Comments on: No Girls Allowed: File Sharing Culture and BitTorrent

By: Dan Balvin

Dan Balvin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:05:07 +0000

I feel like you are misunderstanding what I’m saying. I completely agree that privilege especially amongst straight white males renders so many problematic experiences of ‘everyone else’ completely invisible. Living vicariously is something most of the privileged don’t care to do. All I was pointing out was that the two men who created Wikipedia could not be blamed with 100% conviction of being blind to privilege. Could many contributors and moderators be blind to that absolutely and I think many of them are. I was only saying I find it troubling to assume that those two guys are absolutely blind of privilege all they did was create a forum people with biases and privilege filled it in. But I am completely on the same page as you with how much privilege is taken for granted and invisible to those who have it.

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:51:09 +0000

Race was CLEARLY a factor in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and how the residents of New Orleans were treated. And I could probably give you a dozen concreted examples off the top of my head. This absolutely should be included in the “knowledge database” of our generation and not white washed as with most of the history books.

By: Dan Balvin

Dan Balvin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:37:11 +0000

I can not comment on the people who monitor Wikipedia because I am not one of them and I don’t know any personally but indeed you are probably right I would not be surprised by an anti-feminist bias at all. Gender and sexual preference are the biggest social dilemmas currently going on (not to say things like race aren’t but there is more current progress on that front). Since the internet culture is indeed geared towards straight white men its almost a guarantee that they are majority of Wikipedia monitors. I personally have never met another guy friend who would ever say that they are a feminist so it is an almost certainty that pg’s issue is rightfully so. Majority of straight white men are afraid of the term feminist not realizing that I doesn’t mean women hate men and want to take over the world, but really just about equal gender rights developed because of the fact that most straight white males don’t understand the inherent privileges in being such.
In terms of the Hurricane Katrina argument I can’t really agree with that. My idea of what Wikipedia should be is an objective encyclopedia made by the culmination of all human knowledge. Obviously when you have such a thing you need moderators and with them they bring their own prejudices meaning that it can never be purely what I want. But I don’t think Wikipedia is the place for ‘discussion.’ I may be reading too much into your use of the word discussion but I don’t want the moderator’s opinion or random guy’s opinion in my encyclopedia because its not the proper forum for that. I feel race is an important thing to be discussed in Hurricane Katrina’s history but more fact oriented not opinion oriented. Again if you simply mean having race as a topic in the Hurricane Katrina section then absolutely but if you mean discussion like opinion based back and forth then no that includes too much bias and should be discussed in the proper forum which is not an encyclopedia (also not saying Wikipedia is perfect, plenty of opinion exists but in all cases where it can be minimalized only adds to Wikipedia’s credibility).

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:28:35 +0000

I think you are underestimating the power of privilege and how it renders other experiences invisible. Here is a very clear example of how the creators of a technology were blinded by privilege: http://gamer.blorge.com/2009/06/10/project-natal-is-racist-possibly-microsoft-denies-theres-a-problem/ I can give you many more, including a recent one with Google Buzz and privacy concerns.

By: Dan Balvin

Dan Balvin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:16:56 +0000

Whilst I would agree with the idea that it is possible that the straight white privileged men who designed the site (Jimmy Whales and Larry Sanger) do have a lack of perspective, I think that it is a pretty big leap to accuse them of never thinking of what it would be like for other people other than them and their ‘kind’ to use the site. I don’t think its possible to make the assumption that these guys are racist chauvinist homophobes who make sites only for men like them, is a bit of a stretch. It is certainly possible that they do let that influence them but the site itself gives no indication of that type of bias. I just don’t think assuming that is completely useful in these discussions. All I’m saying is that we can’t assume to know the beliefs and intentions of the creators. As for the anti-harassment features I would say your right because the farther away from straight white male you are the more you are open to ignorance and violence (its so difficult to write that knowing in many cases its the truth). Since most people that created these sites are not far from that base I would definitely say that type of problem is not something they considered whilst making the sites. That is something that absolutely needs to be changed because its a little ridiculous in 2010 that we don’t have any sort of deterant from threats of violence of any kind for that matter on websites used by millions of people.

By: Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10 | Sliver of Ice Design

Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10 | Sliver of Ice Design — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:16:37 +0000

[...] No Girls Allowed: File Sharing Culture and BitTorrent. While Anita and I don’t have the same viewpoint on pornography, she does make some good [...]

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:07:41 +0000

YES! Exactly!

I had a friend that was trying to include a discussion of racism on the Hurricane Katrina page and it was literally a war because every time he put something up it was immediately taken down. It is very privileged to have the time and confidence to spend all day trolling wikipedia.

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:04:55 +0000

It is not inherently anything that Wikipedia has done but keep in mind that most of the “big” sites that millions of people engage with such as Wikipedia and YouTube were developed (predominately) by men which means they never thought about what it would be like to engage in these spaces as anything other then men (mostly privileged white, heterosexual men). So, it’s not some big conspiracy to keep women out it’s just ignorance and being blinded by privilege. For example, as a feminist videoblogger, I often get threats of violence and sexual violence which is disturbing, but I have no recourse for that other then to personally block the user, which does nothing to deter him from doing it to someone else. That is because the people who developed it probably never receive those sorts of messages and never thought to build in some sort of anti-harassment function into the website.

By: pg

pg — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:59:22 +0000

Not a hint of chauvinism to be seen, even though your post is condescending and characterizes a woman’s complaints as “whining.”

By: pg

pg — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:57:11 +0000

The few times I have contributed to wikipedia, anything I have added gets removed right away. I have tried to edit some feminist-related pages but there are obsessive anti-feminist types that monitor the pages and revert edits. It feel like whoever has the biggest axe to grind (and most time to spend) wins. I gave up.