Talk:Albert Cashier/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Pardon?

Snow Rise, you mistyped vaginadalize. EEng 01:36, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I did? I only see "va.igndalize". Which is weird enough in its own right, I'll grant you. Not sure how I typo'd that in there in any event, given I was commenting below, but thanks for the catch. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:19, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Well yes, what you actually typed was va.igndalize but clearly you were trying to refer to the article's being vaginadalized, which I think is one editor's complaint about it. EEng 03:17, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I thought you were referencing Lgbt.history.ig. --Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 02:26, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Nah, best guess I have is that I somehow copied-and-pasted part of ig's name into the "vandalized" in Marisam's section header, through an errant mouse select/click. Anyway, anyone who wants to remove this thread now that the issue is addressed/the typo corrected, please feel free. It's probably just an unnecessary distraction at this point. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Hidden references

A previous editor left some research clues hidden in brackets on the article page. Two of them led to arcane or missing newspaper archives. I've removed them from the article, but reproduce them below in case they are useful to anyone:

The novel The Last Skirt, by Lynda Durrant, is based on his life.

!-- http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/living/16350616.htm --

There are plans to restore the house that Cashier lived in for forty years.

!-- http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/local/15994191.htm --

-- Yamara 21:27, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Additional reference

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104452266 played today. Tells how he died.--Hitsuji Kinno (talk) 17:57, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Contextualize Blanton reference(s)?

I note that the Blanton piece treats as strictly women all the soldiers discussed, whereas the approach of this article is to recognize Cashier as transgender. It might be worthwhile to contextualize the footnote, seeing as the Blanton piece doesn't appear to consider in any way the possibility that any of the soldiers might not be "women pretending to be men" but rather, persons of male gender identity who were classified by others as women based on their external sexual organs.Lawikitejana (talk) 12:28, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I think Lawikitenjana makes a valid point. Jennie's gender identity doesn't seem clear based on the information in the article. Also the link supporting the sentence, "was born female bodied, but lived as a man" is dead. I'm going to remove it and that sentence. 66.205.171.204 (talk) 02:08, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Salt account suspended

Several of the references in this article from Salt go to an "account suspended" and need to be removed.

Mbfiske (talk) 01:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Hicks-Bartlett, Alani, reference

I suggest this source be deleted. Nothing is footnoted. The reference list for this article includes:

From Gerhard P. Clausius, "The Little Soldier of the 95th: Albert D. J. Cashier," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 1958; Gordon A. Cotton, "Illinois Civil War roster includes woman soldier Saunemin's Jennie Hodgers," Vicksburg Evening Post, no date, copy from Saunemin Grade School; Rodney 0. Davis, "Private Albert Cashier As Regarded by His/Her Comrades," Illinois Historical Journal (1989); Richard Hall, Patriots in Disguise: Women Warriors of the Civil War; Mary Catherine Lannon, "Albert D. J. Cashier and the Ninety-Fifth Illinois Infantry (1844-1915)," Master's thesis (1969); student historian's interview with Ruth Morehart, Nov. 14, 1993; Edward Zuckerman, "When Jennie Comes Marchin' Home," undated paper in files at Saunemin Historical Society.

The original sources need to be cited.

Mbfiske (talk) 01:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Find A Grave Reference

The link to the Find A Grave web page for Albert Cashier no longer works. I attempted to find his grave under his name, but was forced to use Jennie Hodgers instead. It is listed there under Jennie Hodgers, as the webmasters at Find A Grave have chosen to refer to him as "she" throughout the article on him. I will leave it up to more knowledgeable wiki editors to do the proper editing and research if needed. NativeSonKY (talk) 05:07, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Thomas Hannah Jr reference to a woman in the Illinois 95th Company G

I restored text to the article on Albert Cashier for the second time. Thomas Hannah Jr refers to a woman in the Illinois 95th in a letter to his wife.

Both times this edit was removed, it was for misspelling and failure to provide sources. I provided a link to the original letter in talk.

Perhaps Thomas Hannah Jr. provides no insight into Albert. I think Thomas contributes to the discussion.

Michael B. Fiske — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbfiske (talk • contribs) 00:35, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Albert small and captured in battle

There is no reference for the following,

"Other soldiers thought that Cashier was small and preferred to be alone, which was not uncommon. He was once captured in battle, but escaped back to Union lines after overpowering a prison guard. Cashier fought with the regiment through the war until August 17, 1865, when all the soldiers were mustered in and out."

I will leave it to someone else to remove.

Mbfiske (talk) 01:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Meatpuppetry

My recent edit to the article was reverted without explanation by Mlr78731, an account that has so far made no other edits to Wikipedia. The account is brand new, as can be seen from its public logs here. Since this happened very soon after Lgbt.history.ig made comments above about getting people who agree with their position on this article to support them, it appears that a serious violation of WP:MEATPUPPETRY has occurred here, or possibly a violation of the rules on sockpuppetry. Mlr78731 may be subject to an indefinite block if the account is a meatpuppet or sockpuppet. Administrator intervention may be required. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the history of the article, it seems to be a fairly common occurrence that new users edit it to properly gender Cashier. I'm sorry I ever said anything about letting others know about your insistence on misgendering, but I assure you I had nothing to do with this.Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 22:22, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

So you say. And you could be telling the truth. Unfortunately, under the circumstances and given your past comments, there is no way that I or other editors can know that you are being truthful. It will be up to administrators to sort out this mess. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Very well. I will engage in yet another procedural distraction from the actual substantive point of this endeavor. This little cabal is quite bizarre and sad. I have made all my changes in the open and I'll continue to do so. I look forward to talking to any administrator about whatever bee is in your bonnet now. Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 22:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

There are simpler explanations for why several experienced users might disagree with a new single-purpose editor than the existence of a strange conspiracy. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:35, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Mlr78731 has now been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet of Lgbt.history.ig. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:49, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Well that's disappointing. I was just about to say we should AGF on the issue. A shame too, as I thought there was room for a reasonable compromise draft here, but if they are just going to abuse process... Snow ^{let's rap} 03:25, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Tumblr attempting to manipulate and vandalize article

http://lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com/post/155182034892/recently-we-did-a-post-on-albert-cashier-a-civil

It seems one Tumblr user is encouraging their followers to edit this page or otherwise come to the talk section to try and influence the direction of the page by pretending to be members of the Wikipedia community. We should probably lock the article until this is all settled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marisam77 (talk • contribs) 23:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I've added this info to the existing ANI thread. EEng 00:31, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks like semi-protection is in order as a preventative measure. Perhaps even a full protection lock down of the page for a time.

What a shame, this clueless user is going to completely stall any improvement of the article, including most especially any movement towards fuller acknowledgment of Cashier's probable transgender nature--and all out of their zeal to see things perfectly match their view. Putting aside for a moment that they clearly have not made even minimal efforts to understand (let alone internalize) this community's purpose and values, and are clearly WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia but rather to advocate for a specific view, they are also the very picture of an ineffective activist--this kind of behaviour will only entrench views, not improve acknowledgment of transgender issues, and make it more difficult for those of us who would support greater acknowledgement of those issues from accomplishing that task within the rules.

LGBT history, if you are reading this, you must understand that you are setting back your stated goal immeasurably through this disruptive behaviour, and through your general dishonesty and attempts to game the system. Getting content to change on Wikipedia requires more than just a decision that an article should read to match your views. It requires time, commitment to understanding this community's way of doing things and (GASP!) a fair bit of prolonged hard work, especially where it requires one to shift a consensus view amongst editors. You have apparently decided that your perspective is so exceptional that you cannot be asked to accept any of that and have now decided to brute force your view by publicly labeling the good faith editors on this page (many of whom were very sympathetic to your view) as transphobic, and by encouraging others to bombard the article with support for your view. Good luck with that, and good luck with your efforts in general as an LGBT advocate, if this is typical of your response to roadblocks and to changing the general perception of trans nature. I fear you will do more harm than good to that movement, speaking as someone who has been broadly supportive of it for decades now. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:55, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Reference to Thomas Hannah saying Cashier was sent back to Belvidere

Thomas Hannah, Jr. does not mention Albert Cashier by name. He says a woman was found in the company and that woman was sent back to Belvidere, Illinois. There may have been more than one woman in Company G of the 95th Illinois. Mbfiske (talk) 04:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I have uploaded a copy of the Thomas Hannah letter to Wiki Commons.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Hannah_letter,_1862-11-17,_Jackson,_TN.pdf

My quotation is from the left side of page 1 in the pdf file. I think this should be included as a reference, but do not know how to do that.

Others are welcome to try their own hand at accurately transcribing the sentence, complete with misspellings.

Mbfiske (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

More than one woman in Illinois 95th Infantry

Thomas Hannah's letter of 17 November 1862 raises the question of how many women enlisted in the Illinois 95th Infantry. Samuel Pepper's letters transcribed in "My Dear Wife" mention Albert. D. J. Cashiere, at least as transcribed. A thorough examination of the muster rolls of the 95th is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbfiske (talk • contribs) 00:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry I didn't sign Mbfiske (talk) 00:57, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The letters and muster rolls are all primary sources and completely unusable as fact sources unless a reliable secondary source interprets them for us. EEng 05:42, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Transgender?:

None of the sources cited provide clear evidence that Jennie/Albert was a transgendered person, including the deposition. Several of the articles provided a whole host of reasons why women cross-dressed to fight in the civil war, including patriotism, greater independence, and a better wage as a soldier than was available as either a civilian man or woman. The deposition is unclear about Jennie's gender identity, which is exacerbated by the fact that it was taken 50 years after the war, memories are delicate, and the use of the male pronoun to refer to Albert when first questioned about her, likely reflects the fact that his innate memories of Jennie are all about Albert. It isn't clear to me that classifying Albert/Jennie as transgendered is anything other than speculation. I would propose changing the pronouns to the gender normative she/her, and adding a paragraph with the unclear hypothesis that Jennie was a trans-man. 66.205.171.204 (talk) 02:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"Transgender (pronounced /trænzˈdʒɛndər/) is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles."

Transgender covers a huge spectrum and Alberts action would still come under that umbrella in my opinion.RafikiSykes (talk) 15:43, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I find it highly dubious that Cashier was female-identified, as most wartime cross-dressers returned to their female identities after the war.Asarelah (talk) 02:07, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

RafikiSykes, it doesn't matter that "transgender" covers a broad spectrum in this case. We still wouldn't say that a woman who cross-dresses but identifies as a woman is a transman. That's the point the IP was making. Asarelah made a better argument than you, with fewer words. 23.20.10.162 (talk) 20:31, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

If there is a source that states that Albert Cashier identified as a woman, it should be quoted in the article. Otherwise I only see evidence that he identified as a man. Ouchlckhcchloh (talk) 18:13, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Correct name/pronouns?

Parts of this article refer to "Albert Cashier" and use the personal pronoun "he", while others use "she" and Jennie Hodges. Which one is proper? MechaChrist (talk) 15:21, 10 September 2011 (UTC) (logged in to properly sign my comment)

Manual of style use the gender the person themselves identified as throughout through their life.RafikiSykes (talk) 15:30, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

To make that explicit, Albert Cashier identified as a man and "he" throughout his life. Ouchlckhcchloh (talk) 18:14, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Gender

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.

---

Should the subject be referred to as a woman who dressed as a man, or as a transgender man? There are sources which support both options, so this RFC is aimed at determining the community's view as to which theory is supported by sources that are more numerous, reliable, recent, etc. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:08, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Comment - why do you feel that an RfC is necessary? FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@FreeKnowledgeCreator: Lgbt.history.ig (talk · contribs) and I do not agree, and I thought it better to start an RFC rather than let them continue the edit war they've stated that they plan to wage if anyone reverts them. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see the problem now. Under the circumstances, the best thing for the moment might be simply to revert the article to the version prior to any edit war. I might need to research the subject more to take a firm view of the issue, but I suspect that the status quo whereby Cashier is described as a woman disguised as a man is more accurate. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:59, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The notion that this issue is going to be decided by a straw poll of sources is ridiculous, as it is plainly obvious that the majority of sources would not have referred to Cashier by his proper gender until the mid-2000s or so. I have provided a number of reliable sources, including those from some of the most preeminent trans scholars, that support the increasingly accepted fact that Cashier was a man; to describe him as "a woman disguised as a man" is not only grossly inaccurate, it's silly and offensive. I said I intended to monitor the page to make sure that Cashier's history is respected; this person has decided to cry wolf with this edit war nonsense. I don't need to edit this again. I am the creator and co-administrator of @lgbt_history, an Instagram account with just under 60,000 followers; if Cashier is misgendered on Wikipedia again, I will make sure that our followers are made aware of your efforts at queer erasure and let them know how to remedy it. That Roscelese has made it a goal to keep Albert Cashier a "woman" is sad and I would hope that a third-party would see through the efforts. Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Respectfully, whether something is "offensive" or not is not relevant. Everything I've read in the article suggests that Cashier was a woman who presented herself as a man, so the status quo prior to your edits looks reasonable. Furthermore, it is entirely inappropriate to propose encouraging people who do not already have Wikipedia accounts to support you here: please see WP:MEATPUPPET. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:47, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Respectfully, you did nothing to address my previous comment save for harping on my use of the word "offensive" as an additional description after the primary description of "grossly inaccurate." I am having a hard time understanding how Susan Stryker, easily the most respected trans historian out there, writing in a study for the Department of the Interior, and supported by a number of other reliable sources, does nothing to suggest that our previous understanding of Cashier's identity--an understanding which, again, was based entirely on antiquated notions of gender that took little to no account of trans existence--is more properly placed in the trans spectrum. Moreover, the number of people following our account that already have Wikipedia accounts is quite substantial, based on previous conversations with followers, so please don't assume I meant anything about non-Wikipedia account holders. The bottom line is that I will continue to make sure that those who do not give proper credence to the clearly reliable sources I've provided are not the final arbiters of an extremely important issue; the only reason why you would ignore Stryker's work, Moser's work, Teich's work, Ernst's work, and the others is because you simply do not want to allow for trans history. It's a real problem. Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 04:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The bottom line is that Wikipedia operates by consensus, and you have no consensus for your proposed changes to the article. So far, it's two against one, as I pretty much agree with Roscelese. Meat puppetry is unacceptable here, and unfortunately your comments create a suspicion (whether justified or not) that you are prepared to encourage it. That won't help you. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:16, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Woman - Cashier should be referred to as a woman who dressed as a man. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:26, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Present the spread of interpretations, and the weight they have in the sources, utilizing careful attribution. First off, let's back off the quasi-hostile language that has been directed at Roscelese for opening this discussion in good faith. WP:RfCs have no minimum theshhold and are, in fact, highly recommended tools, especially in the case of an ongoing or impending edit war or deadlock of any kind, considered a first-line approach to resolving an editorial issue and seeking community impute. Also, I don't know the full story here, but if I take what I'm hearing at face value, Lgbt.history.ig, you are going to want to check this community's policies out more thoroughly before you continue editing here, because edit warring and (especially) meatpuppetry are about the two activities most certain to get a person blocked on this project, and then there will be one less voice to advocate for your interpretation.

All that said, on to the substantive matter. I'll have to take a long look a the sources, but my initial impulse--again taking everyone at face value, with regard to their sources--is that this is a historical majority narrative/significant academic theory scenario. If that's the case, then we should say just that. It's not hard to make room for a single, well attributed sentence to recognize this perspective somewhere in the lead. It doesn't have to be prominent, but if there is significant sourcing (including not just the research itself, but ideally secondary sources covering that research in some context), then we should present the variety of views, give a rough sense of how well supported they have been, traditionally, and then let the reader draw their own conclusions. So long as there is no effort to blow reference to the theory beyond it's level of representation in sourcing, I see no profound issue with it. Snow ^{let's rap} 06:57, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, just took a quick look at the sourcing and exact statements, and if the current version of the page is what is in debate, I think it's fine. If it is that simple statement about the theory at the tag end of the article, I would say that's fine. Two sources which seem more than adequate to RS standards support this theory, in an article which has ten sources total. I understand this is a relatively new theory, but all the statement does is state that it exists, and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether to follow up on the sources presented. It honestly looks very non-controversial to me.

That said, the RfC suggests that the issue is whether the article should generally refer to Cashier being a woman and/or in disguise. Well, clearly both are a matter of context. While I can certainly get behind mention of the transgender theory, I don't think it has anything near the WP:WEIGHT necessary to supplant the conventional narrative that she was disguised in order to serve as a solider and at other times, to work. But perhaps there's a middle ground here. The lead could stand to be enhanced, so why not add a couple more sentences covering key points from the article and then tag at the very end, the exact same terse mention of the theory that is currently at the end of the article. Then maybe even expand that statement at the end of the article by a couple of sentences? I think the way forward is somewhere between that and the current version of the article, though I'd also accept the current version itself, if that were non-controversial to other respondents. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, the more I look at the context and sources here, the less fringe the transman claim seems to be. Even excluding the most recent sources and content, there does seem to be some significant indication that Cashier lived as a man for more than just the pragmatic reasons of enlisting and later collecting a pension. I don't think this should go as far as changing the pronouns in the article--Wikipedia does have a policy of referencing contemporary trans individuals by their preferred gender pronoun (at least where he/she are concerned), but only where there is an affirmative/explicit declaration by that individual; here we have only a theoretical assumption. That said, I'm more convinced than ever that there should be some reference to the notion that Cashier was what we would today call a transman. Having looked more at the proposed/contested edits, I continue to feel that there is unexplored middle ground here. I don't think referring to Cashier as a transman in the first sentence of the lead is necessary, and I definitely don't think overriding the pronouns and all references to gender is appropriate in this case, but I also think the evaluation should appear at the end of the lead, appropriately attributed to the two sources which have made this explicit evaluation. Snow ^{let's rap} 09:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see the most recent source I've added to the article, which is a 1989 article from the Illinois Historical Journal that (1) at least refers to Cashier as "he/her" and (2) makes clear that those who knew Cashier--even after discovering his birth sex--continued to refer to him with male pronouns. ?(Davis, Rodney O. Private Albert Cashier As Regarded by His/Her Comrades (in the Illinois Historical Journal, Volume LXXXII/Number 2/Summer 1989, pp. 108-112)) Veterans of the Civil War were more enlightened on this issue than admins on Wikipedia seem to be. I hope this settles the pronoun issue.Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 16:18, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Snow Rise:, my version of the article (pre-Lgbt.history.ig) contained a sourced reference to the suggestion that Cashier was a trans man - it definitely wasn't stripped from the article. But we do need to make a call as to what to say in the lede and what pronouns to use, because writing her/his at every occurrence is not feasible. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:52, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Woman. Sure, it's possible that scholarly consensus in the future may change, but at this time - and yes, I'm referring to recent publications, not looking back a hundred years - the main body of sourcing in both military and queer history appears to regard Cashier as a woman. It's not a question of recency - below, I list a bunch of sources supporting my view which post-date the Cromwell Transmen and FTMs source (which I also added!). There just isn't that much reliable support for Lgbt.history.ig's claim, and certainly not enough to outweigh the sources which hold the contrary view. The additional sources Lgbt.history.ig is adding simply aren't up to our standards. More detail:
  • Journal of the IL State Historical Society, which I mention because Lgbt.history.ig thinks it's conclusive: [1] The author of this piece consistently refers to Cashier as a woman throughout, using female pronouns and referring to her "real name" and "true identity". Lgbt.history.ig claims that the primary source documents in which Cashier's messmates use "he" pronouns are proof that Cashier identified as a man, but even putting aside the fact that we don't analyze primary sources ourselves, this doesn't stand up (messmates: "they found out he was a woman", "Not knowing that she was a girl, I assigned her", other references to Cashier as a woman - male pronouns are probably just the messmates, shall we say, misgendering her because that's the pronoun they're used to using).
  • (Some) post-2000 academic books and reasonably prestigious-publisher nonfiction referring to Jennie Hodgers, using "she" either throughout or post-reveal, or referring to Cashier's "true gender" or some such: Women in the American Civil War, They Fought Like Demons, Women During the Civil War: an Encyclopedia, Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories..., She Went to the Field, The Mysterious Private Thompson (good publisher but super dodgy on details of this case for some reason),
  • Even this queer history book refers to Cashier as a woman who dressed as a man, noting (unlike the sources listed above) the possibility that she may have been a trans man but repeatedly describing her as a woman soldier: [2]; this one is equivocal, using mostly "he" pronouns but referring to Cashier as a woman repeatedly, "the secret of his gender", included in a chapter on women, etc.
• –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:25, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

What we know is (1) from childhood, Albert Cashier presented as male; (2) he enlisted and served as male; (3) as opposed to many of the brave people who biologically were women that served in the Civil War, he was not discovered during the war (or at least he was not discovered to the extent that he was removed from the service); (4) after the war, he did not shift back to living as female, but instead took great pains to live his life as male; (5) members of his community that were aware of his birth sex assisted in helping him live his life as his preferred gender; (6) only because of an insensitive and primitive medical system was he forced into female clothes and female pronouns; (7) despite this, his comrades from the Civil War fought on his behalf and (a) Cashier continued to get his pension, (b) he was buried in his uniform, and (c) his tombstone initially read just his chosen (male) name (only later would revisionists decide to add his birth name); (8) long after Cashier was dead, his friends still called him “he”; (9) historians and academics who would have no interest in telling the story of trans lives for decades referred to Cashier as Jennie Hodgers and used female pronouns, thus forming a canon of literature that continues to be referred to today as conclusive (including in this conversation); (10) even where some have denied the fact that Cashier was transgender, they nonetheless properly gendered him (see, for example, Roscelese’s citation to Michael Bronski’s “Queer History of the United States”; (11) in the previous version of this article, there were 10 citations, 3 of which were to modern texts that referred to Cashier as “he” and transgender (Benck, Cromwell, and Cronn-Mills), 1 of which was to a picture of him in male attire, and 1 was to a roster of names including Albert Cashier’s; in other words, 5 of the citations were evidence of Cashier’s living as a man (and, it should be noted, 2 of the remaining citations were to the same book, “Women Soldiers of the Civil War,” and 1 was simply to a note about the amount Cashier left in his estate); (12) I’ve added citations to sources by Susan Stryker, Ph.D., Director of University of Arizona’s Institute of LGBT Studies; Rhys Ernst, Emmy-nominated and GLAAD-award winning documentarian on trans lives; Sarah Prager, speaker and writer on LGBTQ history and the creator of the Quist App (dedicated to raising awareness of queer history for young adults), and others, all of which support the proper gendering of Cashier and identifying him as transgender; (13) no one has addressed my sources other than to say they “simply aren’t up to our standards” (which couldn’t be more microaggressive if it tried); (14) instead, we continue to hear from books about “Women in the Civil War” which, not surprisingly, seem to cite back to each other in a circular logic that will never be broken if the sources I’ve listed aren’t taken into account; and (15) no one is arguing that we call Cashier “Jennie Hodgers” throughout, if I understand, but seemingly that would be the same thing as calling him “her,” would it not? He identified as him, just as he identified as Albert Cashier; since you have taken it upon yourself to change his gender, why not cite to some of these same sources that only refer to him as Jennie Hodgers and simply use that name? This man’s name was Albert Cashier. Lgbt.history.ig (talk) 20:35, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest, as I have suggested before, that you channel your passion for primary analysis of Cashier's life into a work of scholarly research. Once you publish and swing the academic world around to your point of view, future Wikipedia editors might revisit the topic. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:35, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Woman A retrospective evaluation of transsexuality is, to say the least, problematic. If we want to say, "Some scholars believe..." or "It has been speculated...", with attribution and explication, that would be OK if the sources are appropriately sober. EEng 23:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• No declaration of Gender, but Female pronouns The sources seem divided. I'm inclined to agree with lgbt.history.ig that he was a man, but it seems uncertain if the sources are good enough to say. Thankfully, it doesn't matter if we end up misgendering them because they're DEAD! so it won't hurt anyone.--Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 23:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • So would your proposed lede start "Albert Cashier was a Union soldier during the Civil War" or something like that? I see where you're coming from, but at the same time, Cashier's main claim to fame and the thing that distinguished her (or him, if you like) from any other soldier was being a woman or a trans man, so that seems difficult to omit from the lede even to settle a dispute. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:12, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
    • I mean, mention the whole thing in the lede, but don't say for sure either way which one it is. Say he was a woman or a Transgender man who served in the Union army. I can't think of any really good way to word it, but I'm sure there's a way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yellow Diamond (talk • contribs) 02:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
      • Don't you have, in the English language, neutral pronouns? That seems the best option so far as no one seems to come to an agreement. To "swing the academic world around (one's) point of view" is very much impossible. Even for historical characters whose story is a lot more known and certain than Cashier's, there are still, nowadays, historians 'fighting' over them. Let's use whatever agreement we come to, but I think that the term 'disguised as a man' is at least very incorrect given the sources quoted above. LeGarde-Chiourme (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

So we'll say it? That's your solution??? EEng 18:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, it's the 'brand-new' account here! Oh wait... In fact, I'm not. I'm from the French Wikipedia. I guess my nationality was not obvious enough, but you can check my work on military matters, if you want to. Well, out of any trolling, that discussion gets absolutely out of hand. You have not opposed any source that proves that THEY (that's one example of gender-neutral pronoun) lived all their life as a woman. And that should be the proof that settles the discussion. Where is it? The ambiguous case of the 'Chevalier d'Éon' was settled much faster than this less ambiguous case. There is a problem. And your very incorrect term of 'disguised' is not the solution. You cannot blame an extreme while using an extreme yourself, if you get what I mean. I invite you to check the article precedently quoted where a solution has been brought efficiently. LeGarde-Chiourme (talk) 18:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

They is used for an unknown person of (therefore) unknown gender; that's not the case here. Cashier may have presented as a man, but there are many reasons someone might do that, identification as a man being just one. EEng 19:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Eh, not exactly. The pronoun is actually quite frequently used for specific, known individuals with an indeterminate gender. Indeed, you can see many examples of that in this very discussion, where we have referred to eachother using exactly that pronoun, rather than make a presumption either way. In fact, it has become something of non-required, but broadly-adopted default amongst our editorial community to use the singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun where there is any reasonable question as to what the gender of the individual is or what they would prefer. And contrary to popular opinion, gender-indeterminate usage has been in the English language for centuries and only in the nineteenth century did it become "problematic", for mostly prescriptivist reasons--even then, it has continued to enjoy steady usage in everyday speech. But those clarifications on common usage made, we do have very different standards and constraints on the grammar of our encyclopedic content than we do for our community discussions. I have to agree, on the balance of our content guidelines, the sources in this particular case, and the general need for clarity when writing for our general audience, that female personal pronouns are indicated in this instance.

But the confusion and disharmony here only underscore the need to properly reference the fact that there is some discussion as to the possibility that Cashier was a trans individual with a male gender. I don't believe this perspective should take over the article, since only a minority of sources express this view, but since they are a significant minority of good-quality RS, espousing a view consistent with evolving views on the nature of gender (and thus, not necessarily inconsistent with the older sources so much as re-contextualizing their language in more contemporary terms for a contemporary audience), I do believe reference to the issue should appear prominently, with a mention in the lead. The reader can then read everything else of substance we have to say about Cashier's life and come to their own conclusion about whether they lived as a man for pragmatic reasons or because that is who they were, by nature. Personally, I think this is one of those cases where most people are going to bring in their inherent confirmation bias and see this in stark black-and-white one way or the other, but WP:Neutrality demands that we stand out of their way while they do that, and not try to correct with excessive labeling that does not appear in the sources or else has insufficient WP:WEIGHT to justify their predominant use. Snow ^{let's rap} 23:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

To clarify, I would definitely be fine moving the sentence in this version of the article (or similar, I'm not being picky) to the lede. But I do think that we need to state the majority view in the lede, and follow up pronoun-wise etc. in the rest of the article, as "she was a woman." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:49, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

That seems like the correct balance to me as well. If further sources continue to re-contextualize Cashier's story as that of a transman, we can re-examine the issue then. I'm doubtful there will be enough scholarship on this figure any time soon to support a shift in pronoun (which would require a rather radical amount of sourcing), but it's not outside the realm of reality. In the meantime, we might hasten to make some changes to the article in line with this view, since I sense an imminent page protection lockdown to prevent the article from being manipulated by LGBT's sock and meat puppets. Let's not let one overzealous editor torpedo reasonable reference to the trans issue; I don't think it's fair to cut off Cashier's nose to spite LGBT History's face, if you follow my meaning. Snow ^{let's rap} 01:23, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• Woman which means the pronouns should remain she and her as well. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:08, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
• Woman brought here by bot BobLaRouche (talk) 23:21, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
• Woman and 'she' the proper place for modern speculation about her being trans is within the article. We only use chosen pronouns when the subject has clearly and explicitly asked for them and/or the balance of sources use them. Perhaps history robbed her of the right to make that choice, history is cruel and we are not here to fix history anymore than we would decide what she might have voted in the 2016 Presidential election. I find the present lead clear, sympathetic and balanced i.e. it was somewhat more than her simply wearing trousers, which the RfC wording above somewhat implies. So, was she a woman? No one can answer that now, but there is no good reason to not refer to her thus, as history has done so far. Pincrete (talk) 02:54, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
• Only use Cashier's personal preference. A person is only transgender if they decide/feel they are a different gender on a personal level, and clothing or even mannerisms have nothing to do with personal identity. Man-skirts went through a popular phase with urbanites in the 1980s, but every effeminate urbanite in Manhattan did not automatically become transgender if they wore one, nor did pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny's male clothing and way of presenting themselves make them transgender. And considering that common terms for transgender and transvestite individuals change from place to place, from culture to culture, from decade to decade, at the end of the day I don't believe it is our place to "decide" what Cashier was ourselves, via the use of expert opinions. I think it would be good to mention how media/scholars perceived Cashier's gender at some point in the article (for example, "Cashier has been described as both transgender and a transvestite in different media sources," but that is hardly relevant to the introduction or how they are referred to in the article. When deciding how we refer to Cashier directly, I say we do research on interviews and quotes from Cashier himself/herself, and modify the page accordingly. Otherwise, gender becomes a category outside of that person's control, when gender is one of the few personal features that is entirely driven by personal identity. Note this is separate from sexual preference or body type. Yvarta (talk) 23:19, 18 January 2017 (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.

Proposed text

• How about make the lede say "Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was a woman or transgender man who served in the Union army as a man during the American Civil War." It's more neutral than saying 'disguised', as I think the Trans intrepretation is well-sourced enough to be a perspective in the lede.--Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 01:44, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good suggestion. The "woman or transgender man" language implies that we don't know or just can't make up our minds; it's conflicted, rather than neutral. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, we don't know, as there is something of a controversy about it. If maybe the sources aren't quite enough to merit that sort of mention, I still think it should go in the lede, maybe a sentence down or so.Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 02:02, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

The point is that the proposed language makes it sound as though the wikipedia editors do not know or cannot make up their minds; if reliable sources cannot reach a judgment or are uncertain, that's a very different matter. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:40, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any policy that says we cannot supply both possibilities, where sources differ. In fact, I've seen that approach in many leads over the years. That said, I do feel the proposed wording is a little inelegant and ambiguous. How about the following?:

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting and continued to live under that identity for most of the remainder of her life. Owing to the consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity, some scholars have posited that Cashier was a trans man.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0G--BowVYg8C&pg=PA78 Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1TaHAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 Cronn-Mills, Kirsten. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices]</ref>.

Give or take a clause? Snow ^{let's rap} 04:04, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that's pretty good. Contrary to what others say, if RSs genuinely conflict, and there's no super-reliable source to sort that conflict out, we certainly (if reluctantly) can present that uncertainty the way Snow Rise has proposed. As an analogy, if there's some uncertainty about whether Explorer 2 was the first (versus the second) to reach the summit of Mount Bigtop, because Explorer 1's claim to have reached the summit has been seriously questioned, we would say "Explorer 2 was a mountain climber who was either the first or second person to reach the summit of Mount Bigtop..." EEng 05:48, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• I think that's a decent lede, but (stylistic) "the consistent" (rather than "her consistent") does sound like an awkward attempt to avoid a feminine pronoun. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 11:29, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I hear you, but syntactically, options are limited in that context. I minimalized the number of pronouns in the first two sentences, and went with that found in the majority of sources in the one instance where I felt a pronoun was vital. But as for the third sentence, there's no way to use the female pronoun with that statement and make the statement semantically self-consistent. I had the same thought as you regarding the use of a definite article there, when writing the statement, but I honestly think perhaps it is sticking out more than it otherwise would because we are highly cognizant of the balancing taking place here; I'm not sure how obvious or awkward it will appear to the average reader. Snow ^{let's rap} 14:44, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

How about:

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it for most of the remainder of her life. This consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some scholars to posit that Cashier was a trans man.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0G--BowVYg8C&pg=PA78 Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1TaHAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 Cronn-Mills, Kirsten. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices]</ref>.

EEng 15:06, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that's a little better. A bigger change would be something like this:

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant to the United States who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Late in Cashier's life, it was discovered that she was female, one of a number of women soldiers who served as men during the Civil War. Because Cashier also passed as a man before and after the war, some scholars have posited that she was a trans man.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0G--BowVYg8C&pg=PA78 Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1TaHAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 Cronn-Mills, Kirsten. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices]</ref>

Feel free to edit the phrasing, which I'm not super pleased with - but this option, I feel, makes it slightly more clear and better-weighted re: Cashier's original and chief notability as a woman soldier, while the previous options imply that it was only once scholars began to suggest that she was a trans man that she came to public notice (untrue). Unrelatedly, I added "to the United States" after "Irish immigrant." –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:06, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, as far as I'm concerned it's more than ready to be installed in the article. Let's see what others think. EEng 18:31, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Better than mine. I support this text.--Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 02:10, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

My concern with that wording is that it actually doubles down on the explicit judgements about Cashier's gender, emphasizing the assumption of the female gender even further than in the current version of the lead. Now, as I've said, I don't favour changing the pronouns to male for the article generally, but to the degree that we can avoid setting the tone one way or the other in the lead (while still being clear with the reader as to what happened vis-a-vis Cashier's service), that's the approach that I think will serve best here, in both policy and pragmatic terms. As such, and meaning no offense to Roscelese's effort, I continue to prefer my or EEng's version. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I prefer EEngs version out of the options presented above. It seems to be the most neutral and appropriate for the encyclopedia. -- Dane ^talk 05:34, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I've changed the lead to EEng's variation. I hope that's agreeable to everyone--this is the version which seemed to have the largest cross-section of support. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:10, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I bask in the warm inner glow of the peacemaker. EEng 20:11, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there any language (from my version or otherwise) that can be added to clarify the weight issue, as I mentioned above? The version as adopted is all right, but it does basically make it sound like she's famous because a couple of recent authors think she was a trans man, when she's been best-known for the past century as a female soldier. What do you feel would avoid obfuscating this without "doubling down"? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:28, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, clearly, having constructed much of the current language of the lead, I'm a little a biased, but I'm genuinely not seeing the same thing you are with regard to the suggestion that it puts the emphasis on the possibility that she's a trans person. By design, the reference to her activity in the civil war occupies the first sentence, and thereby the main definition of her notability. The second sentence describes the fact that she maintained her assumed identity for most of the rest of her life (which was something that was known about her and contributed to her notability as a topic well before the more recent interpretations--it is in fact the main subject of the biography written by one of his/her close friends, which is arguably the only reason his/her story has been preserved). The emerging significant minority view of Cashier as a transman is only mentioned in the third and last sentence of the lead, and written in such a way as to suggest that it is a newer speculative interpretation. That seems to me to place the emphasis of these different perspectives about where you want them, and in a fashion consistent with the relative weight of the sources. And considering that some would definitely like his/her trans status to appear prominently in the first sentence, to be the main thrust of the article, and to change the pronouns accordingly, this seems like a small concession towards compromise.

All of that said, I don't want to be completely dismissive of your concerns. I do feel that your draft didn't just emphasize her military service but in fact very much set the tone (unintentionally, I think) to refutiate the transperson interpretation, by explicitly labeling her a woman in disguise and creating a kind of false equivalence between her and the other individuals in Category:Female wartime cross-dressers in the American Civil War, none of the rest of which adopted a male identity outside of their wartime service as soldiers and/or spies--both of which undermined the point of rewriting the lead in the first place. There's less of a problem with that in the main body of the text, where we can contextualize the competing perspectives and allow the reader to reach their own conclusions, but we have to be more careful about what is said above the fold in a case like this. Ultimately, I would say the best way to address your concern while avoiding any language to predispose the reader to one perspective or the other, would be to include more detail about her service. Perhaps we could discuss her/his length of service? To me, that's the most impressive part of Cashier's wartime accomplishment--staying alive through forty battles all while carrying this massive secret. He/she did not rise in rank, nor play any known significant or notable role in any engagement (in fact, by all accounts, she/he had a reputation for recklessness), but that kind of tenure in such a bloody conflict is something that we can dig into a little to just slightly build up her war veteran status, if you really feel there is concern it will be subsumed by the subsequent mention of the trans theory. How would the following suit you?:

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant who enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War, serving for more than three years and taking part in more than forty engagements. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it for most of the remainder of her life. This consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some scholars to suggest that Cashier was a trans man.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0G--BowVYg8C&pg=PA78 Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1TaHAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 Cronn-Mills, Kirsten. Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices]</ref>

Sufficient to alleviate your concerns? Snow ^{let's rap} 05:48, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I mean, is it your opinion that any explicit mention of cross-dressing or being a female soldier is "doubling down" or failing to "compromise"? She's not known for doing anything particularly cool qua soldier, so I think the stuff about the number of engagements is really just continuing to skirt the issue. The sources generally refer to her as a woman soldier and group her with other women soldiers. We need to be able to do the same because that's simply how this encyclopedia works. We are not providing a service to the reader by attempting to conceal what our sources say so they can "reach their own conclusions". I'm trying to find another way of reading your comment so that that's not what you're suggesting we do, but I'm drawing a blank. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:30, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

No, that's not what I'm saying, nor do I think that's what the other editors who endorsed the recently-adopted version are saying. I absolutely agree with you that the content has to be based on the relative weight of the sources, and I've tried to be clear about that with every post I've made here (including when I opposed Lgbt.history & co.'s radical changes). I don't believe we are concealing anything with the present wording, nor acting in a fashion inconsistent with the balance of the sources. Again, the present version of the lead presents the traditional view first, and even adopts reference to Cashier as a woman. Only in the last sentence does it even raise the trans hypothesis, attributing it properly so that we are not endorsing it.

Staking out ideological ground in the lead as to what his/her "true" gender was is not what I would view as a neutral representation of the complex narrative formed by our sources (including the older ones). In the main body of the article, we can present these two different perspectives in some detail (weighting them according to the sourcing, and fully attributing, of course). But we have a finer line to walk in the lead so as not to stamp our own perspectives on the matter. Now, as a simple function of English grammar and our style guidelines, we cannot altogether avoid referencing Cashier with gendered pronouns, even in the lead, and insofar as that is a reality, I support defaulting to the feminine. But doing more to emphasize a female gender as an assumption strays too far into advocacy for my taste, and I have to oppose it here as strenuously as I did with Lgbt's.history's effort to do the same.

Or indeed, perhaps more so. When you say that "The sources generally refer to her as a woman soldier and group her with other women soldiers", are you really sure about that, or is it possible you may be letting yourself run on an assumption? Because I've now done a pretty thorough review of the sources currently used in the article (or at least the ones which are available), and I have to say that the closer I got to finishing that review, the more I began to realize just how robust the new transperson outlook is, compared to the traditional assumptions, especially amongst the acceptable secondary and reliable sources (which not all of the sources currently used actually qualify as). Let's take a look at each of them:

1: Broken URL, so no idea what this was meant to support, but it's oddly attached to the image caption.

2: This one certainly does reference Cashier as a woman repeatedly, and is perhaps the fullest account amongst the referenced sources which support the view.

3: RS text that expressly supports the transman perspective.

4: RS text that expressly supports the transman perspective.

5: RS text that expressly supports the transman perspective.

6: RS text that expressly supports the transman perspective.

7: RS text that expressly leaves open/tacitly supports the transman perspective.

8: A) is certainly not a reliable source, B) would be a primary source even if a RS, meaning ti could not be used to support a contentious assertion, C) is only a list of names for Cashier's regiment and provides no insight on the gender issue, in any event.

9: Broken link: this no longer a valid source, nor can we be certain whether it was RS, nor what it did or did not say.

10: Dubiously RS, but scarcely mentions Cashier in a handful of sentences; does refer to her as a woman where it does.

11: A primary source which does not inform upon the gender issue in a way that could be used to establish her "true" gender without some pretty extensive leaps via WP:Original research.

12: There is actually no source referenced here, so this is in fact an invalid reference. In any event, it is solely concerned with the size of Cashier's pension.

13: Somebody's unaccredited brief biographic webpage; not RS.

So in reality, amongst the sources that are acceptable secondary reliable sources that have anything explicit to say about Cashier's gender, we have one historical work which refers to her as female by default, but does not engage directly with the trans question and then we have five reliable sources which directly inquire into the specific question of his/her gender, mostly landing on the position that they ought to be regarded as a man. There are an additional three "further reading" sources, but they are not used as references for the article content and we don't know what they say in general (or at least I don't yet and can't evaluate them). So your assertion that the sources so overwhelmingly classify Cashier as a "woman disguised as a man" seems a little thin under a close examination of said sources.

If I'm to be blunt and honest, if I knew what I know now about the quality of some of these sources when I arrived here, and if Lgbt.history had behaved themselves and worked within our policies, I'd probably be saying right now that we need to re-examine whether to place more emphasis on the trans perspective, not less. But having now hammered out a version of the lead which almost all of us seem content with, I don't view it as helpful to re-open that dialogue from square one. But certainly I think this version of the lead/article gives very generous weight to view Cashier was a woman, making that the primary definition, despite the fact that the sources arguably may not say that at all. I think if you continue to press for closer examination of the sources, and and interpretation of their WP:WEIGHT, you are very likely to end up with the emphasis flipping in the opposite direction you would like it to move from the present compromise version.

For now, I'd rather stick with what we have, pending additional sources (whichever way they lean). And I hope I'm not misrepresenting the others who responded to the RfC bot, but it seems like we mostly have all come to a consensus that this is a reasonable middle ground between the "extremes" that original set the bounds of the debate between you and Lgbt.history (and neither of your perspectives are really that extreme, but you take my relative meaning, I presume). Snow ^{let's rap} 21:38, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

...Sources 3-6 were added in the past couple of weeks for the sole purpose of backing up the idea that Cashier was trans. Why on earth would you suddenly decide that they are representative, especially when I went to the trouble of providing a whole breakdown of the available sources earlier? Like, yes, the sources currently in the article give more weight to her being trans because this is what we have been discussing all week, but you have to actually look at the sources that exist. I've already done the work, so please do me the courtesy of looking at the links.

It also looks like you've decided that the burden of proof for her being a woman is just plain old higher than the burden of proof for her being a man. Source 4, for instance, suggests that Cashier "may have been" transgender, but refers to her as a woman soldier among other women soldiers, and you're treating it as unambiguous evidence against saying that she was a woman. Source 11 is primary and therefore unusable as such, yes, but the author referring to Cashier as a woman with female pronouns once he knows, and stating explicitly that he has no doubt she is a woman, wouldn't be meaningful for you if the source were otherwise usable? It looks like you've decided that in order to be usable to say she is a woman, a source must go "we've considered the trans man idea and it's not true", but that's ludicrous. And deciding that an OutHistory blog post which explicitly states that it was written by a student is RS, while an article by an archivist in the National Archives magazine is "questionable"? Snow Rise, what's going on here? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 12:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I'll address those issues in roughly reverse order. To start, there is no such thing as "National Archives" magazine; that ref was mislabelled by an inexperienced editor who clearly did a flyby of the source--it's actually something called Prologue Magazine, which does seem to be published by the National Archives, but looking at the source itself (not just invoking it's association to NARA), I'm not overwhelmed. But my chief concern is that it just doesn't really say much about Cashier to begin with, more than the superficial details contained in our other sources. The OutHistory source is not a blog post but actually seems to be a nuanced piece of journalistic research, with dozens of references and by far the most neutral view of any of our present sources. In fact, it is the only one of our sources which actually explicitly addresses the issue we are wrestling with here and treats it like an open question--all of our other sources just assume, without any analysis that we can really see, that she was male or female, based on their conventional views towards the issues.

As to sources 3-6 having been added recently to support a different view than you hold on the content, my response is "...And?". That's how Wikipedia works; when new sourcing is available, we re-evaluate our content in light of the insight it provides. If Lgbt.history added those sources to support the trans notion with regard to Cashier, then my take is that they did one thing right before moving on to torpedo their entire argument, because those actually are decent RS. Rather than asking why I am willing to accept them when they were added specifically to support an argument on the content (which again, is not a problem but actually the status quo Wikipedia process), perhaps you should be asking yourself why you want to ascribe less weight to them just because they are more recently added. In any event, if you disagree with my analysis of those or any of the sources as RS/not RS, you're free to take them to WP:RSN, but I doubt you're going to get a radically different analysis. And even if we did flip our assessment on one, I don't think it's going to change the equation much for most of those who have commented here. However, I will, per your request, re-review your earlier comments and let you know if it changes my perspectives on any of the sources significantly.

But I will say that it is patently absurd to draw the conclusion that I think "the burden of proof for her being a woman is higher than the burden of proof for her being a man", based on my support for the compromise version of the lead. I'm genuinely confused how you would come to that conclusion, especially in light of the fact that I have overwhelmingly supported a default to the female gender in almost all of the article. I don't know if I can say this any more plainly than I did in the previous two posts, but I'll say it again: we've defaulted to explicitly referencing Cashier as a "her" in the opening of the lead; we mention the theory that Cashier was a transman at the end of lead, and only through attribution. That's content that I helped to write and it clearly emphasizes the female gender over the male--so no, clearly I do not think the burden of proof is higher for that assumption, or I'd have not supported it without more sourcing. But neither am I prepared (in Wikipedia's voice) to stake out ideological ground on what her "true" gender actually was, and we have to be careful how we word the lead so as not to give the impression we are doing just that.

Ok, let me try one last approach to explaining why I think the current compromise version was able to generate consensus support in light of our policies on sourcing and neutrality. Tearing away the encyclopedic format and style, here's what I think the current version of the lead tacitly says to the reader:

"Here is a person named Albert Cashier (originally named Jennie Hodgers). They were a soldier in the civil war, serving as a man--even though, secretly, they had the anatomy of a woman. Even before and after the war, they lived like a man, for almost all of their life. Some people have noted that Cashier appears an awful lot like what we would today call a transman--so much so, that some of them are prepared to just assume they were, based on the evidence. We aren't explicitly supporting or rejecting that theory, because we aren't here to make that decision for you--but enough people have said it that we felt you should be aware of that perspective in an encyclopedia article covering Cashier's life. You should reach your own conclusion as an informed reader by proceeding through the rest of our content and following up on our sources if you feel inclined."

Now, the way I see it, the change you want to introduce would shift the tone considerably towards this implicit reading:

"Here is a woman named Albert Cashier (originally named Jennie Hodgers). She was a soldier in the civil war, serving in the disguise of a man. Even before and after the war, she pretended to be a man, for almost all of her life. Some people have more recently labelled Cashier a transman, based on how she lived. But we've already explicitly told you, in Wikipedia's voice, that she was actually a woman, so you should view this as a kind of speculative, new wave theory. Proceed through the remainder of the article with the strong presumption towards viewing Cashier as a woman and be less inclined to follow up on the sources to resolve any qualms you might have had about this nuanced issue."

In my opinion that is neither WP:Neutral nor remotely consistent with the WP:WEIGHT of our sources. Yes, it's true that I endorse using the female pronouns; given the nature of English grammar and the style and constraints of our encyclopedic enterprise, we have to choose a grammatical gender, and that seems (at least based on current sourcing) the more appropriate option. That's just the reality of the situation. But that doesn't mean we then have free license to otherwise endorse one or the other perspectives on Cashier's "actual" gender, when the sources are greatly split on that question (and at least one has the sense of perspective to state that it can't really be determined). Cashier lived and died well before a time where it would even occur to someone to ask them whether they thought of themselves as a man, so there's no help there. The best we can therefore do is balance our encyclopedic language to avoid staking out territory on that question, and particularly through careful attribution. But in the lead especially, we should avoid making a definitive, unsourced/WP:SYNTH conclusion on that issue, and leave it to the reader to reach their own conclusions. Yeah, we had to slip a single female pronoun in there by necesity, but otherwise the wording is crafted to avoid making a judgement call on Cashier's identity. I believe that is why the respondents to this RfC endorsed the current wording as a reasonable middle ground solution between your and Lgbt.history's perspectives.

I think that's about the sum total of the insight that I can provide to this discussion, unless anything in your links radically changes my perspective, so I'm going to bow out of the RfC now. As it seems that most of the other respondents have moved on as well, at least presently, and Lgbt.history got himself indeffed (note that I drove that proposal at ANI because of their abuse of process, but I still think their perspective was useful, if unbalanced), you will have some latitude to edit the article as you wish, but I hope you will do so by keeping the consensus/input of this discussion in mind. Best of luck! Snow ^{let's rap} 18:39, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Snow Rise. It's more neutral. There are enough reliable sources to go with a wording more open than Roscelese's.--Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 19:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

And I support EEng's version.--Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 19:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I think that what the lede is currently saying is "Cashier was a trans man, whether or not the sources are able or willing to say so." A supposed investment in presenting both options in the lede and letting the reader make their own decisions, even if that's how Wikipedia worked (it is not), would naturally entail presenting the majority view as well as the minority view, and the current lede does not do this; it only presents the minority view. There's plenty of latitude for wording or framing, but the lede needs to be able to say, in some form, that the sources generally view Cashier as a woman soldier. I don't think leaving the reader to infer this very basic scholarly consensus about Cashier's life from the use of the pronoun "she" is acceptable, any more than I would support omitting the counterclaim that she was a trans man and leaving readers to infer it because of her adoption of male dress.

Lgbt.history.ig didn't add the initial sources about Cashier being trans - I did. What I'm saying is that you're assuming that they represent the majority view, when they were added specifically to justify the inclusion of a minority perspective rather than totally excluding it and going with the majority view (biographies of marginal historical figures are commonly un- or poorly-sourced, defaulting to majority views in this way). Basing your interpretation of the history on the sources currently cited in the Wikipedia article, instead of the sources available in the wider world (a number of which I've provided), is basically just self-referencing Wikipedia!

Yes, I know the magazine is called Prologue, but for editors who haven't heard of it, the National Archives might sound more familiar. The OutHistory source specifically, explicitly states that it is written by a student.

I started trying to write another proposed revision to the lede which addressed both of our concerns, but I'm honestly not really sure where to go. My previous version was very restrained, with a bare statement of the discovery of Cashier's sex (no mention of any ~womanly feelings~ or ~true gender~) and a reference to the context in which she is best known. If you're going to stubbornly insist that any reference to Cashier as a woman is going too far, regardless of the sources' consensus, I'm not sure how to "compromise" with you. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:18, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, you don't have to compromise with me (in either the scarequote or literal sense). As I said, I've provided the extent of the perspective I can on the policy and sourcing issues here, per the questions you opened this RfC with, as did others, but I for one don't see myself becoming a regular editor of this article. The current version of the lead that we arrived at through discussion of your inquiry has consensus support for now and I think it stands a better chance than your approach as surviving as a stable version for the article, but if you feel you can improve upon it, there's nothing stopping you from presenting your drafts and trying to generate a new consensus. In reading your most recent comments, though, there are a couple of points I think you might want to keep in mind when undertaking that effort, because some of those comments do not align with policy and community consensus:

1) When we evaluate sourcing for a Wikipedia article, we use only those sources we have immediately at our disposal, not general appeals to what we assume to be the thrust of all of the hypothetical sources out there. That would simply open the door far too wide to WP:OR-style abuses, through gut feelings or statistical assumptions about what collective world of sourcing on a given topic says.

2) When sources diverge in their perspectives, we absolutely do let the reader come to their conclusions, while avoiding predisposing them with Wikipedia's own voice. That's basically the core underlying principle of WP:NPOV. If you feel that's "not how Wikipedia works", I advise re-reading that (pillar) policy.

3) You say that the current version of the article implies that "Cashier was a trans man, whether or not the sources are able or willing to say so.", but I don't see it reading as such, and it doesn't seem the other editors who have commented here and endorsed that version do either (you can always ping them back to inquire of them directly if you like, but considering we all endorsed EEng's version over yours and this was the exact difference between them, I'm not sure you'll get the answer you want). The current version explicitly refers to Cashier as a she, in Wikipedia's voice, in the one place we couldn't avoid a pronoun. Conversely, this version does not refer to Cashier as a transman, in its own voice--it notes that other people have reached this conclusion, and attributes that perspective. This is a very far cry from the (almost diametrically opposed) reading that you are perceiving here, and the rest of us are not.

4) You've again made an assumption about my perspective that is manifestly refuted by my previous comments here. You say that I assume that the trans sources represent the majority view here, even though I've repeatedly referenced it as a "significant minority view" and most of my arguments have been predicated on that assumption. In truth, the more familiar I've become with the sources, the more I've questioned just how minor this minority opinion is; , the more I read, the more it looks as if what little scholarship does exist on this minor historical figure is gravitating towards the nexus of this trans issue--which is perhaps unsurprising, all things considered.

But let's put that aside for a second and just work from the assumption that you, I, and the other editors (excepting Lgbt.history) have all been working from up until this point-- that the trans view is just a significant minority view. That still does not mean that we can are permitted to say something in Wikipedia's voice which directly refutes that significant competing view; likewise, we are not permitted to say anything which directly endorses a particular perspective on a contested issue, in Wikipedia's voice, even if we perceive it to be the majority view. When competing interpretations exist, we stay out of the debate and present attributed information about the span of opinions that exist. We don't endorse any of them. The one exception to this rule that the the consensus has decided we have to tolerate here in this instance is that we are prepared to use female pronouns, out of the necessity of using one or the other grammatical genders. But that necessity does not translate to an open invitation to flaunt policy and insert ourselves into making explicit, direct comments, in Wikipedia's voice about which side of scholarship has the right end of the stick with regard to the subject's gender--which seems to be exactly the distinction you want to include.

Now, if you wanted to say something along the lines of "some older sources explicitly reference Cashier as being a woman" with attribution....well, I guess technically that would be true, but there's a reason it sounds instantly clumsy to our ears; we (and our readers) all accept that this must be so, because the alternative term, transman, has only entered the general English lexicon relatively recently. Which actually underscores the issue that arises from deducing (WP:SYNTHESIS style) that older sources can be aggregated together to support the claim that the "majority view" is that Cashier's gender was that of a woman. Older sources did not have the dimension that would allow them to distinguish between anatomical sex and psychological gender, and we can't really derive a rejection of the transman description from the fact that they used then-conventional language to describe Cashier's situation. However, even if we toss this issue aside, and again just assume that the majority view is that Cashier was a woman, we still do not want to say that in Wikipedia's voice; so long as there is a significant minority view which says otherwise, we must not write our content in a manner which embraces or refutes any perspective. We can attribute those positions, on either side (or any side to the extent we have sources which leave the question open), but we shouldn't advocate for them.

5) This is just an incidental matter, but I think you should be careful about continuing to refactor, reformat, and re-organize the discussion. The occasional minimalist edit to keep things organized is generally tolerated, but doing things like a) striking other editor's proposed text (when they haven't given the slightest indication that they are withdrawing them) and leaving your own as the only proposal that appears to be live, or b) re-arranging the order of comments so that yours respond to another person first, even though you commented after others, are likely to be perceived as disruptive at some point. Maybe that wasn't you who took the initiative with those strikes, in which case, I apologize, but I thought it was worth pointing out that people get touchy about that sort of thing at a point, and its technically not allowed to make edits to other people's comments.

Ok, that's really and truly the end to my comments here. For the record, I'm not going to be hovering over the article, ready to call you out if you change the substance of the lead or anything else--maybe others are, but I doubt it. So you don't have to worry about winning me over in any sense. Not that I think you would radically alter the content in a manner inconsistent with the standing consensus, at least until you've generated a new one; you seem like the kind of conscientious editor who just wouldn't do that. But if you were looking to convince me of your perspective in order to help form that new consensus, I'm sorry, my view just has not been altered sufficiently to move me away from the current version of the lead. If you want, I'll check back soon to see your specific proposals (who knows, maybe we are just talking past eachother and there is a wording that would satisfy both our concerns), but otherwise I've exhausted my input here. Again, best of luck! Snow ^{let's rap} 23:49, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not the editor who struck anyone else's suggestion, and I find your "You shouldn't be doing this, it's really rude, maybe it wasn't you but I didn't bother checking so I'm going to call you out for it anyway" rude and disingenuous. It's also common WP practice to respond above but with an additional indent to keep the threading clear without engaging the wrong user. I am not a new user.

I also don't understand why you continue to state that the bulk of sourcing referring to Cashier as female is some kind of hypothetical or maybe. I did the work here. I looked at the sources before I changed over the article in November. Then, after I started the discussion, I looked at them again and linked them on the talkpage in summary form. You are not required to put in the same amount of work that I did, but it would be nice if you wouldn't base your arguments for the future of the article on some imaginary situation where no one has ever actually looked at the (recent, secondary) sources on Cashier's life.

I do not agree that WP:NPOV supports your advocacy of elaborating the minority view in the lede and leaving the majority view up to reader inference, which is what I was talking about earlier. The reader can only make an informed decision as to what to believe if they are, per WP:NPOV, presented with a clearly written and properly weighted summary of what reliable sources say on the subject. It'd be like opening the William Shakespeare article with the statement that Shakespeare was an Elizabethan actor and the name under which certain plays were published, with a little brief about the authorship conspiracy, while deliberately and consciously avoiding the statement that Shakespeare was a writer. Sure, you could infer from the body of the article that the majority doesn't support the conspiracy, but why would you make a reader infer that?

Hence my suggestions for the lede, which avoid statements about Cashier's identity while reflecting the plain facts (the discovery of her sex, the context for her notability). Again, totally cool with phrasing edits - maybe another verb before the reference to other cross-dressing soldiers would alleviate your concern about Wikipedia's voice vs. accurately reflecting how she was perceived. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:17, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Look, I'm sorry that you launched an RfC and the editors who responded didn't back your perspectives 100%, down to every single last clause and nuance, but that's just the way things work here sometimes, as you surely know as an experienced contributor. I've tried to explain to you why I think the rest of us embraced something in-between your and Lgbt.history's perspectives (and let's be honest here, it's 98% of the way towards your interpretation of the issues!), but it doesn't seem like you're ever going to accept that explanation, so all I can tell you at this point is "tough luck--that's consensus for you."

For the record though, I don't think that wording will ever require any reader to make any kind of radical inference to understand what the different perspectives are here. Clearly the obvious alternative to "Cashier was a transman" is "Cashier was a woman." And even before we mention the trans theory through attribution, we reference Cashier with a feminine pronoun. Are you saying our readers need to be told what "she" means? I'm as certain as I can be that the average reader is going to interpret that lead exactly as the rest of us intended it to read: Cashier was anatomically a woman and most traditional sources (and probably a majority of people today) would regard her as woman by default, but in light of modern thinking on trans identity, some people speculate that she could have been a transman. We're not throwing rocket science at anyone here.

And more so than that, nobody here is even saying you can't explicitly say that some sources think she was a woman (you keep going back to that strawman whenever NPOV comes up, but no one is saying that to you--that I have seen anyway); I think it will look really weird to say something like that when every reader will just be assuming that some sources reference her as a woman, but if you think you can find a way to make it work semantically, propose away. Where it becomes problematic for the rest of us is if you say, in Wikipedia's voice, without attribution, "Cashier was a woman." Especially in the lead. Because the sources do differ on which she was (woman or transman), and even if we feel there is a majority position, and even if we all agree which is the majority position (as we mostly seem to do in this case) we still cannot play favourites by stating one perspective as simple empirical fact, using Wikipedia's voice.

Anyway, the tone of the dialogue here is edging slowly but increasingly towards the hostile and we're just going around in circles while I spend a lot more time than I can afford just now, so I'm off. If you come up with a proposed wording you feel I can endorse, you can feel more than free to ping me back to get my perspective at any point. I'm sure most of the others probably wouldn't mind either. Short of that, you can either 1) accept the consensus and live with the current wording, 2) reject it and make the changes anyway and risk getting called on it by someone, or 3) wait until you feel you have enough new editors around to sway to your perspective regardless of what the rest of us think. Whatever you choose, happy editing. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Can't we just use Roscelelse's version, but say she is known for being a female soldier in the American Civil war, rather than was definitely a woman, and also is considered by some to be a Transgender man? --Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 03:53, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Comment I'd stick to it's current format. In Albert Cashiers lifetime the modern transgender movement didn't exist. The fight to be properly be gendered with specific pronouns didn't exist. I believe the term of choice during their lifetime was androgyne. It's not even clear why they lived as a man. Did they feel they were a man? Did they desire to be a man? Or did their father teach them to dress as a man to get work? Did they use these lessons learned to get work as a soldier? Did they keep up this ruse to draw a soldiers pension for the work they did? I don't know. I can't offer anything but original research to answer this. The only thing I can say for sure is that some scholars suggest that she may have been a transman. No one definitively makes the case that she was a transman. It would be encyclopedic for us to do so. It is not for wikipedia to legitimize the transgender community. It is for wikipedia to document the transgender community. Stating that Albert Cashier is a transman in the absence of evidence and gendering her towards modern standards, again with out the proper evidence or sources, is not scholarly and is a complete disservice to the transgender community. -Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 07:54, 6 January 2017 (UTC) What about they pronouns? Something like

Albert D. J. Cashier (December 25, 1843 – October 10, 1915), born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier adopted the identity of a man before enlisting, and maintained it for most of the remainder of their life. This consistent and long-term commitment to the male identity has prompted some scholars to suggest that Cashier was a trans man — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bwitiye (talk • contribs) 02:11, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

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Lead issue

I'm sorry to do something that seems like harping on the issue, but I do wonder if part of the cause of these drive-by pronoun changes is that we do name the trans man "theory" in the lede but not the woman "theory" - that is, it's easy to read our lede or article and think "people basically think this person was trans, it's just Wikipedia that's made a mistake." I had earlier suggested "Late in Cashier's life, it was discovered that she was female, one of a number of women soldiers who served as men during the Civil War." If people still don't like this language, can I suggest something along the lines of "Cashier became famous as..." so that we can still keep that mention and link? It clarifies things for the reader and also foregrounds the primary locus of Cashier's notability. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:12, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Given the very strong consensus on the previous version of that statement, I would have waited a little longer for comment before implementing it in the lead. But that procedural issue aside, having looked at the way you implemented it, I think it's a reasonable balance. Though I doubt that anyone was likely to have been confused in the way you have suggested, there's no harm to it either, insofar as it contextualizes the "she was a woman" notion as a perspective--maybe the sole and presumptive theory for a long time, but a theory nonetheless. I think it's a decent solution to the difference of opinion. I have, however, tweaked it just slightly because the two sentences were semantically not being related to eachother in the proper relationship for a semi-colon, in my opinion. I feel separating them into discrete sentences reads more clearly and keeps what are essentially two different encyclopedic statements separate. Hope you find it agreeable, because its nice to finally have found a middle ground most everyone seems likely to agree upon. See, all it takes is a half a year away to get perspective! ;) Snow ^{let's rap} 20:50, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually strike that--I had misread part of the statement, and the result was awkward redundant Cashiers in the last sentence. Instead, I have related to the two statements via clause dependency. Left out the "also" again, however, as it would otherwise make the second perspective feel even more subordinate to the first. Snow ^{let's rap} 20:56, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: Sorry I totally missed this, I think your changes are fine. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:53, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Solution to Pronoun Issue

I'd like to offer the suggestion that this article follow the precedents set by the articles about the Chevalier d'Eon and James Barry (surgeon), which omit pronouns entirely due to continued pronoun edit wars and editor disagreement; this solution worked well to resolve the problem in these cases. Wilderwill (talk) 20:03, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

That kind of approach complicates an article substantially, often leads to tortuous prose, and can compromise encyclopedic tone and neutrality. You might be able to move me to support in this case, hypothetically, but here's the reality of the situation: its unlikely to gain support here, and you'll just stir up the hornet's nest again. The current wording was a process of arduous compromise, with two diametrically opposed extremes, but the vast majority of involved editors (both those previously involved and those arriving for the RfC) feeling that the present approach, which endorses neither the theory that Cashier was a transman, nor the rejection of that theory, was most reasonable in light of the sourcing. And believe me, the more I dug into the sourcing after responding to the RfC, the more I saw that the theory figures pretty heavily in them. That said, at the end of the day, it remains speculation (presented as such in the sources) and we have not a single recorded word of Cashier's to cast light on the subject.

Do I think it is possible, maybe probable, that Cashier was someone we'd generally recognize as a transgender person today? Yeah, probably--but it's just a shade too far into Non-WP:NPOV for some people here to expressly endorse that perspective--and honestly, I understand the concern. And it was tedious enough to maintain the (fairly sizeable) consensus that we should avoid greater (and as the consensus sees it, non-neutral) emphasis on male pronouns and explicit statements about "her true gender" (that is, the one matching her anatomical). I don't recommend opening this can of worms again, at least not until new sourcing is developed, which seems somewhat unlikely. The consensus was clear on where the compromise should lay between the two extremes here, and even the last holdout eventually learned to live with it. I think the center is going to hold on this one and you'll just waste a lot of editorial time by driving for the removal of the female pronouns in their entirety. Snow ^{let's rap} 07:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I concur with Snow Rise, that making such a radical change to an article that's currently stable is probably not a good idea. The possibility can always be dusted off in the future if the need arises. I will just say, though, that I think they're overstating the downside of writing that avoids gendered pronouns. Done well, it works well. Awien (talk) 12:16, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

But . . . given the recent round of unregistered editors changing the pronouns, maybe the time has come to consider this again. What do people think? Awien (talk) 02:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

These editors are welcome to bring sources which demonstrate that perceptions of Cashier have changed. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 07:42, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Pronoun correction

GLAAD guidelines state that the pronouns used by a person to refer to themself should be respected in media that references them. Albert Cashier used he/him/his from adolescence through to duration of his life until he was institutionalized. Clearly this was good enough for his community, as multiple occasions of his birth sex being discovered are cited in the article, but each time until the last his community chose to keep his secret and respect his male identity. There is no textual evidence that he identified as a woman and lived as a man for strictly practical reasons. While in the past practical considerations were thought to be the only reason for someone assigned female to live as male, it is now widely known that this is not the case; to assume today that he lived that way merely because SOME women did during some points in history seems dangerously speculative, almost fictionalizing. The insistence on maintaining the use she/her pronouns in reference to Albert Cashier strikes me as strangely unobjective, especially considering that the treatment of Albert Cashier's article is inconsistent with the articles on other historical transgender people. Billy Tipton and William Broadnax, for example, have their preferred pronouns respected although neither ever came out as explicitly "transgender". Ouchlckhcchloh (talk) 16:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

TLDR, there is no cited evidence that Albert Cashier preferred she/her pronouns or identified as a woman while there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Ouchlckhcchloh (talk) 16:25, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Specifically which source claims Cashier used male pronouns? I saw several sources that used he/him/his but that was the sources' respective authors, not Cashier. If Cashier dressed, appeared, and acted as a stereotypical male but still preferred female pronouns, that's pretty strong evidence that they still identified as female and a posthumous change would not be appropriate, per GLAAD, Wikipedia, and/or the subject's own preference. (And if we don't know what Cashier told close confidantes, that's the same thing.) And while I could definitely have missed something, I'm not seeing a source that says Cashier preferred male pronouns.

And as you've already been told, these sorts of discussions don't happen while or after changes have been made. Get consensus before you make contentious edits and definitely don't keep going once others have reverted you. All you've accomplished is that the article is back to she/her/hers, you've been blocked, and this discussion is likely going to just sit here until you come back. Since you seem to have more information on this than whichever amateur happens to pass by, I'm hoping you take the hint since if you resume that behavior, you're going to be out for a lot longer and this article (and Cashier's memory) might suffer for it. CityOfSilver 21:15, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

We don't have evidence that Cashier "identified as" anything. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:14, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Of course we don't because that terminology wouldn't have been in use in those days. If the standard is the concept of self-identification, with deference to biological assignment for everybody who didn't flat-out say "I was born female but I'm male," we're going to misgender practically every trans, non-binary, and/or non-cis person who died before 1980 or so. Do we have evidence that Cashier preferred to be thought of and treated as male? CityOfSilver 15:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

We don't really have any information about Cashier's personal preferences other than a preference for wearing male clothing, which isn't especially indicative of anything. Absent something that approximates the self-designation component required by MOS:IDENTITY (which I agree is harder, though not impossible, to find for historical figures) all we can do is follow reliable sources, which generally refer to Cashier as female. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Cashier lived as a man for almost his entire life, and was accepted as one by his comrades and friends even after being "outed" by hospital staff. That Cashier lived as a man is not only known but widely agreed-upon. Cashier was even buried as one. To use female pronouns here is insulting and ridiculous. 27.55.5.145 (talk) 12:26, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Addition to the page possibly?

Would it be possible to include information about The CiviliTy of Albert Cashier under legacy? Here is the link - https://www.albertcashierthemusical.com. SHOUTChicago (talk) 16:53, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. - FlightTime (open channel) 16:55, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry/drive-by

This article seems to be a big target for throwaway accounts. Is there anything that we should pursue doing? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:04, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

You could request semi-protection or pending-changes protection at WP:RPP if you have good reason to suspect sock-puppetry. I'll leave it up to you if you'd like to do that. AdA&D 15:28, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's sockpuppetry, and I don't think it's frequent enough (yet) to justify PC- or semi-protection. However, the article is on my watchlist, so I'll be keeping an eye on things. —C.Fred (talk) 15:38, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

The fact that several accounts have altered the article subject's gender with the inaccurate edit summary "fix typo" possibly suggests some kind of off-site collaboration or at least the activity of a group of like-minded people. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:14, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

gender

and I quote, "(Per RFC consensus given the greater # of sources identifying subject as female. Would suggest presenting new evidence if advocating change)".Dlohcierekim (talk) 05:09, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Pronoun gender

The article currently uses female pronouns. Given the arc of Cashier's life, and the persistence in chosen identity through various hospital stays, even when discovery occurred and threatened to become public knowledge, and the tombstone inscription ""Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill. Inf.", I find it jarring to see female pronouns being used here. More importantly than any sentiment on my part however, is what it says at MOS:GENDERID, namely: Give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources. If fifty years of presenting as a man, participation in forty Civil War battles, and a male tombstone inscription isn't sufficient to indicate Cashier's self-designation, than I'm really at a loss to know what would be sufficient. Mathglot (talk) 09:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Pure WP:OR and Synthesis. There are no sources pointing to self-designation on her part. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to earn a living - even to wearing trousers. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:37, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: please see the talk page archives for the RFC we had on this subject. Consensus was to use female pronouns given the predominant view of reliable scholarly sources that Cashier was a woman. Do you maybe have more recently published scholarly sources showing that the prevailing view has changed? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree - the article should reflect the pronouns used in recent reliable sources. Nick-D (talk) 23:17, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Roscelese, thanks for the archive mention, I had somehow missed that link (it is kinda small). Wish I had noticed the Rfc; I would have joined in and had some comment or other, but it's not appropriate to second-guess that, now. I will look for some sources, and see what turns up, although it sounds from the Rfc like that territory has been covered pretty well.

Just in response to Laurel, though, I don't agree that it's OR or SYNTH; I was referring more to the principle of MOS:GENDERID which is pretty clear in the first sentence that self-designation trumps RS usage in most cases. If that applies to this case as well, then the question devolves to two things: 1. whether a self-declaration by someone trans has to be in written form or not, in order to trigger MOS:GENDERID identification recognition, and if not, then 2. whether spending a lifetime presenting as male is a self-designation or not. I'm unsure about the first, but I think the second is certainly arguable. It might be worth bringing up point 1 at WT:MOS unless this issue has already been decided. Does anyone know if it has? Mathglot (talk) 00:37, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

It seems somewhat problematic to project modern definitions of gender identification back on someone who lived in a totally different era, so I think that reliable sources are needed to support any change. Nick-D (talk) 04:45, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

• It is probably unreasonable to assume that anyone prior to the 1940's was capable of identifying as a different gender to that of their birth, lifetime pretense to the contrary notwithstanding. The concept itself had not yet developed and therefore identification as trans was not possible. There is no reasonable evidence that she actually thought she was a man, nor any indication she was 'trans', there are numerous examples of girls who participate in military activities as men, who go on to marry and have children as women. I think it is unreasonable to assume that there is any motive beyond the necessity to pretend to be male to enter and stay in the military. In her early life she became accustomed to pretending to be a boy to get work. Additionally she did not make her tombstone, it stands to reason that the people who knew here buried her with her 'male' name, not knowing any different name to put on it (although 9 years later they tracked down her original name and put a new gravestone next to it.) All that being said, it is revealing that she continued to present herself as a man after leaving the military, this in itself however could simply have been a way of obtaining further employment, noting that men were often paid 10 times as much as their female counterparts in this period, this was also a requirement to claim her veterans pension, a relevant sum. I will also note that various people did find she was female throughout her life, although her public front of being 'a man' was for obvious financial reasons not disclosed. Dysklyver 10:15, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
  • These arguments that she could not have been a trans man because the term hadn't been coined yet are just as much WP:OR as the arguments that she must have been because of her dress and lifestyle. Throughout history we do find examples of people expressing more modern ideas of sexuality and gender in the language available to them at the time. It can be muddy, especially when things like "is attracted to women" and "is logical and adventurous" are taken to mean someone female has the "soul" of a man, but I would consider "she wasn't because she couldn't have been" a non-starter. Let's just pay attention to the sources. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:55, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
    • The sources that all say she was a woman. My point is valid, and supported by current scholarship. Prior to recent technological and ideological shifts gender has always been an immutable fact. Additionally, be wary of confusing gender and sexuality as you just did, as they are two distinct issues. Dysklyver 00:24, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Just because there was no Pride parade or LGBT Center and they didn't have gay bars in Ancient Greece, Rome, or Asia, does not mean that there were no gay people until the word was invented. You can sit around and argue that it's anachronistic to call some Ancient Greeks "gay" because the term did not exist (and I'd agree) but gay people were always there, back to the dawn of history; it just wasn't called that then. Obviously, they were of their time and place, as we are of ours; and it looked different then, and it was called something different then. Likewise, transgender people have existed since the dawn of history. The fact that HRT and SRS weren't available then, and we needed to wait a few millenia for the word to be invented, does not change a thing. Whether Cashier was transgender or not should depend, as has already been stated, on our best evidence from the preponderance of reliable sources. The fact that we won't find "transman" printed in contemporary accounts, or chiseled into Cashier's 1915 tombstone, should affect that determination not a jot. Mathglot (talk) 09:34, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
• The tricky thing about this is that prior to the emergence of transgender as an identity label that people called themselves, reliable sources would never have written about Cashier with male pronouns regardless of how Cashier might have self-identified. Personally, from the evidence at hand I think it's quite likely that Cashier, if alive today, would be identifying as a transgender man — I suspect the same of Willa Cather, too — but even if that's true the sources written at the time would never have extended Cashier that courtesy regardless of Cashier's own identity or pronoun preference. So, in fact, it's virtually impossible to reliably establish Cashier's true gender identity from the sources available. The fact that the sources use female pronouns is not in and of itself proof that Cashier wasn't what we would now understand as transgender, because sources written in that time would never have been written from a trans-friendly perspective regardless of the subject's gender identity.
  And it's also true that just because the word transgender didn't exist yet doesn't mean that people weren't capable of identifying and behaving in a transgender-consistent way — there's in fact substantial evidence that people did historically do that quite a bit well before surgical intervention became possible, and the fact that we didn't have a name for it yet doesn't nullify people doing what they could to live a transgender identity with the tools they had available to them.
  For a somewhat similar example, musician Jackie Shane was always written about in contemporaneous sources as a man who performed in drag, rather than as a transgender woman — it literally wasn't until just this year, concurrent with the new reissue of her singles, that media finally started putting it on the record that she identifies as transgender. Until those sources emerged, in fact, our article about her conformed with the "drag queen" sources, because although there were rumours that she identified as trans there were no sources for the fact. We stuck with what the sources said, but what the sources said was actually wrong.
  So in a case like this, where there's some evidence that Cashier may have been what we would now accept as transgender but no reliable sources to establish that definitively and no way to ask, my personal preference would be to use gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/their) instead of male or female ones, on the grounds that Cashier's own gender identity is actually unclear. Bearcat (talk) 20:44, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Agree with almost all of it. Except, when you say, So, in fact, it's virtually impossible to reliably establish Cashier's true gender identity from the sources available, I'm not sure if I agree with that. If we require that the sources quote Cashier as saying, "I am a man", or words to that effect, then I believe you are right. To be clear: if the only determination of someone's gender identity is an explicit statement by the person in question as quoted in a reliable source, then I agree. But "the sources available" also refer to Cashier as "he", and write about Cashier's military experience, and other behavior that are indicative of how Cashier would have conceived of their identity. If reliable contemporary accounts indicate "he" based on all this, absent a self-declaration, does that satisfy MOS:GENDERID, or not? I believe this is a question that should be raised and resolved at WP:MOS, following which it should be revisited here.

In the meantime, here's a Gedankenexperiment: compare Wikipedia's choice of pronoun at the Billie Tipton article, to the choice at Albert Cashier. There are considerable similarities between the two lives, with the obvious difference of Tipton being born a year before Cashier died, and surviving into the era of transgender people, SRS, and public discussion of the topic. Do we have a reliable source for Tipton saying, "I am a man," or was it merely unstated but obvious, with Tipton indicating it by "doing gender" as a man a hundred times a day? In the section on Tipton's death, there is this: He was actually suffering from a hemorrhaging peptic ulcer, which, untreated, was fatal. It was while paramedics were trying to save Tipton's life, with son William looking on, that William learned that his father was a transgender man. In what way was Tipton's life and death different than Cashier's, that they merit different pronouns? In both cases, a life lived was in one gender, and a coroner's "sex assignment at death" indicated another.

We are recognized as our gender by our performance, appearance, and (sometimes) name; more rarely by explicit written claim. I would posit that a sufficient number of reliable sources describing Cashier's behavior and appearance as a man's, along with the chosen name 'Albert', and extraordinary efforts to struggle against discovery until death, are sufficient to establish Cashier's conception of self, barring a clear statement by Cashier, "I am a man."

Actually, I would go even further than that: I would argue that even if we turned up a quotation from Cashier, "I am a woman," it could not be considered evidence that Cashier was not a trans-man. Before the comprehension of gender as socially constructed and apart from sex, "man" simply meant, "adult penis-possessor", and "woman" meant, "adult vagina-possessor." I'm sure if you gave a 19th-century trans-man truth serum and asked them, "Are you a woman?" they would say "Yes", purely as an indication of their genital anatomy as no other conceptual framework existed at the time to answer any differently. That answer would give you no information as to their gender identity, a concept which had not yet been described. Given the current state of knowledge, we might answer differently. This is no different than any number of things that were understood and called one way in the past that we now understand better and name differently in contravention to a unanimity of contemporary reliable sources. But that's more of a prophylactic argument, as to my knowledge, Cashier never claimed to be a woman, either. Mathglot (talk) 07:14, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

@Bearcat: we're not relying significantly on 19th-century sources here. The sources surveyed in the RFC postdated the development of transgender language.

@Mathglot: But I could just as well say "sure, in unenlightened times people thought that wanting to wear trousers and work as a carpenter made someone a man, but now we know that that's just about restrictive gender roles and stereotypes, and we have no evidence that Cashier suffered from any sex dysphoria." We could go back and forth all day with subjective opinions. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

The later sources couldn't go back and ask Cashier about the gender identification question either, and had to rely on the same older written accounts that would never have countenanced that transgender was a thing it was possible to be in the first place. So they count for exactly nothing in terms of proving that Cashier wasn't transgender, because they don't know a damn thing more about Cashier's state of mind than we do. Bearcat (talk) 15:45, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

So are the later sources which determine that Cashier was a man also unusable, since they don't know either and are likewise only relying on earlier sources? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:49, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

That's precisely why I suggested that we default to gender-neutral pronouns. Bearcat (talk) 19:47, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Is that what Wikipedia does in the case of persons whose gender or sex was unknown? Or only for those who have expressed a nonbinary identity? (Are there other examples of articles that follow this suggestion?) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:27, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not personally aware of too many other examples where a person's gender identity was actually debatable and unclear, but that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't some. But one example I do know of is that we've avoided gendering "John Campbell" in Pictures for Sad Children due to conflicting claims about their gender identity, and there is a writer (I can't remember her name offhand) whose article was written gender-neutrally for a few years, until we were able to properly establish whether unreliable source rumours that she had come out as transgender were true or not. (They were.) Very generally, however, gender-neutral pronouns are not necessarily used only for people who specifically identify as non-binary, but are also frequently used for people whose gender identity is merely unknown or unknowable. Bearcat (talk) 03:15, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay, good to know. I'm still not sure there's enough ambiguity to justify it, but it's good to know what the precedent was. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:35, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Most of the above is an exercise is speculation, WP:OR and Synthesis. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:59, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

One potential case for why the pronouns should be moved towards gender neutrality (or possibly male pronouns) is the following. Every other woman who served as a man that has a page on wikipedia returned to their daily life as a woman after being found out or the war ended. I think the fact that Albert remains known largely as Albert, and lived their life as a man, as opposed to these other folks who are known as women and lived as such, points towards a difference between them. It seems strange that a person who was known by most of the people they encountered in their life as a man would be known as something else simply because of the composition of their genitalia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.207.36 (talk) 19:29, 29 November 2017 (UTC)