Talk:Feminist views on transgender topics/Archive 6

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Margaret Atwood

@Newimpartial: As I mentioned in my edit summary, the Atwood material is sourced to two passing remarks in different interviews, with no indication of lasting significance. (Both interviews are mainly about Atwood's views on other topics.) If this article included every time a feminist mentioned trans issues in passing, it would be unending. Cheers, gnu57 18:12, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Otoh, Margaret Atwood's opinions could be argued to be relevant here, based especially on Atwood's novels (especially The Handmaid's Tale), and on her MeToo opinions, which generated a kerfuffle for a bit; at least, consierably more of interest to this article than, say, J.K. Rowling's are, which an editor recently tried to add. Oto, I agree with Genericusername57, here. For one thing, Atwood does not identify herself or her works as feminist, although feminists sometimes say she is (but if we're about believing women when they say something, then, well...). So it might be better to restrict opinions quoted in this article to those who are recognized feminists, and are opining directly on the topic in a significant way, rather than tangentially. If a more direct commentary of hers could be found, perhaps a magazine interview where the topic is explored in depth, then there might be more of an argument to include, but I don't see that based on current sources. I vote to strike. Mathglot (talk) 19:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

We have additional RS interest in Atwood's commentary on Trans issues from The Independent, PinkNews, Inside Hook and Dazed. And none of the links I've just posted are to passing mentions. So the edit rationale, no indication of lasting significance, seems to me not to be borne out by the evidence. Newimpartial (talk) 20:49, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

You're not wrong factually, but something being true and supported, isn't enough for inclusion in an article, it also has to be relevant to the article topic, as defined by the title, i.e., Feminist views on transgender topics. I looked at those four articles, and none of them made the assertion that a feminist view was being covered. I mean, I just found four articles about (ex-wrestler and Minnesota governor) Jesse Ventura's opinions about transgender issues; do we get to include those, too? I would say, no; not in this article, at least—maybe in another one. Same for Atwood, no? If this article were renamed Views on transgender topics, then both Atwood and Ventura's views become on-topic, and the choice to include them or not would then depend on whether they are WP:DUE. Mathglot (talk) 18:53, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I removed it on WP:Synthesis grounds. While I don't think you're suggesting it, to be clear, I don't see that an article for views in general about transgender topics has a reasonable scope or is a real distinct topic. But feminists' views are such a topic. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:48, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Readded because removal was done without consensus, and because while Margaret Atwood has expressed some discomfort with the label being applied to her works in the past, the idea that she's not a feminist is frankly kind of absurd. (She also seems to identify with the label herself at least to some extent, as we document on our page on her.) Loki (talk) 22:37, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

User:Girth Summit just removed the line again, apparently without being aware of the timeline here. Look at the above discussion: it was in from yesterday until just an hour ago, when Crossroads removed it again without consensus. Loki (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Facts that are well-documented in reliable sources can't be considered SYNTH. And no less a source than Encyclopedia Brittanica says that Atwood is "best known for her prose fiction and her feminist perspective". She has described herself as a "bad feminist" which it is clear that she regards, in her quite lucid piece on the topic, as a variety of feminist. The idea that Atwood's comments on Trans issues should be excluded from this article because she is supposedly not a feminist are nothing short of bizarre, User:Mathglot. Atwood avowed herself a feminist explicitly in 2017, and hasn't changed her mind since. Newimpartial (talk) 22:56, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Also, User:Mathglot, both of the sources currently cited in the WP article do discuss Atwood's views on trans issues within the context of her feminism. My additional links provided above were intended to show that her views had received coverage beyond the sources currently cited, but her status as a feminist commentator has already been established by the sources cited in our article itself. Newimpartial (talk) 23:06, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

SYNTH is not based on whether the sources are reliable, but how we are using them to support information in the article. I fail to see much difference between including Atwood's views and Rowlings, apart from the fact that they are completely opposite. Come up with some standards of what constitutes a feminist (for this article) and then apply those standards evenly. AIRcorn (talk) 23:19, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

User:Aircorn: Margaret Atwood is a self-described feminist whose feminism is also discussed in reliable sources (including the two sources cited in this article, and also the Britannica, among many, many others). Rowling is not so described either by herself or by others as far as I know. So if you can't see much difference between including Atwood's views and Rowlings, maybe check your prescription? :) Newimpartial (talk) 23:48, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

My glasses are fine, thanks for the concern. At the moment Rowling is pretty much synonymous with TERF (synthy I know, but still that's where we are) whether she wants to be or not. Atwoods feminism is also not so straight forward (again just look at her article). I don't think either really belongs, there are enough opinions out there without relying on more borderline cases. AIRcorn (talk) 00:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

The Britannica does a better job with Atwood's feminism than Wikipedia does, for whatever reason. And as far as Row!ing is concerned, not all TERFs are feminists, as we should all know by now. The present article concerns Feminists, not TERFs. Newimpartial (talk) 00:51, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Newimpartial, I accept that my revert was out of process - looking at the history, I think I was confused by some other recent additions/removals of similar size, I thought that I was reverting to the status quo, rather than against it - apologies too, therefore, to Loki the Liar. Nevertheless, this material is obviously contested by a number of editors in good standing - please all discuss and agree on the best way forward rather than kneejerk reverting (which I am myself obviously guilty of...) GirthSummit _(blether) 23:20, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Given the sources Newimpartial provides above, some coverage of Atwood's views seems due (and feminist/ germane), though there's certainly room for revising the current presentation, especially towards incorporating more of those other sources. Even without doing that, concerns about SYNTH could be solved/sidestepped by changing " or [...]" to ". Atwood has said she disagrees with the views that trans women [...]" (or ". She has also said she does not think that trans women [...]") i.e. making two separate sentences with identical initial verbiage, which someone was evidently trying to avoid the repetitiveness of. But I think such a rewording is probably unnecessary and the current presentation is probably not SYNTH; in my experience articles often summarize a person's positions like "So-and-so supports x,[1] y,[2] and z[3]" rather than "So-and-so supports x.[1] So-and-so supports y.[2] So-and-so supports z.[3]" -sche (talk) 07:00, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Butler in New Statesman

Judith Butler was interviewed by the New Statesman about this topic, and her stature and the weight given to her statements by other outlets suggests a short summary of them could be appropriate / due, if they express anything not already covered in our existing (four-sentence) summary of her views. (Some of what she said may also be relevant to the article TERF.) -sche (talk) 06:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Definitely agreed. My only qualm is that it continues the trend of this article being an indiscriminate collection of quotes. Loki (talk) 23:47, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed this article as well. And it doesn't have to be a quote; there's plenty of material there that could be summarized. Butler talks a fair bit about Rowling (only because the interviewer asked her a fair bit about Rowling, something Butler criticized her for), and it's somewhat ironic, as Rowling was the subject of another discussion section above, and Butler being a genuine feminist with opinions about transgender topics, her views are at least highly appropriate here. But that wasn't the majority of the article, and Butler opined about a lot of other topics. Mathglot (talk) 08:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Problems with "Particular Topics" section

Rereading this section, today, I think I can see why problems keep cropping up. Unlike much of the rest of the article, this section consists overwhelmingly of a series of issues raised by trans-exclusionary feminists, while also allowing that #notallfeminists hold these views. It would better reflect the topic and avowed scope of the article if it were to include more of the positions held by mainstream and/or intersectional feminists (terms which are not equivalent but which do overlap) on trans-related issues, rather than only discussing a litany of more marginal positions. Newimpartial (talk) 00:07, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

While I agree that's a problem, I feel the problems with this article are deeper than that. I think on a fundamental level, what exactly this article is supposed to be is unclear. Is it supposed to be an indiscriminate list of quotes from feminists about trans people? The title sure seems to suggest that, and so that's what the article tends towards, but if that's really what the article is supposed to be then like all indiscriminate collections of quotes, it shouldn't be on Wikipedia. Maybe instead it's supposed to be some sort of history of the relationship of feminism to trans people? Or maybe it's supposed to somehow be about views of feminists without being a list of quotes from feminists? Who knows, really. The only guides we have are the sister pages Feminist views on pornography, Feminist views on sexuality, and Feminist views on prostitution. While these are somewhat better, they all still feel unencyclopedic to me. Loki (talk) 08:00, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Frankly, this article seems to be inaccurate and misleading since it devotes the bulk of its text to the views of a minority of trans-exclusionary feminists, and does not really depict the views of more mainstream third- and fourth-wave feminists. The entire thing needs a drastic re-write imho. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.254.213.142 (talk) 14:40, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs)

This section needs to be broken up into two sections, or at least, have a neutral section title, and a separate subsection for TERFs. The fact is, TERF is now something very different from "Trans-exclusionary radical feminist", in connotation, formality, and pejorativeness. For me, this section title is the rough equivalent of, == Japanese civilians in World War II (JAPs) ==. If that made you wince, that was the intention, but it's not far-fetched. But it isn't only the section title; although the confused title probably influences the confused content. Sentence 1, in theory the definitional sentence, describes TERFs. Sentence 2, in theory an expansion, defines "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". The third paragraph talks about coinage, but it's impossible to determine from that which term she coined, and flits back and forth between them as if they are indistinguishable. This whole section needs some conjoined twin surgery, which admittedly is a complex operation, but as things stand now, it really doesn't enlighten the reader about either TERF, or Trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Mathglot (talk) 08:51, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF you're welcome — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.15.96.125 (talk) 17:28, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Isn't that really a distinction for [[TERF]? Newimpartial (talk) 17:42, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I disagree for two reasons. First is the one above: TERF already has its own page which goes into the controversy pretty heavily. Secondly, my own opinion is that "TERF" is simply an acronym for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" whose connotations and pejorativeness are no different. They're both theoretically descriptive terms that are overwhelmingly used pejoratively in practice (don't read too much into this analogy, but a bit like "Nazi"/"National Socialist"), and any apparent difference in strength between the long and short terms is just because of the difference in formality, not because the shorter term actually means something substantively different from the longer term. Loki (talk) 06:35, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Globalise tag?

Hi, I think this article could use a Globalise tag ("The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject") - a lot of the page deals with the UK/Canada/US (and a little bit of Australia) in terms of organisations/laws/controversies/etc.. with very few mentions of anything related to the issue from anywhere else in the world. Is this an issue with the article worth tagging? NHCLS (talk) 12:56, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Good idea! I have been editing re "gender critical" recently, and I had been thinking overnight that this term is especially used in the UK, and perhaps less so globally. I had been thinking of how to express that but not yet attempted an edit. AndyGordon (talk) 16:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

The second wave and the lead

I've removed an unsupported claim about second wave feminists being "often" in conflict with trans women. There is a massive corpus of writings by and about the second wave, and only a miniscule splinter of that total concerns trans-anything, which was not a major concern at the time. The word transgender had not even been coined yet, when Friedan's Feminine Mystique burst upon the scene. When it did, there were a thousand things of importance to the growing feminist movement, of which trans women were not even #999 on the list. This changed slowly as the movement matured, with some significant and well-reported attention by individual feminists to various aspects of the growing awareness of trans issues, but they were the exception, and most feminists of the second wave were busy with other things, and when trans issues came up, were mostly accepting or held no opinion.

This leaves the opening to the lead a bit choppy, as it starts off in the second sentence talking about the *third wave*, without having said anything about the second wave, and that needs fixing. Probably it should say something about the second wave not paying much attention to trans issues through the 60s and 70s, at least until the appearance of Raymond's book in 1979, which kind of marked the starting point, or even later. It's not by accident that the article section is entitled #Early history (before 1989), which is nearly three decades into the movement, when most of the second wave theorists were already senior leaders with much of their major work already behind them. Another approach, and a more typical one for the course of most feminists (since Raymond was hardly typical), might be to mention Gloria Steinem, as someone who wrote and spoke very widely, and hardly mentioned trans-anything in her writings until 1984 (iirc), and when she did, it was kind of off-the-cuff and frankly marked by her obvious lack of having considered it much before, and also followed by an interview later where she retracted her earlier views. That probably represents as much as anything, that trajectory of most second wave feminists: starting out by lack of knowledge/lack of interest, and not having anything to say about the topic because "transgender" simply wasn't a concern of feminist women in the 60s and 70s; followed by slow, increasing awareness, and maybe some off-hand response to some interviewer who asked about it; finally involving some considered responses in the 80s or 90s, as the topic of trans issues started to come more to the fore, either because they felt it necessary to "take a side" in response to Raymond, or on other considerations. One has to put it in perspective to recall how far down the list trans issues were for the second wave; remember that it was at the outset white and upper middle-class; even lesbians had to fight for their place in the movement, and the early leaders were not sure what role, if any, lesbians should play. As that played out, the movement had to deal with the concerns of black women, and other PoC, which didn't fit at all with the issues raised in the Feminine Mystique. This took some time to play out; recall that intersectionality was only coined in 1989. And it was only *after* dealing with all that, that the much smaller, and far less well-known topic of trans issues and trans women in particular could rise to occupy some amount of attention among feminists; but by then, it wasn't mostly the second wave responding to it, although they did, somewhat, but they were hardly the opinion leaders of that subtopic of feminism.

In any case, whatever is said about the second wave in the lead, it should follow addition or organization of properly sourced material in the body, and needs to keep WP:DUEWEIGHT in mind; that is, compared to the reams of ink that were spilled on the topic later, virtually nothing was said about trans issues in the 60s and 70s when the second wave was publishing widely, and by the time the topic really arose to wide attention in the feminist community, it was mostly younger feminists from the third wave and beyond addressing it, from whatever point of view, and not the second wave, who were by that time, the "senior stateswomen" of the movement. It simply wasn't on the radar when they began writing. Mathglot (talk) 19:18, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Some sources would be appreciated, I'm sure, by anyone who were to start undertaking a draft based on these suggestions. Equivamp - talk 19:25, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, sources should absolutely be the starting point, and then something (not a lot, because there isn't a lot to say about it) should be added to the body, first. I'm oversubscribed, and may not get back to as soon as I'd like, so I hope others will pick up the baton. My comment above was spurred by a kind of "Hippocratic oath" approach to the article, that is, "First, do no harm," and since I saw the lead as doing harm to the article by its false statement about the second wave, it needed to come out immediately. At that point, I figured I had better justify it more at length than I could do in the edit summary, hence this section. Maybe I'll try and find some sources and throw them into "Further reading" so they're available for anyone who wants to run with them. Here's a start:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:45, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Recent removal of 'feminists' and replacement by 'Trans-exclusionary feminists'

User:Casspedia, your recent run of edits which pretty much replaced feminists with Trans-exclusionary feminists everywhere it appeared in the article in the context of those using the term gender-critical as self-identification, was WP:BOLD to say the least. For one thing, I saw no change to any of the sources in the article to support your changes. Secondly, must of the wording has been exhaustively discussed and agreed upon in previous discussions; if you are not aware of these, check the archives. I won't revert your series because I don't have time for it right now, but I don't think it will survive scrutiny, and I just wanted to give you a heads-up, so that if you wanted to support your effort, you could start thinking about what sources you want to use, and how to support a change of this nature. Simply coming to the article and systematically changing the wording to your own preference without justification, is not likely to survive very long at the article without it. Good luck, Mathglot (talk) 23:45, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

FWIW this wording is also my preference, and the only reason I haven't already made a similar change is that the last time I tried to improve this page, getting consensus was like pulling teeth. Loki (talk) 23:59, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I read this whole sequence of edits differently. I agree with the one instance where "these feminists" was replace with "trans-exclusionary" feminists, because the context identifying who "these" were was part of the section structure, and I don't think readers can be counted on to follow a section structure.

However, I do not agree with the attempt to write "gender critical" (particularly in quotation marks) out of the article because, like it or not, that particular self-description is part of popular discourse and so it helps the reader to provide contest for the label. Newimpartial (talk) 02:17, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I do agree that it is somewhat of a bold nature, but still stand that it can definitely be kept with some modifications if need be. Adding the modifier "trans-exclusionary" does help contextualize things (as in: "these trans-exclusionary feminists" instead of "these feminists"); it might be worth mentioning that because of how third and fourth wave feminism have generally been supportive of trans rights, and how "gender-critical" views are contrary to such recent waves of feminism, disambiguating trans-exclusionary feminism from trans-inclusive feminism is a necessity. Something worth considering is whether trans-inclusive feminism should also be distinguished. Re: Newimpartial's comments on the term "gender critical", I do believe that it does have space to be included, but shouldn't be as prominent as it was prior to my edits. Framing it in a similar vein to how "race realist" is used by proponents of scientific racism might be a good way forward. Casspedia (talk) 02:45, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Sources don't support that or many other equivalencies between race and gender. It is political ideologies, types of feminism, that are being described, and an article cannot take sides as to who are the "true feminists" and mark the article as having the POV of one side by endorsing the description of the other in its own voice. As noted above, the term "gender critical" is quite common; in fact, it often appears without clarification, especially in Britain. The fact is that both that and "TERFism" are one and the same, and the article should be clear about this. Just like other morally charged ideologies, like socialism or Christianity, there are schisms within feminism, with groups calling each other false feminists. Now, we can have our own strong beliefs as editors for sure, but the article can't be written from that perspective. Indeed, the best way to reach the other side is to neutrally lay out the facts. Regarding the one use of "these feminists", I believe this is completely clear from the context. The unnecessary and WP:POINTy subheading can be removed as another option. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Citation overkill in the lead

Anyone wanna fix the two instances in the lead of citation overkill? There may be further instances of death by citation lower down the article, but I've not checked yet. --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 10:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Request consensus to add book to Further reading

I respectfully submit that Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce be added to Further reading. The author, who holds a PhD in mathematics from University College London, is Britain editor at The Economist, where she has held several senior positions, including Finance editor and International editor. Since its publication on July 15, 2021, Joyce's book has received highly favorable reviews in leading publications.

The Telegraph, which Wikipedia tells us "generally has a reputation for high-quality journalism," featured a 5-star review by Kathleen Stock, OBE and professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, herself author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021). Calling Trans a "superlative critical analysis of trans activism," Stock notes that "UK feminists are praised for their creative resistance to trans activism's institutional grip."

Writing in The Times, which according to Wikipedia "is considered a newspaper of record in the UK," regular columnist David Aaronovitch explains that "Joyce [examines] a new ideology about gender. This holds that biological sex is as much a 'social construct' as the idea of gender is. One benefit of Joyce's book is its intellectual clarity and its refusal to compromise. So she takes apart this ideology of gender with a cold rigour."

Trans has also been extolled in less mainstream venues, such as the British libertarian Internet magazine Spiked, where Jane O'Grady traces the lineage of Joyce's book back to one of the milestones of modern feminist literature.

De Beauvoir wanted to prise apart the arbitrary characterisation of woman, and separate 'gender' from what is actually ineluctable—namely, sex. This, she hoped, would break the shackles in which women had been immemorially bound. So it was that The Second Sex launched the transformative wave of postwar feminism.

Now, 70-odd years later, the question that de Beauvoir hoped to make redundant is pertinent again, and the sex/gender distinction that she opened up is, as Helen Joyce laments in her new book Trans, turned on its head. It is now used to reconfirm the very stereotypes it was designed to subvert.

Joyce is sharp, lucid and brilliant in analysing how the recent surge of sexual 'transitioning' and insistence on self-declared 'gender identity' has undermined feminism's achievements.

For the record, I added this entry on July 25, but User:Cdjp1 reverted it without explanation. Basketcase2022 (talk) 18:41, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Is she noted as a feminist? The views of a mathematician and finance editor (which is how I mostly see her described, when I poke around right now for RS about her) are not per se relevant to the topic "Feminist views on transgender topics". -sche (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Normally what goes into Further reading has a pretty low threshold of admittance in most articles, such as "publications that would help interested readers learn more about the article subject". But given that the topic of this article is in one of the most controversial topic areas of the encyclopedia, I'd say a bit more care is necessary in selecting items for the list. The essay WP:Further reading offers suggestions in the #Considerations for inclusion section; under "Balanced", it suggests that "Works named in this section should present a neutral view of the subject, or, if works of a particular point of view are presented, the section should present a balance of various points of view". I'm not sure how many people actually go look for a book based on its appearance in Further reading, but that's what it's for, and if there's a feeling that it's being used more for scoring points for one "side" by listing partisan items (especially if they have partisan-sounding titles) that nobody is actually going to read, then I'm opposed. If it's actually a book that will shed further light on the subject of those interested in delving further into the topic, then that might be a good reason to include it.

While MOS:LAYOUT (quoted first) is a guideline, WP:Further reading is only an essay, so you're free to ignore it. Nevertheless, the essay suggestions regarding "Balance" seem like they make good sense to me, and might inform a discussion that goes on here about it. I'd say that even if one might include more idiosyncratic views or opinions in, say, a historical topic like the World War I for example, I think we need to be more careful in this case. WP:DUE might come into play here. Possibly balance could be attained by providing brief annotations on the items added (as specifically mentioned in the MOS guideline) to identify which books have a partisan slant one way or the other, and by adding several "pro" and several "con" if available and assuming there's no issue of WP:FALSEBALANCE involved. Actually, I'd like to see dispassionate, and neutral reading on the list, if there's even any such thing in a topic like this one. Mathglot (talk) 02:02, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I oppose its inclusion because I see no reason why this particular book or author is particularly suited for inclusion on the list. The author does not seem to be an authority on the subject. I don't see what separates it from dozens of other books that might equally plausibly be added. If anything, the fact that it is quite new and the subject of multiple ongoing controversies means that it is even less appropriate to include it. A good entry in further reading would a be book that gives a broad survey of the topic, or a major section of the topic, written by a genuine authority on that subject. That is not what this book is. --DanielRigal (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

It's a work of journalism, not opinion

Helen Joyce is a long-established journalist who took extended leave from her duties as an editor at The Economist to research and write a book that, as I showed above, has been recommended in reliable sources for its feminist insight into transgender ideology. A journalist does not have to be a serial killer to write authoritatively about that gruesome subject. Nor need she be a renowned feminist to contribute a worthwhile presentation of such views on this particular transgender topic. As for her personal convictions, I believe any fair reading of her book must conclude that Ms. Joyce is indeed a feminist—and an ardent one at that. But that is only tangential to this discussion. Basketcase2022 (talk) 20:54, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

See also the discussion about including a quote from the book here:

Talk:Mermaids (charity) - Wikipedia

I actually think that Helen Joyce is sufficiently notable to merit a page. I'd welcome opinions! AndyGordon (talk) 10:21, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, she does hold Jewish billionaires responsible for the "trans agenda". That must lend her some cred. Newimpartial (talk) 15:04, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

It is most unfortunate that User:Newimpartial has stooped to insinuate anti-Semitism by claiming "she does hold Jewish billionaires responsible for the 'trans agenda.'" On July 27, 2021, Helen Joyce addressed such spurious charges.

In my book I demonstrate that mainstream transactivism is not a grassroots movement, but a top-down one. One part of the evidence is that rich individuals and foundations make large donations to campaign groups that, among other things, lobby to erase biological sex from law and to enshrine gender identity in its place. [...]

This is in no sense "dark money", and I don't say it is. The information is readily available because all such American foundations and charities are legally required to publish details of where they get their money and what they spend it on. I found the information on their websites. [...]

I didn't deliberately select three Jewish donors; it never occurred to me to think about their religions. Two of the three, it turns out, are indeed Jewish, though that is not something I mention in my book because it is utterly irrelevant. [...] I also think it's interesting that the people accusing me of antisemitic dog-whistles are speculating about someone's religion, when I did not even speculate about it. [...]

I am lucky to work in one of the few media organisations that still has a strong commitment to robust but honest debate. When the smears against me started, many of my colleagues spoke out in my support. I am grateful to them, especially to my Jewish colleagues, for whom this appropriation of Jew-hatred as a baseless smear must feel particularly vile.

Basketcase2022 (talk15:51, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:MANDY applies. Newimpartial (talk) 15:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:SMEAR applies. Basketcase2022 (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Have you read WP:SMEAR? I really don't think it does. Newimpartial (talk) 16:11, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Have you read Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce? I really don't think you have. Basketcase2022 (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I have read excerpts, reviews, and her other publications on the topic (including her MANDY post which I read before commenting here). I have a pretty good idea what she is saying. The key point isn't the question of anti-Semitism - it is that she believes in an (imaginary) "trans ideology" conspiracy, which the RS say does not in fact exist. The question whether or not the rich individuals and foundations to whom she attributes the last 20 years of trans activism are Jews, or not, is strictly secondary. The fact that she actually names rich Jewish donors is icing on the cake, but the key point is that she is blaming "money" for what is in fact a grass-roots movement, because it is more convenient for her narrative. Newimpartial (talk) 16:24, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Dear Newimpartial, which RS are you talking about here? Wikipedia:Assumegoodfaith Thanks, Andy AndyGordon (talk) 17:20, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Let's start with essentially all of the peer-reviewed scholarship on LGBT activism. Newimpartial (talk) 17:24, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:MANDY is a highly dubious essay that, in my experience, is mainly used to justify tendentiousness and BLP violations. Newimpartial, your insinuations of anti-semitism, as you also did here, are WP:BLP violations and must stop. As for ""trans ideology" conspiracy"? Where does she say it is a conspiracy? Or is that another BLP violation? As for "ideology", well, that isn't wrong. An ideology is simply "a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture", and it would be absurd to suggest that the activists who speak in the name of transgender causes don't have a characteristic manner of thinking. I also hasten to note that transgender people, like any demographic, disagree among themselves in ways that the loudest and most funded activists don't necessarily represent. Same as with African-Americans and some activists who advocate abolishing police. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

She says it herself in her MANDY essay: In my book I demonstrate that mainstream transactivism is not a grassroots movement, but a top-down one - given the poor sourcing she offers for this and its direct contradiction with peer-reviewed scholarship on the topic, yes, it is a conspiracy theory. As to her naming Jewish billionaires as the actors behind so-called "transactivism", I will leave that to each reader to judge for themselves. Newimpartial (talk) 22:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The only one saying "Jewish" is you, not Joyce. Are billionaires beyond criticism if they happen to be Jewish? I must admit it is quite entertaining whenever I see people on the political left suddenly leap to the defense of billionaires when they normally aren't fans. That some billionaires fund gender identity advocacy is well documented and beyond dispute. Billionaires are ideologically diverse and throw their vast wealth at many things. It does not follow from that alone that trans activism isn't grassroots, of course. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:31, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

But what she actually argues is that trans activism is not grassroots because of donations by billionaires. Who she names, and most of whom happen to be Jewish. This is the same as the usual Soros "logic", as far as I can tell, but with different names.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not defending any billionaires here. I am simply saying that no peer-reviewed sources that I know support the existence of "trans ideology" or attribute the evident success of gender identity activism to Soros-like figures...and tropes be tropes, yo. Newimpartial (talk) 22:51, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

It is a fallacy to say that because crazy conspiracy theorists assert billionaire involvement where there is no evidence of such, that any statement of billionaire involvement is the same "trope". As for "peer-reviewed" sources, it is very common for journalism to be reliable on things that as yet have no peer-reviewed sources. I'm sure when journalists were documenting each of Trump's numerous lies, you weren't on the sidelines saying "but there's no peer-reviewed sources about this lie yet!" Whether or not some academic sources use the exact term "trans ideology" - I haven't checked, but it's a confusing term - the idea central to trans activism that classification as e.g. male/female should be based on gender identity clearly is both an idea (i.e. ideological claim) and must have some sort of name. What do you call this idea then? Crossroads ^-talk- 23:06, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I call it the multidisciplinary consensus of the reliable sources on gender. Newimpartial (talk) 23:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, what do these fields call it? I don't call evolution "the multidisciplinary consensus" of whatever. It has a name. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:40, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The usual terms include "gender identity recognition", "gender identity rights", "gender identity education", etc. Newimpartial (talk) 23:47, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that the issue of whether Joyce and/or her book are notable enough for an article is a separate issue from the question of whether it is appropriate to add it to the Further reading here. It pains me to say it but I fear that the notability might be there. Unfortunately any such article would almost certainly be a flaming dumpster fire from day one. --DanielRigal (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

(Perhaps unsurprisingly, since it shifted to a different topic almost immediately,) the thread above still fails to demonstrate that the opinions of a mathematician and economist writing outside her areas of expertise (even one whose transphobia reliable sources have reported on) are relevant to an article on "Feminist views of transgender topics". Were we discussing "Finance editors' views of transgender topics", this would be different. -sche (talk) 02:01, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, please update me on this - what qualifications does a woman need to be classified as a feminist? GenericUsername2702 (talk) 13:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

At a minimum, reliable sourcing calling her a feminist. But if we're going to represent her as an example of feminist views it'd be ideal to have a source that she's representative of some major current in feminist thought. Your weirdo uncle may call himself a communist but we wouldn't cite him as a source on communism, you get me? Loki (talk) 19:05, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Quotation about "surge of attacks"

I am about to delete the following text, because it is not apparently relevant to this page about feminist views on transgender topics.

In August 2021, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said the surge in attacks on transgender people and other LGBTI people "harms the lives and well-being of those affected and undermines social cohesion," and that "by standing up for LGBTI people, we defend the equal human dignity of all, protect our societies' wellbeing and the strength of our precious human rights system."

Please, if you think it is about feminist views, please explain. It's not clear from the text of the source.AndyGordon (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Germaine Greer

Are you kidding me? Why was Germaine Greer or Julie Bindel removed??? Nlivataye (talk) 11:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Greer and Bindel are both mentioned in the article. Are you thinking of any additional coverage that was removed? --DanielRigal (talk) 12:54, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Unbalanced lead section

The lead section is in reality only a discussion of the TERF ideology, which is not balanced for an article that is supposed to present "feminist views on transgender topics" in general. All the large feminist organisations in the US, such as NOW and LWV, and all mainstream feminist organisations in Europe, support trans rights. TERF is a fringe movement, with roots in a fringe group within radical feminism, itself already a minority within the feminist community. I think the best solution would be to have a separate article that could discuss the TERF ideology in detail (as suggested above), while this article could be a more balanced presentation of feminist views on transgender topics, with far more room for presenting the mainstream feminist view as advocated by the large, mainstream feminist organisations (NOW etc.). The mainstream feminist view should be presented before the TERF position in the lead. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 02:39, 24 November 2021 (UTC) (Edit: I have added some material on the views of mainstream feminists including NOW. Still, the section that discusses TERF ideology is twice as long as the material on the views of all other feminists combined including the mainstream/large feminist orgs and third and fourth-wave feminism in general, which is not really appropriate for an article on feminist views on transgender topics in general) --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 03:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Going forward, please do not add material to the lead that is not covered in the body, per WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. The WP:LEAD is to act as a summary. This issue seems to be resolved after the recent edits - I agree that it was not necessary to go into such depth on such views before discussing the views of 3rd and 4th wave feminism in general, and that the order now is better. Crossroads ^-talk- 07:04, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Do we need a separate article on trans-exclusionary radical feminism?

Trans-exclusionary radical feminism redirects here, although we have a separate article called TERF that is said to only discuss the terminology rather than the ideology itself. That doesn't really seem like a very good solution. Obviously "feminist views on transgender topics" is a much broader topic than just trans-exclusionary radical feminism (that is often described as a fringe movement within feminism; all large U.S. feminist organisations are solidly pro-trans for example). On the other hand, where do we include views and analysis of trans-exclusionary radical feminism that is not coming from a specifically feminist perspective, for example relevant legal developments (e.g. hate speech laws in place in some countries)? Given how much attention attention trans-exclusionary radical feminism (or "gender-critical feminism" as it is euphemistically called by supporters) attracts, a separate article on that ideology is clearly warranted, and it would seem like a much better solution to have trans-exclusionary radical feminism and its abbreviation point to the same article covering both the terminology and the ideology (and analysis of it). If we really need a separate article on the terminology, we could have an article on TERF (term) in addition to a main article on trans-exclusionary radical feminism with a hatnote pointing to the in-depth coverage of the term, but TERF should redirect to the main article on the ideology. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:19, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Really, I think this material belongs in Anti-gender movement, if the sources can be found that make that connection. What we have is a sort of ideological pincer movement. Newimpartial (talk) 10:51, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

They're different. The anti-gender movement describes a backlash to progressive gender stances in general, often opposition to gay marriage or even explicit anti-feminism, mostly emerging as a tendency of conservative Catholic theology. I highly doubt sufficient sources exist to conflate the two. --Chillabit (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

You might be surprised. Newimpartial (talk) 23:42, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Butler here says "it makes no sense for "gender critical" feminists to ally with reactionary powers in targeting trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people". This passing reference distinguishes the two movements in suggesting they may be allied, rather than the same thing.

The anti-gender movement article is built on academic literature detailing it as a movement of distinct origins and expressions that are separate from that of trans-exclusionary feminism. Even if Butler said they were the same, I would expect that to carry much more weight instead. --Chillabit (talk) 01:02, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I too believe that we need separate articles covering the anti-gender movement and trans-exclusionary radical feminism. While they are related in various ways, they are not identical, and the anti-gender movement is also a much broader phenomenon. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 02:47, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem with this is that "trans-exclusionary radical feminism", in its general signification, is typically neither radical nor feminist. Nor is most radical feminism trans-exclusionary. So an article treating this as a topic, rather than a term, would immediately run into a host of problems. I am also unaware of any quality sources that treat "trans-exclusionaty radical feminism" as a movement, rather than as a term, whereas there are plenty of good sources (besides Butler) who contextualize contemporary anti-trans activism, explicitly "TERF" or otherwise, in relation to the broader reactionary currents of anti-gender activism. So-called "gender critical feminism" is a key case in point. Newimpartial (talk) 03:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The main problem here is that we have a huge, poorly written mix'n'match article that is supposed to cover all feminist views on transgender topics, but the way it was written it was almost entirely an article about TERF ideology that largely ignored the "establishment" perspective within the women's movement/feminism and official gender equality apparatus, advocated by everyone from the large women's organisations (e.g. NOW) to official bodies concerned with promoting women's rights (e.g. UN Women). It seems to me that there is currently no article that is in fact the main article about the phenomenon now covered in the section "Gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism" in this article. The end result is that gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism dominates this article to an unhealthy degree, whereas a separate article would make it possible to make this article into a more balanced overview of this broad topic and to move some of the detailed material on the TERF debate into that other article.

Regarding the name of a possible article: the name of the corresponding section in this article ("gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism") would seem like a natural starting point, but I'm open to alternatives and other views. As I understand it, "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" is simply the name (or possibly the most prominent of the two names) of this specific phenomenon. When we use that name, we don't necessarily accept that it is indeed feminism, or we don't necessarily accept the premise of a term like "gender-critical feminism" when we use that term; it's just what that specific phenomenon is usually known as. The article on the term touches upon this issue, quoting Edie Miller when he writes that the term TERF is applied to "most people espousing trans-exclusionary politics that follow a particular TERF logic, regardless of their involvement with radical feminism." Certainly an article would clarify that "gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism" is a specific phenomenon, and address its relation to radical feminism (including the fact that not all TERFs/"gender criticals" are actually viewed as or considering themselves to be radical feminists in the traditional sense). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 08:37, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm just throwing out some possibilities here for alternative titles:

• Anti-trans feminism
• Anti-transgender feminism
• Anti-transgender sentiment in feminism
• etc. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 08:38, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Still skeptical here. For actual feminists who are anti-trans, I don't see any problem discussing their thinking in relation to feminism and within the scope of this article. The gap in wikipedia's coverage of these phenomena, really, is in the Graham Linehan/J.K. Rowling territory of "anti-trans attitudes of people who are not actually feminists" - I mean, wikipedia treats them individually in their bio articles for their specific views, but doesn't treat the movement of which they are a part - a movement that is not part of feminism AFAICT. Newimpartial (talk) 12:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I just want to clarify that I'm not proposing that we remove any mention of feminists who are anti-trans here, just that we create an additional article for in-depth coverage of that phenomenon to avoid that a general article on "Feminist views on transgender topics" is dominated by a discussion of the anti-trans perspective, because most feminists are not anti-trans (exemplified by the fact that the established/large feminist organisations are trans-inclusive). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 14:22, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good path to go down, because it would necessarily result not only in a lot of duplication of coverage but also in WP:POVFORK issues. Such a spinoff would have to be clear about the mainstream views, but it's much easier to do that right here. Whatever problems allegedly exist in this article would not be fixed by this, and would be exacerbated if anything because there would then be two articles with a tendency to accumulate non-noteworthy opinions. Plus, the name of such an article would be near-impossible to decide on, as the sources are very much divided on this.

Regardless of how many self-identified feminists or organizations take the trans-inclusive position, we do measure WP:WEIGHT by what the sources are talking about, and on the topic of not just 'feminism' as such, but the place of trans topics in relation to feminism, many or most of them are about the issues we are discussing here. It wouldn't make sense to have GC/TERF arguments in one article and 3rd wave arguments in another (in fact it would be against NPOV and DUE), and once one realizes that both have to be together, it makes sense to have that as one article covering that, not two. Crossroads ^-talk- 07:21, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

There is no proposal here to have the TERF perspective in one article and other perspectives in another article. Rather, the proposal is to have an in-depth article on TERF/"gender-critical feminism" that is summarised in this main article providing an overview of feminist views on transgender topics. In other words, we would retain the "Gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism" section in this article, but would also have a much longer and much more detailed, full article on gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism. By not having its own article, we place an artificial limit on the coverage of that phenomenon (because it would be inappropriate for it to completely dominate an article on a much broader topic). The reason it should have its own article is precisely because it attracts so much attention in the media and scholarship now. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 08:18, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

There isn't much more to say on the topic than what we have here. Not every opinion in primary sources is considered noteworthy on the various topics in this encyclopedia, including this one. And even if it were split it off, to contextualize everything we would basically be duplicating most of this article over again. Perhaps some of this by-country stuff could be moved to other articles eventually if needed, though I don't think that is yet. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:42, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

This article seems biased.

Some parts of this article feel like they were written by someone who already considers one of two conflicting viewpoints to be right. For example it uses the term "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" which is very contested. Is this article supposed to explain the different worldviews neutrally, or is it meant to advertise one worldview as the truth? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheNamelessTwo (talk • contribs) 13:19, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposed removal of statement by Scottish women's groups

I propose we remove the following sentence.

Seven Scottish women's groups – Close the Gap, Engender, Equate Scotland, Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid, Women 50:50, and Zero Tolerance – released a joint statement during the GRA consultations endorsing the proposed reforms and stating that "we do not regard trans equality and women’s equality to be in competition or contradiction with each other."

The source is here: [1] (Dead link)

Archived: [2]

The statement being quoted is in support of the Equal Recognition campaign, and the only source is the Equal Recognition website that was operated by the Equality Network. The source itself is self-published WP:SPS, not a news blog.

The Equal Recognition campaign is not a person, and so cannot be a subject-matter expert, so this part of WP:SPS does not allow us to consider the source reliable: 'Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.'

The statement being quoted is not about the Equal Recognition campaign, so WP:ABOUTSELF does not apply.

Hi @Newimpartial, I've written this out to help us understand and apply the policies (which are nuanced). What do you think?

AndyGordon (talk) 12:31, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Tagging @Newimpartial AndyGordon (talk) 12:32, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Your argument carries the strangely humanist implication that WP can never cite works self-published by organisations because orgs are not people and can therefore not be experts. Is that right? It seems rather novel to me.

My (more conventional) non-humanist view is that orgs are, in fact, informed sources on their own positions on public issues, which is what this source is being used for here, so I don't see a problem. Newimpartial (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Newimpartial thanks for your quick response. The policy links to the subject-matter expert article which says: "A subject-matter expert (SME) is a person who is an authority in a particular area or topic." Hence it seems to me that the policy would apply to a human and not an organisation.

In any case, is there any evidence that the Equal Recognition campaign's "work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications"?

Much better, did any news outlets pick up on this statement? That would be a much better argument for inclusion. AndyGordon (talk) 13:41, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

We stick to the spirit of the guideline in cases like these. If not a person, if they are a group of people that can collectively be understood to be experts the guideline applies. Scottish Women's Aid is certainly one organization we could consider notable and knowledgeable in the field of women's rights in the UK as one of the largest women's organizations in Scotland. If they have an opinion on the GRA I strongly believe we should include it. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:47, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

News outlets did indeed pick up on the statement: The Guardian, The Scotsman, PinkNews. —0xf₈e₈ 💿 (talk) 15:16, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

That's brilliant - I've added the news sources. AndyGordon (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Removal of expert opinion

Crossroads has removed a detailed international human rights law analysis of the term "sex-based rights" (commonly used by TERFs) by a human rights scholar with specific expertise in this subject area, and claims the source is not reliable because it is hosted on the Wordpress platform. This is both silly and wrong, and if they had read the relevant policy, they would probably have realised that themselves: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" (WP:SELFPUB). Duffy is an international human rights law scholar at the University of Bristol Law School and her research focuses on this specific topic area, namely the interactions of gender identities and law. She was also a founding consultant researcher on ILGA World's Trans Legal Mapping Project[3]. Quoting her opinion that "sex-based rights" is not based on accepted international human rights law jurisprudence based on her thorough analysis (even if published on her own website) is unproblematic. The reason that nobody has debunked "sex-based rights" from that specific perspective in a more conventional venue (such as a journal) may be that the concept itself is such a fringe idea that is not taken seriously in legal scholarship (it is a form of "pseudo-legalese" and was proposed by Jeffreys and Brunskell-Evans, philosophers with no legal qualifications or understanding of the legal framework that Duffy explains). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:57, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be better to remove the section entirely. There's already concerns that have been raised on this talk page about the article being unbalanced and giving trans-exclusionary feminism relatively more space than it actually holds in feminism - adding in a new sub-section entirely about a fringe term potentially gives in too much prominence and potentially makes the page even more unbalanced. NHCLS (talk) 11:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

While I broadly share that concern and have proposed ways to address it, the reason that a short section on "sex-based rights" was added to this article is that sex-based rights redirects to this article, that the term is used in a number of articles and that I think the term should be discussed/explained somewhere (ideally in an article specifically about trans-exclusionary radical feminism, as I suggested above, but such an article doesn't exist yet).

Even if the concept is a fringe idea in legal scholarship (and specifically in international human rights law, scholarship on CEDAW etc., i.e. the perspective Duffy was writing from), it's a relatively widely used term in trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse now. In other words, it's a pseudo-legal term that is popular among non-lawyers involved in anti-trans activism, and that is often encountered in the context of trans-exclusionary radical feminism. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 11:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Leaving aside the section related concerns as I don't have an opinion on them yet, I would point out that we do cite Sandra Duffy elsewhere on Wikipedia as a legal expert. Her analysis of the Bell v Tavistock appeal judgement is one of several cited, though at that time she was writing in Irish Legal News. I do agree though that WP:SELFPUB would allow us to cite her writing on her own blog. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:57, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I would encourage all editors here to treat those issues separately: 1) Whether we, in principle, can cite Duffy's expert opinion on this subject (that she is an expert on) based on an article (not just a brief opinion piece, but a thorough article that cites numerous sources) published on her own website per WP:SELFPUB, and 2) Whether we want more material in the section on trans-exclusionary radical feminism. Regarding the latter issue, I would like to point out that we have no article where we can discuss "sex-based rights" which currently redirects to this article if we can't discuss it here. When I said it's a fringe concept, I meant in legal (human rights) scholarship; the term is encountered frequently enough in political (TERF) discourse. If more editors had agreed to my proposal (above) to have a separate, in-depth article on trans-exclusionary radical feminism (aka gender-critical feminism) that covered both the ideology and the terminology (and not just the terminology), I wouldn't have added the section on this aspect of TERF ideology here in this article, but rather in the in-depth article on the TERF ideology. Crossroads said above that "There isn't much more to say on the topic [TERF ideology] than what we have here"; I don't quite agree with that, and think a more detailed article on the TERF ideology could be possible. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 18:03, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I am coming around, finally, to the view that we need an article called "Gender-critical feminism" that would have a section link from this article, a section link from Anti-gender movement, a disambiguation link from TERF and hypertext links from Radical feminism and other articles. The article would note in its lead section that "gender critical" is the endonym for those xenonymically labeleled "TERF", but would then go on to document the thinking of feminists who have embraced the label and developed this position, which would include (FRINGE) "sex-based rights" discourse and Duffy's expert analysis thereof.

While the argument could be made that the COMMONNAME of this topic is "TERF", I believe it would be an error of epic proportions to try to re-work TERF to become this article, because of the previous wikihistory on the topic (including RfCs) and also because, increasingly, RS media and scholarship are adopting the endonym (sometimes in scare-quotes, but not always) even when they provide critical response and analysis to it. At this point, the term "TERF" (while of course meriting mention in the proposed article) would be a distraction - as an article title - from developing NPOV content on the topic. The treatment up to now, as one section of this article, doesn't do justice to developments over the last 10-15 years, and I don't see how this could be rectified here while maintaining the balance that an article on "Feminist views" should have. To put a finer point on it, the (usually small) minority of feminists adopting "gender critical" positions have had a disproportionate amount of RS attention directed to supporting and criticizing their views, and the DUE treatment of that would be a BALANCED, NPOV article on that specialist topic. Newimpartial (talk) 18:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to gender-critical feminism being the title (quite frankly I feel it implies an admission that the ideology is part the broader anti-gender movement; this may be part of the reason why even those of us who are critical of TERFs don't object strongly to their self-description as gender-critical). The section title here is "Gender critical feminism/trans-exclusionary radical feminism", so the article could be titled gender-critical feminism while introducing the subject in the first sentence as "Gender critical feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) ..." --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I would just be concerned about how to properly frame such an article - because GCism is a fringe movement within global feminism. The only place it really has any type of prominence is within the UK, and a lot of that isn't within British feminist movements, but is within the British media and the British political class. GCism as a movement is also relatively recent - it's really only started springing up in the last few years (so isn't the same thing as the trans-exclusionary movements seen within 2nd wave radical feminism in the 1970s) - and, to put it mildly, has a lot of claims that are very, very deeply contested (there's definitely not a lot of peer-reviewed papers upholding it). So how would we frame an article about GCism? How would we make sure it's not just a list of GC claims without any balance? And, honestly, considering the links between GCism and conservative/anti-feminist movements, I'd argue that titling a separate page "gender-critical feminism" would itself be a little unbalanced - I think something like "gender-critical movement" would be a more neutral description. NHCLS (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I have some sympathy for this, but have come to accept that what one might broadly call anti-genderism has two rather distinct roots: a secular, gender critical feminist tendency and a religious, usually catholic or fundamentalist tendency. In spite of situational alliances between the two they are quite different on the level of ideas, which is what the proposed article would primarily address. You are right, NHCLS, that anti-trans positions in second-wave feminism aren't really in scope for the proposed article since not only the labels ("TERF" and "gender critical") but also the key concept of gender identity would be anachronistic, by and large. But where I disagree with you is in my view that, since roughly 2010, this tendency of feminism has generated enough of its own argumentation, and therefore critical analysis, that it should be easy to source from fairly high-quality sources. And it would give me a place to cite wackadoodle "gender critical" legal scholarship for which I haven't previously found an appropriate context. :) Newimpartial (talk) 20:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Would you want to start by creating a draft article so that we can start arguing about what exactly to put in it/how to structure and frame it/what condensed summary to leave behind in this article/etc... over there then (and so that when we do publish the article up in mainspace, it's already comprehensive with some level of consensus and not halfway done and quickly devolving into edit wars) ? NHCLS (talk) 20:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I suspect it would be less controversial if the draft were initiated by almost anyone else; however, I would be happy to contribute. Newimpartial (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Draft:Gender-critical feminism, then there. NHCLS (talk) 21:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Great. Further discussion relating to the development of the draft article should take place on Draft talk:Gender-critical feminism. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 13:31, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

For once, I agree with Crossroads. I do not think this article needs a section on "sex-based rights", given the limited sourcing available. But see my suggestion for a new article, above.Newimpartial (talk) 12:50, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the arguments above by Newimpartial and Amanda A. Brant that if such a split were to occur, the best article name is Gender-critical feminism. I'm still unconvinced a split is necessary or good, but I will think about it more. I don't think it was best to rewrite the relevant content in a draft rather than plan on copying what we have here as a starting point. If people do eventually want to WP:SPLIT the article, then an official discussion proposing that would be best so we can get a wide-ranging consensus.

Regarding the blog post issue which started this section, WP:SELFPUB also notes that if something is worth saying, then it is likely published. Where does it end with citing self-published blog posts, tweets, etc. of experts in whatever relevant field? As a point of comparison, while not all the points apply, editors may want to review this RfC at the TERF article. It found consensus against including a self-published preprint article (it was included not long thereafter since it was finally published). Crossroads ^-talk- 07:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes; my all means editors should read that rare occasion where Crossroads actually "wins" a discussion. :p

As far as the prospective new article is concerned, a "split" isn't the right framing at all - the new article is only to cover gender-critical ("TERF") feminism, so that means that 20th-century material is generally not relevant; it isn't a simple subset of this current article that could be posted over. Some individuals and organizations who are not DUE in this article, in the context of feminism as a whole, become DUE for the subset. Draft space is precisely the policy-compliant (and relatively low-stakes) place to work these issues out and develop an encyclopedic article, rather than a carcass scavenged during prolonged edit wars. Of course, if the new article is put in the public eye later (possibly after AfC), the mention here would need to be trimmed accordingly and a section reference created. Newimpartial (talk) 12:19, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm very surprised an article on GC/TERFs exist and strongly support its creation. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 15:26, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@A. C. Santacruz: that article is still in the draft space, so it doesn't technically exist yet. But it is open for people to contribute to. Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:28, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

We do have that article. It's this article. Per WP:PAGEDECIDE, There are other times when it is better to cover notable topics, that clearly should be included in Wikipedia, as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context. Any such article has to discuss opposing feminist views, so it makes sense to just treat it as a whole as here. Crossroads ^-talk- 04:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I also support a split (and have strongly for a while) but believe that "Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism" is a more neutral title. I could be convinced otherwise if sufficient sourcing exists that "Gender Critical Feminism" is in fact the WP:COMMONNAME for it. But my opinion in the absence of strong sourcing one way or the other is that first of all, there is no 100% neutral term since the people in question believe "trans exclusionary radical feminists" to be pejorative, while their opponents believe "gender critical" to be puffery. And second, outside of the confines of that argument, "trans exclusionary radical feminists" is a good description of what the people in question believe, while "gender critical" really isn't: to someone unfamiliar, it could equally mean someone who is critical of gender in the trans-exclusionary anti-gender movement sense, or someone who is critical of gender in the neutral gender abolitionist or critical-of-gender-roles senses, or even someone who is critical of gender in the explicitly trans-inclusionary cyberfeminist/xenofeminist sense. So if there's no way to avoid taking sides, and the sourcing is equivocal, we should choose the term that is clear over the term that is ambiguous. Loki (talk) 06:49, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

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"Get the L Out" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Get the L Out and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 16#Get the L Out until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:15, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

'Biological sex is immutable'

I feel this is an unfortunate phrasing in the lead, because if 'biological sex' is defined as chromosomal sex, it is immutable. External sexual morphology is mutable via surgery, but they're two different things. As I understand it, gender-critical (G-C) theory bases itself on external sexual morphology as observed at birth, and mistakenly assumes this to be a purely binary classification. I wouldn't propose to discuss this in the lead, but I suggest either removing the words 'is immutable and' (perhaps expanding the point in the body of the article), and/or to defining 'biological sex' more clearly. But claiming that sexual morphology is 'immmutable' would inter alia expose the logical contradiction at the center of G-C theory described above. So I would do both: delete the 'immutable' comment because it's patently false in terms of the G-C interpretation of what 'sex' is, and define that interpretation more rigorously as per my comment above. Chrismorey (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Socialization and experience

We need a better citation for this claim: "Some feminists argue that trans women cannot fully be women because they were assigned male at birth and have experienced some degree of male privilege." Currently this links to a news article about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; it's clarified in a later paragraph of this same page that Chimamanda believes that "there's no way [she] could possibly say that trans women are not women" because "it's the sort of thing to me that's obvious." Either we find a different citation or we change the claim to something like "Some feminists have argued that trans women experience a degree of male privilege." LarstonMarston (talk) 23:17, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Centering of trans women

Aside from general discussion of transgender identity, this article mostly talks about transgender women in particular, more or less ignoring transgender men and nonbinary identities. I realize that some degree of this is kind of inevitable talking about feminist perspectives, but is there anything we can/should do to reduce this? LarstonMarston (talk) 23:01, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@LarstonMarston: Trans men are generally very tangential to TERF narratives, but they're sometimes cast as poor confused butch lesbians victimized by the evil transgenda. There's some content at Lesbian erasure § Butch lesbians and transgender men covering that conspiracy theory, I think some of that could be worth referencing in the gender-crit section as well. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 01:06, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Most of the socially relevant issues surrounding transgender rights as they pertain to feminism, e.g. discussions about trans women in women's spaces and trans women as part of the more general struggle for women's rights, involve trans women rather than trans men. As a result, this article and the sources it cites mostly talk about trans women. I don't think that's really an issue, though the opinion of TERFs about transgender men that RoxySaunders mentioned above could probably be discussed in this article too. Endwise (talk) 08:10, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Alliance with conservative groups and politicians - in UK

The text "Some feminists who define themselves as gender-critical have allied with conservative groups and politicians … in the United Kingdom" is not supported by the source:. The opendemocracy article records that while some right-wing groups and GC feminists adopt similar positions, it explicitly states "There is no evidence that they are actively working together". Beyond the headline, the article makes no claim of collusion or alliance in any way.

If holding similar views on a specific topic were indicative of ANYTHING, feminists who opposed pornography would be deemed tho "have allied themselves" with the most draconian puritan religious right orgs. I'm not competent to judge the US sources (though the first appears to be an advocacy opinion piece), but the whole sentence appears 'loaded' at best and concluding that two very distinct sets of beliefs are acting in conscious collusion, (the implied meaning of "have allied with") is pretty conspiratorially phrased. As is the section title "Political alliances with conservatives". The 'tone' of both the UK and first US article is that conservative groups are happy to use GC feminists - which may well be true, but doesn't have much to do with what GC feminists have done. This is borderline 'guilt by association'.

References

Pincrete (talk) 13:24, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I see what you mean. More suggestive sources might be here and here. It's also probably worth mentioning that some GC feminists have actively criticized working with conservatives (this is mentioned in the Byline Times article). LarstonMarston (talk) 16:41, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I support retitling and rewording this to fix the issue, and adding the criticism by some GC feminists mentioned by LarstonMarston. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:26, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The section contains several peer-reviewed sources that make claim of alliances. 1: "growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances"; 2: "have openly aligned themselves"; 3: "begun to build coalition with"; 4: "a coalition of". NHCLS (talk) 18:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Well the source used for the UK doesn't support the claim made - and what it does support is somewhat the opposite: "Christian conservatives have become unlikely allies of women’s groups" ie Christian conservative groups have 'coatracked' themselves onto GC feminist positions. Though the article makes clear that the conservatives support only a narrow range of GC viewpoints (relating mainly to self identification and related policies iro trans people) and that these conservatives oppose a whole raft of feminist and LGB measures mostly supported by the GC feminists - hence unlikely allies. I can't access all of the additional sources (££)), but those I can, confirm that a tiny number of 'feminists' (possibly as few as one from the UK) have accepted cash/help from US conservative groups - which amounts to a form of 'alliance', but which is marginal in scale. I can't comment on the US groups accused of allying with conservative groups, since they are not known to me at all. At a minimum LarstonMarston's point that some GC feminists have actively criticized working with conservatives" and clearer text and sourcing to indicate the scale and nature of 'alliance' - certainly in the UK. At present it looks an awful lot like "guilt by association" - because I think autobahns are a good idea, I must have allied myself totally with rabid Nazis! Pincrete (talk) 11:03, 17 December 2022 (UTC) Addendum The two sources provided by LarstonMarston speak respectively of "Right-wing media and think tanks are aligning with fake feminists" - which endorses my point about "conservatives 'coatracking' themselves onto GC feminist positions" and speaks of the right-wingers 'aligning' , not the feminists 'allying' (Media Matters). The second source says: Sian Norris investigates how far-right and religious-right groups are using ‘gender-critical’ arguments to further their anti-LGBTIQ agenda - so the conservative groups are 'poaching' GC arguments according to Byline Times, not GC feminists colluding as our present text implies. Pincrete (talk) 11:52, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Here's a more recent openDemocracy source: "the real danger to cis women comes from the politics of the far right, particularly homophobic and anti-abortion fundamentalists that ‘gender-critical’ transphobes sometimes collaborate with, and are funded by, to the tune of millions of dollars." NHCLS (talk) 13:48, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

That article is an opinion piece and the article which is linked to "‘gender-critical’ transphobes sometimes collaborate with, and are funded by, to the tune of millions of dollars" does not mention a single feminist or feminist org, nor the GC term in any context, particularly not being funded. The linked aricle is mainly about US conservative money being used to oppose abortion and to a lesser extent gay marriage and other 'LGBT rights', mainly in Europe. Pincrete (talk) 17:02, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

This article repeats itself a LOT

Wayy too much of this article is taken up by gender-critical/"TERF" perspectives on trans rights. Between the history recap, the nebulously-titled "transgender rights" section, (in an article almost entirely devoted to discussing trans rights, no less!) the breakdown by individual concepts, and the regional breakdown featuring a massive section on the UK, where most of the relevant ideas originate from, I feel we could stand to lose at least half of what we've said. Maybe we could start with a brief description of gender-criticalism, then expand on relevant individual topics like women's spaces etc. and recent history in the UK? LarstonMarston (talk) 22:21, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

@LarstonMarston: I agree with this, and I also feel like we ought to split out a separate article on trans-exclusionary feminism. If you wanna just start WP:BRDing this page I definitely wouldn't oppose that. Loki (talk) 20:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

User:LokiTheLiar There is a main article already, but specifically concerning the origin and circulation of the term TERF. The main redundancy in this article right now is probably the UK section and the gender-critical feminism section. I also reorganized the history section somewhat. LarstonMarston (talk) 20:50, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think splitting it is a good idea and lends itself to be a WP:POVFORK; however redundancy can be trimmed and points from trans-inclusionary feminists can be added. The UK portion in particular does go over a lot of stuff and some of that should probably be in the existing subarticle about trans rights in the UK. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:50, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I frankly think it's nuts that we've gone so long without an article on trans-exclusionary feminists themselves. We have an article on transfeminism already, and even the word TERF, without ever having an article on trans-exclusionary feminism. Loki (talk) 19:01, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree, also , there is a distinction between trans-exclusionary feminism and gender-critical feminism. The latter focuses on gender itself and it's weaponisation against the female sex, while the former is a reactionary movement within Feminism Kippuss (talk) 12:53, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Bolding

There is no reason for bolding one of two alternative names for a minority/fringe perspective, as this is a general article on feminist views on transgender topics rather than an article on TERF ideology specifically.

I have repeatedly pointed out the absurdity of the current situation where we have no actual article on trans-exclusionary radical feminism, but bizarrely an article on the term but not the actual phenomenon/movement/ideology itself while the latter is supposedly covered in a general article on feminist views on transgender topics, in which TERF is clearly a very specific minority (in most countries even fringe) perspective. Bolding one of two names of TERF here gives it undue weight in this article, which is also supposed to cover much more mainstream perspectives, which are not bolded in the lead. It also looks very odd. Why is only one of the two alternative names of TERF bolded?

Of course, for a long time the name was not bolded. This is a recently introduced change that was not discussed and for which no consensus exists.

(Ideally, the existing TERF article should be expanded to become the main article on the phenomenon/movement/ideology too, instead of its odd focus on terminology only, and to avoid this unfortunate situation where TERF is spread across different articles, some of which are about much broader topics rather than TERF specifically, but that is a separate discussion). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 23:27, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

This is just the tip of one branch of the overgrown mess that is our treatment of trans-exclusionary/gender-critical beliefs. I agree there's an overweighting on the term "gender-critical" due to the bold, though it's justifiable by a plain reading of MOS:BOLDREDIRECT. I did move the bold to the section that the redirect actually targets. That section could benefit from a mention of the term "trans-exclusionary feminism" (no "radical"), and it would then make sense to retarget Trans-exclusionary feminism to the section and bold it there. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 23:43, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the parenthetical point above about "the existing TERF article should be expanded to become the main article": I am strongly opposed to this idea. For details and reasoning, please see longer comment below in section § Merger proposal. Mathglot (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

RFC: Naming a Split

Which of the following options is the best way to title an article (to be split from this one) about the subset of feminism opposed to transgender rights?

1. Trans-exclusionary radical feminism
2. Trans-exclusionary feminism
3. Gender-critical feminism

Loki (talk) 00:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• Option 2: Not all members of this group are radical feminists, so 1 is out. 3 is a self-promoted euphemism, so it's also out. That leaves 2 as the best and most neutral option. I could be convinced otherwise based on sourcing, but my impression is that the sourcing is fairly balanced between these options. Loki (talk) 00:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
• Of the three, Option 2 is by far the best. I think all three titles are misnomers to some extent but 1 and 3 are both unacceptable for the reasons Loki gives. I'm wondering whether a descriptive name like "Trans exclusion in feminism" might be better? If not, option 2 is the way to go. --DanielRigal (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  I think "Trans exclusion in feminism" has similar problems to the current article. The topic of the proposed article is a cohesive group of people and we should be clear about that. We wouldn't name the article about feminism "Advocacy for women's rights". Loki (talk) 02:20, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose The only discussion on a split I can see is between three editors, one of whom disagreed. We have already have TERF so I am not seeing a compelling reason to do what will essentially be a POV fork. If we can't improve this article, creating another battleground article is not going to help the situation and just create more work in an already fraught topic area. Aircorn (talk) 07:47, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  @Aircorn I too oppose sorting the article, and I agree with you. AndyGordon (talk) 08:33, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  I oppose *splitting* the article. AndyGordon (talk) 08:34, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• Also oppose splitting. The reason we have the TERF page is to clarify the use of 'TERF' and 'gender-critical'. The people to whom these labels are applied aren't homogeneous in opinion. I'm not sure why we would exclude information about feminist views on transgender topics from a page on... feminist views on transgender topics. LarstonMarston (talk) 17:23, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  To be clear, I agree that trans-exclusionary feminists deserve space in this article. But they're also clearly big enough to deserve their own separate article. We have an article on transfeminism already, as well as a whole article on just the word TERF, so it's frankly nuts that we don't have an article about trans-exclusionary feminists themselves. Loki (talk) 20:30, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose split and close as invalid (and because there is not consensus for a split, and people like me pointing that out aren't voting on a title, this survey is invalid). A split is a bad idea because it would either (A) be only about the views of TE/GC feminists and hence a WP:POVFORK, or (B) would be about both their views and other feminists' counter-views, thus having the same scope as this article and running afoul of WP:REDUNDANTFORK more generally. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:14, 10 December 2022 (UTC) updated Crossroads ^-talk- 21:58, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  Why would an article about the views of TE/GC feminists be a WP:POVFORK? We already have an article about transfeminism, is that a POVFORK? Is feminism a POVFORK off egalitarianism? Loki (talk) 20:31, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• Close, invalid – non-neutral Rfc statement that fails WP:RFCBEFORE because there is no prior agreement that the article needs to be split, and because proposing a split is not what the Rfc process is for. I'm happy to respond on the merits, in the appropriate venue once the groundwork has been done, but this isn't it, and it hasn't. Mathglot (talk) 21:47, 10 December 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose a split, but support a partial merger with TERF. The article already had the entomology and usage of the word, the debate around it, and the rejection of the term by people called this term. Moving some of the trans-exclusionary / gender critical info over there can reduce the section size here, possibly avoid the POV fork issue, and make the page for TERF more well-rounded. XTheBedrockX (talk) 22:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  I would agree with this. It makes sense to include more information about the beliefs associated with the terms. LarstonMarston (talk) 00:26, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose split discussion here. Proposed split doesn't appear distinct enough from TERF. Any discussion on a split would do better starting there, along with any discussion of naming of proposed subject(s). Some content here could move into the resulting subject(s) after that discussion. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 16:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
• oppose split - gender-critical feminist views on transgender topics are a subset of feminist views on transgender topics. Splitting gender-critical feminist views off into their own article seems like an attempt to censor out part of the spectrum of views. Providing a fork option that uses a slur for an article name only makes the intent more obvious. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 16:42, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
• 1 or 3 are the best titles in my opinion. We have a real problem with WP:UNDUE weight given to this fringe perspective in an article on a much, much broader topic, at the expense of more mainstream perspectives as well as readability and navigation (readers have to look in different articles to find the coverage of the same topic, i.e. the TERF/GC ideology/movement). We already have an existing article on TERF, which is a very bad article with a peculiarly narrow focus only on terminology (the least interesting part). Most of the content on TERF should simply be moved there to make that article into a more complete article on TERF/GC, while keeping a summary here. Whether the article should be renamed, for example as trans-exclusionary radical feminism or gender-critical feminism, is something that could be discussed there (given that the GC term has become more prominent in recent years). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 04:38, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Pinging recent past participants at this page, including: Crossroads, LarstonMarston, Chrismorey, Newimpartial, A._C._Santacruz, Amanda_A._Brant, NHCLS, Sideswipe9th, AndyGordon, -sche, DanielRigal, and Mathglot. Loki (talk) 00:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  How did you come up with these names? Aircorn (talk) 03:32, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  Anyone who commented on this page, or anyone who commented on the most recent page of the archive in at least two different sections. Loki (talk) 07:01, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  But why? If they are actively commenting on this page then they would see this anyway. A big reason to do a RFC instead of a standard talk page section is to bring in outside opinions. Also there has been some editorial selection because a look at talk page history and the names here don't completely match-up. In effect this has poisoned the well for any of the above editors who now comment. This is bad form on a normal article RFC, but on a controversial one is quite possibly a killer blow. Aircorn (talk) 07:43, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  I believe 'gender-critical' is used as a euphemism for trans-exclusionary views, which inter alia gave rise to the unfortunate acronym TERF. While I believe 1. is perhaps more precise (if you're not a radical feminist, surely you don't believe men are an existential threat, and if you're not TE you don't believe transwomen are especially dangerous specimens) I'd agree and go for 2. BTW I do feel this is a valid enough topic to have its own entry Chrismorey (talk) 07:12, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

• Why are we having a RFC on the name of a split before discussing whether a split is needed. Aircorn (talk) 03:29, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  We've discussed whether a split is needed on this page ad nauseum. See: here, here, here, and here. In order to actually propose a split, I want to start by knowing what title we should split it into. (As such: because whether to split is not the question, I am going to propose a second separate discussion on the actual split itself no matter what. Doesn't matter if the consensus here is "oppose" because 1. that's not the question 2. past consensus on past discussions has been to split before.) Loki (talk) 20:29, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  No, we haven't. Very little in those discussions was about a split, but rather about two topics: 1) redirects, and where they should point, and 2) whether some content here should be shipped out to other articles. (The one exception was your link to a discussion about a rewrite which had five subsections, including one about splitting, which didn't go anywhere.) You can certainly propose a split now (not via an Rfc, though; see WP:RFCNOT). Before you do that, you need to decide whether you want to base your split on article size, or article content. If the former, then see WP:SS for further guidance. If the latter, the content you wish to remove and place in another article should guide the naming, and may simply take on the section names of the sections you believe should live elsewhere. Once you've figured that out, then follow WP:PROSPLIT. Tip: it's clear from this page and archived discussions that any such split would be controversial, thus I would advise against a bold, unilateral split without discussion. If you do propose one, please ping me. Mathglot (talk) 22:12, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

  You yourself proposed a split in one of those links. Loki (talk) 04:34, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Direct quote: What should happen now, imho, is that there should be an article Trans-exclusionary radical feminist (currently a redirect) which should have a #Terminology or #Related terms section, under which there would be two subsections, #TERF and #Gender-critical. In each of those subsections, assertions can be made that would be POV for the article title main body, but not POV for each of those subsections, as long as principles of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV are adhered to. There should be a merge of the article TERF into that article, and those who want to create an article Gender-critical should instead add their content to the subsection. Both TERF and Gender critical would become redirects to their respective subsection. This is fully supportable by the range of RSes, is neutral, and solves the problem, imho. Loki (talk) 04:38, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm well aware, and it wasn't taken up. If someone wishes to take it up now, as I said above, it should be in the correct venue and not here. Great write-up btw; give that editor a barnstar. Mathglot (talk) 06:44, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Ahmed "of color"

The ethnic backgrounds of other feminists in the article are not noted: Judith Butler is not called a "white feminist" and yes, her background is relevant to her, that is why it is mentioned in the page on her that she is half-Pakistani. Her heritage is irrelevant to the topic of feminist views on transgender topics, and if it were relevant, why is only her heritage mentioned and not all the other people in the article? Yoleaux (talk) Yoleaux (talk) 23:43, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, nobody else discussed in the article is, or was, a professor of race studies. In general, we should strive to treat like cases alike and unlike cases not-alike, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 14:39, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

That professorship is not mentioned or relevant, and neither should the ethnicity be. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:46, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I hereby question your understanding of intersectional feminism. Newimpartial (talk) 00:15, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

If it is relevant that she is professor of race studies (I don't see how it is in this context, since this is about feminist views on transgender topics, and though feminism of course intersects with race, this is not about race) If this was about her writing/research/views on race, then mention her professorship. Her page already has information about her expertise and her personal background, which of course, is relevant to her, but not to this topic. @Crossroads @Newimpartial -- Yoleaux Yoleaux (talk) 20:50, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

gender-critical feminism … … is critical of gender identity and various transgender rights ?

A recent edit changed the sentence "gender-critical feminism … … is critical of concepts of gender identity and transgender rights" to "gender-critical feminism, … … is critical of gender identity and various transgender rights".

I don't want to defend the old text too much, as it is fairly vague, but the inference of the new text is that GC feminism is critical of (for example) natal women or natal men thinking of themselves as women or men, since "Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender", being critical of such a personal sense would imply that one was critical of everyone's personal sense of their own gender. The new sentence also implies that GC feminism is critical of existing trans rights, rather than being critical of some/many/all proposed extensions of such rights.

I think I understand the intention of the first. GC feminism is often critical of terminology and concepts relating to gender identity, and ordinarily highly critical of personal gender identity being the sole basis for changes to law and to access to what have been women's spaces/sports/positions etc. but the new text is very unclear imo. Pincrete (talk) 15:45, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Whatever the merits of the former or the revised text, it seems to me that the RS support for GC feminism is critical of existing trans rights, rather than being critical of some/many/all proposed extensions of such rights is quite strong. In many/most jurisdictions, GC feminists are advocating for the rollback of existing rights and related health services. Newimpartial (talk) 18:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

GC feminism seems to be critical of existing trans rights inasmuch as the foundation concepts to even have such a thing as "trans rights" are not considered to be valid - in the absence of belief in gender identity, the premise that somebody can have a gender identity that does not match with their gender assigned at birth is literally just not a valid statement. This also applies to the concept that somebody can have a gender identity that does match, incidentally, so the statement could be expanded to end "...various transgender and cisgender rights.", which would - for those who believe in gender identity, encompass the entire human race, so could be foregone altogether. This also would render the sentence coherent to people who both do and do not believe in gender identity, rather than the present sentence, so would remove editorial bias from it.

GenericUsername2702 (talk) 22:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, the prevalence of one extreme position - that not everyone has a gender identity, and that some people understand their sex assignment as making a gender identity superflous - has increased dramatically in GC discourse. Those extremists are correctly characterized as being critical of gender identity itself, IMO, and not simply terminology and concepts relating to gender identity. Newimpartial (talk) 18:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree Pincrete, and re-inserted the word "concept" for gender identity. Possibly it should be restored to how it was in full. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm with Newimpartial here and for basically their reasoning as well. In addition, I don't think Pincrete's confusion is justified. See anti-gender movement: it's very much the case that some people are critical of gender or gender identity as a concept. And that definitely includes trans-exclusionary feminists. Loki (talk) 05:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm fairly content with the addition of 'concept' - though there are probably 'concepts' rather than just one idea which is objected to. I don't strongly object to 'various transgender rights' , since that can easily be understood to mean a gamut of existing and/or proposed rights - though the bulk of controversy is about extending specific rights. I think Loki and Newimpartial are actually largely agreeing with me it's very much the case that some people are critical … of gender identity as a concept.. Wording was very akin to saying "some commentators are very critical of self-image". Their own self-image? Everybody's self-image? Anybody having a self-image? It isn't clear what the sentence would even mean. Pincrete (talk) 10:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Re: the bulk of controversy is about extending specific rights - I don't think the recent RS actually support this. A great deal of the "controversy" is about rolling back existing rights and access to services. Newimpartial (talk) 18:30, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Depends on the jurisdiction and what legal rights are already in place there. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:01, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Legal rights and also access to services. A great deal of recent controversy has been over attempts to create new barriers of various kinds to access to gender-affirming care. Newimpartial (talk) 00:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose merging parts of the "Gender-critical feminism and trans-exclusionary radical feminism" section into TERF. Seen some discussion about this section having too much weight here in comparison to the rest of the article, and it seems appropriate for TERF to be the main topic page for this. My rationale for merging is said in an earlier RfC:

The article [TERF] already had the entomology and usage of the word, the debate around it, and the rejection of the term by people called this term. Moving some of the trans-exclusionary / gender critical info over there can reduce the section size here, possibly avoid the POV fork issue, and make the page for TERF more well-rounded.

How does this sound? XTheBedrockX (talk) 16:23, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm kinda meh on it? While I do want to split that section out from this page, I think there's value in having a separate page for the etymology, and I'm also very much not convinced that "TERF" is the most neutral name. I'd prefer writing out the full name "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" in the title of any new article. Loki (talk) 05:39, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe trimming the four paragraphs on relationships with conservatives would be a better start. Aircorn (talk) 08:21, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, and I oppose the merge. The term is notable in its own right, and is its own topic. Attempting to merge other stuff in there will unbalance it and make it unfocused. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:58, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

The term is notable because of the attitudes associated with it. And it seems pointless to just keep "TERF" as a term and "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" as a concept separate, since discussion of one inevitably leads into the other. Just speaking personally, I think the "TERF" article's significant focus on just the term itself feels like a case of missing the forest for the trees (not seeing the bigger picture).

And not for nothing, others have pointed out in earlier discussions that a separate "gender-critical / trans-exclusionary" article may not be substantially different enough from the TERF article to justify it being separate, at least not without running into a WP:POVFORK issue. XTheBedrockX (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

"missing the forest for the trees": yes, that is exactly the problem with the current TERF article, with its weird focus only on terminology while ignoring the ideas and movement it refers to. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 04:33, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Not weird at all; not ignoring anything, and not a POVFORK. As the lead sentence and the hatnote *both* point out, the TERF article is an article about an acronym. It is not about the ideas or the movement or anything else, and it is not even about the other expression trans-exclusionary radical feminism; it is strictly about the word TERF and nothing else. The title of the article meets WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE, and the lead sentence defines it, and constrains the scope. The hatnote goes on to say, For a broader discussion of related issues, see Feminist views on transgender topics. So, no POVFORK, and no problem with the article; just separate topics, is all. Mathglot (talk) 02:18, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I suggest that this section, and the TERF article, should be merged into a single new article, Gender critical movement, as it has become a thing in its own right that no longer has that much to do with feminism - for example. it now includes elements of the radical right and evangelical Christian right, for whom it advances their agenda. There should, of course, be a summary here about its origins in feminism. "TERF" is a terrible name for an article, as the term is now generally considered a pejorative, in spite of its origins as a descriptive term for trans-exclusionary radical feminism. — The Anome (talk) 11:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

While I support a split: if we disconnect it from feminism, you're looking for anti-gender movement. The connection to feminism is an important part of what the relevant section of the article is about. (This is also a big part of why I'd prefer to name the resulting article trans-exclusionary feminism rather than gender critical movement.) Loki (talk) 20:00, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I support merging most of the content on TERF/GC from this article into the TERF article, while keeping a shorter summary in this article. A separate question is the title of the current TERF article. That should be determined on the TERF talk page. Both TERF, trans-exclusionary radical feminism and gender-critical feminism are possible titles.

We really need to do something with the current mess, where we have one article only discussing the use of one of several alternative terms for this movement (a term that is increasingly being replaced by GC), while most of the content on the movement (ideas etc.) itself is found in a different article on a much broader topic (i.e. this article), causing undue weight problems here, but also being a horrible solution for the readers who have to look several different places for the coverage of TERF/GC. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 04:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Since when is "several different places" for a topic a "mess"? This is a wiki, and "several articles" about a major topic is more the rule than the exception. Have you see the Template:LGBT sidebar, or should we merge all those articles into the LGBT article? Having several different articles about a topic is a primary principle of editing at Wikipedia, and WP:Summary style is a major incubator for new articles about a complex topic, and both the sidebar and the Nav template testify to the multiplicity of articles about different facets of the topic. The same thing could be said about Feminism (see Template:Feminism sidebar and Template:Feminism) and innumerable other topics. There is no particular reason that everything that we want to say about trans-exclusionary radical feminism all needs to be said in one article; that's not the Wiki way. Mathglot (talk) 23:47, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Very strongly oppose merging anything out of this article into the article TERF. The content in the named sections of this article is about the concept, history, events, ideology, and people concerned with the issue of trans-exclusionary radical feminism. The article TERF is about a word: creation of a word, who created the word, what the word meant in the beginning, how the meaning of the word changed over time, whether the word is seen as pejorative, descriptive, a slur, and so on. It's analogous to the difference, say, between the articles LGBT (about a word), and LGBT community. There is nothing in this article that is relevant to the topic of the TERF article, and none of it should be moved there as it would just confuse things. See the use–mention distinction, which is at the core of why these articles are separate, and should remain so.

For all the strife and controversy over the years at the TERF article, and the endless discussions in the archives (some leading to indef blocks of high-profile users), at least the article has managed to retain its focus through all that as to what the topic is: it's about the word TERF. If this move proposal achieves consensus, and content from here is moved there, I confidently predict a gigantic shit show, because the article will immediately lose focus and no longer be about one thing anymore, and the strife will get *much* worse. In addition, it's a one-way trap door, as once you step through it, if it turns out to be a bad idea, undoing it to go back to the current situation will be difficult-to-impossible.

That said, I don't oppose moving content from this article to some other article that is about the *concept* (rather than about the word), such as has been proposed above by User:The Anome to form a new article such as Gender critical movement; that seems fine, and suffers from none of the problems that would occur with the OP above. The TERF article has taken years to get to the reasonable and stable point where it is now, with a few users chucked over the side along the way; in my opinion, stirring the pot by moving content there from here, will brew another storm that may take more years to settle down, if ever. Mathglot (talk) 23:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Being controversial, on it's own, shouldn't be enough of a reason to not move this information over there, at least in my view. If moving this info over to TERF means rescoping the article to something broader, I'm fully okay with that. Plus, let's not forget, consensus can change, even with controversial topics. XTheBedrockX (talk) 19:46, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

I support a merger. “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist” was at one time a self descriptive term for terfs, which only fell our of use because everyone came to realize that terfs were transphobes, and so now they’ve rebranded to “gender critical”. Describing terfs as GC’s would be like describing racists as “race realists”. Snokalok (talk) 10:42, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. Many gender-critical feminists aren't radfems. Also non-feminists can also be gender-critical. MikutoH (talk) 23:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This sounds like semantics more than anything. Gender-critical folks often describe themselves as feminist (whether they fit the criteria of bring "true" feminists or not). And generally speaking, both "TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and "gender-critical" refer to the same group of people.

I (personally) don’t think they're very "radical" or "feminist" either, but they often do self-describe as such, and there’s enough overlap where combining this section into the TERF article wouldn’t look too out of place in my opinion. XTheBedrockX (talk) 16:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

"Sex-based rights" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Sex-based rights has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 June 8 § Sex-based rights until a consensus is reached. Mathglot (talk) 17:00, 8 June 2023 (UTC)