Talk:Heteronormativity/Archive 2005 7

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Verifiability 2 The "criticism" section 3 LGBTI 4 Recent vandalism 5 More on verifiability 6 This is a great article. 7 Article is very POV. 8 Concept, noun, adjective, what? 9 I've tried to get the proponent crap out of the article 10 Snowspinner - STOP IT 11 Adding actual criticism 12 Is There Anyone? 13 A framework for debate 14 Who is heteronormative?

Verifiability

I've spent some time looking through gender and queer theory essays that I have, and I confess, I'm not finding the analysis this page gives to be held by any of them.

I am not denying that the treatment of intersexuals, etc is as described in this page. What I am questioning, however, is whether the exact analyses of heteronormativity this page offers are actually coming from a source, or whether they are original research.

Would someone please provide the following if they exist, so as to give some guidance on what work needs to be done to make this article something other than a piece of original research.

• Where has the word heteronormativity been used outside of academic texts?
• Where does the claim of a connection between heteronormativity and patriarchal society come from? Currently it says "is often seen," but by who?
• Where do the critics of heteronormativity come from? What critics have actually addressed the topic of heteronormativity in so many words?
• What gender theorists comment on the connection between intersexuals and heteronormativity?
• Who has blamed restrictions on gender reassignment on heteronormativity?
• Who has criticized governments for being heteronormative?

For an article about a concept or theory like this one, it is exceedingly odd that it only actually cites a specific person once (The Eve Sedgwick line). Compare to Deconstruction, which is constantly ascribing ideas to specific thinkers. Let's refocus this article so that it actually talks about real and verifiable things. Snowspinner 17:16, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Just what are you going to do if the answers to your questions don't come up, or if you don't like them? Try to delete transgender and intersex people again from the article? And what a coincidence that we just met on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection! How strage! Say, could you not simply leave both me and this article alone? Your behaviour is really starting to worry me. Not to mention that I am worried about your "academical carrer" if you are really not capable of finding those references you are asking for.

And just for the record, trying to remove trans and intersex people with a fake argument of "original research" is not going to work any better then your previous attempts to get rid of me via this article (or whatever you want to get rid of). I recomment a Google search like [1], that sould show you how phony this attempt is. I don't know what thought worries me more - the thought that you know what you are doing or the thought that you don't. Either way, I recomment stopping it. -- AlexR 19:03, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. If they are unverifiable original research, they need to be removed from the article. If there are sources, those sources should be cited. That's basic compliance with Wikipedia policies, and I would hope you have enough respect for the project you're working on to do that. Who says these things? And, more to the point, does anyone but you say these things? Move the assertions from blanket statements and nebulous "some say" to useful information that points to a debate and a real conversation on it.

Past that, I'm uniterested in your personal attacks. I am interested in making this article encyclopedic and valid. Right now, it is not. Hopefully you will help in fixing it, since I suspect you have a good knowledge of the source material it requires. Snowspinner 19:24, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Listen, Snowspinner. The article right now is valid, and it is more than odd that you come up with this argument after months of silence and before that, months of working on that article. You can not complain if I wonder about that. Besides that, even if there were no sources, this would not constiture original research, since no research is necessary to make that connection, it is absolutely obvious. But, since otherwise you will keep getting on my nerves:

• Check this article from the International Journal of Transgenderism, which happens to be the official journal from the HBIGDA: [2]. It is from 2001 and titeled The Gender Caste System: Identity, Privacy and Heteronormativity. The full article can be found here: [3] (RTF file).
• Or this abstract about a workshop with Judith Halberstam: „Queer Cultural Studies: heteronormativity, homonormativity and the politics of sexuality” [4].
• Or how about [5]? Quote: Internal divisions within the Trans and Intersex population replicate the very social and medical divisions generated as a result of these gender identities being pathologized by larger society on the basis that they do not conform to the hetero-normative expectations of contiguous sex and gender categories as exclusively male and female.
• Or maybe [6]? Quote: Heterosexism / Heteronormativity
  The institutionalized assumption that everyone is heterosexual and that heterosexuality is inherently superior to, and preferable to any and all orientations outside of heterosexuality. (...) Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia all stem from and are supported by heterosexism, which is then enforced by a binary gender system.
• And then there is a book I have not read, but the summary is interesting:
  Scheman, Naomi. 1996. Queering the Center by Centering the Queer. In Diane Tietjiens Meyers, ed., Feminists Rethink the Self. Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 124-162. Scheman compares and contrasts Jewish identities and the identities of transsexual women to displace the normalizing apparatuses of Christian-normativity and heteronormativity.
• And [7], [8] and [9] also make your claim of "original research" go the way it ought to - straight through the john.

I hope that ends that line of "debate". You know what the really funny part is? I found those with a single Google search in about 10 minutes. And almost all of them have an academic background. Therefore your claim that you could not find anything is so utterly ridiculous that I find it hard to explain. After all, when I am not involved, you seem to be able to do some constructive work. And I will tell you something else: If you keep trying to remove trans- and intersex people from the article, with increasingly phony arguments, I won't bother with long debates any more, since they are, at least between us, so utterly pointless. Instead I will request mediation, since I see no other way to resolve these perpetual and highly irritating debates. -- AlexR 01:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Great, you found them, Snowspinner didn't. Can you incorporate citations into the article, ascribing points of view to those who hold them, thereby making the article verifiable, accurate, and neutral? Hyacinth 01:46, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm... Problem is, those articles are hardly the first one to mention the connection, and indeed I do not know who made that connection first. I also do not know which books are the most influential on that matter. I know this will disappoint snowspinner; but I life in Germany, and have access to English language articles almost exclusively through inter-library loan. (That is, if I can make it to the library at all; health reasons.) That makes keeping up with literature a bit tricky, especially English literature. I'd therefore prefer very much if somebody with easier access to that could do a literature section. Also, I do not think that not having a large one or not having tons of quotes in the article would make it less verifiable, accurate and neutral. Nor does it invalidate anything in the article, because contrary to Snowspinners claim, the connection is both well established and quite trivial. -- AlexR 02:46, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm finally getting back to this after a semester that had me with no time for doing fact-checking, and I've looked at the links Alex provided. I'm still not seeing any evidence of the term gaining meanignful use outside of an academic context. Links 7, 8, and 9 above seem to be the closest thing to providing that, but they are, in order, a page that is quoting fact-index.com, which is a Wikipedia mirror, an interview with Pauline Park, who is described elsewhere as a political scientist, and thus not unacademic, and a site for a student association that is describing its goals in terms of the academy. So I'm still not seeing the penetration of the term outside academic circles. Is there still some verification on that?
(Put bit about criticism part below, hope you don't mind. [AR])
I'll work on integrating some citations into the article to provide a context for some of the conclusions based on what Alex provided, but I'd like, long term, to see some more in terms of original sources. Anyone feel like crawling through a bunch of Butler and Irigaray for what quotes or citations we could use? I know I don't..Snowspinner 04:57, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC).

First of all, let me say something personal: Now that we both had some time to you know, move away emotionally from whatever is itching us about each other, or whatever, do you think that now we could actually start doing some constructive work together? Because I find your behaviour towards me and how you jump at everything I say, also in other debates, highly disturbing, and more, it makes us both spending far too much time with each other, instead of with improving articles. I would appreciate if things became a lot less personal between us. And, granted, by now your appearance alone is enough to prompt me for a sarcastic answer, but I am willing to make an effort to stop it. Can you make an effort too to stop what is going wrong between us? If, on the other hand, that continues, I am seriously considering requesting mediation, I checked, that is entirely possible when a matter is personal rather than about an article in particular. I would very much prefer, though, if we can solve that without the intervention of a third party. [AR]

Second, I do not know why "penetration outside academic circles" is so important to you, you are certainly not suggesting that because something might be mainly used in academic circles, it should not be in the Wikipedia. The term itself is, after all, a technical term, and probably in all contexts used rather in academic circles. However, a definitely non-academic use would be in Usenet, and it does turn up there occasionally. [10], [11].

Similar searches ought to produce other interesting and relevant results. -- AlexR 17:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

Feb 1, 2005

Fascinating argument. It seems that the discussants have different views on various roles of an encyclopedia: to record, to summarize, to consolidate and to create usage and/or scholarship.

I do believe that Judith Butler used the term "heteronormative", but I don't have the exact cite. I will find it, by and by, and post it on the site. I have noted a number of net usages of the term, but some of them seem far afield. I understood it to refer to the "heterosexual norm," derived, if I recall correctly, from a discussion by Monique Wittig regarding the default assumption that people are heterosexual.

However, I took a quick peek on the net, and saw this usage: “A genderqueer is part of a group of people who reject heteronormativity, the traditional two-gender system." (Fact-index.com) I have not used the term in this way, and I do not believe Butler did either. However, that does not mean it is "wrong," since I believe that meaning follows usage, and not vice versa.

(Lest anyone think I follow Humpty-Dumpty's dictum that a word means whatever I want it to, let me say this: the coiner of a word does not have exclusive privileges on meaning after they loose it into the world, anymore than an author or a painting. The meaning can be expanded, though the expansion should be noted, if you're going to call yourself a scholar.)

This usage at fact-index.com is an interesting one, because it refers back to the Greek root, and the original medical usage of the term "heterosexual" from 1892, at which point it connoted a “so-called male erotic attraction to females and so-called female erotic attraction to males” in one person. Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality 20 (1995). Thus, in addition to assumptions about sexual orientation, the new usage refers to assumptions about gender identity. In particular, it refers to the idea that there are only two genders, an assumption that genderqueers reject.

This expansion of meaning may be repugnant to the original lesbian users of the term, because the two-gender system was (and is) embraced by many lesbians. These fight against sex roles constraining women, and they claim the right for people to express their gender in a non-traditional way, but they strongly resist the notion that they are not women. The same views are held by others in the LGBT community, including, surprisingly, some transsexuals. See my article in the Journal of Bisexuality: "GL vs. BT" available at http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~jweiss/glvsbt

By contrast, genderqueers strongly resist the notion that they are women or men. The usage at fact-index.com uses "heteronormativity" to refer to the assumption of binary gender, in addition to the assuption of heterosexual orientation.

Should it thus be expanded? If someone else has some guidance, all the better. I look forward to an interesting discussion.--Jillian Todd Weiss 10:57, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

The "criticism" section

Seeing no verification at all for the alleged "criticisms' of heteronormativity, I've taken those out entirely. Snowspinner 04:57, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I certainly will not object to its removal, but you do remember the debates, especially with Sam Spade, about these bits? If you don't, since I think you came in after the worst of them, check archive 2004, 1 and 2. I think you and I very much agree that a repetition of these debate would be entirely undesireable. No disagreement here, just cautioning. -- AlexR 17:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

LGBTI

Because it looks like a typo to an untrained reader, and the audience for an encyclopedia is an untrained reader. Perhaps if it were LGBTI instead, but having the unlinked I hanging at the end of it is just typographically unseemly. Snowspinner 04:43, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

Well, I made LGBTI a redir to LGBT, so it does not "look like a typo" any more. You know, both above and below we talk about Lesbians, Gays, Bi, Transgender and Intersex people, so using only LGBT here seems to be quite problematic. Once could expand the acronym, but I don't think that is necessary. It would be far preferable, though, to removing the I behind the LGBT. -- AlexR 17:43, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It seems the link must be "neutral".

Since only one link may be used, it can only have one form, and thus a representative form must be chosen. I argue LGBT is most representative of the acronyms.

We could find POVs which insist on a more thourough discernment of terms than "LGBTI" (such as "LGBTIQQA"), but the longer the acronym the less representative because of the greater possibility of variance ("LGBTQQIA", for example) and the lesser frequency of its use.

However, I changed the link to sexual minorities to avoid the acronym debate. Hyacinth 02:35, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm affraid I most certainly have to revert that, since on the one hand neither transgender people nor intersex people are a "sexual minority" and on the other hand there are sexual minorities that are not fundamentaly affected by heteronormativity, like BDSM people and the like. So actually using "sexual minority" would introduce a fourth group, and that introduction would be inaccurate into the bargain. Also, I already explained that the acronym seems to be used here so that one has not to write "lesbian, gay, bi, transgender and intersex people" (because these are the groups explicitly mentioned in the article), and that happens to be abbreviated LGBTI. There is also nothing un-neutral about that, so I do not understand the change at all. -- AlexR 03:43, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Out of sincere interest... what are intersex people then? Surely not a majority... Snowspinner 03:45, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Not a majority, no... the issue here was with the "sexual" of "sexual minority". Being intersexed has nothing to do with one's sexuality or sexual orientation, instead it is akin to a "third gender", a term which I have often heard intersexed individuals use to refer to themselves. The most accurate discription would probably be "Gender minority". Arcuras 21:05, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Recent vandalism

Though the vandal who keeps insisting that the term 'heteronormativity' doesn't exist is wrong (I mean, really, its use proves it exists), it is kind of funny that the link s/he provided, to dictionary.com ([12]), thinks you're looking for "to run mad after". Then again, maybe its just late and I'm getting rummy. BTW, it seems odd that a term that "doesn't exist" would get over 13,000 google hits: [13]. -Seth Mahoney 08:53, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you, but there is another point here. The term doesn't have a single definition, because it isn't in wide enough use. It seems to be one coined and used by a teeny tiny group of academics, widely divergently, whose students temporarily adopt a use of the term vaguely approximating that of their professors.

More on verifiability

I just came across this page. There's one reference. The stuff in the article really doesn't read like it comes from it.

I would like to see references for most assertions. At least one per paragraph. 'Cos right now it reads like original research. There's a pile of supporting links on this talk page, but if they're references they should be on the article. - David Gerard 19:40, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article isn't original research, but I'm with you as far as more references go - for all pages, not just this one. -Seth Mahoney 19:41, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I could add some references - anything in particular you'd like to see connected to a reference? -Seth Mahoney 19:42, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

This is a great article.

I'm a heterosexual - not even a "metrosexual". Geez, take a look at my apartment and you'll see that I'm not. However, I just wanted to say that this article is extremely convincing and well-written.

It has not changed my beliefs. I've rallied for gays in Cincinnati, Ohio (a very conservative place). I don't think that I am contributing much to the dialogue, but I want to let the community know that a "straight" man suppports this article 100%.

The main thing I have to contribute to the debate is that I don't like loud people. At present, there is a gay person in my office space who is loud and demands attention at every possible opportunity. I don't care that he's gay. Whatever he does outside the office is his own business. However, he seems to put on an act that involves unnecessary drama. He yells and screams to his "audience", including my team (by physical position).

I know lots of homosexuals that do not "flame". I know that maybe 30% (or less) of homosexuals find the need to be "flamers". This is not a deroratory term. It is merely an observattion. I know that some homosexuals employ the word "girlfriend" just to get a rise out of conservative heterosexual men. "Flamers" are hurting their own cause. It's perfect that everyone wants to be him/herself, but deliberatly engaging a "show" persona endangers the cause.

Believe me, I love to get the "homo-haters" into the light. Just understand me correctly. I know there is a place for "Just Jack". That place is not in the office. Just as formerly repressed and disadvantaged African-Americans do not call each other "nigga" in the office, so should drama queens refrain from drama at the office.

There is a place and time for drama queens to reignite the spark. That place is not at the office. Were I to engage my unrestrained self at work, I would be fired for hitting on too many girls and talking about sex too much. The same standard should be applied regardless of sexual orientation. --Axi0m 22:15, 23 May 2005 (UTC)Axi0m

One of the results of people trying to force other people to conform to their ideas of how individuals with male genitals and individuals with female genitals are supposed to behave is that they do lots of psychological damage -- even to unknown victims, maybe even including their own kids. People who have suffered attacks and have lived under the threat of attacks for long periods of time almost inevitably build defenses, and sometimes their defenses are not any more appropriate and effective than were the original attempts at controlling other people's business. It is very difficult for somebody to put down his/her defenses. It's like the true story of a gorilla in a zoo. I think it was a zoo in Chicago, but the location doesn't matter. This was back in the mid 20th century when most zoos kept animals in monotonos and cramped indoor cages. They had a large gorilla whom everybody liked. They decided that they would do the gorilla a big favor by building him an outdoor exercise on the other side of the wall to his cage. They built the outside fence and then they created a door in the wall of the cage, but to the end of his days the gorilla would never go out that door. The reason must have been that, having never been out there, he was afraid of the unknown. I had the same problem with a dog that I got from a Canine Rescue service. Somebody must have slammed her in a car door or some other door a number of times because you had to pull her through the door, and then when she decided she was going through she would make a mad dash -- often dragging me into the door frame and banging my head or shoulders. It took weeks or even months for her to learn that none of my doors were ever going to slam on her.

In the Dao De Jing (or Tao Te Ching if you prefer the old spelling) the Daoist sage says: "The good people I treat like good people. And the bad people I also treat like good people. In so doing, I acquire good." The same methodology was followed by Jesus in the story of the woman at the well. He didn't send her away and tell her to clean up her act, and then come back in five years to receive forgiveness. Instead, he forgave her on the spot, and in so doing he expressed his love and compassion. When you do that for a person you take away the need for them to be continually doing things either to defend themselves or prepare to defend themselves. Doing all that defending takes lots of one's time and energy, and when one no longer has to do it one finally has some resources left over with which one can start to grow.

I don't know enough about the people you're interacting with to be able to suggest how you might be able to create a security dome for them. That kind of thing pretty much depends on individual sensitivity to events as they unfold. But maybe it is worth repeating another bit of ancient wisdom. Characterizing somebody as X, Y, and even worse than that you're a rotten Z is in all cases except for the occasional saint likely to make the person more defensive and therefore more into doing whatever s/he was doing to "counterattack" in the first place. But sometimes it works to say, "When you say/do that kind of thing, this is how it makes me feel. If the other person's intent was not to make you feel that way, then you're already at least as far as first base. 金 (Kim) 06:58, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for not signing. I'm new to posting on Wikipedia, and I'm trying to learn all of the markup. Sad thing is, I'm a web developer.  ;)

Anyway, I appreciate your reference to the Tao Te Ching. That is one book, that were everyone to embrace, the world would be a much better place. Lao Tzu was a very wise man.

I also appreciate your point about defense mechanisms. I'm certain that this man has encountered much hardship because of his homosexuality. Were I to witness anyone bothering him, I'd take his side on principle, defending him with fists were it necessary. But I don't have to like him, and his behavior is unacceptable in a business setting.

At work, be yourself to the extent that it is not disruptive. He is not programming computers as my team is. His work, while very important, probably does not require the concentration level that does programming.

In a casual setting, I appreciate flamers very much. I do volunteer work for a local theatre that espouses gay rights more than any other in the city. Feminine gay men are a blast to be around at a bar, in the theatre, etc. However, there is a certain level of decorum that must be observed while at work. As I've mentioned above, were I let it to all hang out, I would be fired. Yet effiminate men are apparently permitted to engage their full gay persona, while our heterosexual / bisexual friends must limit themselves to business-appropriate diction.

Hell, I've kissed a man and enjoyed it. I'll kiss more men if I feel like it. I'd rather be with women, but I'm not disruptive. I know that the business world does not take kindly to improper etiquette. I'd have no less of a problem with this man were he a woman.

I'm not about to confront the poor guy. He's in a different division of the company, and I don't know what political fallout would ensue. I don't even know which guy he is. The point is that loud people suck. I would never infringe upon the sonic space of others without due cause - like My computer is on fire!

He plays his boombox throughout the day, and I don't honestly care if he is having sex with goats. I believe that herein lies the disconnect between mainstream America and the GLBT community.

Call me an accomodationist if you like, but there is an informal manner and there is business-speak. I engage in the latter, and expect nothing less from our gay brothers and sisters.

--Axi0m 22:47, 23 May 2005 (UTC)Axi0m

Article is very POV.

This article is little more than a carefully worded attack and criticism of so-called "heteronormativity", and that isn't even including the fact that the phrase itself seems to have been invented for use with a negative connotation. Information is presented as objective fact here but it's pretty obvious there's an underlying agenda.

Just listen to the comments of axiom and kim. This article seems to have been designed with the express purpose of promoting the view that males and females are arbitrary, opressive concepts, that there is no "right" way for either to behave, and the article encourages specific (read "alternative") modes of behavior. --Uthar Wynn 01 05:55, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a soapbox for GLBTIFMTAPZ people, and articles should conform to NPOV and have a certain standard of quality.

I used the fully expanded acronym so as not to leave any groups out. :) --Uthar Wynn 01 05:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the article is about explaining an existant concept that you basically do summarize. The question is what opposing points of view you would have included. I am unaware of any stinging critiques of heteronormativity. Normally this might lead one to suspect crankery, but with heteronormativity employed in a wealth of mainstream academic sources, I don't buy the crankery angle either. So if there are some countering viewpoints you'd like to see represented, please add them - with sources, of course. Snowspinner 06:32, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

• yawn* If this Uthar person would bother to dig through the archives of this talk page, we already had that debate. Several times, actually. Like the previous complaints, this one whines about the concept itself, not this article, and does not bother with any relevant arguments, either. So unless an argument (an actual argument, not an "I don't like this concept, therefore, any article that doesn't say it's BS is bad), and one that hasn't been debated to death, either, turns up, there is no reason whatever to put any sort of NPOV warning into the article. -- AlexR 07:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

That said, I bet we'd get this less often if the article were better referenced. ;) Snowspinner 15:31, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Yay! I'm glad someone else is pushing the referencing. -Seth Mahoney 00:25, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if you already had the debate. See the guide sections o"Wikipedia is not a democracy" and is not governed by "majority rule". Just because the majority of the people working on this article are GLBT or are supporters of revisionist beliefs on gender theory does not mean the article should serve merely as a propaganda tool for these groups. I'm re-instating the NPOV warning, there IS indeed dispute over the topic's objectivity, and until things are sorted out you should not remove it. Removing the NPOV warning just because you happen to like the articles slant is a unprofessional and, quite frankly, an immature way of doing things. --Uthar Wynn 01 14:14, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

You've been told what you need to do. Quit complaining and do it. Get out there, look up critiques of heteronormativity, and include them with references. -Seth Mahoney 14:53, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

True, the mere fact that we've had the debate before does not mean that the debate must be over. Again, if there are critiques of heteronormativity that you can cite that are not in the article, please add them. If there are not, though, the article is NPOV - all mainstream points of view for which references can be found are represented. The fact that you do not like the concept does not mean it's not NPOV, however - unless there are verifiable and notable objections, the article shouldn't cover them. Otherwise, they would be original research. Snowspinner 15:31, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Let's say that if a debate is re-opened again with the same arguments (or lack thereof), I'd say it is over - there is no need for endless repetitions of whiners who are not able to get together even one solid argument. Of course, if a solid argument (and new, or previously not throughly discussed) is made, the debate is open again, no question - only I don't see that this is the case here. -- AlexR 22:47, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

You know what? I'm obviously totally outnumbered here and so to avoid a long, protracted edit war (which will be the result) involving me vs. the kind of people who wrote this article, I think I'll just end it now. Remove the NPOV warning if you like, but it still will be very POV, claiming the "naturalistic fallacy" is, indeed, a fallacy, claiming that gender and gender roles are merely oppresive concepts put forth by "the man" to "keep down the gays". The article is very POV, it fails to present any sort of counter-arguments, and it is merely a propaganda tool for GLBTI gender-theory revisionsists and for feminists.

You can keep your queer little article (pun intended) just the way you like it for all I care. I just hope you realize it violates the NPOV standards of Wikipedia. --Uthar Wynn 01 00:42, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, OK, I've removed the tag, but I still hope you'll add some referenced material in the way of counterarguments. Snowspinner 00:59, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Concept, noun, adjective, what?

In the first paragraph it should be clear what this article is about. It is unclear. I read the article and found it to be:

• a contested concept
• an adjective for (some or all? real or postulated?) societies, and
• a label for a debate - all mixed together.

The article lacks clarity. Quotes with references would help too; since anyone can edit here, how else can one judge? 4.250.132.22 12:44, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Uthar Wynn 01, You must think us complete idiots. You state that you will leave the heteronormativity article alone, and then ten short hours later a 'new' user shows up whose comments just happen to include some of the articles you've vandalized before (like this one and the article about meconium) as well as your own talk page.

What an amazing coincidence!

Just because you make comments while pretending you are another person doing so, it does not make your points more valid. The way to win this argument is not by masquerading as different people who agree with your unsupported belief, because even if a belief is popular that says nothing about its truthfulness. To win this argument simply do what others here have already said: quote reliable primary sources that support your opinion. NickGorton 15:04, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, he's right here. The article does need more sources. And primary sources aren't what to go for - secondary and tertiary sources are much preferred, because they prevent original research better. Snowspinner 15:36, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

My comment was not about the sources statement, but rather the argumentum ad populum. If you are going to say something, say it. If I am the only person who holds an opinion, I do not impersonate others to give my beliefs the appearance of popularity or consensus. If I believe I am right I simply defend my arguments. To do otherwise is not only poor rhetorical technique, but quite simply dishonest.

Also while I agree that the sources comment may be a valid criticism, the rest of the points he made are nonsense. It is reasonably clearly written. It is not a reasonably contested subject (well at least not in academia... trailer parks in the rural south excepted.) Which of course makes the 'debate' point also a non-starter. NickGorton 20:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I've tried to get the proponent crap out of the article

I've edited this article to try to get rid of what some commenters have referred to as "new scholarship," and I rather think is some random academic trying to get their own bizarre theories included in an encyclopedia.

For this to be a real wikipedia article, it needs to stop advancing the theory, and only describe it.

I do not think your unsourced and wildly POV additions to the article add anything, and in fact I think you are largely guilty of what you're accusing the article of. I will be reverting you until you provide sources for some of your assertions, particularly, well, all of them. Snowspinner 18:57, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

First off, yes there are some statements in this article that could use some touching up. However, Snowspinner is corerect. The changes were largely POV and deleted far more context than they added. The ensuing revert war was regretable, but the lack of discussion of the many points which were injected leads me to classify these anon edits as bad-faith. -Harmil 19:14, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I think if you scroll up, you'll see that there has been repeated discussions about the deficincies of this article - indeed, there was a cricicism section at one point that Snowspinner simply deleted.

You may note also that her first edit was to add use of the term "hemaphrodite" - which is correct - in preference to the term "intersexual" - which is a POV of heteronormativity proponents.

His/her claims of innocence are belied if you look at the comment and change record here.

No, I'm sorry. Your changes include deleting inter-language links, de-linking the see-also section and introducing a huge amount of highly charged POV content. Bring your points here, one by one for discussion, and I'm sure we can work them out, but the wholesale hack-and-slash of this article cannot be allowed to stand. -Harmil 19:28, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I certainly didn't delete the inter-language links or de-link the see-also section. I think your mistaking a last sloppily-done cut-and-paste attempt to revert the article for the actual edit, which was several Snowspinner reverts back.

The hack-and-slash, by the way, has exactly as much right to be here as the original, which had no sources, was poorly drafted, and defied ordinary conventions like the use of the English language.

1. If you're "attempts to revert" need to be "sloppily-done", then there's a real problem here. There is nothing at all urgent about Wikipedia.
2. No, poor edits have no "right to be here". If your edit does not improve the quality of the artice, regardless of how you feel about the original, then your edit does not belong.
3. If you're unhappy about the lack or sources or of particular terms as you've mentioned above, you might try making very specific, surgical edits, with edit descriptions that justify / source them.
4. Creating an account / signing your comments on talk pages / threading your comments appropriately will help your case and allow people to discuss things with you more easily.

-Harmil 19:50, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Harmil - for the third time, if you go back through the change list, you will see that that is EXACTLY what I had started doing, making surgical changes to particular sections for specific reasons. I stopped when I discovered that SnowSpinner was reverting the changes - even grammatical and dictionary fixes - WITHIN A MINUTE OF THEIR BEING POSTED. Before he/she could even have had a chance to read them.

Snowspinner - STOP IT

This appears to be an article whose only purpose is to advance the personal views of Snowspinner.

He/she has repeatedly taken out any criticism of her views, and is repeatedly reverting the page to reflect only her edits.

This article, as he/she wrote it, is outrageously POV, poorly drafted, almost entirely unsourced, and fails to satisfy even the most basic objectivity requirements for inclusion in an encyclopedia.

Actually, I didn't write most of the article, and I've been complaining that it needs more sources for well over a year now. Your version is notable, in my mind, mostly for being even worse than the current one. Snowspinner 19:16, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

First off, yes there are some statements in this article that could use some touching up. However, Snowspinner is corerect. The changes you (anon) made were largely POV and deleted far more context than they added. The ensuing revert war was regretable, but the lack of discussion and quality of edits seems to indicate a lack of desire to actually "edit" and more of a desire to "enforce" a point of view. Anon, please review WP:NOT before making further changes. -Harmil 19:20, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I think if you look through the change history and discussion here, you'll find quite the opposite. The bulk of my changes were straight dictionary corrections - what does the word "normal" mean, what is a "hemaphrodite" etc.

This article, as snowspinner put it, is almost entirely unsourced and entirely POV. Since he/she has removed the critcism sections and even basic dictionary corrections, the claims of innocence as false.

A solution is to delete the bulk of the article, leave in the opening and the sources, and just dump the rest.

The criticism section you're speaking of, if I remember it, was about a year ago, and was an unsourced piece of drek that was obviously original research. As I have said repeatedly, anybody who wishes to add sourced criticisms of the concept is welcome to. People who want to add their own disagreements with the concepts should go get them published in a notable journal first, and then come back. Snowspinner 19:33, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

That's an absurd response. The article now is entirely unsourced and drek. If you have a problem with unsourced drek - delete the dammed article. These responses of yours are attempts to deflect the obvious fact that the article reflects YOUR views and your are acting to protect them.

Please sign your talk page entries by adding -~~~~ at the end.

Have you looked at the article? It currently contains more sources than most other wikipedia articles. -Seth Mahoney 17:59, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Adding actual criticism

So, the criticism section seemed to be mostly a criticism of the critics, and also made an incorrect assertion: that proponents of the term were obviously LGBTI. This is certainly not true, and I think some conservative gays would object to the terminology, while many liberally minded straights would find it valuable (and of course, sexual minorites are allowed to form their own opinions as well).

None the less, I have attempted to show how current events have brought the (otherwise relatively accedemic) terminology to the foreground, and on what basis it is citicized. I still don't really like that section, and I think it needs some meatier criticism than I can provide, but I think the change is for the better (i.e. it provides actual criticism rather than a laundry list of the forms of homophobia). -Harmil 23:41, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Modified negative verb of attribution, "fear," for NPOV reasons. Rewrote the two sentences to retain meaning. Interesting article. -Globaledits 23:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Is There Anyone?

At the moment this article is entirely unsourced, and a POV for a tiny segment of academic gays.

At the risk of feeding the troll, what evidence do you have of the tininess of the segment? What evidence do you have that all people who use the concept are gay? Snowspinner 22:38, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Is there anyone other than Snowspinner who thinks its body should be retained? Is there anyone who has even a slight argument for doing so?

Unless someone comes up with a good reason not to, I intend to: 1) De-POV the language in the opening paragraph. 2) Delete everything between the opening paragraph and the links at the bottom.

Here is an excellent reason not to - I will block you for vandalism. Snowspinner 00:40, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Please sign your posts by adding -~~~~ at the end.

I think the entire article should be maintained, and that more sources should be added. Your comment that it is entirely unsourced is false - it at the moment contains five external references within the text, as well as two books at the end. This is far more sources than the average wikipedia article contains.

I also wonder what exactly it is you have a problem with - is it the way the article is written, or is it the material the article covers? I can't really see how it could be the way the article is written - it contains numerous "the concept is used in the discussion of...", "is a way of describing...", and so on. Nowhere in the article does it say, "heteronormativity is a true concept accurately describing several of the ways in which our society marginalizes and oppresses people" (which, by the way, it is).

To take this one step further, I can't see what complaint you could possibly have with the subject, either (though I can guess). Our society (among others) does expect there to be two genders that correspond to two biological sexes, and expects certain behaviors specific to each gender, and these behaviors include sexual behaviors. There's nothing really to argue with there.

-Seth Mahoney 17:50, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

"Is there anyone who has even a slight argument for [keeping the article text]"

Well, I guess that would be me. I've contributed to said text, and while I think it needs work, I also think that it covers an important concept well enough that it should be improved rather than removed.

This article is hard to write well for Wikipedia. It requires that we write about a fundamentally POV topic which in turn describes a point of view in an NPOV way. This would strain the skills of most Wikipedians, but I think that the kaizen approach works best here. That is, evolutionary change rather than revolutionary change. -Harmil 21:32, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Ahem: Snowspinner, look at Harmil's comments to the previous posts. I'm posting here first - you're abusing your position if you block it for vandalism. This simply reiterates the point - you don't care in the slightest about the integrity of the article, and you're repeatedly resetting it only because it reflects your own views.

Only one commenter here - Harmil - has actually bothered to say anything in defense of this article, and the farthest he/she is willing to go is that its "hard to write."

No-one has said anything to contradict the fundamental points raised by me and numerous other commenters on this article - That is lacks any sourcing for its ideas (while it does have citations, all but one are of the "see also" and "you may be interested in" variety), or even for the idea that 'hetereonormativity' is a term with an accepting meaning even in a single field, and that its primary purpose is to demean and degrade hemaphrodites and heterosexuals as, respectively, persons not worthy of medical treatment and rapacious and violent hate-mongers.

My own views being what? I mean, I hate to break it to you, but I'm a heterosexual who doesn't actually do gender studies as my main or secondary concentration. So, you know, the personal attacks - kinda missing the mark. I agree the article needs citations. If you look at it, there are comments embedded in the article noting where the sources are most needed. But past that, frankly, you're dead wrong. "Heteronormativity" is not a term created to demean and degrade people. It's absurdly and viciously POV to say it is, and you don't have a single source to go on - unsurprising, considering how obvious it is that you're a troll without a shred of evidence or fact to back your views up.

If you want to rewrite the article, rewrite it to something with sources. If you delete information wholesale or put your unsourced POV back in the article, I will block you for vandalism. If you make further personal attacks against contributors by asserting that they don't care about the integrity of articles or are reflecting their own views - particularly when you have no idea what those views are, I will block you. In general, in fact, have a look at WP:DICK and take it to heart. Snowspinner 22:38, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Snowspinner, I never suggested or implied that you were gay. I said explicitly that the article reflects your views - and as you have now made clear, the article in fact does reflect your views. My guess was that your an academic "lit critter."

Your sourcing position is totally contradictory. If the standard here should be sourcing _alone_, then the bulk of the article (except for the opening definition and its references) should be deleted because THERE ARE NO SOURCES.

It would be impossible for me - or anyone - to provide a sourced REWRITE of an article about the meaning of the term "heteronormativity." This is because THE TERM IS NOT COMMON ENOUGH TO HAVE DEVELOPED A FIXED MEANING. There ARE NO SOURCES from which a sensible article about the term could be derived.

Much of the article, by the way is not even ABOUT heteronormativity - its about the WORLD from a heteronormativity-theory-proponent's perspective. Consider these sentences from the article:

"Many governments and official agencies have also been criticized as having heteronormative systems that classify people into "male" and "female" genders in problematic ways."

Huh? Criticized by whom? Criticized seriously? Did anyone read or care about the criticism? For having the words "male" and "female" on a form? As it reads now, the article endorses the "criticism."

"Because most governments only allow heterosexual marriages, official gender changes can have implications for related rights and privileges, such as child custody, inheritance, and medical decision-making."

Again - huh? Inheritance laws haven't taken gender into account in Western countries for a Century. In "medical decision-making"? The clear jist here is "governments are heteronormative bigots against transsexuals." But there's no content to the claim, as well as no source. Its a description of the world (an erroneous and quite absurd one at that) from a heteronormative point of view, not a description of the term heteronormativity.

You keep hitting sourcing as though it were the only criticism of the article. It isn't. The article is also radically POV - indeed, it consists of the world from a heteronormativity-theory perspective. You haven't said a word about that, and have simply ignored it.

A good example - the first change of mine that you reverted (judging by the timing, apparently without taking the time to have read it) concerns its discussion of hemaphroditism. That is the correct - dictionary and medical - term. The term "intersexual," to the extent it is used by anyone at all, appears to be restricted to heteronormativity theorists. And hemaphroditism is a well-understood and largely resolvable medical condition, something the article ignored entirely, presenting only the heternormativity-theory of hemaphroditism. (One which, I would suggest to you, is deeply bigoted and offensive to hemaphrodites, their families, and their doctors.) The article is drafted with a conscious purpose of displacing ordinary language with lit-crit vomit buzzwords.

That is NOT an appropriate use of the wiki.

My suggestion, again, is to LEAVE IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE TERM, and dump the garbage in the middle which is both 1) Sourceless; and 2) An attempted description of the world, not of the term.

Bullshit. The term most certainly does have a fixed meaning, and it's in more common usage than you say. The appropriate response to an article that doesn't have enough sources is NOT to dump the whole article - it's to find the sources. The term is quite common theory circles. The fact that it is not something that the rest of the world has particularly criticized does not mean that the article is POV. The article would be POV if there were criticism and commentary that it did not reflect. There aren't. Punctuated equilibrium doesn't have a lot of material on Creationist rebuttals of the concept. Why not? Because Creationists largely haven't spent a lot of breath on that concept. Likewise, if there haven't been a lot of criticisms of heteronormativity, then the circles in which it is used - academic ones - are going to get the bulk of play in the article, and this is not POV. Snowspinner 00:11, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Snowspinner, if you think it has a fixed meaning, you're POV - because you're ignoring both the content of the article as written (which acknowledges divergence) and the comments here. I agree the term is common in lit crit circles - but those circles are very, very small and I would suggest that many of them don't intersect each other. Again, the problem with saying "find the sources" is that they don't exist. Again, I have not suggested deleting the whole article - just the unsourced, garbagey middle. For a lit-critter, you are having a lot of trouble reading criticism.

Your point about criticism and commentary is well-taken, but misses the point. There is very little criticism of lit-crit anymore, because no-one outside those tiny little circles cares about it anymore. The problems in each sequential lit crit fad have been evidence on their faces. And even to the extent there has been criticism of hetereonormativity - the article isn't ABOUT THE TERM. The article is ABOUT THE WORLD so the correct source for criticism is contradictory ideas about the world.

The article certainly ignores any evidence or suggestion that the world is not full of homophobic bigots, that the word "hemaphrodite" has a meaning, that it is a medical condition, and so forth.

I notice you failed to respond to the vast bulk of what I wrote, which again establishes the point that is fairly obvious to anyone who's been following this: The article is YOUR POV, and that's why you're defending it.

Finally (for this round) your point about who gets the "bulk of play" is just silly. Flat-earth proponents do not get the "bulk of the play" in an article about flat-Earthers, and that would be POV.

The article's "is-ought" and naturalism sections, now thankfully deleted (I hope you won't mind that I take credit for problematizing them and causing their deletion) were examples of logic, absurd on its face, presented as commonly accepted fact.

Now, if we could just get rid of the "examples in society" section, and re-write the "patriarchy" section to note that this term is itself lit-crit-o-babble, we'll be getting somewhere.

Anon user: please sign your talk page posts by adding -~~~~ at the end.

Again, have you read the article? There are these little things in there that look like: [1], and they're hyperlinks, and they lead to sources when you click on them. The article body has four of them, and an additional one at the end. That is more than most wikipedia articles. Yes, like all wikipedia articles, it needs more, but it already has more than most.

As far as the article discussing the world from a heteronormative viewpoint, well, duh! That's a good way to explain what the theory is about. It doesn't mean "you should accept this view", it means "if you're talking or reading works that incorporate heteronormativity, this is what you're likely to encounter." Just saying "X was criticized for only having 'male' and 'female' checkboxes" doesn't mean the same as "X is bad for only having 'male' and 'female' checkboxes". Get a grip

For the record, I fully support you, Snowspinner, in banning this user if this crap continues.

-Seth Mahoney 00:16, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Seth, that's a very silly position to take, on two fronts. First, if you don't think the criticism of the government for having two checkboxes was meant to imply that the government was bad for having two checkboxes, you need to have your head checked.

Please sign your talk page posts by adding -~~~~ at the end.

You would do well to note the difference between describing something and allying with it. Yes, from the perspective of heteronormativity, the government was bad for doing that. No, that doesn't mean that just because the article meantions this sort of criticism, the article is saying the government is bad for doing that. -Seth Mahoney 01:28, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Second, I note how quick you and SnowSpinner - the defenders of this tripe - are with the "ban" button.

Yup, at least with you. -Seth Mahoney 01:28, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

When the primary criticism, and prevailing public opinion, of lit-crit theory is that it bears a deep underlying affinity with and connection to fascism, don't you think that's a dangerous position to take?

The prevailing public opinion of heteronormativity is, I suspect, "What the hell is that?" Snowspinner 00:37, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Who has made this criticism? -Seth Mahoney 01:28, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

And so the truth comes out: To the extent "heteronormativity" has a fixed meaning, it is a pejorative used to describe persons who oppose the present fad of attacking the English language as bigoted, a project nearly everyone has by this point accepted as a misguided and oppressive one.

Pardon me for saying so, but with your last response, I think its fairly obvious that this debate is over, and that you've lost. The "examples in society" section goes tonight.

Can you source your edits? If not, then someone will revert them. - jredmond 00:51, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

The edits in question will be deletion of material that has no sourcing.

I find this article very informative. The fact that it is a wee bit academic is only a small sin. Haiduc 01:58, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

A framework for debate

Let's try to be more constructive about the debate, here. I think there are a few things we could do to make all of this discussion a bit more productive:

1. Avoid comments which focus more on other editors than the text at hand (yep, I'm violating that rule right now, hopefully for the last time).
2. Cite specific sections of text by name, and even by quotation where possible. Avoid generalities so that we can focus on what, if any, changes are needed.
3. Rather than simply pointing out a problem with a section of text, propose an alternative where possible. This moves debate along more quickly, and makes it less abstract.
4. If you are concerned about sourcing, please find some sources and bring them to the table. Your library and the Web are excellent resources. University libraries may have a better selection of scientific journals.

Hopefully, we can move this conversation along, make any changes that we feel are needed, and move on to other areas of Wikipedia. I don't know about you, but I have a ton of other things to work on. Thanks! -Harmil 11:55, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Harmil, I've made some changes that I think are rather helpful. I intend to make some more to the concept section (that "bovine" nonsense has to go.)

But your points here are rather, frankly, missing the point.

We have an article here that fails to provide a sensible explanation of the concept. (Missing, for example, is any note that the term is sometimes used to refer to anti-homosexual ideas, and sometimes about male and female gender norms.)

Instead (less so now, but entirely until yesterday) it consists of an elaborate, poorly drafted, rather absurd, and poorly sourced claim that the universe is heteronormative and evil.

And we have an admin who, until last night, automatically reverted any changes made to the text (before reading them!) and threatened to ban anyone who made more.

Large chunks of the article were (and some still are) indefensible as written, and impossible to source because the claims were themselves incorrect, and the subject of the article inadequately developed for sources to exist. And we had an admin who resisted and changes to it, threatening those who attempted them. (unsigned Anon 208.194.97.9)

Ok, we've reverted several recent comments by anon, but let's be clear on what those comments attempt to contribute, and what we see as the value of the current language, so that we can begin to build consensus:

• Heteronormative theorists are independant of heteronormativity as a way of describing society. We don't have to say "H. theorists suggest that H. means..."
• "intersexual" is, according to Google, a fairly well used term, and no, it's not a synonym for "hermaphrodite" (it's a broader category).
• Language like "Thus, it is claimed" is not needed. This is an article about a way of describing society, so it is OK to say, "H. is a term which means...." not "H. is a term which claims to mean..."
• "some feminists" OK, this change I actually like and want to put back in. Let's discuss that.
• "Defense of heteronormative structures" => "Critcism of Heteronormativity Theory" I like this change. Thoughts?
• Addition of the Jada Pinkett Smith quote. Not a bad idea, though it should be formatted.
• Addition of link: http://www.queerday.com/2005/mar/07/jada_pinkett_smith39s_heteronormative_harvard_lecture_criticized.html "only uses" This is not bad. I could go with that. Are we sure it's true?
• Wholesale deletion of the rest of the article: Absolutely NOT. Suggest changes if you like.

• Of course it [the claim that the Jada Pinkett Smith incident is the only use of the term outside of academia -me] is not true, and a simple google search would show that - be carefull, though, that might lead t--o information, the greatest danger to stupid prejudices known to humans. Oh, and it would really be advisable if the participants in this debate would sign their comments, so that other people actually can follow this "debate".
• And give a reason for those suggestions, too. And start digging through the archives of this page, because it is tiresome to have to read the same BS over and over again. -- AlexR 06:15, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I just moved your comments down to the end. Inline responses work well in email, but I was actually trying to maintain a flow of concepts, above. If you want me to re-format the list as a vote with room for discussion, we can do that, though.

Also, I know the anon poster is annoying you. I get that and sympathize, however, do keep the policy against personal attacks in mind when calling someone's comments "bullshit". Reverting bad edits is one thing, but don't add rudeness to the mix.

Ok, so I did do a search on Google, and honestly I don't find any other references to the term. It appears in LGBTI-run conferences, academic activist writing, and in a few blogs that are referencing those. The Smith incident appears to be the one and only time that the term crossed intot he mainstream and was used by such diverse outlets as the Harvard Crimson, Fox NEWS and the various wire services. I think that's an important point to note in the article, and the anon editor as done us a service by bringing it to our attention. -Harmil 11:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Google is useful, but it isn't necessarily an infallible sage. Heteronormativity is often discussed and mentioned in the circles I live in, which have nothing to do with conferences or activist writing. Ambi 12:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anyone was talking about dinner table chat, when we talk about the term not being used outside of these areas, but if you have citations outside of the academic and social niches discussed above, please do let us know! Thanks. -Harmil 20:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Let's say, for the sake of funsies, that the term is used exclusively in academic/activist circles (the two overlap, but aren't the same). Why, exactly, might this matter? I'm not being flippant here. Some discussion on this point might help to outline a future course for this article. -Seth Mahoney 22:23, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

The reason it matters is, IMHO, entirely linked to the edit that we are discussing here. The edit noted that the Smith speech controversy was the first, and so far, only time that the word had hit the public consciousness. That is significant, and if true, should be put back in (it was removed because it was part of an edit that deleted most of the article). -Harmil 22:54, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Awesome. I think there may be a case for this statement, on a large-scale level, but there have been several ways that heteronormativity has been recognized on a smaller level, one example being the incorporation of non-gender-specific restrooms into some workplaces and public areas, and another being an elimination of the "Please Check One: _ Male _ Female" secions on many forms. -Seth Mahoney 23:08, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

And what do they use instead? _Male _Female _Animal _Plant ? Or do they write: Please write down your "Gender". Don't use more than 255 characters. LOL --Benedikt 13:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

You write it in, or they have _Male _Female _Decline to say or they just don't ask. I'm sure you would find it less funny and more annoying if you were born neither clearly male nor female. -Seth Mahoney 18:49, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

There is another issue here too. Even if heteronormativity is a term used up until recently in fairly exclusively academic/activist circles that does not invalidate the concept (nor even indicate that it is not within the consciousness of people who are neither gay-for-pay nor college students.) That is, my eleven year old niece, who is neither, and who is not familiar with the term has discussed with me examples of the concept in action and has even noted that there is a tendency for society to be heteronormative – though she didn't use that term.

But then even before the term homosexual was in common parlances, there were people who felt and acted on strong same sex attraction. So just because a term that describes something may not be in the common lexicon, that does not mean that the idea is not out there in society. All that the term does is place a name on the concept. It does not indicate the the concept is a new idea.

If my (admitedly very bright) pre-teen niece can pick up on this, you cannot tell me that the first time (non-academic/non-activist) people in society were aware that heteronormativity exists was after Ms Smith made her speech.NickGorton 05:41, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I think there is an assumption being made on the part of some folks that there's a value judgement being made here. There is not. If the term "heteronormativity" first hit the public after the Smith speech, the that's notable, and should be put back in (two of us reverted it at the same time because it was part of larger vandalism). I don't think it weakens the article or implies that no one had noticed that there were two and only two icons on bathroom doors or that transexuals were not allowed on many sports teams, or that gays advanced more rapidly in business if they kept their closet doors shut, etc. It just means that the term was not part of the general public's discourse on the topic until recently, and since the Smith incident the term has not re-surfaced (again, except for the academic/social niche in which it was created). This could mean that it's not a good word to use if one wants to capture public attention (I tend to feel that way, but that's a POV), or it could just mean that the public is so entrenched in the status quo that there is a tendancy to ignore such input. -Harmil 14:58, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I would ask two questions:

1) why can't terms that are purely in academia be in an encyclopedia that contains over half a million entries?

2) is this same standard applied across wikipedia, or only to those articles that piss off the neanderthals?

For example, are we to nix (or highly qualify) the entries on Vexillology, Information entropy, Combinatorial search, the Equatorial paradox, and Neurophenomenology just because they are further out of the public eye than heteronormativity? Moreover, did heteronormativity become somehow more legitimate than Neurophenomenology because the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire's wife talked about it? Topical legitimacy is determined more by what Paris Hilton says than what John Kenneth Galbraith says?

Sorry. That's not hot.

Or is it that this article is analyzed at a higher standard than the rest of wikipedia simply because the concepts that it names and discusses make some redneck hicks feel uncomfortable? I'm all for NPOV, but that should be combined with a healthy dose of perspective here. That perspective should be that all active academic disciplines are going to produce new ideas, name and discuss concepts that while they existed before where heretofore not formally analyzed, and sometimes point out some really nasty and unpleasant facts to society. This is no excuse for claiming that those new ideas, newly named phenomena, and unpleasant facts are not real or not important.

Did the open source article need a warning when it was first written in 2001 because it was something that was not well known outside of geeky academia and was just some liberal commie pinko crap that Eric Raymond and some other social infarcts who see duct tape as a fashion accessory came up with to hawk their stupid ideas about free beer... or speech... or whatever? Or is there a different standard that is being applied here, simply because we are being intellectually scrupulous and over-analyzing it after some college freshman in the Young Republican's discovered Wikipedia?

Sometimes being too scrupulously intellectually honest is not a good thing. Sometimes you just gotta tell the trolls to shove the nonsense they heard on the Faux News Network where they'll need a skilled endoscopist to retrieve it. Don't let them weaken this article by overqualifying it so that the concept can continue to be dismissed as some uber-PC nonsense which it is not. NickGorton 15:47, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Nick. I think you've articulately summed up what a lot of us have been feeling. -Seth Mahoney 16:51, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

"why can't terms that are purely in academia be in an encyclopedia that contains over half a million entries?" -NickGorton

Nick, please go back and re-read my comment and tell me where I ever suggested that this article be removed, cut down, or made to speak against its current topic? I simply suggested putting back a comment which is accurate. -Harmil 18:52, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

As for your question about open source: yes, it certainly did need to be stated that very few people outside of certain circles used such software. It's important to make it clear what the scope of a topic is, and just as with open source, such clarifications do not harm or slow the growth of the meme the represent. -Harmil 18:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I think this is way out of bounds. Not only did open source not need such a warning, as of December 25, 2001 [14], it didn't have one, and there's no suggestion on the talk page that anyone thought such a warning would be appropriate. The sad fact is that the article was never controversial enough to warrant anything like a "this term is of limited use" sort of statement - it seems like the only reason it is being proposed here is because some people want it to remain in limited use. -Seth Mahoney 21:11, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

I understand that you do not think the article should be deleted. However, the majority of my comments were about the over-qualification of the topic. And no, that is not just inserting a 'true' statement. For example, that evolution is a theory and will never be a scientific fact is a true statement. However when the creationist trolls state “Evolution is not a fact, it is just a theory” that is not a 'simple fact.' You must not only look at the manifest content of a statement, but also the latent content. The manifest content of that statement is that Evolution is not a scientific fact, but is a theory. The latent content uses the vernacular meaning of the word 'theory' as an untested guess and 'fact' as something supported by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. Thus the latent content implies that evolution is a guess that is not supported by the overwhelming preponderance of data. This is not true. This is not a 'simple fact.' It is using rhetorical trickery to advance an unsupported claim in the guise of a 'simple fact.'

You are suggesting something very similar here – or rather are suggesting we let a similar troll do this. We all understand that this is a concept, like many of the others I listed that is really something mostly used in academic or activist circles. We all know that that being something not discussed in 'People' magazine does not hurt its credibility or intellectual validity. However that is the manifest content. The latent content of that statement is what will be read by others who are not intellectually sophisticated and who may read this article: that the concept of heteronormativity is nonsense that was just invented by the liberal intellegentsia to foist one of their commie theories on us normal people. I bet the feminazis or the faggots are behind this too. What a buncha bunk!

And that is the point. Wikipedia is not an academic, but a popular source. If this qualification is inserted, that's how it will be read. And that is not appropriate latent content for this article. Simply saying that the manifest content is a 'true statement' is not enough.NickGorton 02:23, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

You are suggesting, as far as I can tell, sacrificing truth (this term was used in the popular press to describe one incident) for political safety from the assaults of those who will not be detered either way. Let me propose an alternate course. Here's a suggested wording:

The most common criticizm is evident in a March 11, 2005 FOX News story, which refered to the debate over the claim that a comment by actress Jada Pinkett Smith at Harvard University was heteronormative as, "politically correct nuttiness." [15] The charge of political correctness is aimed at the use of the terminology to de-heteronormalize social interaction. This incident marked the terms first and (to date) only major use in the popular media.

This is what happened and why it was so important to heteronormative discourse. Why would it be a problem at all?

As for the troll in question. I say ignore it. It's a troll, and the worst thing you can do to a troll is ignore its antics. The facts are fairly clear here: this one particular bit of text, regardless of its source is true and helpful to anyone researching this topic.

Now, about open source. I think you misunderstood my statements, and it's not really worth belaboring. Suffice to say that I would not have used the words "limited use" to describe the term "open source" but to describe the programs that were "open source" and every document I ever read about open source software (or free software before the term was coined) dating back to the 80s would very specifically call out the limited use of the programs in question (in fact [16] goes so far as to list speicifc examples). Sometimes they would do this as part of evangelizing the software, and sometimes simply to describe where and how it was used. Again, minor side-point, and not terribly helpful. -Harmil 07:13, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Harmil, how about the following (below) re-working of the passage. This sets the 'criticisms' in context. I do not believe this is any more POV than scientists setting the 'criticisms' of creationists in context as well. That is, you can state what criticisms are, but if they do not stand up to intellectual scrutiny, there is nothing that says you cannot describe them in this manner. This acknowledges the existence of such objections, states who made them, and then discloses the underlying motivations as well as logical errors within them.

That is, you can write about the holocaust deniers without giving undue credence to their crack-pot nonsense. NickGorton 16:11, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Defense of heteronormative structures

Heteronormativity is a way of describing social structures built around a certain gender model. Challenges to the label heteronormative may result from a belief that the description of a structure as heteronormative implies that the 'normative' structure is inherently wrong. One of the most common criticisms of the concept of heteronormativity is that it is 'politically correct.' The most well known recent example of this was a March 11, 2005 FOX News story, which referred to the debate over a heteronormative comment made by actress Jada Pinkett Smith at Harvard University as, "politically correct nuttiness." [17] This description of a term as political correctness may be applied for a number of reasons. When used as a criticism, it often implies that the use of such carefully chosen wording and terms is a form of repression of speech. This implies that the articulation of important concepts is prevented or hindered by 'politically correct' regulation of speech by intellectual elites.

However, the basic fear that this criticism represents is that those who describe current social structures as heteronormative may wish to undermine the fundamental assumption that sex and gender are naturally dichotomous. Critics may also fear that those who challenge heteronormativity render moot any justifications for heteronormative social structures such as the appeal to natural law, or certain religious notions. Such people may actually consider departures from the heteronormative structure (e.g. LGBTI – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) as abnormal, diseased, or immoral. Therefor, when social structures are described or criticized as being heteronormative, this may be seen as a challenge not only to the structures themselves, but the underlying religious and philosophical justifications for the normality and appropriateness of those structures.

The range of possible responses to individuals and groups who depart from heteronormative experience ranges from tolerance, pity, shunning, attempts to 'help' members of these groups gain normalcy through compassionate or even forceful means, and ultimately even violence. Events which have brought the idea of heteronormativity to the foreground of social discourse, such as the Jada Pinkett Smith speech do not necessarily represent such treatment. Ms Pinkett Smith's comments were not homophobic in that they did not represent active criticism of LGBTI people. However, her comments were heteronormative in that they made the assumption that normal relationships are only those which occur between a man and a woman. Critics of her speech as heteronormative stated, “Our position is that the comments weren’t homophobic, but the content was specific to male-female relationships.” [18]

NickGorton, I'd rather not take this conversation down the road of hyperbolic comparison to the holocaust, so let's just stop there. Meanwhile, your edit above includes the wording, The most well known recent example of this. This seems to deny that this is the only example of this word showing up [19]

We're not talking about a rarely used word, we're talking about a word that was exposed to the general public once, and if they blinked, they probably missed it. Now, it's a sound theory that should be represented on WP, and there is a lot of good that can come of it being more widely used, but to suggest by ommision that this is a word that is used even remotely as widely as (for example) the phrase, open source software, would be quite wrong. My mother knows what open source software is as do many of my non-technical friends, but no one I have spoken to so far (gay, straight or bi) has ever heard of this term. That's substantial and valuable information that we must not hide because we fear that that fact will be used against us. -Harmil 16:42, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Harmil, you know very well that I was referring to the two most ludicrous denial type critiques known to man: creationists and holocaust deniers. This had nothing to do with the holocaust itself, but rather that was used as an example to demonstrate the problems with accepting every crackpot on the web's criticism as valid and deserving equal airing.

Would you have preferred I spoke about KKK-wing-nuts, flat-earthers, or Scientologists? If so, just go back and replace the crackpot of your choice in my comments and re-read it. The meaning remains the same.

That is, you would not expect an entry on evolution to simply state the creationist dogma without refutation. Similarly you would not expect an entry in the holocaust to mention these crackpots with any kind of manifest or latent legitimacy. This is not about the holocaust and you know it. So stop using that as an excuse to ignore my actual point.

This is about whether or not every kooky nutbrained critique deserves equal time. And like I do not believe 'creation science' should be given equal time as a legitimate alternative theory to evolution, and like I believe the holocaust deniers do not deserve equal time in a history text, I do not believe that this needs to be presented as anything other than the ignorant knee-jerk response that is typical of the Faux News Network. Hell, FWIW, if there is something that FNN calls 'politically correct nuttiness', even knowing nothing else except that fact, I would lay dollars to donuts that it was actually a valid idea.

With regard to my wording, if you will read it, the most well known recent example refers to the critique of heteronormativity. And of all the critiques of heteronormativity, that is certainly the most well know. I did not say 'well known critiques of all the example in the popular literature.' You are reading that into it.

But again, it all comes down to whether or not you are willing to let the latent content of this page scream in bold neon lights: caution: what you read here is not something that normal down to earth people believe, but its just some other crap from some university full of faggots. Because that is exactly what it does: FNN calls this 'pc nuttiness,' no one ever heard of it till JPS gave a speech that upset some whiney queers because it didn't include them, and its all a bunch of mental masturbation produced over a 5 dollar decaf soy Latte by a bunch of gay-for-pay and college students.

Or you could continue to ignore the latent content that this troll has been nicely able to insert and just ignore my points with a distracting claim that referring to holocaust deniers hits some sort of wikipedia line where all discourse must be shut down. But rather than that, I would prefer you actually answer my points and tell me why we must keep speech that has obviously insulting and denigrating latent content in this article? NickGorton 20:42, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Please ignore the troll. We've reverted his edits, and he's gone. What I'm interested in is the specific point, which you have not responded to. This term has been used in a way that the mainstream media and thus the general public would have been aware of once. If mentioning that damages the case for heteronormativity in some way, then there never was a case (and I believe there is such a case... but that's POV, and I'm not going to insert that POV). No entry on Wikipedia should be held up to a less harsh light than that of truth and rigorous, informed, logical debate. Period. Ever. That's my opinion, but policies such as WP:NOT and Wikipedia:Tutorial (Keep in mind) would seem to indicate that it's opinion that is built into the editorial structure of Wikipedia, no? -Harmil 21:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Just ran a quick check, the Oxford English Dictionary contains the term Intersex. A little late, but still satisfying. - DJB - (Will sign up one day....maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but... ;^)

Who is heteronormative?

H. is descriptive of a dichotomous system of categorization that directly links social behavior and self identity with one's genitalia. Wow - that's cool. I know some youth between 14 and 16 who would link self identity with one's genitalia but no social institution who would do that. LOL --Benedikt 13:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Could have sworn I'd responded to this already, but oh well. Must have forgotten to save.

You are mis-reading the sense of the linkage. Think of the phrase "be a man about it" for a second... This is the sense in which people link self identity with one's genitalia. I would not say that a person "is heteronormative", though. I woud say that a person "has a heteronormative bias" or that they "say heteronormative things". Heteronormativity isn't a classification of people, but of bias. -Harmil 11:33, 1 August 2005 (UTC)