Having an ungendered username gets me some interesting interactions when people assume that because I'm not explicitly female, I must be male. Had a fun experience on IRC last night where I asked someone to stop making jokes about women's "boobs" because it sounded pretty creepy toward all women, and got the reply "well, it's not like there's any women active in here, but sure I guess [...]" When I kind of went "uh...ahem" in reply, they were aghast that they'd been talking to a woman all this time and not realized it.
Which sort of neatly encapsulates two sides of the problem - when people assume the a female name is female, their actions change to suit that (whether "suiting" it in their mind is being kinder, making boob jokes, being more dominant, whatever). When they assume that everyone is the "default" gender unless otherwise specified, though, or that women aren't and couldn't be present for whatever reason, it doesn't even cross their minds to change their actions. -Fluffernutter On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Jane Darnell <jane...@gmail.com> wrote: > That is interesting! Of course according to the latest stats, chances > are 87% that any Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia is male (and we > just found out this month that in the Dutch Wikipedia, 94% are male). > It would be definitely interesting to fund some research on this > specific issue (how people react in AfD discussions to > girlish-named-Wikipedians based on female gender assumptions). This > week similar research was published on the use of the Wikipedia > "Ignore all rules" policy in AfD's: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-03-25/Recent_research > > 2013/3/31, Risker <risker...@gmail.com>: > > On 30 March 2013 22:39, Daniel and Elizabeth Case > > <danc...@frontiernet.net>wrote: > > > >> > >> >Thank you for sharing this Jane. It's amazing that it's still such an > >> issue but yeah, a great example of how deeply >rooted our presumptions > >> are. > >> > >> This actually happened to me, in a way, with one now long-departed > >> Wikipedia editor. Despite a female-suffixed username*, I assumed this > >> editor was a male because she was a flagrant asshole in some AfDs in a > >> way > >> that (in my experience) only men ever are. I was actually stunned to > find > >> out she was indeed a she. > >> > >> Daniel Case > >> > >> *As most of us know, username-based gender assumptions cut both ways. > >> Users Hersfold and Nancy (see the explanation on his userpage) are both > >> men, yet regularly deal with new editors assuming based on their names > >> that > >> they’re female. And I know they’re not the only ones. > >> > >> > >> > > Hersfold and Nancy aren't the only ones. I've almost come to assume that > > if a username "sounds" feminine, it's probably attached to a man. Almost > > every editor I know whose username ends in an "a" is male. And many > > female editors have "male" sounding usernames. > > > > If Wikipedia has taught me one thing, it is never to assume anything > about > > the identity of the person on the other side of a username: not age, not > > gender, not orientation, not geographical location, or a million other > > things that we tend to use to categorize people. > > > > Risker/Anne > > > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap >
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