Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gynandromorphophilia

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. We're fortunate to have some very intelligent people weighing in here and (for the most part) the arguments on each side have their merits. I don't feel that a consensus has been reached on the depth of the sourcing or the acceptability of the article's neutrality. No prejudice towards further discussion about rename/merge/redirection. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:14, 14 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gynandromorphophilia

[edit]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. — James Cantor (talk) 01:21, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. — James Cantor (talk) 03:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. — James Cantor (talk) 04:27, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Gynandromorphophilia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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POV fork of Attraction to transgender people. Duplicates material there. Fork is created by a single-purpose account who is an activist minority in the mental health field known for attempting to create and promote an ever-growing list of "paraphilias." See work by Karen Franklin, Vernon Rosario and others for details on this controversy. Recommend merge and redirect to reinstate redirect. Jokestress (talk) 00:47, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Extremely WP:POINTy nomination. Leak of user:Jokestress' well-documented[1] off-wiki campaign. I recommend she join me in banning ourselves from that page, with user page pledges, to prevent further disruption. Moreover, the claims that editor makes about my believes are false, indeed they are BLP violations, that I request she redact. — James Cantor (talk) 01:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. This article is cut and pasted from Transfan. Terms like these are scientifically reifying and pathologizing, per Rosario and many others. Article creator has classified it as a paraphilia, part of his long-running attempts to promote spurious paraphilias here and offsite. "Men sexually interested in transwomen" is the formal term used by legitimate researchers these days. This can be and is all covered at Attraction to transgender people]. Jokestress (talk) 01:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Merge Attraction to transgender people into Gynandromorphophilia. Following up on the above MoS/Med policy to use the technical rather than slang terms (this being an encyclopedia, and all), the professional peer reviewed RS's also use gynandromorphophilia. [This scholar.google search on "gynandromorphophilia"] revealed 14 citations, but [the scholar.google search with "transfan"] got zero. Although there are individual authors publishing books expressing their personal views about what the politically correct term should be, the highest regarded RS's use gynandromorphophilia. Slang terms for gynandromorphophilia (and a note about their inappropriateness) would be an important subsection to include.— James Cantor (talk) 03:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment This is yet another attempt by this editor to medicalize a common form of attraction with an obscure term used by an activist minority in the mental health field, a little pocket of pathological science fixated on the concept of paraphilia. We use value-neutral, non-pathologizing terms here, not obscure neologisms that cast a common sexual interest/orientation as a mental illness or medical condition or disease. This doesn't fall under MoS/Med because medicalizing this phenomenon is POV-pushing. This is discussed much more commonly as a sociological phenomenon than a medical one, with the exception of a few holdouts clinging to 20th century ideologies. There are many books and articles discussing this for every one that uses the quaint medicalized/reified terminology proposed as this article title. All can be covered under attraction to transgender people if we need a more generalized title for a move for Transfan. Jokestress (talk) 09:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to Attraction to transgender people as a duplicate article. Attraction to transgender people is longer and better-maintained. This is a rarely-used word, and WP policy in most areas is to use a commonly used or descriptive term. It's dubious whether the policy on medical naming applies, as this is not primarily a medical condition and is also part of social sciences e.g. psychology, sociology, gender studies. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:42, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. "Attraction to transgender people" is a neologism on a page that was created two hours ago. The phrase does not appear in a single one of the sources provided on that page. (Indeed, the sources on that page use the medical terminology.) A google search reveals no RS's with that phrase. Article length is irrelevant; the information there is poorly sourced and nonsourced. Any usable content there should be merged into the repeatedly RS-recognized term.— James Cantor (talk) 16:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. This article should be about the phenomenon, not the many technical and non-technical terms which describe some aspects of it. We don't need a separate article for each term. We can cover all the bizarre suggestions made in academia over the years in one section in attraction to transgender people. Jokestress (talk) 17:59, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment. Jokestress says there are "many technical" terms; however, the RS's contain two technical terms. Whom to believe, whom to believe...? I agree that not every non-technical slang term proposed to every activist member of whatever group needs a page. "Attraction to transgender people" is exactly such a non-technical slang expression, included in not a single RS, neologized just today by exactly such an activist. None of this supercedes a medical article using medical terms to describe a medical phenomenon published in multiple medical RS's according to the MoS for medical articles.— James Cantor (talk) 18:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • gynandromorphophilia
  • gynemimetophilia
  • Andromimetophilia / androminetophilia
  • Men sexually interested in transwomen (MSTW)
There's also terms like "Men who have sex with transgender women" and "sexually attracted to transgender individuals." All these many terms for similar phenomena should be covered in one article. There's not enough on any one specific term to merit a standalone. We've had this phenomenon vs. term discussion many times before. An activist minority in the mental health field does not dictate what this phenomenon is called, and the convoluted terms used by a couple of "experts" have never caught on. I believe most people who identify as having this interest use the term admirer. All this can be covered at the main article. Jokestress (talk) 19:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. You're losing track of your own kitchen sinking. This page is about "gyndandromorphophilia", which has only a single synonym ("gynemimetophilia"). That you on your own created broader pages with vaguer (and entirely non-RS'ed) terms is neither here nor there for this page. In fact, it argues for this focussed, highly sourced page to which your and other neologisms should be redirected. As I said before, I believe WP would be better of if you and I swore off this page. WP:BATTLEGROUND, WP:HOUND, and WP:POINT all apply.— James Cantor (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. LadyofShalott 23:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Got RS's for any of that? Political Correctness is what it is, but that does not mean that one can just take a sexual concept, add "and affectional" (which not a single RS contains), create a new phrase (which not a single RS contains and which is suddenly missing any reference to sex) and claim the original, sexual RS's still to be supporting the new name/definition. These changes are merely to hide/dilute that pesky, unpopular sex stuff, which many alternative communities are afraid might make them look bad. (Personally, I think the sexual aspects of sexual minorities should be embraced and celebrated, not bowdlerized from WP.)— James Cantor (talk) 21:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. "I love the smell of reductionism in the evening…" re: WP:RS… how about "Blossom of Bone"? It addresses the history of "spirituality" expressed by "homosexual and gender variant men", but IMO somewhat suppresses the whole hard core sex (as well as transsexualism, and transfan "services") aspect of the pagan religious devotions it discusses? And for another example, here's Julia Serano raving about the strong attraction she feels for trans women in her "Love Rant" - well, because we're such damned awesome human beings?
While some male "admirers" of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure.…
At this point in our conversation, my friend tried to play what he probably thought was his trump card. He asked me, "Well, what if you found out that the trans woman you were attracted to still had a penis?"
I laughed and replied that I am attracted to people, not disembodied body parts.
— Julia Serano, ''Whipping Girl, p. 278-9
I expect you to respond that neither of these is a valid WP:RS here - according to WP:MEDRS. That's precisely the point - see WP:NOTDIC: Wikipedia is neither a medical dictionary nor a specialized medical encyclopedia, and moreover these "sexual preferences", though also investigated by sexologists, are typically expressed in conjunction with certain social and cultural practices which are a subject of study by scholars in other fields, as well as individual experiences published in WP:RS outside of the cultic arena of "academic sexology", and are not "all about sex as it is understood by professional sexologists". If you focus only on the work of sexologists here, redirecting "slang" (i.e., the common English usage) such as "transfan" here, this article is (and will remain) 1) profoundly misleading and 2) a stub.
Finally: I see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Naming conventions invoked above by James Cantor to support "gynandromorphophilia" as the only appropriate title - and focus of attention - for an article on this topic. Exactly what disease, disorder, or syndrome is supposed to exist here? I believe it's the case that the term "gynandromorphophilia" does not in itself imply the presence of a psychological disorder - "paraphilias" in the DSM-V will not be automatically associated with psychopathology - so how is this supposed to come under the rubric of "Medicine-related articles"? Medicine - "Medicine is the applied science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease." Where's the disease?
And um, James (if I may be familiar), it's not hard to figure out that I don't do "PC". At all. "Hi, I'm bonze anne blayk - and I'm the fa'afafine of the group!" - retrospective lols - thanks, bonze blayk (talk) 00:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Well, at least you are making it clear for the closing admin that refusals here are about personal ideologies and not the actual RS's...and that the comments are being made already knowing they are counter to what the policies say...— James Cantor (talk) 00:54, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. (Please see James Cantors' original comment before he edited it to make it "more to the point"… rather than being another rather blatant example of the "insult art" and cheap debating tactics he tends to practice as an editor here, contrary to WP:AGF and WP:NPA. This was my response to the original comment, which remains pertinent even though his comment has been "cleaned up" in his self-edit - which was made just before I attempted to post this response.)
That's a charming one-liner, User:James Cantor, but "you have validated my point" is merely an assertion, and a weak debating tactic, not a solid counter-argument. As I stated above: you're going to deny that WP:RS sources are WP:RS sources, hoping that other editors will ignore the distinctions between WP:RS and WP:MEDRS.
Again I ask: How does an article which is not about a "disease" fall under the rubric of "Medicine-related articles", where the higher standards of WP:MEDRS rightly apply?
And I ask: is "gynandromorphophilia" a disease? Or not?
This is not an "ideological" question. It's a medical question. - bonze blayk (talk) 02:09, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Bonze blayk, WP:MED and WP:MEDRS don't only apply to topics dealing with disease. Even Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles shows other topics that fall under the WP:MED topic. And as was stated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, "some people would say that all sexual orientations/preferences fall within the medical specialty of psychiatry." 109.123.127.204 (talk) 03:22, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect as above Sorry I'm not persuaded that this is any more than another word being created/used when none is needed. Blanchard is known to have, shall we say, less than mainstream ideas about gender and sexuality issues and this seems like a way of bolstering their read on a subject in the world's biggest encyclopedia. Insomesia (talk) 12:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Do you have a WP-based opinion? (other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT?) Blanchard coined the word 20 years ago and is now retired. Being in WP isn't exactly going to get mentioned at any tenure meetings, but it is still being used by contemporary RS's. That it is not the word being used by whatever branch of the Political Correctness police is irrelevant to WP. One cannot say that Blanchard's ideas are not mainstream among experts when Blanchard keeps getting elected president of sex research groups and to head the DSM section on this topic. — James Cantor (talk) 14:49, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll start with WP:PROMOTION, whether Blanchard or those who may have a vested interest in promoting their ideas, the effect is the same. Insomesia (talk) 20:51, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you talking about me? I have a vested interest here? How, exactly, do I benefit? I mean, how do I benefit in a way that does not imply re-writing WP:COI to say something entirely different from what it does? And (for those who hadn't noticed already), I created a page identical to this one using John Money's term ("gynandromorphophilia"). If I create two equal and opposing pages (one each on the two RS terms for this topic)...wait...who am I promoting again?— James Cantor (talk) 23:15, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I actually didn't realize you had written this but I do support the general nomination rationale. I have see numerous discussions and whenever Blanchard et al is brought up I assume it will be a protracted circular debate which a cynic might think is meant to wear the opposition down. So you can focus more on others who may be swayed let's just agree that neither of us are likely to change our opinions on this matter. I don't think this is a notable term at all and I'm not interested in having an extended argument. Insomesia (talk) 23:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html
  • Keep. Article seems well referenced, and although none of the references are available for online evaluation, the titles suggest they at least aren't merely tangentially discussing the subject but do in fact support the subject's existence and notability. As for the strong opposition to this subject, I perceive vaguely politics of political correctness and not so much salient arguments. I'm affording article creator the benefit of the doubt for now. I need clearer arguments that I can actually understand from the opposition before I can earnestly consider acceding their reasons for deletion. __meco (talk) 07:08, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • None of the sources seem to be about this term, some of the sources only mention the term, and some don't mention it at all. Insomesia (talk) 10:14, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment. As I said earlier, we don’t need a separate article for every term describing the phenomenon of attraction to transgender people. This can and should all be covered in one article. We have consensus precedent at attraction to disability in terms of article naming. All of the formal and informal terms are currently covered at attraction to transgender people. Per Google books:
  • "tranny chaser" "trannie chaser" "transie chaser" 173
  • "gynemimetophilia" "gynemimetophile" 151
  • “andromimetophilia” “andromimetophile” 138
  • "admirer" about 100
  • "transfan" 51
  • "gynandromorphophilia" "gynandromorphophilic" "gynandromorphophile" 27
  • Men sexually interested in transwomen 6
Should we cover all these? Yes. Should we cover them all separately? No. There are a whole bunch of other terms and aspects of this phenomenon, like tranny hawk, attraction to “shemales,” transie-sniffers, kai-kai/ki-ki, toms and dees, etc. etc. Some of the people writing about this phenomenon see trans people or the attraction to them as a medical condition to be cured through coercion, even starting as children. See this week’s New York Times for details on how families and society are rejecting this medicalizing/pathologizing impulse among these “experts” and avoiding them altogether.
The real issue here is that these medicalizing and pathologizing terminologies contitute a POV fork. There are people who see this phenomenon as a disorder/disease/medical condition, and people who see it as a common form of attraction and part of society. Wikipedia should present both views in one article and not fork the two POVs. Jokestress (talk) 16:21, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is something on that page pathologizing? Is pregnancy not both a medical topic and a natural condition? And where exactly did someone's WP-valid view get removed?
All POISON and ancient BATTLEGROUND. MOS:MED says to put the page under it's technical name, whereas some folks want a slang or their own name used; so, one would have to argue against any/every medical aspect to escape the MOSMED policy.
— James Cantor (talk) 23:22, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Claiming that sexual attraction to an entire demographic of humans is a paraphilia is by definition pathologizing. A paraphilia is defined as attraction to "non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, children, or non-consenting persons." Which of those is "gynandromorphophilia"? Are trans people non-human objects, or are they suffering/causing suffering? If it's something else on the list, please enlighten us. Claiming attraction to trans women is a medical condition is just like conservatives who claim same-sex attraction is a medical condition. See medical gaze for the philosophical problems with this sort of myopic ideology. Separating the medicalized conceptualizations from the larger phenomenon is textbook POV forking. Jokestress (talk) 01:37, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's one definition, not the only possible definition. Our article on the subject describes it as "sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation", which would encompass this as well as many partialisms, which are not included in the definition you quote above, since they're "human objects", but which are explicitly named as paraphilias in the source that your definition comes from (PMID 19779971). That might be why the words generally including appear immediately before where you started quoting the source.
But none of that actually matters: if the DSM (or any other reliable source) is pathologizing this (or anything else) inappropriately, then we shouldn't hush up their choices by merging away their POV. We should follow the sources, even if a source's POV is obnoxious to the affected people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's true that the POV should be included in the current article, but the question is whether it merits a separate article, or whether that would just be a POV fork. I can only see two articles in PubMed that use this term, one of them from 1993 by Ray Blanchard, who coined the term, and a 2008 Hungarian article about gender identity disorder. Is it really the commonly used medical term, per WP:MOSMED ("the scientific or recognised medical name that is most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources")? SlimVirgin (talk) 00:43, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this gets to the heart of the problem. There are two POVs: taking one form, there are people who believe the phenomenon of male attraction to trans women is a type of heterosexual interest (it's generally considered a straight specialty market in the porn industry and is the 4th largest category of porn site). Then there are people (many of whom are gay males) who believe that male attraction to trans women is not "normative stimulation," but somehow male attraction to males is "normative stimulation." It's hair-splitting and POV-pushing to fork the one POV from the other. I certainly understand the dismissive impulse of people like Dan Savage and Michael Musto, who probably feel their hard-earned rights are threatened by other sex and gender minorities. I understand why the gay rights movement threw age of consent activists under the bus for political expediency. I get why some gay men spend their lives trying to prove there's no connection between homosexuality and paraphilia. However, our goal here is to present information where all points of view are contained in one article. There are people who think this is a medical issue/disease/mental illness and people who see it as a sociological, ethical, and/or philosophical phenomenon. People who see the world through a medical lens have one point of view which should not be split off like this. Jokestress (talk) 01:18, 11 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep think Jokestress's analysis is excellent, and the best explanation of these problems that I have seen here, but it leads me to the opposite conclusion. When a subject is treated differently by different areas of human experience, it is not a prohibited POV fork to have more than one article, because the conceptual models of the same phenomena can be incompatible. Those approaches to psychology that consider it one of the social sciences rather than the biological sciences are perhaps the prime example of this, and I would not like to favor either one. We favor science over pseudoscience, but we do not favor one branch of learning over another. In the past we have sometimes attempted to sandwich disparate items under a heading which represents the preference of the majority of people here, and I think this is wrong and prejudicial.Sexology is an academic subject, and should be covered accordingly. Some (perhaps most, actually) aspects of it are also of non-academic interest, and those aspects may need to be covered separately. I see no reason why this article under its present title and Transfan cannot both exist. One reason for doing it would be precisely to avoid problems of just what is a neutral pov, when different people have very different ideas of that.
Dealing with another part of the problem, the perceived insult in the terminology used, I copy what I regard as an equally clear statement from James Cantor's talk p., which expresses what I too think but have not been able to properly word: "I've always thought it unfortunate that paraphilias are still so stigmatized that everyone wants to avoid being counted as one. Personally, I prefer embracing one's differences from the norm rather than re-defining "normal" to include whatever one's make-up is. We cannot appreciate our diversity by denying our differences." DGG ( talk ) 01:27, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome to your interpretation, but I feel I should be more clear if that's what you took from my analysis. It's not just that the terminology is a problem in terms of accuracy (a gynandromorph according to hard science is an animal with intersex traits or chimerism). The conceptualization that someone's attractions are an "error," whether they are gay, or prefer to date fat women, or disabled guys, genderqueer people, or other types of people who are not "phenotypically normal," is the source of the stigmatization. People in kink and fetish communities are generally quite happy to be counted as members of their sexual minorities and celebrate their diversity. Most of them take issue with being called sick, deviant, mentally disordered, abnormal, or other pathologizing adjectives applied by the people who make up these terms. It's not that paraphilias are stigmatized. It's that the very concept of "paraphilia" is stigmatizing. As noted in that article, "the term paraphilia remains pejorative in most circumstances." This disease model of human sexual diversity, with its emphasis on attraction to only those who are "phenotypically normal," is the entire reason no one wants to be associated with the concept. It's body fascism, plain and simple. Lawyers have used the concept of "paraphilia" to try to deny trans women health service reimbursement. James Cantor is well aware of these problems yet continues to be among the foremost proponents of perpetuating this ideology, both here and off-wiki. The quote you cite is sophistry, in my opinion. "Normal" and "normative" get redefined all the time. We are almost 40 years out from the depathologization of homosexuality, and there are still celebrities who hesitate being counted as LGBT because the stink of pathology takes that long to fade away as we move toward normalization. Podophilia redirects to Foot fetishism because we don't need separate articles for the same phenomenon. There's plenty of precedent here for non-forked content. Jokestress (talk) 04:25, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Because I never said (and don’t actually hold) the views Jokestress says (at the same time as she tells everyone to ignore what I actually DID say and DO believe), there isn’t really anything here for me to defend.
  2. Clearly, Jokestress' WP:POINTy nomination of this article has nothing to do with any political divide between whichever gay folks and whichever trans folks. Indeed, one of the primary supporters/authors about gynandromorphophilia (if not the primary supporter) is Anne Lawrence, who is herself a well-accomplished, openly trans sexologist. It’s just a divide with Jokestress’ preferred flavor of political correctness.
  3. The only relevant part is that this is obviously not about WP, but about Jokestress’ feelings regarding whatever political landscape (if only imagined) and regarding her presumptions about my feelings (if quite mistaken).
Although I have gotten to know Dan Savage, I cannot speak for him or Musto…and I recommend Jokestress not do so either.
— James Cantor (talk) 05:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PS- I do have to smile at how far I have come in Jokestress’ eyes. When I started editing WP, she told people I should be dismissed as non-notable. Now, not long after, I am a foremost promoter, mentioned together with Dan Savage and Michael Musto...although, now, I should be dismissed for that reason instead….
— James Cantor (talk) 05:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My assessment of your notability remains unchanged. I was referring to Karen Franklin's and Allen Frances' assessments of your foremost role in promoting spurious paraphilias like the one we are discussing here. [1][2] I'll remind you this is not a forum for discussing your level of notability, unless it's specifically in relation to the deletion discussion. Which it isn't. Jokestress (talk) 06:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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