Wikipedia
Last semester, my class in Women and Gender Studies was tasked with a project surrounding Wikipedia. When we began this project, I must admit my first thought was, “Why are we wasting our time with a site like Wikipedia?” As students, we’re taught that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and that it should never be used when doing research. This idea was so embedded in my head that it clouded my judgment and made it difficult for me to even find a topic or an article to change to begin with. I decided to start with the list of women’s right activists on Wikipedia and noticed there were very few women on it, so I did some research and Rebecca Chalker, who is a women’s activist herself, caught my attention so I decided to focus on her. I added her onto the list and even started an article about her. After reading about her I was so dumbfounded at the fact that such a prominent figure in the Women’s Rights Movement didn’t have her own page on Wikipedia. And then it hit me. How is it that a fictional character like Roger Rabbit has a well-developed page but someone like Rebecca Chalker does not? It all comes down to how our society works and how it plays down or tends to overlook the accomplishments of female identified figures while holding most male identified individuals on a silver platter, whether they’re real or part of a cartoon. Once I realized this, it was so easy to just pick any article and automatically see that in some way or another it was biased. I also decided to edit Norrie May Welby’s page, who was a trans woman but currently identifies as non-specified. I went in and corrected all the pronouns to “xie” and “hir” which are hir preferred pronouns. Even though the edits were small and minimal, the difference it made was huge in that it makes the article not only about hir but also in respect to hir. Overall, I feel like it keeps Wikipedia modern and more unbiased compared to other literature such as our textbooks.