designed and resourced in ways that are arguably
fair and don't suggest favoritism. I would be concerned if such
events happened in a way that excluded certain classes of people on a
regular basis in a way that seemed designed to deny them access to
resources or personal connections which might be of interest to them,
if resources were assigned to one group and not another in a way that
suggested gender-based favoritism, etc.
In the situation that you described, setting up one event out of four
to be gender-specific sounds reasonable to me.
You might consider talking to organizers of previous WikiWomen's
lunches and/or the Wikimedia Mexico women's editathons to see if they
have comments.
Writing as a male member of this list,
Pine
On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Natacha Rault <n.ra...@me.com
<mailto:n.ra...@me.com>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I would like to starts a discussion on women only events. How are
they perceived and do they generate antagonism? I have always
organized mixed events, until the first of march 2017, where an
Art+feminism editathon was hosted by an LGBT lesbian association
in Geneva, and I announced it on the French Bistrot here
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro/3_f%C3%A9vrier_2017#Art.2BFeminisme_2017_Gen.C3.A8ve_:_Viendez.21>
(among
other Art+Feminism events that were all inclusive)
I did not want to impose other rules than theirs on their
surroundings,so I announced a woman only event for one of the 4
events organized. Some members of the community disagreed and
reacted strongly (although I can’t say all were extremely
respectful this is just normal bread when dealing with the gender
gap) but one was so stunning and persistant (he was blocked in
the end and now has a topic ban) that this generated the thought
that we might need to reflect more on safe spaces and organize
such events more systematically, in each conference and each
Wikimania, until this is no issue any more. I remember attending
the women only picnic at Wikimania in Esino Lario and being
confronted with a different attitude: there it only seemed normal.
What do you think and what is your experience on this issue? I am
interested to know all points of vue provided they are formulated
with respect.
Nattes à chat (mostly active on les sans pages
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs> on the
French wiki)
--
Pax Ahimsa Gethen | p...@funcrunch.org | http://funcrunch.org | Pronouns:
they/them/their
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