Template:Did you know nominations/Sonya Friedman

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Launchballer talk 10:59, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Sonya Friedman

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... that self-help psychologist Sonya Friedman published a book on women who were monogamous with two men at the same time?

Source: "What binds them is their having a two-track existence that allows them to preserve their marriage while having a more fulfilling relationship. They are monogamous to two men." - In “Secret Loves” (Crown), therapist Sonya Friedman…, Chicago Tribune

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/History of chocolate
Comment: The article was moved to mainspace with this edit.

Created by Silver seren (talk) and Thriley (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 129 past nominations.

Silver seren^C 23:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC).

ALT1 that according to self-help psychologist Sonya Friedman, men are just desserts? Thriley (talk) 01:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

ALT2 that according to self-help psychologist Sonya Friedman, a hero is more than just a sandwich? Thriley (talk) 02:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

ALT3 that self-help psychologist Sonya Friedman, encouraged women to "give up junk food love and find a naturally sweet man"? Thriley (talk) 02:19, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

ALT4 that psychologist Sonya Friedman stated in her final 1991 self-help book that, with women becoming more independent and less reliant on men, it was "time for women to grow up"? Silver seren^C 03:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

ALT5 that psychologist Sonya Friedman recommends that women create a totem, a collection of objects that represents important turning points in their lives? Silver seren^C 00:40, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

ALT3 has its own set of issues so I'm putting that aside. ALT1 and ALT2 are hooks that feature the name of books published by the subject in a quirky but somewhat confusing way. My preference is for ALT0, but this hook has its own problems, as it's based on Friedman's steamy, self-help book Secret Loves: Women with Two Lives (1994), which plays with the definition of monogamy ("the practice or state of being married to one person at a time; the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner") by redefining a form of non-monogamy ("any relationship style that involves more than one partner, or having sex with people outside of a primary relationship") as a kind of monogamous polyandry, which is a contradiction in terms. How to resolve this? The source for the hook is a newspaper interview, where Friedman says the women in question are married to one man and having an affair with a second, which she describes as "monogamous-to two men". But by definition, that's a form of polyandry, which is non-monogamous. Someone help me square this circle! . Viriditas (talk) 01:04, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I suppose if we wanted to be cheeky, we could wikilink monogamous in the hook to polyandry instead of monogamy. Otherwise, we could just unlink it and put it in quotations. Silver seren^C 01:17, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

When I look directly at the book, I can see that she is attempting to address the psychology of adultery by placing it in the context of the assumed, unreasonable social expectations of herterosexual monogamy, and by doing this, she shows that these are extramarital affairs, which contrasts with consensual non-monogamy or open relationships. The author, a clinical psychologist, explains that the women whose stories she collected were responding to a pathological situation in their life: "the wives in essentially unhealthy relationships sought healthier ones." Obviously, she can't discuss this longform in a brief interview, so I think what she meant to say was not that they are "monogamous-to two men", but rather they are psychologically dedicated to two men, one of whom fulfills them on one level, and a second on another. For the author, this is a form of monogamy because the women she studied don't go beyond that, but this is not a normal use of the term. More importantly, she does not use the term like this in the book. It might be best to create another hook. Viriditas (talk) 01:43, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

How is ALT4 I just added above, Viriditas? Silver seren^C 03:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I will address ALT4 in just a moment. I do want to backup a bit and finish addressing ALT0, as even if we don't use the hook, the article body itself still says "The thing that unified the women she interviewed was that they were all monogamous with two men at the same time." But the so-called "interview" says "What binds them is their having a two-track existence that allows them to preserve their marriage while having a more fulfilling relationship. They are monogamous-to two men." On the one hand, I think the text to source integrity could be worked on here, but after thinking about this for several hours, I'm almost convinced the interview is inaccurate. I read a while back that interviews like this are very often not interviews at all, but a newspaper writer summarizing a longer discussion with the author and piecing things back together in a way that makes it readable. Obviously, this isn't going to be true for all interviews, as many are verbatim, but it may be true for this one. What if the writer chose the wrong word here in their summary? What if that word was monogamy? I say this, because looking through her book, I don't see any claim similar to this one, so for me, that's a red flag. I posted a link to the book online up above, and there are other copies available as well, so take a look and tell me what you think. I'm pretty sure we should remove/rewrite that bit from the article given this state of affairs, since it's quite clearly not monogamy. I apologize if I come off being difficult, as that wasn't my intention. Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

To address ALT4: When I saw this, my mind immediately went to Bill Cosby and his controversial pronouncements and WP:DYKHOOKSTYLE (or what used to be called, C11: "Excessively sensational or gratuitous hooks should be rejected"). There are currently 3.95 billion women in the world. There's also my mother and my sister. For this hook to pass the sniff test, I ask myself, how would my mother and my sister react? Not well, is the answer. First off, the hook is a sound bite out of a larger explanatory context, without which it can easily be misunderstood. Friedman is making a larger argument: 1) men are unnecessary to a happy life 2) women often use men to avoid facing reality, and 3) self-knowledge is the key to a happy life, not a man, that comes after. So just to say it's "time for women to grow up" is catchy, but it doesn't work. But to make matters worse (and compare with ALT0), Friedman never said that! You're quoting Ellen Creager's words, not Friedman's. So let's also set that aside and look at what you have. There's some great potential hooks in Creager's article that you haven't used, for one. Check out the second page. That bit about totems is wild. It's perfect (and it's straight out of Inception). You will need to add it to the article, however. Please think about it, or consider creating something else. Apologies for the length of my comments. Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I expanded the article with totem info and added ALT5 up above, Viriditas. How's that? Silver seren^C 00:40, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

@Silver seren: I'm a fan! You could easily shorten it to something like "...that psychologist Sonya Friedman recommends that women create a totem, a collection of objects that represents important turning points in their lives?" You don't have to say "all" women, and it's not necessary to say "represent themselves" because you end it with "in their lives". You also don't need quotes around totem, and you can choose to link to it as we have an article on it. Play around with it. Your original ALT5 is 179 chars, but in my example, I brought it down to 151. Viriditas (talk) 18:23, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I made those changes. Silver seren^C 00:21, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. @Narutolovehinata5: am I too "close" to ALT5 to pass it? Viriditas (talk) 02:24, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Given that it's just a trimming of an existing hook that was proposed by someone else, and you didn't add any new hook facts, it should be okay. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 07:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping me honest. I hope you don't mind if I call on your services again in the future. Viriditas (talk) 08:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall:

Prefer ALT5. New enough (moved from draft to mainspace on 23 Sept), long enough, neutral and plagiarism-free. Viriditas (talk) 08:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)