Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-10-15/Op-ed
Sexism is a hot topic on Wikipedia at the moment. The Countering systemic bias WikiProject uses Tom Simonite's "The Decline of Wikipedia" to highlight "... the effect of systemic bias and policy creep on recent downward trends in the number of editors available to support Wikipedia's range and coverage of topics." It cites the New York Times to say that "Wikipedia has been criticized by some journalists and academics for lacking not only women contributors but also extensive and in-depth encyclopedic attention to many topics regarding gender."
A Wikimedia Foundation study found that fewer than 13% of contributors to Wikipedia are women. Former WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner said increasing diversity was about making the encyclopaedia "as good as it could be." Possible factors cited as discouraging women included the "obsessive fact-loving realm" and the necessity to be "open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists." In August 2014, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced in a BBC interview the Wikimedia Foundation's plans for "doubling down" on gender bias at Wikipedia.
Grammatical gender has not been a feature of English since the 12th century. The use of the feminine pronoun "she" to refer to countries survived in some writing until the early 20th century, but is almost unknown nowadays. Wikipedia, as a modern encyclopedia, follows this trend: we do not talk about France or the United States as "she", except occasionally in quotations.
In Wikipedia's articles, the use of "she" to describe naval ships is near-universal, despite a successful and ongoing effort to improve the quality of these articles by the Military History and Ship WikiProjects. The consensus is that the first major editor of an article gets to decide for all time whether an article uses "she" or "it". It's obvious from the preponderance of "she" in the articles that almost all of them have been written by those with a preference for "she", which under our current rules is fine. This leaves naval articles as the last bastion of grammatical gender on Wikipedia.
As a man with a fascination for machines, including war machines, I've always had a particular horror of men who describe their cars, motorbikes, or aeroplanes as "she". Without getting too psychoanalytical, this seems to be evidence of ingrained and systematic sexism. The AP style guide and the Lloyd's Register discourage "she" for ships, and the Chicago Manual of Style has stated since 2003: "When a pronoun is used to refer to a vessel, the neuter it or its (rather than she or her) is preferred". Some of my older naval books still use "she", but the modern academic standard in all serious works is to omit it as an archaic usage.
While these justifications are no doubt given tongue-in-cheek, in my value-system the casual sexism is obvious. Aesthetically this jars, and in terms of the embedded values of language, the use of a feminine pronoun to describe a killing machine crewed mainly by men jars too.
The place of women in Western society has undergone a huge change in the past 100 years. Women were allowed to vote in elections after much controversy in most countries after World War I, with Switzerland holding out until 1971. In the United States Navy, women have been recruited since 1917. In the 1940s, a special auxiliary service for women, WAVES, was set up. Women were expected to be non-combatants. By the 1970s, women were eligible for most surface combat roles and the first female naval aviators qualified. American submarines opened their hatches to women only in the last few years. In Britain, the Royal Navy first allowed women to go to sea in 1990 and it was 2014 before the first female submariners were admitted.
Perhaps as women penetrate this male preserve, this last remnant of grammatical gender could be allowed to wither from our project. Wikipedia generally has a proud tradition of being conservative in what we include in articles, but we claim to have a progressive attitude towards addressing systemic bias in how we write. Spinal Tap depicts a male rock star unable to understand criticism of the band's new album cover as being "sexist"; he asks "What's wrong with being sexy?" That was a 1984 satire on the problem of ingrained sexism; are male editors of ship-related articles in 2014 unconsciously perpetuating the same misogyny satirised in the film?
If Lila Tretikov and Jimmy Wales (not to mention the millions of volunteers who write our articles) are serious about helping us create a female-friendly editing environment, reforming the pronoun we use for naval ships might be an obvious place to start.
- The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk or through email.
Discuss this story
Adding to the weirdness, by tradition Russian naval vessels were considered male and referred to as "he" while Wikipedia articles such as Soviet submarine K-222 and Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets refer to the boats as "she" and "her". - Dravecky (talk) 07:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Its an interesting topic. Does the author find the use of "she" to refer to tropical storms equally jarring? I personally don't like the use of grammatical gender but I don't see the point in countering it while it is still prevalent across mainstream media. - Shiftchange (talk) 07:56, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is not our role to reform the world. What are the recommended conventions on pronouns referring to the ship in major manual of style (Chicago, Harvard)? Have any reliable sources suggested a change of pronoun? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ironically, "straw man" is also a gendered phrase. Euryalus (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2014 (UTC)Striking own comment as humour does not always come across in the spirit in which it is meant. Euryalus (talk) 12:22, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]Here's what it is - it is common to give gender to an object that a person has an intimate connection, as is the case with captains and their ships. If you want to call your own ship she, go right ahead. But none of us have a personal connection to any of these ships, so it is a clear "it". Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:38, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an idea, since the referring to ships as she is not sexist (do not try and tell me that it is. If you think that it is, then I emplore you to refer to ships as "he" yourself. I would take no issue with it.), and goes way back (which, contrary to radical liberal belief, is not a bad thing. Traditional things are not bad by definition. They would only be bad if they are harmful, which this is without question not harmful, unless you have convinced yourself that you are a boat and not a human being, in which case I think you had ought to see a doctor about that.) I think it should be up to the original page author.