Talk:Sally Miller Gearhart

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10% Men Quote

Why is her quote about only having population of 10% men keeps being removed. This is well known statement she made and position she advocates. It should be included here. Removing it is taking away from her public ideas. I will add it back please do not remove. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.97.122.11 (talk) 00:26, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

The quote is unnecessary and without citation. If you look below in the section on her writing, the actual piece on sex ratio and society is presented and explained. It is unnecessary to include it in the lead in the misleading style that you have included it. Thank you for your interest in Sally Gearhart. --108.21.184.204 (talk) 00:12, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, isn't this nice

Lovely entry for Gearhart there. I especially like the inclusion of the quote “love is the universal truth lying at the heart of all creation.” Which is nice, isn't it.

Another thing she said, that you could include, is

"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race."

That's a pretty notable thing about Gearhart to have slipped your attention. An "inconvenient truth", you could say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.194.102 (talk) 21:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Photo

The only photo I can find of Sally is from her official website. I'm not sure of the copyright status of that image. If somebody else would like to investigate the status, that would be wonderful. (http://www.sallymillergearhart.net/) In the mean time I'll keep looking for another image. Mdazey (talk) 17:08, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Her website seems to say that she works at San Francisco State University - maybe someone there could take a picture. She might also do a book signing if a new book comes out, or attend colloquia open to the public...Zigzig20s (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Link Error

A book listed in the Bibliography section, The Magister, is automatically linked to a Wikipedia post about book of the same title written by different people. I do not know how to remove this kind of a link, but it's clearly in error. Could someone more knowledgeable tale care of this, please? Furfish (talk) 05:57, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixed link with one to WorldCat record for correct work. MetaClaudia (talk) 18:52, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Reducing male population to 10%

In this article, the claim is made that Sally Gearhart was an activist for reducing the male population to 10% of the world population. This is uncited, and after a quick google search, the only citation for this claim I could find referenced a paper, called "The future, if there is one, is female." The only actual copy of this paper that I could find that wasn't just a reference to the title was attributed to a Bryan Sykes. Given that this is an article about a living person, I have removed the claim. If anybody feels that I was in error, please reply to this post.

Foridin (talk) 03:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Noticed that the quote still remains in the intro but continues to lack context. I haven't been able to track down the original article, however, a 1992 reference to the essay suggests some context for "The Future, if there is one, is Female:" Gearheart appears to be discussing the idea of ovular merging, in which offspring come from two combination of two eggs, not an egg and a sperm. In this hypothetical scenario, only female offspring can be produced. Gearheart is quoted as saying: "A 75 percent female to 25 percent male ratio could be achieved in one generation if one half of a population reproduced heterosexually and one half by ovular merging. Such a prospect is attractive to women who feel as if that if they bear sons, no amount of love and care and nonsexist training will save those sons from a culture where male violence is institutionalized and revered." 100.15.23.61 (talk) 12:27, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Text disputed. Disputed inline template attached. Text is an unneutral opinion based on an editorial by a columnist from another website, that appears to have been republished August 12, 2003 by the given source. 217.61.107.96 (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I've dug up a second source which backs up the context and claims to provide a direct quote. A January 1983 review of the anthology including Gearhart's essay includes the first sentence of the "75 percent female to 25 percent male ratio" quote, and also quotes Gearhart as saying: "1) Every culture must begin to affirm a female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men to women must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." The reviewer explicitly mentions this would be a non-violent and voluntary process: "I think it might take quite a while for half of the population of any country's women to decide to reproduce by ovular merging, even if they were allowed access to the technology." It's also worth adding that the reviewer considers this an extremist view: "Many people will be critical of Gearhart's positions; it is to [Pam] McAllister's credit that she includes such controversial material." Hjhornbeck (talk) 23:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

More context! The same issue of "Off Our Backs" I cited above also includes an interview of Pam McAllister, the editor who included Gearhart's essay in her anthology. Pam is quoted as saying:

There's something else I want to say about our fear of dialogue. I tried to be true to the spirit of dialogue while structuring this anthology, consequently there's a very wide spectrum in Reweaving, from Barb Reynolds who more or less concludes that she should have stayed in the kitchen and kept her family together* to Sally Gearhart who proposes that, for the sake of the world's survival, men should agree to nonviolently reduce themselves to ten percent of the population.

I think this is close as we can get to confirmation without the raw text, so I'll update the main page. (The asterisk is in the quoted text, it refers the time she purposefully sailed her family into a nuclear testing zone. Hjhornbeck (talk) 23:37, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Looks like someone found a source for this quote that is better than an editorial article. I've also had a hard time finding a digital source of this paper, but I feel that the book source listed now is up to standards. Short of buying the essays and uploading scans to imgur, I can't think of a better way to source this. I do feel like this is an important quote to include, as it portrays the opinions of the author without whitewashing whatever may seem unpalatable to most people. Radiophase (talk) 01:58, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Rather than letting this silly little quote go ambigiously attributed, I have the essay right in front of me and can put the subject and citation in directly (it is so weird that people who want to profess knowledge on this subject are unable to visit a library and look directly at the essay volume itself). The subject will be moved to the section on her writing, where it belongs, with a proper citation to her actual work. --108.21.184.204 (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Changes have now been made, enjoy :) --108.21.184.204 (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

You do not have that essay in front of you. Since writing my comment, I've tracked down a copy of the full anthology via Archive.org. If you turn to page 266 of the book, you'll see it's actually Pam McAllister who is the author of that passage, and from the context it is clear she is not quoting Gearhart. I have read through all of Gearhart's essay, and at no point does she say the words attributed to her. I've uploaded the critical paragraph to TinyPic as proof, for those without an Archive.org account.

In addition, that edit implies her quote was produced at a series of seminars at a university; having read through McAllister's introduction to her anthology, her introduction to Gearhart's essay, and that interview with McAllister I can find no evidence it was produced in that way. The interview makes it clear McAllister had a long submission gathering process, long enough to swap several letters with another prominent feminist, so it almost certainly did not come from a series of seminars. The only mention of Reweaving the Web of Life is a citation tacked on to the very end of the paragraph, easy for a casual reader to miss.

If I seem a bit snippy about this, it's because there's a long tradition of feminists being misquoted by people opposed to them. Off the top of my head, I can name Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, Sandra Harding, and Luce Irigaray as examples. Given that background, it is critical to be as charitable as possible when discussing feminist works; if this means long quotes and in-depth citations, so be it. I'll be re-writing this paragraph to represent Gearhart's views as clearly and accurately as possible. Hjhornbeck (talk) 06:11, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate you bringing a critical eye to the entry update I made. And I sympathize with the need to give feminists an honest and good-faith reading. I am not sure what was found objectionable to in the paragraph I wrote, but I tried to bring it up to date to your concerns. However, as you will see shortly, I think there's been a bit of a misreading on your part, and the trouble with the quotations doesn't actually occur:

1. I have changed the outline quote (the "I. Every culture must begin...") to properly attribute it to the editor Pam McAllister. I have to admit that I was a little embarrassed to have made such an oversight. Correction! As I was rereading the Gearhart's essay to double check that the other quotes were properly attributed (they are, on page 281), I noticed that the quote found on page 266 and identified by you (Hjhornbeck) as McAllister's, also comes directly from Gearhart on page 271. Admittedly the punctuation is different (Gearhart uses a close-parenthesis after the roman numeral, whereas McAllister uses a period). (I navigated here to the talk page to make this comment after doing an update to the entry, but now I am going to have to go back and return the paragraph back to the proper attribution of outline.)

2. The evidence that Gearhart's essay was a product of a series of seminars can be found in the last paragraph of McAllister's editor's introduction (on page 268 of the printed copy I have with me). I can quote it here (on the talk page) if you no longer have access to the text itself.

I hope this looks good to you. And I've returned the entry to a editor-written form instead of the long (possibly too long) except from the essay itself. I'm not sure why you felt that the "citation tacked on to the very end of the paragraph" was a problem—the whole of the essay is the cited source for the paragraph. But if you have any other suggestions as to how the entry can be improved, I am happy to engage and continue working on it. 146.96.32.24 (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC) (the original 108.21.184.204 from March 2, 2018)

References

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"misandrist"

Whether she was a misandrist or not is not a question of WP:OR but of a reliable reference. I have removed "misandrist" from the lead paragraph because it was not supported by the reference. Londondare (talk) 09:10, 9 September 2023 (UTC)