[Vwoolf] wikipedia

Mary Ellen Foley mefoleyuk at gmail.com
Mon Jan 1 14:23:55 EST 2018


And transsexuality.  An author I know is unhappy that her work on the US
women's music movement of the 1970s and later has been used in print as
evidence that a particular musician was a transman, when all that the
author wrote was that the widow of the musician said in an intervew that,
while her partner identified as a butch lesbian, if transition had been
available to the musician when she was younger, the widow suspected she
might have chosen it. But--

On the basis of that, someone has changed all pronouns referring to the
musician from 'she' to 'he' on her Wikipedia page and added than she was
transsexual. This musician, now deceased, was a friend of the author's; the
author knows that the musician never used 'he'.  She changed all the
pronouns back to 'she' and removed the reference to transsexuality.
Somebody came along and flips them all to 'he' again, and so on until the
author gave up.

Thus does history get muddled up, pretty much as soon as the subject dies
and can't defend herself.

Mary Ellen

On Mon, Jan 1, 2018 at 6:00 PM, Ellen Moody <ellen.moody at gmail.com> wrote:

> I discover one must hit "reply to all" to reach everyone on the list as
> well as the person's posting you are responding to.
>
> I'd like to mention that for Wikipedia, it's at its best in areas where
> there is least controversy, especially of the social sexual type. I can
> well believe that an article on Indo-Greek Kingdom (*c*.200 BC–AD 10)
> would be close to impeccable. But try Darwin, Charles and see what you come
> up. I used to assign selection from his Voyage of the Beagle and I too
> wanted to ban Wikipedia.  Woolf as a woman, as bisexual or a lesbian, as a
> radical experimenter in fiction, is the sort of figure who attracts
> Wikipedia fights within entries.
>
> I've seen this in other "minor" women of the 19th century -- especially
> actresses' autobiographies. But there are many controversial issues where
> Wikipedia becomes problematic. Events around which nationalistic feelings
> swirl is another one.
>
> Ellen
>
>
>
>
>
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