User:Ggadri/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Heterosexuality

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because I was interested in exploring how heterosexuality is discussed in an unbiased way. I had a feeling that the article would be quite scientific. I was also interested in how topics such as heteronormativity are discussed and how this term ties into religion. There were not too many religions discussed and associated with the term. Growing up in a religious family, heteronormativity was seen as the "norm." Heterosexuality matters because it is viewed as "natural" and "normal." However, there are numerous sexual orientations such as homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality, and the list goes on. After reading the article, I questioned why science states that heterosexuality and sexual orientation are not a choice. It made me wonder why sexual orientation cannot be a choice when people are free to experiment sexually. Sexual orientation is not fixed; people can change the way that they identify as they discover themselves and their sexual preferences.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead section - This section clearly defines the term heterosexuality. In the talk section, there was discussion on how heterosexuality is between persons of the opposite "sex" not just gender. The article has been edited to include both sex and gender. The section acknowledges interconnected terms to heterosexuality such as homosexuality and bisexuality. There is not a brief description for all major sections. The lead section lacks information about society and culture. The subheadings such as symbolism, history, religion, and heteronormativity are not briefly discussed/introduced in the lead section. At the top of the article it says that the article discusses heterosexuality in humans, not animals. However, there is some discussion about animals in the article. It may be helpful to clarify what is discussed about animals in the article (animals and reproduction).

Content - The content is relevant to the topic. The content is fairly up to date; however, there is a study included from 1992. Some other studies an data are from 2010, 2011, and 2012. Some may think that the data is a bit old. It may be helpful to attempt to update the information based on newer peer reviewed studies. The article mentions that majority of people are heterosexual and provide some percentages for age groups. I would be interested in seeing how these numbers/percentages have changed in the last few years. Much of the demographic information comes from the United Kingdom and United States. I feel that this is not the best or most accurate representation of the countries across the globe. I feel that more countries with varying religious and cultural beliefs need to be represented in this data. Many populations do not seem represented in the demographics of heterosexuality. Someone in the talk section mentioned that the section discussing heteronormativity and heterosexism needs to be removed. I do not agree with this. I think the discussion of how heterosexuality is viewed as more "normal" and "natural" than other sexual orientations needs to be acknowledged. Heteronormativity is directly linked to heterosexuality. This term is not saying that heterosexuality is bad, it is just revealing that other sexual orientations are "normal." People can be attracted to any gender or sex, it does not need to be the opposite one and we should not naturalize that. I think it would be nice to tie together compulsory heterosexuality and religion as they can go hand in hand. People that identify as other than heterosexual should not go unnoticed or underrepresented. I feel that the religion section is a little broad, only encompassing some religions. It would be interesting to see if other or more religions could be discussed, especially ones that enforce heterosexuality.

Tone and Balance - The article is neutral. I could not find any biases. Once again, I do feel that not enough religions are discussed in correlation with heterosexuality. I feel that religions that view homosexuality as a sin should be discussed in the article as they reinforce heterosexuality as the norm.

Sources and References - Right away I see multiple scholarly articles. Most are peer-reviewed articles; however, I did find a few books and newspaper articles used as well. I did click on one link that did not work and needs to be updated ("APA California Amicus Brief" (PDF). Courtinfo.ca.gov. Retrieved 2013-10-11). Some of the sources are quite old (1941-1997). The demographic section definitely needs to be updated with some more current statistics. The sources are not all peer-reviewed, some are coming from random websites and news sources. There are multiple sources from multiple authors. However, I feel that the sources do not fully represent people that come from a variety of backgrounds.

Organization and writing quality - The article is organized well, concise, clear, easy to read, and broken down into subsections. I did not catch any spelling or grammatical errors.

Images and Media - The images are laid out well and go well with the content of the article. They are all captioned and the captions are descriptive, clear, and concise. All the images are laid out on the right side of the article so the reader can expect where to find the images and media. The images are all from Wikipedia, they all direct back to the Wikipedia page when I right click on them.

Talk Page Discussion - The way that Wikipedia discusses heterosexuality is quite different from how it is discussed in class. In class, we can speak about our personal experiences; however, these would be considered biased by Wikipedia standards. The talk page brings up a good point about including both gender and sex when defining the term heterosexuality. Another person believes that the section on heteronormativity and heterosexism should be removed. However, I believe that it is necessary to include these terms are they are directly related to heterosexuality. These terms are also commonly discussed in Gender Studies courses when discussing heterosexuality.

Overall impressions - I think the article does a good job at breaking down the basics of heterosexuality. Just from reading the first paragraph, a reader gets a good idea of what the term means. I feel that there are conversations or details missing. I wish there was more discussion on compulsory heterosexuality and religion and how these two concepts tie together. I also feel that the demographics need to be updated to represent today's society and other countries besides the UK and US. The article is fairly developed. I feel that the article could have included more sexual orientations under the sexual orientation heading. Overall, it provides a good basis for the term.