Talk:Concubinage

message: There isn't really any "typical" usage of the word alone. The word tends to be always contextualized, and the contexts can be very different from each other. --Grufo (talk) 07:48, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: According to ... what source exactly? And in what context? In academic literature, or in more general usage? Iskandar323 (talk) 10:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

text: The source for this is The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, which is a pretty reliable source.VR talk 14:09, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Having a source might not be enough, especially when a sentence lowers down the quality of an article. What one thinks when they hear the word concubine is inherently a subjective thing, and we tend not to hear the word alone. I am honestly unable to imagine an example of a sentence where the word concubine appears without being contextualized, either explicitly or implicitly. If a woman says today "I am a concubine", the first thing I will think will be the oddity of the sentence, the second thing I will think will be that she lives with the boyfriend, the third think I will do will be asking "What do you mean?". --Grufo (talk) 15:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: It strikes me that the statement is at once correct and incorrect on both counts. Conceptually, a concubine is more bonded than a mistress but freer than a slave. Genghis Khan had concubines whose power and status exceeded that of some of his lesser wives, just as court eunuchs have become grand viziers. The great modern fallacy of interpretation is to impose our moral values on historical situations that we can barely grasp the implications of. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is really subjective, . When I hear the word concubine alone there will no meanings at all until I am able to contextualize. I would definitely not think about Genghis Khan, since I never think about Genghis Khan, and the last thing I will think about will be Islamic Harems. If you really force me to think about something (but you have to force me), I will likely think about European aristocratic persons from the past, and the concubine will be aristocratic too. --Grufo (talk) 15:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we are have our biases, but ultimately we have to go with what sources say. If there are sources that say other things, they can be included. But a high-quality academic source should be complemented by another high-quality academic source. Don't use a WP:PRIMARY source to say "Academic source says X, but primary source says Y". That's an example of WP:FALSEBALANCE.VR talk 15:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  We don't automatically use what sources say if a statement is inherently subjective, we are free to omit it (WP:UNDUE) --Grufo (talk) 16:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (NPOV) applies: "Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analysing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias."  Omitting those truths that do not suit an editor's point of view is not consistent with NPOV.-- Toddy1 (talk) 16:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  A subjective statement is not a “truth”. It is also not a secondary source in this case, since it does not interpret what a primary source says. Regarding this specific sentence the The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History becomes a primary source and offers no means for WP:V. --Grufo (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Why are you calling an encyclopedia a primary source? That's ridiculous. An encyclopedia is almost the most secondary type of source you can get - as with Wikipedia, typically collating the input of legions of other secondary sources to come up with fair, balanced and neutral definitions. It's not primary because you don't like it. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:54, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I got this slightly wrong. Since encyclopedias are derived from secondary sources, Wikipedia considers them one step further still for the purposes of source categorisation, labelling them WP:TERTIARY. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:41, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

text: You are not free to omit anything simply because you 'think' it is subjective, unless of course there are no objections from any other editors or of course you achieve a consensus in talk that something is indeed WP:POV. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

text: I actually came here to question the same phrase. Reviewing three modern dictionaries, (Merriam Webster, Cambridge, Collins) two of them include "mistress" as a common meaning or synonym, and all of them mention social status, but none of them mention slavery. BilledMammal (talk) 05:01, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: "Can refer to" is not the same as "defined as". I think the Oxford source is saying some concubines in the 21st century happen to be sex slaves, not that that's how the term is defined. Also the Collins source you mentioned does say the concubine is regarded as "sexually subservient".VR talk 05:06, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The article reads "it typically refers" rather than "can refer to", but if we clarified the "sex slave" part of that sentence as "can refer to" then my objections would be resolved. As for Collins, "sexually subservient" and "sex slave" are not synonyms. BilledMammal (talk) 05:45, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I quote the rather pertinent tertiary source cited by VR on Talk: Sexual slavery in Islam: "Voluntary concubinage should be distinguished from involuntary concubinage. In the latter the woman is sold, usually by her family. As a concubine she is rarely a slave, at least legally...yet in practice, the life of an involuntary concubine may look very much like a slave." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. The reality is that the concepts of freedom and slavery were often greyer and more blurred in the ancient and medieval world. A concubine, who may well be "sexually subservient" to a master, and even sold by their parents, might still not be legally classified within society as a slave. This a rather good illustration of the oversimplicity that can creep in when a reductive approach is taken to define a term. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you are slightly mistaken about the topic we are discussing; we are discussing "In the twenty-first century, it typically refers explicitly to extramarital affection, "either to a mistress or to a sex slave", without the same emphasis on the cohabiting aspect of the original meaning", which is about how the word is used in the twenty-first century, not how it was used in the ancient or medieval world. BilledMammal (talk) 10:27, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say that the way in which the term is used differs depending on whether it is being used to refer to events in the 21st-century or events in the distant past. In any case, the definition of "either to a mistress or to a sex slave" also encapsulates the way in which the term can refer to range of roles where a participant may be free or very much enslaved. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: In any case, would you object to the clarification that VI seemed to propose, using "can refer to"? BilledMammal (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "In twenty-first-century parlance, 'concubine' refers either to a mistress or to a sex slave." 

message: I'm removing the recently added section on the Latter Day Saint movement for a few reasons:
# The principal reason is that it is using a single primary source. What we need are secondary sources, which leads into the next concerns I have...
# Right now it seems like it fails WP:UNDUE, which is actually really hard to gauge based solely on a primary source since the weight should reflect the weight in secondary sources. I also don't think that the Latter Day Saints are unique in saying OT figures had concubines. I'm pretty sure that other Christian groups use or have used similar verbiage for most if not all of these individuals, so why is it important to single out Latter Day Saints? Again, secondary sources would help.
# Context feels like it is an issue. The paragraph is based on the occurrence of the word/concept in the movement's scriptures which themselves are commenting on occurrences in the ancient world. But does that mean that it belongs in a the New World section that also tends towards the modern era? This isn't really a New World occurrence of the practice of concubinage. I am uncertain where it makes sense for this mention to occur or if it even should occur, again largely without secondary sources to put the mention in Latter Day Saint scripture in context.
Which brings me back to the first point - we need reliable, secondary sources to really answer the other concerns, imo. --FyzixFighter (talk) 23:20, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that secondary sources would be better. Altanner1991 (talk) 03:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  LDS section 

message: Why there is no mention of indonesia on this article despite it has undocumented infos of concubine system? Eg yogyakarta concubinage in pre modern age. 2404:8000:1027:2C72:C42A:D8CC:B3DA:AF04 (talk) 11:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indonesia? 

message: Keep the Zionist nonsense off of this article, please.  Hagar was not Abraham's concubine; she was his second wife. 70.55.216.171 (talk) 12:44, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zionist Nonsense