Talk:Political views of J. K. Rowling

Split proposed

Out of all political views of J. K. Rowling, it's pretty clear that her views on transgender issues are the most notable. Considering the size and content of the section, it seems appropriate that an article about J. K. Rowling views on transgender issues should exist independently. Skyshiftertalk 15:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - I disagree that they are the most notable. They are merely the most apparent now because it is very much the current live issue. This is also a problem with the approach being taken in this page, where we are following news cycles but not paying much attention to secondary sources. There are secondary sources on Rowling political views. There are sources about the politics of Harry Potter, there are sources looking at her opposition to Brexit, her views on feminism and such like, and yes there is at least one academic secondary source on her views on the transgender issues, but we are not going to fix a bias to the recent issues by creating a new article for the recent issue. Moreover we are likely to just get repetitive. Despite having this page, there is still a lot of political views stuff in her main article. If we split this off, I would wager this article will still get a load of duplicated commentary. Finally, despite the current imbalance in this article, there is no SIZERULE case for such a split. This article should be expanded in areas outside the transgender issue, and not split to allow one issue to grow and spread even more.

Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Size-wise, I'm not sure a split is warranted; although poorly written and poorly organized, the article is now under 4,000 words of readable prose, with a good deal of WP:PROSELINE, WP:RECENTISM and WP:NOTNEWS that should just be cut. But if there is to be consensus for a split, I suggest the target name is wrong. This article most frequently does not deal with "Political views of" or "JKR's views on", rather ideas about her views taken completely out of context and mis-attributed to her. That is, a split might be more appropriately named "J. K. Rowling and transgender issues", since it's unlikely an anyone-can-edit Wikipedia article will stop taking her actual statements out of context. We shouldn't be implying in WikiVoice that we are writing about her actual views, when we rarely are. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. This article is just under 4,000 words in length. According to WP:ARTICLESIZE, that's less than half the size before we need to consider splitting or trimming. Even if the trans section is the largest, it doesn't strike me as anywhere near such a size it needs to be split. — Czello ^(music) 21:22, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support, kinda. There are a couple reasons to split, one due to size, the other may be content per WP:CONTENTSPLIT. I have already stated before that I don't think her views on trans issues are appropriate for this article, and they therefore can be split by reason of content. She is also the most prominent critic on trans issues, and for that reason its own article could be justified. Too much of a focus on trans issue in this article also distorts this article. Personally though I'd prefer a renaming of the article. Hzh (talk) 11:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Spinoffs of this nature are inherently problematic; there are less eyes on the article, and you end up with potential coatrack and POV issues easier. While the article currently covers her LGBT views prominently, the article is absolutely nowhere near the size where a spinout can be argued on those grounds. I agree with Sandy that there's a lot of editorial cleanup that needs to happen to, and that would shrink that section down further, whereas a split article is going to inevitably lead to a bloated, unfocused battleground article with less value. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. For the other sensible reasons have already been highlighted, and because it's not our fault that trans people are all she talks about now.

13tez (talk) 18:15, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Agree with SandyGeorgia that the section is in need of cleanup. The section right now (excluding the Reactions section):

  In June 2020,

  In September 2020,

  In March 2022,

  During Lesbian Visibility Week in April 2022,

  In May 2022,

  In December 2022,

  Rowling commented in a 2023 podcast

  In February 2024,

  On 4 March 2024,

  On 13 March 2024,

  On 1 April 2024,

  Once the section has the WP:PROSELINE, WP:NOTDIARY, and WP:RECENTISM issues taken care of, a split is not warranted (not that it currently needs to be split right now anyway as others have mentioned above). If a content split does occur for whatever reasons, the split article will undoubtedly face those same three issues where editors will try to document and cram every single instance of JK Rowling appearing in the news for transgender-related reasons into that split article. Also agree with David Fuchs that a split article will lead to an unfocused battleground article with POV issues and a lot less eyes watching it. Some1 (talk) 23:09, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Support. There are a lot of subsections that should exist and it’s hard to muddle through this overly long section and find what you’re looking for. A separate article would be helpful in clarifying timelines and other people’s comments. This section is almost certainly going to become longer over time, so a separate article would be very helpful. Bluedoor17 (talk) 19:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - I concur with Czello in that this article is not nearly long enough to consider splitting or condensing. Making an entirely separate article for her views on one specific issue is completely unnecessary.

DocZach (talk) 16:33, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - In addition to making the recentism issue worse, such a split would be inappropriately implying that her opposition to trans people's rights can be separated from her political views. Grayfell (talk) 22:15, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

  I think we can have a summary of her views on trans people’s rights in the main page, for clarity, but then also have a separate page just for her views on trans rights, just to have clearer subsections that people can jump to so it’s easier to navigate the timeline. Bluedoor17 (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose and perhaps consider reducing the size of the section by improving and condensing the prose. ——Serial Number 54129 13:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:SIZERULE, as referenced above. Length alone doesn't justify splitting or trimming, unless the later is to remove excess detail. It could simply do with sub-sectioning, whether that be by time-frames or ideally the content re-organised in some way; for examples views on this, allegation of that, or similar; ie collating content together where relevant into sub-sections. CNC (talk) 01:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

First sentence of one of the lede paragraphs

"Since late 2019, Rowling has publicly voiced her opinions on transgender activism and related issues."

What are people's thoughts on changing "activism" to "rights"? Saying "related issues" makes it sound like transgender activism is an issue i.e a problem, which feels like POV. In addition, Rowling's opinions don't specifically just relate to the "activism" of transgender people, she's made plenty of comments about transgender people who aren't engaging in activism. GraziePrego (talk) 05:11, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I very much agree. I think using the phrase "activism" is not only charged language but it's also just not very accurate, since she has talked about people who are definitely not activists--it seems to suggest then that transgender people, just by being transgender, are making some sort of political statement and engaging in activism, which editors should recognize is a heavily biased suggestion no matter their personal opinions. Geldmacherin (talk) 20:01, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

BOLD cuts to transgender issues section warranting further discussion

A few hours ago, drastic edits were made to the transgender issues section of this article, presumably following the suggestions in the earlier talk topic where a split was proposed. Editors seemed divided on whether the section needed splitting or trimming, there was no clear consensus on which parts of the section were unnecessary or what should happen to them.

Given the fact that the extensively workshopped related section on the subject's main page (that links here) clearly points out that these views appear to be escalating in severity, I'm not sure if blanket cuts in the name of WP:NOTNEWS without prior discussion are really the way to go here. Avoiding WP:BRD here since I am not an experienced editor but would like to hear from other editors. Umdlye (talk) 00:20, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, edits like this definitely need consensus. Sirfurboy's edits have been reverted. A 20k bytes trim can't be done unilaterally. Skyshiftertalk 01:11, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

This is not how it works. The edits were all reasoned, and no, not all because of NOTNEWS. You need to identify the problem with the edits themselves, not just that you want to stick to the status quo. This section is a mess. It has WP:BLPPRIMARY issues, it is almost entirely written as WP:PROSELINE and material I removed was not actual political views. It is challenged material and per WP:ONUS it should be left OFF the page until consensus has been reached for its inclusion. Note that I was careful NOT to remove everything in one fell swoop. I kept the edits down to a level that could be reviewd and discussed on an individual level. Please self revert your revert and then feel free to challenge specific changes. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:11, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

You have made several edits today over several hours since I wrote the above. As you have still not identified any issues with my edits, I will now revert them back out. Per WP:ONUS: The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. The reasons for the individual edits may be found in my edsums of yesterday. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 16:51, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I would have to agree that this level of cutting seems extreme. My points would be that most material there probably had consensus for inclusion on the talk page when it was posted. Also that there should be some talk of comments and responses in this section as those are expressions of her views. LunaHasArrived (talk) 17:19, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

What, specifically, should still be in the page? Why? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:25, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

"Biological women"

I know this is a very hotly-contested issue, but should the phrase "biological women" really be used on this page? I feel there's bias behind using this term, not only because it suggests that transgender women are not women and cannot have female bodies (the former definitely being something that should not be suggested in a wikipedia article, and the latter being obviously false because transgender women can have the same hormone levels as someone born female and get sex-reassignment surgeries) but also because the section in which it is used twice uses an opinion article called "In Defense of JK Rowling" as its source. (source 56)

Describing her views on the word "cisgender" and other phrases as being critical of "euphemistic language to refer to biological women" is also definitely biased. I know that people think saying cisgender or "people born as women" or "assigned female at birth" show bias, but if that's true, then saying "biological women" definitely is as well. So I think:

1. There should be a consensus on what term to use on this page. If there's already a wikipedia rule on this just show me lol and i'll shut up about this.
2. But also: this specific section does seem very biased and should be removed or edited in my opinion. Let me know what you think please.

Geldmacherin (talk) 20:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)