Wikipedia hijacked by ideologues

I’ve long been a big fan of Wikipedia, and refer to it almost every day. So I was interested to learn that Michael Klein and a German journalist, Arne Hoffmann, have co-authored an open letter about German Wikipedia to the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales:

http://sciencefiles.org/2012/07/29/ideological-hijacking-german-branch-of-wikipedia-threatens-to-fail/

They invite people who support the letter to write to them at science-watch@hotmail.co.uk, and I’ve just submitted the following:

Michael, thank you for raising this important issue, and I look forward to seeing how Wikipedia respond. I would add that the same problem is apparent at times in the English language version. For example, the Wikipedia entry on ‘antifeminism’ has the following statement under ‘Definitions’:

 Michael Kimmel, a men’s studies scholar, defines antifeminism as “the opposition to women’s equality.” He says that antifeminists oppose “women’s entry into the public sphere, the reorganization of the private sphere, women’s control of their bodies, and women’s rights generally.” This, he says, is justified by antifeminists through “recourse to religious and cultural norms, and sometimes … in the name of ‘saving’ masculinity from pollution and invasion.” He argues that antifeminists consider the “traditional gender division of labor as natural and inevitable, perhaps also divinely sanctioned.”

Kimmel’s definitions of anti-feminism aren’t held by any anti-feminists of my acquaintance, and I believe they misrepresent the positions of the majority of anti-feminist activists and writers. We don’t oppose women’s equality. We oppose the relentless special treatment of women and girls in general, and feminists in particular, which is proving highly damaging in many ways, gravely affecting the family, marriage, government, business, media, academia, and much more besides.

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