User:Ballinm/sandbox

Mini Aodla Freeman is an Inuk author who was born in 1936 on Cape Hope Island in James Bay. During the 1950s she spent her teens training as a nurse in Fort George, now Chisasibi, Quebec. In 1957 she was working as a translator in Ottawa, translating Inuktitut for the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.

She is best known for her work writing her memoirs titled Life Among the Qallunaat, which was first published in 1978. It details her life living in Inuit communities, her journey of learning while living outside those communities, as well as the changes that occurred in the Inuit communities during the 1940s and 1950s.

The book had a rough initial release when the Indian and Northern Affairs attempted to suppress it by hiding 3,000 copies in their basement. It took three years before her work started being distributed in the north, and was not heard of until it was republished by University of Manitoba Press in 2015. In 2016, the book won the Electa Quinney Award for Published Stories and the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher.

Exploitation of women in mass media

 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * Everything in the article seems to be relevant and many different perspectives are covered. I was, however, particularly distracted and put off by the images that were chosen for the article, as I felt like they needlessly used nudity, which not only made the women in the images be exploited for the article but also conveyed the message that exploitation of women only occurs when they are unclothed.
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * The article attributes opinions to different groups and uses sociological and psychological studies to discuss negative effects in a manner that demonstrates that the article itself goes beyond particular bias. It spends an appropriate amount of time discussing the counter arguments considering that the article is focused on the existence of exploitation.
 * Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or under-represented?
 * I felt that the article could have spent more time focusing on the actual real-life exploitation that women experience rather than just the visual exploitation that is consumed by the public.
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * The links to the citations I checked do work. The sources seem to have been quoted with appropriate context, and none of the articles had different conclusions than the section in the article that they were sourced for.
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * As mentioned above, the article does a good job of using reliable references from peer-reviewed journals and published texts. Most of the sources are neutral in that they are balanced research papers, but in cases where there is a certain lens used by the source--such as a feminist lens--that factor is noted by the article.
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * The article mostly cites sources that were published within the last decade, which suggests that it is very timely material. Its focuses on new popular media forms such as rap music and videogames demonstrate that it is rooted in our modern culture.
 * Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * The Talk page focuses on the tone of the article, the sources used, and how the article might be (and has subsequently been) improved by adding more dimensions to it. It also addressed when a source was taken out of context in an ultimately misleading way as well as the appropriateness of some sources that had come into question.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * The article is given as start-class rating and is a part of multiple WGSS courses from a variety of schools.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * The article uses a lot more scientifically based sources. In our class, I feel that we focus more on texts and arguments rooted in feminist theory.

Masculinity

 * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * The article has done a fairly good job and showing a balanced idea of what masculinity is. There is nothing that seemed irrelevant, but there are definitely elements that seemed like they needed more context and explanation. One example of this is the fact that the article brings up the idea that both men and women can exhibit masculine traits and that "Those exhibiting both masculine and feminine characteristics are considered androgynous, and feminist philosophers have argued that gender ambiguity may blur gender classification." Given that the citations made include Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, would argue that the summary the article has made is far too simplistic and doesn't demonstrate the conclusions theorists such as Butler have actually drawn. I would argue a similar idea about the Hegemonic Masculinity section, which uses a quote from Raewyn Connell that is a strong definition, but the actual text of the article seems to miss the mark in terms of actually defining what hegemonic masculinity is.
 * There seem to be a lot of subsections in this article, particularly in the overview, that are incredibly short and could be combined into a larger subsection of sociological and psychological debates of how masculinity is developed and encouraged. Particularly because it is not a "given" or particularly simply answered question of origin, I think that it is misleading to try and put all of these different and contrasting ideas into the "Overview" section.
 * Similarly, evaluating which elements could fit into the "criticism section" could be important. What is it that is being criticized? Masculinity or how we perceive it? There doesn't seem to be a particular consensus.
 * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * To me, this article seems to lean towards the idea that masculine traits are more than just learned. Its "development" and "nature versus nurture" seem to tend to minimize ideas of socialization in that it does not explore them as much as it does those arguments that suggest that masculinity is inherent based on biological factors. While there are sections that focus more on a culturally developed masculinity such as the "precarious manhood" and "in women" sections, the
 * Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or under-represented?
 * There seems to be a good balance of viewpoints, but as mentioned above, they are positioned differently which leads arguments for biological masculinity to seem over-represented to me.
 * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * The claim that "Masculinity is... biologically-created" is supported by a source that focuses on how the biological understanding of masculinity is a construct, which means that the way the article has used the source is somewhat misleading. It also makes it difficult to understand the concept of separate gender and sex, which the article attempts to assert in the next sentence by noting that "It is distinct from the definition of the male biological sex."
 * Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
 * Some facts are lacking a source, but those sources that are provided are very strong, academically supported, and mostly neutral except when bias is noted in the article.
 * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * Some of the information that is older is given more weight than it should. For example, in the section on development, the article notes: "The relative importance of socialization and genetics in the development of masculinity is debated. Although social conditioning is believed to play a role, psychologists and psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung believed that aspects of "feminine" and "masculine" identity are subconsciously present in all human males." While Freud and Jung are certainly prominent psychoanalysts, I think it would be important to bring in more recent arguments and studies that have similar arguments attached to them.
 * Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * Lots of the discussion seems to be about adding to sections based on the use of the page by students in other courses.
 * Other conversations seem to surround other things that can be included, and the way that the reader's experience can be streamlined.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * The article seems to generally receive a B-rating and is part of several college courses.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * The article uses a lot of scientific based research, which isn't the focus that we have had in class. It also seems to present a lot more arguments for the idea of biological masculinity.