Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:00, 14 October 2023

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Antifeminism article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8Auto-archiving period: 3 months

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This page is not a forum for general discussion about antifeminism, feminism, antifeminists or feminists. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about antifeminism, feminism, antifeminists or feminists at the Reference desk.

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Gender studies This article is part of WikiProject Gender studies. This WikiProject aims to improve the quality of articles dealing with gender studies and to remove systematic gender bias from Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate in the project, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.Gender studiesWikipedia:WikiProject Gender studiesTemplate:WikiProject Gender studiesGender studies ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. To-do list: Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Assess : see Unassessed Gender studies articles and Unknown-importance Gender studies articles Cleanup : edit to see Collaborate : see /Collaboration Copyedit : edit to see Deletion sorting : see /Sexuality and gender Expand : edit to see Infobox : see Gender studies articles needing infoboxes Merge : edit to see Notability : edit to see NPOV : edit to see Orphans : Brannon Masculinity Scale · Holy Virility · Media and gender · Michael Kaufman (author) · Women's education in Saudi Arabia Photo : see Misplaced Pages requested photographs of gender studies Split : History of feminism Stubs : see Gender studies stubs Translate : see /translation Update : edit to see Verify : Riot grrrl Needs attention : see Gender studies articles needing attention Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Feminism Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Feminism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Feminism on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FeminismWikipedia:WikiProject FeminismTemplate:WikiProject FeminismFeminism Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Sociology This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Anthropology Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anthropology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anthropology on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnthropologyWikipedia:WikiProject AnthropologyTemplate:WikiProject AnthropologyAnthropology Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Religion Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Misplaced Pages's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Law Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Conservatism Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Conservatism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of conservatism on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConservatismWikipedia:WikiProject ConservatismTemplate:WikiProject ConservatismConservatism Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Women's History Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women's History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Women's history and related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women's HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject Women's HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Women's HistoryWomen's History Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: Ging, Debbie; Siapera, Eugenia, eds. (2019). Gender Hate Online: Understanding the New Anti-Feminism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96226-9. ISBN 978-3-319-96226-9. Ribieras, Amélie (2022). "'I Want to Thank My Husband Fred for Letting Me Come Here,' or Phyllis Schlafly's Opportunistic Defense of Gender Hierarchy". In Carian, Emily K.; DiBranco, Alex; Ebin, Chelsea (eds.). Male Supremacism in the United States: From Patriarchal Traditionalism to Misogynist Incels and the Alt-Right. Abingdon, England: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003164722. ISBN 978-1-0005-7622-1.

Do you think the definition is correct?

Antifeminism, also spelled anti-feminism, is opposition to some or all forms of feminism. Sounds like feminists are antifeminists because, e.g. TERFs are in opposition to TIFs, radical and marxist feminists are in opposition to liberal feminists.--Reprarina (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Reprarina: I think a major difference between antifeminists and those feminists you mentioned is that antifeminists do NOT consider themselves feminists. What do you say to this, @Roxy the dog:? Python Drink (talk) 23:28, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

So, it's the non-feminist opposition to some or all forms of feminism? sounds more correct... Reprarina (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I say, "Why ask me?" - Roxy the bad tempered dog 00:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the current definition of antifeminism in the lead is misleading IMO. The fact is that by that definition, various different factions/branches of feminism would be antifeminist under the current definition in the lead which makes no sense. Radical feminist and sex-positive feminists appose each other, same with Radical and liberal feminists, TERFs and TIFS (as you said) and so forth. What the central issue here is that there is a lack of agreement of what qualifies as feminism and thus what qualifies as anti-feminism. Whether rejecting some forms of feminism is antifeminist is dependent on what you believe is a "true feminist" and what is not. This of course if the No true Scotsman fallacy in play. Thus whether people who endorse some forms or tenants of feminists but not others are antifeminists is debatable and WP should not take sides in that debate. Maybe we should rewrite the lead to say something like "Antifeminism, also spelled anti-feminism, is the opposition to feminism as a whole or just, as some would argue, to certain forms of feminism.". Then we should then, in the main body of the article, better describe the debate between different feminist strains/branches as to what qualifies as antifeminist since I don't believe a consensus currently exists as to the proper definition, even within feminism itself. --Notcharliechaplin (talk) 01:06, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

It's tricky, like so many things, like defining what a Christian is.

Some defacto antifeminists like Christina Hoff Summers still label themselves "feminist", some pretty hardline antifeminists like myself think of themselves more as "postfeminists" or "equalists" (or my fave "egalitarian") and feel that we are being a More True Scottsman than normal feminists by taking the ideals of feminism in a way we see as more literally (like trying to get equality in family courts, being equally concerned with men's welfare vis-à-vis suicide and imprisonment, etc.).

And and then some characters like Warren Farrell who are correctly perceived as being de facto very prominent antifeminists still describe feminism in a very positive light, albeit with massive caveats, and are very reluctant to describe THEMSELVES as "anti-feminist." Destrylevigriffith (talk) 22:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

I think a more literal and neutral definition would read something like:

Political, ideological, or philosophical opposition to feminism or feminist policy. Destrylevigriffith (talk) 22:43, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

lower college entrance rates of young men

in the 2nd paragraph, that text links to literacy page. It shouldnt, as thats not what is meant in the context. There are many reasons why theres a gender imbalance in college admissions, but literacy isnt one. Jaygo113 (talk) 21:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Debiasing feminism and antifeminism articles

Neither is anywhere near WP:5P2, with the anti- article most noticeably biased (even here in the talk discussion the primary thrust seems to be toward finding what the feminist conception and consensus of what an anti-feminist is, which is the very definition of partiality. It has always reminded me of like if you let the FBI be the primary source material for the article describing what antifa is, if you wrote the Palestinian article only according to Zionist scholarship, if you let the anti-feminists be the primary source material for the feminism article, etc., etc.)

WP:NEUTRAL POV suggests describing the phenomenon of feminism, and not just from the feminist point of view. Their self-definition should be upweighted since they do represent the majority of academic opinion and therefore can be allowed more leniency toward "unbiased" self definition in the wiki article describing themselves, but their own POV of themselves and their worldviews and assertions should not be exclusively represented in an encyclopedia article about their group and it's philosophy. Just as, for instance, the Mormonism article does not reflect Mormon-only points of view, except when they are noted as Mormon POV — while their wiki article does allow some respectful self-definition on the part of Mormons as to what Mormonism is, it does not allow the entire article to EXCLUSIVELY describe the Mormon point of view of what a Mormon is — and this would hold for any other example of a Misplaced Pages article on any other movement, belief system, ideology, or philosophy.

And then of course the antifeminism article should not all be from the feminist point of view (while our own self-definitions should be downweighted as we are in a minority of scholarly opinion, they should not be entirely excluded: of course you let the Mormons have SOME say in what a "Mormon" is).

Ultimately, my proposition for discussion is simply that: both articles should describe the phenomena from a more neutral, more anthropological point of view.

That is IF they are to be up to Misplaced Pages's stated standards of not taking sides in ideological and/or philosophical debates. Destrylevigriffith (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

@Destrylevigriffith: you describe yourself as a "pretty hardline antifeminist". Do you have any evidence that these articles are biased apart from your own personal beliefs? Note that WP:NPOV means following published, reliable sources, not users' beliefs or opinions. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:19, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes of course, but my politics do not (or should not) automatically relegate all of my observations to the status of mere opinions, or worse.

Assuming the best intentions here and that you really want Misplaced Pages to be as unbiased as possible and take as neutral point of view as can be reasonably achieved, the unfortunate reality I see is that the best evidence for the non-neutrality and biased nature of the articles are the articles themselves — and that if you can't SEE it, it's because you're coming from it.

Now I don't mean that as an insult, because I assume that it's an honest question: you really can't see the bias.

The strongest piece of evidence I believe you could see, if you were to feel so inclined, is that the antifeminism article ultimately only cites feminist sources — which are practically the definition of biased in that particular case (an obvious conflict of interest). For some of the sources, you have to do a bit of googling to discover this, but it's not difficult, and I didn't do an exhaustive search. But when I checked on sources that were not announced as likely feminist in the first place, looking up university professors on the university website etc., inevitably it was someone in their gender studies department or the like.

If you want to assume good faith you're just going to have to accept that there will always be red tape that can be deployed against someone like me. In the real world there is no perfect neutrality, there are no humans without bias. The Wikipedians who have the most edits under their belts will understand how to best game the system and see it their way (mostly without even consciously trying, in fact being unable to catch the process occurring within themselves: we human beings just don't see what we really don't want to see):

You folks will always win. You have the power to reverse edits, settle disputes, and interpret things as fitting Misplaced Pages policy or not as per how you see, not just Misplaced Pages policy, but how you perceive the things in question. Systems can always be gamed, and I don't blame Misplaced Pages for being imperfect in this way. This is why you must embrace the spirit of the law and not just look for ways to (selectively) utilize the letter of the law, which could be easily weaponized the opposite direction (a conservative-leaning Misplaced Pages would undoubtedly slant the super contentious stuff a more-or-less equal amount in the opposite direction: Rogan as more of a hero, with more flattering photographs and descriptions, and less of a villain; and anti-feminism as more of a neutral topic and feminism as something with a distinctly negative spin on it — perhaps even as slanted as the antifeminism article effectively is.

For me, coming from a deep internal understanding of not just the feminist position (which I took most of my life) but also the antifeminist positions, the article is so obviously biased toward the feminist conception and preferred understanding of antifeminism (and preferred public understanding of antifeminism) that it really says something if someone can't see the bias without it being proven to them (again, no offense, just describing what I see by taking you honestly, in good faith, that the bias is undetectable to you). Destrylevigriffith (talk) 02:22, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

...(cont'd)

That very inability to see any bias, if true, to be blunt, unfortunately for Misplaced Pages and the public who rely on it for impartial information, really suggests the distinct possibility that the bias is so ingrained in the overall perspective of the culture of top Misplaced Pages editors and administrators that it will be impossible to be pointed out or proven in any way whatsoever to your satisfaction (bureaucracies are always "correct" according to themselves from their own point of view — and it would be nothing but pure internal dogmatic fantasy for top Wikipedians to claim that Misplaced Pages is not in any way a bureaucracy (we do, after all, call such top-level management personnel administrators for a good reason).

Finally, for what it's worth, please consider that I do mean all of this in the spirit of open communication and in the context of my honest desire to see Misplaced Pages be its best and live up to its (very admirable) ideals. I mean that about all of the above, no matter how you choose to take it — which is at least partly up to you. Destrylevigriffith (talk) 02:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

It's not even a little bit true that this article only cites feminist sources, but even if it were, that wouldn't necessarily make those sources unreliable. Or does the statement my politics do not (or should not) automatically relegate all of my observations to the status of mere opinions only apply to anti-feminism? Misplaced Pages articles are based on published, reliable sources, not users' deep internal understanding. If there are reliable sources the article doesn't cite, feel free to present them here. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:40, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

If you type "best arguments against feminism" (or any other similar searches) into Google you will find plenty of articles making actual points genuinely (rather than points misunderstood and spun to sound objectionable). These are all articles in print and published, studies from scholarship in the lake here and there, plenty of stuff that could balance out the article and meet Misplaced Pages's technical standards (if they are interpreted honestly and not used to conveniently exclude all scholarship/quotes/citations that disagree with Misplaced Pages's preferred stance on the matter).

Now I don't expect you to necessarily feel motivated to go do this yourself as a trusted editor, but I sure as hell am not gonna spend hours and hours of my time doing it either if I know for a fact that it's all simply going to get reverted out of an unconscious political bias.

If you do that search and scan around glancing at articles, or even just their headlines, do you think that if I included any quotes from those and taught myself how to attach the sources, that any of those edits would be allowed to remain even if I just added them for balance without deleting anything else?

Or can you save me the time by affirming my suspicion that anything legitimately taking the antifeminism POV will be deemed an unrecognizable/illegitimate/not scholarly enough source in the first place. For example would there ever be any way to include a quote from Karen Straughan or Janice Fiamengo or Warren Farrell — or any top thinkers in the unfeminist/antifeminist world?

Honest questions. I've wasted a lot of my time trying to edit articles here and anything that moves a biased article toward anything like neutrality is always immediately reverted, sometimes with obvious irrationality (as when my Rogan article edits were reverted in bulk even when some of them had nothing to do with changing the tone of the article). Destrylevigriffith (talk) 03:07, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

That's not how we write articles. Per Misplaced Pages:No original research, the best practice is to "research the most reliable sources on the topic and summarize what they say in your own words", not seek out specific arguments from supposed top thinkers. That would in fact lead to undue weight. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

No wonder! So you guys officially just go hunt down whatever you feel like is and can justify as the "most reliable" sources (a notoriously flexible, slippery, subjective, and problematic method for anyone familiar with real research), and then "summarize what they say," and then Oopsie! Presto chango: Misplaced Pages's magic slant, that y'all somehow can't see.

All originating from your subjective choices of the "most reliable sources".

Well, at least I'm starting to get a better handle on how this all came about and keeps cropping up in the first place.

If any Wikipedians are interested in following the story, more and more people are covering the political bias creep on Misplaced Pages.

Point of fact it would be interesting to see an article ON Misplaced Pages's bias (of course it would be called a "claimed" bias, such as perhaps Claim of a Liberal-Progressive Bias on Misplaced Pages.

Omg. It'd be so funny to read. Awkward!

So I take it it's a (convenient) given that all "reliable" sources will be, by definition, feminists and scholars sympathetic to feminism. Any unfeminists or antifeminists will be, by definition, "not reliable", and so we will never see their views reflected on any Misplaced Pages article — even any purporting to explain their views.

It's a really cute little closed loop, to be honest. I'm sure an initially totally unintended systemic problem that just kind of ran away into the current strong lefty lean.

Probably the lean is the evolutionary outcome of a natural self-selection bias on the part of Misplaced Pages's top contributors, and then the increasing self-selection of the Academy, which is going to reinforce who feels comfortable most participating in Misplaced Pages as it reflects only academic consensus, which is going to make top editors feel more and more comfortable doubling down on only using mainstream academic sources that juuuuuuuuuuust so happen to share most of their political views... **

I mean there is a small element of self-consistency here when Wikipedians claim to simply reflect the "consensus" and then only count the liberal academic scholars as true authorities when they take their census for this consensus. It's like a study in the phenomenon of the echo chamber: round and round the reinforcement goes. Destrylevigriffith (talk) 06:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, Misplaced Pages is "biased" in favor of reliable, mainstream scholarship. What counts as reliable is described in detail at Misplaced Pages: Reliable sources. If you wish to change those standards, then the place to do so is at the talk pages of the relevant core content policies rather than tedious rants on individual article talk pages. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 07:51, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages controversial topics
• All unassessed articles
• B-Class Gender studies articles
• Unknown-importance Gender studies articles
• WikiProject Gender studies articles
• C-Class Feminism articles
• Mid-importance Feminism articles
• WikiProject Feminism articles
• B-Class sociology articles
• Unknown-importance sociology articles
• C-Class Anthropology articles
• Mid-importance Anthropology articles
• C-Class Religion articles
• Mid-importance Religion articles
• WikiProject Religion articles
• C-Class law articles
• Low-importance law articles
• WikiProject Law articles
• C-Class Conservatism articles
• Mid-importance Conservatism articles
• WikiProject Conservatism articles
• C-Class Women's History articles
• Low-importance Women's History articles
• All WikiProject Women-related pages
• WikiProject Women's History articles