More on ACOAs and Wikipedia

I want to tell this little story about my own beginnings because it’s very interrelated to happiness and Agnes.  When I was a little girl and I grew up … my life was hell.  I lived with an alcoholic father who beat me and molested me and it was all inside that.  And always as a child, I had this fantasy that somebody would come and rescue me.  And I actually made up a little character whose name was Mr. Alligator.  And I would call him up when things got really bad and would say it was time to come and pick me up.  And I would pack a little bag and wait for Mr. Alligator to come.

The above quote is from Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues, speaking at TED (available online).  The woman she mentioned, Agnes, was a Masai woman who was fighting female genital mutilation.  Ensler continued, telling Agnes’ story, and finally concluded with:

… and, there was this house.  And it said "V-Day Safehouse for the Girls."  And it hit me, in that moment, that it had taken 47 years, but that Mr. Alligator had finally shown up.  And he’d shown up, obviously, in the form, it took me a long time to understand, which is that when we give, in the world, what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us.

Ensler is, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, an ACOA or adult child of an alcoholic.  That means what it sounds like, she’s an adult who was the child of an alcoholic.  Numerous studies have shown the profound and distinct impact a parent’s alcoholism has on the course of a child’s life.  ACOAs tend to have common traits and deal with similar issues throughout lives, a fact recognized by both the treatment and scientific communities.

At TED, a very public forum, Ensler chose to share this deeply personal fact about herself.  To me, this sends a powerful message.  It says "I’m ok with who I am, and you can be too, even if your father was an alcoholic."  I applaud her, and the many other ACOAs who have shared their stories, and chipped away at the huge stigma that still exists.  Since they have chosen to put their stories out there, I think they would want as many ACOAs to have access to them as possible.  But not everyone thinks so.

In an earlier post, I wrote about my battle to include a list of notable ACOAs, such as Ensler, on Wikipedia.  It was taken as a call to action, and although I think action is necessary by members of the Wikipedia community, I turned here to get input from a community that I thought would be able to understand the issue.  Perhaps after some more thought, I can get to the core of the matter and explain why it is relevant to all of us here.

At least three editors are trying to remove the list of ACOAs from Wikipedia, and have been for over a week.  Wikipedia editors are supposed to work together to build a consensus based on established policies, especially when disputes arise.  However, these editors haven’t provided a single valid policy reason to remove the list of ACOAs.  All they say is they think it is unnecessary.  But who fights that hard against something for being unnecessary?

For some reason this list offends them.  They say it is "disparagement" of those named, but everyone on the list has proudly shared their stories.  So maybe it isn’t the list itself, but the message that the editors don’t like, the message that it is OK to be an ACOA, that ACOAs are a part of our society that deserve thought and discussion.  After these brave people have worked so hard to succeed dispite their childhoods, and then shared their stories despite strong social stigma, isn’t it more disparaging to say "sorry, you are not relevant to this article"?