Talk:Feminism/Archive 11

message: This article has always improved, every time I reread it. Congratulation, all, on so successfully tackling such a difficult topic! Here are my comments:
Sections:
*The editors might think about adding a "Proto-feminism" or "Pre-feminism" section. I deleted the Mary wollstonecraft reference because it interrupted the flow of the first-wave feminism section and she isn't a first-wave feminist, but it would be nice to have a little paragraph on the writers and people who inspired the feminist movement. There has been a lot of scholarship recently on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century "feminists" - Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, etc.
*The "first-wave feminism" section has a lot of names without a lot of context for them. Either prune some of the names or add context for the names. 
*The "Women's Liberation in the USA" section does not explain the goals of the movement.
*The Feminine Mystique section cites Friedan's obituary as evidence for the influence of the book - this book has been written about so much. I would suggest finding a better source - just for the sake of making wikipedia look a bit better to the outside world. The summary of Friedan's book seems to be sourced to the book itself - it would be nice if that were sourced to a secondary work on the history of feminism - scholars have interpreted Friedan's work differently and everyone summarizes differently (it's really amazing). Same goes for de Beauvoir's Second Sex.
*Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas paragraph needs a transition from the previous paragraph. It is difficult for the reader to know what to make of the quote in this paragraph because post-feminism hasn't been introduced yet. Perhaps some reordering?
*The Gilligan paragraph is good, but its topic sentence promises a different debate than the one we get - it promises a debate between feminists. It might be a good idea to add some material on how feminists react to Gilligan's work.
*The post-feminism section is still a bit hard to follow - perhaps a more chronological telling and some cultural examples of post-feminism (movies, etc.?)
*I think that the readers of this article will generally not know a lot of the feminists listed - they will be looking for information. I would include a brief sentence describing each "person of interest" in the bulletted lists. I will warn you now that I think these lists will be challenged at FAC - I see nothing wrong with them in an overview article like this, but I would be prepared to defend them. (I think a little sentence attached to them would help with that defense.)
*I don't know if it is possible to explain the "French feminism" section any better, but it is worth a shot. That material is always hard to teach. The most nebulous section in this article is the last part - "1970s to the present". I would try to explain it without using the theorists' own language - it is too jargony.
*The "Black feminism" section is a bit vague and repetitive in its language. Also, it does not really explain what is different about the discrimination black women exprerience. The material on Davis is not clear - what idea did she develop and what word did Crenshaw come up with? We have to be explicit.
*In the "Post-structural and postmodern feminism" section, the ideas have to be discussed without using the language of the theorists. Readers will not understand words like "performative". We have to translate for them. Also, what is Haraway moving towards (away from dualism, Christianity, etc.), but what is her vision of the future? The last paragraph of this section is not cohesive - the topic sentence on French feminism isn't explained in the paragraph and the rest of the sentences repeat what has been stated before in the article multiple times.
*"Third-word feminism" is not explained very clearly - the long list of "-isms" is particularly unhelpful.
*Perhaps "Ecofeminism" is receiving undue weight? Also, the one sentence "However, feminist and social ecologist Janet Biehl has criticized ecofeminism for focusing too much on a mystical connection between women and nature and not enough on the actual conditions of women" needs to be better integrated into the section.
*"Individualist feminism" needs a better initial definition.
*The introduction to "Feminism and society"' is the same as the first paragraph of the "Civil rights" subsection.
*I would de-emphasize the "Language" section in "Feminism and society" as it is less significant than many of the other section topics. It also needs some sort of historical and cultural context.
*The coherence of the "Heterosexual relationships" section is not clear to me - what is the overarching theme there? I could move material from other places in the article to that section - why shouldn't I? How can we narrow its focus?
*I wonder if feminist science fiction is receiving "undue weight". Also, the section seems a bit listy.
*India:
:*Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, Leela Kasturi, Sharmila Rege, and Vidyut Bhagat are Indian feminist essayists and critics writing in English. - What are they saying? 
:*Contemporary Indian feminists are fighting for: individual autonomy, rights, freedom, independence, tolerance, cooperation, nonviolence and diversity, domestic violence, gender, stereotypes, sexuality, discrimination, sexism, non-objectification, freedom from patriarchy, the right to an abortion, reproductive rights, control of the female body, the right to a divorce, equal pay, maternity leave, breast feeding, prostitution, and education. - Break this list up and explain it. Some of these things don't make much sense. I tried to fix it as best as I could, but copy editing can only do so much.
*What are the broad socialist goals of Japanese feminism?
*The Norway section is only about the nineteenth century - shouldn't it have something about the present?
*The "Feminism around the world" section seems a bit disjointed - why these countries and not others? What is the logic for describing these feminist movements? That logic is not made clear to the reader.
*I wonder if the "Feminism and political movements" material shouldn't be integrated into the descriptions of the various feminisms. It seems so truncated now and it doesn't cohere into a section.
Small things:
*The second paragraph of the lead (the wave paragraph) should probably be later in the lead and the waves need to be briefly explained (in just a phrase).
*Each paragraph in the lead needs a "topic sentence" to introduce the main idea of the paragraph. 
*The third wave (1990s-present) is seen as both a continuation and a response to the perceived failures of the second wave. - I would give one example here.
*Second-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity beginning in the early 1960s and lasting through the late 1980s and, as Imelda Whelehan suggests, it was a continuation of the earlier phase of feminism involving the suffragettes in the UK and USA. - In what way was it a continuation?
*If first-wave feminism focused on rights such as suffrage, second-wave feminism was largely concerned with other issues of equality, such as the end to discrimination. - This is not entirely clear - perhaps clarifying a bit what is meant by discrimination? It just seems a bit vague.
*The phrase "Women’s Liberation" was first used in the United States in 1964[1] and first appeared in print in 1966. - Give more context for this, otherwise it is just trivia.
*Bra-burning also became associated with the movement. - Explain what this represented.
*Kohlberg revised his scoring methods as a result of Gilligan's critique, after which boys and girls scored unevenly. - They still scored unevenly?
*It now denotes a wide range of theories, some of which argue that postmodernism has destabilized the notion of a universal femininity, and take critical approach to previous feminist discourses, including challenges to second-wave ideas. - a little convoluted
*According to liberal feminists, all women are capable of asserting their ability to achieve equality - I'm not quite sure what this means.
*In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century both Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were against the demonization of men and supported a proletarian revolution that would overcome as many male-female inequalities as possible. - This information has little context around it. It is just sitting there.
*Colonial oppression may result in the glorification of pre-colonial culture, which, in cultures with traditions of power stratification along gender lines, could mean the acceptance of, or refusal to deal with, inherent issues of gender inequality. - This needs to be explained a bit better.
*Feminism has driven cultural work in the fields of cinema, drama, literature and music. - Banal statement - so have a lot of things.
*Virginia Balisn et al. characterize the growth in interest since 1970 in women's writing as "powerful". - Say who everyone is!
*Caption: March 8 rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh - needs a year
*Women have developed themselves according to the situations and has become advanced in various fields. They have become independent in respect of their reproductive right. - ungrammatical and vague (I can't fix it because I don't know what it is supposed to say)
*Steven Rhoads' book Taking Sex Differences Seriously illustrates sex-dependent differences across a wide scope. - What does "across a wide scope" mean?
*She argues rather than using evidence of innate gender difference there is an over-changing hypothesis to justify inequality and perpetuate stereotypes. - very unclear
*Jeremy Bentham demanded equal rights for women in the eighteenth century. - Are we sure he demanded equal rights?
*During the suffragettes' campaign anti-suffragists numbered 160 in 1902 in Britain. - This seems odd - I would have expected that thousands of men were opposed to women getting the vote.
Prose:
*The article needs a good copy editor. I did quite a bit of work as I was reading, but it needs someone focused on that task. Here are some of the problems I noticed (I tried to fix some of these as I was reading, but more needs to be done):
:*I noticed an inconsistency in the capitalization of "feminism" and "Western", for example.
:*Repetition of words and phrases
:*General wordiness
:*Misuse of the hyphen - "second-wave" should only be hyphenated when it is a compound adjective ("second-wave feminism"). See WP:HYPHEN
:*All scholars need to be identified in the article with some sort of phrase so that reader know why to trust them (e.g. "feminist historian" or simply "scholar"). Names of scholars rarely mean much to the general public. They are no J-Lo.
:*Be sure that "feminists" and "feminism" are used in appropriate locations.
:*The article needs to have a consistent verb tense.
Layout:
*I would look for an attractive picture for the lead - the feminism template is helpful but not eye-catching. Sometimes we have to pander.
*The "See also" list is long - try to prune.
*The "External link" list is long - can you break it up into sections or prune it?
MOS (I only list these things because I know that someday the editors will want to take the article to FAC and these things will matter):
*Inconsistent citation style in the notes (see WP:CITE)
*According to WP:MOS#Images, images should not be sized (see exceptions).
*I delinked a lot of obvious terms (e.g. "men") and linked less obvious ones, but another sweep would be wise. See WP:MOS-L for suggestions on linking.
*See WP:PUNC for rules on punctuation.
*Terms that being defined should be italicized (see WP:ITALICS).
*Inconsistent serial comma - make consistent one way or the other.
*WP:MOSQUOTE - several issues here.
I am very impressed with the editors' ability to summarize so much material here. Overall, the article does a good job of balancing the general with the specific. Awadewit | talk 12:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And I am very impresed by your thoughtful and constructive comments ... I hope you will contribute more to this article.  If you feel capable of acting on any of your own suggestions, I encourage you to go ahead and do it! Slrubenstein   |  Talk 17:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid that I just don't have time at the moment. I have made commitments to other articles and unfortunately I don't see those commitments ending for another two years or so (seriously!). I'm always around for a review or a copy edit, though. Awadewit | talk 18:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Awadewit, for this truely comprehensive review, it really is very very helpful to have a fresh set of eyes and a mind that knows the subject give such a detailed examination of the page.  I'm sure we can all work together on tackling these issues.  Your points about the people of interest is pertinent and I think we should really consider removing them or drastically reducing them--Cailil  talk 19:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I've added a  to this page.  All teh points you've raised about style and layout are in that.  There isn't enough room for teh content issues so after we've addressed the style issues we can put content issues into the "to do" list--Cailil  talk 21:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments, part the second 

message: Who thinks there should be a Portal:Feminism? I think its a good idea. What are your opinions on this? --Grrrlriot (talk) 23:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is a great idea, but I was wondering if we might want to make it a sub-portal of Gender Studies? Phyesalis (talk) 17:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Thanks. What do you mean exactly, Phyesalis? Do you mean a Portal:Gender Studies? --Grrrlriot (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There's and an argument for their being both a Portal:feminism and Portal:Gender studies.  However there would be significant duplication of material if both existed, so choosing one or the other is necessary - in which case I'd go for Portal:Gender studies as the more inclusive--Cailil  talk 22:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

text: I think Portal:Gender Studies sounds like a good idea too. --Grrrlriot (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be a good idea to moot the idea at Project Gender studies talk page?--Cailil  talk 22:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry about the confusion, I assumed there was a Gender studies portal. What I meant was that, for example, the Portal:Human rights is a sub-portal of Portal:Law. In an effort to stave off duplication, I thought we could make feminism a sub-portal/sub-project of the Gender Studies portal/project. I've brought this up over on the WT:GS#Portal proposal. Phyesalis (talk) 01:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand. I totally agree and it sounds like a good idea. --Grrrlriot (talk) 18:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feminism Portal 

message: As Awadewit suggested this article needs a picture for the lead.  Unfortunately there is a dearth of pictures in the commons for this purpose - I'm going to suggest we use Image:8marchrallydhaka (55).JPG  Has anybody any feelings about thsi or any thoughts about an alternative?--Cailil  talk 21:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I really like the one you just posted myself. --Kukini  hablame aqui 23:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture for lead 

message: I saw that the Feminism article needs copy-editing. What does this mean exactly? --Grrrlriot (talk) 21:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  To-do feminism list 

message: If you want more information or if you think you would be interested in participating, Take a look here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Gender_Studies#Subcategory.2FTask_Force_of_Feminism or stop by my talk page and let me know. Thanks! --Grrrlriot (talk) 02:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subcategory/Task Force of Feminism 

message: 216.26.212.37 (talk) 04:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feminist 

message: Hi there, is there an article on this topic under another name? There is one on a book dealing with the subject - Sexual Politics, but I can't find an article dealing with it in general. If somebody could change that redlink to a redirect that would be great, thanks. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:10, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Sexual politics]]

message: *Deborah Laake and Colleen McDannell, both opposed sexual repression in the Church of Latter Day Saints. 
Thank you. ClaudeReigns (talk) 08:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested articles

message: cross posted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender Studies/Feminism Task Force
I've made a "mock-up" of this article minus the "persons of interest lists" in my sandbox.  I realize that edits like IronAngelAlice's are good contributions but the lists are in breach of WP:LIST and they do not conform to the style for summary articles.  What I'm proposing is we either merge these lists into the see also sections of the appropriate sub-articles or we prune them and use  to list the most notable terms (3-5).  Unless anyone objects to the removal of the lists I'm going to remove them at the weekend--Cailil  talk 22:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I made this edit earlier this morning.  I've also made a number of grammar and syntax changes.  However probably the biggest change is the commenting out of the Anita Hill case.  As Awadewit said months ago the weight it was being given may be undue - I am not 100% sure of the need for this article to delve into the story of that case so fo the moment I've commented it out.  If the page is not making sense without it we should reintroduce it either in part or in whole.  Any other opinions?--Cailil  talk 02:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Have had to revert IP 117.200.224.164 who was re-adding spam and blanking  templates--Cailil  talk 19:49, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persons of interest lists 

message: Okay, I've removed the povcheck template added by IP 69.140.152.55 as it is very unclear what they are asking for to be checked.  I left them a note about this already.  If anyone wants to discuss POV in a section could they please put a message here as well as putting a template in the article.  It will allow the rest of us to understand what exactly is being disputed / asked to be checked--Cailil  talk 14:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of POVCHECK 

message: A while ago we had a discussion about naming Judith Butler in the lede (see here) - this was in connection with social construction of gender.  We decided to remove mention of her from the line.
I've just reworded it - to reduce the jargon and to remove ambiguity that was being caused by whether "some" or "certain" gender roles are socially constructed in these scholars views.  (The sources say that 'gender roles are socially constructed' - they don't say "certain ones".)
The line now reads:Other feminists have argued that gender roles are social rather than biological phenomena.[16][17][18] I think it would be beneficial to qualify who says this.  Whether we name de Beauvoir, West and Zimmerman and/or Judith Butler, I would strongly suggest we name drop - because this view is specific to certain people and certain theories--Cailil  talk 20:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  social construction in the lede 

message: Case in point.
The polarization of the sexes, is evident in the lack of clear logic showing that men, benefit from women working, ie their wives, girlfriends, mothers; this type of "bridge logic" as I will call it is totally lacking.
Anyway the point of this is that I recall as a member of the Credit Union, the manager stated quite clearly, that the Union was in total compliance with women's equality employment legislation.
She then laughed.  All our employees are women.
So it is important to clearly state that feminism, was more about rights for women, rather than equal rights for women. In some cases the approach was not at all about gender fairness.
The devil is in the details.
--Caesar J. B. Squitti  :  Son of Maryann Rosso and Arthur Natale Squitti 21:31, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Equal rights or rights? 

message: Cailil has asked me to try and help resolve the issue of the opening sentence. To try and clarify what is at stake here, I have listed the current sentence below:
:"Feminism comprises a number of movements, theories and philosophies that are concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women, and that campaign for women's rights and interests."
Anyone who would like to see a change, please list your version and a succinct explanation for your changes. Hopefully by seeing all of the versions side-by-side with their reasoning, we can start to see some commonalities in wording and reasoning. I know we all want this article to be well-written and accurate, so let's work together to make it so. Thanks! Awadewit (talk) 17:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe this is now resolved, since I accepted Cailil's latest suggestion (the current sentence above), as I noted here.  I still cringe when I read "equality for women" (i.e., it reminds me of Animal Farm), but that is indeed the language often used.  Blackworm (talk) 18:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine by me, too Slrubenstein   |  Talk 20:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, this is excellent! I've stumbled into a consensus! Awadewit (talk) 01:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening sentence resolution 

message: Iamcuriousblue I see you've made a number of the good changes tonight but you've also made one that is a bit inaccurate.  You need to prove that "Women of colour feminism" is more a more notable name for the same subject than "Black feminism", becuase I can prove otherwise.  Notable works of black feminism are Black Feminist Thought: by Patricia Hill Collins, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis, AlterNatives: Black Feminism in the Postimperial Nation by Ranu Samantrai.  There's also the fact that it is categorized as Black feminism in Lisa Anderson's book on black feminism in contemporary drama, in Cynthia Burack's Healing identities, Lorde's collection Sister Outsider, Wall's Changing Our Own Words and King's Theory in Its Feminist Travels.  We can keep going with this list...
The only things I can find on Women of Colour feminism is The Ruptures of American Capital and Colonize This! by Daisy Hernandez  
What I'm going to suggest is this.  Re-title the section as Black feminism.  Then add a note at the top saying it is related to "Women of Colour feminism" and then at the bottom of the section mention the links Women of Colour feminism has to Xicana and Native American feminism which can be dealt with in another section (perhaps Multiracial feminism).  Otherwise you are going to have to totally rewrite the whole of that section becuase its current sourcing only addresses Black feminism and linking Women of Colour feminism (without a source) to Patricia Hill Collins' Defining Black Feminist Thought is original research.  I'm also going to point out that multiracial feminism and Black feminism are very different subjects. Black feminism is much older (going back to teh 60s or 70s) and Women of colour feminism dates from the 1990s.  These are distinct terms & Black feminism is notable enough for a section all of its own.--Cailil  talk 22:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think your judgment call on this is good, but I think the label should definitely lean toward the more inclusive – obviously, there are many feminists that are coming from the roughly the same perspective of the intersectionality of race and gender, and many of these feminists are not "black". The term "Women of Color feminists" (or "WOC feminists" for short) is the term I hear most often, at least in the blogosphere, but obviously, Wikipedia needs to be based more on established, published sources. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 00:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think in this case it is better to adhere to our core policies.  If most scholars talk about Black Feminism, it is incumbant on us to say that they do and provide an account of what they mean.  If there are some notable scholars or activists who in fact argue for a "Women of Color Feminism" we should say so too, and explain what they mean (whether it includes or is somewhat different from Black Feminism).  But we should not put our own views into the article (even if the three of us were in agreement). Slrubenstein   |  Talk 10:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I think its important to look at recent literature, because I do think there are other terms in use. In any event, I'm sure there must be an umbrella term for Black/Multiracial/Chicana/etc feminism that is based on an intersectionality perspective. In the meantime, perhaps use as a section title "Black feminism/Women of Color feminism" or "Black feminism and related feminisms" or something like that. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 21:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

text: Anti-porn feminism can probably be merged in readily, since the overwhelming majority of contemporary radical feminism is strongly oriented toward an anti-porn perspective. Separatism and cultural feminism are part of radical feminism overall, but based on what I've read, they remain distinct types, and are not universally subscribed to by all radical feminists. In fact, I belive Dworkin had differences with separatists and MacKinnon is on record as disparaging cultural feminism. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 21:44, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there is a casual usage of the term radical feminist in North America that is not reflected elsewhere or in the majority of the literature.  Your point about the difference Dworkin and MacKinnon had with other groups is correct.  But radical feminism is quite broadly defined.  Some scholars even include sex-positive feminism within it.  I know that Echols's certainly defines Cultural feminism as evolving from radical feminism but as becoming distinct; and certainly Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology is subtitled "a metaethics of radical feminism" and is one of the corner stones of separatist feminism.  Even if these sub-movements have moved away from radical feminism their history is a part of the history of radical feminism.  That said we can write the section so that it is clear that these subtypes "are not universally subscribed to" and to indicate that they have become distinct--Cailil  talk 22:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Women of colour feminism more notable than black feminism?