Talk:Feminism and equality/Archive 1

Archive 1

why this article is separate

The rationale for this article's content being separate rather than included in the feminist movements and ideologies article or the feminism article is length. All these articles need room for growth without reaching 100 KiB. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:20, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Deleting section about superiority

The section on superiority (and by extension this entire article) contradicts reliable sources about feminism and is based entirely on your misrepresentation of five to six primary sources.

• Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation is a book about the lesbian separatist movement in which Johnston defines female relations with the opposite sex as a form of collaboration. [5] The author never states or implies that she herself or feminism in general “seeks superior rights."
• Jo Freeman’s BITCH Manifesto is an attempt to describe the restrictions that assertive women face in our society and take back the term “bitch.” The author never mentions feminism, she never even acts like she speaks on behalf of women or feminists, and she never states or implies that she or feminism in general “seeks superior rights."
• Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology is a book about women’s oppression, patriarchy and male-centred language. The book was thoroughly misrepresented by Nick Levinson. One particularly disturbing misrepresentation is the part where Nick Levinson claims “She advocated for government by women” and then cites a passage where the author describes “hags” who create “Hag-ocracy.” Another example is when Nick Levinson claims that the author “argued against mere equality” when in fact Daly argues that certain laws like the legalization of abortion help women but don't free them completely. The point is that the author never implies that women or feminists or even the author herself “seeks superior rights.”
• Andrea Dworkin’s Scapegoat is a book about a nation state for women (not a state where women govern men or something like that) like Jews have Israel. Nick Levinson begins his endless quotations with a statement by Isaiah Berlin and and Ramin Jahanbegloo and makes it seem like it was Dworkin who wrote this. Dworkin actually calls Berlin’s statement “You cannot combine full liberty with full equality—full liberty for the wolves cannot be combined with full liberty for the sheep” into question and never states that she or women or feminists seeks superiority over equal rights.
• Phyllis Chester’s Women and Madness is about women's roles in history, society, and myth and the double standard when it comes to women's psychology. Among various other things, the author mentions Amazon societies and how these mythological societies oppressed men. The author points out that female-dominated societies would be no more just than male-dominated societies and expresses the hope that someday a choice between forms of injustice will not be necessary. The author never claims that she, or women, or feminists, are superior or that she, women, or feminists “seek superior rights” in our society.
• Helen Diner’s Mothers and Amazons is a history of matriarchies and mythological Amazons. Nick Levinson admits that the book has nothing to do with “feminist superiority.” Nonetheless, he quotes the book extensively in the section about "feminist superiority."

This section is a breach of WP:NPOV, WP:PRIMARY, and fringe views. This article should be suggested for deletion. TheLuca (talk) 23:22, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You have copied from Talk:Feminism without responding to my reply to the same comments. Except for the beginning, the end, one footnote, and one boldfacing, your latest post is identical and thus ignores my reply of twelve hours earlier. Your obligation under bold-revert-discuss is to discuss, as I am doing. The length of my reply is proportionate to the accusations you have leveled. Please reply on point. I will gladly wait a reasonable time for your reply.

All of the authors make approximately the points you say they make (your descriptions are in various ways close enough that I'm happy to accept them, having read the books and not just descriptions of them) but the same authors also make the points I quoted them as making. Apparently, you believe that authors who make one set of points couldn't make the others. That is incorrect. My quotations are correct, correctly summarized, and supported uncontradicted by the rest of the respective publications.

• Jill Johnston in Lesbian Nation wrote, "A small but significant number of angry and historically minded women comprehend the women's revolution in the visionary sense of an end to the catastrophic brotherhood and a return to the former glory and wise equanimity of the matriarchies." Id., p. 248. Her claim is not about feminism in general and I didn't say it was. It is about a part of the feminist movement and I said so.
• On Joreen's Manifesto:
  • Joreen, now as Jo Freeman, does identify The BITCH Manifesto as a feminist article; this is at http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/joreen.htm. I've added that identification to follow the quotation from it, in response to your point. She is well known as feminist and adding the identification of the Manifesto is appropriate. A self-published statement is permissible when it is with respect to the self.
  • Your statement that she "never even acts like she speaks on behalf of women or feminists" is refuted by, among other things, the Wikipedia article on her, which says, in the lede, "Jo Freeman . . . is an American feminist" (deboldfaced) and that "[s]he has also written extensively about women" and by her essay, On the Origins of the Women's Liberation Movement from a Strictly Personal Perspective, as accessed Oct. 6, 2010, with respect to which "[her] scholarly account of many of the . . . events [in the essay]" appeared at least ten times (id., n. 1). She was already a feminist at about the time of writing the Manifesto; she was, for instance, also invited to "publicize the women's liberation movement to another group of women" (id., the essay).
  • In the Manifesto, she wrote, "We must be strong, we must be militant, [and] we must be dangerous" and that bitches are "always . . . female", are "domineering" and "overwhelming", that the highly competent bitches have "superiority", and that bitches are the "vanguard" of the society of which Joreen wrote. That is a call for superior rights for some females.
• Mary Daly:
  • Gyn/Ecology is as you described it, and it also says "women . . . are creating Hag-ocracy". Id., p. 15. She wrote that "this book . . . is . . . Anti-male". Id., p. 29. She wrote that "women . . . are . . . controlled by men" and that by "direct[ing] our own Crafts/Vessels we become reversers". Id., p. xxvi (New Intergalactic Introduction). Hag-ocracy is a government. Mary Daly called for it.
  • She wrote of "tokenism . . . commonly guised as Equal Rights" as a "false ideal" because it "deflects and shortcircuits gynergy, so that female power, galvanized under deceptive slogans of sisterhood, is swallowed by The Fraternity." Id., p. 375. She wrote that "tokenism is insidiously destructive of sisterhood". Ibid. She wrote, "there is no equality among unique Selves." Id., p. 384. She did support reforms such as "legalization of abortion", id., p. 375, but that is not a refutation of what else she wrote in opposition to the equality that is usually the fulcrum of feminism. She advocated for more power for women than equality could afford.
• Andrea Dworkin:
  • Her call in Scapegoat and subsequently was for, as you say, a "nation state for women", and, since men could live there (she gave the example of a "male intimate", id., p. 246), therefore "a state where women govern men" (quoting from your incorrectly negational claim). She wrote: "One needs either equality or political and economic superiority." Id., p. 336. Her call for a Womenland is a call for "superiority".
  • Her calling "into question" (your phrase) of Isaiah Berlin's statement was to ask "Are women sheep ('led like sheep to the slaughter')? Must women become wolves? Is violence against women a direct result of the fact that there is no inevitable, painful, retaliatory consequence for hurting women?" Id., p. 246. She wasn't challenging his statement; she was using it to build her own, which I quoted.
  • My quotations of her book do not make Isaiah Berlin's words seem like Andrea's own. They are attributed to Isaiah Berlin by both her and me. They are part of her argument and therefore belong.
  • I did not quote Ramin Jahanbegloo except as a coauthor with Isaiah Berlin of a book cited by Andrea Dworkin in her book.
  • The quotations I supplied were in total not too long, given the material and its importance.
• What you say about Phyllis Chesler's book, Woman and Madness, is largely right except that she was "saying that a female-dominated or Amazon society based on the oppression of men . . . . is better for women." Id., p. 338. Therefore, either justice is not crucial to her argument or unjustness is acceptable. She wrote, "[i]f women take their bodies seriously—and ideally we should—then its full expression, in terms of pleasure, maternity, and physical strength, seems to fare better when women control the means of production and reproduction. From this point of view, it is simply not in women's interest to support . . . a fabled 'equality' with men." Id., pp. 337–338. She wrote, "women who are feminists must gradually and ultimately dominate public and social institutions—so as to ensure that they are not used against women. I say 'dominate' because I don't think that 'equality' . . . will be possible for women who have never experienced supremacy in public institutions as men have." Id., p. 347.
• On Helen Diner's Mothers and Amazons, you're flat wrong to claim that "[I] admit . . . that the book has nothing to do with 'feminist superiority.'" On the contrary, what I wrote is that the author herself did not advocate for feminist superiority. And she didn't have to for the book to be important for the article. I quoted the book because it presents history in support of female superiority: specifically, that Amazons were a "feminist wing" of humanity. Id., p. 123. She said that Amazon society included boys as slaves and no other males. Id., p. 122. I quoted her words. A female feminist society in which the only males are slaves when some or all females are not slaves is a society in which females govern males. She wrote, "[among] [t]he Libyan Amazons . . . .[,] [t]he women monopolized government and other influential positions. In contrast to the later Thermodontines, however, they lived in a permanent relationship with their sex partners, even though the men led a retiring life, could not hold public office, and had no right to interfere in the government of the state or society." Id., p. 136. "Strabo, traveling in North Africa . . . found that . . . ["its women"] ruled the country politically, while the men were still without significance in the state". Id., p. 137. She added, "The Berbers of our times . . . .[,] [n]ear the Atlas Mountains, . . . have preserved a strong gynocracy." Ibid.
• None of these works are comparable to a diary or a traffic accident participant's report on the accident. All of the sources I quoted were reliably published by, e.g., Simon & Schuster, Beacon Press, and Macmillan. Gyn'Ecology, Mothers and Amazons, and Scapegoat draw on other sources and interpret them. The reprinting of the Manifesto in books establishes its role in feminism; I simply used its most authoritative rendition, that published by the author.

Feminism is not solely about equality. Difference feminism often completely sidesteps any notion of equality or superiority by asserting that women have their power from being different, rendering equality meaningless and irrelevant (although some nonfeminists also argue difference and irrelevance). Equality is the majority view by far, but it is not the only view.

It is NPOV to state a source's or subject movement's, group's, or author's POV.

The authors under discussion wrote about feminism and not primarily about personal experience. The extensive sourcing within books to other sources is part of what makes them secondary as sources.

A significant minority is not a fringe. The basis of measurement is within feminism, not within a society as a whole, because the article is about feminism.

You indicate that the information about the group The Feminists is only alleged. Please state the basis for your doubt.

You indicate that the entire article is wrong by extension because of the superiority section. Please state how.

Thank you. I look forward to your information. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Copying my reply from the feminism talk page. Nick Levinson, again and again and again, the length of your replies is inappropriate.

I repeat that the analysis of the sources is an interpretative original analysis. Therefore, WP:PRIMARY and WP:SYN state that All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors. The analysis and synthesis of the primary sources advances a position not explicitly advanced or even implied by any of the sources. Therefore, this analysis and synthesis constitutes original research. Wikipedia urges all editors to remove original research immediately and aggressively.

The problem isn't even that the disputed edits don't have consensus. Even if your edits had 1000 other editors supporting them (which they do not), WP:SYN, WP:NPOV, WP:PRIMARY, and a host of other policies override any concerns about consensus.

The content which you want to include violates WP:SYN, WP:NPOV, WP:PRIMARY, and isn't cited properly. TheLuca (talk) 23:00, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Some of the above I have already replied to where you copied the above from. My reply there, including what it incorporates by reference and inference, applies here.

Mothers and Amazons, by Helen Diner, is a book of history. She was not alive during the times she historiographed. It is therefore a secondary source and not primary. It is quotable as recording the historical fact of feminist females governing males. It is not synthesis or POV to quote it.

Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly, cites primary and other sources. It has a Notes section, from p. [425] to p. 467. It has 733 notes. It is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. It is therefore a secondary source and not primary. "Articles may include analytic or evaluative claims only if these have been published by a reliable secondary source." (Secondary Sources: Policy.) So Gyn/Ecology may be quoted for analytic and evaluative claims. It is not synthesis or POV to do so.

To analyze the other publications, I'd have to get some them from libraries again, so I will wait before responding on them, too.

NPOV does not require that every source be neutral. It requires that the article be neutrally balanced but not that no statement in it reflect a source's POV.

I'm happy to refine editing. Wholesale deletion is not the method for that.

Nick Levinson (talk) 05:13, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I made an error in a quotation from Gyn/Ecology and, if I restore the text, I intend to correct it accordingly. From page 375 I misquoted "which easily be withdrawn"; I should have written it as "which can easily be withdrawn". Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I made errors in my quotations, all apparently minor. I twice erred in quoting Lesbian Nation, by Jill Johnston, pp. 248–249; where I quoted "to few initiates", I should have written "to a few initiates", and where I quoted "the nature of the new social forms", I should have written "the resultant nature of the new social forms", and, unless I saw two differing copies of the book, these were my fault. Also, I erred in quoting Scapegoat, by Andrea Dworkin, p. 246, and I saw the same printing both times; where I quoted "control over a boundary", I should have written "control of a boundary", and I didn't insert a needed ellipsis. I intend to correct the enclosing quotations the next time I edit them.

I have gathered evidence of sources being secondary for those that are (I retrieved books from public libraries, which took time). Sources are usable in WP whether they're primary or secondary but the use of primary sources is more constrained. As to secondary sources already under discussion:

• Scapegoat, by Andrea Dworkin, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section, from p. 372 to p. 419; I estimate the bibliography lists over 1,600 sources. It has a Notes section, from p. 339 to p. 371, which has 1,454 endnotes. Its publisher is The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. The book, a comparative political study, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience.

• Women and Madness, by Phyllis Chesler, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section; covering from the earliest times to 1970, the bibliography is from p. [371] to p. 374; I counted 53 sources for the earlier period. The book being a revision in 2005 of the 1972 edition, the earlier sources are relevant to the earlier edition. However, as I'm quoting the 2005 edition (because it's available), the later bibliographic sources have some relevance; later sources are listed on pp. 374–389 and I estimate over 240 sources are listed for the later period. The book has a Notes section, from p. [353] to p. 370, which has 188 endnotes. The 2005 edition's publisher is Palgrave Macmillan, partly a division of St. Martin's Press. The book, a study on psychology, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. According to the 2005 edition, cover IV, she is a professor emerita of psychology and women's studies.

• Daring to Be Bad, by Alice Echols, cites primary and secondary sources. It's based on interviews of "forty-two people", id., p. 391 (Appx. D: A Note on the Oral Interviews), and is an outgrowth of a dissertation, ibid. It has a Notes section, from p. [297] (substantively from p. 299) to p. 366, which has 1,344 endnotes. Its publisher is the University of Minnesota Press. The book, a history, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. Its author was then a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

• Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly, already partly discussed in this Talk section, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Notes section, from p. [425] to p. 467, which has 733 endnotes, and the book also has a small number of footnotes. Its publisher is Beacon Press. The book, a study of ethics, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. She was tenured at Boston College and held two or three doctorates.

• Mothers and Amazons, by Helen Diner, already partly discussed in this Talk section, is a book of history. She was not alive during the times on which she wrote. According to the book, "[u]nfortunately, it was not possible to include exhaustive notes or a bibliography. The book and its price would have been expanded intolerably by an enumeration of all source materials, magazine articles, papyruses, and pamphlets from the diverse disciplines necessary to bring about this feminine history of culture. Nor did it prove possible to make room for the bibliography through an abbreviation of the text, for the contents are already condensed. But in the most important passages, quotations and sources have been included.", id., p. xiii (Author's Preface). The author, "for the 'mothers' part", credited Johann Jakob Bachofen and Robert Briffault, id., p. xiii & n. 2 (Author's Preface), and "for the 'Amazons' part" she credited "Ephoros, Pherecydes, Isocrates, Hellanicus, Cleidemus, Eusebius, Dionysius Scythobrachion, Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch, Pliny, Strabo, Pompeius Trogus, and many nameless gentlemen still older .... [N]ew sources are unnecessary ....", id., pp. xiv–xv (Author's Preface). According to Joseph Campbell, "[t]he authoress, a Viennese lady of society ..., convincingly displays ... an impressive learning", id., p. vi (Campbell, Joseph, Introduction (N.Y.: Aug., 1965)). The book's publisher in 1965 was Julian Press (N.Y.). The book was "[o]riginally published in German", id., dust jkt., rear flap (The Author); I don't have the German edition and am not fluent in that language. The book is at least one level removed from personal experience and the sources on which it relies for much of its content put this book at least two levels removed from personal experience.

Nick Levinson (talk) 08:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

please research into feminist periodicals on superiority

Feminist newspapers and booklets may have reported, quoted, or published well-known feminists as proponents of superiority or supremacy (likelier the former), particularly in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Many such papers had largely local circulation in various locales with some copies arriving nationally and some are available now in microfilm in libraries (at least, Bell & Howell published Herstory: Women's History Collection (microfilm)). Best wishes and thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

please research What Women Wanted, in Stanford Observer

A specific source on superiority that I don't have is Freedman, Estelle B., What Women Wanted: Varieties of Feminism in Nineteenth-Century America, in The Stanford Observer, Jan., 1978, perhaps pp. 3 & 7 (The Stanford Observer published by Stanford University & since renamed Stanford Magazine or The Stanford Magazine (news.stanford.edu)), which is cited in Offen, Karen, Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach, in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 14, no. 1 (Autumn, 1988), p. 125 n. 12 & 139 n. 43 (pp. 8 & 22, respectively, in PDF viewer software) (JStor or JStor's stable URL, both as accessed Aug. 28, 2010, 2:48p) (author was of Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford Univ.). While Stanford University's library probably has this on hand, it appears to be rather costly to get a copy, and, as far as I know after checking WorldCat.org, no copy is near me. I hope someone has a copy and can edit the Wikipedia article accordingly. It is also very possible that the superiority referred to has nothing to do with women governing whole societies, but perhaps is only about a "moral", biological, or essentialist claim to superiority and not governance. Best wishes and thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 09:09, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

please find critiques of supremacy generally

Criticisms of the superiority or supremacy position are implicit in most equality claims, but they probably should be articulated. At the moment, I don't think I have them (except for what I've already added to WP plus some to come on matriarchy). Preferred are two kinds: those by feminists (there's probably a passage in an interview of or an article by Betty Friedan, for example) and those by antifeminists (although some likely exaggerate and conflate all of feminism with superiority aspirations and object to the whole, rather than state a specific objection to superiority per se). Best wishes and thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 09:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC) (Corrected the syntax of the first sentence to conform to that of the next sentence: 09:31, 23 November 2010 (UTC))

whether Les Guérillères community intended as relatively modern

I think Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères, the 1969 novel, was meant to be relatively modern or futurist, and thus so was the proposed female state. This is suggested by the words "rifle" and "bullet" in the novel (Wittig, Monique, trans. David Le Vay, Les Guérillères (1985, © 1969), op. cit. (cited in the draft), p. 141 ("rifle") & p. 132 ("bullet" & "bullets")), in contrast to an existing interpretation of the fiction as Amazonian, probably meant in a sense other than ancientness. The ages of the English words rifle and bullet, about 2–3 centuries (per Shorter Oxford Eng. Dict. ([4th ed.]), could be irrelevant if her original French words, whatever they were, were old enough and meant ancient weapons or weapon supplies used for war. To avoid this factor being deprecated as original research from a primary source, is there a secondary source about the feminist state's intended time frame other than 1969? Nick Levinson (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Superiority section restoration draft pending with new edits

The Superiority section should be restored. I'm editing a draft of it to improve it. I'm posting a draft in progress for discussion and editing before inserting it into the live article. I plan to edit the draft for one source at a time. Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC) (Corrected not this time but in last edit, per edit summary: 23:04, 16 October 2010 (UTC))

Rewriting the draft presented a few issues:

Which sources are secondary and which primary: The authority is WP:Primary and WP:Secondary for the Wikipedia definitions of primary source and secondary source, because while other definitions may be in use in academe and elsewhere Wikipedia's definitions are in use for Wikipedia and reflect consensus among editors concerned with quality of sourcing generally:

• "Primary sources are very close to an event, often accounts written by people who are directly involved, offering an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on."
• "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely on primary sources for their material, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them." (Emphases removed.)

'Based on that, in the draft I treated four sources as primary:

• Going Too Far, just by its subtitle, is a personal chronicle or document collection about the author and the quoting here is from a speech by the author, so the book is treated as a primary source.
• Lesbian Nation says, "This book should read like an interlocking web of personal experience and history and events of the world ...." Id., p. [11] (Remarks). That justifies treating it as primary.
• The Bitch Manifesto is not an insider account but it's not source-based, and treating it as primary is justified as more prudent than treating it as secondary.
• Les Guérillères is fiction and intended as such. Therefore, I treated it as primary, if only out of prudence, since I don't know how a work of fiction could be secondary or tertiary. Even if it purports to rely on a source, if the work is fictional a reader cannot determine that any statement in it actually depends on any source it cites.

On the same authority, I treated all the other sources as secondary in the draft:

• Scapegoat, by Andrea Dworkin, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section, from p. 372 to p. 419; I estimate the bibliography lists over 1,600 sources. It has a Notes section, from p. 339 to p. 371, which has 1,454 endnotes. Its publisher is The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. The book, a comparative political study, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience.
• Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Notes section, from p. [425] to p. 467, which has 733 endnotes, and the book also has a small number of footnotes. Its publisher is Beacon Press. The book, a study of ethics, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. She was tenured at Boston College and held two or three doctorates.
• Women and Madness, by Phyllis Chesler, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section; covering from the earliest times to 1970, the bibliography is from p. [371] to p. 374; I counted 53 sources for the earlier period. The book being a revision in 2005 of the 1972 edition, the earlier sources are relevant to the earlier edition. However, as I'm quoting the 2005 edition (because it's available), the later bibliographic sources have some relevance; later sources are listed on pp. 374–389 and I estimate over 240 sources are listed for the later period. The book has a Notes section, from p. [353] to p. 370, which has 188 endnotes. The 2005 edition's publisher is Palgrave Macmillan, partly a division of St. Martin's Press. The book, a study on psychology, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. According to the 2005 edition, cover IV, she is a professor emerita of psychology and women's studies.
• Mothers and Amazons, by Helen Diner, is a book of history. She was not alive during most of the times on which she wrote. According to the book, "[u]nfortunately, it was not possible to include exhaustive notes or a bibliography. The book and its price would have been expanded intolerably by an enumeration of all source materials, magazine articles, papyruses, and pamphlets from the diverse disciplines necessary to bring about this feminine history of culture. Nor did it prove possible to make room for the bibliography through an abbreviation of the text, for the contents are already condensed. But in the most important passages, quotations and sources have been included.", id., p. xiii (Author's Preface). The author, "for the 'mothers' part", credited Johann Jakob Bachofen and Robert Briffault, id., p. xiii & n. 2 (Author's Preface), and "for the 'Amazons' part" she credited "Ephoros, Pherecydes, Isocrates, Hellanicus, Cleidemus, Eusebius, Dionysius Scythobrachion, Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch, Pliny, Strabo, Pompeius Trogus, and many nameless gentlemen still older .... [N]ew sources are unnecessary ....", id., pp. xiv–xv (Author's Preface). According to Joseph Campbell, "[t]he authoress, a Viennese lady of society ..., convincingly displays ... an impressive learning", id., p. vi (Campbell, Joseph, Introduction (N.Y.: Aug., 1965)). The book's publisher in 1965 was Julian Press (N.Y.). The book was "[o]riginally published in German", id., dust jkt., rear flap (The Author); I don't have the German edition and am not fluent in that language. The book is at least one level removed from personal experience.
• Daring to Be Bad, by Alice Echols, cites primary and secondary sources. It's based on interviews of "forty-two people", id., p. 391 (Appx. D: A Note on the Oral Interviews), and is an outgrowth of a dissertation, ibid. It has a Notes section, from p. [297] (substantively from p. 299) to p. 366, which has 1,344 endnotes. Its publisher is the University of Minnesota Press. The book, a history, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. Its author was then a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

Where primary sources are used in the draft, almost no additional wording is provided. In the live article's section's revision that was largely deleted, the added wording was largely navigational paraphrasing, but most of that was considered as interpretive and has now been edited out from the draft.

WP:SELFPUB allows authors to speak about themselves, so the primary sources are usable under the policies on both self-publication and primary sources. The secondary sources are not personal statements simply because the authors arrived at them and wrote them; they include authors' analyses and evaluations based on sources, so they remain secondary.

Proportionality within the article: In a typical article, the length devoted to a minority view is much less than that devoted to the majority view, so that minority views are not dominant. However, for this article, because apparently many readers doubt or don't know that superiority has even been seriously conceived, while equality is widely known as a central tenet of feminism at least in the U.S. and some other nations, more length was provided to the superiority section so that its being a significant minority view is supported with sufficient quotations and citations without balancing it with support with respect to equality that would enlarge the article beyond the maximum length generally recommended for a Wikipedia article (approximately 100 KiB). Approximately seven well-known proponents were quoted, as were two historians referring to additional advocates. Equality citations are also provided, just with a much shorter summary, generally that they support equality views.

A fact as merely alleged: The subsection Organizations Alleged to Promote Superiority was renamed in the live article by an editor from simply Organizations. No reason was put forth for the renaming. The subsection's source is secondary, reliable, and on point. Most facts reportable and reported in WP are not labeled as "alleged". This section in the draft is being renamed back to Organizations.

Section titles: Subsection titles based on book titles and authors' names are renamed (and moved down a level) so the corresponding subsubsection titles are instead descriptive of what each author respectively described.

Critiques can be added. The Talk page invites research. Some critiques are already present.

Book copies used: The copy of Lesbian Nation I used lately may not be the same copy cited in the deleted live-article text and which I read in preparing the article text, since I recall reading a paperback, but, if I'm not misremembering the book as being a paperback, that copy was not present or catalogued at the libraries where I looked and I don't remember where I got it. However, both book copies are probably the same edition.

Error in a quotation: In a footnote, I wrote "and and" in a quotation when I should have written only "and". This was in the subsection on Scapegoat, by Andrea Dworkin, in a footnote's internal quotation relevant to Isaiah Berlin. I've corrected it in the draft.

Thank you. Nick Levinson (talk) 08:58, 26 November 2010 (UTC) (Corrected, adding "most of" to the time periods in which Helen Diner was not alive for the history she wrote, adding the balance of the statement on secondary sources in the context of WP:SELFPUB, and deleting "been" as a syntactical error: 09:32, 26 November 2010 (UTC))

Two articles are now edited:

A new article, Feminist Superiority, has most of the content on that subject that was in the draft here. The subject is notable, confirmed by the secondary sources the article cites, so creating a separate article is justified.

The previously-created Feminism and Equality article has been edited, so that its discussion on superiority summarizes its essence with a length that does not give superiority undue weight. When I had thought of the weight in the past, I had thought of expanding the discussion of equality, by far the predominant fulcrum of feminism, but didn't do that because that would have required writing on equality at a length that would far exceed what is generally advised for Wikipedia articles, around 100 KiB. I think this solution works for the weight.

Nick Levinson (talk) 23:53, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Article reads like a sloppy screed.

The lede for this article is all WP:POV and WP:OR and needs to be rewritten. The article itself is not much better. It's lacking neutrality in its tone and agenda. It also contains a massive amount of original research and portrays feminism's goal of equality as being a world of female supremacy or dominion over men. It also lists a large number of citations in some places where two or three would do. I will clean it up and trim it down, but a better solution would be rewriting most of it. Currently, feminist authors are focused on equality for those who are not white, cis, straight, able-bodied, or otherwise privileged. To this end, feminists have been focusing on intersectional feminist thought. Yet intersectional feminism (a concept every current well-known feminist has opined on at least once) is not mentioned in this article. I will rewrite some of the parts I can source and invite other editors to join. Ongepotchket (talk) 18:18, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

What you're raising as issues on intersectional feminism can be done largely by adding content. Much of it has already been raised in other feminism articles, but it can be summarized here, too.

The lede is supposed to be a summary of the body and the body is sourced, so the lede is not original research or the pushing of a point of view.

Feminism is a critique of society, thus is inherently biased, and the article should accurately report the subject. It is the article, not the subject, that must be neutral.

That the article "portrays feminism's goal of equality as being a world of female supremacy or dominion over men" is not what the article says or does, since the article says "[s]ome feminists" favor superiority, which is true and sourced, and the lede says "equality ... [is] supported by most feminists", which is also true and sourced. However, it makes sense to emphasize further that the superiority position is a minority position even within feminism and I'll probably do that this weekend.

The offering of more than three citations for one point is simply because of the need to show that the majority view, by far, is for equality in some form, the size being easily missed in an article about multiple views. We could analyze the sources and expand the point, but simply removing sources may defeat the point that equality is a supermajority view.

The only other place where more than three sources are cited is where superiority being sought is discussed. That counters the denial that there are such claims, and it's not very many sources. It, too, could be broken apart for analysis so that each source is discussed separately, but that's been done in another article and would be redundant here.

A couple of paragraphs (one being a neutralizing critique) should be given more sourcing, and I'll probably add sourcing this weekend.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC) (Corrected a word: 15:55, 19 April 2012 (UTC))

I clarified in the article that superiority is a minority view. I'll likely get to the other point, the sourcing elsewhere in the article, this weekend. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:07, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I did more editing. I added citations. Also, I took out a few points that I think are supportable but I don't have the time to dig into them now; perhaps someone will and then restore them, but that'll be later. The newly-added citations are numerous, so feel free to delete some if you think that would help. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Propose to delete the multiple-issues template

Content may be added at any time with or without the tagging and all of the other issues have, I think, been resolved. I propose to remove the template about the article having multiple issues but will wait a week first for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:50, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Done. Feel free to edit as needed. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

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