Talk:Gender studies/Archive 1

message: I'd like to ask someone watching this topic to have a look and maybe discuss the page on Physical_attractiveness, as it seems to me that many arguments exposed there are clearly biased. In doubt, also check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias
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Since this particular issue may come up more than once on this topic, I'll note that "him" and "his" are the correct singular, neuter, third-person pronoun and possessive adjective for the English language (this is true for both American and British English).  Using "a person's characteristics reflect their true nature" is incorrect because of number disagreement, "person's" being a singular possessive adjective and "their" being a plural possessive adjective.
I'm not going to revert/edit unless I have something substantive to add to the entry, but (popular or not), using "his" or "him" is proper for situations in which there is one person of unknown gender because those words double as both the masculine and neuter singular pronoun and adjective.
Some people who take issue with this fact have begun to use "hisser" instead of "his" and "himmer" instead of "him" (hisser being a bastardized contraction of "his or her", himmer being the same for "him or her").  Neither of these alternatives is formal English at this time so using them in an encyclopedia may not be appropriate, but then again those words won't become official MW or OED English until they're widely used so maybe footnoted usage in this particular entry would be an appropriate starting point for them.
This would be probably a good reason for starting a new topic on language planning geared at removing androcentric structural features of language (in which work and data gathered by Deborah Cameron or Anne Pauwels, amont others, could be mentioned).
-- Endlessnameless
: Sigh. Grammatically they are probably not correct. I am sure that many proponents of gender neutral pronouns already know this, but "him" is not really an acceptable term to use. And to avoid this blowing up into a full debate on whether to use gender specific pronouns or not, I think I'm going to reword that sentence to remove reference to gender... Dysprosia 04:42, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. And I heartily agree on that last sentiment :) Dysprosia 08:06, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Physical_attractiveness]] 

message: It seems like this page could benefit from having a section on how gender studies evolved and came to be part of so many universities.  This would also give some context to the criticism section.  I think it would also make sense to include some of the more conservative criticisms in their too, if there is going to be a criticisms section.  
Dfziggy 20:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  history of gender studies?    

message: (Apologies that this is so long)
Having spent sometime looking at this page and some of the justified criticisms of it I decided to rewrite it.  For any one who looked at teh French or Spanish versions of the page the previous English version was shocking.  All that the older version conveyed (and tried to) is still conveyed by the new one.  I have deleted the "weasel words" tag on top of the page - because I completely changed the offending section - Gender in Psychology.  If others find bias here then it should be re-tagged.
Major changes
Gender studies is a field of Cultural Studies that analyzes the phenomenon of gender, both in people's lived experience and cultural representations. Gender Studies is sometimes related to studies of class, race, ethnicity and location.”[1]  -  I added this line to make clear what Gender Studies does and its scope.  None of the previous editors made clear that HOW gender is studied, depends upon WHAT is being studied.  If pictures, text, or film/video is being examined then the study is about the representations of gender.  But if , for instance, differences between male and female salaries is being analyzed then it is people's experience of gender (and how it is socially and economically constructed) that the study will examine.  I am aware that these lines are dense if it is too concise in people's opinion then it needs to be changed.
In Gender Studies the word "gender" is used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. The term does not refer to biological difference, but rather cultural difference. [...] (See also Gender#In_feminist_theory)  -  Due to some criticism on this talk page which confuses gender with sex I have included a piece on the terminology gender which is referred to by other gender articles.  Its omission here up until now is quite extraordinary. 
Studies of the role of gender have been under taken in many academic areas, such as: literary theory, drama studies, film theory, performance theory, anthropology, sociology, and psychology (to name but a few). These studies have different focuses on how and where they study gender...  -  As with my first change I added this piece to make clear the different approaches within Gender Studies.
Gender Studies and Psychoanalytic Theory
In place of the old, weasel worded piece I've compilied a very short list of places that Gender Studies has been influenced by psychoanalytic theory: Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva.  I have also tagged it with: need for expansion.
Major deletions
Work in gender studies influences and is influenced by the related fields of Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies.  -  I deleted this piece because it is ironically ethnocentric, focusing on American Ethnic Studies.  There is no need to have a list these different areas of Ethnic Studies, because the umbrella is more inclusive without one. 
While work in gender studies is principally found in humanities departments and publications (in areas such as English literature and other literary studies), it is also found in social-scientific areas such as women's studies, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.  -  While I tend to agree with this statement I cannot verify it.  I also consider this sentence to be a source of "weasel words", so I consider its  deletion to be appropriate.
The Gender in Psychology
This piece had no place here - it was related to Gender not Gender Studies and was extremely badly written.
Expansions
References: this article had no references, which for an article on an academic field was ridiculous.  However the references that I have added are just preliminary, more are needed and more will be added as more sections are added.
See also: links to other pertinent Wikipedia articles were found and added.
External Links: links to pages on the web - found at the Gender page were added.
Merger?
I've left the merger tag - even-though I strongly disagree with it.  Feminism is related to but not the same as Gender Studies.--Cailil 23:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a start, but this article is still awfully mediocre. I'm not particularly comfortable with the classification that gender studies is part of cultural studies without some compelling source (I'm a gender studies and a cultural studies major, and the course content and work I've taken in each have tended to be quite different), and the topic could do with a decent, properly sourced definition in any case. Your deletions all make sense, and it's nice to see someone making a start on referencing. I'd also have no objection to removing the merger tag, as I don't think it's necessary. Rebecca 23:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I think that's an improvement, yeah. :) Rebecca 04:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  January 6th & 7th 2007 changes 

message: I've been doing some more work on the page today.  1st I took-up Dfziggy's point and created a history of GS category.  After some thought I decided to put the Gender and Psychoanalytic Theory section within this.  I've also moved one of the previous header paragraphs down into the history section,  under the title The Post-modern Influence.  I briefly added a small paragraph on Mary Joe Frug but I've started to find it objectionable.  A part of is in the article's history - if you want to take a look.  (My objection is to an apparent conflation of sex and gender in the piece by Frug - am currently reading it).  Judith Butler really got there first as well, but if any one wants to argue the case for Frug go ahead.
I've also dispensed with the Literature section by adding the books (plus a few new ones) to the references section.
Also would someone like to take a look at the External links: 
# Project "Women's History and Gender History in Westphalia" (in German)
# uniGENDER - online journal (in Polish)
# WikEd - Gender Inequities in the Classroom
All look less than notable to me, any opinions--Cailil 01:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor edits Jan. 13 2007 

message: I've added tag  for the time being.  It will make it clear to passers-by that this page is not finished and not perfect.  My aim with this page is to make it as good as it can be - FA status is a little ambitous but I think that should be aeveryone's aim for an article.--Cailil 15:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tagged as Undersconstruction 

message: Alternatives to the old quotes are
#"Legalizing Misandry also exhibits conceptual weaknesses. "Ideological feminism," a concept that is key to the authors' central argument, is not defined and used in a consistent way. In the Introduction and much of the book it seems to be conceived as the equivalent of "gender feminism", the term that Christina Hoff Sommers applied to the radical feminism exemplified by the work of Catharine MacKinnon and the late Andrea Dworkin (which raises the question of whether this terrain has not already been exhaustively mined). However, in their discussion of scholarship, Nathanson and Young link "ideological feminism" to feminist postmodernism and also refer to "the strategic alliance between ideological feminists and ideological gay people"." - from Dorothy E Chunn.  Canadian Journal of Family Law.  Vancouver:2006.  Vol. 23,  Iss. 1
#"Where the going gets really rough is in the second half of the book, when Nathanson and Young try to explain how the philosophies of radical feminism led to this situation. There are some suggestive ideas here, but they are not developed. "Deconstruction has become the technique of choice among feminist ideologues," the authors note; a provocative point, but they say nary a word about these feminist ideologues and their use of this trendy academic method. Instead, there is a lengthy discussion of deconstructionism in general - from Charlotte Hays in National Review. New York: Mar 11, 2002. Vol. 54, Iss.  4
These quotes are fairly long but they are about gender studies.  I personally don't see the need to get into the arguments in detail.  I think the single line note that "Nathanson and Young have been criticized in academic journals" is enough of a balance for NPOV--Cailil  talk 23:35, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternatives to old quotes

message: Taking on board the good points raised by WIlyD's & Scribblingwoman in their edit summaries I propose the following as an alternative solution: Some feminist critics have dismissed the work of Sigmund Freud as sexist, because of his view that women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity")  The reason I've placed the whole clause (mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis) in single inverted commas is to show that its a paraphrase of Freud.  I switched the positions "lack of penis" and "deformity" because, at least in my reading, this supposed "lack" is more to the point of feminist rejections of Freud. And finally the reason I'm suggesting parenthesis is simply because the dash (which I probably introduced to the paragraph :o ) is sloppy grammar.  This kind of debate about this section is healthy and will help improve the article's quality.--Cailil 00:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me! Hope you approve of the small changes I made, throughout. — scribblingwoman 00:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  the freud section 

message: I think that the new categorical organization is superior to the older alphabetical organization. It provides equal consideration of both sexes, and is more logical and understandable. Fuzzform 06:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits to "See also" section 

message: I guess you could merge them, but do you really want a list of Gender studies related topics added to this article? It might make sense to rename Gender and sexuality studies to List of gender studies topics and expand it significantly, or simply delete it. - TheMightyQuill 15:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd forgotten about that proposal.  Its nearly a year know.  I think another option would be to go through the list - make sure everything is in :Category:Gender_studies and then simply redirect Gender and sexuality studies to here.  That page has been sitting there without improvement for a long time, something needs to happen with it--Cailil  talk 16:04, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I've gone ahead and redirected it to here.  I checked that the appropriate pages were listed :Category:Gender_studies & added those that should be.  If anyone feels strongly about doing this another way - just revert and discuss--Cailil  talk 16:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Gender studies. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://archive.is/20121212181127/http://www.whitman.edu/content/genderstudies to http://www.whitman.edu/content/genderstudies
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050604083319/http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/wiked/index.php/Gender_Inequities_in_the_Classroom to http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/wiked/index.php/Gender_Inequities_in_the_Classroom
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130530132529/http://www.turtlebayandbeyond.org/2012/homosexuality/nordic-countries-defund-gender-ideology/ to http://www.turtlebayandbeyond.org/2012/homosexuality/nordic-countries-defund-gender-ideology/
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thread_title:  External links modified