User:Tom Morris/Write about gender identity sensitively

Wikipedians owe the subject of BLP articles a duty to write about gender identity sensitively. There exist manual of style rules on identity, but sympathy and common sense are just as important for covering gender identity fairly and humanely.

Really bad ideas

Wikipedia articles ought to avoid...

• using incorrect pronouns
• referring to trans people as "he/she" or "she/he"
• putting gendered pronouns or expressions in scare-quotes: "she" was my "dad" etc.
• using slurs like "tranny", "shemale" and "gender bender"
• confusing transgender people with those who cross-dress for pleasure or as part of a sexual fetish
• confusing transgender people with drag queens and drag kings
• suggesting that being a transgender person means the subject is gay; gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation
• suggesting that transgender people choose to transition to another gender: being transgender is not a "lifestyle choice"
• suggesting that being a transgender person is a disease
• using a subject's trans identity as an explanation or reason for criminal or socially deviant behavior

It's not necessary

Often out of a sense of sensitivity and inclusion, people wish to write about how an event or organisation has "men, women and transgender people", which sort of suggests that transgender people are some third category. Third gender people exist (hijra people, for instance), but a lot of the time explicitly noting that some people are transgender isn't important.

If you are talking about a group of women and one of them is a trans woman, just say "women". It's really that simple. A lot of the time it isn't strictly necessary: if you wouldn't talk about someone's hair colour or sexual orientation or race in such a collective description, usually their being transgender is not something that needs bringing up.

That said, there are sometimes places and situations where the presence or exclusion of transgender people is an issue. Many radical feminists seek to exclude transgender women from. For instance, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, various radical feminist conferences (the "RadFem 2012" conference in London is a recent example). When writing about exclusion or other situations where trans issues are issues, obviously it makes sense to write about them.

BLP

Wikipedia articles should not presume to apply an archetypal narrative on trans people. Some transgender people believe they are "born in the wrong body" (a "woman trapped in a man's body", "man trapped in a woman's body" etc.) but this is not a universal self-narrative for all transgender people.

Sourcing

One complaint that came up in talking to trans people was when the subjects of articles underwent gender transition, editors with a particular attachment to an article would demand much greater sourcing for facts regarding the subject's gender identity than they would for other aspects of that person's biography. This is needlessly problematic. Approach sources with caution, sure, but common sense must kick in. Members of gender and sexual minorities often face rejection and negative attitudes: a shift in gender identity is a bad reason for an edit war or stand-off-ish wikilawyering.

Don't be tempted to engage in original research or trying to surmise a person's current gender status, how far they are in a gender transition etc. Self-published sources should be considered fine for gender status: for some people, a blog post might be all that is ever said about their being transgender, but the fact that it's just a self-published blog post shouldn't disqualify it from being used within the bounds of common sense.

Talk pages

On talk pages, frank discussions of subject's gender identity can cause concern for subjects of the article, and also for readers and editors who are transgender. Avoid transgender slurs or insensitivity on the talk page in the same way you would in the article.