Talk:Anarcha-feminism

Where is Wendy McElroy?

Wendy McElroy needs to be included in the individualist section and the sex/porn section. She is the leading individualist feminist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.204.31.239 (talk) 19:26, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Verification needed

It's clear from both information cited in this article, in reliable sources that I've read and from data provided by Google Ngrams that the term "anarcha-feminism" was coined in 1970. However, almost half of this article consists of text about anarchist women that predate the coining of this term. This doesn't mean the information is necessarily incorrect, as many reliable sources have retroactively applied the term "anarcha-feminist" to such people as Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre. But this does mean that great care needs to be taken with this information to ensure that it is verified as relevant to the article, else it could fall into the territory of original research.

To start with, this means that any primary sources from before 1970 are effectively worthless to the construction of this article. And as with other related articles about ideological terminology, this also means we need to be sticking to sources that verifiably use the terminology of "anarcha-feminism" or "anarchist feminism". Anything cited to sources that don't use this terminology, including any pre-1970 sources, should be cut in order to conform to our standards on original research. -- Grnrchst (talk) 11:02, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Sources which explain that people were simultaneously anarchists and feminists should not be removed. I don't know about the rest of your frankly haphazard cuts (removing the entirely LGBT section, etc.), but you cut the section on Meiji and Taisho era anarchist women in Japan, which I wrote. The source it is based on *repeatedly* refers to each of the women mentioned as *both* anarchists and feminists. It does not use the specifc term anarcha-feminism or anarchist feminism to refer to them, but it does constantly bring up how they were anarchists primarily because they were feminists and how their feminism differed from other feminists of the era because they were anarchists. As such, the exact terminological argument you are making is ridiculous. Their actions and lives are directly relevant to any study of anarchist feminism in general, which is what a summary wikipedia page should include. Please stop removing text from the article without considering the historical narratives you are covering up. Ito and Kanno were both influential and historically important anarchists and feminists. Their anarchism and feminism were inextricably linked, as the source I provided *extensively* proves (See p247 of the Hane source, particularly). Athko (talk) 00:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Athko: I have restored the section, given your concerns here. I'll go over the sources in this section again and I offer my sincerest apologies for removing this haphazardly. For the record, I'm not trying to "cover up" any historical narratives, I'm attempting to cut down on original research that has been a problem across a lot of related articles. (This was the issue with the "LGBT rights" section you mentioned, as it was largely about gay anarchist men that had no connection to the feminist movement, with one of the sources explicitly saying they had nothing to do with feminism.)

My concern with a lot of this article was that it was a question of scope, as a lot of it was covering people and issues that weren't necessarily related to the tendency of "anarcha-feminism". I don't think it's "ridiculous" to stick to terminology used in the sources. I just don't think we should be labelling people as "anarcha-feminists" when the sources do not. Maybe in this case "anarchist and feminist" would be a better term to use? I think your concerns are valid. I need to figure out where to draw the line on this, so as not to be too strict about inclusion criteria but not to be too lenient either.

I am actually in the process of drafting a rebuilt version of this article with the sources listed in the bibliography, but I understand that right now it just looks like I'm cutting without adding much. Apologies again. -- Grnrchst (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for restoring it. To your point on scope: I think that the article should focus on people, movements, writings, etc. which interconnect and bind together anarchist thought and praxis with feminist thought and praxis. Feminists who happen to be anarchists or anarchists who happen to be feminists are not really the focus here, but we also should not limit the scope to only those writings using the particular terminology of the contemporary anarcha-feminist movement. Rather, the focus should be on how feminism and anarchism have developed in a way which inextricably links them. Therefore, for instance, the section about Anarchist Feminists in Japan qualifies, as it focuses specifically on feminists who distinguished themselves from liberal feminists *through* their anarchist views, writings, and praxis. A feminist who merely happens to hold anarchist views or an anarchist who happens to hold feminist views is not relevant unless they, in some historically demonstrable way, understand the two to be interwoven such that they oppose either without the other, as Ito and Kanno did (I'd highly recommend checking out the Hane chapter, btw, as it includes original writings by the women which I found fascinating). That way, we can keep the article focused on anarcha-feminism, not drifting to mentioning every anarchist who merely isn't a sexist, while also involving a number of historical events, people, etc. who are integral to the history of anarcha-feminism as a broader political framework rather than just as a specific contemporary movement. Athko (talk) 20:36, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Athko: I agree completely with everything you've said here. Thanks a lot for getting back to me so swiftly. I'll think over how to incorporate this going forward. Right now my draft is made up a broad "history" section, which goes over the developments in the movement itself, and a "theory" section, which goes into anarcha-feminist views on free love, intersectionality, etc. Would you be okay with your section being split and incorporated into each of these? It may involve some trimming. (E.g. moving the bit about them attempting to assassinate the emperor to the "history" section and moving their advocacy for birth control, etc. to the "theory" section)

By the way, as you're interested in this subject, I can highly recommend reading the sources listed as Kinna 2017 and Jeppeson & Nazer 2012. Their historiographical insight on this has been wonderful to read. -- Grnrchst (talk) 20:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Splitting the section would be alright, but if we go ahead with that plan, I might want to spend a while doing more research on the 3 women Hane discusses (only 2 of which were in the section I wrote) as I'd like to put in specifics about their theoretical views rather than the vague description given in a couple sentences currently. The stuff about Ito and Kanno's lives, which would be in the history section, is adequate for an article subsection, but the details about their particular theoretical views are lacking right now and would only constitute a sentence or two in a theory section. Hane includes full original documents written by the women rather than giving summaries of them in his book, and so there isn't much secondary discussion of their arguments in it (Though the inclusion of the original documents is arguably more valuable for researchers, its obviously less valuable for wikipedia citations as they are primary sources). I'd like to look through new secondary research to add more information about their theoretical stances to the page. Athko (talk) 21:02, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

The other woman was Kaneko Fumiko, who I actually know a good deal more about than Kanno or Ito. As far as I know, she wasn't exactly a feminist, though she did believe in gender equality. So I'm not sure how relevant she would be to this specific article but I'm sure there's something worth covering for the article on anarchism in Japan. -- Grnrchst (talk) 21:20, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Athko: I looked through Hane 2003 and thankfully they provide small summaries before each excerpt, so that counts nicely for secondary sourcing. From what I've gone through so far, it seems like Kanno is more relevant to the history section and Ito is more relevant to the theory section, as Hane goes into far more extensive detail about Ito's political opinions than those of Kanno. But I may still end up having to drop some of the more biographical details you've included, in order to keep this focused on the subject. I'll make sure to ping you when I've got something ready to go for review. -- Grnrchst (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Fantastic, thank you! Athko (talk) 22:22, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Athko: Okay! I felt it best to accelerate the rewrite work, as I didn't want to just leave the article as it was for too long. The article has now been rewritten and expanded to hopefully have dealt with the scope issues, shifting its focus to a broader approach than the "rack-zoom" effect of the previous version (which was disjointed and focused more on individuals than the tendency as a whole).

Let me know if you think this version has any problems. And of course, if you feel like there's more to be added and know what that is, feel free to do so. I know more work still needs to be done but I think this new version provides for a better skeleton for future improvements. Regards. -- Grnrchst (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

• I came to the talk page to open a similar topic. The use of "anarcha-feminism" seem retconned to the early 20th century when the majority of the coverage is about the connection between anarchism and feminism. The scope of the article appears to be more "Anarchism and feminism" than "anarchist feminism" or "anarcha-feminism". czar 01:55, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Variants on title

I decided to have a look at variants of the title, as I was wondering if perhaps "anarchist feminism" was popular enough to warrant putting it at the beginning. Google Ngrams seems to suggest that the term "anarcha-feminism" has been the more commonly-used term since 2009, closely followed by "anarchist feminism" (the previously most-used term), and then by "anarcho-feminism".[1] The variants "anarchofeminism", "feminist anarchism" and "anarchafeminism" appear to be far less used, so I think they should be kept out of the lead. (I'm not sure how much adding the unhyphenated variants brings to the table anyway) --Grnrchst (talk) 12:27, 3 November 2023 (UTC)