Talk:Pauli Murray

Honorifics
Pauli Murray could be formally referred to as Rev. Pauli Murray or Dr. Pauli Murray. However, the reference Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray is incorrect.

Dr. Murray received a Doctorate of Juridical Science from Yale University in 1965. Rev. Murray received a Master of Divinity from the General Theological Seminary in 1976. (emphasis mine)

My understanding of the honorific Reverend Doctor would require that one receive a doctorate in divinity or theology. That is not the case and that reference should be reverted.

Mikeylito 07:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I've updated this section to correct some vocabulary usage on my part.

--Mikeylito (talk) 18:38, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Lesbian
According to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's book Gender Talk, Murray was a lesbian who did not disclose it to the public. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.231.249.141 (talk • contribs) (an edit from the US House of Representatives)
 * Cites need page and publication data.Parkwells (talk) 17:46, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Pauli was not a woman. Mybromyworld (talk) 00:08, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:PauliMurrayCover.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 01:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Going for Good Article status
Just wanted to add a courtesy note here that I'll be revising and expanding this article in the coming days to try to reach Good Article status. If anyone's watching this page who would like to pitch in, I'd be glad to have your help! -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * All right, this expansion is probably about as far as my sources can take me. If anyone's watching this page and wants to take a look, feel free, and I'd be glad to have your comments. Otherwise I'll probably go ahead and nominate this for GA in the next few days. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

This has passed as a Wikipedia Good Article
(this is "duplicate" here for when the review is no longer transcluded.)

This has passed as a Wikipedia God Article. Nice work and congratulations! North8000 (talk) 00:40, 27 April 2013 (UTC) Reviewer

Choice of photos
Wouldn't it be better to replace the photos of Ginsberg and Roosevelt with images of Murray? Totorotroll (talk) 10:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If you have public domain images of Murray to donate for those spots, I say go for it. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you at least take down the photos of Ginsberg and Roosevelt?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.238.226.204 (talk) 06:59, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. For the Eleanor Roosevelt image I substituted a Commons image of the Howard University School of Law under that subheading. I removed the Ruth Bader Ginsburg image without substituting another image as I found nothing suitable. -- Deborahjay (talk) 16:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

A couple of edits / corrections
In response to the person who claimed that "the honorific Reverend Doctor would require that one receive a doctorate in divinity or theology": this is incorrect. Anyone who is an ordained minister and also has a doctorate (PhD or any other doctoral degree) in any field is properly titled "The Rev. Dr. So-and-so." A quick google search will confirm this. Also, the title "Rev." should have a definite article in front of it. I updated the "Death and Legacy" section to state "The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray."

I deleted the sentence in the opening section referring to Murray as an "Episcopal saint." Firstly, it was out of place. It fell in the middle of a paragraph describing her process of becoming a priest; it's awkward to mention something that didn't occur until several decades after her death. Secondly, it was redundant. Her inclusion among the collection "Holy Women, Holy Men" is already (and more appropriately) mentioned in the "Death and Legacy" section of the wiki page. Thirdly, the Episcopal Church does not make "saints." Churches in the Anglican Communion (including the Episcopal Church) have not canonized anyone since the time of the Reformation. The only "saints" in its calendar are those who were recognized as such before the Reformation (biblical saints such as St. Paul, and later figures such as St. Catherine of Sienna). The proper term here is not "sainthood" or "saint's day," but "commemoration." All new additions to "Holy Women, Holy Men" are considered commemorations. For example, John Calvin was added to the calendar, but he is not considered "St. John Calvin" in the Episcopal Church. Anyway, Murray's inclusion in HWHM is still referenced in the article; I just wanted to clarify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AngloShmanglo (talk • contribs) 01:50, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Pronouns
In https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-many-lives-of-pauli-murray, there is the line "(Following Murray’s own cue, Rosenberg uses female pronouns to refer to her subject, as have I.)". FWIW. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:32, 24 September 2018 (UTC)


 * In https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/pronouns-pauli-murray, there is the conclusion “(After reviewing the scholarly discussion represented in the literature listed below, we have chosen to use s/he and they/them pronouns when discussing Pauli’s early life and she/her/hers when discussing Pauli’s later years. When discussing Pauli Murray in general, we use all pronouns. We hope this strategy will encourage the reader to embrace the complexity of the concepts of gender, gender identity and gender expression. Our goal is to be open to these questions of pronouns as an evolving issue and to continue to re-examine our choices with the understanding that they could change in the future.)”
 * It seems there is (at the *very* least) discussion enough of gender fluidity / gender identity outside the man/woman binary to not so heavily enforce she/her/hers pronouns on this remarkable figure who sought in so many ways not to be boxed in by oppressive societal concepts. M.j.f.inkbo (talk) 23:55, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I am pinging you because Pauli Murray - Page History - XTools has you as either one of the Top 10 by added text, Top 10 by edits, or both. I will also notify several relevant WikiProjects, most notably WT:LGBT.

I am going to try & frame this as well as I can. Among M.j.f.inkbo's very first edits, this editor made some brave WP:BOLD edits. Specifically, these were pronoun changes. I reverted the edits because I thought that they required discussion first. This article has had the previous version of the pronouns since its inception over 15 years ago & since obtaining GA status in April 2013.

Much has changed since Murray died in 1985. The terms gender fluidity & non-binary gender did not exist then, and transgender & transsexual awareness has changed. To paraphrase the article (avoiding pronouns), Murray struggled throughout adult life with issues related to sexual and gender identity, and acknowledged having an "inverted sex instinct".


 * What would Murray do (WWMD)?

I think I agree with M.j.f.inkbo, when I state that if Murray were alive today, Murray would probably use he/him/his or they/them/their pronouns. The question is do we have a right, or an obligation, to apply these retroactively? Is it okay to be anachronistic in this matter? I do not have answers to these questions, which is why I am calling attention to this. I am aware of my privilege at being cisgender & am saddened at the problems that cisnormativity has caused in our society. This too, is another reason I am seeking collective intelligence, on this, as I seek here other perspectives beyond my own.

This is not the first article that has to deal with pronoun issues. James Barry (surgeon) is an article where it was unknown exactly whether as a woman by birth Barry masqueraded as a man to be a doctor in the British medical system and to serve in the British army (both exclusive male at the time), or because Barry truly identified as a man. The consensus for that article was to eliminate pronouns & solely use Barry's surname. I do not think that would work for this article, but perhaps it might inform our discussion. Please mention other articles that might bring light to this matter.

Please weigh in. I will support whatever consensus at which we arrive. Peaceray (talk) 05:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't like to say something definite without further research, but I believe we should follow the majority of most recent academic sources when discussing historical people with unclear gender expression. The article's current "Sexuality and gender identity" section makes reference to "biographers and scholars like Rosenberg (often cisgender), and conventional practices more broadly, which generally refer to Murray through the use of "she-her-hers" pronouns". If it's true that the most common description of Murray is with she/her pronouns then I believe we should continue this, but the difference in pronoun usage by different authors should be covered in the article, as it currently is. Another option is to rewrite the article without any pronouns at all (like with Barry), which is very difficult to do while maintaining prose standards, though reducing the number of pronouns could be a positive change. Using different pronouns for different periods of Murray's life is also possible, though I don't know that the Pauli Murray Center's use of this practice is mainstream. — Bilorv ( talk ) 11:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Everyone, I think that there is a possible version of this where she/her pronouns are not completely omitted as I had originally done - but I noticed a few things that rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn’t intending to be overly assertive - I was considering respect. I do not feel the combination of pronouns and the matter of gender identity was adequately covered. It was briefly mentioned in a special little section, that sadly few people will read upon looking this individual up. Even within the section that mentions that there is discussion and disagreement on the matter, only she/her is used. Sometimes people use a combination of pronouns for individuals, perhaps that could be an option. Or Murray’s own s/he would be used along with an explanation of it so as to educate the readers on this. This was not an insignificant thing, Murray’s gender and sexuality as well as far left ideas are a just a few examples of some of what made them have such an uphill battle. Their name is not one we learned in school despite their achievements and proximity to figures we did learn about. It also seemed to me that she/her pronouns were used somewhat excessively, which was what led me to just change them to they/them instead of taking a different approach to editing the piece. It seemed the simplest way to leave the previous work intact while taking away this assertion of feminine gender. I am happy to return to this soon, with a more source based explanation for my decisions at the time - and to be clear I was not aware of the talk page until after the edits were reverted. I did not see the reverting or request to go to a talk channel and continue to edit pronouns, once I saw these messages I started familiarizing myself with the talk channels. While I am well aware terms like genderfluid and nonbinary are new, the concepts behind them are not, and people who have not fit the cisgender enforced norms not having as much terminology to use or people to use it with does not negate that which they did and said in life. They/them pronouns are used by some people even for men and women who they are unsure how to refer to, until they are able to get confirmation from that person of what pronouns are preferred. This is one reason I don’t see they/them pronouns as a heavy inference or projection of particular identity. M.j.f.inkbo (talk) 03:38, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with M.j.f.inkbo that if Murray used s/he, then we should use it as the preferred nominative pronoun. I myself have used s/he when referring to a non-specific nominative 3rd person singular pronoun, although I now use one more often.
 * I agree with Bilorv that we can greatly reduce the number of pronouns in the article.
 * Does anyone know how Murray handled objective & possessive 3rd person singular pronouns? I only became aware of Murray in 2020, through this podcast:
 * I hope those familiar with Murray's work will inform us more about this. Peaceray (talk) 07:03, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Once again, an inexperienced editor "SteveOliveGarden" (whose UserPage, I notice, has suffered a speedy deletion) has changed every pronoun in the article that refers to Pauli to the surname "Murray," with an explanatory comment (3/21/22) that belongs on the Talk Page. This makes the writing awkward, and more important disregards the discussion on this TalkPage which has proceeded slowly toward consensus since 2018 and more energetically since 2020. A few of the changes seem construtive to me but not most. Anyone feel that reversion is in order? PDGPA (talk) 19:47, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I note that the edit I flagged has now been reverted by a more experienced editor. I regret that neither of them took the disagreement to this Talk Page, however, as the pronoun issue for Pauli Murray needs to be resolved one way or the other, or I am pretty sure a slow-paced edit war over this point will continue, as it has for quite some time. PDGPA (talk) 01:18, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I note that the edit I flagged has now been reverted by a more experienced editor. I regret that neither of them took the disagreement to this Talk Page, however, as the pronoun issue for Pauli Murray needs to be resolved one way or the other, or I am pretty sure a slow-paced edit war over this point will continue, as it has for quite some time. PDGPA (talk) 01:18, 24 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Seems to me that the edits made on October 7, 2021, by CodeBadger really belong on this Talk page for discussion, not as edits to the article at this point. PDGPA (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2021 (UTC)


 * If anybody has any objection to lesbian feminists like Julia Diana Robertson putting forward their position on the misgendering of Pauli as a "man" I hope they will state their case. The editor (66.254.231.20) who reverted my edit (revision 1048685280) would have us believe her comments are unacceptable because her article was "self-published". Robertson is the senior editor of 'The Velvet Chronicle', not the publisher. 66.254.231.20 also characterizes Robertson as "anti-trans" in an attempt to play the person rather than the ball. Robertson's comments are derived from an article which is a critique of a New York Times article about Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography (Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray) but is an entirely relevant addition to a section which is otherwise unbalanced in favor of the speculative assertion that Pauli is a man in a woman's body (trans man), and entirely in keeping with lesbian feminist critiques of people who misgender lesbian women after their death when they [conveniently] cannot speak for themselves. In the mean time I have restored my edit (placed in a new section: 'Gender' as all the gender related information is not appropriate for the 'Death and legacy' section IMO). I look forward to any responses and arbitration if consensus cannot be reached. Thank you for taking the time to read this. CodeBadger (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Robertsons run The Velvet Chronicle, so it's fair to criticize an article written by Julia Diana as self-published. I think the status quo version appropriately notes that using male pronouns for Murray is a practice outside the historical mainstream. If there are high-quality sources that frame such a practice as lesbian erasure, I would not object to including that view in the article. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:59, 19 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated. CodeBadger (talk) 14:28, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

forgive me, but this sounds more some TERF trans erasure to me. They had themselves opened up to see if they had gonads and dated "straight women."

I vote to reopen this and settle it. 2601:14D:8300:6C70:998B:10CA:7D47:DBBD (talk) 01:34, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

With a, now changed, edit, I suggest a comprmise. If the pronoun is refering to Murray as the subject of the article, or the pronoun refers to Murray with scope of their entire lifetime; then use 'they'. Otherwise, use the pronoun that Murray presented in that time period (as per sources). Using Murray or Pauli is preferrable as is writing in a manner that avoids pronouns. I have not touched this page before, have a WP account, but will not sign in, and am an androgynous queer. I prefer people always use my name, no gender pronouns, once they know my name and I wonder if there is evidence in the literature how Pauli felt about this? The Pauli Murray center has switched to neutral pronouns throughout 47.233.68.106 (talk) 02:56, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Typhoid fever
It says that Murray's father started having emotional problems as a result of typhoid fever. Typhoid fever is a bacterial illness that people get from swallowing fecal contaminated food or water that has the bacteria (Salmonella typhi) present. It causes high fever and sometimes septicemia which can kill the patient. It does not cause emotional problems that would lead to a person being institutionalized. It is not like the tertiary stage of syphilis. This needs to be changed b/c it is incorrect. Completely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.248.13.32 (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe it doesn't mean that typhoid fever specifically was causing the emotional problems- any illness can cause emotional changes; how many people become irritated when they are injured, or suffer from low mood when illness prevents them from living their normal lives? Derpythorki (talk) 12:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Irene Barlow
This article states that Irene Barlow does not appear in her memoir and that is not correct. She discusses her friendship with Barlow on pages 408-411 of the recent paperback reprint. 2601:446:8101:B150:759B:34D0:369B:BFFE (talk) 15:04, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

The short description
The WP:Shortdesc had a focus only on the priesthood and not on the important, submerged accomplishments, we now know of. Here is the new sentence: "Anna Pauline 'Pauli' Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was an American lawyer, civil rights activist, gender equality advocate, author and Episcopal priest who's works influenced the civil rights movement and expansion of the Equal Protection Clause." I would like to have it read (emphasis to point out the change): "Anna Pauline 'Pauli' Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was a transgender American lawyer, civil rights activist, gender equality advocate, author and Episcopal priest who's works influenced the civil rights movement and expansion of the Equal Protection Clause." but this may yet be controversial and WP:shortdesc says to avoid this. If you think the sources are strong enough to add transgender then we can add it. 47.233.68.106 (talk) 05:44, 12 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Since there will likely be a quick revert and push back, I'll leave a pre-defense of my changes.
 * Murray's influence on Thurgood Marshall, the Brown and Reed cases, and the Civil Rights Act of '64 gaining the sex classification, had far greater postitive effect on a large number of US citizens than her later accomplishment of becoming the 1st Black Episcopal Priest. The legal influences had far reaching impacts; she had other firsts, not only the priesthood, but Doctor of Law at Yale and first in her Howard class of that year. Which are we to put in the 1st sentence?  47.233.68.106 (talk) 06:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not the short description, which is currently "American writer and activist (1910–1985)", but the lead section. The relevant guideline is MOS:LEAD, not WP:SHORTDESC. Nardog (talk) 06:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I rewrote the short description. The picture of |Abraham Lincoln's article's short description is a clear example of the first 40-100 letters.  I modified the first 120 characters. So WP:shortdesc applies.  Been on Wikipedia since 2008; I do know a few things.  I don't sign into my account anymore in order to oppose abuse of anons; and as a protest against not being paid for my labor here.  I'm tired of being up against paid editors getting rewarded by their political, religious and professional, and also their actual employers, who work 8-12 hour days pushing their agendas.  This edits were from my love and respect of Murray. 47.233.68.106 (talk) 20:09, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, you did not edit the short description. What that screenshot of the Lincoln article is drawing attention to is the "16th President of the United States" part, the gray text between the article title and lead. As Short description explains, short descriptions were introduced in 2017 and are typically inside . The corresponding source for the short description of this article is the first line: . WP:SHORTDESC covers none of the part you edited. Nardog (talk) 22:32, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I took a stab at rewriting the lede paragraph to place Murray's many accomplishments more or less in order of importance (per the article), to correct English usage ("who's" where "whose" was intended; Murray did not "expand" the Equal Protection Clause, per se, but rather its interpretation), and eliminate redundancy (women's rights and gender equality are included in "civil rights"). I tend to agree that describing Murray as "transgender" in the first sentence lacks NPOV, as fully and fairly addressed later in the article and on this Talk Page. Further improvement welcome of course. PDGPA (talk) 16:21, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a fine rewrite. Thanks. 47.233.68.106 (talk) 20:13, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Typhoid fever and Murray's father
The paragraph about Murray's early life says that her father had "emotional problems" and that some (who?) had attributed it to typhoid fever. Typhoid fever is a gastro-intestinal disease caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi. It can cause delirium due to the high fever but it has no other neurological complications and does not cause damage to the central nervous system. If her father had emotional problems, it was because of something else, NOT caused by a pathogen of the digestive system. Really, who writes this stuff? 47.138.89.140 (talk) 01:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)