User:TaylorMH/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Asexuality, specifically the section titled: "Intersections with race and disability"

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 to review the asexuality article because it's of particular interest to me. I'm most interested in exploring and expanding queer topics. I understand that asexuality is frequently dismissed, mistreated, and misrepresented in LGBTQ+ spaces. I think that this article does a good job of covering most topics connected to asexuality, except for the de-sexualizing of certain groups of people. Specifically, I was looking to see if the article went in depth about social notions connecting disability and asexuality. My first impression when I went looking for this information is that, while it is present, it's a very small section that needs to be expanded to address these misconceptions.

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.)

In considering this topic and article, the first component that I want to address or evaluate is the actual need for a section and how that need should be addressed. I believe that social misconceptions surrounding disability and asexuality do need to be addressed, but should that happen on an asexuality article? Should it be its own article? Should it appear under the categories of disability and sexuality? Or should it appear under the LGBTQ+ tab and then asexuality? I feel that it shouldn't be posted under the LGBTQ+ category and asexuality because that almost feeds into these social misconceptions. That said, I can also recognize how folks searching for answers to these misconceptions may look up asexuality first. It's a tricky question with no clear answer, but I believe it's worth asking where and how this section should be categorized.

In a similar vein of categorizations regarding the existing article, I'm concerned about how small the section titled "Intersections with race and disability" is. I went to view the history of the article and searched for the keyword "intersections" to see what edits folks had made to it. In looking it over, I discovered that Yrodriguez7 was the most recent user to edit the section, but most of their edits were reverted. I went to their Talk page to see why and noticed that Ian explained that the article is considered a "GA" or Good Article. Ian clarified that this means that the article has a "higher standard" of writing and more conventions to follow in order to make edits. Even if the Asexuality article is strong overall, certain sections aren't. I'm concerned about how this "GA" classification could result in folks feeling like they can't add to lacking sections like the "Intersections" component. Folks may be dissuaded from working on these sections due to it being a GA.

Moving into the actual content of the "intersections" section, I'm concerned about this equity gap. There's not enough information, or intersections, with desexualization and identities. I'm also concerned with how race and disability are lumped together. While they definitely intersect for some folks and in some cases, both topics deserve their own sections and research. Ex: People of color may be desexualized for different reasons than those who are disabled. The section only describes a couple of the reasons why people of color or disabled folks may be desexualized and assumed as asexual. More research (ex: more articles, citations, studies, etc) should be drawn on, more intersections with identity should be added, and the existing intersections should be fleshed out more. I'd also love to see more quotes/voices of disabled and poc in this section speaking on this issue.

The links in this section of the article do work and some folks have added strong resources such as the Mammy stereotype and Crip theory. There isn't enough to this section to represent a diverse array of voices, but the scholarship that is drawn on links back to articles on disability and racism. These sources do support the claims that this section makes. There just needs to be more to this section, including more text, sources, voices, etc. While I do see that others have engaged with this section on the Talk page, as I previously mentioned, these changes haven't stuck and so it hasn't been expanded.