Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Feminine essence theory of transsexuality


 * 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 keep.  The Nordic Goddess Kristen  Worship her 00:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Feminine essence theory of transsexuality

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Absurd article, totally WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, made up by User:James Cantor, a colleague of the principle Blanchard to ridicule the transsexuals that they are embattled with with respect to autogynephilia and such (see his talk page for recent ideas of how "fun" this would be). How can the predictions of a 2008 theory have been tested in a 1995 study? How can Dreger be taken seriously as having proposed a new theory of transsexuality? How can Blanchard have desconstructed a theory that nobody had proposed. I recommend that User:James Cantor be canned for his blatant WP:COI on this one Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep. Ten sources, including highly respected journals like Nature (journal) and Archives of Sexual Behavior.  It's perhaps too bad that it doesn't line up with Dick Lyon's POV (Dick is active in transsexuality-related articles on Wikipedia because a major activist, Lynn Conway, is a personal friend), but his dislike of the current scientific consensus on this point doesn't make the subject area non-notable any more than it makes the article as written actually biased.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This is from an editor much more active in the transssexuality articles than I am, and firmly in the camp of trying to prop up Bailey against the backlash from the community of transsexuals that he is attacking, sometimes in the name of "science" and other times by denying that what he is writing about is science. It's sick.  And  seems to have put Cantor up to writing this, calling the idea "fun" on his talk page. And yes, Lynn Conway is a friend of mine and a transsexual, one that Dreger is specifically attacking with her "narrative" idea, which is why I care. Dicklyon (talk) 07:57, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * (Weak) Keep. I'm not sure this qualifies for "speedy" anything, but it seems like this article could describe an actual theory if it can be re-written from an NPOV standpoint. I'm a  bit behind on what the trends are in queer theory and sexology, so I'd like somebody who is NOT involved in this dispute but IS knowledgeable to comment. CaveatLector Talk Contrib 06:22, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Baily and Kiira would be an 11th reference, this one from The Johns Hopkins University Press. If there are NPOV issues in the article then let's get 'em out. In the meantime you can't delete this on the grounds of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Here is a google search for those who need it. &mdash;Noah 07:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment – I never meant to suggest that the topic of feminine essence theory or narrative doesn't exist or that an article can't be written on it, if reliable sources are found. But this article is not that -- it's about the Dreger/Blanchard attack on the theory, poorly disguised as a wikipedia article.  Let's at least start over and work from pre-Dreger sources like these books and journals.  And let's make James Cantor recuse himself from editing on behalf of his colleagues.  Dicklyon (talk) 07:49, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Dick, AfD is solely for ideas that aren't notable. If you think that the subject is actually notable (as you say on my user talk page), then you need to withdraw the nomination.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment – To better understand where Cantor is coming from in posting this piece of dung article, read this assessment of his close colleague Blanchard and of Dreger, a stauch defender of Cantor's colleague Bailey. It's very clear that what has been started here cannot be the basis of a neutral article.  Dicklyon (talk) 08:55, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment – Cantor's COI is so strong that he lies about the primary sources in the opening sentences. Ref 1, Dreger, says:
 * Indeed, TMWWBQ’s title and cover explicitly contrasted with those books on transgenderism which adhered to the ‘‘woman trapped in a man’s body’’ narrative of trans-gender identity, or what I will call hereafter the ‘‘feminine essence’’ narrative. The feminine essence narrative is summed up by Bailey this way:
 * Since I can remember, I have always felt as if I were a member of the other sex. I have felt like a freak with this body and detest my penis. I must get sex reassignment surgery (a ‘‘sex change operation’’) in order to match my external body with my internal mind. (Bailey, 2003, p. 143)
 * In keeping with their themes, books that favor the feminine essence narrative have tended to feature on their covers attractive head-to-toes photos of transwomen dressed rela- tively conservatively. Consider, for example, the front cover of Deirdre McCloskey’s Crossing: A Memoir ...
 * So it's apparent, first, that Dreger attributes the idea to Bailey's book TMWWBQ, contrary to what Cantor claims; and she claims its espoused in a book by McClosky, one of the trans women that she is attacking in her article, attributing it to a book that very clearly denies the essense idea, far from supporting it. Dreger, Bailey, Blanchard, and Cantor all work together on this effort to push their strange theories and ridicule the idea that one can  have a gender dysphoria without having a paraphilia type of mental illness.  It's just sick, and wikipedia should not support them in this effort. Dicklyon (talk) 17:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - This nomination is a retaliatory effort of user:Dicklyon in a long list of his tendacious edits. He has been blocked multiple times for edit warring on this and other topics.  He has been topic-banned for similar behaviour on other topics (see here).  He and I had a negotiated agreement (see here), which he unilaterally withdrew from a few days ago (see here) because it suited him in his dispute with yet another editor (user:Hfarmer, see here).  This is not, in my opinion, a nomination made in good faith.
 * Feminine essence theory of transsexuality should be evaluated on its own merits: All claims are sourced or multiply sourced, the sources are all high-end, the page presents the alternative view and puts roughly equal attention and sources to the sides, and the page notes the current state of the consensus.  I created that page well within the letter and the spirit of WP:COI policies for topic experts, disclosing my relationship with the researcher whose work I cited (see here) and alerting other editors to the page (via WP:WikiProject_Sexology_and_sexuality) so that anyone interested might edit it as they felt fit (see here).  Dicklyon's nomination boils down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT, or, more apparently, WP:IDONTLIKECANTOR.
 * — James Cantor (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. Article satisfies notability and verifiability with non-trivial mentions in multiple reliable sources. Also: AfD is not the correct forum for addressing COI concerns; there are other procedures for that. And in any case, the editor accused of COI regarding this article has already issued the proper disclosures and has not edited the page from any particular POV-slant as far as I can tell. I did a review of the sources and the article (and as part of that process cleaned up some of the formatting, but I've not edited the article prior to this AfD).  I found the page to be a simple report of a theory that some have put forth; it states that the theory has both supporters and critics and the article does not draw conclusions one way or the other.  The theory does exist in that it has been published, the fact that the theory may not be accepted does not change the notability based on its publication, and that is the criteria for inclusion of an article. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Nom needs to re-read WP:SYNTH and WP:OR, but in particular needs to read WP:V. Verifiability, not truth. Even if nom believes the claim of this theory to be false, it is indeed a notable - if controversial - fact of its field. Article should probably be expanded and better MoS compliance, but those are reasons to edit, not delete. Thanks!--Cerejota (talk) 19:21, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge. Non-notable POV-pushing at its COI worst. The "feminine essence theory" is an obscure neologism coined 7 months ago in a "self-published" source previously challenged by the article creator. This is a direct response to a successful AfD for another POV fork (closed on 8 January) about Cantor's friends J. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard. The only two articles that have ever used the term "feminine essence theory" were by Bailey and Blanchard and are part of what is currently titled Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory in Wikipedia. That article is where this new term should reside (if anywhere). All the allowable references in this new article are already sourced there. Jokestress (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. User:James Cantor is a single-purpose account editing Wikipedia for two reasons: to promote his own writings and those of his sexologist friends, and to malign their most notable critics (including me). This article achieves both of his COI goals. Cantor and his friends are essentialists (or more accurately, biological reductionists). This term is a straw man created to make scientific and philosophical challenges to their ideology easier to refute. Disease models of gender variance and research into its etiology are in the midst of a major paradigm shift akin to the depathologization of homosexuality in 1973. Cantor and his friends run the largest clinic in the world devoted to reparative therapy of gender identity disorder in children and are involved in re-writing the manual that will proclaim whether or not gender variance will remain an official "disorder" for the next decade. These "experts" are holding firm in the face of mounting scientific evidence that transsexualism may be better conceived of as a form of neurological intersex with both hereditary and environmental causes. They also seek to discredit the social constructivism that challenges their most deeply-held beliefs about how the world works. Because they cling so tightly to their essentialist dogma, they misrepresent their opponents' views within their essentialist/reductionist model. Because they think transwomen are essentially men, they erroneously assume that their critics all argue that transwomen are essentially women. The emerging models are much more sophisticated and nuanced than that, and this latest straw man is designed to eliminate these complexities via reductio ad absurdum (as one might expect from reductionists). These guys like to dress up their questionable ideas as "science" by throwing around the word "theory" in a rather unscientific manner. Wikipedia should note their unfalsifiable neologism where applicable, but this sort of COI boosterism hardly warrants its own article. Jokestress (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Speaking of conflicts of interest, User:Jokestress is Andrea James, a prominent trans activist. About Andrea James' footnotes:
 * [1] The decision about the Arch Sex Behav comemntaries was rendered at RSN (actually, in several discussions there, as Jokestress and other trans activists have been unhappy with the decision and have pushed for reconsideration), not by any individual editor. When Cantor and I (and other editors) conform to the RSN decision, then that's not really a POV choice; it's compliance with policies.  Furthermore, contrary to the assertion here, Dreger's "feminine essence narrative" language was in a fifty-plus-page-long peer-reviewed journal article, not in a commentary.  And I'm sure that Jokestress will explain shortly how an article 'about a seven-month-old neologism' has so many citations from the 1990s, and why an article about an idea has to be recast as an article about a word.
 * [2] The AfD resulted in a redirect, not deletion, was proposed by the most significant editor of the page, and was not opposed by anyone. Ironically, this new article was created directly because of Jokestress' ongoing campaign to restrict the contents of Homosexual transsexual solely to information about the term instead of the general idea of transwomen who are attracted to men.  Feminine essence theory of transsexuality wouldn't exist if Jokestress hadn't repeatedly implied that there were other, better, more widely accepted ideas of transsexual sexuality.  When Jokestress failed to answer my repeated questions about what exactly those more widely accepted ideas were, I asked a relevant expert, who told me that that there are only two widespread ideas:  Blanchard's taxonomy (supported by nearly all researchers and rejected by nearly all trans activists) and the woman-trapped-in-a-man's-body story that is familiar to most college students (supported by nearly all trans activists and rejected by all researchers).  Since several reliable sources were apparently available, I asked Cantor whether he thought it would be fun to create a new article, and apparently he did.
 * [6] But Jokestress is right that I will always believe that publishing the names and photographs of a researcher's children with nasty comments like "'Kate': a cock-starved exhibitionist, or a paraphiliac who just gets off on the idea of it?" was despicable.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - This page is an important contribution, because it articulates an idea that the general public and many, many transsexuals, including Lynn Conway, believe. Dicklyon's assertion that nobody believes it is simply false. This page will provide a place to keep up with evidence for and against the idea, and there are several existing pages that should rapidly refer to it.ProudAGP (talk) 19:59, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's no verifiable evidence that anybody believes this ridiculous strawman, is there? Certainly not the people who made it up (Dreger and Blanchard, according to the sources cited so far).  I think Conway would see it for what it is.  Shall we ask her?    Dicklyon (talk) 05:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep -- Our nominator wrote has acknowledged that the topic of this article merits coverage. If the topic merits coverage, but someone thinks the current instance of the article needs work then the wikipedia's policies state the contributor with the concern should try discussion to get those concerns addressed -- not deletion.  Geo Swan (talk) 04:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually I said if reliable sources are found. I haven't yet drawn the conclusion that the concept is notable.  Have you? Dicklyon (talk) 05:51, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep It's referenced, but editors must work together to ensure a neutral point of view. --Simon Speed (talk) 16:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "referenced" is not the same as "verifiable". And where are you going to find someone who can "work together" with James Cantor, other than the people on his side?  I'm not going to touch it, except for some tags maybe; it might be better left as a testament to his biased POV.  Dicklyon (talk) 17:02, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep but rename Looking at the references this is clearly a noteable, verifiable theory of transsexualism. Let me argue it to you this way.  In the article as written research is cited which says that part of the male brain of a transsexual is in the female size range.  [This link is to a youtube video by a transsexual child who appeared on 20/20.]  This child "Jazz" will tell you that they "have a girl brain in a boy body".  That is basically the feminine essence theory of transsexualism.  If this theory was not noteable to the general public then how would a 7 year old come to know it.  If it were just a strawman then how would a 7 year old know it?  They would not, because it is noteable, and not a straw man.  However I do think that renaming the article "Brain Sex Theory of transsexualism would be more appropriate based on how it is now written.  Though I suppose in the future the feminine essence as it has been conceptualized outside of western intellectual traditions could be incorporated into the article.  (i.e. in a sense the whole Native American idea of the "two-spirit" is an example of a feminine essence concept of male gender variance, and what we would definately call transsexualism). --Hfarmer (talk) 23:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Collected references

 * 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.