Talk:Gender-critical feminism/Archive 5

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Hatnote revert

@Amanda A. Brant, where is the consensus for including the current hatnote with its current wording? I see a discussion on the target page here: Talk:Anti-gender movement#Misleading hatnote, which doesn’t look like consensus to me.

Why do we have this hatnote at all? The guidance says Mention other topics and articles only if there is a reasonable possibility of a reader arriving at the article either by mistake or with another topic in mind.. This article has a pretty specific title. Is there really a reasonable possibility that the reader intended to arrive at the other article?

Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:12, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

The current hatnote is the one that has been in place, that has been stable, since it was originally added. The sources in this article (as well as the target article) clearly establish that "anti-gender" doesn't exclusively refer to religious or right-wing groups, but is a broader term than can encompass a range of beliefs, including self-identified feminists who promote anti-gender beliefs and who don't identify as religious. "Broader" is a concise, neutral term that avoids giving an inaccurate or misleading impression. We have a hatnote because the gender-critical or TERF movement is frequently discussed in relation to the anti-gender movement or considered a part of the anti-gender movement, because they promote similar beliefs and use similar terms, because "the trans-exclusionary feminist (TERF) movement and the so-called anti-gender movement are only rarely distinguished as movements with distinct constitutions and aims" as one source quoted in the article puts it, and because even the names—"gender-critical" and "anti-gender"—are very similar and convey the same thing (opposition to gender, or what they term "gender ideology"). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 12:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree it shouldn't really be in the hatnote, but if it is: the target page hatnote says "the conservative or religious movement". If it is to be included it should use the same language. Void if removed (talk) 20:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Ignoring the target article and sources for now (I haven't looked yet), I agree with the wording of "broader". Sources say that both anti-gender movement and gender-critical feminist movement is mostly conservatives, not that one is more conservative than the other. —Panamitsu (talk) 22:12, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Ignoring the target article and sources for now

But that is the crux of the matter. Placing wording in this hatnote that doesn't accurately reflect the target page - and takes a non-neutral WP:POV on the relationship between the pages - is unsupported.

The claim that "gender-critical feminism" is part of the "conservative or religious" anti-gender movement is implied by using the term "broader".

Placing a contested claim in the hatnote like this is declaring it strongly in wikivoice, when this is the sort of thing that has to be presented as a dispute. Void if removed (talk) 15:17, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

It accurately reflects the target article, which in fact discusses anti-gender movements that are not religious or conservative. It is the hatnote in the other article that is misleading and poorly worded and that doesn't accurately reflect the content of that article. The hatnote here is accurate and always has been, the concise word "broader" doesn't even say anything about whether the anti-gender movement is exclusively religious/conservative or not (it's not, anyway). There is no reason for us to use the hatnote in this article to engage in a debate over whether the anti-gender movement is exclusively religious/conservative, when we can use a concise, neutral wording that serves its purpose which is navigation. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 05:18, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I think the same WP:POV argument can be used for the other way around. Describing the anti-gender movement as "the conservative or religious movement" implies that gender-critical feminism isn't, or is less. Thus another POV. I agree with Loki's statement in another comment that "broader" should be clarified to mean anti-gender, not feminism. —Panamitsu (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

The anti-gender movement is unambiguously conservative. This page is about gender-critical feminism, which in one sense operates as part of the anti-gender movement, and therefore in conservative ways, and in another sense operates as part of the feminist movement, and therefore in lefty ways.

So it's unclear, and the sources are therefore also unclear. Many sources will note the movement's links to the right, while other sources will note that the distinction between it and bog-standard opposition to trans rights is that gender-critical feminists at least claim to be on the left. And many really are, outside of their GCF activism.

Rather than just broader movement, I would say broader anti-trans movement or broader anti-gender movement to make it clear we are not referring to feminism in general. Loki (talk) 23:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Either alternative is fine with me. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 03:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

We should use the wording in the Anti-gender movement article i.e. the conservative or religious movement. Sweet6970 (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Sweet. I have no idea why "broader" is mentioned at all. Also the text about two protein-coding genes should be removed. There is zero, zero, chance than an editor searching for protein-coding genes called TERF1 or TERF2 will end up being redirected here because of the contentious and misguided TERF redirect and then not immediately realise this is an article about gender-critical feminism. The point of a hat note like this is to avoid wasting reader's time that they have to read too much to realise they are at the wrong place. The very top of the article is such precious place, that we need to use it only for what is essential. Hopefully at some point in the future we can drop the "TERF redirects here" note as well. -- Colin°^Talk 17:17, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The point of the hatnote isn't just to reduce confusion, it's also to provide a link to the relevant article. Hence the links to the articles about the genes.

Also, we do get lots of confusion between the subject of the article and the broader anti-gender movement. We've gotten such confusion multiple times on this very talk page. So I'm very skeptical of removing that part of the hatnote either. Loki (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Well see Wikipedia:Hatnote point 3: Mention other topics and articles only if there is a reasonable possibility of a reader arriving at the article either by mistake or with another topic in mind.

I don't think anyone is proposing removing the anti-gender link. But the wording is just plain wrong and unsupported. -- 08:41, 13 November 2023 (UTC) Colin°^Talk 08:41, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I've reworded the hatnote to say "the conservative or religious movement" rather than "the broader movement" as proposed above. The new text is objectively accurate and mirrors the note on the linked page back to this one. The old text is unsupported by reliable sources and clearly does not have consensus support here. Anyone restoring the old text would need strong sources that the entire GCF movement is actually a sub-movement of the "broader" religious one, which is daft. -- Colin°^Talk 08:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Reverted. In the case of no consensus (which is clearly what we have here), the status quo wins. Loki (talk) 09:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The problem with your suggestion is that we don't have an article on the so-called "broader anti-trans movement" to link to, other than just going the whole hog and linking to transphobia. So you haven't offered an implementable solution.

Therefore the WP:BURDEN is on you and Amanda, to demonstrate, with sources, that GCF is so clearly and unambiguously universally regarded as being part of the religious anti-gender movement that we can declare so to our readers in a hat note and. There may be commentators who note they both bang on about "gender ideology" and share some common goals, but I don't think the "is a subset of" claim made currently in our text is in any way a consensus view. Please self-revert and per policy you need to demonstrate with consensus that you have sources firmly on your side.

There is nothing contentious about the text I changed it to. It was neutral and accurate. Seeking a neutral wording, seeking compromising with other editors is what we all, as editors, should be seeking per policy. Editors reverting to restore contentious text that is not supported by the sources know what that means. Don't do it, Loki. You should revert. -- Colin°^Talk 11:36, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

No it's not our responsibility to "demonstrate" your WP:STRAWMAN. The anti-gender movement is not exclusively religious. It's a broad, vague term, that may refer to religious, conservative or self-identified left-wing or self-identified feminist groups, as established by sources in both this and the target article. Your claim that the anti-gender movement is exclusively "conservative or religious" is just plain wrong. Some scholarship ten years ago tended to describe the anti-gender movement as typically conservative or religious, but that has changed significantly in more recent scholarship as the anti-gender movement has become more visible outside of countries like Hungary or Poland, and it's not universally described as "conservative or religious" today. The original, stable, concise and uncontroversial and neutral hatnote text needs to remain in place, there is no consensus for changing it to an inaccurate claim that the movement is just religious/conservative. The hatnote serves a navigation purpose, it's not appropriate to use it to make a controversial and misleading argument that the movement is exclusively religious or conservative. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 16:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not our duty to WP:SATISFY you, but just to be clear there already are several sources that link the two movements over at this section of the page on the anti-gender movement.

Also our article on the anti-gender movement doesn't describe it as solely a religious movement, and I agree that if it did "broader" would clearly be inappropriate. However, it is in fact described as primarily a conservative movement, and that's less clear. What exactly the relationship is between the two movements is also unclear. I've said before I'm not a huge fan of either "broader" alone or "conservative or religious" alone, but between the two I think "broader" captures the link between the two more clearly, because they're not just two ideologies that happen accidentally to be very similar to each other.

Rather, what seems to have happened per the sources (although again, very ambiguous and not well documented) is that the tiny group of anti-trans radical feminists from the 70s took on significant portions of anti-gender terminology and ideology as part of positioning itself as a more mainstream political force. It's not uncommon at all to see GCFs using the term "gender ideology", which is the core signifier of the anti-gender movement, and even their term for themselves ("gender critical") seems clearly based on anti-gender beliefs. Loki (talk) 21:53, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that captures it. Anti-gender is really defined by opposition to what they themselves term "gender ideology", and it has become a rather broad, vague term that may encompass a range of rather different beliefs, from self-styled radical feminists to Catholic conservatives who are united in their opposition to LGBT+ rights and the concept of gender, and who increasingly use the same terminology and share core ideas in this area, despite originally having less in common. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

The response to claims like this, eg. from Holly Lawford-Smith's "Sex Matters" - with specific reference to the Pearce citation - is that a) such allegations of links are motivated, and b) gender-critical feminists more often refer to "gender identity ideology":

[...] and that they 'argue that such developments result from what they call 'gender ideology" (Pearce et al. 2020, p. 681). The authors then go on to identify the term 'gender ideology' as originating 'in anti-feminist and anti-trans discourses among right-wing Christians, with the Catholic Church acting as a major nucleating agent' (p. 681). They write that this term has been 'increasingly adopted by far-right organizations and politicians', who 'position gender egalitarianism, sexual liberation and LGBTQ+ rights as an attack on traditional values by 'global elites" (p. 681). It is not uncommon for detractors to link gender-critical feminism to conservative groups, although the most common form is to simply suggest 'alliances', exploiting left ideological purity in order to discredit gender-critical feminists. [...] But whether or not the authors give a fair reconstruction of the history of 'gender ideology', it is much more common for gender-critical feminists to refer to gender identity ideology, specifically picking out the worldview of those who advocate for the replacement of sex with gender identity.

it has become a rather broad, vague term that may encompass a range of rather different beliefs

I mean, yes, if you use terms indiscriminately (TERF, gender critical, gender-critical feminist, anti-trans, anti-gender) the effect will be no clear distinction between any of these things. Void if removed (talk) 10:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

even their term for themselves ("gender critical") seems clearly based on anti-gender

There's no evidence for that beyond having a word in common, and this is exactly the same logic that has people claim "national socialism" is "left wing".

There are a limited number of words being used in a highly contested space and many overloaded meanings.

2nd wave feminists theorised sex and gender as distinct, in order to critique "gender" as the socially constructed roles and stereotypes that disadvantage women and maintain male primacy.

Gender-critical feminists (encompassing radical, materialist, socialist and marxist feminists etc) continue that lineage, while the current dominant perspective in academia is that sex and gender are indivisible, and even in some quarters that sex is itself a construct arising from gendered expectations. This is the key distinction. From Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader Chapter 5: "The History of Sex: Sex Denial and Gender Identity Ideology" (Jane Clare Jones):

The contemporary trans rights movement emerged in the early 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic through a blend of legal activism and academic theorisation. The present movement is distinguished by a belief system we will call here 'gender identity ideology' or 'trans ideology,' the core claim of which is that being a man or a woman is a matter of gender identity rather than biological sex.

[...]

Radical materialist feminists, by contrast, retain second-wave feminism's distinction between the material reality of sex and the cultural construction of gender. We argue that women's subjugation by the social norms and cultural values of patriarchal gender is a historical development which functions by converting women's reproductive capacities and domestic labour into an appropriable resource.

The term "gender critical" arose because they were being called TERFs, or anti-trans, and the name was an attempt to re-establish what their feminism was about, ie a sex-materialist critique of gender. From the preface to Holly Lawford-Smith's "Sex Matters", referencing the points made in her earlier book "Gender Critical Feminism":

In that book I noted that this movement for sex-based rights, popularly known as gender-critical feminism, has a disagreement with mainstream or socially dominant conceptions of feminism in multiple areas, including about prostitution and pornography, about transgender issues, and about intersectionality. One of my arguments in that book was that while gender-critical feminism is ceaselessly positioned by its detractors as being about trans issues — indeed, as being essentially `anti-trans' — gender-critical feminism's disagreement with gender identity activism (the activism of some members of the trans community and their allies) is actually just an implication of its core commitments to a sex-based feminism, and not its central preoccupation.

The anti-gender movement on the other hand is ideologically opposed to this critique of gender as distinct from sex. A key plank of the conservative position is that the "natural order" (men are men, women are women, and both should adhere to their god-given roles) is disrupted by feminism, and thus, despite the name, they are "pro-conservative gender roles".

As gender abolitionists, gender-critical feminists are the polar opposite of the "anti-gender" movement.

This conflict with conservatism is further noted in Holly Lawford-Smith "Sex Matters" again, in chapter 1 - "Ending Sex Based Oppression":

This discussion should be of interest to radical and gender-critical feminists (and their allies) committed to gender abolitionism

[...]

The gender abolition pathway comes with costs for one final social group: those social conservatives who think that conformity to gender norms is morally good, and that the gender roles that result from conformity to gender norms structure society in a positive and meaningful way.

Gender-critical feminists repeatedly note that their critics make this association with gender conservatism with weak or non-existent evidence. From Jane Clare Jones, again, this time in The Philosophers Magazine:

The first classic move MacKinnon makes against gender-critical feminists turns on conflating gender-critical feminism with gender conservatism, positioning us as anti-feminist conservatives in feminist drag.

[...]

MacKinnon likewise declares that “the feminist anti-transgender position is built on…the notion that gender is biologically based”, without evidence. Such evidence is perhaps superfluous, given that the tropes conflating gender criticism with gender conservatism are by now so well-worn they have accrued the patina of truthiness.

[...]

MacKinnon misrepresents the gender-critical position by equating it with gender conservatism

[...]

no matter how often gender-critical feminists assert that we don’t believe that sex determines gender, both constructivist academics and trans activists keep insisting that we are “essentialist” in the “bad political sense” and obdurately conflating our position with gender conservatism.

Void if removed (talk) 16:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Wikipedia had an article on Gender-critical feminism that actually told the reader accurately what GCF is, what it is not, and what perhaps only some GCFs believe and some dispute. How the fundamentals of what it is about "gender" that is being "criticised" or how their beliefs go beyond being overly concerned with the words chosen as a label. How the various groups are similar and how they are different. What they are themselves criticised for and the arguments they make in response, and what they in turn criticise their opponents for and perhaps how those respond. The reader then might have a chance at being able to make up their mind. Wikipedia is not here to tell our readers what they should think or believe. -- Colin°^Talk 20:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, compromise suggestion: the related conservative movement? Loki (talk) 21:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I think it's slightly better than the version with religious, but not a very good alternative. First, the word "conservative" seems to be used in an American sense, but even the right-wing part of the anti-gender movement is often described in scholarship as right-wing populist, far-right and in similar terms, rather than "conservative" which has more centrist connotations in Europe. Secondly the word "conservative" doesn't capture how the term "anti-gender" has been used in recent years, in recent scholarship. It reflects outdated perceptions of the anti-gender movement that ignore how the term is used in recent scholarship, as a more inclusive term than just a term for traditional right-wing anti-LGBT+ movements. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Forgive me for not accepting at face value claims made on this page without sources. Editors with ideas that a page on GCF should include sources and events dealing with basically any 21st century transphobia on the internet as "in scope" here, aren't going to convince me what the scope of the "anti-gender movement" is without very good sources. Amanda seems to want the latter to mean any transphobia including those who can't manage on the internet because they are at mass or attending a Republican rally or burning down abortion clinics.

I think Loki's suggestion is better, in that "related" is an appropriate term and "broader" completely inappropriate. Loki, it might have felt tempting to cite WP:SATISFY in an argument but that section in an essay isn't some get-out-of-jail-free card you can play if you don't want or aren't able to meet a requirement, such as a request for sources. And WP:BURDEN is policy.

We need to make sure that this article doesn't fall into the phony tropes and claims by extremists on either side. Consider our favourite politician, Sunak, in his comment I noted above about "believing that people can be any sex they want to be". When many people hear that, their first thoughts are that being trans isn't a lifestyle choice, so he's talking out of his arse. And the second thought would be not to believe another word they say on the topic. If we make that mistake on Wikipedia, in our hatnote or lead especially, then we just alienate the readers folk here want to convinced of the facts.

The clue about this is in the article title and activist people and organisations that fit under it. If we claim that a bunch of feminists (you know, the folk who have spend their lives battling socially conservative ideas of patriarchy) are part of a "broader" socially conservative movement we look silly. If we claim a bunch of people who are frequently LGB (you know, the folk who the established Church says are going to hell, and who spent their lives fighting religious and social orthodoxy for equality in gay marriage and employment rights and "don't say gay" bills) are part of a "broader" conservative religious movement, we look silly. And if we claim women, who have set up all sorts of GC groups with "women" in the title campaigning for what they see as women's rights, are part of a "broader" male dominated religious-right movement that goes around banning abortions, we look silly. Sure, there are points where these movements have common ground, and adopt similar language and appear on the same platforms when pushing politics. But "related" is the adjective here, not containment. -- Colin°^Talk 10:13, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

We need to make sure that this article doesn't fall into the phony tropes and claims by extremists on either side of course if they are extremists according to academic sources. Judith Butler, Julia Serano, Cristan Williams are definitely not extremists according to them. Reprarina (talk) 08:04, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Extremists was too strong a term. Passionate advocates is perhaps better. The kind of source and style of writing can be a clue as to how careful and accurate the source is. A source where someone is being interviewed by a favourable interviewer can end up including ideas that weren't fully thought out, unchallenged and may even be edited for brevity. An opinion piece ranting about how hateful those other people are, often falls into traps of believing all those people are part of some homogeneous blob, whether that blob is transphobic people or the mythical trans lobby. -- Colin°^Talk 09:10, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

If "passionate advocates" of transgender rights movement are authors of the articles in mainstream academic encyclopedias and journals in women's studies, lesbian studies, trans studies, gender studies, we shall prioritize them. If neither those who research transgender rights movement nor those who research misogyny say that "transactivism is misogyny", then it's the fringe position. WP:BALANCE.

Even if it isn't or wasn't a fringe position in UK. Armenian genocide denial is not fringe, it's even mainstream position in Turkey and Azerbaijan, there are even many academic articles in these countries which promote this conception. However, until it's the fringe position in the world, it's the fringe position. Reprarina (talk) 10:56, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Em, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or what it has to do with this section. -- Colin°^Talk 11:34, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

The sentence describing the word "terf" as derogatory should be changed to critical, possibly adding "because it's a descriptor for someone who is transphobic."

The word terf is negative because it's critical of something (in this case transphobia). It shouldn't be listed as derogation. Lados75 (talk) 15:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

The OED says ‘TERF is now typically regarded as derogatory.’ See [1] Sweet6970 (talk) 15:55, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that a dictionary produced in a country that many RSs view as having high level of transphobia and specifically TERF ideology can cancel all the sources that find the term gender-critical more problematic than TERF. Reprarina (talk) 13:34, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

If you wish to continue arguing this point I suggest taking this to TERF_(acronym), where this text was originally copied from, which is the page that is supposed to be for this term and where this is backed up by a citation to two dictionaries describing it as derogatory and disparaging. This is not the place to argue about the meaning of the term, and please note the consensus on that page is derived from eg. this RFC. There is no serious disagreement in WP:RS over whether TERF is derogatory, only whether it is technically a slur.

Also, your interpretation contradicts the idea that it is a purely neutral descriptor. You may personally think the disparagement is justified, but that does not make it not derogatory. Void if removed (talk) 15:59, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there is any dispute that the term TERF is typically used today in a derogatory manner. There is endless internet debate on whether it is a slur. The words derogatory and slur are different and the latter contentious as to use a slur is considered bad form whereas being derogatory might be justified. -- Colin°^Talk 17:29, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Obvious keep, per both the RS and the target article we're summarizing. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:34, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

You yourself start by saying "The word terf is negative". That's what "derogatory" means. Loki (talk) 03:17, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Well it isn't really. Words like poor or ill or being anxious or sad are all negative things. Derogatory means to be disapproving and disrespectful. The transformation of this word into an insult (and debatably a slur) also highlights that there is generally quite a gap between what saying "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" and saying "TERF". The dictionary doesn't comment on whether the former is derogatory. -- Colin°^Talk 08:26, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think there's a distinction, and I definitely dispute that there's quite a gap. Dictionaries often don't define long phrases but I have no doubt it'd be considered derogatory as well, for the same reason that calling someone a transphobe is derogatory. A TERF is a kind of transphobe, so no kidding it's derogatory. Loki (talk) 02:02, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

If "I don't think there's a distinction" refers to "negative" vs "derogatory" then a dictionary will swiftly enlighten. If you are referring to "TERF" vs "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", then I think you need to examine the complaints of GCF. None complains of being insulted about being called a "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" (unless they very much aren't) and nobody suggests that phrase is a slur. It is the word "TERF" that is shouted in hate, typically towards women, who see themselves as standing up for "women's rights". The phrase "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" isn't derogatory because those who hold that view actively campaign on those exclusionary terms and go about getting the law to declare it is a protected belief. It isn't even "negative", in their eyes. The biggest argument against using that term is that it isn't appropriate for a lot of GCF who aren't radical feminists. The second biggest is that it concentrates on a consequential rather than a fundamental. -- Colin°^Talk 09:43, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I guess it's time to create an article Gender-critical (term) based on numerous reliable sources which find this term problematic, dangerous, harmful and so-calledy. Reprarina (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would think a little discussion of the term itself would be due for this article. If the paragraph/sub-section/section gets large enough, a split might be warranted.

If you're up for it, what we really need is an article on Gender-critical views, which could include some discussion of the term itself. We either need that or we need to decide that this is the article about gender-critical views, meaning that non-feminist gender-critical views and people are on-topic for this article. It would then be sensible to include a lengthier treatment of the term there with some summary here.

Prior discussion happened at in the archives. We have a rough split between people who think a separate article is best and who think this should be the one about all GC views. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:17, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

We have already article about so-called gender-critical views in general. Reprarina (talk) 14:39, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't really think there are "gender critical views" using those words that aren't tied to gender-critical feminism. The closest thing is the anti-gender movement. Loki (talk) 02:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Now I think it's quite possible to create the consensual article Transphobia in feminist movement. Fortunately, regardless of whether a particular feminist is transphobic and how we should call transphobic feminists, sources clearly state that transphobia in feminism exists (there are no sources with position "there are no transphobia in feminist movement") and it meets all the criteria for what you can create an article about on Wikipedia. Reprarina (talk) 03:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Gender Critical Views (new section)

Given this page is a mish mash of different things, I suggest creating dedicated section titled "Gender Critical Views".

I suggest the page should first and foremost be about gender critical feminism, and that all sources that do not specifically refer to gender critical feminism, but are instead about far more broadly construed "views" or "movements" or "narratives", be moved to this section, and subsections within it. I think eventually this will take up at least half the article.

This would essentially split the article in two. Then, if that works and helps clarify the distinctions and divisions, consider separating into two articles. Void if removed (talk) 12:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

We have articles Anti-gender movement and Transphobia. In the academic RSs there are no consensual claim that "gender-critical" views are actually gender-critical. And where do we put all the sources until 201n year which use the term gender-critical towards pro-trans views? Reprarina (talk) 13:08, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm slightly confused by the proposal. If you regard GC as a superset of GCF (based on comments here) then why would it be a section heading with the latter? I think we should go with creating a "Gender critical" article. The tired argument that these terms are all synonyms for modern transphobia and should be dumped into one article doesn't have either sources or policy on that side.

This is a wiki. The point of a wiki is that it should be quick and easy to try things. If they work and make sense then people will be happy with it. If they don't then it is possible to change again or back. However, given the contentious nature of this, I suspect people might not be patient if one creates a draft-quality article in main space. So I suggest using a user-draft space to get something good-enough-to-go and then I think we should try it out.

Wrt the claim "no consensual claim that "gender-critical" views are actually gender-critical" this is simply nonsense and focusing too much on people who argue about words rather than argue about reality. It matters not one jot whether the words "gender-critical" make sense to you or I or are the best words for the beliefs or are terrible words for the beliefs. All that matters is that they are the words used in reliable sources to identify a group who hold certain beliefs. I'll repeat my earlier comment, which I think is appropriate here, to consider the US term "dish soap" vs the UK term "washing up liquid". The former makes a lot of sense. The latter offers no clue as to what is being washed (your body, your clothes, your car, your pet?). But nobody is going to persuade anyone in the UK to use another set of words for it, we are stuck with it. We are now stuck with "gender-critical" meaning a certain thing, whether or not anyone agrees with what it is about gender someone should be critical of. The rather tedious argument about the choice of these words can of course be covered within the article as there are sources on this, but such people can't alter reality by being upset about word choices that someone made and took hold. -- Colin°^Talk 10:00, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I just wondered if incrementally shuffling things around in this article could get halfway there but never mind. I will do a user draft for discussion as suggested weeks ago. Void if removed (talk) 10:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Wrt the claim "no consensual claim that "gender-critical" views are actually gender-critical" this is simply nonsense and focusing too much on people who argue about words rather than argue about reality. Do you understand that the article about gender identity denialists will never become consensus while using their terminology? Wikipedia chooses the terminology of most scientists in controversial situations. It always chose. Only in this case, for unknown reason, the terminology of the minority was chosen. There is no such thing that Wikipedia reaches a consensus after this. Can not be. Reprarina (talk) 16:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm having trouble parsing your statement, Reprarina. Could you state it another way? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:16, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I think they are saying we shouldn't be using the words "gender-critical" (we do, about 40 times, in Wikivoice, outside of scare quotes, as do reliable sources) because it is terminology that hateful fringe extremists came up with to describe themselves. I think they'd rather the whole article talked about TERFs (they wrote on 3rd Nov that in what they view as reliable sources, '"TERFs are reviewed academically and objectively, as TERFs and not "gender critical feminists"' and that it is a 'recently appropriated term'). The problem is that even sources hostile to this viewpoint use GCF (e.g., search Google for "gender-critical site:https://www.thepinknews.com"). And that legal descriptions of these beliefs use the term (e.g. Employment Tribunal rulings on gender-critical beliefs in the workplace). This is not a "science" subject. Activists, whether writing in academic journals or a blog, use the language of activism. Our sources, even our best sources, are allowed to use biased language and polemic tone and be verbally hostile towards groups they hate. Wikipedia is not. -- Colin°^Talk 08:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

You mentioned The Pink News. The Pink News often calls them 'gender-critical', not gender-critical. Reprarina (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The vast majority of their articles do not and nearly always when it is written in quotes, the author is Amelia Hansford. Neither the BBC nor The Guardian use quotes. Putting the words in scare quotes is signalling "I'm an activist" or "I'm on your side". As is calling people "TERFs". It's like when tabloids call scientists "boffins" or when sceptics use the word "sheeple" or "sky fairy". It's just signalling language, to indicate a group-belonging, and doesn't have any place on Wikipedia. -- Colin°^Talk 18:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I am tired to tell you that even the most reliable mass media sources shouldn't be used as the core of the article (they could be used in general but they should not be the core) when there are countless of academic articles. The core of article shall be the most reliable of the academic sources or it won't be consensusy. And by the most reliable academic sources, I don't mean Holly Lawford-Smith, and not because she writes something I don't agree with. Reprarina (talk) 19:11, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Please see WP:OUROWNWORDS. It lists the many reasons why editors on Wikipedia write articles in their own words and agree on things like article titles under their own terms. Advocacy is one reason: being published in an academic journal does magically make a polemic neutral and does not magically make advocacy impartial. Point-of-view is another reason: our academic journals overwhelmingly call people who are taking medicine or attending hospitals "patients" but we call them "people". And so on. Have a read of our articles about the people you would label TERFs. Wikipedia never ever calls them TERFs, though it may note that some people have called them that. It certainly doesn't claim they follow "TERFism" or "TERF ideology". It will, however, if a label is appropriate, in Wikivoice and without scare quotes, note that they study gender-critical feminism or have gender-critical views or even say they are gender-critical. And neutral impartial sources will tend to do that too. -- Colin°^Talk 21:30, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

At least I don't think that transphobic feminists, unlike transphobic antifeminists, should have an indulgence to be transphobic without calling them transphobic. Reprarina (talk) 22:22, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Point-of-view is another reason: our academic journals overwhelmingly call people who are taking medicine or attending hospitals "patients" but we call them "people". And so on. Have a read of our articles about the people you would label TERFs. Wikipedia never ever calls them TERFs, though it may note that some people have called them that. It certainly doesn't claim they follow "TERFism" or "TERF ideology". It's sad that such policy prevails in English Wikipedia. Reprarina (talk) 22:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not convinced this is true. See this search. Some of these are quotes or the titles of sources but there's also a fair number of times where we use the term "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" or "TERF" in our own voice. And plenty of the times we use the phrase "gender-critical" are also in quotes, for what it's worth. There's also plenty of times where we avoid both constructions: so for instance Helen Joyce is called a "critic of the transgender rights movement" even though we have sourcing for "gender-critical". Loki (talk) 02:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I had a look at both your searches and have to disagree with your assessment of "a fair number of times" or "plenty of times" for either claim. More like "never" and "once" and I looked through several pages of results. But wrt Joyce that was my point with "if a label is appropriate". Often Wikipedia just says what they said or specifics of what they believe without putting people into boxes. -- Colin°^Talk 09:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Here's pages that use "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" or "TERF" in our own voice on the first page of results:

• Transgender rights in the United Kingdom

  • Several commentators have described the level of transphobia in British society in general (including the negative coverage of trans-related issues in the media) and the support for trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) in particular as unusual compared to other Western countries, and the discourse on transgender-related issues in the United Kingdom has been called a "TERF war".

• Anti-gender movement

  • Anti-gender rhetoric has seen increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourse since 2016.

• Women's Declaration International

  • The organization has been described as anti-trans, anti-gender, trans-exclusionary, trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), and as a hate group, and in several countries the group has been linked to the far right.

• Shemale

  • Raymond and other cultural feminists like Mary Daly argue that a "she-male" or "male-to-constructed female" is still male and constitutes a patriarchal attack by males upon the female essence. This is often considered to be part of trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) ideology.

Loki (talk) 00:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Checking how and when those were added I find:

November 2021 added:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transgender_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom&oldid=1056194695

• Sourcing for this is confusing as its a long sentence with 6 references. Multiple news sources calling Rowling a TERF, but the primary academic ones are Pierce et al and Hines. This is talking in broad terms about what they regard as the "ism". No-one specific is called a TERF here, and this is rendering what some academics say about general trends and ideologies into wikivoice. The use of "TERF" to refer to the "ism" is odd and arguably should be changed, almost nobody uses it that way.

October 2021 originally added, December 2022 expanded in lede:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-gender_movement&direction=next&oldid=1049138876

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-gender_movement&oldid=1128207661

• General claim about discourse, again based on (Pierce et al).

December 2021 added:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Women%27s_Declaration_International&direction=next&oldid=1058662413

• The source is one news report calling people TERFs and TERF groups. This is exactly the problem of conflating the acronym with the expansion, as if people who casually talk about TERFs actually mean it in some strict, academic sense of "trans-exclusionary radical feminists", instead of essentially "transphobe". Arguably this expansion is inappropriate and the source is tenuous since it doesn't actually call WDI "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" at all.

March 2022 added:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shemale&oldid=1075034081

• Unsourced claim and should arguably be sourced or removed

Void if removed (talk) 10:43, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Loki, please try to read carefully what I wrote: Have a read of our articles about the people you would label TERFs. Wikipedia never ever calls them TERFs, though it may note that some people have called them that. Articles about people. You know, biographies. None of the articles you list are biographies or actually call someone a TERF. You know, like "Alice Smith is a writer, singer and TERF..." Oh, and the first four links Void gives are all made by the same person, Amanda, so reflects their preferred choice of term, which is how Wikipedia is made and fine but entirely unconvincing that this is any kind of consensus. -- Colin°^Talk 14:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

As I've said before, regarding the use of "TERFs" by a source as "signaling language" is circular. If reliable sources are ones that use a positive term instead of a negative term, then you've defined "reliable" as "positive". The use of "TERF" is no more disqualifying of a source than the use of "racist" is.

Furthermore, both "TERF" and "gender-critical feminist" are signaling language, and there is no neutral term. I would personally prefer this article be called "trans-exclusionary radical feminists" because I believe that's the most commonly used name, and that's despite having been the one who launched it under "gender-critical feminism". Loki (talk) 02:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Loki, read my comments carefully. I don't know how many times I've said that it is allowed for our sources, even our best ones, to be biased, to use polemic tone, to be advocacy, even to hate. That doesn't stop them being "reliable sources" but it does stop them being impartial ones. The point here is about the language we use, and we are absolutely required, by policy, to be impartial. Our sources are not. Impartial sources like the best news reporting from Reuters or PA or BBC do not call people TERFs, nor do they bamboozle their readers with historical jargon that is nearly always inaccurate like "trans-exclusionary radical feminists".

Neutral is to call a group of people what they call themselves. In every other sphere of social concerns that is the case. It is a basic mark of respect necessary for us to impartially talk about people and with people, even when we disagree with them. I get that some people here have zero respect and have repeatedly stated that this group is down among the white supremacists or paedophiles for whom we lock up and throw away the key. But society does not share your view and the law does not share your view. Society and the law views this as just another cultural or political disagreement like Socialism vs Capitalism or Evangelical Christianity vs High Church Anglicanism or Scottish Independence vs Unionism. I get that there is a strong desire to call a group by a disrespectful name when one really hates them. If that's a problem for some, they shouldn't be editing on this page. This is policy. -- Colin°^Talk 09:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

"Neutral is to call a group of people what they call themselves."

Look on the article Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Reprarina (talk) 18:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how many times I've said that it is allowed for our sources, even our best ones, to be biased, to use polemic tone, to be advocacy, even to hate. That doesn't stop them being "reliable sources" but it does stop them being impartial ones.

But it's you that is saying that the term is "biased". That's what's circular. It's negative, but the way WP:NPOV works, a "bias" in a source is not defined by a deviation from the view-from-nowhere but from the overall POV of the sources.

Impartial sources like the best news reporting from Reuters or PA or BBC do not call people TERFs, nor do they bamboozle their readers with historical jargon that is nearly always inaccurate like "trans-exclusionary radical feminists".

"Do not" is I think stronger than the evidence shows. More like "have not". Other reliable and undeniably newsorgs like [US News & World Report] do use the term.

Neutral is to call a group of people what they call themselves. In every other sphere of social concerns that is the case.

Absolutely not and this is contrary to WP:NPOV. Neutral is to call a group of people what the sources call them. In this case, I agree that the balance of sources seem to lean towards gender-critical, and I also agree that this is one of the guidelines the sources seem to use when they're deciding between terms, but it is by no means a general rule that we call a group of people what they call themselves. We call the sides of the abortion debate abortion-rights movements and anti-abortion movements, not the self-aggrandizing terms they call themselves. Loki (talk) 01:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Many of them call themselves just "radical feminists" and instist that they represent radical feminism, that trans-inclusive radical feminists are not actually radical feminists. Reprarina (talk) 06:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

(Which, I should note, is very silly, considering two of the most well known radical feminists, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, are/were both trans-inclusive.) Loki (talk) 01:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Loki, I wonder if you are confusing normal words like "biased" and "neutral" with your own concept of these words in wiki policy. When I say "neutral" is to call a group of people what they call themselves, that is fundamentally a truth, nothing to do with Wikipedia. Anyone choosing not to call someone what they call themselves is not being neutral but is literally making a point (typically negative) about that group. That point (that the group should be so described) may well be a majority or even near universal one, but it cannot claim to be neutral.

I don't really understand your comment about biased or why you keep complaining when I say some sources are biased. It's just something we have to live with.

The words we use, and our article title choices, are far far more complex than just "what the sources call them". That's a strong influence for sure but it hits against all sorts of other problems including for a start that we have to pick just one and our sources are not consistent.

Is it "millionaires shortbread" or "caramel slice" or "caramel shortbread"? There's a strong desire for us to find neutral sources to decide that sort of thing because they help us decide between competing opinions. I could cite a Scottish baking website to declare that "Millionaires shortbread" is the original and only sensible name and that all the others are abominations. It wouldn't be neutral so other editors would complain that well of course a Scottish baking website would think that. But if someone found some "International Baking Encyclopaedia" which had an editorial committee of experts from around the globe, that would be far more persuasive. Both sites would be considered equally "reliable" per our policies on that. Neither website is "wrong". But we have to make a choice, and we tend to neutral. See WP:NPOVTITLE and WP:POVNAMING: "neutral terms are generally preferable". -- Colin°^Talk 09:53, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I suggest that Colin and Loki here are past the level of indents where useful results may be formed. @Colin: there happens to be a such "International Baking Encyclopedia". Its title is The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, and it says, among other things: Since both the radical feminist and gender critical traditions have a history of strong trans support and advocacy, the use of TERF, especially within
the context of social media, serves as an important rhetorical intervention against the effort by anti-trans sex essentialist activists to colonize “radical feminist” and “gender critical” identities. While the term TERF is critiqued as being antagonistic, it nonetheless fills a discursive void in that it concisely assigns a lexical identity to a set of ideas pioneered by the TERF movement, regardless of who makes use of these arguments. In this way, TERF can be used both to identify a specific morality-driven rhe- torical tradition and to distinguish it from trans- inclusive traditions and movements. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 10:34, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies is not a definitive authority on what other people believe and call themselves.

This quote also demonstrates that the term is both not neutral (through implication of a morality driven rhetoric where none necessarily exists) and also incredibly broad ("regardless of who makes use of these arguments"). It also highlights that the term is an explicitly political one, ie "an important rhetorical intervention against the effort by anti-trans sex essentialist activists".

This contested political use should be made clear on the page for TERF and is exactly why such usage should not be presented in wikivoice here. Void if removed (talk) 10:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's a book on "trans studies". The title says so. Like if "The SAGE Encyclopaedia of Scottish baking" were to opine on the ridiculous words Americans call their biscuits and desserts. The article on TERF is by Cristan Williams who SAGE tells me can be contacted on cristan@transadvocate.com and it turns out they are Editor-in-Chief of a blog called Trans Advocate. You are seriously trying to tell me this is a neutral source?

Guys, you need to look at sources that are not passing judgement on either TERF/GCF viewpoints nor on trans viewpoints and advocacy. It is something that the best news reporting does, agencies like PA Media, Reuters who's work has to be acceptable copy for use in any newspaper of any political or socially liberal/conservative persuasion. Or news media who's charter explicitly demands they are impartial, like the BBC or ITN. I'm sure there are examples for other countries. And dictionaries, where appropriate. -- Colin°^Talk 14:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

We don't search for the most “neutral” sources, we search for the most reliable sources. The sources that are perceived as neutral are often not very reliable. We have a rule NPOV, the authors of RSs do not. And if you think Сristan Williams is biased, you can check the primary sources. And make sure what Сristan Williams says about TERFs is true and what “neutral sources” say about them is a lie. As a rule, encyclopedias tell much more truth than the mass media sources. This is true in this case as well. Reprarina (talk) 18:52, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

You're saying that what he says is "true" that others are lying and that we can check primary sources.

Ok, this is WP:OR but permissable on a talk page so lets do that. Cristan Williams says, RE: Raymond:

Her goal, as she unambiguously stated in her work, was “morally mandating [transsexualism] out of existence” (p. 178). It is this shared vision of morality that discursively binds TERFs to the ideological right.

I am not a fan of Raymond, but this is a complete misreading. A common one, so not surprising, but exactly why this author should not be taken at face value.

The Transsexual Empire can be freely read here. The relevant section is in the Appendix, on page 178. Lets see what she actually says:

I contend that the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence. Does a moral mandate, however, necessitate that transsexualism be legally mandated out of existence? What is the relationship between law and morality, in the realm of transsexualism? While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it—and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with.

We get an indication right up front that her real aim is focused on sex role stereotypes (ie gender). But first she goes on to explain and dismiss alternative ways of interpreting that "moral mandate":

Many see a very definite connection between social morality and its preservation in law. They would argue that if there were a broad social consensus about the immorality of transsexual surgery, then the law should incarnate that social morality. Others, of course, would argue that to ground issues of law in the social conscience is not always protective of individual rights and may, in fact, be destructive of those rights. They would say that the law can only legislate against individual rights when they can be shown to be directly harmful to another’s rights. I do not wish to argue either of these positions.

So straight away here she lists the conservative/right position of treating "transsexual surgery" as socially immoral as a position she does not agree with. So what does she actually mean by morally mandating it out of existence?

The prevention of transsexual surgery, and the social conditions that generate it, are not achieved by legislation forbidding surgery. In the case of transsexual surgery, the good to be achieved, that is, the integrity of the individual and of the society, does not seem best served by making transsexual surgery illegal. Rather it is more important to regulate, by legal measures, the sexist, social conditions that generate transsexual surgery, and also legally to limit the medical-institutional complex that translates these sexist conditions into the realm of transsexualism. Thus I am advocating a limiting legislative presence, along with First Cause legislation, which, instead of directing legal action to the consequences of a genderdefined society (in this case, to transsexualism), directs action to the social forces and medical institutions that produce the transsexual empire.

[...]

Legislation dealing with First Causes would concern itself with the network of sex-role stereotyping that produces the schizoid state of a “female mind in a male body.” The education of children is one case in point here. Images of sex roles continue to be reinforced, at public expense, in school textbooks. The message is that such roles are assigned to male and female bodies in our society.

What Raymond actually advocates here and through the rest of the appendix - what she means by "morally mandating" it out of existence" - is the dismantling the sexist society that produces the drive to transition, and what she sees as the capitalist/medical/industrial complex that profits off that desire. She very explicitly does not call to prevent access to medical transition, but to dismantle the sex-role stereotyping (ie, gender) that she believed the desire to transition arises from. The "moral mandate" is directed at the societal sexism which she sees as the cause of the desire to transition.

This is the precise opposite of the ideological right, which seeks to preserve normative sex-role stereotypes and treats transition as immoral at the individual level. Raymond OTOH is a gender-abolitionist, and believed that if we abolished gender (ie, normative sex-role stereotypes), the desire to transition would ultimately vanish at a structural, societal level.

Note that Dworkin said the same thing in Woman Hating:

"community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it [...] as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear".

But don't take my word for it, another explanation of Raymond is here:

For Raymond, true liberation cannot be secured by any mere blending of sex roles. Rather, it must be secured through a transcendence of sex role altogether (164). This suggests a notion of the self that is prior to sex role or at least a notion of a self that can be freed from the cultural interpretations of sex. Raymond's solution to “the problem” of transsexuality which she sees as promoting the surgical violation of bodily integrity, is to “morally mandate it out of existence” (178) by working against sex role oppression through education and consciousness raising (178–185).

So when Williams says "It is this shared vision of morality that discursively binds TERFs to the ideological right" this is simply wrong since these are completely different visions of morality. Raymond saw the sexist society - and capitalist exploitation of that sexism - as the targets of the "moral mandate". The right sees that sexist society as natural, and holds interfering with that natural order (through transition) to be immoral. These are different positions, and Raymond explicitly disavowed the latter viewpoint in the text. Void if removed (talk) 00:33, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I totally understand why this seems extremely far from a right-wing position. Raymond wants to abolish telling men that they should be masculine and telling women that they should be feminine, and right-wing people do not. However, Raymonds wants to save conservative definitions of the words male and female, man and woman, girl and boy, the definitions what conservative parents tell to their children - women are those who born with vaginas etc. If she doesn’t have any conservative ideas in her worldview, why was it so important to her that she writes a whole book about it? And didn't she collaborate with the administration of the conservative libertarian Ronald Reagan?

Dworkin at least in 1970s years believed that transsexuality will dissapear but she thought the same abouts words male and female, man and woman. This is a principle difference between her and Raymond - Raymond believed (and maybe still believe) that transsexuality will dissapear and all people who will born with penises will just say "I am a man whose behavior considered feminine in the patriarchal past". In addition, she spoke negatively about researching in gender clinics, about which Dworkin spoke positively.

And are you sure that conservatism can't incorporate raymondism into itself? We see, for example, that Conservative Party (UK) is quite okay with incorporating second-wave feminist ideas and protects Raymond's understanding of what a woman is. They even say such feminist things that toxic masculinity is a problem etc. However, according to politological RSs, it is still a conservative, centre-right to right-wing party. They didn't became left-wing just because of telling such things.

And do you know how many supporters of traditional masculinity were there among the communists? Didn't Stalin, Brezhnev, Mao Zedong view men as those who should be masculine, serve in military forces and be soldiers against capitalist world? For them the need to maintain traditional masculinity was a constant. However, they are far-left according to politological RSs. Reprarina (talk) 07:51, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

My point is that we are not in the realm of science, but in politics and philosophy, of interpretation and argument over meaning of words and terms and identity, all of which are contested and contradictory depending on whom you read. What we have here is a critic saying that not just Raymond, but all "TERFs" - a term he uses with a very broad sweep - are bound to the ideological right. This is justified here based on firstly a debatable reading of one specific quote from Raymond, and secondly a false lineage that says that everyone who is a "TERF" is some sort of devoted acolyte of Raymond.

This will come as a massive shock to the Communists and Marxist feminists who get called TERFs, or the gender-critical feminists whose background is continental philosophy, not Raymond and Jeffreys.

What we have are GCFs saying one thing, critics saying another, GCFs responding etc. This is a back and forth with no definitive end.

We can say what they believe from the best available sources, and lay out any conflict over that with the best available sources and that is it.

And the best available sources of what gender-critical feminists believe are their own words, published in reputable sources, and categorically not the WP:PARTISAN critics like this one. If they are notable, then their criticism should be included if it is WP:DUE. If it is a widespread and well-sourced opinion it could be in wikivoice, if it is not then it should be an attributed quote.

I know that "trans studies" authors like this one think that "TERFism" is a specific anti-trans school of thought with its own rhetoric, aligned with the political right, and taking as its most important work The Transsexual Empire.

But that is not what "gender-critical feminists" say about themselves - and the response of "trans scholars" is not to engage with what they actually say, but instead to state that GCFs are lying to cover up their true anti-trans, Raymond-centric, right-wing agenda. Eg.

Hungerford promoted the term as a euphemism for beliefs, rhetoric, and behavior that were critical of trans people. [...] Hungerford’s rhetorical work was aimed at languaging a sex essentialist anti-trans ideology as feminism

Was it really? Can we take the internal motivations of a living, named feminist here as read, because Cristan Williams is an authority on "trans studies"? Absolutely not. The author here is outright saying that Hungerford - a lesbian feminist - is not really "critical of gender". There is absolutely no evidence given for any of that. It is just different opinions, not "science".

Now, what this particular source is good for is corroboration that Elizabeth Hungerford is one of the first to use "gender-critical" WRT feminism, something which before now we've only had primary sources for. That would be an excellent addition to the history I think, because it supports the timeline that TERF was coined in 2008 and "gender-critical" was coined by feminists around 2013 in response to being called TERFs and having feminist events shut down. Void if removed (talk) 16:33, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe the consensus would be to wait to see what the general political science sources will say about them in the political spectrum. Cristan Williams is not a political scientist, so her reliableness for such claims is limited. Reprarina (talk) 21:02, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

We often use SAGE Publications encyclopedias in articles about feminism and gender issues. It is considered to be very reliable in such fields. By the way, do not think that complimentary coverage of an ideology based on a fringe theory does not violate WP:FRINGE. There is a clear scientific consensus that gender identity is a real thing and has big significance in human life, and there are a huge number of scientific articles on this topic. And in this case, the followers of Janice Raymond are revisionists of the established scientific consensus. In the British society, it's a large group. In the international academic community, it's a small and therefore fringe group. Reprarina (talk) 19:25, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

In the international academic community, it's a small and therefore fringe group Really? Because there is plenty of what you could call "gender-critical feminism" in academia from Latin America, Russia, and the rest of non-Anglophone Europe. See, e.g., La coeducación secuestrada: Crítica feminista a la penetración de las ideas transgeneristas en la educación (Silvia Carrasco et al, Spain), Le llaman feminismo y no lo es. Cuestiones De género: De La Igualdad Y La Diferencia (Alicia Miyares Fernández, Spain), the high regard for Sheila Jeffreys among some Brazilian feminists, the descriptions of the Latin lesbian feminist community by Dominican Ochy Curiel in Sobre el VI Encuentro Lésbico Feminista Latinoamericano y la no inclusión de trans, and many others. It's not just British "Raymondists" engaging in gender-critical rhetoric. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Who are "gender-critical feminists" in the Russian academic envoronment? Reprarina (talk) 01:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

It is a small group. This group still need to become much more big to stop being fringe.

"La coeducación secuestrada: Crítica feminista a la penetración de las ideas transgeneristas en la educación". Yeah, there is such book. And how many scholars quote it as a reliable source? Fringe doesn't mean non-existing. Reprarina (talk) 02:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The size of the group is not that important. If the topic has received sufficient comment in reliable sources, we have an article on it. And this one more than does. Lots of small groups of people and their beliefs warrant documentation on Wikipedia but they don't get unreasonable editors tendentiously arguing we should only use sources that hate them or, if we understand you correctly below, don't actually bother to read their literature. -- Colin°^Talk 08:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The size of the group is important for classification them as fringe. On their international level, their contribtution to gender studies today is comparable, say, to the contribution of the racialists to race studies. In Russia, for example, racialism is the absolutely mainstream position in race studies, school textbooks still say that there are negroids, mongoloids and europoids, and Russian mainstream race scientists such as Stanislav Drobyshevsky say it plainly. False analogy? No. The existence of gender identities among people has been proven scientifically no less than the non-existence of biological races among them. Reprarina (talk) 12:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Reprarina, I don't know how many times you have to be reminded that this is not the article gender studies, any more than this is the article Christianity and you are complaining about Free Church of Scotland (since 1900) being small in number and full of homophobes and transphobes. We all hear what you are saying but you are arguing about the wrong thing. -- Colin°^Talk 13:57, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Well it has received at least one favorable Spanish-language academic review in an international feminist studies journal as well as a Spanish news article detailing its reception, so it's part of the way toward being notable enough for its own article... If a significant portion of Latin America and even Spain (although thankfully less supportive) considers such discourse to be acceptable in mainstream academia and lay media, surely it should have coverage here that impartially reflects what its proponents believe? JoelleJay (talk) 00:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I concur with Reprarina; NPOV doesn't mean you get to pick and choose the sources that you think are the most "neutral". We assess the situation among the highest quality sources available, and on an article within the remit of gender studies, a recent academic encyclopedia on gender studies ranks pretty high. Newspapers and dictionaries, not so much. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 19:56, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

We already have high quality academic sources laying out what gender-critical feminism is too, in their own words.

We can include high quality critical sources to demonstrate the nature of disagreement and conflict as necessary, but it is inappropriate to use WP:PARTISAN sources that routinely describe the objects of their criticism using derogatory language for (by their own admission) explicitly activist purposes as if they are an absolute authority on their political opponents. It is like using a Hayek as the ultimate and neutral authority on Communism (except at least there there is some sort of historical materialist analysis that can be used). Void if removed (talk) 20:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Whether a source is WP:PARTISAN or biased is determined by the balance of the sources. An economics source that was pro-minimum wage would not be biased, because that's the consensus of the field, even though it's politically contentious.

Similarly, there are plenty of cases where we use mainly opponents as sources. For instance, the vast majority of our sources on creationism are opposed to creationism, and the vast majority of our sources on Mussolini are opposed to fascism. In general, which sources we use depends on which view is the consensus of the sources and which views are WP:FRINGE. For a fringe position, Wikipedia policy actually requires we do not use only friendly sources. Loki (talk) 20:36, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

And we've been round this before, and by no reasonable measure are "gender-critical" views - feminist or otherwise - WP:FRINGE.

Germaine Greer - one of the few feminists actually named in this page - is arguably the most famous living feminist in the world, with widely acclaimed, bestselling and influential works spanning decades, and gender-critical feminism is the continuation of the second wave she exemplifies. We have multiple, high-quality, academic sources published by reputable, mainstream academic publishers saying exactly what gender-critical feminism is. This is a long, long way from flat-eartherism.

The problem really I think is the notion that "gender studies" is "the field", and therefore anything which "gender studies" considers to be fringe is therefore WP:FRINGE but that is the wrong measure. Feminism is not gender studies and gender studies is not feminism, nor does it get to dictate what is and is not feminism to the rest of the world.

Feminism is "a range of socio-political movements and ideologies". It is a far broader field than just "gender studies" in academia, never mind "trans studies". It encompasses grassroots activism, non-academic writing and ad-hoc organising around women's concerns. Academia is one part, but there has always been tension between different factions, theorisations, schools of thought etc.

Besides which we have mainstream high quality academic texts laying out exactly what the beliefs are and spelling out the arguments and disagreements. Attempting to label those WP:FRINGE simply because the majority of academics presently working in "trans studies" or "gender studies" disagree with them is frankly begging the question. We have to give a fair account of all perspectives neutrally, and taking "gender-critical feminist" sources off the table by that route is a complete misuse of WP:FRINGE. This is not crackpot science that can't get published in a reputable journal, but philosophical and ideological difference of opinion that is a) a reiteration of thought that has been mainstream feminism for over half a century and b) by now quite well-represented in reputable publications. Void if removed (talk) 23:27, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

In the field of academic trans studies, Germaine Greer is absolutely fringe and says only her fantasies about trans women that refuted by scientists. Although there is nothing to refute here: to phantasize without providing evidences that "if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight" is not the science at all. Science is based on testable hypotheses. In the field of women's studies her works are also seriously criticized. Germaine Greer's ideas in women's studies are also absolutely departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in women's studies.

"a reiteration of thought that has been mainstream feminism for over half a century" - good luck with deleting the information from the article that it was "a fringe movement within feminism in the United States". It was Janice Raymond, her scientific adviser Mary Daly and some other scientists in the same little community. Dot. Such feminist gender identity denialism was literally never an academic international mainstream. The same cannot be said about modern scientists studying transmisogyny in the feminist community. This is a huge group of scientists with huge citations of works. And they receive many positive citations from many scientists in various fields of science. More and more dissertations use Julia Serano's terminology: transmisogyny, cisgender etc. How many scholars use the book "Gender-critical feminism" by Holly Lawford-Smith in their works as a reliable source? Reprarina (talk) 06:16, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

You seem to be under the impression that this is a) a scientific article, b) a trans studies article and c) about the feminist lineage of Janice Raymond. Absolutely none of this is true. This is not a "trans scholars' perspectives on TERFs" article.

This is an article about many disparate feminist perspectives and ideologies that have been lumped together under the heading "gender critical feminism" since about 2013 because they all for one reason or another cleave to the second wave notion that sex and gender are separable, and since academic gender studies post-Butler is unified in believing that is not true and anyone who thinks so is a TERF, a big protracted argument has ensued. That is it. That Raymond wrote extensively about transsexualism is neither here nor there. Many of the citations of gender-critical feminist thought have zero to do with Raymond, and everything to do with second-wave continuity. Void if removed (talk) 11:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

If someone say to a person "you're a TERF" who have views which are far from raymondism it doesn't mean there are no raymondism (the actual trans-exclusionary radical feminism). Western social liberals are called "communists" by conservative libertarians - it doesn't mean that the article Communism should be written about them. Reprarina (talk) 21:49, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

This discussion is getting a wee bit distanced from "what changes to the article do you propose?" -- Colin°^Talk 21:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I generally doubt the concept of the "article about gender-critical feminism". What is there to write about? That gender-critical feminist Janice Raymond wrote The Transsexual Empire? She did not call herself gender-critical then, rather her ideological opponents called themselves gender-critical until late 2010s years. Reprarina (talk) 22:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Raymond, Daly, et al were not scientists, nor were they purporting to be scientists. Serano's work on transgender studies is not scientific research either, and she doesn't present it as such. You are seriously misusing that term. JoelleJay (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The articles Communism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism etc. also should be written on the most reliable sources such as most quoted and respected encyclopedias. Very ardent representatives of any ideologies, depending on their views often perceive the most reliable sources as biased against them and think that Wikipedia is written by a lobby of their opponents. Reprarina (talk) 20:53, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with both Reprarina and Maddy. It seems to me like that encyclopedia is a very reliable source, more so than your average news article. Loki (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Loki, this kind of argument is unhelpful and misrepresents what the case is. Nobody has said news articles are more reliable than academic works. The only think I've said is that some kinds of news reporting use an impartial tone and neutral language that we might learn from. People saying things like "XXX is a very reliable source" is also unhelpful. Nobody is arguing that these sources are unreliable for all things: the reliability of a source is tied to the context. What is the claim or fact or opinion we are writing in an article that is sourced to it. So an Encyclopaedia of Trans Studies might be very reliable for what academics in the field of trans studies think (likely entirely critical of GCF) but not at all reliable for what gender critical feminists think. And we need to stop using our policies like WP:FRINGE which deal mainly with science to argue about what is just different ideological view. Ideological views, like politics and religion, do not tend towards some universal truth and may forever be in disagreement. Science however, tends to settle arguments and move in a direction. That's why we dismiss already-discredited science. We can't do that for ideologies. It isn't for Wikipedia to say, for example, god does not exist. or socialism is wrong. We need to be neutral and impartial and let the evidence speak for itself. -- Colin°^Talk 11:02, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I think that you are assuming your conclusion here, again.

I agree that the SAGE Encyclopedia of trans studies is unlikely to include gender-critical perspectives. But where you see in that an imbalance that demands we find more GC sources to restore balance, I see an indication that gender-critical sources are outside of the academic mainstream.

It feels like you are taking as a given that gender-critical sources are academically respectable, when I don't see much actual evidence of that. It seems to me like we're dealing with a mainstream view that is pretty hostile to GCs, both in activist and academic feninism. Loki (talk) 22:17, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Loki, you keep arguing about things I haven't said. I am not at all talking about balance. Look, academic mainstream is pretty hostile to religion, full stop, and certainly doesn't waste its time discussing the concerns of Free Church of Scotland (since 1900) (oh and I think we can assume the Wee Frees are generally opposed to any modern fancy liberal ideas on sexuality or gender). But any reasonable person wanting to know what they believed would bloody well go and ask them. Or read a book by one of them. It doesn't matter one jot that you could fit them all into a football stadium or what mainstream academia thinks of this sect wrt Christianity as a whole or wrt how one should live one's life and whether there's a god. What I'm saying really, Loki, is your arguments are irrelevant wrt our choice of sources for what on earth GCF's believe. Go fill the rest of the page with "balance" on how wrong they are and cite whatever trans studies sources you like on that. But please, could we at least get our facts right wrt what on earth they believe. Citing activists on what people they hate believe is just plain stupid.

And wrt respect. All humans deserve respect, even when they are wrong. If you can't write about people you disagree with in a respectful manner, please, please, go do something else. You've made your point that you don't respect them and I don't disagree that the majority of feminist literature writes about them in a derogatory manner. But this is not that. This is Wikipedia. If our readers are to gain a negative view of GCF they should do so from being educated, not from being told what to think. -- Colin°^Talk 22:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I not sure that this encyclopedia is more reliable for Transgender rights movement and Transfeminism than for TERFism. On the contrary! Reprarina (talk) 22:18, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Are we really arguing over whether it's acceptable for us to use the term "TERF" in wikivoice?! I agree with Colin and Void here. We should not be using derogatory terms for groups when their primary use-case is explicitly activist characterizations of ideological opponents. Even when the activism is published in academic works. There are plenty of scholarly, reliable journals that have a declared bias -- see the divide in perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war coming from Israeli/Jewish-focused sources versus Arab/Islamic-focused sources -- and so demand careful attribution when using them to discuss topics they oppose. The only references that are generally acceptable for wikivoice in these cases are the ones that take a dispassionate stance on the conflict and any moral arguments and simply aim to describe them without judgment. JoelleJay (talk) 03:07, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Are we really arguing over whether it's acceptable for us to use the term "TERF" in wikivoice?!

No.

This is mostly an argument over sources that use the term "TERF" in their voice. I do, incidentally, think that it's occasionally acceptable to use the term "TERF" in Wikivoice, but only under the same circumstances we could call someone a "racist" in Wikivoice. Loki (talk) 03:47, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia never ever calls them TERFs, though it may note that some people have called them that. It certainly doesn't claim they follow "TERFism" or "TERF ideology". It's sad that such policy prevails in English Wikipedia.

It looks like the reply function misplaced my comment.

Anyway, I still agree with Colin and Void that it's inappropriate to use activist works to define in wikivoice the ideological bounds of a term/group the activists oppose, especially when it seems there is some conflation by them of GCF as an academic niche that extends well beyond trans identity vs as a modern euphemism for TERF. JoelleJay (talk) 05:58, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Why do you think they're "activist works"? Because they use the word "TERF"? Yet again, that's circular. (Also all the sources I've seen dispute the idea that gender-critical feminism extends well beyond trans identity or indeed is substantially different from trans-exclusionary feminism. At most, the difference is that it's not necessarily "radical".) Loki (talk) 07:45, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

You don't think people who self-describe as trans activists, publishing in media dedicated to trans studies, are producing activist works when it comes to describing their ideological opponents? The entry on "feminism" (written by a soc PhD candidate and an MPH candidate...) is (predictably and justifiably) entirely focused on how transgender people have been perceived/received within feminism, and so describes the works of feminist scholars exclusively (and mostly negatively) through that lens. For example, the article claims The Transsexual Empire is a feminist anti-transgender manifesto influential within and outside feminist movements, that trans exclusion has come to characterize “second-wave” 1970s feminism, and that [l]iteratures grounded in [1990s postructural feminism, in particular works of Judith Butler] discuss trans people and trans bodies in order to argue that neither gender nor “biological sex” exist outside of cultural contexts or understandings and the systems of knowledge that produce them. This is a significant departure from trans exclusionary radical feminism. The framing implies that erasing trans people was a ubiquitous conscious effort and that the "transgender question" is ultimately relevant to and opined upon by all feminist scholarship from the 1970s on.

This is a fine resource for topics discussing the perspective of transgender studies, but it is not a wikivoice-acceptable source for an overview of "feminism" and especially not for stating what a particular feminist ideology is. JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

It's true that transgender rights activists and transgender studies overlap a lot. But the same could be said about feminist activists and women's studies. It can be said also about many other fields. Reprarina (talk) 06:44, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Wow, so many people arguing past each other. Arguing strongly against exactly what the other person didn't at all say. Perhaps it is worth rewinding up to the top of the section. It started with a suggestion about sections but someone came along and argued we shouldn't be using the word "gender critical" and instead talk about TERFs. They claimed all the best sources talked about TERFs so we should too. My argument in this section has been about these word choices. We've had the laughable suggestion that someone who runs a blog called "Trans Advocate" is a source who might influence whether we use the word "TERF". I look at the website and see a little cartoon showing a flask of "TERF logic" being heated to produce a test tube of "anti-trans hate".

We are absolutely required by policy to use an impartial tone and neutral language: WP:IMPARTIAL. Our sources, even our very best sources, are not and can use whatever words and insults they like. Policy requires that "The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view". Editors wishing to write in a disapproving tone about TERFs should do so on their own blogs or at Twitter. This is an article about gender-critical feminism and any criticism of that needs to be quoted opinion or factual rejection of claims, etc. WP:NOR says "The best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words". It does not say: "and when those sources insult the topic of your article with their tone and word choice, that means you can too".

And Joelle Jay's point is one I've made several times on this page, that sources like an Encyclopaedia of Trans Studies are absolutely great for articles on transgender and absolutely great for opinions about how GCFs are wrong or whatever, but frankly unthinkably inappropriate for what GCFs think or believe. If you took this idea to any other area of Wikipedia you'd be mocked. It's like suggesting our article on Methodism be sourced to Christopher Hitchins or someone arguing that Methodism is actually a minority faith, fringe even, on a global level, so we shouldn't use any Methodism sources to describe what it is.

None of the sources discussed are bad but they all need to be used appropriately for the context in which they are relevant. -- Colin°^Talk 10:42, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, and the source “Gender-critical feminism” written by a so-called gender-critical feminist is certainly suitable for such purposes. And it doesn’t matter that those who study them from the outside ignore this book. Yeah, right. Reprarina (talk) 21:58, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

"those who study them from the outside ignore this book" well then they aren't doing a very good job of "study[ing] them" are they? What do they do then? Read tweets? This is not a science subject where there are the good scientists looking at autism and measles and doing valid research and there are the bad scientists doing dodgy research and getting caught fiddling the figures. And where we are trying to write an article on autism or on measles and should rightly ignore the fringe and discredited group's output. The subject of the article are the very people you are telling me we should ignore. You are actually telling me that our best sources on gender critical feminists wouldn't actually lower themselves to read any gender critical feminist literature, least of all a book published by Oxford University Press by a professor who's field is... gender critical feminism. Is this peak nonsense on this page, or is there more? -- Colin°^Talk 08:09, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Just because you personally don't like how the authors of sources that fit Wikipedia's reliability criteria do their work does not make them unreliable. Reprarina (talk) 12:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it is time to put this section to bed. People have made their views clear and the policy requirements on us as editors are clear. Have editors got actual serious changes-to-the article proposals to make? Make your suggestions then. -- Colin°^Talk 08:18, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Noticeable space at the end of History

In the chapter, History, there's some space between the last paragraph and the start of another chapter, Around the World. Since I used the legacy theme, I thought I could've been an issue of said theme alone, but after switching to the default theme, same problem. I wanted to make a quick minor edit, but considering my account doesn't met the requirements, I thought making a comment here would help. The second block seems to work when previewing it, where the first block shows what the issue is.

In her own 1987 book ''[[Gyn/Ecology]]'', [[Mary Daly]], who had served as Raymond's thesis supervisor,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Feminist theologian Mary Daly dies|url=https://www.ebar.com/news///240420|access-date=3 July 2020|website=The Bay Area Reporter / B.A.R. Inc.|language=en|archive-date=8 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308171932/https://www.ebar.com/news///240420|url-status=live}}</ref> argued that as sex reassignment surgery cannot reproduce female chromosomes or a female life history, it could "not produce women".<ref>Daly, Mary, ''Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism'' (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, pbk. [1st printing? printing of [19]90?] 1978 & 1990 (prob. all content except ''New Intergalactic Introduction'' 1978 & prob. ''New Intergalactic Introduction'' 1990) ({{ISBN|0-8070-1413-3}})).</ref> [[Sheila Jeffreys]] and [[Germaine Greer]] have made similar remarks.<ref name = BINDEL2>{{cite news | last= Bindel | first= Julie | author-link= Julie Bindel | title= The ugly side of beauty | work= [[The Guardian]] | date= 2 July 2005 | url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/02/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety | access-date= 16 June 2023 | archive-date= 25 February 2021 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210225140358/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/02/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety | url-status= live }}</ref> In a response to related remarks by [[Elizabeth Grosz]], philosopher [[Eva Simone Hayward|Eva Hayward]] characterized this type of view as telling trans people who have had sex reassignment surgery: "Don't exist."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hayward |first1=Eva S. |title=Don't Exist |journal=[[Transgender Studies Quarterly]] |date=2017 |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=191–194|doi=10.1215/23289252-3814985 }}</ref>



== Around the world ==

=== United Kingdom ===
<!-- More detail and more sources about the early history would be nice -->

In her own 1987 book ''[[Gyn/Ecology]]'', [[Mary Daly]], who had served as Raymond's thesis supervisor,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Feminist theologian Mary Daly dies|url=https://www.ebar.com/news///240420|access-date=3 July 2020|website=The Bay Area Reporter / B.A.R. Inc.|language=en|archive-date=8 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308171932/https://www.ebar.com/news///240420|url-status=live}}</ref> argued that as sex reassignment surgery cannot reproduce female chromosomes or a female life history, it could "not produce women".<ref>Daly, Mary, ''Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism'' (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, pbk. [1st printing? printing of [19]90?] 1978 & 1990 (prob. all content except ''New Intergalactic Introduction'' 1978 & prob. ''New Intergalactic Introduction'' 1990) ({{ISBN|0-8070-1413-3}})).</ref> [[Sheila Jeffreys]] and [[Germaine Greer]] have made similar remarks.<ref name = BINDEL2>{{cite news | last= Bindel | first= Julie | author-link= Julie Bindel | title= The ugly side of beauty | work= [[The Guardian]] | date= 2 July 2005 | url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/02/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety | access-date= 16 June 2023 | archive-date= 25 February 2021 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210225140358/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/02/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety | url-status= live }}</ref> In a response to related remarks by [[Elizabeth Grosz]], philosopher [[Eva Simone Hayward|Eva Hayward]] characterized this type of view as telling trans people who have had sex reassignment surgery: "Don't exist."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hayward |first1=Eva S. |title=Don't Exist |journal=[[Transgender Studies Quarterly]] |date=2017 |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=191–194|doi=10.1215/23289252-3814985 }}</ref>

== Around the world ==

=== United Kingdom ===
<!-- More detail and more sources about the early history would be nice -->

Considering the nature of this page, I full-heartily hope this isn't inappropriate to do. Danny, JumboSizedFish (talk) 22:00, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done! PBZE (talk) 07:08, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Danny, JumboSizedFish (talk) 18:57, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Lede Image

Pinging all involved @LokiTheLiar: @XTheBedrockX: @Void if removed: @Snokalok:. I removed the lede image because it isn't a common symbol used by gender-critical feminism and instead is a low-quality text poster, it was readded by Void if Removed, removed for lack of rational, and then readded by me then reverted.

If we look at other articles say capitalism, socialism, authoritarianism they lack any lede images instead showing a sidebar of with a common symbol used by their movement/ideology. They do not have a random propaganda poster explaining their worldview, it would take away from those articles. If the lede image is going to be present it should be consistent with other lede images of articles and be symbol common of gender-critical feminism, say a commonly used flag. The lede image in it's current state does not represent the article, nor does it fit the requirements of WP:LEDEIMAGE.

Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic.

The current image does not illustrate the topic anymore then text in the article already does but in WikiVoice, it's not a high or exceptional image, and it also does not show the the reader to get any information, or otherwise. Des Vallee (talk) 19:26, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

If it's not suitable enough to be a lead image, I can understand that. Even still, though, I think it's better to have the picture placed somewhere in the article rather than not having it here at all, if only for illustrative purposes. XTheBedrockX (talk) 19:33, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@XTheBedrockX: I agree that it could be used else where in the article most likely in the views section, would you support moving the image to Gender-critical_feminism#Sex-based_rights? Des Vallee (talk) 19:36, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@Des Vallee Sure thing! Seems like a fitting place to put it. XTheBedrockX (talk) 19:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@XTheBedrockX: I am going to be WP:BOLD, and move the image towards that section. If anyone has an issue with this, and instead maintains it should remain the lede image feel free to revert and the continue the discussion. Des Vallee (talk) 19:45, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I would like you to self-revert until the discussion is done, please. Loki (talk) 19:56, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

I mean, compare to anti-gender movement. Those articles you're comparing to are very broad ideologies which are much less likely to have a suitable lead image. (And even so, I would argue pretty strongly that socialism should have one, since it's very strongly associated with certain symbols.) Loki (talk) 19:55, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

@LokiTheLiar: Socialism has a red-flag in the infobox, which functions similarly to lede image, however a red flag is a common symbol used by socialism for generations, by contrast an obsecure socialist poster would not, if there are no suitable lede image that represents this article, then there shouldn't be a lede image. The anti-gender movement is far superior as a lede image, it shows an in person protest with common symbols used, such as flags, and also links the protest to a Catholic anti-abortion protest in Peru which gives further context, not just a random poster. Des Vallee (talk) 20:29, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

This discussion has sit from for 2 days to allow for a discussion to occur. Per XTheBedrockX and the points laid out here. I am removing the image, again if anyone has any objections and feel as though the image should remain the lede, feel free to continue the discussion. Des Vallee (talk) 19:41, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

The image should be removed. Its provenance and relationship to gender-critical feminism is unknown - it isn't notably attached to any named gender-critical feminists or feminist groups, it doesn't repeat a slogan named in the body as attached to gender-critical feminism, and most importantly the name of the image is "terf sticker". TERF is accepted by a broad range of WP:RS as a derogatory term - we should not be endorsing casual use of derogatory terms on Wikipedia. The only justification for it would be if the sticker itself used the term - which it does not. A sticker with a different title from a notable gender-critical feminist, or gender-critical feminist organisation would be acceptable. This is anonymous guesswork. Void if removed (talk) 13:23, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

More sources on socialization

Can anyone help me dig up some original sources of GC’s saying things about socialization? I’m trying as I can, but it’s an experience reminiscent of when I had to search for anti-vaxx views online for a school project in 2015 - the actual views are hard to find, and the criticism of them is much more common. As such, if anyone has any original sources, it’d help. Snokalok (talk) 14:36, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Legal Cases

Is it worth adding yesterday's judgment against Westminster Council and Social Work England? Seems to be notable.

More here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/social-worker-wins-discrimination-claim-over-social-media-posts

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/09/social-worker-suspended-there-are-two-sexes-wins-tribunal/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/social-worker-wins-harassment-claim-over-gender-critical-views-3v395btmg

https://unherd.com/thepost/victory-for-social-worker-harassed-over-gender-critical-beliefs/

https://www.localgov.co.uk/Tribunal-rules-against-council-in-discrimination-case-/58630

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/gender-critical-rachel-meade-westminster-city-council-social-work-england/ Void if removed (talk) 14:37, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is worth including – the Guardian piece includes: ‘The judge said the disciplinary process from 6 November 2021 amounted to harassment’ which is strong language. Thanks for picking this up – I had missed it. Sweet6970 (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding the BBCs coverage as well which just appeared: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67934781 Void if removed (talk) 18:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

This one is useful because it provides another RS description of what GCF beliefs actually are. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's usable for that - we have sources discussing it directly; relying on a passing description in coverage of a court case doesn't really make sense. --Aquillion (talk) 08:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

We have many sources describing it directly in these same terms. This is not a passing reference, this is explaining the basis of the case at issue, and accords with what is neutrally represented in multiple HQ sources. Void if removed (talk) 09:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

If we have better sources (ones actually about this topic rather than just mentioning it briefly as part of the background for something else), we can use them instead; but this one adds nothing. It is, in this context, a passing reference - they are briefly explaining some background for the case at issue; they are not providing an in-depth look at this article's topic as a whole. That makes it a bad source for anything other than that specific case, and the case itself doesn't seem significant enough to include here. --Aquillion (talk) 09:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It's useful in that it provides additional weight (not just from the BBC, but from a judge) to the perspective that GCF is primarily about the nature and importance of sex, as opposed to, say, being some kind of far-right Christian plot. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

The judgment also explicitly finds the opinions - and the expression of them - not to be transphobic:

The opinions expressed by the Claimant could not sensibly be viewed as being transphobic when properly considered in their full context from an objective perspective

I think this sort of thing highlights the increasingly hard to reconcile conflict between the position of UK courts and reporting in neutral sources, and the many (sometimes quite hyperbolic) sources in use on this page that maintain it is inherently and unavoidably transphobic, and anyone who disagrees is transphobic by extension. Void if removed (talk) 10:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• A judge is not a subject-matter expert; their opinion is relevant when it comes to the law (and mostly just the law that appeared before them, ie. this specific case.) They have no WP:WEIGHT when weighing in on larger social issues. Certainly I would strenuously oppose weighing a judge's decision over eg. academic coverage from experts on the subject. --Aquillion (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Surely not zero weight. As a larger social issue, academics don't have privileged access to truth. Reliable sources of all kinds should be used.

  One of the front-lines of dispute is about whether GCFs should be characterised as intrinsically transphobic, hateful or akin to racists. Where these concepts intersect with laws, a judge is very much a subject matter expert. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

  One of the front-lines of dispute is about whether GCFs should be characterised as intrinsically transphobic, hateful or akin to racists. Where these concepts intersect with laws, a judge is very much a subject matter expert.

  I agree, this should definitely carry some weight.

  More coverage in the Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/social-workers-scared-to-speak-about-trans-issues-382370zcm

  And today, from Simon Fanshawe: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beware-the-culture-wars-how-employers-can-trip-over-trans-issues-fvj9m5kxv

  Seems that a key aspect that keeps coming up is that the regulator was criticised for taking a complaint at face value rather than investigating it was malicious before taking action. As an aside I note that part of the reasoning in the judgment that the complaint shouldn't have been taken at face value was that the original complainant used "TERF". Void if removed (talk) 11:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I think no. This appears to be a regular first-tier tribunal ruling, and overall not that impactful. It doesn't appear to have created any new case law, unlike the Forstater appeal. While it's no doubt impactful to Meade, I fail to see how this is of encyclopaedic relevance, especially with respect to WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:NOTNEWS. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:11, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Ltd was a first tier ruling. First tier rulings aren't by themselves meaningless, and there are several notable aspects to this.

Per the Telegraph:

It is the first case of its kind where an employer and regulator have both been found liable for discrimination in relation to gender-critical beliefs, which Ms Meade described as the thought that “there are two sexes, male and female” and “that a person cannot change their sex”.

It is another case that builds upon and reinforces Forstater, covering as it does expression of belief. It lays out, again, what "GC" means in terms of UK law (good for the lede), and is notable because not only her employer, but also her regulator were found guilty not only of discrimination, but also harassment. Also notable because, contra many of the criticisms on this page, found "her opinions were not “of a nature that they aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms of others”". Void if removed (talk) 09:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

The quotation from The Telegraph that you've highlighted seems to be misrepresenting the judgement. The issue at play here, per paragraphs 190-194 of the judgement, are those of freedom of thought (para 193), and whether the manifestation of Meade's beliefs were of a nature that they aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms of others contrary to Article 17 (para 194). In this instance, the tribunal found that the manifestations of Meade's beliefs did not rise to the level specified in para 194. There is also a lot of detail from paragraphs 205 to 266 detailing where the employer (first respondent) and complainant against Meade (second respondent) both were correct (eg, para 207 and 235 found that Meade's initial suspension on 22 July 2021 did not amount to discrimination for her beliefs) and incorrect (eg para 211 where the employer did not clearly identify the posts which they are considered went beyond a manifestation of the Claimant’s protected beliefs and why they considered this to be the case and para 233 where it was only the actions taken after 6 November 2021 which the tribunal found discriminatory).

If we're going to include this case at all, then we should wait for legal scholars published in reliable sources to analyse and summarise the key points. The press sources, like The Telegraph, do not go into a level of detail that fully and accurately summarises the breadth and depth of the ruling. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:15, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

My instinct is also no. I don't think the article on feminism in general would mention a court case involving a feminist unless it was somehow very clearly tied to the concept as a whole. So for instance an article on the civil rights movement would mention Brown v. Board but it doesn't mention every single one of the many legal actions relating to the movement. Loki (talk) 04:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• Yeah, it's not really a useful source at the moment unless there's later reason to believe that it's a major case that directly relates to the topic as a whole. Articles like these aren't meant to cover every blow-by-blow of every court case related to anyone involved in the topic. --Aquillion (talk) 08:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I would add, for anyone arguing that this case should not be added - can we please apply the same logic to the AEA and Amy Hamm cases. Why should they be included? The sourcing on both is much weaker, AEA/EHRC is not an impactful judgment or one that relates specifically to gender-critical feminism, and the other isn't even a judgment at all yet. In addition to the numerous opinion pieces, straightforward news reporting on the Meade case is: BBC, Guardian, Times, Telegraph - that's a broad spread of the media in the UK. The other two are sourced solely to Pink News and LGBTQ Nation. There's no comparison there. Void if removed (talk) 10:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the Meade case is significant because it involves discrimination and harassment by a public authority and a regulatory body. Also, it is treated as significant by Personnel Today, which gives it considerable coverage, presumably because the publication thinks its readers need to know about it, in order to guide their conduct in future.

Another point: The section is called Legal cases, but perhaps it should be re-titled Discrimination against gender-critical feminists. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I edited the main page without realizing this discussion was going on. Yes we should include as its covered by multiple reliable sources. AndyGordon (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I count four in favour of inclusion, three against. But even if we do exclude, the current rationale for excluding this case would IMO favour removing the AEA and Amy Hamm cases. Void if removed (talk) 23:39, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I support the retitle Discrimination against gender-critical feminists suggested by @Sweet6970

Re Hamm, there are other sources that could be consulted especially CBN News, not just the one we're currently using.

Re the AEA case, not sure. The paragraph is a direct copy from our LGB Alliance page. As written, it doesn't explain what the case has to do with GC feminism, whereas the other three legal cases are all about discrimination against GC feminists. AndyGordon (talk) 08:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps these would all fit better in the United Kingdom section, given they are cases about UK law? Having the section at the top level might misleadingly imply that these rulings apply in other jurisdictions. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:22, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I simply note that if WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:NOTNEWS apply to this, there are many many other things they apply to on this page, and if we set the bar here, then we should have a clean out of lots of other "news" that doesn't meet this threshold.

There's other sources for Amy Hamm (CBC has some I believe), but there's no ruling - does it need a blow by blow or should it wait till its finished? And AEA has no place here IMO. Its filler. If Equality Act judgments are important, then there's half a dozen rulings far more consequential and widely covered than this I can think of off the top of my head (all the FPFW and FWS judicial reviews for starters). Void if removed (talk) 11:46, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I would not support a narrowing of the legal cases section implied by such a renaming.

Re AEA v EHRC, I believe the second edition (and later) of A Practical Guide to Transgender Law by Robin Moira White QC, has detail for why this case is impactful with regards to the subject of this article, based upon the publisher's update note (page 6 of the PDF, after page 226 of the book) for its inclusion. This case was brought by a then prominent gender-critical activist, Ann Sinnott, and her organisation challinging the 2011 EHRC guidance on the inclusion of trans people, particularly trans women, in single and separate sex services. I would suggest instead that we cite and expand upon that analysis from White, as it details why this case and it's failure was impactful. I'd need to get a copy of the latest edition of that book though to see if there's any difference between the update note linked earlier in this paragraph and what is in the most recent edition, unless one of you already has a copy?

Re Hamm, I'm actually going to be removing it after posting this reply on NPOV grounds. There doesn't yet seem to be a ruling, and I don't see a good reason for us to be highlighting individual quotations from what she has said in oral evidence. That fundamentally fails NPOV, as we are only highlighting Hamm's side of the case. According to one of the bodies involved with Hamm's case, they won't be submitting written arguments until sometime in the early part of this year, so this is very much an ongoing case. I'd suggest we keep a note of it somewhere on the talk page however, and look at what sourcing exists particularly from legal scholars and analysts when the judgement is eventually issued. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:56, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

More coverage of the legal landscape in general, precipitated by the Meade judgment. A quote:

Gender-critical feminists believe sex is biological and cannot be changed, and disagree with trans rights activists who say gender identity should be given priority in terms of law-making and policy. Clashes in workplaces – in some cases with those who regard the focus on biological sex as transphobic – have led to a string of employment tribunals.

So another WP:RS saying quite neutrally what gender-critical feminists believe, and what the conflict is.

The article has further mention of Meade, implication of impact on wider employer behaviour, stresses the importance of all of these cases in totality, and notably mentions Bailey in the same breath as Forstater in terms of significance as setting "strong precedent", yet there's no mention of Bailey in our article.

Meade has now had something like a dozen mentions across The Guardian, Times, Telegraph and BBC. I still don't see why AEA is WP:DUE and this is not, based on the broader secondary coverage. Void if removed (talk) 13:12, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Please see my recent addition to our article, in which I treat the Guardian piece as a summary of the legal situation. Sweet6970 (talk) 14:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Points from the Jo Phoenix case

Another tribunal result is in: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65ae82d58bbe95000e5eb1f7/Ms_J_Pheonix_v_The_Open_University_3322700.2021___other_FMH_Reserved_Judgment.pdf *Dan T.* (talk) 22:20, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@Dtobias: there weren't any reliable secondary sources for this ruling when I looked a couple of hours ago. Has that changed yet? Otherwise it would be undue to include this. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

There is now an article in the Guardian about the Jo Phoenix case [2]. Sweet6970 (talk) 00:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding some more:

Telegraph:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/open-university-gender-critical-jo-phoenix-tribunal/

Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/open-university-professor-gender-critical-wins-tribunal-m2sghj6x7

Times Higher Ed: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/open-university-failed-protect-gender-critical-professor

Solicitors Journal: https://www.solicitorsjournal.com/sjarticle/prof-jo-phoenix-wins-landmark-case-against-open-university. ("Landmark Case")

Irish News: https://www.irishnews.com/news/uk/professor-with-gender-critical-views-wins-unfair-dismissal-claim-H33ZEMT7WNLDFEKRTT655OADPM/ Void if removed (talk) 12:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Point (1) Comparisons with racism

The article in the Guardian says that the tribunal found that comparing gender-critical views to racism is a form of harassment:In a judgment published on Monday, the tribunal found that Prof Louise Westmarland, head of discipline in social policy and criminology at the OU, made the “racist uncle” comment, which amounted to harassment….. and Prof Westmarland knew that likening the claimant to a racist was upsetting for the claimant. We conclude that its purpose was to violate the claimant’s dignity because inherent in the comment is an insult of being put in the same category as racists”.

Point (2) Use of the label ‘TERF’

The article also says that failure to protect Phoenix from being called a TERF is grounds for legal action: The judgment said: “We find that the claimant was not provided with effective protection from the effects of the launch of the GCRN. We find that the respondent did not provide the claimant protection particularly in the form of asking staff and students not to launch campaigns to deplatform the GCRN, or make calls to remove support for the claimant’s gender critical research, or use social media to label the claimant transphobic or TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist).

These points should be highlighted in our article.

Sweet6970 (talk) 18:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Mentioning that the case was successful seems due, highlighting those specific quotes however does not. I would instead suggest rolling it in with the enumeration of successful claims in the third paragraph of that section. At the very least, this case does not appear to be settled yet, as per the second to last paragraph of the Guardian article the OU are considering appealing it. If we're going to include any more detail, I would strongly urge that we wait until legal scholars provide an analysis of the case.

Of particular relevance to this section are the forthcoming scholarly paper and second edition of A Practical Guide to Transgender Law by Robin Moira White. Both have the potential to give us good summaries of post-Forstater legal cases within the UK. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:17, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I look forward to reading White's considered reflections on losing the Meade case when it appears. Void if removed (talk) 09:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Is Robin Moira White something to do with the Meade case? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

White was Council for Social Work England on that case. Void if removed (talk) 21:26, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

For the level of detail you're proposing Sweet, I think it would make more sense to cover the case in detail on Phoenix's article. This would be similar to how we currently handle Allison Bailey's case. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:48, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

"...known to its opponents..."

Saying that it is "known to its opponents as..." is plainly non-neutral wording and is completely unacceptable in the lead sentence. The given sources do not describe it that way; many of them use it as if it is a neutral descriptor and the proper terminology. Characterizing the authors as opponents is editorializing on our part. Furthermore, the framing implies that "gender critical" is the 'real', neutral term, which every source for that sentence contradicts - all of them present it as a self-description and use quotes surrounding it to make it clear it is a non-neutral term. If we were to qualify TERF with "...known to its opponents...", we would have to insert "Self-described" before "gender-critical", otherwise we'd be misusing the sources. --Aquillion (talk) 09:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

No, completely neutral sources employ "gender-critical". Hostile sources use TERF. The sources cited in the lede use words like "despise" about their subjects - are you seriously arguing that this is non-oppositional? That TERF is mentioned three times in the opening sentence of this article is non-neutral, and attempting to sanitise it by implying that those who are gender-critical refer to their own beliefs as "TERFism" or "TERF ideology" is absolutely unsupportable.

The introduction to a recent blatantly hostile source addition ("Exploring TERFnesses") even at one point uses the term "FART". I wonder quite why we're taking such pathetic juvenilia seriously TBH (and this is from a prominent and influential activist and author, not some random nobody), but there we are.

That source also says:

The acronym TERF, which means Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism, was coined by the Australian blogger Viv Smythe in 2008 to refer to a specific form of feminist hostility towards trans issues.

So again, the term is about "hostility to trans issues". Not a neutral or accurate description that is equivalent to "believing sex is real, immutable, binary and important" which is what "gender-critical" is widely accepted to mean, eg. in UK law.

It also says:

we see the expression ‘gender-critical feminism’ – a self-definition by some individuals and groups labelled TERFs by others – as problematic because it serves specific actors to ‘rebrand’ their anti-trans activism and to legitimise their own positions by presenting them as more moderate (Thurlow, 2022) or as doing critical work (Ahmed, 2021). While several authors in this special issue have suggested new expressions to address this phenomenon, we prefer to use the term TERFnesses based on the term TERF, because of its resonance in contemporary debates

Again, non-neutral - they don't see the two terms as neutrally equivalent, they see "gender-critical" as sanitising vague anti-trans beliefs they believe to be bad, and "TERF" a more resonant term for highlighting that negativity. The decision to employ a non-neutral term is explicit.

The use of TERF is inherently non-neutral because it is derogatory. There is no question about that. The only serious disagreement is technically whether it goes so far as to be a slur (and even then the best is that there is "academic disagreement"). Void if removed (talk) 09:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

That is your personal assessment of the source; it isn't what the source says. What they say is that "gender-critical feminism" is a non-neutral self-description used as a tactical rebranding, whereas TERF is the more established term. "Resonance" in this context means that it is a term that has broader usage. If you want to characterize "TERF" as being used primarily by its opponents, you will need high-quality academic sources saying so unambiguously (and you would need an overwhelming number of such sources, because they're in conflict with the sources already in the article.) And even then, it would be necessary to add the "self-described" before gender-critical, because the sources unambiguously frame it that way; you don't seem to be disputing that at all, you even quoted them saying it yourself. Obviously if we were going to characterize the usage of one term we would have to characterize both. --Aquillion (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

The introduction to a recent blatantly hostile source addition ("Exploring TERFnesses") even at one point uses the term "FART". I wonder quite why we're taking such pathetic juvenilia seriously TBH (and this is from a prominent and influential activist and author, not some random nobody), but there we are.

Please don't misrepresent sources. "Exploring TERFnesses" doesn't use the term "FART" in its own voice, it just mentions the term's existence. Also, reliable sources can be used here even if you personally dislike or disagree with them. PBZE (talk) 19:28, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

1) There are countless examples of scholarly and mainstream media sources using this term descriptively. 2) There are numerous examples of TERFs calling themselves TERFs, there are even TERF groups that call themselves TERFs (sometimes written as "terven"). 3) The term was created as a neutral, descriptive term, by radical feminists themselves. If some (how many is debatable) TERFs now perceive it negatively, it's because of how the transphobic ideology it refers to is perceived, more than it is related to the term itself. Thus, the term can be compared to "racist", which describes an ideology that is widely condemned (and some might object to being called racists), but that is nevertheless a descriptive term – in the sense that racism does exist and some people/groups are racist. We don't write "known as racism to opponents". --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 14:17, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It is well established that the term is derogatory. Therefore, it cannot be neutral. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It is not at all established that it is uniformly derogatory. You have cited multiple high-quality academic sources using it in the article voice themselves; our usage reflects the highest-quality usage, not random blogs or opinion pieces. And, in comparison, we have sources overtly saying that "gender-critical" is a non-neutral self-description, so certainly we can never present it as the more neutral term. --Aquillion (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

our usage reflects the highest-quality usage, not random blogs or opinion pieces

No - it reflects some selective academic usage, and ignores the many other sources that have come up many times in this talk page - far beyond just "blogs and opinion". Aside from the fact that the OED says it is derogatory, some choice quotes:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2022.2147915

In the UK trans inclusive and gender critical feminists hold positions that are increasingly polarised. While the latter seek to exclude trans women from the category ‘woman’ and advocate for single sex spaces that would exclude trans women, they argue that the term ‘TERF’ (trans exclusionary radical feminist) is a derogatory slur in part due to its use by opponents on social media, and they prefer the term ‘gender critical’. While ‘TERF’ itself is a contested term and argued not to be a slur by some on the trans inclusive side, I will apply ‘gender critical’ here out of respect for people’s rights to self-define.

Kathleen Stock: Material Girls

In 2008, denigrating the motives of critics of gender identity theory was given a big boost with the invention of a 'TERF'. TERF stands for 'Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist'. It was reportedly coined by American Viv Smythe. In 2008 Smythe was running a feminist blog. In a post, she promoted the Michigan Womyn's Musical Festival, also known as Michfest. When founded in 1976, Michfest had been conceived by its radical feminist organisers as for females only - or, as organisers named them, 'Womyn-born-womyn'. There was a heavy lesbian presence, in the traditional same-sex sense, amongst attendees. Latterly, the festival had become controversial for its explicit exclusion of trans women from the event. (Indeed, eventually Michfest closed in 2015, partly due to this controversy.) Smythe was quickly taken to task by blog readers for her promotion of Michfest, and in the course of her subsequent public apology, coined the acronym TERF. She wrote, of her promise not to promote any trans-exclusionary feminist event' in future: 'I am aware that this decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs).'n The term TERF rapidly took off, as memorable acronyms often do - perhaps helped by its ugly phonetics and capacity to be easily barked out as an insult or threat. Though in Smythe's original construction, TERFs were, by definition, feminists, later popular usage of the term widened to refer to any person at all who had, for whatever reason, an even mildly critical perspective on the bundle of ideas that constitutes gender identity theory. Indeed, trans women and trans men themselves came to be called TERFs, whenever they worried that gender identity alone was not what made you a woman or man.

Holly Lawford Smith: Sex Matters

Despite its alleged introduction as a neutral acronym for a version of radical feminism, in its current usage the term `TERF' has evolved so that it has become derogatory in at least its implicature if not its content. The term is widely used to apply to those who hold that the sex category 'female' has social and political relevance in certain contexts regardless "of gender identity. The term is almost exclusively used in derogatory and dehumanizing ways, and often accompanied by violent imagery, by those who are critical of people who take such a view. On seven different accounts of slurs, TERF appears to meet the criterion for counting as a slur.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/29/philosophers-object-journals-publication-terf-reference-some-feminists-it-really

TERF is an acronym meaning “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” While the term has become controversial over time, especially with its often hateful deployment on social media, it originally described a subgroup of feminists who believe that the interests of cisgender women (those who are born with vaginas) don’t necessarily intersect with those of transgender women (primarily those born with penises). [...] TERF “is widely used across online platforms as a way to denigrate and dismiss the women (and some men) who disagree with the dominant narrative on trans issues,” the scholars wrote.

Finn Mackay: Female Masculinities

The acronym has become so widely shared in social media activism and mainstream journalism that it has become almost a void, as it is applied to anyone expressing transphobic, prejudiced, bigoted or otherwise exclusionary views about trans men, trans women and all transgender and trans people. It is applied to those who are not feminist activists and would never identify themselves as feminists; it is put onto those who may be feminists but are certainly not Radical Feminists; it has become a shorthand for transphobic, and mostly applied to women

Void if removed (talk) 23:55, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Stock and Lawford Smith are primarily notable as anti-trans activists. Stock is no longer a professor due to her views and is affiliated with an unaccredited alt-right "fake university" in Texas. Their publications in this field – outside their areas of expertise (such as fiction and aesthetics in Stock's case) – are not really academic sources or representative of mainstream scholarship in relevant fields – such as gender studies, sociology, etc. They are fringe voices in academia (or outside of academia in Stock's case), and their writings on this topic are primarily political/populist in nature. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

You keep mentioning these sources so I'll break them down:

1. Says GC feminists say TERF is a derogatory slur, does not say it is. It notes that trans-exclusive feminism started developing in the 70s
2. Is by a GC activist, says TERF is overused for non-feminists (and notably, that it was coined to refer to a group of radical feminists who believed trans women should be excluded from Mitchfest, which started in 1976)
3. By a GC activist, says TERF is a slur
4. Says 7 people (notably, including prominent GC activists like source 3's author) complained about the use of the term TERF in a journal, to which the journal said it's not a slur and is descriptive
5. Says it's overused for non-feminists, but notably the book repeatedly uses the full expansion "trans exclusionary radical feminists to refer to GC/TER feminists
6. The OED does not say "TERF is derogatory". They explicitly did call it derogatory because it's more nuanced than that: We weighed it up, and because of the intentions of the coiner and the fact that there is a little bit more nuance behind its usage – it’s not always just a straight-out insult – we took the approach that we would explain that in a note. We felt it was a bit more nuanced than just slapping on derogatory or chiefly derogatory[3]

So in short, these sources do not support the claim "TERF is derogatory". The sources you listed (and sources in the article TERF (acronym)) support 1) TERF has become somewhat overused to refer to anti-trans non-feminists as opposed to anti-trans radical feminists 2) TER/GC Feminists call it a slur a lot 3) it is sometimes (but not always) used in a derogatory way 4) it was coined to refer to a strain of feminism that existed since the 70s Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 02:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The point as always is that the term is disputed, can have a range of meanings, is often vague and insulting, and WP:RS repeatedly note that it is used by opponents in a derogatory fashion. The argument is being made that since academics use it, it is fine and precise. But that is selective, since other academics note it is controversial and use other, more precise and less inflammatory terms instead (like gender-critical feminist or trans-exclusionary feminist).

I think that it is important to note that this is contentious and fairly represent multiple sides, namely:

• Some say "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" is not neutral and inaccurate, and that "TERF" is anything from an insult to a slur (eg. Stock, Lawford-Smith)
• Some say gender-critical feminist is itself not neutral and that trans-exclusionary (radical) feminist delineates important power relations (eg. Thurlow, Hines)
• Some note that this is contentious and use gender-critical feminist or trans-exclusionary feminist as more neutral terms to avoid unnecessary conflict (eg. Shaw, Mackay)
• Some say that TERF itself should be used, because it is insulting, and the targets deserve to be insulted, because they are akin to racists (eg. Williams, Long-Chu)

A central part of the conflict is around the meaning and purpose of these terms, and insisting that it is undisputed or straightforwardly equivalent in the opening sentence is not WP:BALANCE.

Personally I would suggest a bolder rewording that makes the nature of the dispute clear, instead of trying to mash it into the lead sentence, and say something like:

"Transgender advocates say that gender-critical feminism is not a neutral term, and argue the importance of using trans-exclusionary feminism or trans-exclusionary radical feminism instead. The latter is commonly abbreviated as TERF, but this form has become contentious and is typically considered derogatory." Void if removed (talk) 11:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, there is no neutral term for this concept. But academic works are split, and even GCFs themselves use "TERF" sometimes, so we definitely can't say "TERF" and "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" are only used by its opponents. That's not only not verifiable, it's just false. Loki (talk) 23:47, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

It is not established that the term is derogatory; in fact this is a slogan used by some TERFs. Many academic and media sources use the term descriptively. Quite a few TERFs refer to themselves as TERFs, or use the term interchangeably with gender-critical. For this movement, it seems every term used is subject to some disagreement – which includes "gender-critical feminism." Lack of universal support for a term – among the fringe group it describes – doesn't make it derogatory. An excellent comparison would be "white supremacist"; this term is not typically used by the white supremacists themselves; instead it is used as a descriptive term by scholars and others, and describes a real phenomenon, movement and ideology. The fact that many white supremacists would object to being called white supremacists doesn't make the term derogatory. Similarly, "trans-exclusionary" describes the real ideology of marginalizing trans women, particularly in the context of feminism; the other part of the term, radical feminism, is obviously not derogatory, it's what they call their ideology themselves. In fact, trans-exclusionary radical feminism/feminist is constructed as an even more neutral term than white supremacism/ist, so if anything, the term is less derogatory. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

It's also a matter of the lead reflecting the body. First of all, nowhere in the body does it say that "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" is exclusively or chiefly used by "opponents", and the only sentence even suggesting that is "Though it was created as a deliberately neutral descriptor, "TERF" is now typically considered derogatory."

If that were sufficient to summarize in the lead sentence, then for the lead to proportionally and WP:DULY reflect the body, the lead sentence would also need to summarize this paragraph:

Claire Thurlow noted that since the 2010s, there has been a shift in language from "TERF" to "gender critical feminism," which she described as "dog-whistle politics whereby the phrases act as a coded message of anti-transness to those initiated." Mauro Cabral Grinspan, Ilana Eloit, David Paternotte and Mieke Verloo argued that "we see the expression ‘gender-critical feminism’ – a self-definition by some individuals and groups labelled TERFs by others – as problematic because it serves specific actors to ‘rebrand’ their anti-trans activism and to legitimise their own positions."

PBZE (talk) 19:10, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Removals from history

@Sweet6970, you just reverted my recent addition to history stating delete material which is not about g-c feminism – see WP:COATRACK.

The material was added from the SAGE Enclyopedia of Trans Studies' TERF entry, specifically it's section TERF activism which says The following is a timeline of TERF activism that proved structurally or culturally significant. And before the "TERF doesn't mean GC" argument gets pulled, the source is 110% explicit that Since Hungerford’s 2013 announcement, gender critical and radical feminist are the primary self-identities used by TERFs when publicly discussing the equality of trans people. It is obviously about g-c feminism, so please self-revert.

Relatedly, I believe you should self-revert this edit, where you changed Janice Raymond's The Transsexual Empire, published in 1979, purported to examine the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes to ...examined the role... You're an experienced editor so I feel weird having to point out 1) that is absolutely not a claim that should go in wikivoice without reliable secondary sources agreeing and 2) there are no reliable secondary sources agreeing, it's cited to Raymond herself. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

What do obscure lesbian paramilitaries in the 70s have to do with gender-critical feminism, a term coined around 2013?

The section this is taken from is a timeline of trans history. None of this is terribly relevant to the phenomenon of "gender-critical feminism" which emerged some 40 years later, about 5 years after TERF was coined. This is not a forum for listing every grievance against lesbians since time immemorial.

And the particular edit you point to is fine - it was editorialised. Void if removed (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, according to the source, they fall under TERF activism that proved structurally or culturally significant. Are you saying the gender-critical movement sprang into existence in 2013? You said the phenomenon of "gender-critical feminism" which emerged some 40 years later, about 5 years after TERF was coined - but that is not what the sources say at all. The sources say they're different names, not different concepts. This article already says that even...

Can you please explain why a timeline labelled TERF activism is actually a timeline of trans history.?

Also, my point about Janice Raymond still stands. 1) the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes is absolutely not appropriate for wikivoice without secondary sourcing (it is her opinion trans identities do that, not a fact) and 2) there isn't secondary sourcing. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

a timeline of trans history

My mistake - it appears in multiple sections, I stopped at the first mention.

Even so I find it somewhat incoherent that a section which starts by stating TERF originated in 2008 then talks of "TERF activists" in 1973. Once again we find that TERF is a term used by critics indiscriminately, with little real regard for chronology or ideological specifics. The events mentioned are apparently structurally or culturally significant, but the author doesn't say how, why, to whom or in what way - its just some random events that have no bearing on gender-critical feminism. The leap from gender critical feminism, to TERf, to random events in the 70s is just further destroying any meaning of this page. Perhaps it has a place on Feminist views on transgender topics.

my point about Janice Raymond still stands

The changes was from "purported to examine the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes" to "examines the role".

The use of "purported" implies the examination itself is false. This is editorialising and WP:POV. Void if removed (talk) 21:20, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

From the first paragraph of the entry: Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community, TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. The community used the term to refer to the sex essentialist feminists who were flooding into their discussion space. TERFs asserted that “sex” was reducible to specific body attributes or to early socialization and therefore saw trans women as men and sought to remove them from “women’s spaces” and the lesbian feminist movement.

their section "Utility of TERF", they state The linguistic and cultural utility of TERF becomes apparent when one considers the reality that practically every contemporary anti-trans sex essentialist argument was originally asserted in Janice Raymond’s 1979 TERF classic, The Transsexual Empire.

TERF is an acronym for transgender exclusionary radical feminist, who sources agree prefer the term gender critical for themselves. Don't mistake a name for the emergence of whole new branch of feminism. Simple yes/no question: is the source referring to radical feminists who believed that trans women should be excluded from women's spaces? Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

TERF was coined in 2008, GCF in 2013. While battles between feminists and transsexualism date back at least to the 70s, neither of these terms make much sense prior to when they were coined, in the context of post-1990s theorising about sex and gender identity and conflicts over self-identification. "Gender-critical feminism" is one step on a timeline, and the terms are not interchangeable.

The problem is TERF is a derogatory term for anyone (mostly women, and especially lesbians) who don't think trans women are women. While the original targets were eg. Raymond and Jeffries, that isn't its sole meaning. Again: the OED confirms it has wider meaning. Applying it backwards to lesbians in the 70s not only makes no sense, but as presented this is applying a term of abuse retrospectively and whitewashing documented sexual harassment.

So in this instance, no, it is not referring to radical feminists - it is referring to lesbians. There are no named individuals with a recognisable ideology, simply "TERF activists". Sources are supposed to be WP:VERIFIABLE and the narrative presented here conflicts with what is documented elsewhere.

These are modern terms for modern conflicts.

And I'd add that since I've noticed that TERF Lesbians has also been added as a redirect here, it reinforces that some people consider lesbians who don't accept trans women as women to be TERFs.

I'm frankly astonished editors are still arguing this is a neutral term. Void if removed (talk) 09:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Sources are supposed to be WP:VERIFIABLE That is not how WP:V works or what it means. The sources that we use on enwiki are not beholden to enwiki's policies, and there is no requirement in either WP:V or WP:RS that our sources "show their working". What V actually means is the information, whether it be facts, allegations, quotations, etc., that we include in our articles is verifiable to what one or more reliable sources state about the topic.

In this circumstance, it is verifiable that the SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies contains the text that YFNS quoted. The text beginning Popularized in 2008 by an online cisgender feminist community appears on page 822. The text beginning The linguistic and cultural utility of TERF is on page 825. With those page numbers, and the rest of the citation information (ie publication name, publisher, author, ISBN, etc), it is possible for any reader or editor with access to the source to verify that the source states that information. That is where the requirements of WP:V end.

There are no named individuals with a recognisable ideology, simply "TERF activists" True, but not unusual given the nature of the source being used, nor the nature of the content. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies is a tertiary source. It is briefly summarising and contextualising information already present in multiple other secondary and primary sources. For example, the expulsion of Beth Elliott from the Daughters of Bilitis and later harassment and attack of Elliott at the April 1973 West Coast Lesbian Conference is verifiable to a large array of secondary sources over on Elliott's article in the Daughters of Bilitis and West Coast Lesbian Conference sections. There's no reason why we could also bring those sources across here to further support what the tertiary source has stated. However even reliable secondary sources like Meyerowitz where she wrote about the West Coast Lesbian Conference don't name all of the individual activists, because several of the incidents involve large groups of people. Meyerowitz does however name one radfem who used their keynote speech at the conference to denounce and attack Elliott, Robin Morgan. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I basically agree with YFNS here and think something much like their edit should be reinstated, though I think the examples they added could be worded better so it's clear that the people in the examples were early anti-trans feminists and not just random women. Loki (talk) 19:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

YFNS: the material I deleted comprises inf about incidents in trans history. It tells us nothing about gender-critical feminism, which is the subject of this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sweet6970: There is a rather large overlap between trans history and what we currently call gender-critical feminism or TERF activism, particularly with regards to the activists that are the topic of this article engaging in activities targeted against trans people. This is natural, given the subject matter. Reviewing the edit that YFNS linked above, the first paragraph seems to be content that fits within that expected overlap of what would now be called gender-critical or TERF activists targeting individual trans people and trans-inclusive organisations. The second paragraph likewise documents Janice Raymond's interventions towards restricting access to trans health care through public health insurance in the US.

If I've missed something obvious here, could you please detail which sentences are those which comprise information about incidents in trans history and are out of scope of this article? Otherwise I don't find your objection per COATRACK to be convincing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Sideswipe, the point is that the material is not about g-c feminism. It is just anecdotes about (apparently) trans history. The Transgender article doesn’t say that J K Rowling has received death threats from trans supporters, nor does it say that g-c feminists have suffered discrimination. None of the material I removed has any place in this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

the point is that the material is not about g-c feminism Except that it is? I've got a copy of that encyclopaedia in front of me, and the content that YFNS added is explicitly in a section about structurally or culturally significant TERF activism, covering activities from 1973 through to 2019. Two pages after this in the same chapter details the transition in branding (for lack of a better term) by the activists who are the subject of this article from TERF to gender-critical. Though the names have changed over time, they are still fundamentally the same group of activists or feminists, whether they are called gender-critical, TERF, or some other term. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I don’t want to keep repeating myself. The material tells us nothing about g-c feminism, and you haven’t provided any argument that it does. Sweet6970 (talk) 23:52, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand how you believe this. Do you consider trans-exclusionary radical feminism to be wholly separate from gender-critical feminism? Do you believe that trans-exclusionary radical feminists only came into existence circa 2008 when Viv Smythe coined the term to describe them? Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th: – you are entirely missing my point. The material tells us nothing about g-c feminism. If you want to dispute the point, please address it – what does the material tell us about g-c feminism? Sweet6970 (talk) 12:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@Sweet6970: I understand that is the point you're making, but I don't understand why you think this is the case. Personally I cannot start to refute a point until I can at least understand why someone is making that point. Why do you think the material that YFNS added is about a topic other than the subject of this article? Is it because it's describing events that predate the existence of the terms gender-critical and TERF? Or is there some other reason? Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I’m sorry, Sideswipe, but we’re not getting anywhere here. The material I deleted comprises anecdotal history about trans activism. Trans activism is not the subject of this article. As a very rough analogy, the history of the Tory party has no place in an article about socialism.Sweet6970 (talk) 11:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Respectfully, we're not getting anywhere here because what you've been saying does not make sense to me. I fundamentally fail to see how the activities of what we would now call either gender-critical feminists, or trans-exclusionary radical feminists made against three trans women (Beth Elliott, Sylvia Rivera, and Sandy Stone) would be considered trans activism. Nor do I see how the now defunct National Center for Health Care Technology citing Janice Raymond's work when recommending that US public health insurance not cover what we would now call gender-affirming healthcare could be considered trans activism. Both of these things were, per the SAGE Encyclopedia source and other sources, the result of activism and actions by trans-exclusionary radical feminists targeted against trans people, either individually as in the case of Elliott, Rivera, and Stone, or as a whole as in the case of Raymond.

I've tried asking you several times now for clarification so that I can better respond to your assertion, however you seem to have refused to provide that clarification. Maybe my response in the paragraph above this one disputes your point, and maybe it doesn't. However without clarification as to what you are basing your objection on, I cannot know for sure and I cannot give a fuller refutation.

As for your analogy, it is I believe a somewhat faulty one. Tory socialism was an established concept between 1870 and 1940, used to describe the approaches by Disraeli, Baldwin, and Macmillan. While that may be out of scope of the main socialism article, it is nonetheless in scope of the broader topic and is mentioned in other articles. Now the topic of this article does not yet have enough content to warrant a series of sub-articles. In the future we might have a history of gender-critical feminism article, if that section ever gets long enough to support it. And at that time, an argument could be made that content like what YFNS added and you reverted may be better placed in that article. But we aren't there yet. We only have this article, the related TERF (acronym), and somewhat adjacent anti-gender movement articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Sideswipe, I have not refused to provide clarification – I have several times tried to clarify this for you, but it doesn’t seem to work for you, and I don’t know how to make it plainer. It is a very basic point about the subject of this article. This article is about a branch of feminism. It is not about trans people. So (dubious) anecdotes about trans people have no place here. Your argument about my analogy demonstrates that I am correct – there is nothing about Disraeli, Baldwin, or Macmillan in the article about Socialism.

But I now realise that I made a mistake when I deleted the material about Janice Raymond – that was not my intention. Apologies for causing confusion over that. Sweet6970 (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This article is about a branch of feminism. It is not about trans people. So (dubious) anecdotes about trans people have no place here. They aren't anecdotes about trans people. They are early instances of what we would now call TERF or gender-criticial activism against trans people, in this case three trans women, to try and prevent them from participating in events (Elliott at the West Coast Lesbian Conference and Rivera at the Christopher Street Liberation Day rally), groups (Elliot with the Daughters of Bilitis), or their work (Stone at Olivia Records). The trans women are the targets of the activism, not the perpetrators of it. Both the SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies (a tertiary source), and multiple secondary sources (like Meyerowitz and those in the biographical articles of the three subjects) cover it in the context of the topic of this article. It is part of the history of this type of feminism, in the same manner that the suffragette bombing and arson campaign in the UK is an important part of the overall history of the UK suffragette movement.

Your argument about my analogy demonstrates that I am correct – there is nothing about Disraeli, Baldwin, or Macmillan in the article about Socialism. I think you have misunderstood what I said. Socialism as a topic on enwiki is covered in multiple related articles. As one of several prominent political philosophies there is a lot to write about it, much more than can be summarised in any one article. As a result, the content is split over multiple articles all of which are linked within the Socialism sidebar template. Disraeli and the rest are not mentioned in main socialism article, because that is a high level overview of the breadth of the entire topic. They are however mentioned on more specialised articles within the same series, because those specialised articles go into the depth of the topic.

Currently, gender-critical feminism is a much smaller topic. We don't have a series of articles covering the breadth of the topic, because that level of detail has not yet reached the point where we would consider splitting the article due to size. That may happen in the future, for example if the history section gets long enough that it could support a stand-alone history of gender-critical feminism, then I would agree that the content would be better covered in that more specialised article. However we're not there yet. We only have a single article, which is covering the breadth and depth of the entire topic. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It tells us that gender critical feminists, also known as TERFs or trans-exclusionary radical feminists, repeatedly attempted to exclude trans women from feminist spaces in the 70s. Loki (talk) 23:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

No, it tells us that this book contains an entry by a WP:PARTISAN activist who makes that unverifiable claim.

As it says in the intro, this is not a strictly scholarly text:

the inclusion of a wide range of contributors, including professionals in the field, academics, activists, and writers.

From this review:

The contributors are a mix of academics[...]; independent scholars; journalists; and non-academics

From this review:

In addition to the standard practice of including the work of university-affiliated researchers, the Encyclopedia features entries from independent scholars writing outside the context of academia; practitioners working directly with trans client populations; activists and organizers; and leaders of trans-led and trans-supportive organizations.

This is not comparable to a standard encyclopedia, despite its title. We should not be accepting at face value, as fact, in wikivoice, the unverified and ahistorical writings of a WP:PARTISAN source as if it is WP:SCHOLARSHIP simply because it appears in a collection which is explicitly committed to including non-academic writing, with a stated WP:POV as its objective. Especially when it involves tenuous interpretation of insults projected back in time 35 years before they were coined. This is at best a source for the attributed opinions of the author, all of which seem to be derived from the author's own self-published source. Void if removed (talk) 09:51, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Void’s points. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies is an excellent source and published by a major reputable academic publisher. The entry on TERF is specifically related to the topic of this article, that is the trans-exclusionary radical feminist (or TERF) ideology/movement, also known in some sources (or as a self-identification) as gender-critical feminism since around 2020. Note that trans-exclusionary radical feminism and gender-critical feminism are equal titles of this article, and has been since the beginning. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 12:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

1) Quick question, will you attack the reliability of any source that uses TERF and doesn't say it's a slur? Relatedly - does that apply to trans exclusionary radical feminist or just the acronym TERF?

2) What makes Cristan Williams a PARTISAN activist?

3) What is the stated WP:POV? Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 15:27, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This question was not posed to me, but I will just note that the use of TERF as a descriptive term in feminist and gender studies and sociology is quite mainstream,[4] and "terf is a slur" is mainly a slogan and unsubstantiated claim heard from some TERFs (quite a few of them call themselves TERFs, as we know). --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 15:33, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

1: I like to think I would question the reliability of any sources that are shaky - I am pretty sure I have pointed out sources I have used myself that are, at best, viable for attributed opinion. And the point about TERF is that WP:RS have very, very different points of view on this. Even this source notes that some academics won't use it. And again, the OED says it doesn't simply mean "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" every time it is used, and that it is an insult. I think it is fine to say "source x argues it isn't a slur, source y argues it is" because that's well-documented. But it is much harder to definitively say it isn't derogatory when several dictionaries that say it is, and as to whether it gets used anyway, some academics do, but at least as many don't. It is selective to only agree with the ones that seem to enjoy using it and to ignore the ones that don't. It is a contested term.

2: Williams is Editor-In-Chief of TransAdvocate, which is:

The TransAdvocate aims to improve the lives of transgender people through investigative news and nuanced commentary from a boots-on-the-ground trans advocate perspective.

TransAdvocate is a project of Transgender Foundation of America, a nonprofit of which Williams is Executive Director.

There is nothing wrong with a source being partisan or activist, but this is not a neutral, dispassionate, scholarly record of history taking account of all points of view - this is the output of an advocacy org.

3: The stated POV is, from the encycopedia:

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies centers trans people and experiences

And again: there's nothing wrong with a POV, but to ignore that this encyclopedia is written entirely from the trans perspective means that it is hardly an authoritative source on feminism or feminist history that can be readily taken as wikivoice, especially when the section author seems to be the principle source of information and using a quite contentious and deliberately insulting description.

Per WP:BIASED Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.. This is fine as long as we accept that this is a viewpoint, and not definitive, and thereby exclude other viewpoints. There is a difference between two irreconcilable positions on much of this topic, and we're relying on plenty of conflicting and polarised WP:RSOPINION. I am continually arguing for WP:BALANCE, and I simply don't think that taking a highly questionable interpretation of modern insults projected backwards to the 70s gives a useful timeline of gender-critical feminist history when the term was coined in this context in 2013. Void if removed (talk) 23:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

We cannot ignore that tons of academic sources positively cite very radical trans activist academic papers. And there is certainly no need to remove factual information from encyclopedic sources from reputable publishers. Reprarina (talk) 04:07, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The author of the TERFs section that YFNS quoted, Christan Williams, is as far as I can tell from information online, an academic with a PhD from an accredited university, who has a pretty respectable publication list both on Google Scholar and her own website, with works in several reputable academic journals and other works by academic publishers (eg she's one of several contributing authors to Trans Bodies, Trans Selves). She appears to have written extensively on trans history. While it is true that page xxvi in the introduction of the encyclopedia does state that the work as a whole does contain contributions from activists, I'm not seeing any evidence that Williams is a non-academic.

Now if you want to dispute the reliability of this source, or the section we're citing, ultimately that is a discussion best held at WP:RSN. However I will point out that this work overall was published by a major academic publishing company, Sage Publishing. The lead editors, Abbie Goldberg (dewiki article) and Genny Beemyn, are both well respected academics at major US universities. The overall encyclopedia itself, per page xxvi was subject to extensive editorial review, and the majority of authors were asked to revise their entries at least once. This work very much appears to be a reputable work, published by a mainstream academic publisher, with a high level of editorial oversight. It appears to meet all of our criteria to be considered a high quality reliable source, albeit a tertiary source.

Per policy, we can use tertiary sources. They can be extremely helpful when evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other, as well as providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. However Wikipedia articles are primarily based on material published by reliable secondary sources, so we may wish to support the citations to the encyclopedia with other relevant secondary sources. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes the encyclopedia is a reputable publication, that's not in question - what is though is whether it adheres to scholarly norms for such publications because it is being cited as if it is, and by my reading they don't - and there's a stated and laudable reason in that they want to center trans and marginalised voices. Fine, but I don't think you can simply say everything in it is definitive just because it is called an encyclopedia, and each section has to be evaluated on merit, whether it is WP:DUE, corroborated, etc.

I think this is a strong and unverifiable claim that needs independent corroboration to appear in wikivoice (and by that I mean actually independent, not just another source that cites Williams). Void if removed (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

what is though is whether it adheres to scholarly norms for such publications because it is being cited as if it is, and by my reading they don't If you have a copy of the encyclopedia, then I would direct you to the Background of the Encyclopedia section on page xxvi. That section clearly states, as I explained in my last reply, that there was strong editorial oversight from an editorial team, with contributors being asked to revise their submissions as and when appropriate. This appears to be no different a process than any other SAGE Encyclopedia that I'm familiar with.

I think this is a strong and unverifiable claim that needs independent corroboration to appear in wikivoice Again, you're misunderstanding WP:V. However, could you clarify which claim are you talking about? Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:28, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Anything pre-2013 is already diluting the focus of this page. Anything pre-2008 makes very little sense, and the inclusion of Raymond and Greer really only serves as background to the establishment of the term "TERF".

Calling lesbian activists in 1973 "TERF activists" makes no sense whatsoever.

The page on Beth Elliott says she was accepted and served until late 1972 when accusations of sexual harassment from former friend, lesbian separatist, and feminist activist, Bev Jo Von Dohre, led to a decisive vote.. So this source contradicts the sources there.

I think this is a questionable source expressing completely unsubstantiated and ahistorical opinions, and trying to include it here is just going to derail an already derailed article further because what's stated here must be balanced by all the information on other articles that contradicts it, from much better sources. Void if removed (talk) 23:20, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Anything pre-2013 is already diluting the focus of this page. Anything pre-2008 makes very little sense It would be a monumental mistake to assume that the activists this article describes only came into existence in the mid-to-late 2000s. We know through academic and tertiary sources that this type of activism has been ongoing since since at least the early 1970s.

Calling lesbian activists in 1973 "TERF activists" makes no sense whatsoever. While it is true that the term TERF was only coined in 2008, the activists for whom that moniker described were clearly active long before that point. Whatever they may have called themselves, or been described as by others, would be of relevance to the terminology section.

So this source contradicts the sources there No, it doesn't. The mistake here is that our article on Beth Elliott is unclear as to when the 35 to 28 expulsion vote happened. The source in the citation for that sentence doesn't actually state when that vote took place. The Google Books preview for Joanne Meyerowitz' How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States implies that the vote took place in 1973, as that vote lead to the split of the Daughters of Bilitis, and it can be inferred that this was prior to April 1973, as that is when the West Coast Lesbian Conference occurred in LA.

The only thing that needs correcting here is our article on Elliott, for which we'd need to reanalyse the sourcing to figure out when the expulsion of Elliott from DoB occurred. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:54, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Just want to note I'd been fixing the Elliot article up right before you left this note and published just after. One of the sources there was a self-published website, but all the sources there (including that one) agreed she was kicked out for being trans in a vote on whether to allow trans women at all, none attribute the decision to the allegations of sexual harassment. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 00:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Many of first-wave feminists didn't call themselve feminists. But they are feminists according to RSs. Reprarina (talk) 04:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

For the record, the section I'm quoting, TERF activism, says

• TERF activists organized to expel Beth Elliott...,
• A group of TERF activists calling themselves the Gutter Dykes physically attacked...,
• TERF activists attempted to stop Rivera from speaking at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade,
• TERF activists had long been opposed to Sandy Stone... A TERF organization named The Gorgons...,
• Janice Raymond published what has become the manual for TERF advocacy, the book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male.,
• and In 1980, the congressionally mandated National Center for Health Care Technology (NCHCT) contracted Raymond to research the ethical nature of trans health care.

So it is triply explicit (through the section title, description of the section as a timeline of TERF activism, and explicit use of the term TERF activist) these are moments significant to TERF/GC history. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Because of the clear consensus on this talk page, Sweet's WP:IDHT notwithstanding, I've readded the material with "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" or similar wherever the source has it to make the connection explicit. Loki (talk) 01:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@LokiTheLiar: – you have also missed the point. If you want to dispute the point, please address it – what does the material tell us about g-c feminism? And please do not make unfounded accusations – I could say that those who refuse to address my point are engaging in IDHT – but I prefer to assume good faith, and assume that those who have not addressed my point have just missed it. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Trans-exclusionary radical feminism is gender-critical feminism, as we say in literally the first line of the article. Does that make it very clear? Loki (talk) 15:03, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Theres a 3/2 split here and clear ongoing disagreement. Accusing Sweet of WP:IDHT is uncalled for. Void if removed (talk) 10:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Your paraphrase is cumbersome and wholly inappropriate.

The author does not say "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" - they say "TERF". We've already established many times you can't just expand the acronym unless someone is using it very precisely, and this one is not.

In the same piece, the author argues:

While TERF, as a lexical unit, can carry unflattering overtones in the same way that bigot, misogynist, or racist might, it nonetheless constructs a much-needed way to disentangle the sometimes subjugative, violent, and even murderous anti-trans behavior and rhetoric of TERF activism from radical feminism itself

[...]

While the term TERF is critiqued as being antagonistic, it nonetheless fills a discursive void in that it concisely assigns a lexical identity to a set of ideas pioneered by the TERF movement, regardless of who makes use of these arguments. In this way, TERF can be used both to identify a specific morality-driven rhetorical tradition and to distinguish it from trans-inclusive traditions and movements.

The author is using TERF in a broad sense, and specifically because it is insulting and/or derogatory. It is very wrong to expand that terminology to the precise form where the author is not making this explicit, and is openly stating it has wider and derogatory usage.

In fact, the author even notes this:

Moreover, TERF is critiqued because its use is sometimes expanded, especially on social media sites, to refer to those who promote a TERF-style sex essentialist discourse, even if the anti-trans activist may not self-identify as being any type of feminist.

The author also notes that it is possible to be neutral, but they are choosing not to:

Some activists and academics do not use TERF, as they wish to avoid the possibility of a controversy that would detract from their arguments.

As a result, we have no idea who the supposed "TERF activists" they refer to are, or what their ideology is.

It all seems to be backwards reasoning, projecting modern terms onto past actions. The lesbians did not eject Beth Elliott because they were TERFs - but they are TERFs because they rejected Beth Elliott. Void if removed (talk) 11:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The idea that TERF might mean anything other than trans-exclusionary radical feminism seems extremely suspect to me, to say nothing of the assertion that "we've already established [this] many times". Loki (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Again, from the OED:

Also more generally: a person whose views on gender identity are (or are considered) hostile to transgender people, or who opposes social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people.

I literally just quoted the source above, conceding this point:

its use is sometimes expanded, especially on social media sites, to refer to those who promote a TERF-style sex essentialist discourse, even if the anti-trans activist may not self-identify as being any type of feminist

And I gave 5 quotes higher up in this discussion with expanded meanings. Seriously, it is a disputed term, and an empty one, that basically just means "transphobe" at this stage.

When the (opinionated) source itself says TERF might actually not strictly mean "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", while at the same time applying it back in time to unidentified lesbian feminists some 35 years before the term was even coined, with no citations, I think you're on shaky ground thinking it can be simply expanded as "trans-exclusionary radical feminist" in wikivoice. Void if removed (talk) 16:01, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Dictionaries are generally not great sources for this sort of thing because they're often not written by subject-matter experts and tend not to go into depth; as a result, even your reading of it depends on your interpretation. Likewise, the problem with just dismissing a source as "opinionated" the way you're doing here is that logically most editors are going to feel that sources that say things they disagree with or which use language they disfavor is opinionated, leading to circular arguments; you could say "I think no neutral source uses the word TERF!" and when sources are presented saying otherwise, you could just dismiss them as non-neutral because they use the word TERF. Whether a source is opinion or not depends on how and where it's published - there are publications that don't do a great job of separating fact and opinion, but you have to actually make that argument, you can't just dismiss academic papers as "opinionated" based on your personal characterization of their conclusions. And in general there's a lot of high-quality academic sourcing discussing how TERFs rebranded as gender-critical, making them the same ideology; it's a pretty hard sell to try and characterize all of that as opinionated, especially when you haven't really presented anything that directly disputes that fairly well-established timeline. --Aquillion (talk) 05:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

’purported to examine’

How about amending the wording to: … examined what she considered to be the role of transgender identity in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes…? (proposed addition in bold) Sweet6970 (talk) 20:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

That works perfectly; thank you! Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:00, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I have now made this change. Sweet6970 (talk) 23:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Article scope

I've noticed that there are persistent disputes over what exactly this article covers (like if it covers anything before 2013/2008, and if it should include sources about "trans-exclusionary radical feminism" or exclusively sources about "gender-critical feminism"). Should there be an RFC to settle this issue once and for all? PBZE (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe. But RfC's are a large time investment for the community, and I think an important first step before an RfC would be to look at what secondary and tertiary reliable sources consider the scope of this topic to be. Do they draw a distinction between post-2013 activism versus 2008-2013 activism versus pre-2008 activism? Or do they consider it to be one consistent topic, that has changed names at least twice (ie TERF to gender-critical)? As in all things on Wikipedia, we should follow the sourcing for how they describe and frame this topic. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement that all the questions you've listed are important ones and the right ones to ask. Even so, we should probably establish an explicit consensus for them soon in some way, to avoid having the same rehashed arguments over and over again, like what's happening now. PBZE (talk) 04:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I think answering those questions is how we can achieve an informed consensus on the article's scope. There's no point in holding an RfC until we have some sort of answer for those, because I strongly suspect the first question from an uninvolved editor will be "well what do RS say?"

If the sources are clear, then we wouldn't even need an RfC to resolve this issue, as we would be able to point to those sources for it. We have several very strong policy reasons like WP:V and WP:NPOV to support such a consensus even in the absence of an RfC. Conversely if the sources are unclear or undecided, then we could go to an RfC, using those same sources to inform the question and options for the survey. Sideswipe9th (talk) 04:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, we have multiple highly credible academic sources in this very article that very explicitly link the "TERF" and "gender-critical" terms together (some describing the latter as a rebranding of the former) and discuss history of the underlying ideology/movement going back to the 70s. To me that's pretty clear evidence for the scope of this article being broader, but that gets repeatedly called into question in this very talk page, so I hope for a way to better establish a consensus and put this dispute to an end. PBZE (talk) 07:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

There's many articles where a basic fact about the topic gets frequently called into question. The ones that come to mind immediately as someone who spends a lot of time in trans-related articles are the first sentence of trans woman, Graham Linehan's status as an anti-trans activist, and also Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull's status as an anti-trans activist (and not a women's rights activist).

In one of these cases (trans woman), there was an RFC to determine the consensus. But in the case of KJKM and Linehan there wasn't, those are just based on talk page consensus. And if you look at the list of articles that use the special template on Linehan's talk page I'd guess you'd find most of them are based on talk page consensus. Loki (talk) 08:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

An issue with that is that the sources disagree quite profoundly, depending on which "side" they fall on.

Meanwhile arguments are being made here that "TERF" is not an insult (or if it is, it is deserved), that "gender critical feminism" is akin to racism, and therefore any sources that don't treat it with contempt are to be distrusted/excluded. Void if removed (talk) 10:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

TERF ideology is singularly focused on marginalizing and demonizing trans women, so in that sense the ideology is comparable to other ideologies that marginalize groups of people, particularly minorities. Above we discussed whether a term that describes such an ideology is inherently derogatory because some (but not all) of them object to the term. It seems to me that trans-exclusionary radical feminist (or TERF) treats TERFs with far more respect, and is much more "neutral" in nature, than comparable terms such as white supremacist. And there are many examples of TERFs using the term themselves. The radical feminist part of the term just refers to radical feminism and there is nothing derogatory about that; the trans-exclusionary part refers to their stated objective of excluding trans women from what they consider radical feminism/womanhood etc. Many academic and other reliable (media) sources use the TERF term descriptively. It doesn't really matter if all TERFs are comfortable with the term; most white supremacists don't describe themselves as white supremacists either. We do not require terms to enjoy universal support, even among fringe groups. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 14:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

TERF ideology is singularly focused on marginalizing and demonizing trans women

Whatever it is that you think "TERF ideology" is, that is not an accurate description of gender critical feminism. If it were, it would not be protected in UK law. Such a belief would not be (as it goes) worthy of respect in a democratic society.

The constant claims that "TERF" is neutral are not reflected in academic sources like the one at the heart of this latest controversy, which concedes it is not neutral and makes a point of using it precisely because it isn't. There's a general confusion between "academic sources think it is neutral" and "some academic sources think they deserve it". Void if removed (talk) 15:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding the results of the Mackereth and Forstater cases:[5]

only if the belief involves a very grave violation of the rights of others, tantamount to the destruction of those rights, would it be one that was not worthy of respect in a democratic society ... The EAT in Forstater thus concluded that it would only be “in extremely limited circumstances in which a belief would be considered so beyond the pale” that it would not qualify for any protection under article 9 ECHR. ...
In our judgment, it is important that in applying Grainger V, Tribunals bear in mind that it is only those beliefs that would be an affront to Convention principles in a manner akin to that of pursuing totalitarianism, or advocating Nazism, or espousing violence and hatred in the gravest of forms, that should be capable of being not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Beliefs that are offensive, shocking or even disturbing to others, and which fall into the less grave forms of hate speech would not be excluded from the protection.

British courts have not ruled on whether or not "TERF ideology", "GC feminism" or anything else "is singularly focused on marginalizing and demonizing trans women". But both those cases did rule that such a singular focus would not make beliefs cease to be "worthy of respect in a democratic society".

Forstater and Mackereth did not say that GC beliefs are good or don't harm trans people; those cases merely found that the threshold for not protecting beliefs is so high that only pursing totalitarianism, or advocating Nazism, or espousing violence and hatred in the gravest of forms would not be "worthy of respect in a democratic society". Not the highest of bars and certainly not a rebuttal of @Amanda A. Brant's statement. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 18:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The bar for the mere holding of a belief being permissible grounds for discrimination is rightly high. A belief that was "singularly focused on marginalizing and demonizing trans women" would not pass the Grainger test, because a component of that is that it "not conflict with the fundamental rights of others", never mind the other tests for coherence and cogency. You're misunderstanding those cases by imagining that the bar is so high, such a belief would so obviously clear it.

But in any case beyond the mere belief itself, if it were indeed "singularly focused on marginalizing and demonizing trans women" then you would expect expression of that belief to run into problems. Yet time and again this expression is also being protected and not - as portrayed by opponents - deemed transphobic and hateful. Indeed, in Meade last week, the fact that both SWE and Westminster Council believed that it was inherently transphobic led them to discriminate unlawfully, while the judge explicitly found that Meade's statements were not transphobic when viewed objectively. I think continuing to spread around the claim that these beliefs are inherently hateful and that sources that espouse them are also hateful, constantly likening this to racism and white supremacy - when if that were true it would not be protected in law in the UK - is clear WP:POV. Void if removed (talk) 19:01, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Void’s interpretation of these cases is correct. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Whether transphobia is "legal" in the UK, or Russia or any other countries with bad LGBT+ records[6], has no bearing on the argument made above. Even in the US you can advocate really extreme views, such as Nazism and other forms of racism, but that doesn't make those views "non-extreme". It's also perfectly legal to point out how such views marginalize and dehumanize minorities. The bar here isn't whether it's legal to hold an opinion. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, I don't know if we need an RFC to settle a question that is settled by the first sentence of the article. Loki (talk) 01:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The article's scope has been settled from the very beginning and there is no need to keep beating this dead horse. The article covers the ideology or movement that is now typically known as either trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) or gender-critical feminism, with the terms being used interchangeably by academic and other sources to refer to the same thing. A topic is not based on the specific term – terms often change over time, and many topics are known under more than one name – but rather on a concept. This movement did not come into existence in the 2020s, it started out as an anti-trans fringe movement in radical feminism decades earlier and has roots dating back to the 1970s as many sources note, but the movement became much more prominent/notorious/visible in the 2020s, and the specific terms used today are relatively recent: There are barely results for "gender-critical feminism" in Google Scholar before 2020 or so, but many results for trans-exclusionary radical feminism/ist/ists or TERF in the decade prior to that, but that doesn't mean this entire belief system was created only just now. Of course anti-trans self-identified radical feminists had been around for much longer than the past 3–4 years. Adopting a new term didn't change that. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 09:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is, the dead horse keeps getting beaten anyway by editors who dispute this article's scope. The fact that we feel the need to even engage with those disputes, instead of, say, WP:SNOWCLOSEing and moving on, to me feels like a sign that we need to more formally and unambiguously establish a consensus. PBZE (talk) 17:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

We already have a consensus. The article already has a clearly defined scope, and has had from the very beginning. We can just move on now. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, participating in this argument for a day has kinda convinced me. A lot of the pages that do with an informal consensus just have IPs or new SPAs coming to disrupt them. We have a consistent dispute between two groups of editors, and although one group is definitely larger I don't think the question will be settled until we do some sort of formal consensus-settling mechanic. Loki (talk) 19:32, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

But we do have a consensus. We discussed the conceptualization of the article extensively from the beginning, and it was always clear that it was intended to cover what is known as both trans-exclusionary radical feminism and gender-critical feminism, a term that gained traction only recently (around 2020) and that refers to the same ideology, as many sources note. In fact those two titles are equal titles, as discussed extensively since the very beginning. There was never any opposition to the conceptualization of the article in this regard when it was decided. Furthermore, this article evolved from/was split off from a section in Feminist views on transgender topics that had been titled "Gender-critical feminism and trans-exclusionary radical feminism" (as equal titles) for a long time (and which remains its title), reflecting a long-standing consensus. When we have a status quo that has existed for literally years, it is by definition the existing consensus. It's important to keep in mind that "consensus on Wikipedia does not require unanimity (which is ideal but rarely achievable), nor is it the result of a vote"; the consensus in this case has evolved through editing—the most common route—and discussion over many years, resulting in the current status quo (see Wikipedia:Consensus for more). If someone wants to change that, they would have to obtain consensus for a change, but that would be their responsibility.

I don't see any viable or serious alternative to the status quo. What is the actual proposal here? Limiting the article based on just a term that gained traction 3–4 years ago, as a new term for a movement and ideology that had existed for many years before that (Thurlow, Claire (2022). "From TERF to gender critical: A telling genealogy?". Sexualities. doi:10.1177/13634607221107827. S2CID 252662057.), would not only be artifical, but completely absurd and impossible given how this topic is treated by sources: In the decade prior to 2020 there is a large body of academic papers discussing trans-exclusionary radical feminism as an ideology or movement and hardly any mention of the term "gender-critical feminism". Then, as sources note, "gender-critical feminism" appears as a new "self-definition by some individuals and groups labelled TERFs by others" (Grinspan, Mauro Cabral; Eloit, Ilana; Paternotte, David; Verloo, Mieke (2023). "Exploring TERFnesses". Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies. 10 (2). doi:10.21825/digest.90008.). Gender-critical feminism is simply a new term for what was pretty much universally labelled TERF before 2020, and this movement or ideology didn't come into existence in 2020, but has a much longer history. If, say, Bill Clinton changed his name to Rob Johnson, we wouldn't omit his entire biography before the name change. And there are many ideologies, movements and numerous other concepts, from fruits to humans, that have had more than one name. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 11:47, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Every second we spend entertaining the idea of changing the article's scope is a second we could have spent improving the article. I suspect that, because we would only have to do so once, an RFC would save time in the long term.

Regardless, we need to stop the consensus from being repeatedly questioned or obscured in ways that drain the time of editors and act as a bottleneck to improving the article. How do you think we should do that? PBZE (talk) 18:21, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the need for an RfC, especially considering that there is no viable alternative. Having a vote is not required to establish a Wikipedia:Consensus. The existing consensus and the years-long status quo are as valid as any consensus that could result from an RfC. You typically start an RfC if you want to challenge a consensus and change something. It has been explained several times how this article has been conceptualized and how it has two equivalent titles that basically refer to the same thing, and the article also includes sources that explain all this. We could add this explanation that reflects the status quo to the top of this talk page, to limit pointless comments about whether sources use one specific term that gained traction 3–4 years ago or whether they use the use the term that was used by virtually all sources in the decade prior to that and that remains a common term. E.g. something like: The topic of this article is the ideology or movement known variously in reliable sources as gender-critical feminism (including abbreviated forms such as "GC", "GC feminism) or trans-exclusionary radical feminism (including abbreviated forms such as "TERF ideology", "TERFism" and similar expressions). The two main titles are equivalent. The article was split off from the article Feminist views on transgender topics where the corresponding section is titled "Gender-critical feminism and trans-exclusionary radical feminism" --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 19:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)