Fuck this shit, and shame on Wikipedia. From The New York Times:
Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists
I JUST noticed something strange on Wikipedia. It appears that gradually, over time, editors have begun the process of moving women, one by one, alphabetically, from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory. So far, female authors whose last names begin with A or B have been most affected, although many others have, too.
The intention appears to be to create a list of “American Novelists” on Wikipedia that is made up almost entirely of men. The category lists 3,837 authors, and the first few hundred of them are mainly men. The explanation at the top of the page is that the list of “American Novelists” is too long, and therefore the novelists have to be put in subcategories whenever possible.
Too bad there isn’t a subcategory for “American Men Novelists.”
There is, actually, a subcategory for “American Men Novelists.” It lists two authors. The women’s subcat has hundreds.
For those who don’t understand why this is a problem: if “women authors” is a subset of authors, while there is no significant subset that is definied as “male authors,” then the default assumption is that “author” = “male” unless otherwise stated. Which is bullshit.
Why is Emily Dickinson here? Did she secretly write a novel that I don’t know about? Or is this just a stealth campaign to promote Emily Dickinson every chance you get? Because I would be okay with that.
She did secretly write a novel! Michael Bay is turning it into a movie next year.
(No, I just wanted an image of a American woman writer. I didn’t stop to think long enough, obvs.)
It’s currently being discussed at length on the talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:American_novelists#Preferred_gender_classification_style
Someone
created the “American Men Novelists” category this morning, perhaps as a
suggested solution to the problem — others have been adding male
novelists to that list, but of course, what about novelists who don’t
identify as one of the two traditional genders? (An “other” category has
been suggested, but personally I don’t like the sound of that – human
sexuality is a complex topic, and relegating people to one of two
‘normal’ categories, and otherwise they’re in the “weird” box is….
problematic.)
Another proposal is to remove any gender
categorization, which sounds great, except that ‘hides’ the female
authors in the list, so if someone were looking for female authors,
they’d have to guess at gender from the listed names. (In effect, this
would ‘hide’ the female authors)
Dual-categorization has also
been suggested, though the way Wikipedia’s system works, any page given a
sub-category is automatically a member of the parent category (though
that isn’t displayed prominantly).
Anyways, consensus will be reached, and things will be adjusted.
And extra layers of insidiousness come from consideration of LGBT issues.
If challenged, I wonder how the people behind this decision would defend it against, say, subdividing American novelists by State of birth (which goes much further than merely dividing by two, and is therefore surely superior?), or by genre of novel, or by initial of family name, by year of birth or by… whatever.
Also, I gather many of the “women novelists” are far more well known than some of the “novelists.” Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harper Lee don’t make the cut as prominent novelists just because of no penis?