Sexism in Wikipedia and similar sites

[VestalVirgin]

It was mentioned on here that the Wikipedia article on "woman" has been tampered with by MRAs, and I read elsewhere that Wikipedia is mainly edited by dudebros. Not surprising, once you think about it.

Has anyone observed this phenomenon on other sites, too? I would assume, for example, that TVTropes is afflicted with the same problem.

And is there anything we can do about it? (When editing clearly isn't possible because the sites are locked to protect the male-centric, misogynist content?)

Maybe start an alternative version if knowledge and time allows (this may be a pipe dream), or support similar sites that are run by women or which are clearly not overrun with these kinds of people? Become wikipedia regular editors and attempt to change it from within?

I think setting up an alternative version would be best, but, as you say, probably a pipe dream.

I'd support similar sites, but have no idea if there even are any. If there are, they clearly aren't very well known.

Changing from within ... well, if those higher in the hierarchy lock the sites for editing to preserve the sexism, there's not much one can do about that.
Adding new sites about famous women is a good thing, of course, but if those are then destroyed for the woman allegedly not being important enough ...
(Didn't someone on that other thread say a site about a little known woman was allowed to stand? Perhaps focusing on women whose name the dudebros have never heard would make it possible to make the wiki more womanfriendly more or less in secret?)

Oh, good topic for a thread, Vestal. (We "know" each other under my previous name, btw, I name changed after a recent media thread-stealing incident).

One thing that might help is the number of wikipedia entries for women that are just "stubs" (I've spotted a few of these in the past - didn't note down the names, unfortunately).

And yes, it is a more widespread problem. (Inserts rant I've been sitting on for ages). For instance on the IMDB website for films, I was surfing around it looking at films I'd watched recently, and came across one for Better than sex, an Aussie indie romcom from about 15 years ago. It was tagged "female promiscuity" on the basis of a scene where the two protagonists are comparing numbers of previous partners and the woman's tally comes to about 30. The man's is pushing 50. It is not tagged "male promiscuity".

TV Tropes I would say is broadly liberal feminist in its inclinations. Page after page calls out sexist cliches of the past in a reasonably insightful way, although it's clearly a bit of fluffy fun, and not up for a hardcore radfem take down of the patriarchy.

I've never noticed a sexist bent in the Wikipedia establishment and the principles on which it was set up, although there's almost certainly a sex bias in contributors and hence a bias in what gets written. And it's as open to MRA trolls as anywhere else on the Internet. Unless I saw examples of eg female-centred pages being struck down for lack of notability whilst male-centred ones are allowed to stand, I think it's open to change by the simple expedient of getting on there and changing stuff.

Now you might not have time to do that of course, because you are WOHM and doing the majority of childcare and the housework and perming your arm hair or whatever we have to do to look presentable nowadays... but that's a broader question. And tbf it's probably possible to edit Wikipedia whilst doing two of those things.

@PricklyBall that's interesting, who edits IMDb?

PricklyBall wrote - "One thing that might help is the number of wikipedia entries for women that are just "stubs" (I've spotted a few of these in the past - didn't note down the names, unfortunately)."

Here is a list of women-related articles on Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiProject_Women_articles_by_quality

Listed in decreasing level of quality, this is the article count:

Featured article: 59
A-Class article: 1
Good article: 268
B-Class article: 858
C-class article: 2,474
Started article: 15,247
Stub article: 22,311
Unassessed article: about 6,150

So, plenty of scope for improvement. I think it would be good if more women would contribute. Anyone with an Internet connection can edit Wikipedia.

I noticed that there' very few female authors listed on TVTropes compared to male authors. Also, some of the articles on female authors there are stubs.

And I think they also lock pages for editing because they don't want feminist sentiments to be edited in - cannot think of an example for that, but I do remember that they deleted some articles on rape tropes, which as far as I remember had nothing to do with a problem with rape apologists and more to do with the fact that women added examples of rapes that males would prefer to think as not being rape ...

They seem to have reinstated some of those articles, but I seem to remember the whole thing caused a small scandal and someone collected and preserved the deleted articles.

That's very interesting about the rape tropes, Vestal. Someone mentioned on another thread that she reads scripts in a professional capacity, and she's amazed at how many "hero gets accused of rape but it's all a misunderstanding/set-up/revenge/blurred lines about consent" plots she gets sent - all by writers convinced they're doing something new and brave that's never been done before, and tackling an important but hidden social issue that desperately needs to be aired .

Minekraft - I don't know how the editing of IMDb is set up. It would be interesting to know, though.

all by writers convinced they're doing something new and brave that's never been done before

The mind boggles. It already appears in the Bible! Not new or original at all.
A rapist actually being punished for once, now, that would be refreshing ...

IIRC I think you read my rape-revenge-run-the-bastard-through-with-a-sword fic, vestal. Crude and unpolished as a piece of writing, but remarkably cathartic to write.

Oooch, yeah, I think I did. Very cathartic, indeed. Rare that it happens in real life, though. Sadly.