I have been banned from Wikipedia for the contents of this post.
philipsandifer.com
philipsandifer.com
1. Article renamed to "Chelsea Manning" within minutes of first announcement.
2. Article moved back and forth over a couple of hours as various contributors disagree.
3. Request for discussion submitted by a user to move back to initial title, on the basis that controversial or unexpected page moves should be discussed or consensus reached before happening.
4. A week or so of discussion results in the conclusion that the page should be left with the initial title for at least 30 days, when a new proposal should be submitted for discussion.
5. New proposal raised as suggested.
6. Subsequent discussion takes place and decision is made to rename article.
7. Article is renamed.
What I see in this blog post is a bunch of petty ad-hominem attacks by somebody who's pissed they didn't get their own way. I don't think that amounts to the obviously incorrect and purposefully misleading title "Wikipedia goes all-in on transphobia."
Wikipedia is a massive, sprawling bureaucracy - it's true. There are petty rivalries and fiefdoms, and this blog demonstrates that clearly (although perhaps not from the perspective the writer intended.) But I don't, on the whole, see a massive problem in evidence. It's pretty much just excessive melodrama of the sort which one sees whenever a large group of people try to govern themselves, and it'll either sort itself out or Wikipedia will fall and something else—probably something that makes a better attempt at solving the bureaucracy problem—will take its place.
Which they are, slowly. Get used to it: this is the ugly face of herd politics, and it's only going to get more common with time, sadly. The only solution I know to this is to set up a strongly empowered group of stewards with their heart in the right place and the power and mandate to step in and fix things when they go awry - yet even that is fraught with issues, such as what happens when the stewards themselves are corrupted with idiots.
Until we have a foolproof system for weeding out well-meaning and well-sounding and hard-working idiots, this is what every organisation will naturally tend towards until a dictator takes over it and either destroys it or makes it wholesome again.
While I have long believed Wikipedia is too cliquey, and been annoyed that things like C++ articles are wrong, this shows the problems run much deeper, and are much more serious than I realised. The rules lawyers now rule wikipedia, and their biggest concern is their own self-preservation.
Philip Sandifer comments defined anyone who disagreed with him as being "virulent hatred of transgendered people" and writers of hate speech. Such broad statements, regardless of how much he believes in it, does not bring a positive discussion.
There were worse offenders on that discussion. People who made hate speech statements, people who were extremely offensive, people who have no business in a clam, polite, and friendly discussion. And, to be extremely clear, it is a pity that the banning of Philip got lumped together with those people. The two events has nothing to do with each other, other than maybe creating some mitigating circumstance for Philips defense. This defense was brought up in the arbcom case, but was not considered enough. Thats the story here.
Clearly other people than you are finding it of interest.
I'm starting to think that forking wikipedia might be a worthwhile endeavor
The first is funding.
The second is to gather a base of reasonably committed people who can clear up graffiti without becoming deletionist.
I don't have any good ideas about solving either of them, but any reasonable proposal for forking WP and trying to replace it should address them.
Chelsea Manning announced her new identity on August 22d. The original consensus on August 31st was to leave the article at Bradley Manning due to the wikipedia policy that subjects be known by their most common name. This was not final, and it was acknowledged that the common name was likely to change so it was decided that the topic could be revisited in 30 days. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bradley_Manning/August_2...
By the time the topic was revisited in early October, Manning was commonly known as Chelsea by the public and the article was moved.
I don't see any evidence of "transhate" in this, it's just policy. For another example, Snoop Lion's page is still called Snoop Dogg.
Edit: I'd only read the decision summaries; there is transphobia in the vote justifications.
There was plenty of transphobia involved in the discussions, even if it's not plainly visible from the move history.
Should an article on African-American civil rights get a redirect from "Niggers"? (NO.)
People deserve the basic respect of being called by the name that they want, and not by names that they don't want.
Why not? If I claim that my name is John from now on then what right does anyone else have to claim otherwise? As for legal procedures, it depends on the nation of residence mostly. For example, in Scotland you do not need to go through any legal process to change your name in a legal sense, you are identified by the name you use for yourself, rather than there being a 'state sanctioned' name which would need to be altered.
I have no problem whatsoever with "trans" people but do not think it is optimal for, eg, Ms Manning to be simply labelled a woman. She is clearly not, at least not 100%, female, not in the same holistic psycho-physical way that other females are. For example, I'd like to see her try to use a female changeroom and see if the other females go along quietly with that.
Of course Manning should have the right to her name of choice and to be treated as the person she identifies as. But asserting that one can change gender just by announcing it - even when it is a completely sincere statement - seems far too simplistic to me. I of course understand the argument that inventing some new gender designator could further marginalise an already vulnerable demographic, but by simply avoiding the question I think we've dug ourselves into a bit of a hole.
As another commenter said, names are important. It is important for Chelsea to be addressed as she wishes. But it's also important for our language to have a reasonable set of tools to unambiguously describe things. Simply declaring "she's a girl now, and if you disagree with that in the slightest you're a transphobic cis majority oppressor patriarchal bigot", as I see far too much on Twitter, is not the solution.
It's a complex question and I'm not sure what we can do to solve it. I am glad, however, that the topic is on the agenda - the fact we're even talking about it is surely a step forward.
Invoking some "holistic psycho-physical" intuition to dismiss years of research and experience with transgender issues is somewhat presuming.
And yes, I am sure in certain circles this issue has been discussed for years, but I would say Manning's case is the first time a lot of people have thought about these issues.
woman |ˈwo͝omən|
noun ( pl. women |ˈwimin| )
an adult human female.
If those two words did in fact have the distinct meanings you imply, that would solve some of the problem.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning[4] (born Bradley Edward Manning,
December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who…
Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight
on 25 March 1947) is an English singer-songwriter, …Edit: I'm fine with calling a person how they want to be called, and showing respect where respect is due. But the retroactive-everywhere-always-and-forever corrections are silly.
What do you mean by asexual? Do you mean transsexual? If so, the correct word is trans-male or trans-female (reflecting which gender they identify as).
The answer is - whatever they tell you to. Some would prefer "they". Others wouldn't care if you use "him" or "her". Yet others prefer some invented pronoun (there's a long list).
The only one that's likely to be inappropriate is "it". Don't use that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
I agree that 'they' works well in English and I continue to use it.