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Latest comment: 11 years ago by -sche in topic Should we really yield to gender identity when one's biological sex is vitally important?
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MOS:IDENTITY and WP:POVNAMING

Latest comment: 11 years ago21 comments15 people in discussion

I know that MOS:IDENTITY and name changes have been the subject of a lot of discussion recently... but one aspect has not yet been discussed: Does MOS:IDENTITY sometimes conflict with WP:POVNAMING? I would say that most of the time it will not... but, on rare occasions it can. I am thinking about a situation where a person changes their name to reflect an identity change, and yet a significant majority of reliable sources (written after the name change was announced) reject the name change and continue to use the person's old name . In this situation we actually would be non-neutral to favor the person's preference over that of reliable sources. We would be giving what could be a fringe view UNDUE weight. I think we do need to factor this Policy provision into the guideline. Blueboar (talk) 23:02, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

This can involve names of people and names of places. See "Macedonia naming dispute".
—Wavelength (talk) 00:02, 25 August 2013 (UTC) and 00:17, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
See Category:Naming controversies.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:17, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
It is entirely possible to call Manning "Bradley" and refer to Manning as "she" in the same sentence. I see no conflict. It would be moot most of the time anyway because Manning would be called just "Manning" with no first name. Darkfrog24 (talk)
I was trying to frame my question in terms that went beyond the current controversy over the Manning article. I understand that this is on everyone's mind... but please try to think big picture. Blueboar (talk) 01:38, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
MOS:IDENTITY is about what pronouns to use. WP:POVNAMING is about what name to use. So I don't see how they would ever come into conflict. If reliable sources reject a name change, then Wikipedia sticks to the old name, as per WP:AT and WP:POVNAMING. If a person reveals that they are transgender, then Wikipedia uses the pronouns that go with the newly announced gender as per MOS:IDENTITY. If that means using a name that is more typical of one gender and at the same time the pronouns of the other gender, then that's the result of correctly applying the policies. Since people can have names that are atypical for their gender without being transgender, this is something that already happens in Wikipedia articles. No conflict. 99.192.84.128 (talk) 01:59, 25 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Got it, BB.: It would be moot most of the time anyway because the subject would be called just "[subject's last name]" with no first name. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:22, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
At issue here is not whether a statement from the subject as to his or her gender would be "respected in most circumstances." I think almost everyone agrees in MOST circumstances there won't be an issue. It's whether it should be accepted in EVERY and ALL circumstances. Most of us who are opposed to the current reading of MOS:IDENTITY are opposed because it does not follow WP:POVNAMING which demands at least SOME reference to reliable sources other than the subject.--Brian Dell (talk) 10:44, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Bdell555, to repeat a comment I made to "Dicklyon" above, unless you are talking about someone you know personally who tells you about their gender self-identification, a person's expression of gender identification will only be known because it is presented in the media. If the National Enquirer reports that Tom Cruise has said that he is a woman, we should wait for a reliable source. But if it is reported by a reliable source, then there is no problem. And to repeat a comment I made above to "Blueboar", MOS:IDENTITY is about what pronouns to use. WP:POVNAMING is about what name to use. So I don't see how they would ever come into conflict. 99.192.84.19 (talk) 13:24, 25 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
  • Against I don't see a problem for several reasons. The most obvious reason is because MOS:IDENTITY says that when a dispute over a name occurs we go with RS. Additionally, us using a name the person doesn't use isn't necessarily a "POV naming". "Octomom" is a good example of a POV name. Any reasonable person would agree that it has an derogatory tone. Just naming an article after a name different to the one the person themselves prefers (e.g. Cat Stevens) isn't necessarily a "POVNAME". --RA (✍) 20:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Refusing to recognize a person's name change in that circumstance would also be a violation of WP:POVNAMING — so if you're left in a situation where you have no choice but to juggle POVs, really the only choice you have is to err on the side of respect for the individual who's being named. Bearcat (talk) 02:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
This is a common argument... and why POVNAMING talks about seemingly non-neutral names and terms. It isn't a question of refusing to recognize the change (we would still note it prominently in the article... probably in the first sentence) - its a question of recognizing all viewpoints and assessing how much weight to give them. Yes, it does seem non-neutral to not follow the person's wishes. However it would be more non-neutral to ignore all the other sources. When you have only one reliable source (the person) saying the name is X, contrasted by multiple reliable sources all agreeing that the name is Y, Wikipedia policy is to follow the majority usage in the sources and use Y (doing so is actually more neutral than following the person's desires). Blueboar (talk) 12:37, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
While it is true that media sources vary in how consistently they follow correct practice for writing about a transgender person, and sometimes in how much they even care about what is or isn't correct practice in writing about a transgender person, any source that uses anything other than her stated name is, by definition, also committing a POV act. They don't get to decide that they know better than she does what name she's allowed to use; she gets to make that decision for herself, and any source that does not respect and follow her wishes is itself being POV. And our NPOV rules also require us to evaluate our sources for their POV — for instance, we're obligated to deprecate sources that refer to gay men as "faggot" or to African-Americans as "n-word". We're obligated to deprecate sources that are presenting an obviously biased or non-neutral portrayal of a story. So why are we expected to do that in every other case, yet accept it as neutral, and somehow more definitive than her own word on the matter, when the source's POV is an anti-transgender one? Bearcat (talk) 18:02, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Support: This is probably one of the few cases where considerable weight should be placed on WP:SELFPUB. Moreover, how reliable are "reliable sources"? As an example, one would normally regard the New York Times as being reliable, yet in this article they refer to the Duchess of Cambridge by her maiden name in their headline (OK, they use her current name in the article). The quality British press style her as the "Duchess of Cambridge" and never mention her maiden name. (The popular press appear to have a mixed approach). One could expect the same sort of split in quality references about a trans-gender person. Martinvl (talk) 19:26, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I think Blueboar has a very valid concern, and one which I've witnessed in a very extreme form at Alexis Reich. The only people referring to John Mark Karr by that name are LGBT rags and Wikipedia; every other source post-2010 refers to the sex change and then goes back to "he" and "Karr". I grant this is a somewhat extreme example, and more loaded than most, but these do exist, and requiring a one-size-fits-all approach is supremely unhelpful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

tBotNL, whether or not the title of the Alexis Reich is wrong is a matter for Wikipedia:Article titles, not the MOS. I think the title is wrong, but nothing in the MOS says that "Alexis Reich" should be used for the title. (See the section below called "Proposed wording change to MOS:IDENTITY" for more discussion of this.) In the body of the article, the name used throughout is "Karr", so I see no problem there. As for the pronoun, sources report that in 2008 the State of Washington officially recognized that she is a woman and issued a driver's license to Alexis Reich under that name, so we have sufficient sourcing to support the use of female pronouns in the article. So I don't see the problem. 99.192.57.48 (talk) 17:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
It only says Karr because I went through the article and removed a ton of unreadable crap which read something like "Reich (then male)" and "Reich (at this point still a male)". Exactly nothing establishing the subject's notability occurred under the name and identity Alexis Reich, and it renders the article extremely confusing. A man named John Mark Karr was arrested on these charges and subsequently fled, that is what the record and all of the reliable sources (which is what we're supposed to be following, not LGBT rags) say. And before you give me any "she was always a woman, she only found out she was later in life than most" 1. that claim is still highly debated in science and 2. is not universally held even among transgender people; Thomas Beatie, for one, explicitly said as much. People's past identities don't magically disappear, we shouldn't pretend they do. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:28, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
So the Karr article used the wrong name, almost a year ago you fixed it, and since then it has used the right name. So what's the problem? Oh yeah. The article title. I agree that it is wrong, but based on WP:AT, the policy that governs article names. This is not a MOS issue. As for the pronoun issue, Reich was always a woman, she only found out she was later in life than most. What's that you say? Scientists don't all agree? Well we should find out what the dominant view of scientists is and go with that. The "Gender identity" article includes this sentence, "Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that." It even provides three sources for the claim. So I don't see a reason to think that the scientist who disagree are more than a minority view. Finally, about Beatie, he says that he realized that he was a "he" around age 10, so he's not a good example for you to use. 99.192.91.135 (talk) 03:38, 30 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.912....)
Yeah, I usually use Dee Palmer as my example, was a little off my game... anyways, it's not up to us to right great wrongs when it comes to gender identity. There's a reason that link doesn't take you to a section on preferred editing practices. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Respecting the "Gender neutral"

Latest comment: 11 years ago15 comments10 people in discussion

As long as we are discussing the best way to respect gender self-identity... I know two people who self-identify as being gender neutral... neither male nor female (or perhaps self-identifying as being both at the same time). One even went as far as convincing his/her employer to install a unisex bathroom so she/he would not have to choose one sex over the other. Thankfully, neither of them are notable enough for an article... but what if they were? MOS:IDENTITY does not cover this. Blueboar (talk) 13:42, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Interesting question, but as I read it MOS:IDENTITY does cover the situation insofar as it says to use the pronouns "that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification." I just don't happen to know which pronouns do that. But it is easy enough to find out. Try asking those two people what pronouns they think should be used when referring to them. That would be a good place to start. Let us know what they say.
In the absence of knowing an answer, gendered language can be avoided if you think about it enough. It is much easier to do than people might suspect, as is demonstrated in the plot summary for the film Let the Right One In, where editors agreed that the gender ambiguity of the character "Eli" is best handled by not using any gendered terms in reference to Eli. 99.192.84.19 (talk) 13:58, 25 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
I agree. In some cases, it may be better to suggest avoiding gendered language. There is also the epicene they. I don't think this would be appropriate is most cases. For example, if it was used on the Penny Whetton article, I think it would be offensive. But it may be a solution in some cases, in conjunction with avoiding other forms of gendered language. I think the Manning example is one where it might work in the short term, until things worked themselves out. --RA (✍) 21:50, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Members of Category:Androgynous Wikipedians might have some ideas.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:18, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
In some cases you do indeed have no viable choice but to avoid gendered language altogether; however, singular "they" is also a fairly widespread (although not universal) alternative. (Some of the other gender-neutral pronouns that have been proposed in the past, e.g. "hir"/"zie", never really caught on and aren't generally appropriate for use on here for that reason.) Categorywise we have Category:Genderqueer people — which again might not be ideal for all of the people in question (I still have no idea whether to file Judith Halberstam in it or not, for starters), but does demonstrate that we have options. Bearcat (talk) 02:24, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Regardless of whether gender-neutral is something that human beings can actually be, it's not something that the English language actually does. As Bearcat says, people have proposed gender-neutral pronouns, but they didn't take. English does not at this time have singular pronouns that are suitable for use with people that are not gender-based. I wouldn't be opposed to using the person's surname as much as possible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:48, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

In fact, singular they works quite well. It's intuitively acceptable and has centuries of usage. Its only barrier is people who like to pretend that pronouns can't be used for both singular and plural, but you (*cough*) know better. MaxHarmony (talk) 19:10, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Where possible, the most non-controversial method would be trying to avoid pronouns where controversy might arise. Many sentences can be written to avoid excessive pronoun use. As an exaggerated example, "He said that his job at his employer where he worked..." could be changed to "Last Name's job at employer..." Andrew327 19:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Another barrier, MaxHarmony, is that the singular they is not sufficiently formal for an encyclopedia. People don't pretend that singular and plural must match. They know it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
Is you singular or plural, then? MaxHarmony (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
I agree with MaxHarmony that when it's not possible to avoid pronouns, it's best to refer to non-male, non-female people using the singular "they". (Tangentially, I've always been amused by the suggestion that the singular "they" was somehow informal or incorrect. Is the King James Bible informal? Did the men called the fathers of English literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer, not know how to speak English or Middle English in the latter case? The English borrowed "they" from the Norse in the 1200s, and were already using it with singular antecedents by the 1400s—possibly as early as the 1300s. It had been in use for centuries by the time the first prescriptivists decided to dislike it.) But it's usually possible to avoid pronouns... -sche (talk) 23:46, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
This idea that prescriptivism is a recent phenomenon or that people who acknowledge that the English language has rules are silly has got to go. Do what you like but don't do it here.
Regardless of what the singular they ever was, Wikipedia must work with the way English is. Right now, the singular they is not considered appropriate for formal contexts. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:48, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
I am a strong supporter of using "they" as a singular pronoun, including in formal contexts (Merriam-Webster also agrees with this), but using "they" is not a solution here. The singular "they" is only appropriate in generic contexts to avoid using "he" as a generic pronoun (eg; "The rules say that any person who wants to ask a question must raise their hand.") or in a context where the gender of the person is unknown (eg; "The winner of the race lost their trophy.") To use "they" as a singular pronoun for people who identify as neither gender fits neither situation: The reference is to a specific person, not a generic reference, and the person's gender is not unknown, it is known to be "neither". So unless people who identify as neither gender say that the singular "they" is what they prefer to be used, it would be inaccurate to use it. 99.192.57.48 (talk) 14:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it again, but I do recall a survey finding that the most common non-gendered pronoun is indeed they. Certainly in my experience, most non-binary people are at least willing to accept they. Anyway, I doubt there would be a case in which we would know a person's gender is non-binary but not also know which pronouns are appropriate. MaxHarmony (talk) 17:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, part of the problem here is that always referring to people by their name, and avoiding the use of pronouns entirely, causes text to come across as stilted and unnatural and also not appropriately formal for use in an encyclopedia. Just as an off the top of my head example, ponder "Councillor Smith said that Smith's car was vandalized because Smith made a speech at the city council meeting defending Smith's brother from being implicated in the criminal allegations against Smith and Smith's father. Smith had to take Smith's car to the garage for $15,000 in repairs, but Smith's application for public reimbursement of the expense was rejected." The vast majority of the Smiths in that passage need to be pronouns; it reads really awkwardly in the form I presented it here.
The unfortunate reality of writing in any format (books, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, etc.) is that sometimes you're simply left in a position where there's just no choice but to make a judgment call between imperfect alternatives, a position where there's no word or construction that is exactly right and you're left racking your brains to figure out which one is the least wrong instead. To me, "generic" vs. "specific" isn't the deciding factor; in fact, you routinely see singular-they used in contexts where a specific person is being talked about but their gender isn't clear; you even see it in Wikipedia discussions (for example, when the arguments, edits or actions of a Wikipedia contributor are being discussed in the third person but the OP hasn't explicitly clarified whether they're male or female). And the difference between "unknown gender" and "of neither gender for which we have pronouns available" isn't really an impenetrable barrier, either; it helps here to remember that gender is not only a characteristic of people but also a grammatical characteristic of words — so I don't think of singular-they in terms of whether or not I know the gender of the person, but in terms of whether or not I know which grammatical gender is or isn't called for.
So I compare the alternatives: gendering that person as male or female is definitely wrong; the conventional gender-neutral "it" is definitely wrong because it's for inanimate objects; virtually all of the gender-neutral alternatives that have been proposed for people (the hir/zie stuff) are unencyclopedic neologisms that never really took in general usage and thus aren't viable for use here; going with "he or she"/"his or her" would be inappropriate in the context; and making a point of avoiding pronouns altogether turns the text into stilted, awkward and just plain bad writing. Whereas while not everybody agrees on the legitimacy of singular-they, it at least has the benefit of being comprehensible in the context, and having enough of a history behind it that it's not going to make people go "what the hell is that?" the way "zie" would, and being pretty widely used already. So while you can certainly argue about whether it's right or wrong in the prescriptivist sense, it's not wrong in either the descriptivist or the "making yourself understood" senses.
It's obviously not the perfect solution, because it frequently gives rise to circular, unresolvable debates about whether it's right or wrong — but until English actually settles on a new prescriptivist-approved way to handle such matters, at least to me singular-they is indeed the least imperfect solution that we have available to us right now. Bearcat (talk) 17:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Gender: changeless or changeable?

Latest comment: 11 years ago13 comments8 people in discussion

There appear to be two possible ways of considering gender: as changeable or as essentially changeless. Those who see gender as changeable can accept that someone who was born male might want to become female and vice versa. Those who see gender as essentially changeless fall into two camps. There are those who believe that gender is fixed by biology and cannot be altered by surgery or hormone treatment. However, others who believe that gender is fixed, see it as essentially hard-wired in the brain, and whether people seek surgery or hormones to transform their bodies or not, they were always of the other gender all along, regardless of appearance or previous personal identity.

While these two views agree about gender being changeless they are diametrically opposed to each other, for one ascribes gender to the body while the other ascribes gender to the mind.

If you view gender as changeable you can accept that George Jorgensen can change to Christine Jorgensen, James Morris, father of five, can change to Jan Morris, Richard can become Carlotta and Bradley Manning can identify as Chelsea, and can seek the hormone and surgical treatment to transform her body to fit this identity. However, the fact that Chelsea Manning now identifies as female does not alter the fact that she previously identified as a gay male and has a male body.

However, MOS:IDENTITY#Identity seems to treat sexual identity as both changeless and changeable:

Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman"), pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life. Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and " [sic]" may be used where necessary). Nevertheless, avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage (for example: instead of He gave birth to his first child, write He became a parent for the first time).

So when people change their sexual identity, it applies retrospectively. This immediately causes problems. Direct quotations from a previous phase of their life may clash with current sexual identity. Also there might be inconvenient facts such as he might have given birth or she might have fathered a child and she might have pursued a career that would have been impossible for someone of their current gender at that time. Also, they might have had relationships, such as marriage, which would appear to be at odds with their present sexual identity. And what would happen if X, who was born with a male body decided to live as a woman and then later changed her mind and reverted either to being male again, or being without gender?

I can accept the idea of a person changing gender, and even doing it more than once, but not to rewriting history on the grounds of ideology. Michael Glass (talk) 14:30, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You've got to pick one or the other, frankly. As we've seen above, one major organization for LGBT rights has apparently stated that the old pronouns should be used when discussing old news; while I think GLAAD recommends retroactive use of the pronouns in the case of a gender change. Also I think your division above into gender=changing or changeless is a false dichotomy, the world is a lot more complex than that - see Two spirit or Albanian_sworn_virgins, etc. There are many different gender identities that exist now, or in the past, or in the future, and there are changing societal expectations of those gender roles, so you have two moving targets - what are the boxes society defines and accepts, and what are the ways in which you personally see yourself fitting into those roles.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
(1) Michael, it is not helpful to use phrases like "rewriting history on the grounds of ideology." If there are two (three, really) different views of how gender is determined and whether it can change, then there are two (three, really) different views people might have about pronouns. No one will think that their own view is "rewriting history on the grounds of ideology," so for you to suggest that others might be wanting to do that or for them to suggest that you might be doing that is unconstructive.
(2) If there are two (three, really) different views of how gender is determined and whether it can change, then it would seem that Wikipedia should follow what the best experts say about it. Thye could be wrong (it happens all the time) but we have no better way of dealing with the matter. As with any content in articles, when we find out we got it wrong we change it. So with gender we follow the best expert advice of the day and if later we find out they got it wrong, we change it then. Correcting historical errors is good, while we all agree that rewriting history is bad.
(3) As I wrote a little bit above, the "Gender identity" article includes this sentence, "Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that." It even provides three sources for the claim. So I don't see a reason to think that scientists who disagree are more than a minority view. What the New York Times or CNN seem to imply about gender with pronoun choices is not an expert view on gender, so (as some have argued) doing what the "reliable sources" do is really a question of what you count as a reliable source about the nature of gender. I'll go with scientists over journalists on this one.
(4) The issue of what pronouns to use could be a matter that is entirely settled by your theory of gender, but it might not be done that way. For example, it is common in drag queen culture to refer to a male who identifies as a man as "she" when he is in drag. It also is certainly not unheard of for gay men to refer to other gay men as "she" even if the man does not identify as a woman and does not do drag. Pronoun choice need not follow from a person's gender identity. It is a stylistic choice, which is why pronouns are covered by the Manuel of Style.
(5) So the choice of pronouns need not have anything at all to do with what the scientists' current best theory of gender is. We can believe that gender is fixed by age 3, yet advocate switching pronouns based on how a person presents themselves. We also can believe that gender is something that can change in adulthood, but nevertheless think that pronouns should only based on the most recent expressed gender identity. There is nothing at all inconsistent about either, as they are choices of style, not of substance on gender identity and identification.
So how should we decide what Wikipedia's pronoun policy will be? Well, we could just all vote and go with whatever the result is of whoever happens to show up and vote. That leads to some very messy talk pages and lots of acrimony (plus the problem of canvassing, which we have already seen on this page). Alternatively, we could just follow the style guidance of most of our reliable sources. If we defer to them on content, why not also on style? It sounds good, but there is one big problem. A lot of our reliable sources are the media. Reporting the news is done in a different voice from recording history, which is what Wikipedia does. So, for example, in a news article about Muhammad Ali written today discussing the question "Who is the greatest Heavyweight boxer of all time?" might refer to him as "Ali" throughout and say things like "Ali won the Olympic Gold Medal" and also "Ali was 22 when he first became the world heavyweight champion." for a news discussion about who is the greatest boxer, the fact that Ali was named "Cassius Clay" when those events happened is irrelevant, and so might be ignored. A news article written today might well choose to use the voice of the present, not a historical voice, as their interest is not to recount historical events.
This distinction between the historical voice and the present voice is crucial for understanding why media sources might make a different pronoun choice from the one we should make. This is where the Time magazine article (mentioned two sections above and quoted much higher up by Betty Logan) is interesting. In the article the author notes that most of the policy statements about what pronouns to use seem to be very present-oriented, and so did not really say clearly what to do when writing about the past. So the author asked the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) and a spokesperson gave this example to explain that pronoun switching is ok:
"Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, came out as transgender last week. In a statement, Manning said she had felt this way since childhood. Manning grew up in Oklahoma. In middle school, he was very outspoken in class about government issues and religious beliefs, friends said."
Obiwankenobi mentioned GLAAD, so I looked up their published policy on pronouns and transgender people. it says:
"Avoid pronoun confusion when examining the stories and backgrounds of transgender people prior to their transition. It is usually best to report on transgender people's stories from the present day instead of narrating them from some point or multiple points in the past, thus avoiding confusion and potentially disrespectful use of incorrect pronouns." (Italics in the original)
Note that this advice acknowledges that if one were to use the historical voice in writing it would mean changing pronouns in the course of an article, which could result in the confusion or disrespect mentioned. GLAAD merely advises the media against using this voice. While that sounds like very good advice for them (although different from the Time-reported NLGJA advice), it does suggest that both organizations recognize that switching pronouns based on how people have presented themselves is a valid style when using the historical voice, as an encyclopedia or other documenter of history uses. You can believe (as I think GLAAD does) that a person's gender has not changed, but merely been revealed in a self-identification announcement, but that switching pronouns when writing from the historical voice is still a valid style choice. I might be wrong, but I think this is what both the NLGJA and GLAAD are saying. 99.192.84.228 (talk) 17:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
It depends on what you mean by "gender." If you're using the social science definition, in which "gender" usually means "gender role" (society's rules about what male and female people may do), then yes people can change from one gender to another by changing their names, clothes and behavior. However, in ordinary speech, "gender" is interchangeable with "sex" and means "the actual state of being male or female." Some kinds of frogs can change gender in this sense, but it is not clear whether or not humans can. Nor are there any universally accepted rules about what counts as changing gender. (Some consider a raised-male person who's had surgery to be a woman and others consider her/him a modified man, etc.)
Many transgender individuals say that rather than becoming male or female, they discover that they always really were male or female. This story is not universal, but if it is correct, then it means that gender identity does not change, or at least that transgender individuals are not examples of changes in gender identity.
What this all has to boil down to is what the WP:MoS should do about gender in humans. Right now, science can't prove who's right, and sources are mixed. There's also no politically neutral position. If we say "he" throughout Manning's article, we're saying that Manning is making this up. If we switch from "he" to "she," we're saying that gender can change. If we say "she" throughout, we're saying that Manning really was female the whole time and we just didn't know before.
We're darned if we do this, darned if we do that and darned if we do the other thing. However, the other thing, using the latest preferred pronoun throughout the article, is the most polite of these three options. Ordinarily, as Anon99.192.84.228 seems to be saying, courtesy wouldn't be our top priority, but everything above it on the list has been crossed out, so it makes a darn good tiebreaker.
Keep the current policy. Call Manning "she" whenever calling her "Manning" would be awkward. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:28, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
Darkfrog, as for "This story is not universal", are there any sexologists who currently don't agree with the story?? Georgia guy (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

First of all I would like to thank people for their replies. I think we need to leave aside trying to work out theories of gender, because opinions are so divided. I think we need to see if the policy is adequate. I don't believe that it is. In a field that is so divided, the policy says the latest expression of sexual identity:

... applies in references to any phase of that person's life.

I therefore invite editors to look at the case of Peter Wherrett, a famous Australian motoring and motor sport journalist and race car driver. He married and divorced three times and had children and grandchildren. However, Whettett lived as a woman for two years, before dying of prostate cancer at the age of 72. Seventy years of living as a male followed by two years of living as a female but the policy says that we should apply the feminine pronouns for every aspect of Wherrett's life. I would say that in this case it makes more sense to leave this editing decision to the good sense of the editors of that particular article.

But it's not just Peter Wherrett. Christine Jorgensen described herself as having been a "frail, blond, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games". Jan Morris married a woman and they had five children, one being Twm Morys. This article informs us "Twm Morys was born in 1961 in Oxford, a son to the writer Jan Morris." a phrasing that is potentially misleading, as Jan is Tym's biological father. Take another case, that of Penny Whetton, who is married to a woman and they have two boys. This is the boys' reported reaction to the situation: 'The boys, while being "absolutely terrific" about it, differed in their responses. The older boy was "not all that open about it", while the younger one tells his mates, "My dad's Penny; my dad's a woman."' [[1]]

I don't think there's any simple answer about what to do about transsexualism. However, a policy that blithely says to use the pronouns of the latest expressed gender and avoid language that sounds impossible is too rigid. At the very least, the word generally should be added. Michael Glass (talk) 01:25, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If someone presented as a heterosexual man for most of his life but came out during his seventies and lived the last two years of his life as a homosexual man, saying that this was what he'd always been, would we refer to that man as ever having been straight? No we would not. We would say that he presented as straight, but we would not say that he truly was. If there were a different pronoun for homosexuals (thank God; we did not need those knock-down-drag-outs), we would use them throughout this individual's life. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:56, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Michael Glass, I don't see the problem. What makes you think that editors who happen to be interested in Wherrett are in a better position to know what to do about the issue of gender than we all here are. If she lived as a man for all but the last two years of her life, I don't see the problem with using female pronouns. If the article is well written, people reading it will know she was transgender and thus will have no problem understanding the prononuns used. Jorgensen calleed herself as a child a "boy", which is fine. If the quote is important enough to use, the article can use it. I don't see any problems there. For Twm Morys, I am more confused by the fact that his last name is not spelled the same as Jan's last name (and this is not explained on the page) than I am about his parentage. (And also, I am confused about whether Twm's mother is named Elizabeth Tuckniss or Elizabeth Morris, as this is not well explained nor does googling help much.) Penny Whetton's youngest son seems not to be confused at all. "My dad's a woman." Yes, she is. Even a child can understand that. 99.192.72.160 (talk) 03:21, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
  • If even a child can understand that his dad's a woman, then perhaps the policy that says "avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage" needs to be tweaked or even reconsidered.
  • As for Peter Wherrett, perhaps one needs to understand the traumas and compulsions in his life before applying a wiki policy like a cookie cutter. See [1] I do think that perhaps people who know more about Peter/Pip Wherrett's life are in a better position to judge the issue - that is unless ignorance is deemed better than knowledge.
  • If Christine Jorgensen said she was a boy, what is wrong with Wikipedia saying that she was a boy?
  • Neal Blewett is an example of a man who identifies as gay but was married for 26 years and had children. That's not a problem. However, there is a problem with the area of transsexuality, and that is the regrets that some feel after sex reassignment surgery. See [2], [3] and [4]. At the very least, it could be that the latest gender may not be the last one for an individual. Michael Glass (talk) 07:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Michael Glass: ...tweaked or even reconsidered. I agree.
...ignorance is deemed better than knowledge. That's silly. But it also sounds like you want to adjudicate whether Wherrett really identified as a woman at all based on personal trauma, which stikes me as both original research and offensive.
...what is wrong with Wikipedia saying that she was a boy? Just because she said it does not mean it is true. Quoting her saying it might be deemed important because the real content of the sentence reflects her adult feelings about her childhood. But that does not mean we have to agree that her terminology is accurate. If she believes that "boy" tracks a person's sex, but it actually tracks their gender, then she made a simple language mistake. If you are worried that he use of "boy" might be confusing, the information could be presented like this: Jorgensen said that as a child she was "frail" and "introverted" and she "ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games."
...the latest gender may not be the last one for an individual. Yes, and the latest name might not be the last either. Cat Stevens was "Steven Georgiou" at birth, at 17 began performing as "Steve Adams", at 18 became "Cat Stevens", at age 29 changed again to "Yusuf Islam", and at age 58 began to go by just "Yusuf". He might change names again, and if he does information on his page will be updated again to reflect that. What's the problem? 99.192.77.211 (talk) 12:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Thanks for your support on one point, but surely it's an advantage to find out more about a person's life before rushing to judgment. It has nothing to do with adjudicating about Wherrett's feelings. About Christine Jorgensen, has it occurred to you that of all people, Christine Jorgensen would have known best whether or not she was a boy? Has it occurred to you that concealing this fact might completely misrepresent her whole life and her life's work? Stories about people changing their gender and then seeking to change back again should ring warning bells that more may be going on than just a deep-seated desire and belief that the person involved has a different sexual identity than their body suggested. Changing one's gender is a more profound alteration than changing one's name. Michael Glass (talk) 14:29, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

People can and sometimes are mistaken about their sexual orientation. There are lots of stories of people who say they "thought" they were one thing and then later "realized" that they were another. People sometimes do not know themselves as well as they think they do, and so can make mistakes that later they correct. There are lots of cases where people other than the person in question believe they know better than that person does what their real sexual orientation is. Sometimes those people turn out to be right. But there still is no better source for what a person's sexual orientation is than the person themselves. As editors, we don't get the right to second guess everyone's statements about their sexual orientation because sometimes some people have been confused about it. The same goes for gender. What was Wherrett's gender? I don't know. But I do know that what she said it was is the best source we have. Is it possible for a person's gender to change or is it always the same? Academics and scientists who specialize in gender identity are in the best position to answer that one, and so far as I understand it they say that basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 14:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

In Wherrett's case we're dealing with someone who was named Peter Wherrett at birth, who had a traumatic childhood, who shot to fame as a motoring journalist under the name Peter Wherrett, who married, who fathered children and had grandchildren, who married and divorced three times, who liked dressing in women's clothing from childhood, and who after the end of the third marriage lived as a woman for two or three years before finally dying of prostate cancer. These facts are clear and we don't need to specify a gender (or even use a gendered personal pronoun) to state them. I have no opinion on the formation of basic gender identity in this case or any other. Michael Glass (talk) 23:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

More MOS:IDENTITY

Latest comment: 11 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion

I don't like retroactive article changes; any pronouns or attributes of a person should be accurate (and verifiable) as of the time of the event described. Even if we accept the assertion that the gender should be (or should have been) the same for the entire article, it leads to severe confusion in the case of (say) sportspeople who competed as both genders. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:13, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

This survey may be of interest to you Arthur: #Survey. Many editors are uncomfortable with revisionist pronouns. Betty Logan (talk) 01:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Betty, calling it "revisionist" is unfair to the people who have supported the change. It accuses them of not caring about historical accuracy rather than acknowledging that they believe that changing pronouns is necessary to correct misinformation. So it's more accurate to say that all editors are uncomfortable with "revisionist" pronouns. It's just that editors do not agree about which pronoun method counts as "revisionist". But I'd prefer that the word 'revisionist" not be used, as it is inflammatory. 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
I don't intend any offence, all I mean here is changing historic terminology to reflect a recent development. I don't really know how else to refer to it, since it is a revision in the use of terminology, if not in the gender itself. Betty Logan (talk) 01:48, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
The word "change" is pretty neutral. So rather than "Many editors are uncomfortable with revisionist pronouns" say "Many editors are uncomfortable with changing pronouns." The word "revisionist" has a strong connotation of lying about history for ideological reasons. 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Hi. You must be new here. :-)
I kid, but what you just said has been written on this page many times in many sections in the last few days. I'm not sure it really merits a new section. But to reply to the substance of the point, there is no confusion if an article is thoughtfully written. Just as articles take the time to point out when athletes change nationality, thus explaining how they can compete in the national championships of two different countries or represent two different countries at different time, articles can make it clear by saying so when a person was competing as a man and when competing as a woman. It's not hard to do at all. 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:17, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Is it revisionism or correction? The issue at hand seems to be whether a person who changes gender presentation from male to female has actually stopped being male and started being female or whether that person was female the whole time. If the latter, then it's not a retroactive change but a retroactive correction. Only if the former is true would revisionism be an issue. The problem is that we can't prove who's right objectively. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:51, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Re "any pronouns or attributes of a person should be accurate (and verifiable) as of the time of the event described": invocations of verifiability as a reason not to apply a name or pronoun retroactively intrigue me. Please consider joining this discussion of the closely related subject of the retroactive use of names. The editors who've commented so far all seem to agree that if reliable sources document that someone changed names from (for example) Pat to Lou, and if reliable sources document that Pat invented foobarium, there's nothing "un-verifiable" about writing "Lou invented foobarium". Likewise, if that person used to be considered a man (and sources say "he invented foobarium") but is now considered a woman — and if that change is documented — I don't see how anyone can argue there is a verifiability problem with writing "she invented foobarium". People can debate whether or not retroactive use of pronouns violates some other policy or best practice, but the notion that it is not "verifiable" is... unpersuasive. -sche (talk) 03:06, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
If you have a source saying "She used to be a man" and another saying "He invented foobarium", then you are combining the sources to produce a new claim i.e. "She invented foobarium" that is not verifiable in either source. If both claims come from the same source then there is still the issue of semantic integrity, but if they come from separate sources it is basically WP:SYNTHESIS. Betty Logan (talk) 05:33, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Care to copy that comment over to the central thread, Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#wp:Verifiability_and_retroactive_use_of_new_names, and join the discussion there? -sche (talk) 05:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Betty, you are confused. It might help to check the article Opaque context. You are treating a transparent context as if it were an opaque context. If we know that Jane Brown used to be John Smith and we know that John Smith invented foobarium then we do know that Jane Brown invented foobarium. That's a simple transparent context.
Here's another example you might like: We know that Lana Wachowski used to be Larry Wachowski We also know that Larry Wachowski was a co-director of The Matirx. Suppose that tomorrow a reliable source were to report for the first time that "after 3 weeks of filming, Lana wanted to fire Keanu Reeves, but Andy talked her out of it." No source reports this information using "Larry" and "he". How would you report this information on The Matrix page to avoid synthesis? Presenting the quote and explaining that Lana=Larry is, according to you, synthesis. In fact, deciding that the the information is worth reporting in the article at all requires an editor to make this so-called "synthesis" in the first place. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 14:15, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Present tense

Latest comment: 11 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

I just noticed a change in the identity section. It implies that people we're talking about here are always still alive. This needs to be altered to that it is valid for all transgender people, not just living ones. Georgia guy (talk) 00:44, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this is right. I just removed the word "current" because it does not change Betty Logan's intended meaning, but also removes the worry that dead people are not covered. I also removed the word "preference" since the question of whether a pronoun that applies now (whatever it might be and for whatever reason, be it "preference" or some other reason) should be applied retrospectively is what is intended. These two tweeks are not intended to alter the meaning of Betty Logan's rewording/ 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:09, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Do you have any suggestions? I get what you are saying, if someone has died they should be referred to as "Mary was famous writer. She wrote a famous book. She was born male." Betty Logan (talk) 01:13, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Well I think the intended idea is that a dead person's "present" gender is whatever their gender was the day they died, just as we use the name a person had when they died as their "current" name. I'm not sure more of a reword is needed than the one I just made. Do you think it is still unclear? 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:20, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192...)
I agree with that: "Mary was a writer" is a present tense variant of "Mary is a deceased writer", but does that need to be explicit? There is bound to someone who misinterprets the "present tense" aspect in relation to dead people. Maybe just drop "When referring to someone in the present tense...", since the next sentence clarifies the stance on retro usage. Betty Logan (talk) 01:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Hmmmm. This might be trickier than I thought. Suppose a person is "John Smith" from 1960 to 1999, but in 2000 becomes "Jane Brown". Now suppose in 2013 new information about something this person did in 2005 becomes known. It is not a "present tense" event, so the guideline seems to say that this is a controversial case. But I think we all agree that for 2005 saying "Brown" and "she" is not controversial. Now if new information about something the person did in 1995 were discovered, some say it should be "Brown" and "she" while others say it should be "Smith" and "he" and still others say it should be "Smith" and "she". The problem is how to capture that this is where the controversy lies. I think I'll leave it to someone who does not have one eye on the US Open tennis to try figuring it out. 99.192.72.160 (talk) 01:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
I am removing the first part of the sentence. Past and present tense isn't the issue here, it is retrospective application to a period before the person's new publicly identified gender. The second sentence makes this explicit, and poor wording is what has made this guideline troublesome to begin with. Betty Logan (talk) 01:40, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
The expressions "latest" and "most recent" and "last expressed" and "most recently expressed" can apply to preferences of both the living and the dead.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:17, 1 September 2013 (UTC) and 18:27, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Why exactly can't we require someone be diagnosed as transgender before a pronoun switch?

Latest comment: 11 years ago22 comments7 people in discussion

Why exactly can't we require someone be diagnosed as transgender before a pronoun switch? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 19:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Likewise, we should require someone be diagnosed as not transgender before using gendered pronouns at all. Vexorian (talk) 11:49, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia requires material be cited to reliable publications. Medical diagnoses are confidential, so must not be published without the consent of the patient. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:25, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Additionally, because a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria is basically patient self-reporting in the first place, so it would basically be the same thing as accepting the persons word for it. Doesn't really make any sense to require such a diagnosis. Cam94509 (talk) 19:33, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
    • I assume the doctor has to actually believe them? I’d rather trust the word of an impartial third party professional, then the subject them self — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 19:40, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
      • Why would the doctor not believe them? There's not exactly any evidence that is going to be presented to them that the person is lying. This is all not mentioning the fact that there is NO REASON FOR THE PERSON TO LIE in the first place. Also, sign your posts with four of these little guys: "~" If you can't find them on your keyboard, they're to the left of your "1" key, most likely. You'll have to hit shift to get them. Cam94509 (talk) 19:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
        • If a doctor makes a diagnoses they know to be likely based on a lie, it will reflect badly on their reputation. On other hand (seeing as we’re not requiring a change in lifestyle or behaviour) the individual has nothing loose by lying — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
          • (Uh... sign your posts? Seriously? You just have to type four tildes. Please.) Your argument doesn't make any sense. Why would a person WANT to be referred to by a particular pronoun unless they wanted to be referred to by a particular pronoun? The persons statement is enough; it's as good as a statement to the press that they, for instance, like icecream, which, if it were noteworthy, and reported on by a third party source, we would definitely accept as verifiable. Similarly, if someone makes a statement to the press that they wish to be referred to by a particular pronoun, then we would accept that as verifiable. I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at here.Cam94509 (talk) 20:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
            • saying you like Ice Cream doesn’t have any effect on anyone but your self, claiming to be Trans (however wrongly) tends to up set people. Also I think that would be giving the person too much power over the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 20:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
              • (SIGN. YOUR. POSTS. SERIOUSLY.) No, this is completely illogical. It doesn't matter if it "upsets" people. A person saying they are trans to a media outlet is CLEARLY good enough for WP:V. There's no need for a diagnosis for our purposes, especially given that that diagnosis is based on self-reporting. (because why would you lie?) (Hey, sign your next post maybe?) Cam94509 (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
                • I'm saying that a peace of information being contentious is a reason someone might want to lie about it. "There's no need for a diagnosis for our purposes" their claim require us to heavily edit several pages — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 20:31, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
"I'm saying that a peace of information being contentious is a reason someone might want to lie about it." That makes absolutely no sense. "Oh, this thing will make me more unpopular because people are discriminatory! Better go and say it, even though it's false!" said no person. Ever. Also, another reminder: Sign. Your. Posts. (Seriously, if your next post is signed by sinebot and not you, I'm just going to ignore it, as I'll think you're trolling me.) Cam94509 (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
                    • it deepends who your audiance is. somepeople have a very libral fanbase
(Well... you tried. Four tildes, no quotes, next time, but I'll give you credit for trying.) No. Your argument makes no sense. To be honest, there isn't consensus for your suggestion, there probably never WILL be consensus for your suggestion, and it's probably best if you just admit that and move on, at this point. Cam94509 (talk) 20:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
What ramifications? A quick copyedit that's pretty much find-and-replace? It's an extremely low-cost event with even lower likelihood. We can't base policy on such a low risk. MaxHarmony (talk) 00:00, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
                            • "What ramifications?" confusing people
I agree, but you don't go far enough. We need to apply this to everybody. So far as I know, Tom Hanks has never had a professional gender assessment. Hanks first came to public attention spending half the time in a dress claiming to be a woman, and half the time claiming to be a man. Until such a time as it (Hanks) does so, I refuse to use either male or female pronouns for it. Hanks, if you're reading this (I really liked That Thing You Do!...) and cannot prove to my satisfaction that you are a "he", I will address you accordingly. Be warned! 99.192.79.173 (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
        • when in doubt go with the genitals .
Hanks has never dropped it's pants on film, so I have no idea what it has for gonads. Hank's is still an "it" to me! 99.192.79.173 (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
Technically, Hank should be a "they" to you, not an it :P Cam94509 (talk) 20:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Even if they had, you're not a medical doctor, let alone one trained in genitals. Who are you to determine what someone's genitals should be called? MaxHarmony (talk) 00:00, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
              • I've looked sideways enough to know a dick when I see one
I disagree that Gender Identity Disorder/Gender Dysphoria is simply self-reported. A person says "I am male/I am female". GID, however is a medical diagnosis. Hormones are not available OTC for anyone that wishes it. A diagnoses would be definitive. Likewise, the medical non-diagnoses despite a patients protest is also reason to rely on the medical expert and not the subject. Diagnoses protect those that have the disorder by not allowing others to exploit it. If checking the "F" box on an employment application or school admission triples the acceptance rate, or changes the prison where a criminal is housed, self-diagnoses is entirely inadequate and will stigmatize GID as a fraud. Currently, those that truly have the medical condition need diagnoses and treatment. For Bradley Manning, he blamed GID for assaulting a female superior, emotional instability and leaking classified documents unlawfully. If it's true that the he has GID and it contributed to that behavior, the bar better be pretty high (i.e. more than his say-so) before he stigmatizes an entire class of persons with that behavior. --DHeyward (talk) 21:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
As a person with a diagnosis of GID (because that's what it was called at the time), trust me: the diagnosis is, at least from many doctors, based entirely on self-reporting. Cam94509 (talk) 21:11, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Also, it's worth noting that Manning DOES have this diagnosis, so the point is moot in her case. Cam94509 (talk) 21:12, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm a little surprised this conversation about MoS: Identity is taking as long as it is.

Latest comment: 11 years ago21 comments12 people in discussion

At the risk of oversimplification, MoS: Identity is more-or-less upheld by WP:NPOV,Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons WP:Basic Dignity, and WP:Dick, among other things. Yeah, to use the example of the day, we absolutely will need to include in the article about Manning that they spent a lot of time going by a former name, but that's what redirects, aliases, subheadings, and the "Born" part of the infobox is for. I mean go look at Moon Zappa's page, or the page of any of the screen actors and actresses that chose a different name to go by for registration in their guilds.

Maybe I'm off base, but it seems like a lot of the talk surrounding how to discuss trans* folks of sufficient notoriety to merit an article is a great big circle-jerk of rules-lawyering, violating the spirit of the Pillars, the Manual, the works. Now that can be fun in its own right, yeah, but may I suggest going and having that fun over whether or not Star Trek Into Darkness needs a colon or not? Something that's a little less invested in actual, living people? Something a little more harmless? I mean that (and libel, privacy laws, etc.) are a big reason why we even *have* WP:Bio, last I knew.

Kell (talk) 22:54, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Do you think the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association are in violation of WP:Dick as well? What about The New York Times, who have agreed to the recommendations of the NLGJA to refer to Manning using male pronouns during the period of her life that she was known as Bradley? I think your comments are a little ill-considered, and I think it's entirely proper to explore the semantics of the English language, discuss our interpretations of policies and guidelines and consider the advice and practises of various journalist organizations and major media organizations. Betty Logan (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Maybe. I'd have to examine that stuff and think about it some more.
There's a difference between discussing, and fighting about it a lot of the times it comes up, Betty, and it's just going to come up more and more as time goes on, if current trends are any indicator of future trends (which I admit is a hazy ruler to measure by).
Though I would point out that while I want to assume that most editors are coming at this from a well-meaning place, quite a bit of the talk I see above has a hard time fitting that description.
As well, as much as a troublesome point it is to hash out, while we do need to look at what those journalists and major media organizations do, I hesitate to advise we accept their guidelines without serious consideration. They are doing something rather different than we are, namely selling airtime, newspapers, and stories. Our job isn't to write something people will give us money for (thus avoiding the need to pander to the audience or be sensationalist, mostly), so our priorities are a little different too.
We can report things, and we can do it with respect to the inherent human dignity of those involved. That's where I approach this from. I'm not saying that you aren't, I haven't examined you enough to make that judgment, assuming I should be making that judgment at all. But...some folks seem to be losing sight of that, and that's a tough thing to watch, even if it's just Wikipedia. Kell (talk) 23:40, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Its human nature and everyone has their breaking points. As for sources I feel that wikipedia should follow sources and not be making political WP:POV stands on things like this, that's my opinion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:54, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia would be making a political stand regardless. It is full of WP:SYSTEMICBIAS to claim that using dead names or the opposite pronouns to the ones a trans person specifically asked for would be politically neutral. It is not political neutral at all to claim that they have no right to choose their gender expression. It is also harassment to insist on misgendering them. Vexorian (talk) 12:01, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry Kid, I'm not confidant that I follow what you're saying properly. Could you clarify what the political stand in question is? I *might* know what you're saying, but I don't want to misunderstand you. Kell (talk) 00:01, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Meaning that if the majority of reliable sources are saying one thing and one source comes out saying another we should not rush to the point where the media picks it up and it becomes a WP:POV issue. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, no, that's not really how it works. It is verifiable in reliable sources that Chelsea Manning has declared her identification as a woman. That's it. That's the end of it. She's factually a trans-woman. Gender identity is self-declared and not subject to external questioning or disbelief. The only concern is, is it verifiable in reliable sources that she said it? Yes, it is. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 00:42, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
It really depends on how you perceive Wikipedia. Many editors have raised the discord between WP:V and MOS:IDENTITY, and its validity in the arguments depends on whether you regard Wikipedia as recording facts or recording claims. There is no right or wrong view on that: Wikipedia reflects the goals and aims of its editors, so if some editors feel they are documenting published claims then that is what they are doing. Betty Logan (talk) 00:50, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
As I've noted before: The WP:V argument against the current policy is entirely nonsensical. Merely having a source that states the person prefers to be referred to with a particular gender pronoun covers WP:V here. Cam94509 (talk) 01:11, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
It is nonsensical based on your interpretation of what Wikipedia does. But your interpretation doesn't trump mine, or Knowledgekid87's, or anyone else who subscribes to the same view, unless of course you are going to type up our articles for us. An editor defines their own goals on Wikipedia. Betty Logan (talk) 01:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Sure. Let me go tell that to everyone complaining that applying WP:BLP to the article formerly known as Chelsea Manning was "illogical" or "incorrect". Cam94509 (talk) 01:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Since I've long found arguments like the one you make curious (and specious), I asked about the issue on WT:V#wp:Verifiability_and_retroactive_use_of_new_names. So far, almost everyone seems to agree that there are no WP:V issues raised by retroactive use of a name/pronoun. One user made a comparison to the question of whether or not using a dash in "Comet Hale–Bopp" violated WP:V and/or WP:OR (from the presence of the dash, you can infer that it was decided that it did not violate those policies). -sche (talk) 01:31, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Betty, I honestly don't believe that you believe that there is a WP:V problem. You can't. To explain why, I'll just repeat the answer I wrote on WT:V. Take, for example Metta World Peace. He lived most of his life as "Ron Artest" and most of the sources for information on his page are to publications that pre-date his name change, and thus refer to him as "Ron" and "Artest" with no mention of his current name. The section on the Pacers–Pistons brawl, for example, uses sources from 2004, 7 years before the name change. But if we are going to take seriously the worry about name changes and verifiability, then we have to ask why is information about a brawl that a source says involved "Ron Artest" on a page for a person whose name is "Metta World Peace". The answer is because we have some reliable sources that Artest was involved in the brawl and other reliable sources that Ron Artest is the same person as Metta World Peace. We do not need to find some new source that says "Metta World Peace was involved in a brawl in 2004". The idea that there is a verifiability issue here is absurd.
For gender, take the following real example: 11 year old future singer Robin Thicke was being babysat by hockey legend Wayne Gretzky on the day that Gretzky was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. This quirky fact has been deemed interesting enough to be included on Thicke's page. The source that is cited for the information uses a male pronoun when mentioning Robin Thicke twice in a throwaway comment. The only other indication in that source that the source believes that Thicke is male are two uses of the word "son" (to define his relationship to Alan Thicke). But it is easy to imagine the same article without these mentions of gender. If it had been written with no male pronouns and no uses of the word "son" for Robin Thicke, someone who took the gender verifiability question as seriously as you say you and some others do would be forced to say that we cannot conclude that the source believed that Robin Thicke was male and so the Wikipedia page cannot say, as it does right now, "Wayne Gretzky had been babysitting him while his father was on vacation...." That's also absurd. 99.192.68.167 (talk) 02:26, 2 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
I would rather you didn't tell me what I don't believe about my own argument, or at least if you are, maybe you should tell me what I do believe. I have been consistent on this point from the discussions at the Film project right up to here: we are a verifiable encyclopedia. We are not documenting facts because we have not corroborated these facts ourselves; we are recording published claims. In that capacity, if we are using someone else's material and attributing claims to them then we have a duty to not take their comments out of context. When I add content to Wikipedia first and foremost my primary concern is representing what other people have written as accurately as possible. Once you start introducing new names, changing gender pronouns you are compromising the nature of the claim you are representing. There are plenty of other editors who have repeatedly made this same point in the various debates, and you are free to disagree, dismiss, whatever, but the point remains that for many editors the goal is to accurately convey published information, and some of us feel that the guideline as it stands compromises that goal. Betty Logan (talk) 05:27, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
It seems clear that you do believe that nothing that is sourced as having happened to "Ron Atrest" can be included in the article for Metta World Peace without a separate source that explicitly says it happened to "MWP", so most claims in the MWP article are actually without a valid source right now. It also seems clear that if any source uses no pronouns for a person, we cannot conclude anything about what the source is saying about gender, so we are not allowed to use any gendered pronouns when describing facts in our article. If a source says "Sting is going on tour this winter", the Sting article cannot say that "he" is going on tour, because we have no confirmation that the source is saying that Sting is male. That's bizarre. 99.192.68.167 (talk) 05:48, 2 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Or consider my favourite example: if we have reliable sources saying "foobarium is soluble in H2O" (and other reliable sources saying H2O = water), do you actually think it's WP:SYNTHESIS to say "foobarium is soluble in water"? (this comment on the nature and use of names may also be of interest.) -sche (talk) 04:39, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


I have some questions for BL and others who share her position.
Betty Logan believes that there is a WP:V issue with referring to subjects by their most recent declared pronoun throughout their lives. The core of this, I'm guessing, is the idea that a subject's own report of his or her gender identity is not sufficient evidence of that gender identity.
So what is? Sure, self-reports can be unreliable. People can lie and people can be nuts. That's why we defer to better forms of evidence on most issues. However, in the case of gender identity, what do we have that's better? Who, other that the subject is even capable of observing his or her gender identity? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I think there are different worries being expressed by people who talk about WP:V. One is, as you say, that a self-report might not be good enough to establish a gender identity, so Wikipedia's policy (they say) is to report that the person is whatever gender media sources say, even if it is at odds with what the person themselves say. It is hard to see how that is not a transphobic position. But that is not (as I understand it) what Betty Logan has said. Her objection goes like this: Suppose Smith was born male, but in 1979 publicly identifies as female. Smith wins an Grammy award. A source says "He won a Grammy in 1969". So Wikipedia reports that "She won a Grammy in 1969" and cites that source. Betty Logan's worry is that by doing that we are claiming that the source attributed the win to a female, when they actually attributed the win to a male. So the issue is not "Is the source right?" but is "Are we misrepresenting what the source claimed by switching the pronoun, even when we do not quote directly?" She says we are. But I point out that if she really believes that, then she has to accept that a source that says "Sting is going on tour this winter" has taken no position on his gender, thus Wikipedia cannot add to the Sting article "He is going on tour this winter" because that attributes a gender claim to the source that is not present. That, I claim, is absurd. 99.192.77.201 (talk) 14:13, 2 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
A person's statement is normally going to be reliable as to their gender identity as far as that statement goes. But it may not be correct to think of it is reliable with regards to a person's past gender identity or the way in which the person would wish to be referred to in the past tense (the two things are not strictly the same and it is not clear which should count). We may wish to make an assumption that gender identity in the past will be the same as in the present. Which is fine, but it is wrong to allow for no exceptions. We should be allowed to take a different approach, for example, in order to respect a biographical account given by the subject, or to avoid content which is confusing or ends up air-brushing history. I don't think it would be OK to write: "Mr and Mrs Manning were delighted at the birth of their daughter and decided to name her 'Bradley'". This may or may not be a useful addition to the article, but that is not the point. The MOS should try its best to cover any content an editor may wish to add.
Additionally, I think there is something slightly barbarous about the part of the guidance which asks us to skirt around mention of anything that identifies the biological sex of the subject. It is a fact of life, for example, that transgender men can get pregnant and give birth. Yet our guidance asks us to pretend like this never happens. This cannot be right. Formerip (talk) 14:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

On the question of names (not pronouns), it seems like we should do for transgendered people who change their names whatever we do for non-transgendered people who change their names. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father changed both of their first names when his son was about five years old. Look at Leonard Bernstein, Garri Kasparov, or Estée Lauder. What would you do with Richard James Hart? I think it's best to consider the question by referring to what we do in articles that don't have the complexity or emotional issues that surround this particular case. Figure out what's normal by using normal cases, not one of the most complicated cases that we're likely to encounter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed wording change to MOS:IDENTITY

Latest comment: 11 years ago32 comments12 people in discussion

I would like to propose that we delete the following bold text from MOS:IDENTITY:

Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles where the term appears in the title of an article. When there is no dispute, the term most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself. Wikipedia should use them too. (For example, see the article Jew, which demonstrates that most Jews prefer that term to "Jewish person".)

To be clear, I am only looking to delete the bold text, not the first sentence. The trouble with this text comes when there is a conflict between how a person or group is most commonly addressed in reliable sources and how that person or group prefers to address itself. If you ignore the phrase When there is no dispute..., the policy makes a very strong statement that we must use the term that the person or group prefers. However, the phrase When there is no dispute renders everything that follows meaningless. If there is no dispute, why consult the manual of style? The entire purpose of a manual of style is to provide some guidance when there are multiple plausible choices. The policy, as written, does not actually tell us what to do if there is a dispute. It is very easy for someone who (purposefully or not) ignores the phrase "When there is no dispute" to come away thinking that the policy is saying something that it is not actually saying.GabrielF (talk) 07:09, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree. Also, the idea that when there is no dispute we use one criterion, and when there is a dispute we use another one, is nonsense. If a particular form of words is the best one to use when there has been a dispute, that form of words would have been the best to use had there been no dispute, so it makes no sense at all to have a clause which specifically states that it applies only when there is no dispute. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:51, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think much of the advice in the section that is bolded is OK. The phrase, When there is no dispute certainly is problematical. I think the desired clarification could be achieved by the omission of that phrase and some other changes. Then the passage would read:
Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles where the term appears in the title of an article. The term most commonly used for a person is usually the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group are usually those that the group most commonly uses for itself. Wikipedia should use these terms too. (For example, see the article Jew, which demonstrates that most Jews prefer that term to "Jewish person".)
(I would also question the example at the end of the passage. I would guess that the choice between Jew or Jewish would depend on context.) Michael Glass (talk) 15:12, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
While the text would be significantly clarified by deleting the phrase "When there is no dispute", doing so would create a new policy and carve out an exception to existing policies such as Wikipedia:Article titles. We should not do this without significant discussion. GabrielF (talk) 01:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Mild Support My reading of those sentences is that they are designed to be informative, not instructional, so while I do think they have informative value if they are being read as (or could reasonably be read as) being instructional they can be removed without loss. To explain my reading, the second sentence ("When there is no dispute....") is merely pointing out that, as is often the case, a person's name is not in dispute and in those cases it is simply true that the person's common name is the name they use for themselves. The next sentence ("Wikipedia should use them too.") is just reaffirming the position that the policies listed in the first sentence take. The final parenthetical sentence is explicitly indicated to be an example, and is not a controversial one, so I take it to be informative as well. So while I see nothing problematic about any of these sentences and I do think they could be helpful as explanations, I see no real change in the policy by removing them and so have no real objection to that.
It might be worthwhile for people to check the history of how those sentences came to be a part of MOS:IDENTITY in the first place. Five years ago, in April 2008, there was a discussion on this talk page that resulted in a significant wording change. Part of that change was to add the references to other policies in the first sentence, as it looked at the time that MOS:IDENTITY was in conflict with them. So this text:
"Use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification) whenever this is possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself."
was replaced by this text:
"Disputes over the proper name of a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Naming conventions where the name appears in an article name. When there is no dispute, use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself."
A month later, in May 2008, an editor made a further revision that seems to have not been discussed or disputed resulting in this text:
"When there is no dispute, the name most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself; Wikipedia should use them too."
If you want to check out these bits of editing history for yourself, here are some links (I hope) will take you the the pertinent pages: The April 2008 edits, the April 2008 talk page discussion, and the May 2008 edits. 99.192.80.196 (talk) 13:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
  • Support As currently written, the bold section seems to add no clarity to the issue, for the reasons given by GabrielF. And it's just strangely written; I would be okay with reverting to the April 2008 version, which appears to state the intended policy more comprehensibly. I thank 99.192.80.196 for providing the additional information. I think the undebated May 2008 change damaged the readability of the policy. Also, I think the "Jew" example is not good. The article actually states that, in many contexts, "Jewish" is preferable to "Jew," but that it can also be insulting to avoid "Jew" in favor of "Jewish" when "Jew" would have been acceptable. (And, as a Jew, I can vouch that I have never encountered a preference for "Jew" over "Jewish person." In fact, like most ethnonyms and demonyms, the adjective form is almost always used rather than the noun form. I.e., "I'm Jewish." instead of "I'm a Jew.") If the guideline needs an example, we should choose a better one. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:59, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm afraid I'm going to have to say that the language is hopelessly contradictory for the reasons everyone's said. If the second sentence only applies when there is no RS dispute, then when is it helpful and when does it actually mean anything? We can't pick a name that has no RS support. I dont think the volume of discussion about phrasing in April 2008 is sufficient to validate this aspect of the guideline in light of current interest in the naming of the Manning article. But I still find the following text from the April 2008 discussion substantially more satisfactory than the current guideline: Use terminology that the majority of sources use for the subject whenever possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself when reliable sources conflict with one another. What do you guys think of something along these lines? With respect to this expected objection from above: Also, the idea that when there is no dispute we use one criterion, and when there is a dispute we use another one, is nonsense – I don't really think that's true. If we have to make a choice between RSs assuming roughly equal usage of a name what's wrong with expressing a preference for the self-chosen name? We could add a clear statement to the rule about it only applying if more traditional naming considerations are in equipoise. Or perhaps it would be best to revisit this issue in a few weeks when it's less hot? AgnosticAphid talk 05:15, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I already offered my mild support for the proposal above, but if we want to consider alternative ideas I have one. The intent of the bullet point in question is (as I understand it) to be informational only. Paraphrased and shortened, the point would read: "For disputes, check these policies. Where there is no dispute, this is what happens." So I suggest that we drop the second part (as proposed) and reword the first (and only remaining sentence) to be more explicit about the fact that names are not settled by MOS:IDENTITY, but by other policies. So I suggest this: "What name to use for a person either as the title of an article or when referring to a person within an article are determined by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles." Nothing in particular needs to be said about disputes over names, because where there are disputes, people should check the appropriate policies and when there are none, there is nothing that needs to be said at all. 99.192.57.48 (talk) 14:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Personally, I think it would be desirable to express a preference for self-identification in the event of a RS naming dispute. I'm probably going to regret mentioning this, but I think that the RM about Manning is actually a good example of this – if half of the RSs use Chelsea and the other half use Bradley, and we can't agree which is more accurate, why can't MOS:IDENTITY, consistently with its pronoun guidance, express a preference for the self-chosen name? It seems to me that a decent number of people in the Manning RM think that MOS:IDENTITY is at least instructive to a certain extent, and it also seems to me that a lot of people wouldn't agree that the second sentence means nothing -- see this comment, for instance -- and I think that expressing the MOS self-identification preference as a tie-breaker subordinate to more typical naming criteria, as above, could be a good compromise. Maybe? Another possibility is to just create a separate Wikipedia guideline about names and pronouns and perhaps other things relating to transgender individuals specifically and then we could trim MOS:IDENTITY down to the bare minimum. AgnosticAphid talk 15:21, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
What should or should not be done concerning the question of what name to use (whether as the name for and article or a name used within an article) should be settled by Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles. The MOS should stay out of it. For article titles, the policy already says "When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best...." If that is deemed to be insufficient, then the change should be made to the policy there, not here. 99.192.57.48 (talk) 15:44, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192...)
My concern with AgnosticAphid's proposal is that MOS:IDENTITY applies widely - for instance to ethnic groups - while the recent discussion has been dominated with one very specific case. I don't think we've fully explored the consequences of establishing self-identification as a tie-breaker for a wide range of articles. I also think that the best place for this proposed policy change would be at WP:Article titles, which goes into substantial depth on the different factors in choosing a name. Placing it here would split Wikipedia's guidance on names into different places. GabrielF (talk) 15:56, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps, then, we should put reconsidering the wording of MOS:IDENTITY on hold until the closed discussion at WT:AT is revisited. I sadly don't think that we'll be able to reach a consensus on whether the second sentence as currently written is entirely superfluous, even if we can all agree it's confusing. AgnosticAphid talk 17:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think waiting is necessary. GabrielF's proposal has three supporters (including GabrielF) and so far no one has said voted against the revision. We might disagree on what the sentences after the first are saying, but so far everyone is ok with removing them. That people don't agree about what they are saying is all the more reason to remove them for being unclear. 99.192.57.48 (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
I'm afraid that I totally don't agree with that proposed revision. Making this change would suggest that the subject's self-identity is not a relevant consideration in naming decisions at all, but I disagree. It seems to me that based on the Manning RM that there are quite a number of people who would agree that the subject's self-identity should have at least some weight in article titling, even if it's subordinate to other considerations and not dispositive. I think that we need to have a broader discussion about this issue before we remove wikipedia's only guidance (I think it's the only guidance? Maybe I'd change my mind if I'm wrong and this actually is addressed elsewhere somewhere). I believe that is the case even though the current wording is obviously ambiguous and therefore open to interpretation perhaps in an unintended manner. AgnosticAphid talk 18:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
As it is currently written, MOS:IDENTITY does not say that self-identification should be a relevant consideration, except for cases where no consideration is needed because there is no dispute over what name to use. The policy as it stands easily leads editors to an incorrect conclusion and for that reason alone it needs to be changed. It sounds like what you're saying is that you want people to misread the policy because you like the misreading. That, to me, is bad policy-making. I think it's very reasonable to ask that self-identification be a consideration in article titles, but that should happen through the normal policy-making process, not through exploiting bad wording. I would strongly recommend raising the issue at WP:AT. Now is the opportune moment to make this official policy the correct way, since a relevant test case received massive attention and is fresh in everyone's mind. GabrielF (talk) 02:36, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
All I was saying is that there seem to be a lot of other views on this issue and it seems way inappropriate to make a dramatic change to the only policy we have just because four people here on this talk page agree on what "if there is no dispute" means. For instance, in the post I linked before, the editor said, :WP:IDENTITY is applicable here and supports using Chelsea. It states: “When there is no dispute, the term most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself. Wikipedia should use them too.” Some people have argued that this doesn’t apply because there is a dispute over whether to use Chelsea or Bradley. But I think it is clear in context that the reference to a “dispute” does not mean a dispute on Wikipedia; rather it means a dispute regarding what is subsequently referred to in the sentence – “the term ... [a] person uses for himself or herself...” How is this a completely unreasonable viewpoint? And I'm not going to even pretend that I've reviewed all of the other opinions about MOS:IDENTITY's applicability in that RM. AgnosticAphid talk 02:46, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
The fact that the policy can be interpreted to mean two entirely different things (that it applies when there is no dispute over what to call a subject, or that it applies when there is no dispute over what a subject calls himself/herself) suggests to me that it is completely useless as policy and needs to be changed. GabrielF (talk) 02:59, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
It does need to be changed, but the manner in which it needs to be changed needs to be consistent with the naming policy, and the discussion on how we should change the naming policy to address this and similar issues is on hold until after the digestion of the Manning RM. So I think it's a bit unfortunate to find ourselves with such an unclear policy at such a consequential juncture, but I do think it's best to wait for at least a little while, and perhaps we can all take solace in the fact that future discussion will be robust because in my admittedly brief time watching this page that controversial discussions here never seem to lack for participants. AgnosticAphid talk 03:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
Agnosticaphid, that interpretation you quote is demonstrably false. I have already posted the changes in how the text was written and a link to the 2008 discussion that resulted in the "Disputes over.... When there is no dispute...."' language being introduced. They make it incontrovertibly clear that the "dispute" language was only introduced to make it clear that MOS:IDENTITY was not attempting to overrule policies on what names to use. But that someone reading MOS:IDENTITY as it is currently written might have the incorrect interpretation of it you have noted is a good reason to eliminate that part of it. 99.192.91.135 (talk) 03:20, 30 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192...)
But really, who cares what those five people thought either? I have no real knowledge of the underlying history of when MOS:IDENTITY was created, but I thought it was a bit of a broader collaboration between a few groups of people. Some people came along later and made essentially the same argument people are making here in this section and changed the text accordingly. They did a poor job and now we're stuck with this unclear text that needs to be fixed at some point. But there's nothing special about what those original people thought, I don't think. It's not like we operate under some system of strict precedent or something; we don't need to defer to the original judgment. Opinions there or here about the exact phrasing of these two sentences are massively swamped by the opinions people have expressed in the Manning RM about MOS:IDENTITY and – though I could be wrong – they're likely to be massively swamped by the future discussion on this issue at WT:AT. AgnosticAphid talk 03:41, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
"But really, who cares what those five people thought either?" Since they wrote the passage being misread, I would say it matters a great deal what they thought. If you want to know what the text means, it is worth knowing what the people who wrote it said they were saying and what they were changing the text from. 99.192.91.135 (talk) 03:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
  • Oppose the proposal as written. The guideline does need strengthening and clarifying, but massacring it is not the way to achieve that goal. Thryduulf (talk) 14:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Thryduulf. Removing "when there is no dispute" may be appropriate; find a better example than "Jew" is also a good idea. Removing the rest would be overkill. -sche (talk) 19:23, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Establishing a default is absolutely a useful thing to do; while the wording could certainly be improved (perhaps replace "When there is no dispute" with "Normally"), but that's no reason to delete the entire text. —me_and 22:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Alternative proposed wording for MOS:IDENTITY

I propose replacing the current wording of MOS:IDENTITY with that below. It incorporates all aspects of the current guidance and so supercedes it in its entirety. Thryduulf (talk) 15:15, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

  • The Wikipedia:Biographies of living people (BLP) policy must be complied with at all times. If there is a dispute regarding any information about a living person's identity, the course of action that will be least likely to harm the subject should be taken until the dispute is resolved. In almost all cases, complying with a subject's expressed wishes is the least harmful action to take.
  • Articles about people should refer to them using the terms they use for themselves where this is known. This applies to the subject's gender, sexuality, religious affiliation (or lack of affiliation), ethnicity, and similar. If a person's preference changes at any point, then Wikipedia articles should use the latest verifiably expressed preference from that point forward in all cases, except where the subject's wishes are explicitly different to this.
  • Changes in religious affiliation should not be applied retroactively unless it is clear that the subject wishes otherwise. Changes in gender, sexuality and ethnicity should be applied retroactively unless the subject expresses a clear wish to the contrary. Where statements by the subject are unclear or ambiguous then the defaults here should be used until the subjects views become clear. Previous names and identities should only be included in an article where they are relevant and encyclopaedic.
  • Always use the names, gendered nouns (e.g. "waiter" or "waitress", "actor" or "actress") and pronouns appropriate to a persons latest expressed gender. This applies to all periods of their life unless the subject unambiguously requests otherwise. Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions, but only do so when necessary - in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions; " [sic]" may be used if required. Nevertheless, avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage (for example: instead of He gave birth to his first child, write He became a parent for the first time). In all cases a reliably primary source is sufficient to verify the subject's wishes. In the case of discrepancy between sources, primary sources should be given greater weight than others regarding a subject's identity.
  • Where the preference of a subject is not known then in most cases the terms most commonly used by members of the group for themselves should be used (For example, see the article Jew, which demonstrates that most Jews prefer that term to "Jewish person".). An exception to this is where there is a clear consensus among reliable sources to do otherwise, whether the terms used in recent or contemporary sources for historical figures are preferred will depend on the subject area and nature of the sources.
  • Use specific terminology. For example, often it is more appropriate for people from Ethiopia (a country in Africa) to be described as Ethiopian, not carelessly (with the risk of stereotyping) as African.
  • The adjective Arab (never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic) refers to people and things of ethnic Arab origin. The term Arabic refers to the Arabic language or writing system, and related concepts (Not all Arab people write or converse in Arabic).
  • Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by policies such as Biographies of living people, Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles where the term appears in the title of an article. Note though that sources published prior to any announced change in preference are not relevant for determining the common name of a subject for the period after the change.

--- -

This is a style manual, it serves as a guideline for matters of style, but it does not generally discuss deeper matters such as how to treat article subjects. There is already a very good place to discuss policies related to living persons, and that is WP:BLP. Sweeping changes to BLP should be discussed at that page, not here. There are several reasons for this: policy should be consolidated rather than spread across multiple documents in order to avoid having different pages conflict with each other, and the MOS is considerably weaker than BLP. Compare the tags at the top of each article.GabrielF (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
It would be useful to highlight what the changes you're proposing are, ie what you've added and/or deleted. —me_and 22:20, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
As I say at the top, this proposal is to delete everything that's there at the moment and replace it with this. The penultimate two bullets ("use specific terminology", and "The adjacetive Arab) are identical, consider the rest as new. It retains some of the same phrases but not always in the same order or the same place. Thryduulf (talk) 21:29, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose. We have an entire Category:Impostors of people who are specifically notable for saying one thing about their identity, and most reliable sources saying something else. Then there is Category:Criminals, a noticeable fraction of whom are still claiming innocence despite being convicted. And some of each, non-negligible numbers of each, are living. Of course it harms these living persons when we write bad things about them; but it can still be the right thing to do. --GRuban (talk) 21:27, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Eh? What have criminals and imposters got to do with gender or religious identity? Thryduulf (talk) 21:29, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Nothing, but that is not what your proposal says. It merely says "identity", and that's exactly what an impostor is lying about. Insert those words into your proposal, and we have a different story. --GRuban (talk) 21:34, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
Nothing in that proposal stops us writing harmful things about people, it just requires us to get consensus to do so first and to use the least harmful way to describe them until there is consensus. If there is no dispute that all the reliable sources call someone an imposter or criminal then we note that all the reliable sources call them that.
If a someone presents themself of as a woman while considering themself to be male then we refer to them as male, they consider themself female we refer to them as female. If we don't verifiably know what they consider their gender to be we go by what reliable sources use. Being a criminal is not a matter of personal identity but a status defined externally - you are objectively a convicted criminal or you are objectively not a convicted criminal. If the subject is convicted but considers themself innocent we report neutrally that they consider themselves innocent, but they are still guilty. Thryduulf (talk) 21:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

MOS:IDENTITY proposal 2

Latest comment: 11 years ago22 comments13 people in discussion

The current phrasing

  • Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman"), pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life. Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and " [sic]" may be used where necessary). Nevertheless, avoid confusing or seemingly logically impossible text that could result from pronoun usage (for example: instead of He gave birth to his first child, write He became a parent for the first time).

clearly produces absurd results. I have two counter-proposals, which have not but fully discussed in the current discussion, currently in closure.

  1. Replace the second sentence with:
    • This only applies during the period in which the person is identified with that gender; editors' discretion is to be used in regard pronouns referring to times in which the person is clearly of the opposite gender.
    • (Note that the third sentence is still needed.)
  2. Replace the last sentence with:
    • Nevertheless, avoid confusing or seeming logical impossible text that could result from pronoun use by eliminating the pronoun, rather than obfuscation:
      • Instead of He gave birth to his first child, (logically impossible), or
      • He became a parent for the first time (removing information likely to be considered relevant), use
      • She gave birth to her first child (as the person was a "she" at the time), (only if the first change is made; otherwise this should be a {{!xt}} or just removed)
      • Name gave birth to Name's first child (avoid pronouns entirely).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs)

Oppose #1 This is inconsistent with the closest thing that we have to evidence regarding the way gender identity really works in humans. As for #2, the example doesn't make it clear why any change is needed. "She gave birth to her first child" doesn't have anything obviously wrong with it, and it might take the users a little longer to get what we're talking about than with the current example. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:32, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Comment: Number 1 is obviously not acceptable to the large number of editors who believe that nobody other than the subject has any say about what gender they "clearly" were in the past. As for number 2, I personally find constructions such as "Name gave birth to Name's first child" unacceptable. Pronouns cannot always be avoided in English. – Smyth\talk 13:41, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Both In (1) the phrase "the person is identified with that gender" uses the passive voice, which makes it unclear who is doing the identifying. If you mean "typically reliable sources identify the person with that gender" then it is a bad policy because sources can make mistakes. If a woman who has always self-identified as a woman tricks the world by pretending to be a man, then otherwise reliable sources will erroneously use "he" and "him", an error Wikipedia should not be committed to maintaining once the truth is known. Also, "editors' discretion is to be used" is just to say that the guideline offers no guidance. The guideline should offer something better than that. In (2) you claim that "He gave birth to his first child" actually is "logically impossible", but it is not. The guideline as written only calls this "seemingly" logically impossible, which is better (although still not great). The advice given in the original is not good, but the suggested revision makes it worse. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 14:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Support though the wording may need to be tweaked. I strongly support the examples given, which clearly illustrate the problems with the wordings in red. We often know the previous gender of transsexuals. Christine Jorgensen stated that she was a boy. Jan Morris married and fathered five children. I don't think that there is any doubt that Chelsea Manning was born with a male body and once identified as a gay male. These are matters of record. Michael Glass (talk) 14:46, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Comments: In my example, the person is now male, but had been functionally female at the time, and gave birth. "He gave birth to a child" is apparently impossible, and "She gave birth to a child" violates the present guidelines. We are not here to right great wrongs, but are here to write an encyclopedia. Although we need not slavishly follow professional style guides (see my comments re WP:LQ), which would suggest we should not even consider the present formulation, we should strive to be clear and accurate, not necessarily kind. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Arthur Rubin, is there any example of the "we don't have to be kind" statement that has nothing to do with transgender people that you can name?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Georgia guy, I agree with AR that for Wikipedia, clarity and accuracy trumps concern about people's feelings. I suppose I could ask you if you know of any case where clarity and accuracy have come into conflict with kindness and Wikipedia sided with kindness. Because unless you can give such an example, it might just be the case that the two things almost never conflict. The best other example of them coming into conflict I can come up with is a bit trite, but it does show taking clarity and accuracy over feelings. Wikipedia has an article titled "Trekkie" that tells us that "Trekkie is 'frequently depreciative', thus, 'not an acceptable term to serious fans', who prefer Trekker." The title of the article is the common name, as WP:AT requires and Trekker just redirects to it. This despite the explicit acknowledgement that most fans take the word to be insulting them. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Arthur Rubin, your proposal would leave the first sentence of the guideline intact. That sentence says we should use the pronouns that reflect "that person's latest expressed gender self-identification". Thomas Beatie began to self-identify as male at age 10, began to live as a man at age 23, and had sex reassignment surgery at age 28. Various governments recognized him as legally male. At age 34, while still identifying as a man, Beatie gave birth for the first time. He has given birth two more times since. So even with your proposed revision, Beatie's article should continue to report that "As a man, he gave birth to all three of his children from 2008 to 2010." 99.192.79.173 (talk) 17:07, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
WP:LQ is a poor example. In that case, the style guides almost universally say that Wikipedia's current policy is wrong. With respect to gendered pronouns, there's a split such that it is not clear what the English language itself requires. It actually makes more sense to follow style guides in the case of WP:LQ than to develop our own system, as here. However, in both cases, we see a lot of people claiming to care about accuracy when they're really working from emotion and assumption. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:33, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
(ec) In regard "we don't have to be kind", yes. There are a number of kooks (with articles) on Wikipedia, and we can accurately say that they are "kooks" (people with a reality deficiency?) if adequately sourced. Alexander Plutonium (who no longer has an article) and Florentin Smarandache (who no longer has an article; damn, I would have !voted Keep as he's a notable kook) come to mind. Well, I think we're being too kind to Immanuel Velikovsky and Stanislaw Burzynski, although some might say that they are still attack pages. The latter article is still attacked by his supporters.
In regard Thomas Beatie, you're right. That discredits my argument against the second sentence of that bullet point, but a strong argument for rewriting the fourth sentence, as we clearly should say "He gave birth ...."
As for trans people, I'm good friends with James Robinson (filk musician) and fairly well acquainted with Alexander James Adams, both of whom, in public and in private, refer to his previous identity as a female as another person. The latter article is a good example of what should be done, disregarding this guideline, but respecting both reality and his self-image. It generally avoids pronouns, but refers to him as "(Heather) Alexander" as a woman, and "Adams" as a man. This guideline should be rewritten to support this article, rather than the article damaged in an effort to follow this guideline. This may be atypical trans self-image, but it's what/who I know. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose both. I don't think the current guideline "produces absurd results", but I think it could be made to by adopting these changes. The first proposal is simply re-treading ground covered by WT:MOS#MOS:Identity, and amounts to a back-door repeal of the guideline. (As 99.192 puts it, '"editors' discretion is to be used" is just to say that the guideline offers no guidance'.) It should be rejected on procedural grounds. The second change introduces (indeed, prescribes) a style most find to be a bad style (see e.g. Bearcat's comment about Councillor Smith). -sche (talk) 17:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
-sche, I hated the Councillor Smith example when it was first made, but ignored it then. But since you mention it, the example shows what happens when someone avoids pronouns, but does not even bother to try to write well. It does not take a genius to rewrite the passage so that no pronouns are used, but so that it is not ridiculous. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 17:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
It might take a genius to keep it up for a whole article. Formerip (talk) 18:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Nope. I have previously offered this example, but it bears repeating. Because of the gender ambiguity of the character Eli in the novel and film for Let the Right One In, the plot summaries for both have been written with no reference to Eli's gender. Eli is a main character and the summaries are several paragraphs long each, yet there is never a pronoun used for Eli in either. No genius was required. 99.192.79.173 (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2013 (UTC) (99.192....)
Let me guess. Does it say "Eli" over and over? Formerip (talk) 21:39, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose both: While recording someone's gender expression at the time is not an unreasonable goal, and sometimes may be worth expressly clarifying if it clarifies the actions they take, I feel this fundamentally misunderstands not only what it means to be trans, but the actual purpose of pronouns and names. A pronoun is used to refer to a person or thing, not used to describe them. In so far as they do any describing, they are used to describe that person in their current state, even if you are discussing them in past. You would, for instance, say "Mrs. Smith did X as a child", even if she was Miss Carpenter at that time in her life. This is because names and pronouns are used, primarily, to reference a person, not to describe them. There's also an entirely different problem involved in the simple nature of "what it means to be trans", as for many, perhaps even most, (but not all) trans people would say that they have *always* been the gender they identify as. It might be reasonable to insert a very narrow exception, a line like "unless the person who is being discussed requests otherwise" after the retrospective line, but even there, that feels bad from a "what do we use pronouns and names for" perspective. Cam94509 (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
That is the single best explanation of this issue that I have ever heard. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:31, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Cam94509's explanation is great. It's inconsistent with how we handle this issue in non-trans-related articles, it's inaccurate, and additionally, "editors' discretion" is not really a good thing to enshrine into policy with regard to this issue, as we've seen in the number of editors who are poorly informed and eager to push a POV on this issue. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
    @Roscelese: I assume the "it" in "it's inconsistent with..." refers to the changes to the MOS which Arthur Rubin is suggesting, rather than to Cam's explanation. Does it? -sche (talk) 04:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

When there is no dispute.

Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

It is clear that trans-phobia (conscious or not) is making some editors' priority to get rid of the policy that forces us to refer to people with the gender they choose.

It is true, however, that the policy has an issue of ambiguity and that it is being exploited actively to ignore it. Hence why I propose the following modification:

[[Disputes over how to refer to a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Article titles where the term appears in the title of an article. When a preference from the person or group can be verified, the term most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself. Wikipedia should use them too. (For example, see the article Jew, which demonstrates that most Jews prefer that term to "Jewish person".) ]]

I suspect this was the initial intention by adding when there is no dispute. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vexorian (talk • contribs) 11:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Your suspicion is wrong. There is a lot of text on this page, so it is hard to wade through it all, but up above I posted the progression of how the text was changed in April 2008 and a link to the discussion on this talk page at the time about it. The text had read this:
"Use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification) whenever this is possible. Use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself."
Concerns were expressed that this made it sound like the MOS was in conflict with several policies. As a result, the text was revised as follows:
"Disputes over the proper name of a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Naming conventions where the name appears in an article name. When there is no dispute, use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself."
The first sentence was inserted to make it clear that these three policies do have priority. The phrase "when there is no dispute" is needed to make it clear that the second and third sentences are not in conflict with the first. As you have suggested rewriting it, it looks like they could conflict (in cases where the way of referring is in dispute AND a subject has stated a clear preference). So the idea was to make it clear that the self-preferred term is what we use so long as there is no dispute. A month later, in May 2008, an editor made a further revision. This seems based on the recognition that it is rather odd to offer guidance about to do "when there is no dispute". After all, if there really is no dispute, why should anyone need advice on what to do? So the wording was changed from one that offers advice to one that merely states the obvious, although using advice-phrasing resulted in an afterthought final clause:
"When there is no dispute, the name most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself; Wikipedia should use them too."
If you want to check out these bits of editing history for yourself, follow these links: The April 2008 edits, the April 2008 talk page discussion, and the May 2008 edits. 99.192.77.201 (talk) 12:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)
Just for info, nobody and nothing "forces" us to do anything. WP:BURO and WP:IAR. Something that those with more strident views and larger soapboxes among us sometimes seem to conveniently forget. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:55, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I do not believe that this proposed revision makes anything more clear. Consider the following: "When a preference from the person or group can be verified, the term most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself" In a case where the name "most commonly used" by reliable sources is different from the article subject's expressed preference, this wording would essentially redefine the words "most commonly used" to mean something that they do not ordinarily mean. We would essentially be saying that even if term A is most commonly used by reliable sources, as long as term B is preferred by the article subject then by fiat, term B becomes most commonly used. That's downright Orwellian. GabrielF (talk) 21:30, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

The way the policy reads right now is that Verifiability and Neutral point of view GENERALLY apply but not apply in the SPECIFIC case of gender identity in which case the subject's preferences are all one needs to know. Would Wikipedia have


--Brian Dell (talk) 07:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Brief informative headings

Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I invite all editors (new and old) to read (or re-read) Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 142#Brief informative headings (June 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 15:06, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Ha! Touche, Wavelength. Kell (talk) 15:22, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
+1 -sche (talk) 08:58, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Thread retitled from "A request for comment on a proposal to have year-in articles henceforth add reader useful links within "monthly" section headings with respect to Manual of Style#Section headings".

An administrator has stated that I should begin a request for comment (as in here).

The following is a request for comment on a proposal to have year-in articles henceforth add reader useful links within "monthly" section headings with respect to WP:MOS.

Wikipedia:Manual of Style states in subsection Section headings that, "Headings should not normally contain links.

I have italized the word "normally" because I believe that I have discovered an instance where a section heading should have a link. The link would achieve the wikipedian editors' accepted practice of helping the reader. The linking would introduce a labor saving step of linking to the source whereupon the following data was drawn from.

Year-in articles (e.g. 2008 in the United States, 2010 in science, 2012 in film), as well as, year articles (e.g. 1982, 2013, 1603) are considered I quote, "intrinsically chronological articles" (as is stated here). As such, these articles gain a large, thou not complete, immunity from WP:OVERLINKING of dates.

In the "Events", "Births", and "Deaths" subsections of these year-in articles data is routinely added to the monthly subsections by editors. Since 1999 and most especially since 2004, the quote/unquote events and quote/unquote deaths have been daily drawn from pages such as these May 2011 and Deaths in October 2008. The year-in subsections "Events","Births", and "Deaths" have been filled into monthly subsections by editors whom believe that certain daily items warrant notability.

In particular, I state that I have for the last three years been far-and-away the major good-shepard editor of the year-in wiki articles for the United States (e.g. 2011 in the United States, 2012 in the United States, 2013 in the United States) as is proven here (ip 70.162 was me also), here, and here.

I would like to add links within the months subsection headings (as I have done here). I would like to add links to the months instead of a "{ {see also} }" since it would be less ubtrusive and more accurate, and thereby, more useful, to the reader.

Although I believe that all year-in articles should use this format I am only today seeking to change the year-in the United States wiki pages for the years that can be linked 1999 thru present since (1) these are the only years currently available and (2) "I" only routinely patrol the United States articles and do not wish to force other countries or catagories good-faith shepards to abide by this change if they are not so willing.--68.231.15.56 (talk) 07:00, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Obsolete personal name in title

Latest comment: 11 years ago10 comments9 people in discussion
This is implausible and going nowhere. If such a happenstance were to come to pass i'm sure we could deal with it without legislating it.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:18, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Thread retitled from "what if someone says they want to be addressed by a new name, but say they want their page to still have the old one so people not in the know can still find out about them easily?".

what if someone says they want to be addressed by a new name, but say they want their page to still have the old one so people not in the know can still find out about them easily? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.144.40 (talk) 21:08, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd be honestly surprised if anyone actually said that. That said, pages about people that have went by multiple names will often contain those names, or redirects to that page from those names. See Nicolas Cage for an easy example, and then try searching for his given name.
Because it is a very simple thing to set up, and would have clear ties to the old name, then that particular concern would be dealt with, I would think. Kell (talk) 21:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) Whenever a subject (a person, an arena, etc) is known by multiple names, redirects are created so that people who type in any of the names reach the article. Your scenario is highly implausible; I wouldn't object if someone hatnoted it the way WT:MOS#what_if_someone_tries_to_claim_different_genders_and.2For_names_so_often_that_it_will_confuse_people.2C_and_be_hard_to_keep_up_to_date.3F was hatnoted, above. -sche (talk) 21:25, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
    • what if you're using google?
When I was in school, whenever an authority figure came to give a presentation there was always one kid who would make a game out of insisting that they explain in excruciating detail how they would handle the most completely implausible scenario. They used to torment the poor guy from the fire department by asking them the precise response time to climb up to the tallest roof on campus. Generally, adults outgrow these games.GabrielF (talk) 21:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I am revising the heading of this section from what if someone says they want to be addressed by a new name, but say they want their page to still have the old one so people not in the know can still find out about them easily? to Obsolete personal name in title, in harmony with WP:TPOC, point 13 (Section headings). Please see Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines. The new heading facilitates recognition of the topic in links and watchlists and tables of contents, and it facilitates maintenance of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

What if Michelle Obama turned into a ice cream, so you updated Wikipedia but then you realised it was a dream so you tried to self-revert but you couldn't because you'd forgotten the URL for Wikipedia and you'd forgotten the URL for Google and you'd turned into an ice cream yourself? Is there a specific policy about this? Formerip (talk) 22:09, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

See WP:DENY.—Wavelength (talk) 22:15, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
The simple answer to the question is... Our policy is to use whatever name is most frequently used by a significant majority of sources... regardless of the wishes of the individual. This is in line with WP:COMMONNAME, WP:UNDUE, and a host of other policy and guideline provisions. Blueboar (talk) 23:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
My one concern here with using the majority of sources is weird cases like trans* and some other minority stuff, where mainstream culture and minority culture issues clash in a way that's decidedly troublesome. An awful lot of trans* folks, for example, get kicked around in mainstream news sources, despite whatever amount of work (little or big) they've put into their lives. It strikes me as a rough way to treat human dignity, let alone Wikipedia:DIGNITY. 2602:306:C435:8719:3DC4:8440:925B:111D (talk) 06:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Slash"

Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The usage of Slash (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is under discussion, see talk:Slash (musician) -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 05:41, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Should we really yield to gender identity when one's biological sex is vitally important?

Latest comment: 11 years ago86 comments39 people in discussion
A request at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure yielded only the following comment:
Because the "should we yield?" thread opened with a loaded question rather than a proposal to change the MOS in any specific/concrete way, and because several discussions covering the same part of the MOS (but, in contrast to the "yield" thread, making concrete proposals for change) were started while the "yield" thread was ongoing or shortly after it closed (and because later discussions eclipse earlier ones), I humbly suggest that the "yield" thread has already been 'closed' (meaning, shut so that further contributions are not accepted) by the archive bot, and that any further 'closure' (meaning inference of a 'consensus' for a concrete change to the MOS from the discussion) is probably not possible. In particular, WT:MOS#Gender self-identification covers substantially the same ground as the "yield" thread. To a much lesser extent, Archive 146#Gender and direct quotations opens by questioning a different sentence but the same general section/sentiment of MOS:IDENTITY, Archive 146#Inconsistent pronouns questions whether or not to keep pronouns consistent within an article, which is semi-relevant to the "yield" OP's question of whether or not to say "'she' fathered a child", WT:MOS#RfC on pronouns throughout life rehashes the "inconsistent pronouns" discussion, and WT:MOS#Gender, direct quotations and sic rehashes the "direct quotations" discussion. -sche (talk) 21:25, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

So I think the gender identity policy is odd. Under a situation like Chelsea Manning's, we could have a "she" father a child in the fully biological way. Should we really yield to gender identity when one's biological sex is vitally important? (I understand the wisdom of changing gender following sex change operations)jj (talk) 15:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC) ( I logged in)

Yes. Personal identity is vitally important, and I'd argue considerably more vital than biological sex. —me_and 15:57, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
I disagree. Biology is essential to the survival of the human race. jj (talk) 15:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Sure, biology is essential to the survival of the human race. But using the pronouns a transgender person has asked people use isn't going to impact anyone's biology nor impede our ongoing survival. —me_and 16:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Touche, but this website is meant to reflect reality, not mere feelings. Could a Filipino ask to be called hispanic, white (or vice-versa) and we do a change just based on his/her word? jj (talk) 16:06, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
If someone identifies as a different gender, we should respect that, and use the pronouns they choose. A person's biological sex does not dictate the pronouns that should be used to refer to them. See GLAAD's Media Reference Guide: A Resource for Journalists: "Whenever possible, ask transgender people which pronoun they would like you to use. A person who identifies as a certain gender, whether or not that person has taken hormones or had some form of surgery, should be referred to using the pronouns appropriate for that gender." Per the AP Stylebook, "use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly". – GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't seem disrespectful to note that, with extremely few exceptions, we all are either male or female. A male who wishes to become female strikes me as similar to someone who wishes to become a doctor: I hope you respect my decision, but I wouldn't expect you to refer to me as "doctor" until I've actually taken the steps to become one. I mean, just factually, you don't become one just by deciding you want to. 71.209.109.202 (talk) 22:09, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
I very strongly encourage you to read up about transsexualism before commenting further. Trans* people do not simply "decide" to become male or female, they realises that they are, and always have been, male or female. In a way you are correct that one does not simply become either a female or a doctor simply by choosing to be one, but that is coincidental and claiming that there is any relevance to the comparison is disrespectful. Whether that disrespect stems from an lack of understanding or deliberate intention to offend (and I am not labelling your statement as either), is of little relevance to those people who have to deal with it on a daily basis. Thryduulf (talk) 01:07, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
  • No. There is a similar topic bubbling away at the film project. MOS:IDENTITY is a guideline, while WP:VERIFIABLE is a policy, and guidelines do not trump policies. If WP:V and MOS:IDENTITY conflict, then the policy takes precedence. That has always been the case with other policies and guidelines, and this is no different. Betty Logan (talk) 16:27, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't see where WP:V comes into play here. In this particular situation, we can verify both that Chelsea Manning is biologically male, and that she identifies as female. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:32, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
The question seems to be presented as a general one so I answered in that capacity. However, I can think of many different circumstances of where MOS:ID would not be easily accommodated. For instance, even in one of the examples the guidelines gives "He became a parent for the first time" in place of "She gave birth for the first time" obsfucates a verifiable fact. Likewise, "He had a hysterectomy" is a biological impossibility. If Angelina Jolie became a man, it would be incongruous to say "He is married to Brad Pitt". MOS:IDENTITY only really relates to matters of self-identity, but once you move from a gender context to a biological sex context, then WP:V requires us to put the guideline aside. Betty Logan (talk) 16:50, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
It depends on what you mean by "biological sex context." In most cases, discussion of the biology of human gender is not relevant to the article about the subject. Chaz Bono's article, for example, does not require such a discussion. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I think my comments make it obvious what a "biological sex context" is. If the subject gave birth, then that is female biological action; if she marries as a woman, that likewise is a biologically female act. When we are describing biologically female acts, the subject should not be presented as male. If MOS:ID prevents us from presenting a verifiable fact as a clearly as possible it should be put aside. Betty Logan (talk) 17:11, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Your comments did not make your meaning clear. I had thought you were talking about a situation in which issues of the biology of gender became relevant to the subject's life. I couldn't remember her name in time to include it in my post, but the article about Caster Semenya, for example, does merit a discussion of these issues because Semenya is best known for a gender-based controversy that involved a semipolitical issue, in this case gender testing in sports. This isn't the case with Chaz Bono or with Chelsea/Bradley Manning. So no, I didn't think you meant giving birth when you said "biological context."
Marriage is not a biological act. It is a social act. That has more to do with gender in the sense of gender role than gender in the sense of being intrinsically male or female.
As for presenting verifiable facts clearly, the article absolutely should say "Chelsea Manning was named Bradley Manning at birth and raised male." MoS:ID does not prevent this in any way. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:28, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
A wedding may be a social function but a male/female marriage is a biological act, unless it is not consummated, although we assume most are. Even if you make it clear someone was born male, then it is still incongruous if you describe them as "She" in a context in which they fulfil a biologically male role. To take an example from the Manning article, this sentence has been reduced to farce: Raised as a boy, Manning was regarded as small for her age – as an adult, he reached just 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg). This sentence refers to him in male capacity twice, and a female capacity once. This is a prime example of where MOS:ID should be put aside. The claim specifically relates to the biological traits of a young boy, and here language is deliberately obsfucating a verifiable fact. Betty Logan (talk) 17:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Consummation is biological, but we can have sexual intercourse without marriage and marriage without sexual intercourse. Vows are intellectual and social, often spiritual. Think about it: What is a wedding vow, really? It's a promise made to one's partner and one's community. Men and women can both do this and they do it in almost exactly the same way. Almost any animal can consummate a sexual interaction, but only humans can marry.
The sentence that you cite is not in compliance with MoS:ID. MoS: ID It requires that female pronouns be used in all cases. It should say, "Raised as a boy, Manning was regarded as small for her age. As an adult, she reached just 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weight 105 lb (47.6 kg)," though it could probably be reworded to use fewer gendered pronouns. This is a case of MoS:ID being insufficiently enforced, not a case in which MOS:ID needs to be put aside. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:05, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Re-writing the sentence as you suggest may make it compliant with MOS:ID, but would violate WP:V. His stature was considered in relation to being a biological male, so should be presented in the context that is imparted by the sources. Using a female pronoun in this particular context obsfucates a factual claim. Betty Logan (talk) 18:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
How would it violate WP:V? The fact in question is whether Manning is male or female for the purposes of gendered pronouns on Wikipedia. That Manning is female in this sense has been verified: Manning declared it publicly.
Referring to the young Manning with female pronouns is consistent with the idea that Manning did not become female as an adult but rather was always female and only discovered this fact later in life. There is no deceit here, only a misconception that has been corrected. If a country music singer had always maintained that she'd been born in Nashville but later finds her birth certificate and sees that she was born in Memphis, we don't have to refer to her as being born in Nashville, even when discussing parts of her life during which she believed that to be true.
As for the "small for his/her age" issue, the problem that you describe can be handled in context. The passage just said that Manning had been raised as a boy. It is likely that the reader will know that Manning was being evaluated using boys' height figures. To be extra safe, it could be reworded saying "Manning's height was below average for boys her age" or "Manning was shorter than what was at that time considered average height for a boy." It's not a gendered-pronoun issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:42, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
The use of the female pronoun in such instances removes clarity from expressing a factual claim. It undermines WP:V, not least because you are not representing the claim as clearly as possible. You are effectively introducing wordplay to alter the context and expression of a fact that is not present in the source. MOS:IDENTITY is a nice guiding principle to have, but not if it compromises the documenting of fact, which is the over-riding goal of Wikipedia. In cases where the events of a person's life or facts about them are clearly contingent on them being biologically male/female then they shouldn't be compromised by revisionist gender pronouns. Betty Logan (talk) 20:01, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't understand how using "she" alters the context. What facts do you believe are being obscured? This is not a rhetorical question. I actually don't see what you're getting at.
As far as being "biologically male" or "biologically female," unless someone has tested Manning's chromosomes, blood chemistry, run an fMRI, and published the results, we cannot rightly claim to know to which biological sex Manning belongs. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:11, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Biological sex is vitally important, but let's first establish what that is. The biological characteristics associated with gender in humans are genes/chromosomes, gene expression, body chemistry, anatomy with respect to primary sexual characteristics, and anatomy with respect to secondary sexual characteristics, which includes brain anatomy. These things don't always match. The clearest example of this is that people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome can have XY chromosomes and plenty of testosterone in their blood but they also have breasts and female-seeming genitals. They usually don't even know they're not ordinary women until they're adults, an most of them continue to identify as female after they learn of it. So yes, biological sex is what causes gender identity, but biological sex is not limited to whether or not someone has a penis. It is most likely that trans people are trans because they have the brain anatomy or body chemistry or some other real, non-imagined measurable characteristic of the gender in which they wish to identify, but this has yet to be proven concretely. So okay, we can assume that Manning has had male external genitalia this whole time, but what about all that other stuff? Because we cannot give every subject a brain scan, blood workup and entirely hypothetical exam based on scientific discoveries not yet made, we should not base Wikipedia policy on this information. So what are we to do? Calling Manning male makes a political statement and calling Manning female makes a political statement. We're stuck either way, so we might as well do what we do with every other subject and take Manning's word for it. At least that's polite. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

  • Yes. The primary thing we go on when looking at people's gender is just that: their gender presentation and self-identification. If asked, I tell people I'm a man, and I appear as a man. It is a rare and privileged minority that get to confirm that my gender presentation and self-identification matches my biological sex. I don't know whether I in fact have XY chromosomes: it is not something I have tried to check. As for sex organs, you'll just have to trust me that it is not a sock stuffed down there.
    For the vast majority of people, their gender presentation, their gender self-identification and their biological sex will be the same and will not be an issue for them. But for a pretty small number of people who are trans the important thing we should do under WP:BLP is to treat them with the dignity and respect to identify them as they identify themselves. Just as we rightly have policies that say that a person is the ultimate decider of their religion, sexual identity and so on, it is profoundly undignified to have a situation where someone is misgendered by Wikipedia. If we are unable to follow the subject's wishes regarding their gender identity, then our BLP policy is failing article subjects.
    Let's not be get caught up in arguments over the relative merits of Manual of Style vs. WP:COMMONNAME here. The ultimate issue is one of BLP and treating subjects fairly. In a case like Manning, where we have a clear and pretty unequivocal statement of their wishes regarding name and pronoun use, it is absolutely unfair on her as a subject to not respect those wishes. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:43, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
  • @Tom Morris - *re "Let's not be get caught up in arguments....The ultimate issue is one of BLP" - Complete shenenigans. BLP doesn't tell us to treat folks "fairly". It tells us to treat folks "verifiably". If it's verifiable that someones COMMONNAME is Jack, there name is Jack. Period. Since when has WP been about "respecting wishes". We aren't in the game of "respecting wishes" in the game of delivering verifiable information. NickCT (talk) 20:20, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

To repeat a comment I made at the Manning RM discussion: consider how we would handle it if Manning said he'd always felt that he was blue-skinned (say), and was thinking of getting a full-skin tattoo to match his body image. Would we mangle the article so as to imply that his skin was always blue? I suspect that we would not, and that there would be no controversy about this. A statement that some BLP subject always felt they were blue-skinned would be a reason to edit the article to say that the subject always felt that they were blue-skinned, but policy would not support editing the article to say that the subject had always been blue-skinned and that was why they were dyeing their skin blue. So likewise with penises. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 18:18, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The article is currently just misleading. The extensive and retrospective use of female pronouns, resulting in "she was arrested", "she was sentenced" etc, simply imply that Manning was always female. If someone unfamiliar with the topic started to read the article as it stands now, with a photo of a man in the infobox, that reader would be throughly confused by the second paragraph.
Manning became notable as a man, and has openly identified as a female for a matter of hours. The recent radical changes to the article skew the prose to a most unhelpful degree. Furthermore, I don't really understand the idea that we have to kow-tow to the subject's wishes regarding his/her Wikipedia article. How about if Lance Armstrong self-identifies as drug-free? Do we say, "Aw, OK, then, we don't want to upset him"...? Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
A variety of professional medical associations recognize that gender identity is something that's personal and internal. [2] [3] [4] No professional organizations recognize one's drug status as being personal or internal. --Hirsutism (talk) 19:31, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Clearly, but neither instance presents a good reason to distort facts. Put simply: the article says "she was arrested". No female was arrested, and that is incontrovertible. Ergo, the sentence is misleading. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
According to many transgendered individuals, Manning was always female and merely discovered this later in life than most people. So yes, "she was arrested" would be factually accurate. When we talk about women who dressed up as men to fight in the Civil War, we say "she was promoted to lieutenant," even though everyone thought she was a man at the time.
Can I prove that Manning was always really a woman? No I can't. But no one can prove that Manning was really a man this whole time either. We should err on the side of being polite and take Manning's word for it, just as we take other people's. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
It may be factually accurate according to certain viewpoints, but it is still misleading. Your Civil War analogy isn't entirely similar, as Manning was never simply a woman pretending to be a man. The result of (for some reason) the desire to be polite is that a number of readers, possibly a large number, will not understand what has been written. Not all readers can be expected to get their heads around such a rewriting of history, which is what this is, as all historical sources refer to Manning as a man. I do not expect those sources to be rewritten with male pronouns substituted for female ones. Bretonbanquet (talk) 19:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand how using "she" is misleading. Manning is a woman for our purposes. Of course the article should say flat-out that Manning was raised male and was living as a man and believed to be a man at the time of her notability. Using "she" does not change this. That's not rewriting history. That's incorporating newly discovered information into the narrative. Otherwise we'd have to say that the sun circled around the earth when discussing any historical period during which this was commonly believed to be true. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:14, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
You seem to be implying that everyone accepts, or should accept, that Manning was always a woman, because Manning says so. I doubt that it's a widely-held viewpoint. I do not accept the logic behind why this practice should apply to gender and not anything or everything else. I have read GorillaWarfare's point below, and however widespread the practice may be, I believe it's still misleading, and largely unnecessary. Bretonbanquet (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Not everyone accepts that Manning merits (or ever merited) the pronoun "he" either. We can't prove that Manning is really a she. We can't prove that Manning is really a he. Manning's word for it might not be hard evidence, but it's enough to tip the scales. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:08, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • No No No - This policy seems to bring MOS:IDENTITY into clear and blatant conflict with WP:COMMONNAME. If I decide to call myself "Sarah", but the entire world refers to me as "Nick", it is just plain silly for Wikipedia to reflect my personal choice and not the viewpoint of THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD. Can someone point to another group of people that get to choose how they are named on WP?!?!?! Are transgendered folk special? Why do they deserve special consideration when we try to figure out what they should be called.........? Now for the record here, I want to say that I think it's a great thing when WP gives some consideration to self-identity, but this is just silly silly silly silly silly. Just silly. NickCT (talk)
(edit conflict) Referring to trans* people as their preferred pronoun, regardless of when they decided to start using said pronoun, is pretty standard practice. From GLAAD, "Avoid pronoun confusion when examining the stories and backgrounds of transgender people prior to their transition. It is usually best to report on transgender people's stories from the present day instead of narrating them from some point or multiple points in the past, thus avoiding confusion and potentially disrespectful use of incorrect pronouns." From Matt Kailey, "I would always use the person’s current pronoun, even when referring to something that person did in the past." – GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Here [5] is a good example (with one apparent lapse) of how easy it is to write something without using gender pronouns. Bretonbanquet (talk) 20:31, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
NickCT, you are confusing two independent questions: A person's gender and their name. The name used for an article title should be how they are commonly referred to, as WP:COMMONNAME says. But that does not say anything about what gender a person is or which gender should be used in reference to a person. WP:COMMONNAME should determine whether the name of the article is "Bradley Manning" or "Chelsea Manning". But within the article, whether the male or female pronoun is used is a separate question. In fact, while WP:COMMONNAME governs the title of an article, it does not even put a limitation on the name used for the person within an article. In the Metta World Peace article, he is referred to a "Artest" when discussing the parts of his life when that was his name, which is most of it (so far). In the case of Manning, WP:COMMONNAME says that the article right now should be titled "Bradley Manning", because that is her "common name". Within the article, it is fair to note that Manning now wants to use the name "Chelsea" instead of "Bradley". But since it is standard within an article to refer to a person solely by their surname, it will be just "Manning" in most of the article as a reference name. And none of that settles or even begins to address the issue of whether or not Manning should be referred to as "he" or "she". That's because her name and her "common name" are separate questions from her gender. 99.192.64.222 (talk) 22:17, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
@99.192.64.222 - Actually I stand partially correct here. For some reason when I first read "Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman"), pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification", I thought it was saying that we should use the self-identified name. It doesn't. It says we should use the self-identified pronoun. Good point-of-order IP.
Maybe a resolution is to call Manning "Bradley", but use "she" as the pronoun. I feel somewhat neutral toward that potential outcome. NickCT (talk) 22:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Are self-identified names often wrong?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:03, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
The title concern is a little more complex than the pronoun one. Most people know Manning as "Bradley Manning," as this is the name by which she has been referred up until extremely recently. Though there are many cases in which article titles do not much the subject's legal name (Marilyn Manson, not Brian Hugh Warner; Laura Jane Grace, not Thomas James Gabel), there are plenty of counterexamples where an article title is different from the subject's preferred name (Snoop Dogg, not Snoop Lion; Lily Allen, not Lily Rose Cooper). – GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:21, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
@Georgia guy - Self-identified names often aren't common names. NickCT (talk) 23:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare - re "The title concern is a little more complex than the pronoun one." - I think I'd agree with that. Purely speaking from a policy basis, my feeling now is that MOSIDENT supports the "her" pronoun, while COMMONNAME supports the use of Bradley. That seems somehow like a bit of a contradiction, no? Refusing to use the female name, but opting to use the female pronoun.... NickCT (talk) 23:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
NickCT: I agree that using both "Bradley" and "her" might seem odd, but some people have male names despite being female. Take Michael Learned, for example. 99.192.64.222 (talk) 23:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
NickCT: the question of how Manning should be referred to is a very lively debate right now on her talk page. I'll leave further discussion of that specific case to there.
Georgia guy: It depends on what you mean by "wrong", but even then it is probably not all that often wrong. A self-identified name can quite commonly be different from a person's legal name. Many celebrities have legal names different from their "credit" name. Also, many people use nicknames as a self-identified name that is not a legal name. The idea behind WP:COMMONNAME is that the default in naming an article should neither be to a person's self-identified name nor should it be to their legal name. It should be to however the person is most commonly known. "Snoop Dogg" is the common name of the person whose legal name is "Calvin Broadus" and who now self-identifies as "Snoop Lion". So sometimes all three are different. Which name is the "right" name and which are "wrong" depends on what you mean by "right" and "wrong" names. 99.192.64.222 (talk) 23:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Example: Is Christine Jorgensen the right name or a wrong name?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
It still depends on what you mean by "right". "Christine Jorgensen" was her legal name at the time of her death, so it is "right" in that regard. It also is the name she is best known by, so as a common name it is "right" in that regard. If you are talking about her early life when her legal and self-identified name was "George", it might be "wrong". But names are labels that pick out a person and do not necessarily telly you what a person's legal, self-identified, or common name is. So the sentence "Christine Jorgensen was born in New York" is true, even though her name was "George" at the time she was born. But it is also true that John Wayne was born in Iowa, even though his name was "Marion Morrison" at the time. (Note to NickCT: Using both "Marion" and "he" might seem odd, too, but that's what he was named). 99.192.64.222 (talk) 23:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
OT remark — the classic division is that Marion is a man's name and Marian is a woman's name, as with Francis for a man and Frances for a woman. By now Marion may be more common as a woman's name, but it was not always thus. --Trovatore (talk) 03:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Classic case of "nothing more than feelings" vs More Than a Feeling. All I know is when I have a Wikipedia article, I'm self-identifying as a pteranodon, science be damned. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:42, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes. This isn't rocket science, actually. For most people, their sex and their gender "match". Most people are either both male and a man or female and a woman. But in the case of a transgender person (who has not had sex reassignment surgery) a person can be male and a woman or female and a man. When gendered pronouns in the English language were developed long long ago, the idea that a person's sex and gender might not "match" was not a consideration. So the question, "when a person's sex does not 'match' their gender, which pronoun should be used?" was never thought necessary to ask. But in more recent times, it has become clear that it is a valid question and there are two straightforward answers: (1) Let's have pronouns track sex or (2) Let's have pronouns track gender.
The question of whether pronouns should track the person's sex or their gender is not intuitively obvious to many people. But for people who are not transgender it often seems more natural for pronouns to track sex while to those people who are transgender it generally seems obvious that pronouns should track gender. People who are not transgender, but who are sympathetic to the transgender community have generally decided that it is asking less of us to get over the fact that it might sound unfamiliar to us to use pronouns to refer to gender, not sex than it is to ask people to accept pronouns be applied to them that seem alien and false. Furthermore, that female pronouns seem less odd to those of us who are not transgender when a person who is biologically male "presents" herself as a woman suggests that our comfort with pronouns is only superficial, while a transgendered person's comfort with them is quite deep and personal. So both people who are transgender and their supporters have strongly advocated that pronouns should track gender, not sex.
In addition, a person's sex can change over time, but a person's gender does not. In this regard, gender is like sexual orientation. Even when a person who is gay "presented" themselves as heterosexual and even at a time in their life when they sincerely believed that they were heterosexual they were not. They were always gay, even if it took a bit of time to come to that realization and even more time before telling others. For a person born biologically male but whose gender is female the same is true. She is a "she" by gender from birth, regardless of biology, regardless of how she presents herself and even regardless of how she understands her own gender at earlier times in her life. Once she knows that she is a "she" and tells the world that she is a "she" it becomes a verifiable fact (for anyone worries about WP:V) that she was always a "she", even when she (biologically) fathered a child.
MOS:IDENTITY has been written to specifically acknowledge these facts. Since a person's gender does not change over time (regardless of whether or not the person's sex changes), it means that the correct pronoun to use for a male (sex) woman (gender) is "she" even when referring to a time when the person had a male name, male genitalia, and presented as a man - and even at a time when she (biologically) fathered a child.
"O brave new world, That has such people in't!" 99.192.64.222 (talk) 21:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
At this point I need to jump in with a clarification: The word "gender" has about five correct definitions in English. In ordinary speech, it means "state of being male or female" in general with no real implications about biology vs. sociology. "What gender is that kitten? It's female." In the social sciences, it's often used to mean "gender role" (society's rules and expectations for how male and female people should live and act) and even "gender identity" (a person's self-concept as being male or female). So if I say that biology determines gender (general sense) or if Anonymous User 99.192.64.222 says that we should ignore sex in favor of gender (gender role), nobody's using the word wrong. But it might help to drop a "gender role" or a "biological gender" out there for clarification when appropriate.
I'm saying this because the first (and second and third) time I heard a non-hard-scientist say "gender is culturally defined" I thought she had lost her mind. Years later I found out she was just using a different def. of "gender."
For me, I'm not too clear what Anon99 means by a person's sex changing over time. I know of frogs that can do that. If Anon99 means hormone treatment, surgery etc. then I'd say that some of the biological determinants of gender in humans can be altered. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:08, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, but not by the current methodology. I am a gay cisgender man who accepts transgender individuals as having the new name and gender they have chosen. After they do so. Simply put, the expressed preference of GLAAD and transgender individuals that a person should retroactively be referred to only as their new gender is nonsensical. It is not confusing to read a piece that describes a person as being born a man and living as a male (with male names and pronouns), explains the person's gender transition, and subsequently describes her using female names and pronouns. What is extremely confusing is to read a piece that mentions a person's male birth, but then describes the person using female names and pronouns when referring to a time when they were known as a male, especially when any source dating to that time will describe them as male.
Chelsea Manning is, to put it succinctly, a female man who is known as Bradley Manning. In the article, descriptions of Manning's life from now onwards should refer to her as Chelsea Manning. When describing Manning's childhood, service, and trial, he should be referred to as Bradley Manning to reflect the understanding of him that existed at the time. WP:IDENTITY should be modified to indicate that a change in name and gender references should occur only from the point at which the change in the person's identity was expressed. Further, it should make it explicit that a person's chosen name should not automatically become an article title if the person is still commonly known by a former name; the common name should remain the title, with the new name being used in the body of the article from the time that the name was adopted. --DavidK93 (talk) 01:52, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
DavidK93: "... gender they have chosen." To talk of a person choosing a gender is like talking of a person choosing a sexual orientation. People don't choose to be gay, straight, or bi. People don't choose their gender. Manning lived as a male and used male pronouns exactly like how some people who are gay live as heterosexuals (ie; date people of the opposite sex they have no attraction to and even get married to someone of the opposite sex and have kids) and explicitly deny being gay. But that does not mean that they suddenly become gay when they first come to realize that they are gay or when they first publicly acknowledge that they are gay. Same for transgender people. They don't have, as you put it, a "new" gender. They might have a new sex if they undergo surgery and hormone therapy, but not a new gender.
"When describing Manning's childhood, service, and trial, he should be referred to as Bradley Manning to reflect the understanding of him that existed at the time." We almost agree entirely on the issue of name. The one disagreement is at the end of the sentence of yours I just quoted. She should be referred to as "Bradley" for her life prior to today, but the reason for that is because until today that was her name. The name used should not be decided based on anyone's "understanding" of a person, but based solely on what the person's name actually was at the time. 99.192.64.222 (talk) 02:27, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't see how one can simultaneously believe that (1) gender is fluid; and (2) Bradley Manning's gender has always and immutably been female and we know this for a fact. We have Manning's assertion that she currently identifies as a woman and prior assertions that she was confused about her gender identity, but to extrapolate from that that Manning's gender has always been female is a bit much, especially given that admitted confusion. Dyrnych (talk) 03:11, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Dyrnych: Firstly, I agree that you can't believe both (1) and (2). But I don't believe (1). Gender is not "fluid". Secondly, there is a difference between being confused about your gender and it being "fluid". To use the example of sexuality, it is not uncommon for people to be confused about their sexuality at some point in their lives, but that does not mean that their sexuality changed. 99.192.70.178 (talk) 04:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC) (=99.192.64.222)
I was going to stay out of this, but... With regard to whether or not gender is fluid, I feel the need to point out genderqueer; there are indeed people who feel that their gender is fluid. Likewise, there are people who feel that their sexuality (though not necessarily their sexual orientation) is fluid; some people will simply think of those people as bisexual, but a lot of people who feel that their sexuality (in this case, sexual attraction to men, women or both) is fluid don't consider themselves bisexual. I'm also with Darkfrog24 on not understanding how a person's sex changes over time (unless it's what Darkfrog24 mentioned). I've never heard anyone until now assert that a person's sex changes, unless speaking of sex reassignment surgery; but even with sex reassignment (the surgery or non-surgery aspect of it), it is not as though a person's biological sex has changed to the point where even the DNA reads their sex differently. Flyer22 (talk) 03:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I have to disagree about one point. People don't choose to feel the attractions or the roles that their mind believes in, agreed. However, they DO choose when to come out and identify who they are or who they believe themselves to be. Up until this point, from the perspective of everybody except the individual in question, the person has been what they identified as until that point in a public sense. UNTIL Chelsea Manning identified as Chelsea Manning, she was a biological male who every other person on the planet identified as just that. I can happily accept that Chelsea feels as she does and is now identifying as a woman. What I can't happily accept is that this changes the past or that her simply saying "I am now this" makes it so, immediately and for all time past and present. There is no other facet of Wikipedia where we would ignore all other sources in favour of the views of the person themselves... Otherwise I could self-identify as the most-notable person on the planet and make a Wikipedia article about myself that says everything that I believe myself to be. Why does gender warrant the one and only exception to our standards? - Floydian τ ¢ 22:07, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes What's the big deal? Scholarship regarding this has been clear for years, as have journalistic and law ethics. Respect the gender identity of the individual, regardless of their current sex. One is not more important than the other. You can acknowledge both if it is pertinent, but what genitals or chromosomes a person has is typically not pertinent. We don't note intersex individuals that frequently (often because we don't know, and that's the point). Also, please use the appropriate terms: man/woman or masculine/feminine for gender and male/female for sex. (I am working on my PhD in sociology and focusing in gender). EvergreenFir (talk) 03:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, and I object to the loaded wording of the question. EvergreenFir has it right. Dougweller (talk) 05:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment Lots of personal opinions here; I have mine, but they are all irrelevant. Wikipedia should follow reliable sources, particularly in this case reliable style guides. By all means let's discuss what these say, and how to word articles so as not to confuse readers, but not what our personal views are. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:12, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment We do have a clash here between the common name by which Manning is known (Bradley Manning) and Manning's identity as a woman (Chelsea Manning). One way of dealing with this clash might be to minimise the use of personal pronouns. For example, the first paragraph could be reworded like this:
Chelsea E. Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was convicted in July 2013 of several violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after releasing the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Manning was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The prisoner (or She) will be eligible for parole after serving one third of this sentence, and together with credits for time served and good behavior could be released eight years after sentencing.
This may or may not be acceptable to other editors but it could help to make the prose less confronting to some readers.Michael Glass (talk) 08:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

The lead for Carlotta is currently worded in a similar way:

Carol 'Carlotta' Spencer (born Richard Lawrence Byron)[1] is an Australian cabaret performer and television celebrity. She began her career as an original member of the long-running Les Girls cabaret show, performed entirely by heavily costumed males, which started in 1963 in the purpose built Les Girls (nightclub) building which stood on a prominent corner in the heart of Sydney's Kings Cross. The building was owned by Sydney identity Abe Saffron. Carlotta, a transgender woman, rose through the ranks of the show to eventually become the show's compere and its most famous member.

-- Nbound (talk) 09:10, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


""A quick reminder that the question being debated is "Should we really yield to gender identity when one's biological sex is vitally important?". This is not a question surrounding how we should treat transgender peoples self-proclaimed identities in most cases. Instead this is question asking if it is worth respecting a person’s identity when it leads to a very confusing article. The main case of this is Bradley Manning's article which is almost unreadable now.

First off if we are going to get anywhere we have to agree that the Bradley Manning article is confusing. This is because most people are not used to refer to people who currently have all the biological characteristics of one sex but identify as the other being referred to by the pronoun that they identify with. Can we at least agree that the article is confusing in its current state? 67.169.14.206 (talk) 16:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

It probably is, unfortunately it got protected at a bad time. The thing to note is that none of the other transgender articles are hard to read. Chances are the Bradley/Chelsea Manning article can be fixed. The status quo for refering to transgender people didnt just happen over night, and has been tested for years. If there was confusion Im sure the transgender community themselves would have sorted something vastly different out. -- Nbound (talk) 22:55, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
I hate to say it, but I think getting posted in the LGBT wikiproject is the reason it is so confusing. They rushed to push their advocacy into the article. Clinton (talk) 23:35, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
As can be seen from scrolling down once clicking on this link, that article was locked down before information about the matter was posted at the LGBT project. This means the pronoun changes had already been made. There are LGBT Wikipedia editors who don't participate at WP:LGBT. And there are Wikipedia editors who are not LGBT...but believe in WP:MOSIDENTITY. Flyer22 (talk) 00:50, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think the article is particularly confusing at present. It notes Manning by both names immediately, makes it clear that it's going to use female pronouns, then uses them consistently. I understand that this may confuse some readers, but not doing this would also cause confusion. —me_and 23:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


Gender is a grammatical term, and the idea of "gender identity" is in and of itself advocacy. Grammatical gender in reference to sentient beings exists as a way to reference the biological sex of the individual in question. You can't be a man who is female - that isn't how language works. To suggest otherwise would be an endorsement of doublespeak. Clinton (talk)

if you are fundamentally opposed to the idea of gender identity, you might consider looking into the article about it — it is an established entity in the spectrum of identity, and it has been discussed for over a century. i do not think the validity of "gender identity" as a concept or term is up for debate. ~ Boomur [talk] 01:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
If it's not up for debate, what have people been discussing for over a century? Plenty still believe a man who wants to be a woman is just a rarer sort of man, and a man who has the surgery is a modified man. But I've no opinion on what you or Wikipedia should think. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:00, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
sorry for the lack of clarity. what i'm saying is that the concept of "gender identity" is a valid and recognised concept that has been used in psychological et al. literature for a long time, not that people are trying to decide what it is. they aren't. ~ Boomur [talk] 04:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I am wondering about a different context; notably the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. The festival holds an intention that it be for females assigned at birth for political/socio-cultural reasons; trans women simply do not fit into that category. However, there have been edits to remove the implication that trans women aren't female and justified by the WP MOS style guidelines. This seems specious to me. Gender is completely socially constructed; there is nothing innate about it. Female, however, has a variety of associated characteristics that cannot be adapted (reproductive capacity, menstruation, etc.) It seems very odd to define the rule through the exception (less than 3% of women have Klinefelter's or some intense genetic disorder or are intersex). The overwhelming majority of trans women have no genetic disorder and are biologically male. To ignore that is also to ignore the realities associated with female biology that are unique. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugaredpeas (talk • contribs) 14:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Jumping in: Sugaredpress's position can be difficult to understand because the word "gender" has multiple meanings. SP, do you mean "gender roles are entirely socially constructed," "gender identity is entirely socially constructed" or "the state of being male or female is entirely socially constructed"? I'd partially agree with you on the first one but not on the other two.
Also, in all three cases, I'm not clear what this has to do with the Manning case. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:55, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes. Pronouns should reflect a person's chosen gender identity. To do otherwise is profoundly disrespectful to that person, and a violation of the BLP policy which requires that we write biographical articles about living people with "a high degree of sensitivity" to the subject. Kaldari (talk) 17:53, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
I support MOS:IDENTITY as it stands now; it has served Wikipedia well over the years. I also note that the comment by jj which began this discussion is loaded and factually incorrect in places, and may have skewed the discussion so much that it won't be possible to reach a consensus and/or conclusion. (JJ says, for example, that "we could have a "she" father a child in the fully biological way", but MOS:IDENTITY actually advises not just against confusing wording in general, but against that specific kind of phrase. I quote: "instead of He gave birth to his first child, write He became a parent for the first time".) -sche (talk) 23:05, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


I support MOS:IDENTITY as it was written before the Chelsea Manning dispute. I agree with -sche that the comments by jj show bias, as does the section title, and I also believe that this discussion has been hopelessly muddled by people changing the policy while discussion is ongoing, making it difficult to discern what editors are supporting or opposing. That's all unfortunate.
So to be clear: I believe MOS:IDENTITY ought to explicitly require editors to use the pronouns that reflect a person's chosen gender identity, and to use the name the transgender person has chosen for him or herself. I agree with Kaldari: to do anything else is disrespectful and a violation of BLP. Some further comments:
  • BLP is not purely a protection against libel claims. As per ArbCom, we are required to consider the ethical implications of our actions, to respect the basic human dignity of subjects, to not mock or disparage, and to hold as our guiding principle the desire to do no harm.
  • Being misgendered is traumatizing for transgender people. That's because it repudiates and denies a central fact of a person's identity -- their gender. In most cases, transgender people have had a lifelong battle to be accepted as the gender they understand themselves to be, and societal disapproval, mockery and judgement is a significant contributor to their increased risk of suicide, stress, isolation, anxiety, depression and poor self-esteem. Misgendering a trans person is arguably not only painful for them, but for trans readers who may feel that by extension, their own gender identity is also being denied.
  • Some editors have argued that it's more important for Wikipedia to be accurate than to refrain from hurting people's feelings. And, editors have argued that Wikipedia should reflect article subjects' "real," "official," or "legal" gender. It's true that for most people, whose biological sex and internal sense of gender identity and public gender expression are all the same, it *is* that simple. For transgender people though, it's not. That's why it makes sense to reflect a person's gender as they say it is: because there is no other way to make the determination that is always and obviously better. Neither we nor the news media are experts on this topic nor are we the transgender person's doctor, nor do we have access to his or her birth certificate or driver's licence or medical records. We should respect the limits of our own knowledge. To label someone's gender as different from what they say it is is in fact a highly questionable decision, and in doing that Wikipedia would not be privileging truth over kindness.
  • I will point out that many reliable news organizations' style guides agree with my position here, including that of the AP which feeds material to 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 broadcast outlets. Others have issued specific guidance on Manning (for example, here, here and here) which will no doubt be precedent-setting in future cases.
  • Lastly: when I was studying journalism many years ago, misspelling or otherwise getting wrong the name of someone you wrote about was one of a very small number of ways in which a student would automatically fail an assignment. I say that simply to underscore that names are important to people, and getting them right is generally understood to be a matter of basic respect. Sue Gardner (talk) 06:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Up front I'll admit I can't see claims of potential harm to Manning (situations like that are what sparked this discussion) as dire; for the past 8+ months I've been singularly focused on a biography with far more serious privacy issues than this, and unlike the Manning situation there's potential for real-world harm if I'm not very careful. That being said, our goal isn't to right great wrongs in English terminology. We are supposed to be rendering prose in accordance with reliable sources, not blindly following LGBT groups (or any other group for that matter) however noble their intentions. The style that GLAAD and others noted above insist upon is not universally agreed upon even by all transgender people (see for instance Mina Caputo, specifically the Personal life section), and sources such as the NYT at least sometimes follow the convention of referring to someone by their gender at the time being discussed ([6] being a rather interesting article on Renee Richards). There are many situations where using the latest expressed gender at all times makes perfect sense (Calpernia Addams being one such example), but on the other extreme you get the hackneyed prose of articles like Dee Palmer or Alexis Reich. This would make it seem that there's no one easy solution, and it should probably be sorted out on a case-by-case basis instead of having a prescriptive rule clearly favoring a particular point of view. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:11, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
No, unless the change is adopted by the predominance of reliable sources-- WP is a summary of reliable sources. If they address a person differently after a person has a sex change then that portion of the WP article should reflect those sources accurately. I think having a guideline that says that we should present a subject on WP in that subject's preferred manner rather than the manner the subject is presented in reliable sources is a dangerous precedent.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Sue Gardner. The sort of rejection we see on various pages here that transgender people even exist and a refusal to recognise the scientific, medical consensus in regard to transgendered people, is no different from the pushing of other sorts of WP:FRINGE POVs, e.g. climate change denial and more. The community and the Wikimedia Foundation need to take firm steps to stop that sort of thing if Wikipedia is to remain an encyclopedia. Josh Gorand (talk) 12:01, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
  • No, though I would have worded the discussion topic differently. It's not about the biological sex being vitally important, per se. I'm sure the Manning article will end up being titled Chelsea. My problem is with the re-writing of past events before the name change. Why isn't there more acknowledgment of the NLGJA policy? A spokesperson for the group said it would recommend “he” for historical reference: “When writing about events prior to when the person began living publicly as the opposite gender, NLGJA recommends using the name and gender the individual used publicly at that time. For example: Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, came out as transgender last week. In a statement, Manning said she had felt this way since childhood. Manning grew up in Oklahoma. In middle school, he was very outspoken in class about government issues and religious beliefs, friends said.”
The full article is here. It was Betty Logan who drew my attention to that article, and I fully agree with her points near the top of this discussion, particularly:
The use of the female pronoun in such instances removes clarity from expressing a factual claim. It undermines WP:V, not least because you are not representing the claim as clearly as possible. You are effectively introducing wordplay to alter the context and expression of a fact that is not present in the source. MOS:IDENTITY is a nice guiding principle to have, but not if it compromises the documenting of fact, which is the over-riding goal of Wikipedia. In cases where the events of a person's life or facts about them are clearly contingent on them being biologically male/female then they shouldn't be compromised by revisionist gender pronouns. Betty Logan (talk) 20:01, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
When building an encyclopedia we should respect history before anything else. The "she" pronoun should not be applied retrospectively when the subject was male. The "inconsistency of pronouns will confuse our readers" argument doesn't hold up. The reader is much more likely to be confused as to how the person was perceived by misidentifying the contemporaneous gender. When Manning was in the military everyone saw the person as male. Sources reporting on the trial wrote about Manning as male. WP should reflect that because it's not an account from the subject's POV, it's an encyclopedia. - Gothicfilm (talk) 01:01, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
But was the subject male at the time? If someone is believed to have been born in Nashville but it later comes out that that person was born in Memphis, we don't have to continue referring to him or her as a Nashville native, even though pre-revelation sources will have done so. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:04, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
That is not analogous. We're talking about basic pronouns. - Gothicfilm (talk) 03:28, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
If you believe that, then you should also acknowledge that referring to someone using a pronoun is not necessarily the same thing as stating a fact.
Going back to the subject of biology, we can assume that Manning probably spent most of her life with male external genitalia, but we don't know about Manning's brain anatomy, body chemistry, chromosomes, levels of gene expression or any of the other non-imagined, measurable biological factors that produce gender in humans. My own take is that we should value biological sex over self-reference, but only if we are in a position to collect information about the subject's biological sex, and we're not.
If you wish to claim that Manning was ever male, what evidence do you have? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:31, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
  1. ^ http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/a-passion-for-cars-and-women-20090324-98un.html
  2. ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/when-sexchange-is-a-mistake-some-transsexuals-suffer-bitter-regrets-sarah-lonsdale-reports-1512822.html
  3. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/local/la-me-mike-penner29-2009nov29
  4. ^ http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/30/1062194756832.html
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