Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender Studies/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
align="left" This article is part of WikiProject Gender Studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Wikipedia. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.

Contents

Done / Ms./Mrs.

And done. Please all, let us stick to discussing how we can best go about engaging in writing and improving articles, and take the philosophical arguments somewhere else. Ambi 23:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Why was the discussion I started on the silliness of changing "Miss" and "Mrs." to "Ms." archived? This whole project is motivated by a philosophical argument, and to the extent that the philosophical arguments motivate your proposed article "improvements" and "writing," I think they merit discussion.

The archiving of this discussion is deceptive. You are launching an ideologically-influenced campaign under the guise of good wikipedia housekeeping. Nathaniel

Well I think thats a bit of a stretch. There definitely is a pro-feminist bias in this project, but I think you're exaggerating it.--Urthogie 08:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, exaggeration or not, I would like to pose the following question: What wikipedia policy supports the idea to systematically edit pages and replace "Mrs." or "Miss" with "Ms." I know of none. In fact, this has the effect of reducing the information previously available. (In all cases where this is carried out, the marital status of the woman referred to as "Mrs." will have been removed from the article unless there is mention of her current husband or marital status.)

You say that I exaggerate, but I would like to give you an illustration of what I am talking about. When I first encountered this "project," (to remove "gender bias" in wikipedia articles), I objected to the fact that it was being organized under an image for the sign associated with the female symbol. The next day, the image was amended to show both the male and the female symbol. My point is that the "Ms./Mrs./Miss" aim of this project should not be given serious consideration, because it is just as silly as pushing for the elimination of "gender bias" under the banner of the female symbol.

Instead, the aim to replace Mrs. with something more palatable is the reflection of an ideological viewpoint. This is unacceptable. Another one of the aims, to create a greater number of articles of feminists is perfectly acceptable. This is expanding the information available to wikipedia users rather than reducing it. Nathaniel

I actually agree (I think) - Ms., Miss, Mrs., or anything else is unnecessary. Just as when referring to men, beyond the first mention of her name, a woman may be referred to by her last name only, without anything appearing before it. And this seems generally to be the case on wikipedia articles already. -Seth Mahoney 23:39, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes. That was the intention in the first place. I actually dislike seeing "Ms." on Wikipedia, especially to the extent it is used, because it provides a "gentleness" that you don't generally see used with men's names. The notice even discouraged the use of "Ms.", so I don't know where this debate came from. Sarge Baldy 23:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Organising the front page

Hi all, I've been thinking that we could clean up the front page a bit more so that its more obvious what needs to be done. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Law (which I also participate in sometimes) has some sub-pages to classify work to be done - this might be a useful idea here to minimise the clutter. Also we should consider whether establishing templates could be a useful device for us to bring some articles under a subject umbrella? AnAn 11:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - I think that would make this a lot easier to work on. I'm one of those who could probably contribute quite a bit here (seeing as it is my major, after all), but I'm probably too early in my degree to really know where to start on my own. Ambi 11:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
I've created a /to do pagefor us. But that only moves the clutter from the front page to the to do page. To do has the advantage that you can use it to populate a pretty yellow {{todo}} box on the front page, but that's no use if the info itself is very messy. So, we can go about categorising the info on the to do page, or make an 'open tasks' template of the kind found here. The drawback with the template is that it looks difficult to maintain. What do people think? AnAn 02:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
I think a template might be a good idea. Keeping a box isn't so difficult, just so long as you make sure there's an "edit" button handy to edit it at our whim. Sarge Baldy 03:03, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

New tasks box

I've created {{Template:WikiProject Gender Studies Tasks}} which inserts a lovely tasks box into the page. I largely copied it from WP:CSB, but changed the colour from grey to the WP:GS lilac. I've made it so there's a link to /to do, and also an edit this list. I reckon we can continue dicussion and comments about the tasks on /to do, at least for now. In populating the tasks box with articles from /to do, I did the following:

  • refered to List of feminists and List of women poets, but didn't extract any of the individual articles. I think these lists will need ongoing attention, and they're also open at WP:CSB.
  • tried to include as many non-anglo, non-US, non-leaderly people in the main lists as possible, while making it balanced and interesting.
  • couldn't really see any articles should be classified under "update". Maybe that could be deleted from the list?
  • used a "reserved" (i.e. commented out) list to hold any overflow, so that the lists don't look cluttered. When updating, move items from the reserved list into the main list.

I've been really tempted to split the expands into "people" and "topics", but I'm not sure that would work out in the long run. I hope that what I've done is OK with everyone. Cheers, AnAn 01:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I do like how the box came out! I don't know about "update" either, since even if we do need to use it, it might leave things unclear just what needs to updated. I like the idea of a person/topic split as well, although on the other hand I'm not sure how we'd justify it. But it does all look nice, and it makes the project page look less hefty. Sarge Baldy 02:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Make it gender studies

Thank you for including the male symbol in the graphic. Now it would be good to make your project actually gender studies rather than only women's studies. The prejudices against women have long been discussed and recognized (at least by a large portion of the population), whereas the prejudices against men tend to be misunderstood or ignored - probably a bias of our time, which is only beginning to change.

I have always been open to feminist viewpoints, and it disturbes me that this is not reciprocated. I am not suggesting that all oppression has been evenly doled out - women seem to have been far more oppressed - but I'm neither willing to accept the view that men have suffered none, or that there are only biases against women but none against men in Wikipedia. There are many feminist contributors to Wikipedia, but probably few masculists, so this in itself might incorporate a bias. My hope is that people involved in your project are open to these possible biases, instead of insisting that gender issues belong to women alone. Further to this point, it is probably fair to say that we all have way too much emotional baggage around this issue to properly assess it, so we should be as open as possible. If you don't like or agree with what I'm saying, consider the possibility that you haven't yet become aware of some of the hidden men's issues that have had little air time. This is in no way a denial of women's issues, however.

Re: Miss or Mrs. changed to Ms. - agreed it should be last name only. But if you're going to use a title, it should be whatever title that person uses, not necessarily Ms. It's simply inaccurate to call someone Ms. when they are legally Mrs. This is an encyclopedia, after all, and readers are relying on us to inform them correctly. Even if you consider it sexist, that sexism should not be disguised. It's also disrespectful to the person's choice, and may be culturally insensitive. 24.64.223.203 09:51, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey, you're welcome to pitch in and participate! You might want to consider getting a user account so that its easier for people to communicate you. AnAn 13:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Less intrusive flag?

Ummm. This logo is a bit obnoxious. Can where be something a little more thumbnail or perhaps a stub-style gizmo? I'm doing the Good Goddess' work over in the menz' articles, and the current size is just too much for me. Rorybowman 04:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this template is a bit intrusive. But its actually a lot smaller than other templates are. I think the key is in making it a more useful template (one that acts to point to a collection or continuum of information). I really like the template found on anarchism, and the Wikipedia:Project Law ones are also pretty good. I reckon we need to start organising all the info we have into the template. AnAn 01:02, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Flag issues

Again, with the issues with the symbol for this project! Anyway, if the aim of this project is actually to make wikipedia more gender-inclusive, in terms of content and quality of work, there may be problems with the current symbol, as it reinforces the idea of a male/female gender binary that, as all you gender theorists out there know, not only doesn't reflect the way the world actually is, but represents an anti-trans, anti-intersexed, and possibly anti-gay bias. Since all of these are issues that gender articles work with, perhaps there's a way to alter the symbol so that these issues don't rear their ugly heads? -Seth Mahoney 01:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. I had a similar problem in working with a feminist userbox template earlier. Unfortunately, I don't know any true feminist symbol that rejects this binary or effectively emphasize femininity. Even the term "feminism" is problematic when you think about it (for my own purposes, I tend to define it similarly to "gender egalitarianism", but even that term is problematic because it presupposes the existence of gender divisions). But uh. As for the image, I'd be happy to see any suitable replacement. But I basically conceded that there was no good symbol. (I have been tempted to design one, however). Sarge Baldy 01:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I couldn't think of one myself, but thought I'd throw out the complaint in case someone feeling more creative than I am at the moment could come up with something. -Seth Mahoney 01:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
It seems almost resistant to symbolism. If you reject gender, what do you have left to put into a symbol? It seems like it'd be hard to design anything that doesn't enforce gender division and still retains meaning. Sarge Baldy 01:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
How about one where there's a single circle, and the male and female prings coming off it. It could mean, "male" and "female" together, or it could mean "transgender", or each of those separately. AnAn 02:33, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I actually had this same idea for a symbol, and rejected it for reasons I've forgotten now. But on second thought it does look pretty nice. I'll see if I can't make a cleaner version later, with transparency. Sarge Baldy 04:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I like that. It could be read as hetero-centric, but in this context, I don't think that's so likely. It would also reduce the size of the image, which would help with some of the complaints about the template, woultn't it? -Seth Mahoney 02:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Hehe! Doesn't this symbol mean the divergence of male and female? It makes me think of hermaphrodites, personally. Nathaniel

I don't think so. AnAn 23:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The symbol for hermaphrodites is Mercury (planet), "Venus with horns." I think of this one as "the unicorn" 8^) - Rorybowman 23:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Something I ran across

In articles on Soviet snipers, such as Zikan, the links to articles on other snipers are in the see also section. Maybe I'm just being hypersensitive, but does it strike anyone as wrong that the female snipers are listed [[Name]](female). Seems like an irrelevant detail. Why dont the male snipers have (male). I corrected one instance, but it seems like this could be a lot more prevalent. Anyone with better wikiskills than me should probably look into this. savidan(talk) (e@) 08:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Its not really relevent to have the gender after the name. Ultimately, a reader will go to the article and discover the gender for themselves. I've removed the "(female)" from these pages. AnAn 05:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Hah, thank you. It's been bothering me for quite a while, and I kept meaning to take ten minutes and hunt them all down, but laziness always got the better of me. It's like a double-whammy, not only are we saying "This sniper was female" which shouldn't be surprising in the Soviet army, but we're saying "Soviet names are weird, you can't tell if they're male or female unless I tell you". Anyways, much thanks Sherurcij (talk) (Terrorist Wikiproject) 05:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Penis envy and Evolutionary psychology

Hi. I recently made some comments on the penis envy article in regards to evolutionary psychology. The comments are at: Talk:Penis envy#Ev Psyche and Penis Envy. I'd be curious to hear some feedback. EPM 19:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Transsexuality in Iran

Hi, the above article needs significant expansion - any help would be much appreciated (mind you I am assuming this WikiProject also deals with trans-related issues - if not, please feel free to remove this request). SouthernComfort 15:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Userbox?

Hi, I was wondering if there's a reason why no "This User is a member of WikiProject Gender Studies" template has been created. Userboxes like this are used by other WikiProjects and are a great way to direct people to the project headquarters. If there are no objections, I'll make one, but I just wanted to check it out first. Thanks! Romarin 04:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've gone ahead and made one... if there is still no opposition I'll post it on the project page later on. Check it out for now at Template:User_WikiProject_Gender_Studies. Romarin 18:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Request for back-up and/or input

I recently came across a template on the Esperanza Programs page that I believe could be viewed as derogatory toward women. I have left a note on the corresponding talk page voicing my concerns. In an effort to make Wikipedia free of sexist references, I would appreciate back-up by any others who also disagree with the usage of this template, as well as any input (whether in support or not) on the subject of my concern. Thanks, romarin 19:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Problem appears to be fixed. Very good. --Singkong2005 10:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Gender and development

It would be good to see more information on "gender and development". Any input appreciated - see discussion at Talk:Gender. Thanks! --Singkong2005 10:57, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Help over at Veganism#Feminist_motivations?

Hi, the content over at Veganism#Feminist_motivations is so sparse as to be mildly confusing. Would someone familiar with feminist critiques of meat-eating (or feminist advocacy of veganism) please expand upon that section? Much appreciated! Coelacan 17:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Sexual apartheid

This Afd is likely to be of interest. --Ian Pitchford 15:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


Come support change of Defenceman article to 'Defence Player'

Know anything about sports? Do you have an opinion?
Come voice your opinion at Talk:Defenceman. ColtsScore 14:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for tracking that one. Deebki 13:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Gender Bias in Sports Articles

I'm inspired by User:ColtsScore's request for support and would like to suggest that sports articles be given a little attention. I've been working hard for months by myself (and walking to school barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways - just kidding...) to bring some gender balance to the sports articles. I began because I was unable to find even the most basic information on Women's sports, especially football (soccer), with the Women's World Cup coming in 2007. And now, I'm also faced with the daunting task of finding collaborators to support the inclusion of men in articles on "traditionally more female" sports. I've met with quite a bit of resistance (see my page for a glimpse of the dialogue) and could use help from some very tactful, collaborative and patient editors. Is that you? Please help when you're able. Deebki 13:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I feel your pain. When I started working on netball articles, we didn't even have an article on the major Australian national league, and only had articles on one country's national team. It's now improved to the point where there's at least basic coverage, but it still has such a long way to go. I couldn't agree more about the football issue, either - I'll keep an eye on things. Rebecca 13:43, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm still bothered that it's so androcentric. Like that women have "Women's basketball" category where men just go in the "Basketball" category. It makes it sound like basketball is a men's sport, where women play some far less important deritative called "women's basketball". Sarge Baldy 22:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I work on a lot of sports articles where women are "under-represented" and often encounter the androcentric issue. I've sometimes re-titled a section or article "men's..." in order to point out that it's exclusive. But, I worry that that may only widen the gap. Deebki 19:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Well put. Alas, how do we go about changing it? Rebecca 01:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I wish I knew. It's just such a rampant problem. I was considering making a proposal earlier that would end double standards, and there seemed to be at least some support for it. It's not just a problem for sex, either. I'm just not sure how easy it would be to pass something like that. When you're categorizing information, people can always argue that it's OK to have double standards when something is much more "common" than the other. Like that it's OK to have a "gay actors" category without a "heterosexual actors" category, because heterosexuality is just so "normal" that you don't need to call them that at all. You can just "assume" actors are heterosexual or that football players are male. Sarge Baldy 18:16, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Here's one way to begin: There's a discussion on my talk page right now, where the Wikipedia:WikiProject Football "creator"/manager asserts that he can't see the gender POV in football articles. He says, "football in general is about men," and cites low women's participation in football as a justification for limited Wikipedia focus on women in football articles. I could use help from each of you in outlining the gender POV problems for the football (soccer) project editors. Take a look at some of the androcentric pages (List of football (soccer) clubs, Football (soccer) around the world, Talk:List of football (soccer) players with 100 or more caps, Soccer dad redirects to Soccer mom. Please drop by and voice your opinion. Deebki (talk) 20:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
(Correction: The creator of Wikiproject Football is not an admin, as I've just learned. Deebki 08:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC))
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/k/Wikipedia_talk%7EWikiProject_Gender_Studies_Archive_2_cc42.html"