Talk:Femininity

"feminity" vs. "femininity"

Until I came across this page, I thought that the occasional occurrences of "femininity" I saw on the Interwebs were playful/sarcastic/memetic deliberate misspellings of "feminity", but this entry and the redirect from Feminity indicate that this isn't the case. However, the number of instances of "feminity" in Talk:Femininity and its archives would indicate that the confusion isn't uncommon. Should there be a discussion of the use of both words (or perhaps a mention in the lede, since that also mentions womanliness and womanhood as alternate names)? Or is there a better place for that? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 12:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems that feminity is an older version of the term femininity [1] and is already addressed in the Wiktionary [2]. USchick (talk) 19:10, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Inclusion of feminine disambiguation at top of page

I don't believe it is appropriate to provide a link to the Grammatical gender page at the top of the femininity page. I can see providing a link to the Grammatical gender page to the gender page but this link is not appropriate.

I switched it to ...

"Feminine" redirects here. For other uses, see Feminine (disambiguation).

like on the Masculinity page. -- Dave3457 (talk) 03:46, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine, my fault for not checking whether a disambiguation page existed (I just assumed it didn't, since it wasn't linked to). Victor Yus (talk) 06:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

re placement of Geert Hofstede's book

I'm not sure I'm keen on Geert Hofstede's book coming up almost at the top of the Behavior and personality section, which is an important section which follows the lede.

Since we're just giving an overview of the subject for the general reader, I think the stuff starting with "Femininity is sometimes linked..."; "something something dichotomy has had a considerable influence..." is good too (assuming it's true) and "An ongoing debate [regarding nature vs. nurture]" gives a good perspective, assuming that Hotstede has not somehow conclusively proven that it's nurture, which I sort of doubt. (It would be unusual for adaptive behaviors to not influence genetics, given enough time, I would suppose.)

Not an expert, don't feel strongly about it, and it's not terribly important I guess, but I moved Hofstede down quite a bit. (I also moved Serano down with him, keeping her just below Hofstede as before. Don't know Serano but I get a polemical vibe here (her article describes her as an "activist" for instance), although I could be dead wrong about that. I'm sure she's worthwhile, but not up so high.) They could go up a few paras too I suppose (or be restored to the top if someone can indicate that Hofstede really is is more or less the last word on the matter). Herostratus (talk) 14:59, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I support you on this. I think these are interesting and useful edits, but I don't think either should come before Ann Oakley for example. I also think that if editors are going to introduce relatively little known sources such as the Hofstede book, then we should have page quotes as in the Serano (and in which case a different citation model really ought to be used, since presently we have three citations for the same book differing only in page numbers: I'll try and take care of that some time if someone else doesn't oblige first). Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 16:34, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Added: Regarding page numbering, I've used the reference page {{rp}} template described in Help:References and page numbers to rationalise the hitherto five duplicate Serano references and added a comment at the beginnign of mark-up to encourage editors to follow suit. Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 00:57, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks ERH. This is great work! Herostratus (talk) 13:37, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Added: incidentally I see from your User page that you translate articles from the Russian Wikipedia. The Russian article on Femininity is rather good I think and eventually I propose to incorporate some material from it here if I don't see it from elsewhere first. Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 17:10, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll maybe take a look at that anon. Herostratus (talk) 13:36, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

"Ideal feminine"

What exactly is meant by "ideal feminine" (the heading for a subsection in the article)? It's not a collocation of itself that I recognise.

The Google search engine allows you to search for occurences of an exact string of words by putting them in quotation marks. Searching thus on "ideal feminine" gives you as a first hit this Wikipedia article on femininity, while subsequent hits as far as I can see offer it exclusively as as adjectival phrase rather than as a noun phrase - this "ideal feminine beauty", "ideal feminine figure", and so on.

Looking through the Revision History I find these from User:USchick who first created the section (Barbie dolls ...) here and then 'defined' her neologism here.

Shouldn't we be renaming this section somewhat more conventionally?

While I'm here, am I alone in being distinctly underwhelmed by Sue Gardner's (the 70th most powerful woman on planet Earth - no really :)) effort on the "ideal feminine" in Communism? A strong brianish carefully skirting whistling to oneself restraining desire to a lift back leg dog walk sort of mental image takes hold of me as I work through this piss poor collection of quotations from various sources. This would be Sue chasing the femininist vote in a safe redneck sort of way I take it (she didn't exactly cover herself in glory at New York v Strauss-Kahn valorising an investigative report by Edward Jay Epstein that was was immediately shot down in flames but was nevertheless the subject of a far from NPOV section for a very long time before I restored balance to it). I'm prepared to have a go at editing her good faith yeah right efforts, but would I, you know, get sent to Siberia for it? Exiled for life? Trolled into a lonely suicide on a Mediterranean island perhaps (just an idle thought)?

Reassurances sought. Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 01:53, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

"Traits that have been cited as feminine include gentleness, empathy, and sensitivity ..." in the lead

Originally this was "Behavioral traits generally considered feminine include gentleness, empathy, and sensitivity ...".

"Behavioural" is clearly wrong ("personality" is the appropiate quailifier if one were needed). The statement is supported by two citations, one an obscure 1980s academic citation (well. times have moved on ...) and the other is a tertiary source. In the circumstances I changed to "Traits that have been cited as feminine include gentleness, empathy, and sensitivity ... " and asked for a quotation. If an obscure source is cited that is an appropiate request.

IP Florida making a revert says that this is bogus and she can provide the quotations - so provide them please.

Thank you. Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 00:13, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Florida IP immediately reverted. Well, one tries one's best ... Elissa Rubria Honoria (talk) 00:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

And your point of steadily calling out my IP location is? That type of thing makes me not want to log in (I accidentally edited this article while logged out and kept with it after that because my IP address had been exposed). I should get my IP address (which will change later regardless) wiped from the history first before replying here while logged in, which can be legitimately done upon request. I'm also a guy, so I don't know why you assume I'm a she unless that's your feminist side showing. Usually, people assume that an anonymous person is a guy unless it's evident that the person isn't. And assuming that someone is a guy on Wikipedia is usually correct. I can see from your edit history that you have a lot more experience editing Wikipedia than is expected of someone with an account that has not been registered with Wikipedia for very long, but I'm sure you don't want me calling you "not-so-new editor."

This is what I said.[3][4][5] I didn't say I can provide the quotations. If the sources use the word "generally" and that is taken into account with all the many sources saying that those (or some of those) traits are generally considered feminine or are generally associated with femininity, I don't believe you should remove "generally." WP:Verifiability doesn't care if you disagree with "generally." You are also contesting a very non-contentious statement. Though what is considered feminine varies, it is well known that these traits are generally associated with femininity. And an abundance of sources support it. Using the "need quotation to verify" tag is strange to me because a lot of sources used for Wikipedia are offline sources: WP:SOURCEACCESS. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It also doesn't make sense to revert me on the words "Traits cited." Using "Traits that have been cited" is unnecessary verbiage. 72.216.11.67 (talk) 20:35, 27 August 2013 (UTC)