Talk:Gender self-identification - Wikipedia


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  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2024 and 10 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lynnphung (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Rizu Unagi.

— Assignment last updated by Bbalicia (talk) 00:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Gender self-identification → Gender self-determination – This page is about the legal human right to determine one's gender in documents. Gender self-identification refers to the act of self-identifying or self-conceptualizing one's own gender identity. Self-determination includes not only the freedom to self-identify, but also the freedom to disidentification (not identifying as something doesn't automatically mean self-identifying as another thing). And thus gender self-determination is more precise and concise. --MikutoH talk! 23:52, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Note: WikiProject Gender studies, WikiProject Law, WikiProject LGBT studies, and WikiProject Feminism have been notified of this discussion. --MikutoH talk! 23:52, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
More specifically, this article is about the legal right to determine one's own legal gender based solely on self-identification. I'm mainly familiar with sources using the term "gender self-identification" to describe this concept. I know there are some that use "gender self-determination", but I have experienced those as being a minority.
As some cursory evidence, I get about 33,000 Google News results for ["gender self-identification"] and 1,880 for ["gender self-determination"]. All sources on the first page for "identification" are about this legal concept, while some of the first-page "determination" results refer to a proposed Portuguese law about a different concept (treatment of kids in school). Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:53, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Ambivalent about it, but I just boldly added Gender self-determination as an alternate bold term to the lead as the two terms are used synonymously by people as is showcased even by the current interchangeable use of the two terms in the article already. Personally I prefer the term that people self-identify. The fact that a paper confirms this as legal recognition of this identification is a side-effect. Google scholar shows a pretty close split of 1,690 for self-determination and 1,380 for self-identification. On more data, we have google ngram showing an about equal rise in both terms with a slight edge for self-determination. So I think we could go either way for the article title and even currently, the inverse redirects here, so arguably, given that determination seems to have a slight edge in both scholar and ngrams we could swap them, but then again as FFF has pointed out, news seems to be showing an inverse to this, though we usually take precendence for scholar/ngrams over news, so again, could go either way. As another singular, but rather big global body, the UN uses Gender-identity, but also gender self-determination in this Report on Gender Identity where they discuss the right to self-determination for ones gender identity. Raladic (talk) 02:46, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
    At least for me, a quick scan of the Scholar results shows a similar discrepancy in the subject matter. "Determination sources" include some that are discussing other concepts and rights: either self-determination meaning control over one's life and social position or self-determination referring to acceptance/identity itself, with no reference to legal recognition. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:01, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Google news searches strongly favour "identification" and it has a natural, often used contracted form "id", so I think that is the title more familiar to the widest readership for the legal concept. "Determination" is much more general in meaning, a quick skim of those sources includes wider themes of autonomy. Conflating the two is going to lead to confusion with linking articles where eg. the subject expresses opinions narrowly on self-identification that don't carry over broadly to self-determination. RE: ngrams, the British English corpus shows a starkly opposite trend so it may represent another transatlantic difference on this issue. Void if removed (talk) 11:49, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
By google scholar search, "gender self-determination" is at about 1500, while "self-identification" is around 1500 (with fluctuations of a couple hundred on repeat searches for each). The latter term probably has to be disentangled a bit more from social self-identification. There's not so much gender "self-determination" in the sociology literature I would guess (from college, and from the last time I've read some of the gender literature a few years ago), since you don't get to self-determine a social construct. To me it would 'make sense' if "self-identification" is the social and psychological term while "self-determination" is strictly the legal term, but clearly the RS are not restricting themselves -- both news and legal sources are freely using "self-identification" to refer to, often explicitly in their respective works, a legal right of self-determination.
I'm not read up on the sources as of late, so my input is weak, but I'd suggest status quo of bolding both terms in the article, per indeterminate RS. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:56, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply