Jane Darnell, 23/02/2014 10:37:
Men, when perceiving anti-male behavior tend to do the opposite, namely they become aggressive and stand their ground.
True, and in laughable ways even. Is such an attitude, however, so peculiarly true of this "male" label, which seems so secondary and useless? The "males under siege" attitude I sometimes saw (never on Wikimedia projects though) is ludicrous and looks crazy fanaticism. However, earlier this morning, I experienced something like that with Jane's observations. The hint that I may be considered evil for the shameful underrepresentation of non-Italian (or even non-Ariosto/Tasso) ottava rima poems authors in my personal library... made me feel under attack. And I bite back automatically. Suddenly I understood how one can stupidly feel attacked for one's own inner self. It would be interesting to know more about such social dynamics in a more general way. They're certainly not new, see e.g. an Ariosto example in Walter Scott's "Waverley", chapter 54.
The key way to entice more women to contribute is to give them the tips and tricks [...]
Sounds like warfare and trenches. The real solution is making people not feel attacked, not making your attacks stronger or more subtle. Like, admit that a user writing about "underrepresented painters" is just the ordinary story of a volunteer who contributes to a wiki with the bias of their own personal interests, because that's how volunteers and wikis work, compensated by the other people's interests, NPOV, NOR etc. The same story as with users exclusively writing about [male] catholic bishops, [male] soccer, [ungendered?] pokémons, or [mixed!] English modernists writers. (Though I intimately and strongly despise the first three, and I do the latter.) Unilateral proclaims of one's own higher moral and intellectual stance rarely result into durable peace treaties.
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