Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies/Peer review/Bisexuality

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was petered out. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 17:15, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bisexuality

As was agreed on WP:LGBT, I am starting a regular peer review of our monthly collaboration so that editors wishing to contribute can look here for ideas. Thoughts on every aspect of the article so that it may reach FA would be helpful. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

• I have glanced at the article and these are some things that stand out to me:

• The lead definitely needs expansion, but that should be one of the last things completed so it may summarize the entire article.
• The first section of the Description is confusing. There needs to be a description of how the terms "gender" and "sex" are used.
• In terminology, it should be determined what terms need be linked and red-links at least stubbed out.
• Modern Western prevalence section--should this be expanded to include a "world view"?
• Bisexuality in History should cover a world view and carry forward to the modern day. Likely this should be a daughter article that is merely summarized here.
• Bisexuality in animals definitely needs expansion.
• Bisexuality in modern Western entertainment should be renamed Bisexuality in culture and include a historical worldview. It should probably also be a daughter article that is summarized.
• Of course, the entire article should be properly cited. There are some external links spread throughout the article that should be converted to proper footnotes.
• The article could use a few more images.

Just a few notes from my perspective. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 20:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Mostly this has the typical problems of an article that's been accreted rather than constructed. It rambles in parts and lacks clarity, proportion, and balance. You can see where the people who added each bit of information were coming from, but someone unfamiliar with the topic would probably have a lot of trouble.

Terminology: Might be better as a daughter article; the detail is a little overwhelming so early on. The terms would probably be easier to absorb if they were brought up in context instead of in a separate glossary -- for example, biphobia could be discussed under social status. The acronym MOTSS is too obscure to be helpful in explaining other unfamiliar terms.

The "modern Western prevalence" section rambles around and doesn't adequately clarify how different assumptions lead researchers to different results, though it makes several stabs at it. The paragraph on Freud seems to belong in another section. Lack of citations is particularly problematic in a section supposedly based on quantitative research.

Social status:

Historically, bisexuality has largely been free of the social stigma associated with homosexuality, prevalent even where bisexuality was the norm.

This is a bold claim and needs very solid support. But it's supported by nothing, not even the uncited discussion that follows it, which merely supports a claim that bisexuality has been accepted in men who are upper-class and/or living in Ancient Greece. That is not a majority of the world's population.

Lacking in this section is any sense that people have ever been persecuted for homosexual acts rather than identities and that the question of exclusivity was not necessarily relevant. In fact, for a reader who comes to this without any preexisting knowledge about the subject, the take-home message is that bisexuals have never been subject to any discrimination except by lesbian and gay people. Highly misleading.

On the other hand, there are bisexuals who marry or live with a heterosexual partner because they prefer the complementarity of different genders in cohabiting and co-parenting, but have felt greatly enriched by homosexual relationships alongside the marriage in both monogamous and "open" relationships.

Mentioning "the complementarity of different genders in cohabiting and co-parenting" like this, without any balancing reference to bisexual people whose primary partners are of the same sex, has a strongly heterocentric effect. This is wandering off the point of the section, anyway. The weird use of the word "monogamous" (to mean something like "polyfidelitous"?) makes it extra confusing.

The discussion of symbols comes across as a digression; it could be its own section or subsection, or just be turned into captions. The paragraph criticizing the use of the pink triangle as a symbol is unbalanced POV, and belongs in pink triangle rather than here, anyway.

The history section makes some bold claims without citation. The terms "age-structured" and "gender-structured" need explanation. The caveat about "sexual orientation" being a recent concept would be better at the beginning than the end.

The article might make more sense if history were placed before social status; historical social status could be merged into history to avoid covering the same ground twice.

I don't think the section on animals needs to be much longer, but it would be good to characterize what types of bisexual behavior are most often seen, what biologists think about it, and so on.

What does "Bisexuality (behavioral and biological)" mean? If "biological bisexuality" is being used to refer to hermaphroditism, that's really confusing and unhelpful.

The section about bisexuality in entertainment needs an explanation of what popular culture says about bisexuality and how portrayals have changed over time, although that may be hard to find good sources for. I agree that the long, unilluminating list would be better as a daughter article. —Celithemis 00:35, 3 February 2007 (UTC)