Dewdrop-Lollipop not feminist enough

[Full disclosure: I am not only a woman, but was also a Women's Studies minor in college (majors were not available), so I tend to have pre-disposed but not inflexible opinions on this sort of thing.]

I’ll admit that reading Jane’s entry on Monday did not make me run to the Wikichix site to see what it was all about. However, it did interest me enough to mention it to my boyfriend, and he jumped all over it. He immediately began to send them an email to request an account with his own contact information and the name “Grace” (I suggested Wilma). After a google search revealing no hits for that name and realizing that they would ‘confirm his femininity’ through his school email address, he sort of chickened out and used my email instead. I wouldn’t let him use my name, so he used Jane Smither (actually my grandmother’s name, I think), and the username “dewdroplollipop.” “Jane’s” email was appropriately full of smiley faces and exclamation points, asserted her female-ness, and asked for registration. One ‘Submit’ button and a google search later, he discovered that Jane Smither is part of the Women and Gender Differences Research Group of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Now, if anything could get you in, it should be credentials like that, right? But alas, I have yet to receive any communication whatsoever from the Goddesses of Wikichix and am beginning to lose interest in their whole schick.

I feel nearly the same way here as I did the first time I read bell hooks. That is, perhaps there is a bias that exists here; does further subdivision fix it? If, contrary to all logic, Wikipedia, a faceless and anonymous Internet site, does somehow discriminate against women editors and oppresses women’s ideas of what everything in the world is, shouldn’t this be fixed from the inside? Won’t a better product emerge if everyone works together on one thing to make it better instead of throwing down their toys and retreating to the “_____-only” clubhouse? Instead of discriminating ourselves further, shouldn’t we simply issue a call to encourage women to post on Wikipedia and other Wikisites? Self-segregation, especially with specific rules banning spectators and participants who are Others, does nothing but encourage stereotypes, prejudices, and distrust.

By the way, in a google search for bell hooks, the first entry is her Wikipedia article, which begins like this:

bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952) is an American intellectual, feminist, and social activist. hooks focuses on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films, and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through an African American female perspective, hooks addresses race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.

Please, Wikichix, point out to me the glaring “systemic gender bias in Wikipedia” that apparently makes “it clear that a number of women [are] not comfortable contributing to the conversation.” Obviously, I’m too repressed to see it myself.

In related news, said boyfriend just called and pointed out that when you rearange the letters in "feminist" you get "i fist men." heh.