I haven’t run into this at all (I am a Wikipedia editor and have actually written an article from scratch) but I also stick to really pretty theoretical computer science and math stuff, and the pages I edit tend to be pretty lightly traveled. I’m also more of a casual editor than an OCD wiki-stalker, so maybe my previous work has been erased. Who knows. However, I also note that I make no mention of my gender on my user page, so maybe that has something to do with it? Who knows.

Are there any more mainstream Wikipedia editors in the crowd?

Possibly the weirdest gaming experience of my life was in my early days playing “City of Heroes” when I was running around one of the low-level zones with a female character I’d just created. I got followed all over the place by a guy who kept sending me creepy, not-quite-reportable messages. It was intensely uncomfortable and nerve-wracking, and it was a huge eye-opener for me.

Hobbes: Not a Wikipedian, but I’m a former editor at Everything2.com—we have quite a few women who serve in some editorial capacity. I don’t remember what our male-to-female user ratio is, but I think I remember hearing that it was fairly high, as far as Internet Writing Websites go. We still have some problems with sexist douchebags, but they tend to get shouted down in our chatterbox by other users.

I’ve also done some work for TVTropes, but I’ve never gotten into their community, so I don’t really know how sexist they may or may not be. They strike me as a fairly egalitarian site, but I don’t know what might be happening behind the scenes that I’m not aware of…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Feminism if you want to see the Wikipedia grind-down.  This is just the discussion page, where people who want to bother to argue, argue; edit wars are easier for the wankers and so provide probably the majority of why I don’t bother doing much on that site.

I was wondering what percentage of wikipedia writers don’t list their gender or list it in an obfuscatory manner.

Recently (well, last year) I got perma-banned for pointing out sexism on a forum I enjoyed.  But since the one guy I did point out ‘hadn’t done that recently’ and those quasi-reportable and the forum owner is a young guy married to a girl invested in the sexist dichotomy, the fact that they had driven off every single female user aside from two out lesbians and two married and invested - out of like two dozen users - didn’t seem to strike them as odd.

Of course, I couldn’t get them to understand that just because a minority of a minority attempts to retake a negative word (in this case ‘trap’ as regards to transgendered people) doesn’t mean you get to use it freely. 

It pissed me off, and I got banned.

The pattern repeats itself.  I don’t know how to fix it, of course.

I got in a week long argument years ago with a guy who insisted that “feminism is the belief that women are human beings” is an example of a strawman argument and accused me of having an “extreme POV.”

I hate wikipedian culture, sure the articles are sometimes handy to get a lay perspective on a topic, but I can’t take the constant privilege being thrown around that taints everything with a bias many wikipedia editors can’t identify because of they don’t understand their privilege.

I even remember seeing a talk page where someone wanted an article about discrimination against disabled people deleted because it wasn’t “relevant” or “noteworthy.”

This sort of reminds me of the whole penny arcade vs shakesville thing that has been going on for months. Gabe and Tycho normally seem like pretty urbane fellows, and I really don’t think that the dickwolves comic promoted any of the narratives of the rape culture, but gabe and tycho seem to be completely unable to wrap their heads around the fact that rape culture exists. I think tycho said something to the effect of people who acknowledge rape culture living in a different reality than he does, when it has always seemed really super obvious to me that most people think there is a point when a woman gives up the right to refuse consent, that prison rape is hillarious and not unspeakably awful, etc. And then the fact that gabe tried to call the whole thing off because he got a death threat, which is admittedly really awful and unexcusable to do. But it also seemed like he only got one death threat. Almost every woman i know who has been politically active on even the local level has been threated with rape, death, or violence, and given the fairly large reach of PA, and the fact that the writers have sort of a cavaliere attitude towards controversy, death threats were a fairly mundane thing for them.

Looks like editor Cuddlyable3 still thinks himself the shepherd of the strawman article. Gugh!

An unfortunate truth about Wikipedia is that quite a few editors are compulsive polesitters who have a particular vision of what constitutes verifiable and/or canon, and it’s very, very hard to get something kept that they don’t belong there (for example, my attempt to point out that Dora from Questionable Content is bisexual; the exact words hadn’t been used, though Jeph had made it clear that she was in passing a couple of times, but the edits were reverted anyway).

When I was more active on Wikipedia, I did a lot of work on food articles. Two of them stick out in my mind as being particularly interesting—the first was “cabbage soup diet”, which is probably still just as much of a spam magnet as it was when I worked on it. Now, I referenced one source which is a humor site about fad diets that happens to also be part of a “buy embarrassing things” website—it was hard to find other references. I also had to do a lot of horsetrading on other references to get bad references out, and ultimately it was all for nought (although better references were found). (Incidentally, although “ignore all rules” is claimed to be a foundational policy, it only ever seems to come up when someone is trying to explain why it doesn’t apply.)

The other was “Italian-American cuisine”, and that was spectacularly ugly (also demonstrating the wisdom, IMHO, of Wikipedia’s “no experts” and “no original research” policies). I don’t remember exactly how much I wrote, but a lot of what’s in there is mine, and as I happen to collect historical cookbooks (including Italian-American), I’d say I’m pretty qualified for writing on the subject. Another editor made a number of good but occasionally fail edits that weren’t especially well-sourced, and in particular the guy tried to pull rank based on the fact that he was Italian-American. I don’t think he liked it when I reminded him that it means precisely nothing in the context of Wikipedia sources, especially when he removed all the sources I added.

That’s why I do all my wiki stuff on RationalWiki and TVTropes. And the fun part is, on both of them you’re allowed to have a sense of humor, at least as long as what you write is accurate. Although I have to admit to being one of the people responsible for making RW an absolute hell for libertarians…

Actually men don’t need to create an environmnet where women don’t feel threatened; they need to stop creating environments where women do feel threatened. It isnt like women are going out into nueetral terroritory and getting all scared because there aren’t any men around, but rather that a certain percentage of men, when allowed an audience and anonimity will act like vicious fucktards to anyone who is a lady or vaguely lady-esque.

And middle class american white women are absolutely not the most oppressed people in the history of the world. Some times straight middle class white dudes are asked not to treat other people like shit and which is basically like all the horror of genocide, rape, and pestulance all at once.

What brings you to this little sight, bro? Don’t you have big important man-things to do with your big important man-brain? Why are you wasting such thiings on a girl site?

Oh Therapy Dog. Truly convinced that men would have been able to get anything done without the labor and effort of the other half of the human race. You’re just so cute.

Please don’t feed the trolls, especially when they lie about my arguments.

Currently we have been a little busy building and maintaining all of human civilization but once we’re done with that we’ll see if we can find a way to create, discover and discuss things in a way that doesn’t offend you.

Name one important thing you’ve done in your brief, pathetic life.

We’ll get right on that.  Currently we have been a little busy building and maintaining all of human civilization but once we’re done with that we’ll see if we can find a way to create, discover and discuss things in a way that doesn’t offend you.

First, the “civilization” men have built is extremely wanting.

Second, instead of men creating, discovering, and discussing things in a non-offensive way all by yourselves, why not simply listen to what women say as they’ve done all the work for you already.

Comment #11: alysia

I have to take umbrage to your using ableist language with the fuckTARD construction. There are better ways to insult people without slurring mentally disabled persons.

Comment #12: Amanda Marcotte

Sorry, I missed your comment as I was typing.

RT—you are right. I apologize both for that and for troll-feeding.

Alysia - whatever happened with that dickwolves thing?  All I got was a convoluted rant from my roommate about death threats and that Gabe and Tycho had withdrawn the shirts, but I guess all that went down on Twitter and the roommate was unclear as to who made the threats and if they were for or against the shirts. 

I liked Gabe and Tycho, so it was hard to watch them be such dicks, but they do seem to have learned something, however unwillingly.  It’s somehow more disappointing when you think you have a space that’s relatively gender-blind, then something unpleasant happens and everyone’s true colors come out.  I personally didn’t have a problem with the initial joke and thought some people did over-react, but their handling of it was not exemplary.

Wikipedia’s articles on anarchism are the demonstration of the weakness of their policies. They have a ‘teach the controversy’ approach which ends up promoting fringe views on the same level as actual scholarship, so the Anarchism subset of the site is heavily slanted towards the ‘anarcho’ capitalist view, when there is no historicity to the claims that anarcho-capitalism has any relations to the anarchist movement in general.

I’ve put up exactly one Wiki article. I must step up, I see and represent.

For one of the worst examples of what you’re talking about, Amanda, check out how freaking ballistic Cracked.com readers are going over a newish writer named Christina. She’s now a regular poster but the comments under her articles always devolve into “woman isn’t funny” or “woman is making it too much about women” or “woman woman woman thick thighs woman woman”. It’s something to see. I respect her for her persistence in the face of it all. Since it launched, Cracked has been Male Default All the Time (male writers writing for male readers—it’s in the prepositions and gender/sexuality assumptions), and now that there’s a different demo visible in 4% of the articles—TANTRUMS!

We do try sometimes, us men I mean. Earlier today we had twenty page discussion about why people should stop tossing the word rape around when playing multiplayer on somethingawful. The stereotype of a SA poster is a neckbearded, shut in, socially awkward asshole surrounded by a sea of empy coke cans and despite being who we are the majority of people were able to figure out it wasn’t edgy or funny and they should cut that shit out. At the same time a lot of people said they probably wouldn’t call people on being offensive because they don’t want to have to educate the children from hell but it looked like progress, sort of. That and all the people who really like saying rape had to explain why they think its ok which with a non hardcore fundementalist crowd is a good means of persuasion because a lot of people think about what they said in retrospect.  Obviously its likely some of the posters were women but SA/games is way more male than female.

Kyso, Tycho basically said he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Gabe posted a slightly more thoughtful post basically trying to be sympathetic to the opposing view, tried to score feminist points by bashing MRAs, and then basically said that he thought that rape culture was this really bizzare concept and that people who believe in rape culture and those who don’t are too different to come to an understanding so he also doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. A lot of people are threatening not to attend PAX, but emotions may be quelled by the time it actually rolls aroound.

One of the speakers for pax (i can’t remember who) was a rape survivor and given the fallout decided not to speak at the conference. After this, the guys stop selling the shirt and said it was not because of the speaker. I am sure the speaker’s life has been threatened a fair amount too.

When I read about the shortage of women writing for Wikipedia, I immediately thought of this article and the ensuing discussion and the extent to which I do not have the time or emotional energy to fight this fight, over and over.

This reminds me of the time when I completely lost my shit after the 500th time one specific asshole in guild chat told me to go make a sandwich.

Chet:

Except that “fuckwit” means approximately the same thing, literally, but it can only be construed as offensive to people who are confused (i.e. fucked wits). Does it hurt to make a vocabulary substitution?

I don’t think Gabe & Tycho have really gotten anything. They have a pretty standard MO of starting shit at this point. Just about every online discussion of the brouhaha has resulted in the men dismissing the concerns of the women without even attempting to understand how women who are recovering from a sexual assault and maybe a little sensitive to things shouldn’t have to feel like their experience is being thrown back in their face at every turn. When enough women have said “we won’t feel safe at PAX” they decided to pull the shirts from the store, but have actually encouraged men to wear them to the conference, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Ultimately, their response is along the lines of theferret’s Open Source Boob Project and the last shitstorm Gabe & Tycho stirred up, which is less “Holy crap, I hadn’t realized that our callousness was actually causing emotional distress to some of our fans, we’re sorry even though it wasn’t our intention” and more “oh, um, I guess we’re sorry because hot little cosplay chicks might boycott our convention, and wouldn’t it be a shame if we couldn’t see their cute little outfits. So whatever it takes to keep the tittays on display, that’s what we’ll do.”

I think it’s a stretch to suggest that “fucktard” refers to actual disabled people[‘blockquote]

So we’re all just supposed be willfully ignorant of basic etymology so you can continue to use your pejorative of choice? Probably as many people associate a moron with an exact IQ level as associate biting the heads of chickens with geeks. But retard? You really don’t think people know what you’re comparing them to when you call them that?

Comment #27: scrumby  on  02/07  at  11:18 PM

I used to edit history articles on Wikipedia but got burned out.  It was tiring to have to fix the 5th grade “john is a poopy head” vandalism, and I got tired of arguing with ideologues who thought that watching the History Channel made them as much an expert as someone with an actual Ph.D. in the subject.

I might have missed something somewhere, but it was my understanding that the shirt was pulled before the speaker withdrew, because they got some e-mails that pointed out that they would not feel comfortable going to PAX with people wearing that shirt (I personally think that while it wasn’t intended as such you would see misogynistic rally around it) and that’s why it was pulled. The threats and everything from that point flew from both sides.

(Of course by “prepositions” I meant “pronouns. I was actually gaming-while-posting at the time—on a WoW flightpath—and this is what happens.)

I’m torn about that FUS website—I like the idea, but the execution seems a little sloppy; several of the posts weren’t obviously sexist or gendered in any way, which I think detracted from the message. (Hell, the dinosaur egg one got an actual laugh out of me—it had a very dickwolves*-esque type of humor, which I often enjoy.)

*And, while I’m being a contrary jerk, I thought that whole kerfaffle was one of those rare few examples of someone actually “looking for it” ie. for trouble/offense. Sure, Gabe and Tycho wound their way around to failing eventually, but I thought the original joke was totally fine. But I know YMMV.

I was actually gaming-while-posting at the time—on a WoW flightpath—and this is what happens.

Bitch, please. I’ve seen those flightpaths; you had a good hour to get your wording right. ;p

Wow, I thought I might have been a little too sensitive when this happened to me on Wikipedia, I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse to find out it’s just the same old sexism.

I added a page on there several years ago about a small genre of videogames that is specifically directed towards women, kind of like the romance novel genre (in fact it pretty much is romance videogames). I had to fight to keep it separate from the general article on ‘dating sims’, which of course assumes a male player and viewpoint. Someone argued that my article should just be ‘added’ onto the other one (and shortened to a paragraph probably). I thought, it’s fucking Wikipedia, does it not have the space to be as specific as possible, especially for things that are targeted to a whole other almost 50% of the population?

Man, I didn’t even realize it pissed me off so much until now. I will definitely be checking out FUS, I didn’t realize how lucky I was to start off playing WoW in an all-female guild. When that disintegrated, my willingness to join another guild and participate went down so much after I realized how women are treated. Most guys act as if it’s a huge favour to stop saying they ‘raped’ that boss, let alone refrain from commenting on what your voice sounds like or asking personal questions.

no - either i have “bad luck”, or i “go looking for it”

I hate when other women throw this out at you for being upset about things. Admittedly they are probably burned out and tired of all the bullshit too but burying one’s head in the sand is never a way to go.
It’s not going to make it stop and will, most of the time, make it worse.
I learned that in elementary school (and got sent to the principal’s office for “hitting a kid out of the blue” when the teacher was sitting right there chucking at the whole “cute” scene of this boy harassing me until I lost it - never got harassed again though).

It’s frustrating as hell when people actually advocate doing nothing because “things aren’t going to get any better if you fuss about it”. #*&#^$

Chet:  “If “retard” is out, so are all the rest of those words for the exact same reason, because they mean the exact same thing and refer to the exact same people.”

Try harder.  I mean, if that’s right, then towelhead and Arab are both “out” for the same reason, because they mean the exact same thing.

Except they don’t.  Just because they are applied to the same population doesn’t mean they have identical meanings.

Denellen, your descriptions reminded me of this young man I tutored who was blind. (As am I). He was incredibly smart and well-read (having done nothing but listened to books on tape his whole life), but he did not know how to tie his shoes, spell or write anything, cook himself a meal, eat with any sort of manners, do laundry, etc. This is a guy who could have went to college and done anything, but he worked as a dishwasher. His whole life, no one taught him Braille, or to read, or do math beyond basic arithmatic, etc. (And his aunt was his special ed teacher.)

Anyway, he told me he had never been discriminated against as a blind person. I was like, “you’re whole life has been an example of discrimination againt blind people.” I told him this as I was teaching him to tie his shoes, which he learned in about 30 minutes. (Do you know how hard it is to find velcro shoes in a men’s 13?) I think it comes from internalising the hate and not realizing that you are worth as much as everyone else and that you deserve better treatment. I also think that if you have never been treated equally, it can be really hard to see what that looks like and that your experience isn’t it.

I think this happens with women (and all minorities) too. It is hard to see what equality could look lke when the status quo is so pervasive. There is a 70% unemployment rate among the disabled, no one can say we are post-ablist and know anything about the disability experience. If you go looking for bad luck, then so must every disabled person and woman I have ever met.

*facepalms at Chet being Chet yet again*

Oh hey anyone who wants the full timeline of the Penny Arcade story, here you go. http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline

Though I’ve never in my life heard anyone actually use “fucktard” to refer to a genuinely disabled person.

I have.  Though mostly they called him ‘a fuck’.  I think I agree with your position that’s there’s no good way to say someone is uninteresting, boring, without energy, smarts, logic, or knowledge.  Each one will fall into some ableist construction.

Now, if it’s some specific word or complaint, sure, I’ll react.  My pet peeve is ‘trap’ referring to women who aren’t fuckable due to having or being suspected of having male genitalia.  But I’m not going to go after trap doors, ash traps, oil traps, or Grimtooth’s various endeavors.  You have to draw the line somewhere.

MJB:

Ugh. The stupid, it burns. As I recall, there really should never have been a controversy in the first place, but Mike and Jerry couldn’t take the high road while they still could. It looks like the only people who come out looking good in this are the woman who stood her ground on her being a rape survivor and the people (like Jeph Jacques) who publicly chose to stay out of it.

Personally, I’d be far more offended if someone called a developmentally disabled person “retarded” than if someone used “retarded” as a pejorative for someone of full faculties acting stupidly in some way.

I don’t think the argument that ‘arab’ and ‘towelhead’ mean the same, and therefore shouldn’t be used, matches Chet’s argument.  Especially since no one on this thread has managed to find a word that actually means moron without having been either a pejorative or an archaic and insulting medical term.

You are reaching for a double plus un-good place.

@Chet: As any term for diminished or different mental capacity is used clinically, it will eventually spread into common use as an insult. Eventually the insulting use is all that remains. The main difference between terms like imbecile and retard is the former was adopted into common use as an insult so long ago that few people could tell you that it was once used to describe a condition. Mentally retarded was used within most of our lifetimes.

When someone uses words like imbecile, moron, stupid, etc, what image does that conjure up for you? When someone uses the word “retard”, what image springs immediately to mind? That’s the difference.

Amanda, is it your position that women do not contribute to Wikipedia because they are targeted by men for being women, correct?

How can that be, when editing articles is done anonymously?

How can that be, when even within a discussion it is impossible to know someone’s gender? (except for articles that are about gender issues where there could be indication of one’s gender. For a discussion about, say, the Pythagorean Theorem, there wouldn’t be any indication what gender a commenter was).

The recent articles have complained that subjects such as influential fashion makers or Mexican feminist writers are not covered or covered indaequately. If no one has bothered to even create an article, how can this be because of sexism?

Celda, you can edit an article anonymously, but many people do not.  Not everyone is ashamed to use a handle that indicates a gender.

Plus it’s probably not a stretch to say that most people who argue that women are inferior or feminists are full of shit or you can’t prove that men really are privileged in society are men.

I wander all over the web.  Sorta meander around you might write.  Stumbled on to a side path in something that seemed incontrovertibly to be a mild but amusing site. Replied to something and was answered by someone that knew what she was talking about.  Later she replied to me and asked if I would like to see something interesting.  She didn’t mind me lurking but didn’t want me writing.

Turned me on to a series of discussions specifically by women between each other about the “I can’t believe such and such happened.”  Then a series of replies that illustrate male sexism excellently.

Whenever I wander over there, I try to not write, but there was a discussion site for female doctors just frankly discussing what was going on in the medical industry.  I did make a note of thanks for the information they gave me. Once.

Actually there are a hell of a lot of valid statements about nothing but pure sexism.  I agree, I’ve done a lot of the type of things that they talk about.

@Crissa: Fool or ignoramus. Though one refers to someone that won’t learn and the other refers to someone that hasn’t, but could. One of those are usually what’s meant when using retard as an insult. “He’s a fucking ignoramus!” is more fun to say anyway.

Of course if you’re looking for a word to use to call someone stupid, and calling them ignorant or stubborn simply won’t do, there’s always the word “stupid”. It was always an insult.

I’m with Mighty Ponygirl on the Penny Arcade fiasco. They are not getting it at all. I’ve been following it via that tumblr site linked above and it seems that they took down the shirt because of industry pressure. Then Mike went whining about it on their forums and said on twitter that he’ll be wearing his shirt to PAX. You know, that conference that they want to be inclusive and safe? In the follow up posts, Mike announced that he was unilaterally ending all discussion of the issue. And Jerry seems to think that rape culture is this radical fringe idea that’s totally out of some parallel universe and doesn’t really exist in his reality (the one true reality, natch).

Not sure how it all can be connected to wiki, except here’s Celda claiming that there’s no gender on the internets, sort of like there’s no rape culture in PA’s reality?

Brian X:

*facepalms at Chet being Chet yet again*

Riker and Picard *double* facepalm for emphasis.

After looking at the tumblr page, it’s definitely a lot worse than I thought, bad enough to remove my bookmark to the site (it’s a shame, the front page had some nice writing. Never really liked the comic however)

That said, the reaction obviously is a very overly defensive reaction. Reminds me a lot of people making “People Eating Tasty Animals” jokes. It’s basically trolling. And in my mind to a certain degree it’s trolling in response to trolling, which just makes everybody look bad and defensive and just isn’t good for anything serious (besides one’s own ego I guess)

There was a real chance to do some good education here, I feel, and it was squandered away in a wash of rage. At least that’s how I’ve always felt about the issue. It’s quite the shame. Now there’s nothing left but rage.

And @Celda Amanda’s point, from what I can gather (maybe I’m assuming too much as it’s MY point as well), is that it’s not necessary that Wikipedia actually has a very sexist, uncomfortable, dominating environment, it’s that people assume that would be the case. And the reason for that is that because you often see, both on and off-line that groups can and often do create sexist, uncomfortable, dominating environments. And that’s the problem.

To go off on that, while maybe Wikipedia can do some things to make a better environment, but that’s not the whole issue. We can work towards creating more balanced, comfortable spaces for women in general, make it the expected norm rather than the exception, and that will do a lot of good.

Of course, I couldn’t get them to understand that just because a minority of a minority attempts to retake a negative word (in this case ‘trap’ as regards to transgendered people) doesn’t mean you get to use it freely.

It pissed me off, and I got banned.

You got banned for that?

I think I seriously underestimated the degree to which that place crashed and burned.

Celda, you can edit an article anonymously, but many people do not.  Not everyone is ashamed to use a handle that indicates a gender.

True enough, lots of people edit with registered accounts. Then, one method could be to look at the percentage of anonymous editors: of those who do edit without registering, how many are men and how many women?

I am assuming it would be still male-dominated. If so, how can the reason be sexism? It could not be.

Not sure how it all can be connected to wiki, except here’s Celda claiming that there’s no gender on the internets

Nah, nice strawman. I said, the reason why women do not contribute to wikipedia is not because they are discriminated against. All the arguments that have been put forth to suggest that are extremely weak.

And the reason for that is that because you often see, both on and off-line that groups can and often do create sexist, uncomfortable, dominating environments. And that’s the problem.

You’re right about this, but it’s a very big leap to say “Women assume Wikipedia is hostile to women, that is the reason why they largely do not participate in it.”

and the truth of the matter is, in some small way, all the anti-disability people are RIGHT - we SHOULDN’T exist - but the REASON is that Science! should have fixed it. or at least made more EFFORT to fix it!

Well like, I guess in a perfect world no one would suffer from any form of disability, but it’s kind of meaningless (at best, harmful at worst) to say.  We don’t live in a perfect world, and the answer to that is to minimize the impact that disabilities have on people’s lives.

It’d be like saying that trans people shouldn’t exist, because no one should have to live in a body they hate (or whatever phrasing you’d use).  It’s sort of technically correct if you squint really hard, but nothing good could ever come out of saying it.

A lot of the time when dealing with this issue, it’s hard to talk to men about it, even if they don’t mansplain or get pompous, because men literally don’t see how much abuse women take online.

As a dude I have to say I never did appreciate this until I started a feminist blog. Then pretty much immediately I found myself the target of a host of bitter, vicious, threatening misogynist assholes. I’ve been online for a loooong time and have been in countless online arguments, but nothing like this. At first it was sort of refreshing to know I’d pissed them off so much, but the cumulative effect of it really wore me down. (Now that I’ve got more feminists posting in my comments it’s much better.)  And yeah, I find myself picking my battles too.

Obviously, the shit I’ve had to put up with is not exactly the same as the shit many women and especially feminist women have to put up with online—nothing I’ve had to deal with even remotely compares with the shit a lot of female feminist blogger have had to put up with— but this experience gave me a taste of it at least.

I think one of the problems with accessability is that they are often placed poorly.  As if they’re meant to be frustrating to both disabled and non.

But I don’t get the dig at ‘sign language’.  Isn’t that what the SL in ASL means?  And why should a person not translating or reading need to know if it’s ASL or ESL or whatever?

Celda, you can edit an article anonymously, but many people do not.  Not everyone is ashamed to use a handle that indicates a gender.

Also, it’s not like the arguments we make are always ungendered - or, rather, it’s not like women who are interested and willing to speak in such a public forum are always going to be the ones upholding the status quo..  See lijakaca @34.

Personally, the reason why I ever got into editing wikipedia is because right at about the time I was starting to take an interest in such stuff, there was the whole kerfluffle re: the article on women and the insults therein.  I decided that it was not really something I felt like spending my time on, for a variety of reasons.

I love this site. I came here as a palate cleanser after arguing feminist cultural theory with a passive-aggressive 23 year old stripper with poor reading comprehension skills. I feel better now.

But I don’t get the dig at ‘sign language’.  Isn’t that what the SL in ASL means?  And why should a person not translating or reading need to know if it’s ASL or ESL or whatever?

I assume it has to do with “sign language” not meaning anything.  Someone who knows ASL isn’t going to be able to understand another language.  It’d be like referring to someone who speaks Swahili as speaking “African”.

This is interesting information this is good to hear you write about a great topic.

hotels in mahabaleshwar

RE: Penny Arcade

Ah, I hadn’t seen the timeline, and didn’t follow the Twitter war.  I see now that Gabe and Tycho have brought their problems upon themselves with their piss-poor handling of the situation.

@19 Raynlt

I like Christina on Cracked, but she’s very hit-or-miss.  She does the first person humor, which makes it easy to attack her for vaginaing up the place, but I think it also makes her too close to the source material and prevents her from having the bite she needs to really be funny.  Her articles that are good are very very good, but a lot of the time it feels like she’s holding back. 

Not saying that she isn’t putting up with a shitton of sexism there.  But she should definitely ignore it.  Hell, Seanbaby ignores all his critics, even the ones making the absolutely valid point that he’s become a lazy joke-recycler, and he’s as beloved as ever.  Which, by the way, if Shakesville ever wants to shake things up again, Seanbaby can be an excellent source of poorly thought out offensive rape jokes.  When he’s funny he’s hilarious, but when he’s phoning it in it’s rape this and retarded that.

Danica, doesn’t absolutely every woman have that experience——unless they’re one of those self righteous trolls who says, “I’ve never experienced sexism” or some such shit?  The teacher—the voice and persona of authority—-ignores whatever the boys do, then suddenly develops perfect vision when the girls fight back.  Ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty——or right now, it’s always the same.  Ignoring it doesn’t make it any better—-in fact it’s worse, because it’s basically just putting it on the person being harassed to shut up for—-why?  It doesn’t benefit her any. She’s got to swallow shit and pretend it’s fancy chocolate.  It benefits people who don’t want to think about it or don’t want to see it for what it is.  And of course whoever is doing the harassing is free to harass all the women or girls he wants to,  so it solves nothing.

57 and 58

Agree agree agree.

I’ll up it, even: I’m fairly convinced some people want some other people to suffer emotionally or physically some of the time. Exhibit A: under a recent article about a possible universal flu vaccine that could potentially wipe out every virus we know about, currently, if it’s widely applied, some asshole declared that “the world is overpopulated enough” so let’s not find cures, let’s continue to let people (third world people, of course) die off miserably in huge, preventable batches. The fact that he feels it’s appropriate to combat overpopulation by denying the sick—by letting existing people suffer terrible physical and psychological pain as they lay dying—rather than fight for universal access to birth control is kind of telling. Living with a disability is not the same thing as lying on a death bed, of course, but I think in the minds of some people, it’s on the same continuum of perverse spectator sport. It’s that zero sum thing: if s/he’s disabled, I’m more able-bodied and privileged, so maintain the status quo.

Kyso #67: Most of the Cracked authors are hit or miss. Only about a 1/4 of the articles all told actually get me laughing. The commentators’ reactions are a classic example of selective perception. Or just plain double/higher standards.

As for ignoring: As a female film reviewer who endured a bit of that BS myself when I wrote for a particular fauxgressive media site, I personally chose to ignore it completely, and it was never so bad (it was nothing like what Christina or feminist bloggers experience) that it gave me pause. But I can understand why Christina opts to “pick her battle” in that fashion. To each her own.

Celda, it doesn’t require that someone explicitly state a gender in order for a negative environment based on gender discrimination to result - gender discrimination is formed by actions, not categorizations per se. Even if I don’t explicitly identify as female in my Wikipedia handle (and I don’t), I still find myself facing attitudes of sexism and gender discrimination, attempts at silencing, “tone” arguments, and an enforced, hegemonic viewpoint that attempts to erase my gender when editing. Just because some other user also uses a gender non-specific handle does not mean that he or she is not engaging in those same behaviors. And just because there is no explicit statement of who is male and who is female when performing this engagement, does not make it any more appealing to strap on my helmet and march back into the trenches for another day of non-specific gender warfare. Just the fact of there being sexist behavior tolerated, encouraged, and sometimes required by a particular forum is enough to make it so that women don’t want to participate.

“I assume it has to do with “sign language” not meaning anything.  Someone who knows ASL isn’t going to be able to understand another language.  It’d be like referring to someone who speaks Swahili as speaking “African”.”

I understand, not knowing ASL or being deaf (my daughter learned some ASL in summer college), that there are several different sign-languages in different parts of the world which are not mutually intelligible.  (Which only makes sense, since spoken languages are different in different parts of the world and are mostly not mutually intelligible.)

If you’re trying to take college classes taught by teachers who don’t or can’t sign, it doesn’t do any good.  Even with lip reading, how often does a prof face the board or is otherwise not visible when talking?  To complain about the need for a translator who can sign for a deaf person is just rude and mean.

Besides, if you know ASL but are surrounded by people who don’t know it, that limits its usefulness outside the Deaf Community in the US (presumably many/most/all of whom will know ASL).

However, I may be completely wrong about this, and I don’t want to be accused of hearsplaining or mansplaining, so I defer to anyone with a superior knowledge about the subject…

(BTW, it’s nice to hear from denelian again, who last I knew was facing some sort of difficult/painful surgery — on her hip, if I remember right.  We really do have some sort of unconventional surrogate family thing going here…)

@59/manboobz,

Actually, good to know, manboobz is on my reader but I rarely do comments because sometimes wading through the “you’re totally wrong because don’t you know about my man problems??” comments are just… tiring. Don’t need. But your stuff is hilarious, will make more of an effort to be participative.

If you stand up for women, or womens’ issues,  there’s always the danger of being labeled either a woman or a pussywhipped male for it. I remember some debacle with MRAs where any man who didn’t bash women was labeled a ‘mangina’ and told that he peed sitting down. 

#70—-they’ve won,  because they’ve driven women out. And then, chances are, they probably go to where the women are and try and take over there.  Some feminist site invited them into a discussion and the trolls didn’t want to participate once there was an invitation. It was the lack of consent that they wanted.

There was a recent conversation about this at echidne (last couple of weeks).  It was pretty good.  I recommend her gender series for anyone who needs data for pay-gap and whatnot.

oldfeminist@4:
That is just sad.  That “Some argue that feminism is not about women but about gender freedom for all” in the intro, and a complaint gets dismissed out of hand?  That’s just rediculous.  If it said “Some argue that feminism isn’t only about….” that might be okay, though not really appropriate for the intro paragraph.  Without that word only, it just should not be allowed as a legit POV, or a POV at all except to be ridiculed.  gender freedom for all would come in a feminist world, but it is not the key goal.  Seriously, that would be more humanist of which feminist is an overlapping subset.
Damn, it looks like I missed an interesting troll.  (though glad he wont be around forever, so silver lining)

#7—-it’s like jokes about prison rape. If rape is bad, all rape is bad. It can’t be a little bad or mostly bad but sort of okay—-and that’s where those two guys went wrong. Well, that, and the refusal to open a book or stand up to some truly horrible shit that went on right in front of their faces.

Crissa: ESL is English as a second language.  ASL is the official name of the most common, but not only, sign language used by deaf people in the USA and many other English speaking (and not) countries.

Does anybody ever tell a man to just ignore it? Women get that all the time, but do men?

@ginmar: Only if they are a different sort of minority or when it’s a parent talking about a younger family member, IME.

Hey, Chet.  Fuck you.

I’m offended and you don’t get to minimalize itjustbecauseyou want to keep using language in a privileged way.  As if ‘asshole’ wasn’t always an available insult.  Fuckhead.  Loser.  Etc.

‘Fucktard’ is offensive and it pisses me off just as much as the resurgence of ‘retard’.  My opinion of those who use those words, and of whatever point they want to make, plummets.

My brother has DS, and I’ve been fighting this damn battle all my life.  HE is not an insult.  He’s a much happier and kinder person than I am.  So, no he wouldn’t get offended and in your face. He’d treat you better than you deserve.

I get tired of fighting it, but fuck you twice for claiming people don’t have the right to be offended or only retarded people have the right to be offended and that your super special etymological skillz somehow protect you from criticism on this point.

It’s privilege, and it’s bullshit.

@ginmar: what helen said. Only if they’re in some kind of disempowered position. Real men and boys don’t cry. And of course Real Men<TM> take things calmly until the plot point where they beat the crap out of the people who are oppressing them.

What’s always struck me about that certain kind of guy (from 20-odd years participating in feminist forums) is just how insistent they are about being heard everywhere. It doesn’t matter how many places their words dominate, it’s still a terrible injustice if there’s one place they don’t.  (And I must be a girly-man too—I tried wikipedia early on because some of the articles outraged my sense of editing, but nah. Also the no-experts thing can be a problem when you’re a former reporter and want to say, “I interviewed X, and this is what my notes tell me they said.”)

And they always need the last word.  Always. Hm, I need to think about this whole thing.  I’m far too familliar with the other sort of guy—-the ones who insist on having every word be heard.

Comment #16: alysia

Thanks Alysia.

Chet

It’s the same logic as calling something you don’t like as “gay” or calling someone a “bitch” or more generally calling for a person to be “a man” by implying they’re a woman. You’re linking the people whose label you are using to bad things, thereby calling the labeled persons bad at the same time.

It’s very offensive and especially uncreative. It only takes a modicum of effort to insult a specific person without causing collateral damage.

And yeah, I’m one who’ll argue any sort of insult implying diminished cognitive functions should not be used, but I save the fight for egregious use of ableist insults, like calling someone or something retarded or using the “-tard” construction.

Denellen,

As a disabled person, I am proud of my own existance as such. My belief is that disability is a natural part of the human condition, and that disability is not always (or in ALL ways) a deficit. People with disabilities bring value added elements that enrich our society. On average, they/we tend to be more resourceful, more inovative, and have a better perspective than your average able-bodied individual. (Of course this is a generalization, but I’m talking trends in population, not that every single disabled person is more resourceful, etc. than every single able-bodied person.) Many, many inventions started in their infancy as accommodations to be developed for the disabled (sometimes BY the disabled). Everyone who enjoys the internet has the deaf and baudot code to thank. Everyone who likes getting a one shot vacuutainer that exchanges vials for blood draws can thank the one-handed med tech who invented it. Everyone who enjoys using something like Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing can thank the quadriplegics it was developed for.

As for science “fixing” us…my feeling is that how much you want to persue cure or medical interventions for your disability is a very personal decision that everyone should have a right to make on their own. I know people with spinal cord injuries who spend every waking minute volunteering to be human guinea pigs. Fine for them, but that isn’t how many of us want to spend our lives, we would rather use our strengths and energies pursuing something else more meaningful to us.

Finally, here is the thing about SS benefits. It seems the same people who bitch about disabled people being on SSI/DI are the same people who refuse to provide employment or other accomodations and actively discriminate against us in employment and other ways. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t not employ us and then not provide some kind of compensation for us. (I know we are all just supposed to kill ourselves off “Million Dollar Baby” style, but not happening, thank you.) So, just blow them the fuck off. Wait till they are old and disabled and see how they change their tune (because 85% of us will be disabled sometime in our lives. The alternative is usually dropping dead at 35 in a car accident.) It is about surviving. We all gotta do what we gotta do.

Renyalt @69

Her topics are always pretty good, I just think she sticks too much to the self-depreciating humor that usually works for female comedians but in this crowd can do her no favors, plus it kind of limits her.  Some of the stuff she did partnered up with the senior (male) members of the staff was awesome, which is probably why they started giving her more regular columns.  Cracked.com’s comment section is always out for blood, so if she’s going to get criticized anyway she might as well be testing her limits.

I’m sure men are told to ignore it in different language—as a way of telling them to ‘man up.’ If a man can’t respond with domination and violence to something that upsets him, then he has to ignore it. But the important thing is that men have that other option, women don’t. We aren’t allowed to go in and beat the other side into submission.

#73, ginmmar: If you stand up for women, or womens’ issues, there’s always the danger of being labeled either a woman or a pussywhipped male for it. I remember some debacle with MRAs where any man who didn’t bash women was labeled a ‘mangina’ and told that he peed sitting down.

I think you’ve described virtually EVERY discussion I’ve had with MRAs. Maybe not the peeing sitting down bit but the rest, yes. The mangina/pussywhipped accusations are omnipresent. (And then the same guys who use the word “mangina” complain endlessly about feminist “shaming language” directed at them.)

There are some MRAs who are still convinced I’m a woman because I criticize misogyny and MRAs, despite the fact that I blog under my own name, and I’m a real person named David who can be googled, etc etc, My favorite accusation was that I wasn’t just one woman but a GROUP of women—because, you know, women do everything together, like going to the bathroom.

So again, blogging while feminist has given me the closest approximation of what it’s like to be a woman on the internet.

Hum, interesting choice of activity that women do together, manboobz.  It is a typical choice.  IME, the times I have felt compelled to accompany another woman to the bathroom it was either because we were in a strange place and it was good to either find out from them where it was or show them where it was or because we were in a hostile environment where being alone was bad and alone and female was double bad.  In school, bathroom breaks were kind of constrained by breaks between classes, so you didn’t really have much opportunity to be in the loo alone.

But saying ASK when it’s ESL is just as offensive.  If they’re speaking swahili, they’re speaking ‘a foreign language’ and saying they have a ‘foreign language interpreter’ shouldn’t be insulting.

You have to pick and choose your battles.  And the amount of straw argumentation here is offensive.  Chet never, ever, said ‘retard’ or ‘tard’ wasn’t insulting - merely that the reason given wasn’t different than many other words.  No one bothered to answer him that ‘tard’ was more offensive, and therefore shouldn’t be used, and only one person mentioned that it was used more recently as an official term.

That’s the problem.  Giving a blanket reason ‘it was used as an insult’ means giving up alot of nuance in language.  Even ‘fool’ is merely an older version!  Sure, it’s over a thousand years old instead of merely a few hundred, but hey…

Why are we so fixated on putting other people into a box we can insult, anyhow?  Like helen’s response to david - ‘interesting choice of activity’ - when of course it’s st… foolish, he was explaining a foolish MRA position!

My favorite accusation was that I wasn’t just one woman but a GROUP of women—because, you know, women do everything together, like going to the bathroom.

Well, you know it takes at least 2 or 3 silly woman-brains to equal one almighty man-brain. /MRA

RT said it better:  people are not insults.  Women, minorities, POC, GLBTI, differently-abled—we’re all humans and the fact that we aren’t the dominant power sect of white male cis Christian doesn’t mean we are lesser

Humans are not insults, and calling someone ‘retard’or ‘queer’ or ‘cunt’ is just not acceptable.

Crissa, Chet’s insult is offensive because it not only lets us know he disapproves of said person he’s insulting,  which was his intent, but it also lets us know he doesn’t respect t the mentally handicapped, which he denies and privileges away with saying he’s never had a retarded person complain about its use, and apparently therestof us don’thavetheright to speak up on their behalf or on our own.

crissa@ YEAH. That happened to me recently at a news blog: AmericaBlog has BANNED me for calling out body-shaming in a post about Michelle Bachmann (saying things about how ugly and bug-eyed she is, wanting her to shut her ‘pie-hole’, wanting to see her and Sarah Palin in cutoff shorts washing a pickup truck, not wanting to see her get scanned by the TSA since she’ so UUUGLY, etc, etc.). And after YEARS and YEARS of supporting them and being an ally, I am banned for calling out sexism. AND, my comments were deleted. Gee, maybe I should have worded it nicer! /s So, according to AmericaBlog, homophobia is BAD, but sexism and misogyny are AOK. I am boycotting AmericaBlog forever. HYPOCRITES.

If so, how can the reason be sexism? It could not be.

Yeah, it could not be. Celda says that, therefore it’s reality.

It could not be that a lifetime of being told to shut the hell up and let the mens talk would result in a significant portion of us actually shutting the hell up.

And it could not be that getting threats of rape and violence when we do speak up would wear us down and result in another portion of us deciding to give it a miss and try to pursue lives a little more free of toxin.

It also could not be that Amanda explained exactly the thought process behind this decision in the fucking post.

I remember some debacle with MRAs where any man who didn’t bash women was labeled a ‘mangina’

Reminds me of the flaming sack of shit who explained to a mail list I was once on about how he was a real man, and that meant that women argued with him a lot, but rully he was totes what they were looking for. Whereas any of the men who spoke up to affirm that he was a flaming sack of shit, well, there were “girl men” who were not really men anymore, and women liked that because girl men agree with women on everything, but they only want to have sex with real men.

It also could not be that Amanda explained exactly the thought process behind this decision in the fucking post.

Well I mean come on, Celda can’t actually read the post, can he? He might get girl-cooties on him. Can’t have us thinking he actually takes a woman’s thoughts seriously enough to READ them when they are right in front of him.

Some of this discussion also makes me think about the people who think that since X (black or female or disabled or otherwise not dressed for success) person has made it into the top echelons of income or or publicity that there is now no discrimination.

No, *ssholes, we will know that discrimination is gone when all women/minorities/etc as untalented and lacking in social skills as you can rise to positions of responsibility and feel comfortable spouting off opinions about everything while demanding that others be silenced.

Manboobz, it’s this: feminism will make you unpopular, an outcast, even and perhaps especially amongst some feminists. But it will definitely make you an outcast with the world in general, because women are supposed to be seen and not heard, and so they don’t exist, and if they don’t exist—and they’re not really people—-then they have no problems that have to be acknowledged, do they?  Plus women are regarded with so much undisguised and unacknowledged hatred that people are genuinely bewildered that calling a woman horrible names is at all untoward.  Every woman asks for it,  at all times.

Once you realize that feminism will make you unpopular, I think, a lot of the bewilderment goes away.  Very few people get popular being feminist because at some point push comes to shove and you have to point out that, say, yes indeed, abortion means life or death for women, and that that’s more important than some dude’s measely twenty bucks per week in child support. But women in this culture have so little value that whoever said it takes two or three of them to be regarded as important as one man hit it on the head. And the people who devalue women like that—-they also complain about the Taliban and Sharia, and Islam, which values women less than men. But here in our culture it’s exactly the same but there’s tremendous hostility to putting it in words, to saying it out loud. As long as you do it and not say it explicitly, then you have plausible deniability, and you have to say it every time it comes up.

according to AmericaBlog, homophobia is BAD, but sexism and misogyny are AOK. I am boycotting AmericaBlog forever. HYPOCRITES.

Not surprising. Former Republicans, like Andrew Sullivan - they only changed parties because they wanted an exemption for themselves. Plenty of liberal men repeat Limbaugh talking points word for word when it comes to gender issues.

Shhh! You’re not supposed to remember that. Nor are you supposed to point out that the low bar makes them only a teensy bit better than Limbaugh and his legions of zombies. Apparently, with these guys, if a woman says one harsh word to them—-however true—-just once in his lifetime they’re entitled to carry a grudge for ages, yet no act that a man does is considered sufficient cause for a woman to be even wary of a man.  And so many other uneven standards.

It used to be you could tell the libs from the cons by who voted for abortion.  There’s still a few Republican hold outs on that. It’s the classic ‘nice guy versus jerk’ dichotomy that Nice Guys like to whine about.  The biggest difference is honesty—but it’s the Repubs who are being honest that they hate women.

#93, kristin: ...and women liked that because girl men agree with women on everything, but they only want to have sex with real men.

This is another extremely popular “argument” on MRA and “Men Going Their Own Way” websites, sometimes bolstered by some little evo psych-ish arguments they’ve made up to justify it.

The strange thing is how many of these guys, even as they attack feminist men as manginas, identify themselves as “beta” “nice guys” and complain endlessly about how women only have sex with “alphas” and “thugs.” (And if you bring up the large number of women who date/marry guys who are neither alphas or thugs, they argue that these women aren’t actually having sex with their boyfriends/husbands but are secretly having sex with thugs.)

Yeah, my wife and I have a real estate partner who is classic MRA/“nice guy.” My wife has known him a long time now, and she considers him a good friend, but got over her inclination to date him real fast when she was younger. Because I do martial arts, I don’t think I fall into his “mangina” category. Otherwise, who knows?

As for there being “no gender on the internet,” well… yeah. There is. Briefly getting into MMORPGs, I continued my practice of primarily playing female characters. The shit I saw there… insane. Just insane.

It could not be that a lifetime of being told to shut the hell up and let the mens talk would result in a significant portion of us actually shutting the hell up.

And it could not be that getting threats of rape and violence when we do speak up would wear us down and result in another portion of us deciding to give it a miss and try to pursue lives a little more free of toxin.

It also could not be that Amanda explained exactly the thought process behind this decision in the fucking post.

So according to you, the fact that women do not contribute to Wikipedia is because of environmental pressure and external influence, thus they are not responsible for failing to help add to Wikipedia.

Now, if the facts in question are positive or a success, for example in Hanna Rosin’s talk about the rise of women: “http://www.ted.com/talks/hanna_rosin_new_data_on_the_rise_of_women.html”

Well of course women are themselves responsible for this success, right? No one would argue it was because of a favourable environment or external support.

Funny how that works.

And of course, as we all know, the reason why women do not simply click “edit” and add to wikipedia anonymously is because they are told to shut up, even though in such a case it is literally impossible for anyone to communicate with them.

And if a man were to anonymously add to Wikipediado, why of course no one would erase his contribution, since after all they would know that a man had done the editing, and no one would ever erase a man’s words.

And the reason why women do not register for wikipedia and discuss pages is because other people can instantly determine they’re a woman, then argue with them and say they are wrong, and they do not want to deal with that. And of course if a man were to register and discuss pages, no one would ever argue with them since they would know it was a man who was speaking.

Here’s a quote from another article which sums up the situation:

The thing is that wikipedia ran for almost ten years without anyone given much thought to the distribution of the sexes on the contributors. There was never any discrimination against either sex - in fact it was possibly to contribute anonymously without anyone else ever knowing one’s gender. It was truly a free for all. Then recently, after this real life open experiment had been running for 10 years, a survey of the contributors was made…

Only 13 percent of contributors were female!...

When left to their own devices (just as they were in the great experiment known as wikipedia) men and women will simply often pursue different interests.

Very sad how some people are unwilling to accept these facts.

Free for all = likely to reflect current societal prejudice in pretty much the same way that meatspace does.

That’s all the writing I’m willing to do responding to your wilfully ignorant comment.

denelian:  I totally hadn’t thought that angle.  I was thinking that the term sign language was the insult, instead of knowing which signing it was, which I totally wouldn’t know which school it was.  Sure, I can recognize Asian accents, but there are many regions I can’t even tell you what language that is, or even place it right on the globe.  Sign is totally one of those.

I wonder what happens to someone like me who can’t hold a pencil long or is so clumsy with fingers and learning to sign… What I imagine is like talking to a couple of my friends who can’t seem to string verbs and nouns together coherently, so I’m always having to fill in the blanks and ignore their errors to pay attention to the message, because they’re otherwise really kind people; just inable to write clearly.

I’ve talked to a couple of guys on Second Life whose first language is ASL, and they’re usually embarrassed at their grammar, since it’s completely object-oriented.  Of course, I find it pretty easy to understand, honestly, a very curious but fascinating accent.  But of course, they can’t see that, they just see being harassed on forums for being ESL (and this time I mean second language).

PS, personally, I’m looking forward to getting off my meds this summer.  I hope I can, anyhow.  I hope you’re able to adjust to your situation… I know getting off mine will leave me wandering around stupidly for a few weeks.

I just came across your blog and reading your beautiful words. I thought I would leave my first comment but I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Pass4sure JK0-016 Pass4sure 642-067 Pass4sure 000-977

Wikipedia is awful. I have had 127 pictures put up for deletion in a few hours because I displeased a user called “a man in black” and his posse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amib.jpg

Chet

Right, and you’re doing that every time you say that someone is “stupid”, or an “idiot”, or a “moron”, or an “imbecile”, or a “fuckwit”. But somehow those terms are ok but “retard” and “fucktard” are disqualified, presumably because somebody who was “right” didn’t like the person who said it (for the most part, that’s how these language issues are being settled; the “right” people can use any kind of language they want, like the person who decided to insult me with a rape reference.)

You are arguing with a person who finds all those words unacceptable and tries very hard to not write or say them. I even think “stupid” should be an off-limit word. But getting people to stop throwing their privilege around and slurring and denigrating disabled persons is a hard fight and I have finite energy to fight it every fucking time it happens.

I don’t conjure up a difference, I guess. “Retard” and “moron” mean the same thing to me; I don’t think of the disabled when someone says “retard”, for some reason I think of frat guys. Seriously. But, what’s the standard, here? The etymology isn’t popular; therefore it can be ignored?

It doesn’t matter what you don’t think about when you are enforcing prejudices against a marginalized group, what matter is the damage you do.

Right, I mean I certainly wouldn’t want to abuse the privilege of dictating to other people what words they should and shouldn’t be able to use, just because I was related to someone with a developmental disability. Oh, wait, but it wasn’t me that abused that privilege - it was you.

Never mind. I certainly can’t expect you to examine your own privilege. No, it’s much easier to wield your own brother like a weapon, all to win an internet debate. (I’m sure he treats you better than you deserve.)

Hey Chet, am I “privileged” for being mentally and physically disabled and am I using my “privilege” as a weapon?

Don’t you think that indicates that being cognitively disabled is unfortunately inherently stigmatizing, and that language choices (like calling non-disabled stupid people “retarded”) aren’t particularly contributory?

It’s <u>people</u> who decide what is stigmatizing. Things and conditions aren’t stigmatizing all by themselves.

There’s always going to be a language need to call stupid people stupid, and I think that outweighs the privilege of people like Caren to exploit their relatives to dismiss arguments they don’t like.

This is about the prejudices against disabled persons and Caren is being a good ally, like a straight person can be an ally with LGBT persons. She’s not exploiting her brother, she’s fighting for his rights and dignity because she is a decent human being.

But I’m not going to stop. It’s more important to me to preserve a rich variety of language for calling stupid people “stupid” than to avoid offending you. Avoiding offense isn’t the highest moral calling.

And thus here you state your manifesto that you value saying certain words and knowingly demonizing certain groups, even if indirectly, is more valuable to you than respecting the humanity of the people you denigrate, slur, and further marginalize.

The English language has a finite number of words but an infinite way of communicating things. You can be more creative, do better, and communicate more deeply if you only apply yourself to the task, but instead you choose the easy way and the “rich variety of language” of a prejudiced society.

Kyso @65: This is not the first time PA has gone this route: Mike goes off and rants about the ungrateful bitches (who can forget his long whine about how he essentially married for sex), and Jerry doesn’t want to confront him. You know, bros before hos.

Celda @101: Random unsourced Wikipedia comments are not ‘facts’. But you knew that.

Free for all = likely to reflect current societal prejudice in pretty much the same way that meatspace does.

Unfortunately, the default feminist excuse for any fact, event, or actions that reflect negatively on women (it’s not their fault, it’s because of discrimination / external pressure) does not work for Wikipedia. No reasonable person could believe that, though apparently many feminists do.

Do you believe that there could be prejudice in the real world if other people were invisible and intangible like ghosts, AND did not communicate with each other directly? Analogous to how people (who are mostly men and few women) edit Wikipedia anonymously without communicating?

If so, I question your thought processes.

Celda @101: Random unsourced Wikipedia comments are not ‘facts’. But you knew that.

Where did I claim that a random comment was a fact?

I also notice that you did not refute any of my assertions.

Right, but in this specific case we’ve all determined that there’s no way to denigrate someone’s intelligence - specifically their intelligence, not just them as people - without “demonizing” people with genuine cognitive impairment.

Then if you realize this, why continue to do so?

If push comes to shove, it’s more important to be able to express certain crucial ideas than to avoid offending the easily offended.

Question answered.

This is an expression of your privilege. It’s not about offending the “easily” offended, but to stop being part of the problem that stigmatizes, bullies, and kills those that society marginalizes. There are no “crucial ideas” that must be expressed which contributes to the harm inflicted to the harmless and powerless who are the targets of a society’s fear and rage.