Talk:Wartime sexual violence

Semi-protected edit request on 5 April 2024
In the subdivision of the history section called Boxer Rebellion, I request for where it says "The forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance, upon their capture of Peking, went on violent rampages against Manchu civilians, looting, raping, and murdering numerous civilians they came across" to "The forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance, upon their capture of Beijing, went on violent rampages against Manchu civilians, looting, raping, and murdering numerous civilians they came across" please. 2A0A:EF40:1232:F101:5443:C859:A04:2281 (talk) 16:50, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: no reason given for the proposed change. M.Bitton (talk) 00:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 April 2024
In the subdivision of the history section called Boxer Rebellion, I request for where it says "The forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance, upon their capture of Peking, went on violent rampages against Manchu civilians, looting, raping, and murdering numerous civilians they came across" to "The forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance, upon their capture of Beijing, went on violent rampages against Manchu civilians, looting, raping, and murdering numerous civilians they came across" because most people know the city by the name of Beijing and Peking is just a Western word. 95.147.145.134 (talk) 19:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ Tollens (talk) 21:59, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 May 2024
Change: "As Tamil women got raped by Japanese, the Japanese soldiers contracted venereal disease like soft sore, syphilis and gonorrhoea and Thai women also spread those diseases to coolies on the railroad."

To: "As Japanese soldiers raped Tamil women, they spread sexually transmittal diseases (STDs) such as chancroid, syphilis, and gonorrhea. These epidemics in turn spread among Thai women and male railroad laborers."

Justification: Reworded to assign the actions of rape and of spreading disease to the men actually perpetrating mass rape, rather than using passive language or assigning the actions to the unwilling victims. Changed disease terminology to consistently reflect the medical names rather than common names. Changed the outdated and offensive term "coolies" to more descriptive language. Yimmeny (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * That whole section needs work: poor grammar and sourcing of non-academic works written more than half a century ago.
 * Some of your changes such as saying there is a link between the outbreak between Japanese soldiers and coolies isn't supported by the source. Gonorrhoea is just the British spelling of the term and isn't anymore of a 'medical name' than gonorrhea. Coolie is the proper term to describe the labourers and isn't going to be removed due to it being potentially offensive per WP:NOTCENSORED.
 * I have reworded that sentence by linking it to the aforementioned rape. Traumnovelle (talk) 09:18, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Suggestion to change:
 * "This lead to Japanese soldiers contracting venereal disease such as chancroid, syphilis and gonorrhoea. These diseases were also spread to coolies through Thai women living in near the railroad."
 * To:
 * "This lead to Japanese soldiers contracting and spreading venereal disease such as chancroid, syphilis and gonorrhoea. These diseases were also spread among coolies and Thai women living near the railroad."
 * Agreed, the original needs more work than this.
 * Again, there is a subtle tendency here to assign the action of spreading disease to the women and the suffered outcome of contracting the disease to the men. At best the spread of STDs is equally shared among all in the chain of exposure. In an article about sexual violence, especially, it's important to be careful about this language. Arguably, those who are raping multiple people in groups are doing the action of spreading disease, not the unwilling victims.
 * In my opinion, I don't think coolie is a well known term any longer, and it seems to me to be more useful and formal to use the clarity of "low-wage rail workers" than pejorative slang.
 * Change in spelling of gonorrhea was unintentional. Thank you. I only intended to change "soft sore".
 * It was not my goal to create a link between the first and second parts of the paragraph. I assumed the intent of the original author and sought to preserve it, perhaps poorly.
 * Thanks. Yimmeny (talk) 17:51, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Coolie is a historical term and is appropriate in this usage, calling them rail workers ignores important context.
 * The source doesn't seem to explicitly state the spread between coolies and Thai women so I've removed it, it doesn't state that the Thai women were raped, they may have had consensual relations, may have been prostitutes, or maybe they were raped: but the source doesn't specify. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:44, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Seems that the discussion was cut off. If either party wants to reactivate this request they're welcome to do so. ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 12:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)