A rumor reached me the other day that transgender people are among those instrumental in building Wikipedia. I had noticed already that Wikipedia articles are a notably good source of abundant and accurate information on transgender subjects, and that they had been neatly arranged together, so clearly someone in the Wikisphere likes us. I hadn’t realized how much there was already published until I came across that index page. One more step closer to transsexual world domination, <rubbing hands together> mwahahaha…
Wow, that’s a good collection of topics. I should do so well with GSM. 
(And now I finally know what ‘cisgender’ means.)
What’s GSM? Sounds like an antidote to MSG. <Heads to Wikipedia, looks up GSM> Ah! Thanks to you, Sunspace, my communications technology IQ just about doubled within a few minutes. (Note to self: add telecommunications to the list of things to learn about)
cisgender? I’m bettin’ some transgender-interested theorist remembered his organic chem.
Orthodocs
Paradocs
and
MetaPhysicians
Is there something you find particularly BETTER about the “transgender” topic that isn’t true of many more topics?
Rumour? I thought it was common knowledge hereabouts. Although I forget the exact extent of her involvement; I’m sure she’ll remind us if she sees fit.
KellyM is involved in wikipedia, but I know that she stays far from the articles on transgenderism. It is vital that wikipedia use a neutral point of view and to that end she does not edit articles about subjects she has strong feelings about. She tells me that there other transgendered individuals there she works with.
I’ve tried to keep tabs on the trans/gender articles too (just this morning I created the article on Vladimir Luxuria, Europe’s first transgender MP).
Well, that explains it. It isn’t the secret hidden agenda of “those gays” we should be worried about - and their attempts to foist homosexuality on us all. Its the transsexuals. Hope you guys have figured out you have to hand out something better than a toaster.
It brings back memories of organic chemistry, it does.
On preview, I note that someone else has beaten me to it.
That explains why I never got my copy of The Gay Agenda ™, because it’s really a Transexual Agenda. Hmmph, no one tells me anything.
I don’t edit the articles on transgender topics at Wikipedia; I don’t trust my ability to remain neutral or to refrain from introducing unsourced original research.
There are a lot of transgendered (and gay) people editing Wikipedia. The mechanism by which virtual communities attract queerfolk (for lack of a better term) in disproportionate numbers is something which has drawn some degree of attention from sociologists. Perhaps someone should present a paper on this at Wikimania 2006 in Boston this August… (hint hint)
Thanks, Kelly. My hypothesis is: Just you being there and being your naturally wonderful self has raised their consciousness. You don’t have to “do” anything. You are the Tao which does by not doing.
I don’t get why people always grumble when I say “cisgendered.” (It’s more respectful than “normo.”) One would think to be able to talk about a subject, it’s legitimate to use its learned vocabulary, accessible in seconds via Wiktionary or Google fu–unless someone considers the subject itself illegitimate? Maybe gender normos have never had occasion to switch the point of view around and contemplate what they look like from the other side.
Cis- and trans-, like this and that, or here and there, are words that necessarily indicate the position of the speaker with respect to the subject. Guy Deutscher, in his excellent book on linguistics for the layperson The Evolution of Language, theorized these point-of-view words as one of the three fundamental concepts all language is built from, along with things and actions.
I have read way more ancient Mediterranean history than organic chemistry, that’s for sure, so I know of the cis- prefix from Cisalpine Gaul, which from the Roman point of view meant ‘Gaul on this side (of the Alps)’, i.e. Italian Piedmont and the Po plain, contrasted with Transalpine Gaul, for Rome ‘Gaul on the other side’, i.e. France. And therein hangs a tale. In 390 BC, long before Cisalpine Gaul was incorporated into Roman Italia, the Cisalpine Gauls attacked Rome. Their leader was Brennus, which explains why he is Mr. Celt in Civilization III Conquests. Plutarch relates that the Romans were wakened in the night by the honking of geese sacred to the goddess Juno, whose temple was on the Capitoline Hill. This allowed them to mobilize in time to defend the city from the surprise attack. Such was Plutarch’s explanation for why Juno had the epithet Moneta, ‘She Who Warns’. The Senate set up their coin factory as an adjunct to the temple, so the word moneta became the English word mint.
You do me too much credit – and you clearly aren’t aware that I’m actually a very controversial administrator, reviled by many. I have a reputation for being abrasive and “disrespectful of consensus”, and am widely considered to be a “rogue admin”. There are not a few Wikipedians who would see me stripped of my administrative rights, and even some who feel that I should be banned.
Nor am I the first or even the most prominent transsexual on Wikipedia. I’m not even the first transsexual to serve on the Arbitration Committee. There are at least a dozen transsexual admins on en alone and some of them have been admins far longer than I have. I’m a relative newcomer to Wikipedia and those articles were well-established before I even started editing there.
Fascinating. How did there get to be a bunch of us involved?