Wikipedia:Peer review/Rei/Cross-dressing, sexuality, and gender identity of Joan of Arc/archive1

Cross-dressing, sexuality, and gender identity of Joan of Arc

I've listed this article for peer review because…

The main article, Joan of Arc, is already quite large. An issue that has led to a lot of contention on the Joan of Arc talk page and isn't even mentioned at all in the article is the issues related to Joan's crossdressing: specifically, its implications for her sexuality and gender identity. This issue, long debated in academic circles, has gained increasing public attention after such works as "Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Rupaul" by Leslie Feinberg and "Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People" by Joan Roughgarden. As per discussion, there seemed to be enough agreement on WP:Notability that it was suggested that this new article be created (in my talk page for now; I'm trying to tread lightly) so that people could comment. Unfortunately, I have not received any comments from the main Joan of Arc editors, despite a post announcing its existence. So, before I make this a normal, public article, I'd like to get it peer-reviewed. Since this is a hot-button issue, I want to stay to the highest standards of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V.

On the talk page of the proposed article, I've listed a number of things that I think might be issues with it and am seeking ideas for (including the title, which I think is a bit awkward).

Thanks,

Rei 21:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I know absolutely nothing about the subject and so really can't comment on that side but in general I would say this article reads very much like an essay and not like an encyclopedia article. Reading the main Joan of Arc article I don't particularly notice a yawning gap where major information on dressing as a man is missing.

To make the article better though I would try to do the following:

• summarise and shorten everything
• move the 'Historical context' section off to an article called Cross Dressing in The Middle Ages or something similar (maybe it already exists) and summarise it in a paragraph
• you start a lot of sentences with 'Person X writes "a quote from person X"' and then don't finish off with much discussion. It is much better to write a statement based on the quotation from X (and preferably someone else too) with a reference to the quote/book etc.
• the intro section needs some work, what is the prevailing view of what her sexuality, and gender identity were? if there isn't a prevailing view then has there been in the past? just saying that it is debated isn't very helpful, the intro should sum up the whole article. JMiall₰ 12:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I know this could use a lot of work, so any input I can get is much appreciated.

As for the "prevailing" view, there is no single prevailing view. There are the Catholic and French nationalist traditionalists who tend to see her clothing as being irrelevant to her gender identity and sexuality, and then there are people who believe that it has implications bearing on her sexuality, her gender identity, or both. Even historically, there was no single view, with the English often crediting it to loose morals or witchcraft, and the French as purely out of necessity.

Actually this last paragraph would make a decent addition to the intro, it is a quick summary of the opinions of various sets of people, exactly what the article needs! JMiall₰ 09:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I had already been thinking of moving the historical context section into a new article and summarizing here, so I'll go ahead and do that this weekend.

My main concerns with "summarizing and shortening" (and the reason I wrote it like this to begin with) are exposing myself to charges of WP:OR. The reason it credits everything to various academics, with little to no summarizing, is that I worry that if I don't do it that way, some of the traditionalists (of which there are some on the main Joan of Arc article) will almost certainly step in and claim WP:OR on anything that they oppose that isn't clearly sourced. In fact, this is the main reason why this is its own article; getting anything "summarized" in the (crowded) main article invariably ends up being labeled as OR because it's not credited to a single source. The results of talk page discussion on the main article were to create a new article so there would be room for discussion of historical context, prevailing views, and the like. Do you think I shouldn't worry about that as much?

Again, thank you very much for the feedback! -- Rei 22:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• The title is really quite awful. It reads like the name of an essay, not the title of an encyclopaedic article. I suggest a rename. Adam Cuerden ^talk 15:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)