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February 25, 2009	Good article nominee	Listed
March 11, 2009	Peer review	Reviewed

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Gold star lesbian was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 8 April 2018 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Lesbian. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:58, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In western vs non-western cultures

Hi there. I'm questioning the structure of the two sections "Identity and gender role in western culture" and "Outside western culture". These two sections are essentially the "history" of lesbian identities/behaviors around the world. While the section about Western history is a lot more extensive (presumably because editors found more sources), I think it would make more sense for these two sections to be one "History" section - then 3.1. can be "In western culture", preserving all the subsections as they are, and 3.2 can be "Middle East", 3.3. "Americas", etc. Maybe "Americas" should be renamed too, as it talks about Latin America with a pararaph on Native Americans.

I believe that leaving the two sections as they are reinforces an inequitable divide that elevates western LGBTQ history as more important or distinct. By making one "History" section, each "cultural region" is of equal hierarchical standing in the structure of the article. I see a previous discussion on this in the archives.

Further, this section would then become quite long (and already the subsections are large). There is an indepedent History of lesbianism article (which needs improvement). Perhaps we can shorten each subsection on history within the main Lesbian article and transfer some of the more detailed content to the History article. The History article can be linked at the top of this section with "Further reading...".

(Final point - I don't know if it's worth getting into - the division of western vs non-western cultures is complicated on its own. Technically, South America, as well as Native American cultures in North America, are also in the West...)

I look forward to hearing what others think. -- Ryan (talk) 04:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Zimmerman hanging reference

Hello RoxySaunders! In this edit, you cleaned up some Zimmerman "Histories and CUltures" encyclopedia references. Unfortunately, a reference you deleted is not correctly replaced in a couple of spots and now the page renders with sfn-no-target errors. {{sfn|Zimmerman|1999}} had a target, but it was deleted in your edit. Are you able to replace the correct citation so the error can be fixed? Maybe the problem is just the incorrect publication date -- 1999 instead of 2000. -- mikeblas (talk) 11:52, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mike, thanks for the heads up. I'll try to fix this when I get the chance. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 12:50, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mikeblas: I recall now why I left it like that. Those two citations lack page numbers, so I was unable to determine what section (and thus, what author) was actually being cited, and I didn't/don't have the energy to search the whole encyclopedia to find out. I've gone ahead and fixed the error by adding a {{cite book}} for the encyclopedia as though Bonnie Zimmerman was its author. This is probably incorrect unless we are citing a foreword which she did write. Oh well.

The section was originally authored in this diff as part of a Wiki Ed project. It's possible User:Livrendon could help with this, but I assume they are no longer active. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 00:31, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know who corrupted the details of the Zimmerman book, but it was published in 2000 and the isbn is 0-8153-1920-7. You can verify the details with the IA copy of the book @ https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofle00bzim/page/n7/mode/2up (the IA copy is used for the pages/chapters linked in the citations). Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:50, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pyxis Solitary: You're right, 2000 is correct—you're welcome to fix it. The only version of the encyclopedia accessible to me when I made this change was an eBook edition distributed by Routledge in 2013 ( doi:10.4324/978020382553 ISBN 9780203825532) which seems to have faulty metadata claiming the book was published a year early. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 14:43, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A good reason why eBooks are not the best sources. If you search a book title on Google Books it will respond with all its editions (Zimmerman @ 1). And it's always a good idea to verify information on a book through LCCN (Zimmerman @ 2) and OCLC (Zimmerman @ 3).
The citing problem is odd because when you deleted the Zimmerman ref in this edit, the book was cited as "{{sfn|Zimmerman|2000|p=748|loc=Symbols}}" and if you scroll down to the References > Parenthetical sources section it appears as Zimmerman, Bonnie, ed. (2000). Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8153-1920-7 – and linked to IA copy.
However, after your edit was reverted you changed the ref to "{{harvnb|Stevens|1999|p=748|loc=Symbols}}" and in References > Parenthetical sources the book appears as Stevens, Christy (November 30, 1999). "Symbols". In Zimmerman, Bonnie (ed.). Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures (1st ed.). New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 747–748. ISBN 9780203825532 – with url linked to the pages in the exact same IA copy. In this edit you also changed all the Zimmerman refs to 1999.
"you're welcome to fix it" – I have have been an editor in this article since 2017 and I don't understand why you expect someone else to fix problems you created.
(For historical interest, this is how Stevens/pg.748 was cited in 2019.) Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 04:39, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because Ctrl-Fing the date and ISBN is trivial except on mobile, where I'm currently participating from. It would take less time to fix than to condescendingly explain to me at length, but I guess we've already hit the point of sunk cost.

When I'm back at a real computer I'll fix the cites and probably inline them. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:24, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks foe your fixes, RoxySaunders! -- mikeblas (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I often defer to others to make fixes when someone else seems very familiar with the material. Most everybody tries to operate on best efforts and WP:AGF. -- mikeblas (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

barbara bee ottinger

I think we should make a page on this person. I want her name to be known in this community for her work as a photographer LydiaMurman777 (talk) 05:48, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can create a biographical article, too. There's no need to wait for someone else to do it. Read Help:Your first article + Wikipedia:How to create a page, and comply with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lead sentence note

I am not too familiar with the history of this page but I took the note in good faith to assume the matter has been extensively discussed before. Can another editor point Tubend towards those discussion(s)? I'm assuming it's in one of the archives. For future reference, it's generally considered good practice to start a talk page thread instead of reverting your preferred version in again like here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I misread what that second edit was actually doing. I will say that I think it's redundant to say "defined as human females". Women and girl already say that and it's not really something you'd expect to read outside of that context. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:37, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Women and girl already say that". Not any more. Sex is biology and gender is a concept — but sex and gender have now become synonyms in many circles. A trans woman was not born female, nor a trans girl. Pyxis Solitary (yak). Ol' homo. ⚢ 12:43, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not at clear that the three sources^[1]^[2]^[3] supporting the first sentence are using female or female homosexual according to your personal interpretation, especially because they were published in the 2000s.

A survey of modern dictionaries:

Merriam-Webster: n. a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to other women : a gay woman
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5e. n. A woman whose sexual orientation is to women. '
Cambridge English Dictionary n. a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted to other women
OED n. a woman who engages in sexual activity with other women; a woman who is sexually or romantically attracted (esp. wholly or largely) to other women; a homosexual woman. OED

The text (defined as human females) should be removed as it is clearly surprising and puts us in contrast to other modern reference sources. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oops—no wonder I found it surprising; it was added yesterday! Reverted to the status quo.. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk • stalk) 13:46, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, thanks. I didn't want to touch it myself because I already reverted them once and didn't want to get into in an edit war. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:50, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Pyxis Solitary I'm not saying trans women aren't women, but those articles do actually say that women/girls are human females in the lead sentence. As I said it's not really something you'd expect to read outside of that context and these articles also mention transgender individuals later on. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anyways, in their first edit, that editor did try to change "woman and girl" to "female". [1] I then changed it back and then we had the edit that I mentioned above. I do think that the archives where this has been extensively discussed should be linked (because I'm not sure I could find that either) in the hidden note. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "Lesbian". Oxford Reference: A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford University Press. 2008. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
^ Lamos 1999, p. 453.
^ Solarz, Andrea L., ed. (1999). Lesbian Health: Current Assessment and Directions for the Future (1st ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. p. 48. ISBN 0-309-06567-4.

[Oxford-Lesbian-1] "Lesbian". Oxford Reference: A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford University Press. 2008. Retrieved 10 December 2018.

[FOOTNOTELamos1999453-2] Lamos 1999, p. 453.

[Solarz-48-3] Solarz, Andrea L., ed. (1999). Lesbian Health: Current Assessment and Directions for the Future (1st ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. p. 48. ISBN 0-309-06567-4.

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