Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Men and feminism (2nd nomination) - Wikipedia


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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 no consensus. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AfDs for this article:

Men_and_feminism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Long standing WP:NPOV, WP:CONTENTFORK, WP:COATRACK issues that have not been addressed in many years. The topics here also have better maintained independent articles. Also, the article seems to have degraded significantly (at least in NPOV terms) since the last deletion discussion in 2007. This tells me that the page would not be able to remain free of issues even if the effort is put into fixing them. Equaaldoors (talk) 21:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Nothing covered here that isn't already covered in our other articles, in more NPOV ways. It's a POV contentfork as it stands, and unlikely to get hugely better. Kevin (talk) 21:33, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The content problems stem from the intangibility of the subject and that is never going to be resolved. The same content is better covered by existing independent articles. Exok (talk) 21:48, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It discutes a notable topic, the article is well developped and sourced. --FavorLaw (talk) 22:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I expressed concerns about this article in 2010 and it still seem very poor. As well as the NPOV issues there's also the open-ended nature of the title and it still reads like an undergraduate essay to some extent. It's also worth noting that the previous AfD discussion came out quite strongly in favor of delete (5 vs 2) though this wasn't considered to be consensus for some reason.--Shakehandsman (talk) 23:08, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - There's a lot of referenced info in here. I'm not going to comment on whether the article should stay or not, but if it is to be deleted I think it would be prudent to userify first, contact the relevant wikiprojects, and see if any of the info and refs are useful for other articles. (I've done it here, though this particular topic isn't so much my area) LukeSurl LukeSurl t c 00:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - For the reasons listed in the deletion nomination (note, I nominated this, but this is my first afd, so I don't know if I should comment here). Equaaldoors (talk) 05:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I agree with all the original arguments for deletion and stated the same on the article's talk page at one point. There is some decent, sourced content there and an effort should be made to find it a home, but the article title is hopelessly open-ended and has no chance of ever being NPOV. Further, the existing content doesn't lend itself to being left mish-mashed together under a different article name.--Cybermud (talk) 06:03, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as before from the first AfD discussion, and even more so now. It's been extensively edited since the last AfD, and has been improved past the stub phase. It has problems with style, but that can be fixed. It is heavily sourced. I'm not sure where it could be merged into. Bearian (talk) 16:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, for the same reason I said in the previous AfD. I agree the article is improved, but it doesn't change my fundamental view that it is an essay and not an encyclopedic survey of an encyclopedic subject. I had never seen WP:COATRACK before looking at this page, but that seems spot on to me. --Legis (talk - contribs) 18:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep. This seems to have started life as a student essay, and it was interesting but not appropriately written for WP. Over time, as people have tried to make it more appropriate, it has become disjointed, so it needs a bit of work. I would say keep if there are people willing to fix it, then after 12 months revisit whether it should be deleted. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't think anyone's really willing to put the effort into fixing it properly. The article has been covered with banners calling out various major issues for multiple years, with little positive effect. Maybe some references were added here or there, and formatting tweaked, but that's about it. Someone could take a hacksaw to the POV, but I'm afraid the general issues will cause it to re-occur. -Equaaldoors (talk) 23:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Needs some clean up; a tag listing of what might help. But obviously males as individuals and organized groups have a variety of view points on feminism and it's unlikely readers will just follow see alsos all over town to figure out where they are. My question is: Where is Women and feminism? Need it for the same reasons. CarolMooreDC 23:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Where is "[Men|Women] and *" for any other topic in Wikipedia? I expect that no other such article exists. "Men" is an absurdly broad category that immediately begs the question "Which men?" Would any of these articles make sense? Men and Racism, Men and Communism, Men and Judaism, Women and Atheism, Women and Postmodernism? The very title of the article presupposes an ability to summarize reactions of fully one half of the world's population throughout human history -- at which point the whole introduction to the article would need to clarify what the article is really about (if we hope to have it even be remotely encyclopedic.) If the article were 1000's of pages long it would by hopelessly incomplete. Something like "USA Men and Feminism" might work since this title limits itself to discussing the reactions of "American men" and scopes itself to only the men who lived in America during the span of history that the USA has existed and only those forms of Feminism that existed in America during that time span.--Cybermud (talk) 21:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:45, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment You're not comparing similar articles. This is a gender-sensitive article, unlike all your examples, so of course there wouldn't be a page called "Men and Communism". The analogous pages would be like Women and Islam, Women and the Church, Women in government, Women and Mormonism, Women and smoking, etc. The page never said it was describing all men any more than those similarly gendered ones speak for all women or for the entirety of other groups. It's a subjective inference. The authors of the sources don't claim to be accounting for every individual man either seeing as many are men themselves. They're describing men in terms of the overall category. I agree the page would be better if it were globalised, but I think it can be fixed by further contributions. Paintedxbird (talk) 16:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Women and Islam and the "Women in" articles you cite are about women's roles within certain aspects of society -- not the writings of women on certain ideas or women's participation in various social movements. This article starts off with thinkers and ends up with men participating in movements with some relation to feminism. It's a "gender-sensitive" article without a clear idea of what "feminism" is being reacted to at various times, and without a solid title. If the title reflected the actual content, it would be "Certain men's reactions to the idea of female equality and some men's participation in movements related to feminism," and that even sounds like at least two separate subjects, neither of which is presented coherently or in any comprehensive way. And who's to say that Plato's writings that touch on gender are different from what they would be if he were a woman? What is especially "man-oriented" in the writings of the thinkers in the first parts of the article -- are they reacting to the idea in a different way than women would? That's not something that can be assumed. Unless there's something that distinguishes those responses from the responses of women we don't actually have "gender-sensitive" subject matter -- anything different than Women and Pacifism? or what we have is a potential topic without actual content. You say "The page never said it was describing all men" but the title says that, and there is nothing in the article (explicitly or implicitly) to define its scope to something more restricted than what I've described just above. There are plenty of men thinkers already presented (better than in this article) in Protofeminism and History of feminism, but those articles present them essentially the same way as women thinkers are presented. Unless they can be presented as having a male pattern of reacting to feminism, they don't belong in this article. What remains is an article smaller in scope: "Men in feminist movements" or maybe "Men's reaction to feminism", which are justifiable subjects, but distinctly different ones. The best way to get to that smaller article is to delete this one. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
you persist with the idea that the article refers to all individual men, but "men" can refer to the general group as well as it does here. not everyone chooses to interpret it your way. if something is written to serve male interests it doesn't matter if the author is male or female, it's still male-centric, but this page is about detailing men's response to feminism. i agree, the reaction to feminism should be expanded and it should be further shown how these historical and current speakers are related to the prevailing attitudes within their patriarchal societies, but obviously that can't be done if it's deleted. there's a lot of information out there that can expound this topic. Paintedxbird (talk) 07:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
CommentActually there's not. Sure there are books, chapters, articles and discussions that may use the title "Men and Feminism" or something similar, but these are not encyclopedic articles that can stand on their own and, I maintain, they never will be. The fallacy here is caused by the fact that such secondary content is implicitly scoped towards its target demographic. A historical record of American "3rd Wave Feminism" may very well include an account of "Men's reaction" but such a title presupposes that the readers have the appropriate context to understand we are not talking about the reactions of male African Pygmies in the 1900s but rather that of wealthy, white, heterosexual, christian men in 20th century America. Having content that talks about very specific groups of men doesn't really talk about "men" as a holistic group in any way, shape or form. Indeed a core tenet of many flavors of feminism is that sex and gender are socially constructed so, according to such theories, there is no essential "reaction" that could ever be found or generalized across historical, cultural, geographic, religious, sexual and socioeconomic boundaries. Which is not to even begin to discuss that feminism itself comes in thousands of flavors... some of them contradictory (eg gender/radical/seperatist vs equity feminism.)--Cybermud (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. i think it's a notable topic. feminism is a female-originated movement that's often seen as female-centric. so detailing the reaction of men as the perceived opposite is quite relevant. also, it's a significant enough subject that i believe a lot of contributions here might be lost if an attempt were made to redistribute the content. i don't believe there's a POV problem as the page has an entire spectrum of responses which can be further added to. it seems a large amount of the criticism of this page stems from semantic issues. Paintedxbird (talk) 16:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Per nom's policy citations--here's why: If there's a spectrum of responses among men (and this article indicates the spectrum of responses is about as wide as it could possibly be), where's the relevance of the link between "Men" and "Feminism"? The reaction of men (or, rather, certain male thinkers) to the idea of equality for women (and since we're stretching this article from Ancient Greece to the present, that seems to be the definition of "Feminism" being used here), appears to be across the entire spectrum of possible responses. Is the actual subject here the idea that men can have different reponses, among themselves, to feminism? If so, that's no different from any other subject, as Paintedxbird says above. Better to delete an article that hasn't shown prospects of approaching a solid subject. No sources address the subject as a whole, which means we either have to fall back on solid common sense or a very tight case should be made for having an article. It seems to me that it would be more fruitful to create articles on men's responses to feminism in particular periods, but it should still be shown that there's a pattern of differences in those responses to the responses women have shown. (The section "Male feminism" seems to hold together pretty well and might be its own separate article about men involved in modern feminist movements.) Get the sources that address the subject as a whole first, then we have an article, not a coatrack unlikely to be improved anytime soon and always subject to bias.--JohnWBarber (talk) 21:37, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Male responses to feminism" would be a more accurate title for the existing material which includes various responses. I'd be surprised if we couldn't find at least one source for each subject that uses the words men or males and respond or response or responses. :-) That could be suggested at the article's talk page. CarolMooreDC 02:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep — This topic is independently taken as notable by numerous book-length sources, such as in this Google books search. And it's no surprise since feminism has as its central object the relation of power between men and women. Whether or not any sources now cited address the subject as a whole, numerous available sources do. Certainly, the concept is no less coherent than any of the "International reactions to…" article we have. Notability, rather than consistency across different subparts, is the relevant criterion. Those who seem to be offended by the idea that the article suggests that all men have one reaction (which it doesn't, from my read), should remember this is a WP:IDONTLIKEIT response, rather than a policy argument.--Carwil (talk) 23:01, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I looked over a few pages of that Google Books search and didn't see anything that went beyond men and modern feminism (and it looked like feminism in the United States). The article doesn't distinguish the feminist movement from the idea of equality or more equality for women through the ages, and it combines thinkers on the subject of feminism with modern men who simply participate in the movement. If there's an actual topic here for us to have such a broad article subject, then show us a reliable source that discusses this topic as a whole in a way we can all understand (that is, it says something about men interacting with feminism from Ancient Greece to the present that is encyclopedic). Where is that source? That would change my mind, and it's got nothing to do with WP:IDONTLIKEIT. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you read the introduction of Peter Murphy's Feminism and Masculinities (Oxford University Press, 2004), he discusses the examination of women's rights in Ancient Greece and later. You should be able to see parts of it on Amazon. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 23:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks, I just did read it (it's online up to page 17). What I was looking for was a source that actually connects older writings going back to Ancient Greece with more than a mention. When the introduction starts to describe some of the writings collected in the book, it does go into a bit more depth in describing what they say about some modern men's movements, but the Google version then cuts off (page 17). There's no discussion about how Plato or the rest actually influenced modern men in ways that feminism in general didn't. There's also no discussion about how Plato (or the rest)approached the subject differently because he's a man. There's hardly any information of what any of them actually wrote. The introduction just seems to celebrate the "proto-feminist" men rather than discuss them. The introduction begins to describe the pieces in the anthology, and does so in more depth, and it may well justify an article about modern men's relationships to feminism -- which is, after all, the subject of the anthology. But the idea of how men from all ages have reacted to "feminism"? This source doesn't come close to describing that. The title and introduction of this article lead readers to believe that information exists on a separate men's perspective on feminism. The connection is supposed to be more than trivial (feminists with penises). Replace the word "feminism" with "pacifism" or "slavery" or even "drama" and the first four sentences of the first paragraph of the introduction work equally well. That's no accident. Only for modern times does there seem to be some meat to this article.--JohnWBarber (talk) 03:48, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • You want a source that covers "ancient times" because of three sentences in this article? And without it you think the article should be deleted. Huh? Please explain in terms of policy.--Carwil (talk) 12:27, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Aargh. And I trusted you on this: Men and feminism devotes p. 30-31 to discussing Plato in "Ancient Greece." Your google books has a search bar, right?--Carwil (talk) 12:32, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment on feminism there's already a lot of stuff that's continued in other articles. you can't put every single thing about feminism on the page, it'd be too long. in regards to your examples there's Lesbian feminism and Feminist views of pornography. we don't need a page for every group in relation to feminism, but i think men's interaction towards feminism is notable.Paintedxbird (talk) 19:49, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And as for 'children and feminism', we have an entire category: Category:Feminism and the family. I'm sure there's still more that could be written there. Normally I'm all for merging sub-topics into a main one, but not where the sub-topics are independently notable and there's plenty to say about them, nor where the main topic is so broad a merge would be utterly infeasible. Robofish (talk) 22:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but rewrite - being badly written is not in fact grounds for deletion. We assess notability at AFD and notability is asserted by the existence of secondary sources (not just the ones used in the article). And here's just the top 10 on the topic of Men and Feminism: Men doing feminism by Digby; Men and feminism by Tarrant; Men in feminism by Jardine; Feminism with men by Schacht & Ewing[1]; Men and the making of modern British feminism by Chernock Men's feminism by Lopes et al; Between men and feminism by Porter; Misframing men by Kimmel; Feminism and men by Schacht & Ewing (different book to the other with a similar title[2]); and Feminism and masculinities by Murphy.
    Of the 3 policies listed by the nom WP:COATRACK & WP:CONTENTFORK are irrelevant & not applicable; the NPOV objections are unexplained & unclear (the article deals with men's movements both pro- and anti- feminism). Yes this is a very badly written summary article and it needs serious work but that aint grounds for deletion and on the sole issue of notability there's a library of secondary sources--Cailil talk 23:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: A POV essay in violation of WP:SYNTH doesn't cease to be so just because the assertions presented are sourced. Ravenswing 01:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - an article on a legitimate and notable topic, albeit one in serious need of cleanup. At the moment this article reads like one long he-said/she-said argument, with each POV followed by a 'response' from the opposite one. That is not how to write a balanced article. But as other editors have noted, the general topic of the engagement of men with feminism, both positive and negative, is a notable one, so we should have an article here. If it gets kept, I'll try to do my part to fix it. Robofish (talk) 22:21, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As noted by others, the article is heavily sourced and there seems to be an endless supply of information on the subject of men's responses to and interaction with feminism in scholarly sources [3]. Having read the article talk page, I think that many of the complaints about NPOV stem from a misunderstanding of WP:NPOV. Editors on the talk page complained that the masculinist or mythopoetic responses deserve a more positive coverage and that, in the absence of it, the article is not neutral. However, none have been able to provide reliable secondary sources that would justify a more positive coverage. The article was first tagged on the basis that "For example, including men's rights as a part of the antifeminist movement is NPOV"[4] when, in reality, it is simply the consensus found in reliable secondary sources. These tags remained and the rest was added by the nom himself [5][6][7] because he objected to the article structure, i.e., two "profeminist reponse" sections, something that could be remidied by simply removing the two subsubheadings for now and then better integrating the points. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 22:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as an OR/POV male-oriented synth of separate topics, namely: "Reactions to feminism", "Opposition to feminism", "Support for feminism", "List of male feminists". ClaretAsh 22:27, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. ClaretAsh makes an excellent point that this article opens possiblities to a mix of seperate topics. However, I don't think that makes the content here inherently OR or POV. It would probably a good idea to see how we can best focus this article or split it up. Part could possibly go to a Reactions to feminism (which would include opposition to feminism), part could go to Support for feminism, part could go to Role of males in feminism. All of those can be encyclopedic subjects, and a quick glance at sourcing indicates that they could all stand alone as notable subjects (but could also just be spinouts from feminism). However, this is not the place to discuss those issues. This is the place to discuss if this article should be deleted. There is far too much valuable content here that could work perfectly well in those articles (and possibly others). That is an editorial decision to make: how do we want to present this content. Not should we present this content. The answer to the latter is a clear yes. All else is for bold editing, article talkpages, and general content work. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Split into anti-feminism and pro-feminism, possibly merging the latter into a new article on male feminism, as the latter is pretty much about that. As Robofish points out, the concept really does exist, and it is a matter of academic discussion, but the article is in serious need of a cleanup. Sceptre (talk) 05:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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.