Talk:Lesbian erasure

Revisiting balance: transgender-related content in the body

Given the previous Talk page discussion regarding summarizing trans-related content in the lead, which, afaic, was successfully resolved with Roxy's 7 July edit, do we want to now look at the content in section § In relation to transgender women as possibly overly detailed and in need of pruning, or is it fine as is?

Recently ( 11:22, 17 April), brand new editor Antimoany (talk · contribs) removed 6kb from section § In relation to transgender women (diff), likely in response to an {{overly detailed}} tag placed atop that section by newish editor Computer-ergonomics (talk · contribs) a day before (diff). This was followed by a revert to status quo ante by Crossroads, and further tit-for-tat reverts by Computer-ergonomics and Mathglot, leaving the current state of the article as it was before the "Overly detailed" banner was added. User Computer-ergonomic then asked about this at my Talk page (here). I offered the best advice I could, mainly to come here and discuss, and possibly to relate the "Overly detailed" banner as being related to WP:DUE WEIGHT; I'm bringing it here on his behalf.

To place this in context, which the newer editors may not have been aware of, the issue of trans-related content has been discussed previously, at § Summarizing transgender-related discourse in the lead, and resulted in User:RoxySaunders adjusting the lead on 7 July 2022 in this edit with the summary, "Per Pyxis's advice on talk, rewrite this first section (now subsection) into a more condensed summary with fewer UNDUE OVERQUOTEs, without significantly disrupting the balance. My summary of Gilreath's 2011 POV is commented out, as it's not clear whether this represents a "significant minority viewpoint" relevant for inclusion here. Plan to tackle the trans women section eventually." (See history around this edit in time: 15 Jan – 15 Aug 2022). That discussion also included @Pyxis Solitary:. Do we want to expand the issue to trans content in the body, or put another way, should that section be pruned? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:42, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for opening the conversation @Mathglot; I actually will be tapping out of this discussion from here as I feel like I should not have gotten involved with reverting it. I hope the conversations that this opens are fruitful. Computer-ergonomics (talk) 19:09, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough; best of luck on anything you choose to work on. Mathglot (talk) 20:42, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

My own thoughts about this are as follows. Clearly, we need to follow WP:NPOV, and with respect to this section of the article, WP:DUE. So the question, is, what is the appropriate amount of weight to assign to the subtopic of lesbian erasure which concerns trans-related issues? In general, per WP:DUE, it should be roughly proportionate to the coverage in reliable, secondary sources. And here, I believe, is the locus for disagreement about this issue, because there may be a mismatch between the importance/relevance of trans issues (which I would judge as minor to very minor) within the larger topic of lesbian erasure on the one hand, and the proportion of reliable source coverage of the latter with respect to the former, on the other. This leads to a situation in which the article seems to devote too much attention to what is not a major part of the story taken from a more scientific, or lived-experience point of view. This happens sometimes when some culture war issue arises from a tiny corner of a larger topic, and more coverage appears in the media about what is not really a major part of the larger topic, or at least, was not a major part until some issue–usually a conflict, because that sells newspapers–hits the fan and starts taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room.

In the Lesbian erasure topic, trans-related issues were quite minor, until a conflict arose, and grabbed all the attention, and now reporting about the trans aspect is a much bigger proportion of coverage of the larger erasure issue than it once was—at least in news and popular media, but, importantly, not as much in scholarly media, so there's a disconnect or mismatch there now. Trying to navigate WP:DUE WEIGHT in an environment like that is not easy. Let's take Transgender rights and a (formerly) minor subtopic of it as an analogy: transgender rights is a huge topic with many aspects, covered in the main article and in multiple child articles. And then, within the last ten years, a U.S. state passes a so-called "bathroom bill" about what public rest room a transgender individual is allowed use, and then the formerly very minor issue blows up into a political and culture war issue, somewhat overwhelming all the many medical and societal subtopics around transgender rights, and sucking up lots of the coverage because that's what the media do, they cover conflicts. But here again, there's a mismatch now between the proportion of coverage in news and popular media, and in the proportion in scholarly publications. (I chose this example precisely because it's a mirror-image case, in the sense that within the topic of lesbian erasure, trans-related issues occupy, or at least occupied, a minor part of the whole; whereas in the second example, it's the other way around, where the trans issue *is* the major issue, within which a (formerly) very minor-to-nonexistent issue has now expanded greatly in coverage.)

A situation where an erstwhile minor issue has grabbed more attention recently (especially in news/popular media) than was previously the case, makes figuring out how to navigate WP:DUE WEIGHT difficult, especially where non-news sources remain closer to where they were before; and that's where I think our attention ought to be focused. Mathglot (talk) 20:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I think your detailed post here, Mathglot, is very well-reasoned. True there seems to be a significant lack of high-quality (academic) source material, yet despite that, it has grown into a very large section. ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 22:04, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

The other sections heavily rely on non-academic sources and there no talk of them being "overly detailed" despite their far greater length length. And now this section, but for one small paragraph, is dedicated to the criticism of the the subject of the topic in question, with only single individuals as the sources for 2 of the 3 paragraphs (dedicated to dismissing the concept). NPOV this section is not, and held to a far different standard than the rest of the sections. 99.75.147.243 (talk) 22:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

A lot of this content about trans women is just editorials, which are generally garbage sources that should rarely be cited by Wikipedia and only when the author has relevant, specific expertise, such as academic qualifications. If you axe all the editorials from the article and replace by quality print sources the dispute will go away. (t · c) buidhe 20:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, looking at the quality of the sources (striving to cite quality sources), and looking at how much weight various facets are given in reliable sources overall, would make this section better. Right off the bat, I'm struck by how repetitive and relatively weakly sourced many parts of the section are, e.g. the first three paragraphs are repeating that butch/tomboy women are said to be pressured to transition, using just two sources over and over, one a random fringe-looking opinion [that trans people are genociding lesbians] with no evidence it's due weight, which is weirdly interpolated in between two paragraphs which—although both about the same Katie Herzog article—feel as if they were written by different people who had some...different ideas of what the article was saying. Who wants to take a(nother) crack at bringing this into a more encyclopedic and policy-compliant state? I will see if I can whip the first three paragraphs into a better shape, but don't have time to do the rest yet. -sche (talk) 01:40, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

"garbage sources that should rarely be cited by Wikipedia and only when the author has relevant, specific expertise, such as academic qualifications." Based on Wikipedia content guideline for citing sources, this is strictly your personal viewpoint. The Times and The Scotsman newspapers, AfterEllen website, and New Statesman newsmagazine are not "garbage sources" — they have all been in publication for many years, have Wikipedia articles created many years ago, and do not appear in WP:RS/P as "Generally unreliable" or "Deprecated". Wikipedia states in WP:RS: (1) Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author....If the statement is not authoritative, attribute the opinion to the author in the text of the article and do not represent it as fact.; (2) Some sources may be considered reliable for statements as to their author's opinion...When using them, it is best to clearly attribute the opinions in the text to the author and make it clear to the readers that they are reading an opinion. And if they're biased opinions: reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 11:12, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Editorials are often reliable sources for the opinions of their authors, but not authoritative for general reporting. I think that's the main point. They are of questionable value for establishing the basic facts about a subject. Hist9600 (talk) 12:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

No argument with your comment. However, there are subjects that exist but for which you will not find a trove of scholarly articles published about them. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:24, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

BTW, another article which crossed my watchlist with similar issues is Dyke march, which similarly includes a mix of historically important info sourced to academic sources, recent controversies sourced to news or opinions, and news sourced to instagram (or nowhere; people seem to come along and add cities where they heard there was a march, with or without sources). It's in a better state now than it was (for a time, news took up half the article) and than this section is, but if anyone has time to also look it over from a weight perspective, it wouldn't hurt. -sche (talk) 14:45, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

I've revised things some more. I tentatively reordered the section about trans women so it opens with the statements that make the connection to lesbian erasure, and then the more common position that trans women are not lesbian erasure (the old version had weirdly buried both of those things). I cut some of the worst WEIGHT violations. The section on "language" has similar issues, btw (in several directions; on the face of it I notice not just how much of the section is taken up by blow-by-blow about queer, but also how much is quoting Keating). -sche (talk) 14:13, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

"I tentatively reordered the section about trans women so it opens with the statements that make the connection to lesbian erasure"

That is your POV and not NPOV. Agter your edit the section is almost entirely a criticism of the eponymous subject instead of being a detailed accounting on what the proponents of this part of lesbian erasure believe is happening with Transgenderism. 99.75.147.243 (talk) 22:35, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not about "what the proponents of this part of lesbian erasure believe". That's the whole point of NPOV: it's not what proponents or opponents believe about anything; it's about what the majority of reliable sources say. Mathglot (talk) 00:17, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

First-person accounts

Looks to me like things are getting better. I wanted to also raise the subtopic here of first-person accounts, and how we want to deal with them in the article. For example, in section § Butch lesbians and transgender men, we have the Charlie Kiss piece from The Economist: this is clearly a first-person account, and besides any caveats adhering to opinion pieces in general, it is also WP:PRIMARY. The in-text attribution checks that box, but I'm wondering about WP:DUE; if we use this account, it should be because it is the prevailing view among secondary sources; or if not, an intro sentence perhaps should be added, cited to a secondary (or even tertiary) source than can provide the reader an idea about how to interpret this personal account in the context of other views. Next up is Ruth Hunt's piece in The Independent, which is a bit of a hybrid: on the one hand, it's mostly an opinion piece about how the apparent support of butch lesbians by voices on the right invoking "erasure" is in reality nothing of the kind, and merely a cynical attempt to hide their real objective, which is to garner support for their transphobic opinions; but on the other hand, it's partly (though minimally) a first-person account due to Hunt's self-description as a butch lesbian, and how she sees through the transphobes' divide-and-conquer strategy, and calls for support for trans equality.

I'm not opposed to including both of these sources, but it would be better if there were a brief lead-in based on one or more secondary sources to put them in context. As is, it's a bit too WP:PRIMARY and feels unmoored. Mathglot (talk) 20:49, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I share your reservations about Kiss; I was about to add to my comment above that "Frankly we could cut also the second half of the Kiss quote; and once we have a more comprehensive / 'due' section, we might even cut the whole Kiss quote, though at the moment that would only worsen the current weight skew." To the extent Hunt is / was speaking as head of Stonewall, the sentences about her statement(s) are more appropriate, although there too, once the article is more balanced it should be possible to condense or cut the latter part of her remarks. -sche (talk) 22:08, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

DUE, by the numbers

I'd like to approach this from a different angle, namely the WP:DUEWEIGHT issue by the numbers. I've added the {{section sizes}} banner to the talk header banners at the top, to help with this issue. If you notice, at 16kb, the section § In relation to transgender women is the largest section in the article, and it's only a subsection. Second largest, is the top-level section § Language and lesbian spaces at 13kb; and other than those two sections, the remainder of the body is 9kb, making § In relation to transgender women about 40% of the body of the article. I haven't sampled the sources, but is this really a fair representation of the entire theme of lesbian erasure in the literature? Mathglot (talk) 00:50, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

As I said in 2019, "this is not an article about transgender women or men", but some editors turned it into what you see today. With fewer personal agendas and activist editing, it may be possible to make it more about lesbian erasure, and less everything but the kitchen sink. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

That would be an improvement. Mathglot (talk) 10:34, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Would it be okay if I removed the two last paragraphs of § In relation to transgender women? To me, it almost certainly looks like an issue of WP:UNDUE, and I've explained my reasoning for why I initially removed them in my edit summaries:

"Removed the paragraphs beginning with the alleged “conversion therapy” claims onward, as this most likely would not meet WP:POV guidelines" and "These beliefs are already noted as not being a majority opinion within the LGBT community, so having 2 entire paragraphs of not-very-prominent people explaining their support for a fringe position is very clearly undue, even if it does not use Wikivoice." XTheBedrockX (talk) 08:04, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding this edit and summary: what in the text and sources has relevance with lesbian erasure? You appear to be adding willy-nilly content and sources. Furthermore, the trans content already overwhelms the page and the whole article is now out of kilter. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 08:38, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

For a very important reason. I point to my edit summary where I first added it:

"added info about a recent YouGov poll showing that 75% of cisgender LGB Britons had positive views of trans people (including 84% of cisgender lesbians who said the same)." XTheBedrockX (talk) 08:42, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The YouGov poll is irrelevant. It's not about lesbian erasure. It would be different if it was a poll about lesbians and lesbian erasure. Right now you're stacking the deck with irrelevant content. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 08:50, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

If polls like these (and the additional sources in the article, particularly in the context they were placed in) show that most lesbians do not feel threatened about transgender people in women's spaces, and that fear of trans people erasing lesbians is, in fact, not a major opinion among lesbians, then it stands to reason that having significant portions of the article dedicated to POV that is not a majority viewpoint is a case of WP:UNDUE weight. Having these views represented is fine, if given the proper weight, but as it's not a majority view, then it shouldn't be made to appear as if it were. XTheBedrockX (talk) 09:01, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree, with the main concern simply being that it's important to not misrepresent a minority or fringe view as a majority view. The section has not put these views into context or given the most common views proper weight according to WP:DUE. If lesbians are talking about trans women as women, and trans lesbians as lesbians, then the concept of lesbian erasure may not be invoked. However, if lesbians are presuming that trans women are not women, and trans lesbians are not lesbians, then the concept of lesbian erasure may be invoked. It's up to us as editors to make sure that articles are not misrepresenting views and misleading readers, so providing larger context may be important. Hist9600 (talk) 15:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I think that the issue is that the first paragraph of the In relation to transgender women section gives undue weight to a single relatively small obscure group and a single opinion piece - in fact, it's mostly cited to a single random opinion piece by Wild! In response to that, the rest of the section has become bloated with responses. We can't address the second problem without addressing the first one - the solution is to cut the first paragraph down to a single sentence cited to non-opinion sources, noting, in absolute bare-minimum terms, that that usage of the term exists (without spotlighting groups, opinion pieces, or quotes like it does now and without delving into justifications for it) - something like The term lesbian erasure has been used by some radical feminists to argue that the expansion of transgender rights erases lesbians then a few more sentences summarizing its broad rejection and making it clear that it's a minority view. With that it could be gotten down to a single paragraph fairly easily and possibly de-sectioned. The purpose of the section should not be to present all the various back-and-forth arguments to try and convince the reader of what the various people we're citing are saying; the purpose should be to briefly note that people exist who take this perspective. (Also, the section above it is just a disconnected WP:QUOTEFARM and should be removed as part of this.) Possibly it could even be merged with the paragraph that currently quotes Keating and Cauterucci, who are really talking about the same topic; this would let us put them first to avoid putting undue weight on a minority viewpoint. --Aquillion (talk) 20:21, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

AfterEllen

Would like to note that 10 of the current References use AfterEllen as a source. They're not an especially high profile website, and since 2016, they've apparently published a number of op/eds that feature claims that are very polarizing and/or unpopular within both feminist and LGBT circles. That seems like an issue of WP:DUE for me, personally. XTheBedrockX (talk) 08:26, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

AfterEllen is a lesbian-centric website. In was determined in a WP:RS/N discussion in July 2020 that "There is general agreement that AfterEllen is reliable, but that it should be used with context.". Since the subject of this article relates to lesbians, the circumstances of the topic make AfterEllen acceptable as a source.
As for your opinion that "they've apparently published a number of op/eds that feature claims that are very polarizing and/or unpopular within both feminist and LGBT circles." – (a) WP:BIASEDSOURCES states: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. ...Common sources of bias include ... other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context;" (b) "10 of the current References" — I found 8 uses of AfterEllen as a source, not 10; (c) there is no evidence that AfterEllen is "unpopular within both feminist and LGBT circles". I am a feminist and a lesbian and I do not dislike AfterEllen, nor does anyone in my social circle. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 08:02, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

This is just as much an opinion here as my statement, but in fairness, I see your point about WP:BIASEDSOURCES. There were also still 10 sources at the time I made that comment, for the record, as 2 of those were removed in the most recent edits (as they were the subject of my own comment in the above thread. XTheBedrockX (talk) 08:39, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

There was a more recent discussion about it here. An important note is that it changed hands in 2016, after which its entire editorial board was replaced and its coverage drastically changed direction - most secondary coverage of it as a source after that only really covers it in context of that. And an important aspect of using biased sources is WP:DUE; placing excessive weight on a source whose primary reputation comes from the stark POV it adopted after its acquisition is certainly something to be avoided. A more important issue IMHO is that it mixes fact and opinion without differentiating them, which is sufficient reason to avoid ever using it without attribution; it can only really be used via WP:RSOPINION, and only when its opinion is due. And, of course, WP:BIASEDSOURCES requires attribution anyway - not just the name of the source but the nature of its bias; we can't cite it for eg. anything trans-related without unambiguously noting its bias on trans issues in some way. --Aquillion (talk) 20:26, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

This seems like a fair rationale to me. Given all of this, post-2016 AE being cited without qualification most likely wouldn't benefit this article, and especially not if they take up a substantial proportion of it. XTheBedrockX (talk) 03:16, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

• There was a more recent discussion, but even going by the 2020 discussion, "context" there means "with attribution noting its biases", not "it can be used in this subject." That's a basic part of WP:BIASEDSOURCES - if you concede that it is biased with regards to LGBT people, then we have to note that bias and the nature of that bias via its attribution every time we cite it. And it certainly does have a well-recognized bias - every Wikipedia editor has their own perspective and group of friends and the like, but based on coverage, the stark reversal the site underwent after it was acquired in 2016 and its editorial board was replaced is the main thing it is notable for, and the context established by the related bias needs to be part of its requisite in-text attribution whenever it is cited. (In fact, that event in 2016 is the main thing we say about it in this article.) --Aquillion (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Just to note, the more recent of the discussions on AfterEllen was formally closed after the most recent reply here. The source is now considered generally unreliable, especially relating to queer reporting and biographies of living persons for articles published post-2016, and those published pre-2016 may be used on a case-by-case basis with context to cite uncontroversial claims. Looking at the AfterEllen citations in the article, all were published after the editorial team change in 2016.

There's almost certainly content that we need to change in the article because of this, and some parts may need to be removed if reliable sourcing cannot be found for it. Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Searched for it, and can confirm that this is true (discussion linked here). Guess that means we need to start looking for other sources. XTheBedrockX (talk) 22:46, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Though, it should be noted that while we're citing it several times in the article, it's only being cited for a few things. The one thing that we might want to consider removing or replacing is the half-paragraph cited to Julia Diana Robertson. It's also cited several times in the merged references for "queer", but we have several other sources there, so it would be easy to swap which one we're focusing on (the fact that it was cited three times in a bundle is already weird; citing the same source three times for the same statement doesn't really add anything, reliability aside.) And finally, it's being cited as a primary source for stuff related to the events in 2016, which is probably fine as long as we also have a secondary source. --Aquillion (talk) 23:09, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Alright, it's done. XTheBedrockX (talk) 23:56, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Gender and Technoculture 320-01

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NatDriesbach (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Slf1702.

— Assignment last updated by ACHorwitz (talk) 16:18, 10 October 2023 (UTC)