Talk:Straightwashing

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2019 and 3 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Molliewilliams4.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody

OnBeyondZebrax, JDDJS and Ressbite, you all might want to discuss this and this. I didn't ping OnBeyondZebrax because OnBeyondZebrax created this article and the article appears to be on OnBeyondZebrax's watchlist. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:17, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

The idea that the movie straight washes the character is downright false. He is clearly portrayed as gay in the film, and no source written after the film was released claims otherwise. Whether or not the film is a negative portrayal of LGBT is irrelevant to this page. JDDJS (talk to me • see what I've done) 01:29, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions

@Carterhowe, Oliver.gill8, Molliewilliams4, Cargerrior, and Achipman: this article was consistently using Help:Citation Style 1 citation templates, please continue with those. Or at the very least make sure you're providing complete, accurate citation information, making use of permanent identifiers like DOI or JSTOR IDs or whatever instead of URLs which go through your university's proxy system. Please look at Template:Cite journal and Template:Cite news (and WP:MOS) and in general just take a second look at your citations and see if they're accurate/complete/consistent.

The article right now is also kind of all over the place. Where are you getting a definition of straightwashing that includes so many disparate actions? What's the scope of your article? Straight women going to gay bars, news outlets not mentioning a gay athlete's sexuality, and the change of a canonically LGB character as straight are all very different things. Be careful not to engage in WP:SYNTHESIS.

Also re LGB, this is an article about *straightwashing*. If you're going to keep changing this to LGBT you're going to need sources saying there's a consensus in the field to use this term to refer to trans characters being depicted as cis in other works. See Flyer22 Reborn's note.

P.S. please consistently make use of edit summaries! They are very helpful to other editors to see who introduced what changes in which edits. Umimmak (talk) 07:06, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I reverted a lot of the material, and then I restored this. Umimmak, if you see anything else that should be restored, feel free to restore it. If the editors keep editing inappropriately, just revert them. Tell them not to WP:Edit war. Report them to the WP:Education noticeboard if needed. I'll eventually be back on Wikipedia to help. I'm seeing WP:Synthesis and some off-topic stuff (such as the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stuff) and WP:Undue weight stuff, and a lot of trivia. Also, we should be summarizing the literature and not including any and everything on the topic. Yes, we include popular culture material, and I'm aware that this topic mainly concerns fictional characters, but, per the MOS:POPCULT section of WP:Trivia, we are supposed to include it appropriately. And as for sources for video game material, play.eslgaming.com seems okay, but dailynexus.com seems weak. At WP:Video games, editors can ask about good sources to use for the video game material. Editors need to also make sure that the video game material is not undue. WP:Undue weight states, "Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, juxtaposition of statements and imagery." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:44, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes agreed about all of those points; thank you for being explicit. Umimmak (talk) 07:37, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Casting cisgender actors in transgender roles

Actress Jen Richards has extensively criticised Hollywood's practice of casting cisgender actors in transgender roles, especially cisgender men in transgender female roles – see, for example, here. Since it is analogous to whitewashing in film, it can be called (a different form of) ciswashing, or transface (analogous to blackface). The controversy doesn't seem to be covered on Wikipedia yet – does it fit into this article? It does mention the more general phenomenon pinkface. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:59, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't feel that it really fits into this article because this article is about LGBT character/figures being rewritten to not be LGBT. Those characters are still portrayed as LGBT, even if the actor is not LGBT. My personal suggestion would be to first create a draft in a sandbox and see if you can find enough coverage on the issue to make a whole new article on the issue. If you have enough to make a seperate article, you can go to WP:LGBT for help picking out a good name for the article. If you don't find enough information for it's own article, maybe you can add what you do have to Pinkwashing (LGBT). JDDJS (talk to me • see what I've done) 17:01, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke If you do decide to take my advice and try to create an article, check out the last paragraph in Dallas_Buyers_Club#Critical_response. A lot of useful articles about casting cis actor Leto in a transgender role there. JDDJS (talk to me • see what I've done) 17:07, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! Personally, I'm not sure if there is enough material for its own article – at least for the beginning, it's probably better to add it to a thematically suitable article, whichever is chosen. There's not even an established term – although transface comes closest and is least ambiguous, it's probably not widely recognised enough. It might be sufficient for a section title, though. I don't have the energy right now; if you come up with a short paragraph or so, that would be lovely. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:22, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Just a note: The term pinkface does currently have a home on Wikipedia. Whether or not the material should be moved to a different article (out of the Gay-for-pay article) is something to consider. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 23:32, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Straightwashed artists

I put this little list of artists into the article, but it got deleted.

Many famous artists, writers, actors and composers also got straightwashed by historians, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giacomo Leopardi, Benvenuto Cellini, Camille Saint-Saëns or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikowsky.

What do you think about it? Should we change some names (since there are so many), like Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Horowitz etc. Or find another wording? Or a whole new article with a longer list? --Chip-chip-2020 (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

This subject should definitely stay in this article. I'm fine with Tchsaikowsky, for one, as an example since there seems to be a scholarly consensus about him. Regarding anyone else, I will repeat what I said at your user page:

When it comes to historical figures and their sexuality, they should only be claimed as LGBT under the circumstances described at Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#Sexuality. The relevant portion: For a dead person, there must be a verified consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate. Historically, LGBT people often did not come out in the way that they commonly do today, so a person's own self-identification is, in many cases, impossible to verify by the same standards that would be applicable to a contemporary BLP. For a dead person, a broad consensus of academic and/or biographical scholarship about the topic is sufficient to describe a person as LGBT. For example, while some sources have claimed that William Shakespeare was gay or bisexual, there is not a sufficient consensus among scholars to support categorizing him as such—but no such doubt exists about the sexuality of Oscar Wilde or Radclyffe Hall.

This obviously applies to such claims in the main article text as well, as WP:V and WP:NPOV likewise apply. Note, too, that all material about individuals' sexuality must follow WP:Due weight. Sometimes such claims are too fringe to mention at all, such as if they do not appear in any academic WP:Scholarship.

Also, on this page, I'll quote some helpful advice given by a user on the Fringe Theory Noticeboard: I think we need to require that any source is a longterm historian who has thoroughly studied this particular person in depth, otherwise the author has absolutely no hope of knowing what [the person] was "really like". That means: 1) No dabblers who flit from one subject to the next, writing a book on a different subject every year. 2) No authors from outside the history field, in fact no one from outside the [appropriate] subfield [of history]. 3) Absolutely no political activists, novelists, playwrights, etc. 4) Preferably someone who has written [extensively on that or] a closely related topic. That means even if the source is an article in the NYTimes (normally an RS), if it was written by a fashion editor trying to link a historical person to their favorite political cause then that's just an opinion by someone who doesn't have anything relevant to say about the subject. This is frankly just the normal procedure for an encyclopedia, which is supposed to rely on scholarly academic sources written by respected specialists on a relevant topic. And another user: Beware activists trying to claim one of their own, stick to academic sources. There is no shortage of academic sources on [the person].

Straightwashing is a real issue in the world in general, but Wikipedia cannot go to the other extreme, nor can it right great wrongs. Best to stick to well-sourced examples about which there is a scholarly consensus. There is no shortage of such ones. This also leaves the best impression on readers. Crossroads ^-talk- 21:19, 25 January 2021 (UTC) clarified first sentence

Straightwashing is a problem, also here on Wikipedia, indeed. So could you revert your undoing and leave the names in you agree to? And maybe put some names in you already mentioned yourself? And maybe somebody else here has an opinion on the other names?--Chip-chip-2020 (talk) 08:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I clarified my comment above. On average, I do not believe straightwashing is a problem on Wikipedia. We do sometimes get the opposite problem - editors coming along and advocating for WP:Undue weight on theories that someone was gay or bi when few or no scholars advocate that. Also, none of those sources you listed above are WP:Scholarship. I don't know if straightwashing has occurred with Oscar Wilde or Radclyffe Hall. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:55, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

well, Oscar Wilde also tried to straightwash himself by marrying a woman. And also many polish artists by the way got straightwashed. There also seem to be many scientific monographies about the latter ones, I‘ll check.--Chip-chip-2020 (talk) 22:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if "straightwashing oneself" is how the term is used. That source is about Frédéric Chopin; that he was LGBT is a fringe theory, which you have already been informed of, and I am well aware that you know this and of your editing on that page which had tried to put undue weight on that theory (as here). Crossroads ^-talk- 23:01, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that this information belongs in this article. This article seems to be more about fiction and hiding agreed-upon historical facts for fear of people (children?) getting the wrong idea. The article seems to be more about "accidentally forgetting" to mention that unrelated men used to sleep in the same bed without scandal, maybe because the author doesn't want to stop and explain that central heating didn't exist back then, or that inns might only have a few rooms to rent, or that people who grew up sharing a bed with multiple siblings – having ten people living in two or three rooms was not exactly unusual – just didn't think that "going to bed with" meant having sex with.

There might be a possible article in the subject of "artists whose sexuality and gender identity has been speculated upon by modern people", but I'm not sure about that. It might be difficult to differentiate genuine historical question from uneducated speculation. You wouldn't want to use sources that say things like "every artist anywhere who ever used what's now a modern Western symbol of LGBT pride was probably gay". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:38, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Regarding such a "possible article", I know that a great many editors, including myself, would view that as WP:PROFRINGE and vote to delete it. Really, nowadays there are many people who have misguidedly been speculated about in that way on weak or non-existent grounds, and sometimes based on the misunderstandings you mention (e.g. sharing a bed was not considered necessarily sexual in the past because people were much poorer). Crossroads ^-talk- 08:04, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

You know, there has been speculation about Abraham Lincoln; he slept in the same bed with a fellow for several years. Ditto as above, "going to bed with" in those days did not mean having sex with. --Whiteguru (talk) 09:41, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

To include a (famous) name there needs to be a source that says "X was straightwashed in this particular way", at the least. Ideally we'd be specifying in what culture someone was straightwashed (e.g. did Victorians suppress this information? Is it about public consciousness of the figure today?) and attributing the point of view if it's not academic consensus. (By definition, if a figure is being straightwashed today by historians then it is not acceptable to point this out, because consensus among historians is how we determine what information to include. Claims that are possible to mention include "Historian X argues that the field has straightwashed Y..." or "In era X, historians straightwashed Y...")

Newspaper sources are not great—we should really be using academic sources for this—but they would maybe be better than no sources/content. What we definitely cannot do is provide our own interpretation of poetry, or say "X was LGBT therefore straightwashed". This is WP:SYNTH. — Bilorv (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Is there a term for making a character GLBT who was not?

There have been some cases where characters who were not known to be GLBT have been reinterpreted as GLBT in a later version of a book/movie/TV program. Is there a name for this, the opposite of straighthwashing? Pete unseth (talk) 17:20, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea, there is probably no formal term but TVTropes calls it “adaptational sexuality”. Dronebogus (talk) 20:37, 20 June 2022 (UTC)