They don't want to go to Chelsea

[steepholm]

Unlike some academics, I've always had a lot of time for Wikipedia. It can be a great place to begin research, I tell my students, though it's a bad place to finish. I've chipped in a few pounds whenever Jimmy Wales's face has appeared at the top of a page asking me for cash.

It's disappointing, then, to find that, having been one of the first organizations to respect Chelsea Manning's statement regarding her gender and name - a move that has since been followed, with varying degrees of completeness and good grace, by much of the world's media - Wiki has now reverted to calling her "Bradley", at least for the next 30 days.

Behind this reversion lies an intense and sometimes acrimonious debate amongst Wikipedia editors and admins. I don't pretend to understand the rather Byzantine process by which disputes are resolved within Wiki, but the conversation is an object lesson in how cissexism works today, amongst people who no doubt think of themselves as tolerant and open minded. The dismissal of the well-documented evidence of the harm done to trans people, both psychological and in terms of physical threat, by misgendering, as well as the underlying assumptions that for trans people (as opposed to, say, Lady Gaga, John Wayne and the Duchess of Cambridge) self-determination is in the gift of the cis majority, here wearing the baggy cloak called "consensus", and that Wiki editors with no experience in the subject are better placed to pronounce on trans issues than trans people - well, it's all rather depressing. Next time sunny Jim comes calling, my donation will be going elsewhere - probably to Trans Media Watch.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I know someone who was a serious and hard-working editor of Wikipedia until he* was consistently and viciously trolled and caught in edit wars because he was open about his genderqueer gender identity and his feminism. I know a straight cisgender former Wikipedia editor who found and provided evidence, supplied by Carter's closest friend and bandmate, that singer Dave Carter was in the process of transition and taking estrogen at the time of death. All my cis friend's edits to this effect were consistently removed, allegedly because his evidence wasn't strong enough, but clearly because the other editors didn't understand or respect the concept of being transgender. So Wikipedia's collective ignorance on trans issues has been going on for years, because although individual editors have fought for trans issues, a mass of privileged heteronormative cis guys have yelled them down. Crowdsourcing: sources the ignorance of crowds.

*Current preferred pronoun; at the time, he identified as outside the gender binary, and I don't recall what pronouns he used then

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Have to say that wiki is a disaster area for historical research- it tends to repeat all the lazy assumptions caused by a refusal to return to primary sources.

Being written out of existence online? Well, there's a novelty! :oS

[readthisandweep.livejournal.com]

It can be a great place to begin research... though it's a bad place to finish.

This, in spades. Wiki is too random to be considered reliable.

[sovay]

I know a straight cisgender former Wikipedia editor who found and provided evidence, supplied by Carter's closest friend and bandmate, that singer Dave Carter was in the process of transition and taking estrogen at the time of death. All my cis friend's edits to this effect were consistently removed

You're right: it's mentioned in an adjunct article, but nowhere in the article actually about Carter. Whose songs I love. Aaaargh.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this.

I'm going to continue to engage with the project, to try and get it fixed. I wish I could say I was optimistic about that.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I wish you luck!

Having been campaigning on this issue for the better part of forty years I find it gets more, not less depressing as the years go by!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

What seems to be going on in the section you link to is that Wales is hairsplitting over whether calling a transgendered person by the abandoned name is an act of violence or not. Either way, it's a side point to the glaring fact that Wikipedia accepts all kinds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LL_Cool_J) of ridiculous adopted names (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mexico) without having to vote on whether they're acceptable.

And, by the way, since the pro-change writer cited the Duchess of Cambridge as someone whose choice of changed name was accepted without a demur, I note that media writers are constantly still referring to her as Kate Middleton, and this doesn't cast doubt on what her right moniker is.

By the way, have you looked at your Wikipedia entry?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

By the way, have you looked at your Wikipedia entry?

I try not to think about it! My entry was created by an old friend - who nevertheless cut off contact with me when I transitioned. Later (but before said transition) I edited it to give it neutral pronouns, etc., but some time after that it was the site of a ridiculous edit war between a couple of Wiki people who tried to assess whether I was worthy of inclusion by counting how many libraries held my books, and then decided to move all that data into the entry itself (re-introducing gendered pronouns in the process). It's a total mess, in short. Like my website, it's on the list of "Things I'll deal with when I have the reserves to do so."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Happy to help, if help I have!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yuck. But on the other hand, thanks for introducing me to Dave Carter!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I believe the original author of the adjunct article is my friend Phil, who was contacted by Tracy Grammer directly. He wrote up the contact as an article so that he'd have a published source for the edit to Carter's main article. The edit war on Carter's article can be viewed here in the September 2006 changes.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Great - so he provides evidence in the form requested by Wales, and is then told that said edit is "ridiculous" and of "unacceptably poor quality", because it was in that form. This is, at the least, asshattery of the first water. Given other events it's easy to believe that it's also motivated by transphobia.

[sovay]

But on the other hand, thanks for introducing me to Dave Carter!

. . . I can kind of inundate you with music if you want. I discovered Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer in 2002, right before Carter died; "Tillman Co." came on the radio and my mother said instantly and correctly, "That's someone who's lived in Oklahoma," and next they played "I Go Like the Raven" and Carter talked about the inspiration for the song being a dream of "a Tibetan raven goddess dancing on a mountain of skulls," and I bought Drum Hat Budda as soon as I could find it in a store. A number of their songs have turned out to be important to me over the years.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm up for inundation!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, your web page. I'm afraid I'm going to get stroppy about this. I believe it the responsibility of everyone who maintains a web page to keep it updated, or at least usefully accurate. I was going to follow up my post about food trucks with a creeb about how so few of them keep their location schedules on their web pages, even though they have places to do so. Same goes for bookstores that close or move locations, and for music series that print and mail out their brochures for the upcoming season before they bother putting any of this on their web pages.

Besides, knowing Wikipedia, if you try updating the entry first, some editorial masshole is going to revert it using the website as grounds. (In California, you can change your name without going to court, but only by abandoning all use of your previous name.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'll relaunch my website when I'm ready to do so and have decided the best way to go about it. In the meantime I no longer link to it, but it's still useful for anyone who wishes to find out about my work up to the time when it was last updated - a date clearly displayed on the front page.

I don't consider the Wiki page my responsibility, but for what it's worth I publish exclusively under my legal name, which is also the one in my passport and on the Change of Name Deed I registered with a solicitor in 2011, the one I vote with, pay my taxes under, have my house registered in at the Land Registry, and am known as by my employer, friends, family and colleagues, bank, utilities, etc etc ad nauseam. Maybe the existence of my old website means that all this fails to cut the mustard in Sacramento, but I don't feel bound by the strange dictates of a local subdivision of a foreign state!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It depends very much on what sort of stuff you tend to look up. There are a lot of pockets of excellence that haven't attracted anyone with silly theories. My sister says there are great swaths of very accurate info in her field (microbiology), for instance, though I would predict that anti-vaccinators go after certain articles regularly.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

All I can say is, if I didn't know anything about you and were looking you up, I'd be puzzled and confused. Puzzling and confusing people = not a great plan. So I do encourage you to make progress on this matter soon.

The website is your responsibility, the Wikipedia article not. But it's necessary to do the one first.

Of course California has no jurisdiction over you, but others' rules may be useful guidance. A US Supreme Court decision not long ago cited the laws of several foreign countries as a moral compass in an ambiguous situation. Those who objected huffily that those countries' laws had no bearing on US jurisprudence had missed the bloody point.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Mightn't it do to put up a placeholder saying that the most recent revision of the website, other than putting up the placeholder, was in the year such-and-such, and it is to be considered an out-of-date source of information until further notice?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that's a strange attitude for the Supreme Court to take, on the face of it.

As far as the website is concerned, though, you have a point. Perhaps I should take it down temporarily. (If I can remember how to do so, mind: it occurs to me now that all the data and programs are on my old computer, now gathering dust in another room.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I think that's a good idea.

[readthisandweep.livejournal.com]

Quite so - mine was a generalisation. And my concern would be for people believing everything on Wiki is absolute fact.

[reddragdiva]

A few friends have been speaking of this with him in terms of what is helpful and unhelpful. I think he'd prefer to be helpful, fwiw.

(I'm David Gerard, the other Wikipedia admin who moved the article to Chelsea. I am also presently attempting to work within the process to get this fixed. I think I can say it's no secret that a lot of Wikimedia Foundation staff and board members are bloody horrified about this, and do appreciate that it's just as if people had voted 250-200 in favour of endorsing gross racism as policy.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You might be aware that one of the defenses of California's homophobic Proposition 8 was that it had been passed by majority vote, to which the (eventually successful in court) response was that you don't get to enshrine bigotry and deny fundamental civil rights by majority vote.

I see also that the anti-Chelsea side of the Manning argument has brought out comments from the sort of people who claim that biology is entirely binary and she will never be a woman; this shows they are 1) ignorant of biology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex); 2) disturbingly reminiscent in argumentative thrust of the sort of people who used to (and maybe still do) claim that biological sex differentiation proves that women belong barefoot in the kitchen.

[reddragdiva]

Keenly aware :-)

The problem is that it is literally true that no-one runs Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales certainly doesn't - his job is to be the Queen of England: figurehead, public relations, smile and wave, and if he does anything, the people who in fact write the whole thing get really upset and frequently reverse it. He has no actual power. The WMF doesn't have content control, per CDA Section 230 immunity for content, so actually has to be really careful what other control it exerts.

TransMediaWatch are highly aware of the case.

This really is an entire cluster of fucks.

[reddragdiva]

(Jimmy has his voice, and after reaction to that comment he's thinking very carefully on what he can say next that is helpful rather than helpy. This is good.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that's good to hear. I really want to think well of Wikipedia!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Given awareness of the Prop 8 case, I hope, therefore, that the parallel argument that "referring to subjects by their preferred name" should be default policy, and not generally subject to popular vote, will prevail on Wikipedia.

[vampwillow]

Absolutely agree, and that is speaking as a member/admin/activist in WP/WM for over nine years (and still on some of its inner workings). I think it is disgustingly reprehensible that such transphobia has taken place there considering the great past of WP in such matters.

Possibly this cissexism is related to the activities which brought her to public attention, but that doesn't excuse them at all.

It is a prime example of WP/WMF shooting itself in both feet. and arms. and donor's feet. etc.

[vampwillow]

Would you agree with me we won't get Chelsea sorted until Cat Stevens is moved to its correct location too? Frankly I find the whole thing over-crazy as that is what redirects are for ffs!

Sometimes it is a pity that WP is too big to fork meaningfully.

[reddragdiva]

I have no idea on the Cat Stevens vs Yusuf Islam issue. I think that's nothing to do with Mr Islam at all and is entirely an excuse; as such, if it were moved another excuse would take its place.

[reddragdiva]

In this case at least, it's clearly WP rather than WMF, which is at least slightly reassuring.

[vampwillow]

but that is not at all clear in the "wider world". And re Yusef Islam, that is what he wants to be called - for many years - yet we use his previous name. But Mohammed Ali instead of Cassius Clay ... :-0

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You make a fair point. The name I use is the name I've been using since I was 15 years of age (I'm now 56). Who are these people to say that it isn't my name when all my personal doumentation and qualification docs say that it is and was how those docs, BC apart- the only one that needed changing, were originally named, like any other woman's?

I think our friend is correct in her assumption of blatant transphobia.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, the case for Yusuf Islam seems to me a no-brainer. For an even closer parallel to his case, there's Moya Brennan, whom I happened to mention in my LJ post earlier today. She was born Máire Ní Bhraonáin and came to fame as Máire Brennan, under which name she recorded many albums, both with Clannad and as a solo artist, before changing her name to Moya Brennan in 2002 (for professional purposes) and in 2009 (for legal purposes). WP lists her under Moya Brennan - no problem at all, and quite right too.

Islam's trajectory is very similar - although one might argue that his name change demands to be taken even more seriously, reflecting as it does deep spiritual convictions rather than a convenient orthographic simplification. I can't say for sure that the refusal of WP to list him under the name he's had for 35 years reflects a hostility to Muslims, but it's certainly inconsistent with other decisions, and in a way that opens WP up to that charge.

[reddragdiva]

Yeah, I meant that it being brought up in this discussion (as it was by the advocates of Chelsea's old name) was not because they had any concern whatsoever for Yusuf Islam's opinion, but as another excuse.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Exactly. You would think that no one on Wikipedia had ever heard of a cross-reference, which is plainly absurd. Yes, you need to be able to get to Cat Stevens's preferred name by Cat Stevens, as most people of my vintage only vaguely remember that he adopted another name and not what it is (nor do I remember what his parents first called him, which presumably wasn't Cat), but you don't have to have that be the header on the article proper.

[sovay]

I'm up for inundation!

IOU a lot of Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer! Please find selections below. All biases are my own. Some of these songs I just like, but some are important to me.

From When I Go (1998):

"Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love"

Love is a star that will not shine till the hour of your return
And I count the days in cups of wine and the candles I have burned

"The River, Where She Sleeps"

'Cause the waters run so marvelous and deep
In the river, where she sleeps

"Lancelot"

I ain't no untarnished Galahad
Down from Arcadia like a dream in your head
But gentle lady, lend me the pure heart I never had
And I'll bring you roses and bread
And we'll fashion gold out of lead
With all the illusions we shed

"Little Liza Jane"

Bulldog train! She's my ball and chain
Racing, rocking, tightrope-walking little Liza Jane

"Elvis Presley"

Oh, if you should meet me on the march
From Appomattox all in grey
Won't you take this message to the King for me?

From Tanglewood Tree (2000):

"Happytown (All Right with Me)"

The gods will lounge around until the show is through
If it's all right, it's all right with me
And it's all right with you

"Tanglewood Tree"

I'm walking down a bone-dry river where the cool mirage runs true
I'm banking on the fables of the far, far better things we do

"The Mountain"

Some build temples and some find altars
Some come in tall hats and robes spun fine
Some in rags, some in gemstone halters
Some push the pegs back in line

"Crocodile Man"

Inside the house is the hall of mirrors
Inside the mirror is the temple of sin
Inside the temple is the face of Mama
And Mama she knows just where I been

"Cat-Eye Willie Claims His Lover"

You can cry have mercy and crawl the cane for cover
But you're bound for butcher's bride
The slewfoot devil won't be denied
When Cat-Eye Willie come to claim his lover

From Drum Hat Buddha (2002):

"Ordinary Town"

So sang the sage of sixteen summers in the upstairs choir
So sang the old dog down the street beside his wailing wall
Go home, go home, the mayor cried when Jesus came to City Hall

"Tillman Co."

Maybe old Moses come and turn this current back
Cross me over ever holy and dry
Climb me a crooked oak, scar-face, bible-black
Swing this shovel till it cracks the sky

"Disappearing Man"

In the dark, in the dawn, with your wedding dress in tatters
You reveal the yearning desert in the country of your skin

"236-6132"

If I was afraid to break or bleed
I would find someone much easier to need

"Love, the Magician"

Yeah, he tracked them by the muddy waters and he trailed them by the lonely lake
But he only saw two black otters, swimming over by the farther bank

In memoriam: Tracy Grammer, "The Verdant Mile"

I miss you like I love the sound of blackbirds in the trees
I sit alone and wish that either one of you would visit me
But no matter how much seed I hang, what prayer I call out
I cannot bring that bird in from the field or make an angel come around

I hope this is vaguely representative. Enjoy!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That's a lovely gift to wake up to. I'm listening to 'The Verdant Mile' as I write this.

[sovay]

The edit war on Carter's article can be viewed here in the September 2006 changes.

Your friend Phil may have won the edit war. At the very least, someone got the information into the article.

(This bulletin brought to you by learning that "Phantom Doll" was the last song Carter wrote before she died, never having considered it in context of gender dysphoria before; it's heartbreaking from that perspective. Anyway, it made me wonder if Wikipedia had gotten over its transphobic asshattery. A little!)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Augh. How desperately sad.

But I'm glad the Wikipedia article has been corrected.

Edit: The page history continues to be very interesting. Check out the edit attached to the comment "(this is sensitive material. i am tracy grammer and i am quoted in this article. i have edited the words attributed to me and shaped the story more accurately.)"