For many of you reading this, you’re probably asking, “What was Adam Goodkind doing at an “arts and feminism” event? Isn’t this the same Adam Goodkind who, in 11th grade, took on a formal debate on why women are inherently inferior to men?” To my perplexed readers, Yes, it is one and the same.
Today was the 2nd annual art+feminism edit-a-thon. The idea is to fix the inherent male bias in wikipedia, Participants selected a female artist, and either bulked up her wikipedia page or created one. (My contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jae_Rhim_Lee)
My inspiration to participate was partially to understand more about the wikipedia editing and creation process, but also partially to advance the feminist cause. Here’s why:
As someone with a disability, I have been the victim of discrimination on more than one occasion. It sucks, a lot. And my personal belief about how to change minds is, you need to change the ground truths. I do not believe that events like corporate-sponsored “Diversity & You” seminars are effective in making real change.
Rather, you need to change the fundamental truths, from the ground-source up. This is a painstakingly slow process, like drops of water slowly eroding a rock into a canyon, but I firmly believe it is the only way to make a real impact.
Had a great time at the Wikipedia #artandfeminism Edit-a-Thon w/ @robincamille. Learned a ton, good times were had pic.twitter.com/8J7EoDuykT
— Adam Goodkind (@adamgreatkind) March 7, 2015
Wikipedia edit-a-thon’s are exactly what we need to make these changes real, and I applaud the Wikimedia Foundation for supporting it.
[As a footnote, I really wanted to work on the page for Evelyn Glennie, a deaf percussionist, but her page is already pretty substantial.]