Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender studies

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Archive: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender Studies/archive1

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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 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)