Talk:Meghan Murphy

Choise of wording in last sentence

The last sentence of the article goes; On several occasions since August 2018, Murphy has been suspended from Twitter and asked to delete certain tweets about transgender issues that violated it's hateful conduct policy.[38].

I have re-read the line a few times to be sure that I did not misinterpret it, as I reacted on the by me bolded word "hateful" describing Twitter's conduct policy, wherefore I wonder if it is the wording of Meghan or the wording of the writer of the article? If by Meghan, it should be within quotation or explained that it is her description of the policy. If however it is the choise of the creator of the article, then I believe it falls under weasel wording which would then make the word "hateful" inappropriate, as it goes against the neutral tone that should be kept in articles free from personal bias of the writer.

Sincerely - Okama-San (talk) 20:16, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello, it's actually not Meghan or the person who edited it in, it's the wording twitters rules use to describe the specific section of the rules that she broke.ShimonChai (talk) 09:35, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I realized that just yesterday after having gotten to bed, ugh. >.< I wish I could erase the post as it is a bit embarrassing in retrospect now, but, that's life. :P

Sincerely - Okama-San (talk) 12:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Tagging of first sentence

There's some pretty ugly tagging in the first sentence currently, due to an edit I made. I apologize for the cosmetics of it, but hopefully it won't last long, and the fact that it looks so gross will motivate its rapid repair. The problem was, that you had three references at the end of what is supposed to be the definition, and single most important sentence in the article, and none of the references support the statement made; they are all trivial mentions of Murphy, in articles about something else. I tagged them all {{failed verification}} for the lack of support, and {{better source}} for the need to have something more than just a tangential, trivial mention of Murphy. That makes for a horrible-looking first sentence, I'll admit. If someone wants to come along and just remove all three references, and all six tags completely, and replace it with one {{citation needed}}, I won't object. But those references really should not be there. Mathglot (talk) 07:41, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

First, I agree that none of them properly cite the first sentence due to the contents of the citations not being in the citation given. To fall inline with citations given:

"Meghan Emily Murphy is a Canadian writer, and founder of Feminist Current, a feminist blog and podcast" (Note, this is just based on those citations given, not citations throughout the entire article.) Though, I disagree on the trivial part, The Globe and Mail as far as I know is reliable, and so is The New York Times, furthermore I couldn't find any ruling on "trivial" mentions disqualifying a citation from being used in either the better source template, nor in WP:NOTRS. ShimonChai (talk) 12:35, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi ShimonChai, and thanks for your comments. G&M and NYT are both highly reliable sources, and AJ too, there is no question about that, but that's not the issue here. There's a statement about trivial mention somehwere; I'll try and find it. But basically, these all contain quotations by Murphy about some extraneous topic, and are not about her in any meaningful way, other than to identify who she is.

• I.e., in the G&M article about sexism in the workplace, several experts are queried, and each of the three have a one-sentence reply to the question, which is quoted, and they are each identified by name, position, and publication. They are quoting her own words, so it's WP:PRIMARY, and it's not clear whether they asked the respondents for their title, or simply looked it up on the web, in which case they are quoting a self-published source. This identification is barely more than some commenters provide in the Letters column at G&M (e.g., "Hilary Pearson", here). I'm not saying this absolutely cannot be used if there is nothing better, but it's a trivial mention of her position (the article is about something else) which description most likely comes from asking her, or looking at the blog.
• The NYT article is about Hugh Hefner, and contains one sentence, again by Megan Murphy, not written by others about her.
• The third reference is an interview with a Bangladeshi microfinance banker and Nobel prize winner, opining about responsibility for violence in Burma. This article has nothing to do with feminist politics. After the end of the interview with Yunus, there is a follow-up section with a teaser for the publication's weekly "Arena" column, and includes one sentence of quoting Murphy's opinion on the subject of this other column; again, this is a statement by her, not about her. She is identified, as any opinion source would be.

If these three articles, none of which are about Murphy in any substantial way beyond a trivial identification are the very best that can be done to verify the first sentence of the article, then it would be reasonable for someone to question whether Murphy is even notable enough to have an article. However, I don't believe there is a question about notability. That being the case, surely stronger references than these must exist. A truly secondary source, might be a G&M or NYT article about "opinion-shapers in radical feminism", where people (not employed or connected with Feminist Current) talk about Murphy perhaps comparing her to other writers, perhaps going into some analysis or evaluation of this generation of feminist opinion makers, or just anything, more than simply identifying her by name and position. That would be a substantive, independent, secondary source, which these three, imho, do not seem to be. I will try to find the "trivial mention" statement if I can, but even if I can't, surely we can do better than this. These sources are very weak on a number of accounts. (I'm still not bothered if someone just deletes all of them, and am tempted to do so myself, but would be better if someone else did.) Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

So, it turns out "trivial mention" is connected with Notability, not referencing. It is found in the first sentence in the section on significant coverage. There is also the essay, WP:Trivial mentions. So my objection to those references would have to be cast in some other way, than citing "trivial mention". I still think they're weak, but I'll have to find the right policy for it. Mathglot (talk) 23:47, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

No volunteers so far, so went ahead and removed the references, and tagged the first sentence as {{cn}}. Mathglot (talk) 12:55, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

First sentence description TERF vs radical feminist

An IP editor adjusted the first sentence of the article to read "Meghan Emily Murphy is a Canadian writer, journalist, and founder of Feminist Current, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist blog and podcast." The term TERF was just a piped link to the general page for "radical feminism" (as the article had previously linked). While it seems to me that the subject of this article is perhaps best known for her opposition to transgender rights, this edit seemed like an NPOV issue to me, since TERF is not a label of self-identification, but one applied by others who disagree with them. To be clear, I think given the prominence of this part of her politics, some mention of her stance would make sense in the introduction, but this exact wording did not seem the way to go about this, and particularly not via a piped link. Any thoughts on this? --Sauzer (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Those who accuse Murphy of being a "TERF" and persist on inserting the offensive term into the article are activist editors. However, her history regarding transgender issues is that she is not against trans people, she's against trans ideology and transgender rights legislation. It's a fine line, but an important distinction. As a WP:BLP, every statement about her must be supported by reliable sources. And yes, injecting "TERF" or "trans-exclusionary" into the biography is a violation of WP:NPOV. Pyxis Solitary yak 06:53, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Pyxis Solitary describes themselves as a TERF on their user page. They should be forbidden from editing this page due to their non-neutral, hateful perspective.

The article has two components: how Meghan Murphy is a radical feminist and how she excludes trans people. It is inaccurate _not_ to refer to her as a TERF.

Agree with the IP comments, it's hard to imagine a blog writer that is more typically an active TERF promoting transphobic rhetoric. The arguments that you can never use the term "TERF" to describe anyone, has limits and arguing that Megham Murphy is not a TERF or blatantly transphobic is beyond logic and published fact.

By the way, Pyxis Solitary, there is no such thing as "trans ideology". If you continue to spout unsourced damaging nonsense that so blatantly attacks all trans people this way, you should be blocked or banned from Wikipedia in line with the Arbcom Discretionary Sanctions applying to gender related topics that you were alerted to in May this year. Thanks! --Fæ (talk) 16:44, 1 August 2019 (UTC)