i am so not an authority.
Apr. 14th, 2004 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxIn the years that I've operated some form of feminist site or other (be it WHB or the long-defunct cuntzilla.org), I've continued to get requests from people wrestling with feminism, asking for input, or stuck on research papers (hey, once the website was even a research subject). Not a lot of requests, mind you, just one every month or so.
This says something about research methodologies, I guess, which is that undergrads and high school students are using the net more now than they did when I was that age. But I think we already knew that.
What I find odd is the assumption of expertise. Because I maintain a feminist site and write about feminism, I am assumed to be an authority on anything related to feminism - whether it be as basic as "i thought you had to be a lesbian to be a feminist" or "what's the relationship of Jung to feminism". I get lectures on the biblical case against abortion (for some reason, ministers tend to think I'm Christian and therefore will be turned by biblical arguments). I wonder if this "expert effect" applies to everyone else who runs a feminist site of some form (or, for that matter, to anyone who runs a community site of any form)? Everyone who reads this runs a site of their own (even your LJ is a site, after all) - do you have this experience?
In any case, this assumption by unwitting readers that I'm an expert has led to some interesting discoveries on my part. In my effort to try to find unbiased answers for people whilst deflecting them away from the idea that my opinion has more weight that anyone else's, I've learned a lot about aspects of feminism I might not have encountered otherwise. I've also had a lot of interesting conversations with people who think they're anti-feminist but turn out to agree with a lot of what I think.
This says something about research methodologies, I guess, which is that undergrads and high school students are using the net more now than they did when I was that age. But I think we already knew that.
What I find odd is the assumption of expertise. Because I maintain a feminist site and write about feminism, I am assumed to be an authority on anything related to feminism - whether it be as basic as "i thought you had to be a lesbian to be a feminist" or "what's the relationship of Jung to feminism". I get lectures on the biblical case against abortion (for some reason, ministers tend to think I'm Christian and therefore will be turned by biblical arguments). I wonder if this "expert effect" applies to everyone else who runs a feminist site of some form (or, for that matter, to anyone who runs a community site of any form)? Everyone who reads this runs a site of their own (even your LJ is a site, after all) - do you have this experience?
In any case, this assumption by unwitting readers that I'm an expert has led to some interesting discoveries on my part. In my effort to try to find unbiased answers for people whilst deflecting them away from the idea that my opinion has more weight that anyone else's, I've learned a lot about aspects of feminism I might not have encountered otherwise. I've also had a lot of interesting conversations with people who think they're anti-feminist but turn out to agree with a lot of what I think.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-14 08:30 am (UTC)As I said in Use and Users the other day, problems that crop up when people use the Web -- such as the obvious problems with evaluating the authority of a source -- are really just making visible problems that have been around for ages and ages.
Maybe now we start to solve them?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-14 09:26 am (UTC)It would be swell to have some sort of expertise validation of any page, but who would do that? It's not like there's a W3C of EVERYTHING. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-14 08:36 am (UTC)