Chikipedia
By Guest Blogger | 18 August 2008, 17:33
Chikipedia.com is like Wikipedia, except with chicks, right? Charlotte Cooper has more in this guest post
Ever feel the fire has gone out of your feminism? Tired of having to explain why something might be offensive to women? Maybe you just want to look at pouting pictures of hot chicks and then some? Whatever your wants, just check out Chikipedia.com, a great step forward into the future by Break Media, the company ‘who knows guys’ and obviously feels the need to create a ‘legitimate’ comprehensive wank bank.
The ‘ultimate user generated guide for everything you want to now about sexy famous women’ be she underwear model or TV star, stacks up the ‘chicks’ in the same format as wikipedia, providing scant information about her life and career and a sketch of a female body next to her measurements (where available). You can even choose to sort the archive by “similar chicks”. A handy resource for men who want to learn more about their favourite ‘babes’, or any babes as the endless list of chicks seems to suggest.
There is the option to request moderation, but I don’t think they accept as a valid complaint ‘offensive due to the perpetuation of women as objects and not real people’. The site is user-generated so the creators probably take little responsibility for the content, the fact that there are pictures prove the need for it, right? However the attached blog really reduces the company’s faith in men for being anything than huge throbbing penises.
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Feeds
Laurel Dearing said:
great... not only is it objectifying, but its referring to something thats supposed to be intelligent and knowledgeable.
Posted on 18 August 2008 at 5:46 PM
Anne Onne said:
Right, because of course women famous for their looks or bodies don't get to be acknowledged alongside other famous people in normal sorts of lists that acknowledge achievements, they should be grouped together as 'similar' based on vague looks and catalogued like some sort of toy. Yeesh.
I guess we'll have to wait for Prickipedia, the wiki featuring lots of hot sexy objectified men, listing ALL their measurements ... But I'm not gonna hold my breath for that. After all, men, even the hot ones, are people worthy of respect for more than just their physical attibutes or how they make women or gay men feel. Women, on the other hand...
Posted on 18 August 2008 at 7:55 PM
Tony Moll said:
Surely the right for sick souls to fantacize about peoples bodies is more important that other people being offended.
And who says that seeing others in a sexual light means that were seeing them as real people?
Posted on 18 August 2008 at 8:20 PM
a very public sociologist said:
Sounds like a charming way of wasting hours and hours and hours. I don't think.
While we're on the subject (sort of) of men being reduced to their penises, I've written something about last night's 'The Perfect Vagina', which may be of interest to F Word readers. You can see it here
Posted on 18 August 2008 at 8:41 PM
earlgreyrooibos said:
Ugh. I am not going to even VISIT that site. Don't want to give them the traffic. Plus, just KNOWING that it exists makes me really depressed.
On the other hand, maybe I should contact the owners and have my say about it. Not that they'd listen. But it never hurts to try.
Posted on 18 August 2008 at 10:42 PM
Stephanie said:
I heard of this site before and I just looked at it there and typed in "Feminist" in the search box to see what they had to say. I didn't see anything derogatory (apart from the whole website of course) in that but they did have links to other "chicks" who are feminists. The only one I looked at was someone named Saffron Burrows (who I'v never heard of) and one of her "assets" listed is that she is bisexual. Talk about not having ownership over your own sexuality. It's appalling.
Posted on 19 August 2008 at 8:38 AM
Virginia said:
Anne Onne - prickipedia would be amazing! Although obviously sinking to their level. But as Chikipedia is user generated content we could spam them with male entries - if we all did it we could cause them some problems. Any one up for that?
Posted on 19 August 2008 at 9:10 AM
Anna said:
Oh, I so am.
Posted on 19 August 2008 at 12:21 PM
Genevieve said:
I searched for some 'chicks' who I'm a fan of...Kathleen Hanna, Carrie Brownstein...no entries for them. Guess talented feminist musicians really aren't on their radar.
Posted on 19 August 2008 at 3:51 PM
Leigh said:
No can do Virginia- in order to post material on the wiki you have to create and account, which means agreeing to the terms of service, which includes:
• Your Materials, user name and/or screen name will not disparage in any manner the Site, its owners, advertisers, products, or services and sites.
An alternative would be to login and Add to pre-existing content things that promote consideration of the subjects as people, but it would have to be carefully written as there is another condition of the terms of service not to editorialise.
Posted on 20 August 2008 at 2:35 PM