Talk:Gender-critical feminism/Archive 7

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Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-03

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gabiangiuli (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jesstrada.

— Assignment last updated by Momlife5 (talk) 15:51, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-01

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jiselle04 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jlopez04.

— Assignment last updated by Bbalicia (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Bias

One would be hard-pressed to find an article more spectacularly tilted than this one. It's an ideological broadside, not an encyclopedia entry. Naturally, then, it is "currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment." Perfect. Nicmart (talk) 06:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

@Nicmart There has already been a requested move, and the result was no consensus. And keep in mind WP:NOTFORUM. —Panamitsu (talk) 06:33, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Getting consensus for cutting down on quotes

I recently made this series of edits aimed at reducing the number of long quotations (and, frankly, getting rid of some pretty badly phrased sentences like "Gender-critical feminists promote the idea that sex is important" without any definition of what that means when a better definition is present in the previous paragraph).

Many of these changes were reverted in this series of edits by Void and Swood Sweet. I suspect, based on the way talk page discussions have gone in the past, that the majority of people watching this page would prefer my version, and so I'm bringing it here to ask. Loki (talk) 15:13, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I think you mean me, not Swood. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:25, 13 March 2024 (UTC) And please explain why you think most people would prefer your version – surely edits are judged on their own merits, not on who makes them? Sweet6970 (talk) 15:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

They are, but I was hoping to just let people see the edits for themselves. But since you asked:

I think that it's obviously an improvement to the article to reduce the number of long quotes. Long quotes are often used to smuggle a POV into an article by putting it in the mouth of an advocate, and one of my major goals in removing the quotes was to maintain WP:NPOV. They're also often just bad stylistically: quotes aren't in Wikipedia's style and so swapping frequently between long quotes and our text can be jarring.

I also frankly think quoting sources at length is somewhat of an abdication of our duty to write an encyclopedia. The source isn't writing an encyclopedia, we are, and that includes a duty to summarize what the sources say. We would never include a long jargon-filled quote from a paper in the hard sciences, but for some reason when it comes to gender studies we have lots of similar jargon-filled quotes. Loki (talk) 15:39, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Regarding Long quotes are often used to smuggle a POV into an article by putting it in the mouth of an advocate: I think your reasoning is back-to-front. This article is about g-c feminism, and we need to tell readers what g-c feminists’ views are. Therefore, we should not be putting their views in wikivoice – we should give quotes to make clear that these are the views of g-c feminists, and not the views of Wikipedia. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Is the length of the quotes really that problematic? Quotes seem like a good solution to the difficulty of putting anything in wikivoice. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 15:34, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this, the problem is most of these are WP:RSOPINION in a highly polarised area.

Extensive quotes are about the only way through the issue of wikivoice, when practically every single aspect of this is hotly disputed by oppositional scholars. Void if removed (talk) 16:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Excessive quotes are a problem for the reasons described in WP:QUOTEFARM: Quotations embody the breezy, emotive style common in fiction and some journalism, which is generally not suited to encyclopedic writing. and Quotations that present rhetorical language in place of the neutral, dispassionate tone preferred for encyclopedias can be an underhanded method of inserting a non-neutral treatment of a controversial subject into Wikipedia articles; be very careful. It's always important to ask why we're using a particular quote - is the precise perspective of the speaker important? If it's being used to introduce an argument or idea, is that argument WP:DUE? And if we have many quotes, are we really introducing a bunch of distinct ideas that are all worth their own quotes on an encyclopedic, or is it just trying to present arguments to convince the reader? My opinion is that quote-bloated sections are often the result of editors with differing perspectives on an issue rushing to add as many views supporting their preferred interpretation as possible, and especially adding more to "balance out" opposing views when they should be removing or paraphrasing those quotes instead. There's also a risk of nose-counting, where people add a bunch of quotes to just have the view of a lot of people agreeing; or situations where people effectively WP:SYNTH up what the major arguments are and what the broad strands of thought are on a topic by pulling a bunch of quotes out of either opinion-pieces or from news pieces that don't really present those quotes in that context. Situations like that are better-handled by summarizing the views of a bunch of people in one sentence (eg. "X, Y, and Z disagreed, saying this is wrong" rather than individual quotes for each.) The ideal way to summarize broad views is via a secondary source that discusses overarching opinions anyway, which both helps establish due weight and lets us characterize the strands of thought without having to try and assemble it ourselves out of quotes. --Aquillion (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty of quotes from those opposed to g-c feminism – I see that these have not been challenged. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I meant when I said that people ought to be more aggressive about removing quotes rather than adding ones to "balance them out" (which leads to a quote-farm.) Obviously we can't remove quotes in a one-sided manner, not unless there's actually significant differences in WP:RS coverage or something. But editors by their nature are more likely to go "that looks wrong" and notice problems that go against their own personal understanding of a topic, which means that in a controversial topic area it works best if people with different views on the topic work together to cut down on or paraphrase unnecessary quotes. --Aquillion (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Luckily these quotes are in the Views section, where the objective is to explain what the subject’s views are, and quotes direct from the horse’s mouth are often the best way of illustrating this. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:38, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that a Views section is better than normal for quotes, that's not a reason to go nuts with them. Wikipedia policy doesn't stop applying because a section is titled "Views". We still need to represent their views proportionally to the rest of the sources, and in the manner the sources say they should be represented.

In the article on anarchism, a good article about a political ideology, we do explain what anarchists believe, and even quote some of them, but we never quote anyone for a whole paragraph. The longest quote there is only 12 words long. Feminism (another good article) has some longer quotes, but not that many, and not that much longer. There's still never a whole paragraph quoting anyone. Loki (talk) 22:53, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Which of the current quotes is going nuts? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-03

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gabiangiuli (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Jesstrada.

— Assignment last updated by Momlife5 (talk) 03:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Terminology

This article is about "gender-critical feminism". Having a terminology section titled "gender-critical feminism" seems completely redundant, seeing as that is the scope of the page. Having that section devoted entirely to criticism of "gender-critical feminism" is merely duplicating content from later in the article, and prioritising this opinionated criticism above the "views" section which explains what gender-critical feminism actually is. The content belongs in the scholarly analysis where Thurlow's views in particular are already represented. Void if removed (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the article reads very oddly with the paragraph on Terminology where it is – this is just a duplicate of material in the Scholarly analysis section. Sweet6970 (talk) 21:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. The group of people this article describes did not come into existence in the late 2010s when the term "gender-critical" was first used, nor did they come into existence in circa 2008 when Viv Smythe came up with TERF. The group pre-existed those terms, and those terms simply reflect names by which the group were known at various points in time. The purpose of the terminology section therefore is to document the various notable names this group has been known by, hence why we cite Thurlow and Grinspan et al. for the late-2010s rebranding from TERF to gender-critical. And if the group rebrands again as was noted as potentially occurring during the recent RM, and that rebranding is noted in reliable sources like Thurlow, then we would naturally document that subsequent rebranding in the terminology section.

I also don't agree with Sweet's point that the current paragraph for the gender-critical feminism subsection is entirely duplicative of content elsewhere in the article. Thurlow's work is quoted and summarised in several sections, but the content we include is unique within each of those sections. Grinspan et al. is duplicative, though I think the fix here is to remove the brief paragraph from the scholarly analysis section, as it seems to me to be more out of place there than the terminology section is given what Grinspan are saying in that sentence of their editorial. That said, whether or not the editorial for a special issue of DiGeSt is more due than the other twelve papers within the issue itself is perhaps a better question to be asking. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:58, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

The group pre-existed those terms

That is of course the opinion of some, but it is not universally shared. That is, it is the opinion of critics that this is so, and the opinion of those who call themselves "gender-critical feminists" that it is not.

The idea that there is some coherent "group" that moves from lesbian separatism in the US in the 60s, to organising on Mumsnet against the GRA reforms in the UK circa 2015 is of course absurd.

The only unifying factor is that all of those disparate people are (either contemporaneously or retrospectively by historical revisionists like Cristan Williams) being called "TERFs", most commonly as a term of abuse. Void if removed (talk) 10:14, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

[...] That is, it is the opinion of critics that this is so, and the opinion of those who call themselves "gender-critical feminists" that it is not. This only further warrants a "Terminology" section.

The idea that there is some coherent "group" that moves from lesbian separatism in the US in the 60s, to organising on Mumsnet against the GRA reforms in the UK circa 2015 is of course absurd. It is not, that is how all ideologies work. They develop and spread (or don't).

The only unifying factor is that all of those disparate people are (either contemporaneously or retrospectively by historical revisionists like Cristan Williams) being called "TERFs", most commonly as a term of abuse. That is your view of the subject. One might also argue that a unifying factor is anti-trans activism and advocacy. TucanHolmes (talk) 08:01, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

The topic of this article is the ideology or movement known variously in reliable sources as gender-critical feminism (including abbreviated forms) or trans-exclusionary radical feminism (including abbreviated forms). Unlike TERF (acronym), the focus here is on the ideology/movement itself and not on a specific term, but a terminology section is clearly warranted as a facet of the broader topic, and to document the various prominent terms that have been used. Gender-critical feminism is a term that only gained traction a few years ago (from around 2020), many years after the movement (i.e. the topic of the article) emerged under different names, and it's important to document the history of that term as well. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:20, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

What?

What on earth is this article about. Is TERF an expression of XX and XY sex determination? If it is then please say so in a more elegant manner. 92.18.249.104 (talk) 12:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This article is about Gender-critical feminism, as its title says. Sorry, I don’t understand your query. Do you have a suggestion for improving the wording of the article? Sweet6970 (talk) 17:02, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

This article reads as a collage essay.

This article feels un-fit for Wikipedia standards Five pillars of Wikipedia. The article is confusing, overly wordy, and spends more words pointing holes in the ideology than explaining what the ideology is. Criticism should go in the criticism section, not in every sentence of the article. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia, not a collage essay.

The disambiguation notice at top links to Anti-gender movement which is significantly clearer article both in explaining its topic, and in doing so in a neutral and direct manner. There is also significant overlap which could be a good resource look to.

I get that this is a very loaded topic, and these kinds of subjects of Wikipedia tends to need a lot of people looking at them until they converge to a good point. But this article needs a serious overhaul. 91.130.50.13 (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

No. Wikipedia is written from a neutral perspective, and this includes pointing [sic] holes in the ideology. We don't do uncritical exposition for ideologies, since Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view, and an ideology includes a point of view. That's what an ideology is, a point of view is part of its essence. Wikipedia is also based on reliable sources and, where applicable, facts as established by reliable sources. While we might quote adherents to an ideology and explain its structure and basic premises, we also point out where these premises or structures are (obviously) wrong, if applicable. That is not criticism, more encyclopedic evaluation with respect to what reliable sources have to say. If a point is contentious, we attribute it. If it is not contentious, or represents a fringe position in a discussion, we treat it as such. This is to avoid giving false balance to various aspects of a topic. We do this precisely because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

Criticism should go in the criticism section. No, please see this essay about criticism on Wikipedia.

If you see problems with the article, please feel free to be bold and correct them yourself. TucanHolmes (talk) 14:06, 10 April 2024 (UTC)