Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   speedy redirect to Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory. to preserve history per WP:MERGE. Mgm|(talk) 10:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy

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The most valueable content of this page has been merged into other articles as per discussion at Talk:Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory Therefore this article is now redundant. Hfarmer (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete For the reason I have given in the nomination. The article Blanchard Bailey and Lawrence theory controversy is no longer needed and is superfluous.  The way WP will cover this angle is going to change.  The subject is still controversial and that controversy does in myopinion have a life of it's own.  As a matter of fact I think it could still work as a stand alone article.  We just will not treat it that way.  When this article was made the idea was to remove all of the content that dealt with the controversy into a separate article.  Whereas before each related article had a section, sometimes half of the article long which described the controversy in detail.  Even aspects of the controversy not truly relevant to a specific article.  What has and likley will be done is that the aspect of the controversy that pertains to a specific topic will be described in that topics article.  Now that this is done there is no reason to keep a separate article for the controversy.  (Nor should one be recreated in the future unless the ammuont of controversy matterial in these articles rises to the point where a separate article is needed to maintain summary style.)--Hfarmer (talk) 17:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete too much space is devoted on Wikipedia to coverage of this theory which has virtually no currency outside the work of its originators and their associates. Guy (Help!) 17:53, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Much of this page is a POV fork filled with poorly-sourced BLP violations. Jokestress (talk) 17:56, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment a RS'd fact about a person is not a BLP violation just because it is unflattering. The ugly facts about who did what will be in the other articles in some form or fashion.--Hfarmer (talk) 18:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The reason for its deletion should be that most of the "facts" in it are actually Hfamers's syntheses and interpretations from primary sources. If we got rid of those and rewrote the article from reliable secondary sources, it could potentially be worth keeping.  Dicklyon (talk) 05:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment I don't really care one way or the other about keeping or deleting this article, but I'd like to see some good rationales either way. JzG/Guy has his facts wrong:  Blanchard's taxonomy, although not the only current idea about how to describe and classify MtF transsexuals, is perhaps the single most widely supported idea among researchers around the world; the fact that (American) trans activists (some of whom are editing these articles) reject it doesn't mean that it has "virtually no currency" (unless you mean to exclude a plurality of experts, in the way that Thabo Mbeki excludes every researcher that thinks HIV causes AIDS as being inherently biased through supporting a causal connection between HIV and AIDS).  To the extent that WP:DUE requires that we "consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors," the fact that it is rejected by activists editing Wikipedia is utterly irrelevant.  (See also WP:FRINGE on this point.)  Furthermore, this article provides relatively little information about the idea -- it's mostly who said which mean things about whom -- so deleting this article won't significantly reduce encyclopedia-wide coverage of the idea.  Additionally, the closing admin should probably be aware that User:Jokestress is Andrea James (a trans activist and a principal actor in the scandal), with what we might call "some level" of inherent bias.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I concur with what you just said. The status of BBL theory is not the subject at hand.. On the pertinentnt talk pages I have pointed out that Blanchard and others who have contributed to this line of research and were selected by the APA; their peers to help write the section of the book (The DSM) to whom others will refer when making a diagnosis. I know [WP:NOTCRYSTAL] however it is plain that the relevant academic field does not regard Blanchard as a crack pot. I only write this to head off some precipitous wholesale deletion of the other articles on this topic.--Hfarmer (talk) 20:48, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Invoking the sexuality of Wikipedians to undermine their credibility, as you have done above, is in extremely poor taste. I don't think there is much informed dissent from the view that BBL theory is a homophobic crank theory with no mainstream acceptance. We must guard against undue weight even where the topic is one which interests or repels us. Guy (Help!) 21:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no interest in using James' gender as a means of undermining credibility, and I don't think that reporting verifiable facts about political activism in the relevant topic area does that. Furthermore, undermining James' neutrality is so trivial that I can't imagine taking such indirect approaches.  We are, after all, talking about a person that publicly humiliated the innocent children (by name, with their photos) of a sexologist to hurt their father, by writing things like "There are two types of children in the Bailey  household:  those sodomized by their father and those not sodomized."
 * Blanchard's taxonomy is used in current medical research (See, e.g.,, , , ...) .  That's hardly what you'd expect from a "crank theory with no mainstream acceptance".  In fact, it appears to be the single most widely accepted idea at the moment so long as you're talking to researchers instead of political activists.  For good or ill, Wikipedia has many, many more transgendered people and trans activists editing this article than sexologists (User:James Cantor being the only researcher that anyone is aware of), but it's not the viewpoints of the editors that are relevant.  It's what the high-quality reliable sources say, and they say that Blanchard's taxonomy is useful and is therefore being used.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't think that Blanchard's theory is the "single most widely supported idea among researchers," and I don't think this should affect the reading in the slightest unless you can back that up.Nogladfeline (talk) 01:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact that Jokestress is Andrea James is not using anyone's sexuality. (If anything it would be using someones identity but I digress). Guy simply saying this theory is crank does not make it so.  Between what Whatamidoing and myself have presented how can you look at those facts and say this is a failed rejected crank theory.  Accepted by only a small number of people.  After a certain point it falls to you to show evidence to back up your claim.  I  humbly suggest that time is now. --Hfarmer (talk) 00:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect somewhere. Doesn't matter where.  If information from this article has been incorporated into other articles, it needs to be kept for purposes of preserving the edit history. JulesH (talk) 21:18, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not really practical since the information is being moved to more than one place. Perhaps instead of a redirect how about a stub article which merely points to the other articles? --Hfarmer (talk) 22:04, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A redirect to Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory would make the most sense. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment – I just checked the original history of it and found that it has been created in 2007 by Hfarmer, the current nominator for deletion, as a junk synthesis of primary sources. The trouble is, she's now migrating such junk syntheses from primary sources into the biographies of the relevant people.  This needs to stop; brief mentions of the controversy based on secondary sources, biased though they are, would be better than Hfarmer's biased synthesis from primary sources.  At least some of us were able to use this article as the "wastebasket" for junk, keeping if off the bios, until she started doing this.  A reason to keep would be to keep the crap from migrating to the bios; then we could work on throwing most of what's here and rewriting it from reliable secondary sources.  A reason to delete would be that the article to too screwed up to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - I agree with Dicklyon in that while the article is inherently problematic, certain editors appear to be taking the opportunity to migrate the WP:BLP and WP:NPOV (accused) material to biographies, which is even worse. Nogladfeline (talk) 01:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions.   -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.