This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Material Archived 23 June 2006
Why is "Usually both sexes: Pubic Hair, Underarm Hair" relevant here? It seems out of place to me. I would change it, but I can't (not registered). 61.9.204.168 12:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
1. The primary reason I added the text in this article is that I have been (and will be) working on a series of articles about intersex conditions. (The first completed are sexual differentiation and androgen insensitivity syndrome--- comments welcome. Several articles on various forms of ambiguous genitalia and CAH are underway, which is why the links are red, but will be done soon.) I used the concepts of "genetic sex" and other levels of definition but realized that these weren't necessarily defined or referenced as well as I wanted, so I am trying to rectify this. I am not intending to be controversial and hope no one finds any of it politically objectionable.
2. I note that there are separate articles on gender identity and sexual identity. Both have worthwhile content but I consider the two terms interchangeable and I don't think I have ever heard anyone make a distinction (a preference maybe but not a distinction) in an academic or medical setting. I don't know the history of the two articles, but why not conflate them and post a redirect from the less-preferred term? I will mention this also at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles but I am not planning to do the merge. I wonder if the writers included some of the aspects of sex of assignment or were trying to distinguish sexual behavior from other aspects of gender-associated behavior? Perhaps the terms mean something different to some of the writers here? If so, I am requesting that someone write a brief explanation of the usage distinction to put into the two articles (and link them) to avoid confusing some of us-- the paragraph on semantics of sex and gender already in this article (which I moved without changing) doesn't quite address it. Thanks. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
3. I find the noun "intersexual" deplorable. I realize I am writing from a medical perspective, but people with these conditions are people, not conditions, and I have never heard the term used even informally in a medical setting. When I mentioned this on the [[Talk:intersexual], I got a response that made me wonder if the writer understood the difference between a noun and an adjective. I have gone ahead and "edited boldly" but if community consensus prefers this usage, I won't fight over it here. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
4. As a matter of fact rather than semantics, the paragraph I changed here seemed to confuse discordance of gender role with biological discordance. This is a distinction worth maintaining. Though sometimes congruent, they are two distinct categories of human variation. The other distinction worth making is that between intersex condition and ambiguous genitalia. All three of these categories are inextricably confused in the Intersexual article, which simply needs to be replaced (as I intend to do with a new article entitled intersex). I am making the distinctions here to reduce inter-article conflicts of usage, and offering to discuss and defend it to make sure these distinctions are acceptable to the community and cause no unintended political offense. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
5. I changed the intersex example from one that asserted the old early twentieth century misconception that there is a unitary "biological sex" that is somehow the "real sex" to an example that suggests a more complex and only partly biological determination of sex and gender identity. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
_____
For sex vs. gender, see the article by Milton Diamond at http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/intersex/sexual_I_G_web.html
_____
§ Problem. The text of this article says:
§ The article needs to be clear about whether the word "women" characterizes the individual's sex or the individual's gender. A person of the female sex is, by definition, someone who can produce ova. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know an XY individual cannot produce ova. And as for the word "boy", if it characterizes the individual's sex then a boy should mature into someone who can produce semen. And as for "an extra X chromosome," does chromosomal status determine sex? If so, XXY individuals should be a third "sex." If not, then what is it about the individual with a rudimentary uterus that makes "him" a boy? Does the writer in fact mean to describe an individual who appears on casual inspection to be a boy but who actually has a uterus or other biological factors that are discordant with the individual's apparent status? P0M
§ Again, this paragraph is quite muddy. If a small subset of the intersex individuals has under- or over-virilized external genitalia, then what characterizes the remainder of the intersex individuals? P0M 03:09, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I have tried to provide a more systematic way to organize information in the article. See what I have produced so far at User:Patrick0Moran/Sex_discussion and edit and/or discuss if you like. P0M 05:35, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The article now looks very good to me. It should safeguard against anyone considering himself/herself or someone else as some kind of abomination due to not fitting into an overly rigid conceptual scheme. Thank you for your good work. P0M
"Sex" could mean either 1) The biological distinction between male and female, or 2) Sexual intercourse or sexual behaviour. Currently we take the approach of "primary topic disambiguation", but I think this is inappropriate, as "Sex" has (arguably) the slightly predominant meaning of " Sexual intercourse", rather than the biological distinction, when in general use. If someone types "Sex" into the Wikipedia search box, what article will that person be looking for? I'd argue that it wouldn't be this current page the majority of the time (it's the looking-up-naughty-words-in-the-dictionary effect...!).
For this reason, I think we should use "equal disambiguation", and have a disambig page at [[Sex]], and move this page article to Sex (biological distinction), or some such. — Matt
I agree that Sex should redirect to the disambiguation page, and that this article be moved to something else, like "Sex (gender)"; "Sex (biological distinction)" is even better. I streamlined Sex (disambiguation) so that it's less confusing and easier to get to the two most common articles of interest. -- Beland 03:44, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Anome's edit and most recently DanP's edit miss the point of the text. Anome wanted to emphasize that orientation is only usual, but this is just as true of the other levels, so I added the usual label to all of them. DanP removed it apparently because he thinks male and female are only defined by karyotype but in fact this is not true and there are other male and female karyotypes besides xx and xy. Read the text. Sex is not defined absolutely by any single level of differentiation. Every level, not just orientation, is usual. No level is categorical. Let's be consistent. Alteripse 23:23, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
§ Aren't we back to the definitional issue we struggled with some time ago? One definition of "male" is "the ones that produces the sperm", and "female" is "the ones that produce the ova." The problems start almost immediately since newborns are routinely categorized as either male or female or dunno, yet they cannot produce reproductive cells until much later, and castrated males, menopausal females, etc. are still called men and women even though they can no longer produce reproductive cells. A somewhat expanded definition follows from looking at what someone is expected to be able to do in the future, or has been capable of doing in the past, or might have been able to do if s/he had escaped the knife. But another way is to look at body morphology and say, "regardless of whether there are really vestigal testes in these labia, this child looks like a girl so she is a girl," etc.
§ What individuals are, in terms of sexual functionality, is quite complicated. Boiling it all down to "male", "female", and maybe "intersexual" leaves out a lot of the details that will determine how individuals will be able to lead their lives. Is it helpful to say of an individual who has only one X and no Y chromosome in each cell that "she" is female? If you want to talk about how people like her generally act, generally look when mature, etc., then yes. But to speak of her that way obscures the fact that she is sterile. That is a defect of language that must be gotten around somehow, both to help her know what to expect and to help prospective husbands know what to expect. In less extreme cases, not everybody's functionality in the reproductive sphere stands close to the statistical norm. P0M 01:17, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Patrick I think you put way too much emphasis on fertility as the criterion of sex. For lots of different reasons, I think your argument that 45X girls shouldn't be described as female without reservation or stipulation about fertility is incorrect and offensive to boot. Alteripse 01:32, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
§ Maybe it is not clear from the way the chart is given its context, but what Alteripse seems to me to be trying to indicate is that any of the factors might be "fudged" a bit without destroying the total picture. Somebody might by XYY instead of XY, for instance, and yet he might function very adequately as a husband and a father, so adequately that nobody would even guess that he might be XYY. Somebody might be XX and come into the delivery room to the observation of a nurse, "I...think...you've got a little girl," and yet in the full course of her life she might make a perfectly adequate wife and mother. The alternative to leaving designationa a little fluid this way is to try to make up different names for all possible configurations and then to add another level of qualification whenever someone can be more or less male or female on a sliding scale (as, for instance, when an XX individual has been masculinized in the womb to a greater or lesser degree). P0M
No, no, no. The most important message of the section is that there is not a single infallible criterion for what someone's "true sex" really is. I know it is counterintuitive and goes against what most people think they know about sex. Not even the chromosomes are absolute. I gave you examples of males with XX and females with XY and it gets weirder than that. There is not a single level of definition of sex which is absolute rather than probabilistic. Thanks for talking instead of changing. If I have managed to persuade you, how can we explain this better so people think, "wow, I didn't realize that," instead of, "that can't be right, I'll fix it..."? Alteripse 02:08, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Guess what, I agree with your suggestion and changed the table. Also, genetically identical twins can vary in some of the aspects of sexual differentiation (such as gender identity) that do not seem to be primarily coded for by genes. In that case, I would probably describe them as "discordant at one level of sex or gender" rather than refer to them as "different sexes" (although I can imagine a couple of contexts in which people might use the latter phrase). Alteripse 19:25, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Could I suggest another change? The row labelled "usual level of sex hormones" doesn't contain levels, but which hormones have the higher levels. Should it be labelled "usual dominant sex hormones" or something like that? JPD 15:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
An unsigned contributor said the following, which I have moved here from the article -- The Anome 22:40, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm. I wonder whether census takers use the "traditional" method of determining sex. ;-) P0M 02:55, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This text is too restrictive. The individuals of many species can be divided into two sexes. This is true. But Sexual processes, sexual reproduction occurs also in species where the partners are practically indistinguishable. The kernel processes are meiosis and fusion (syngamy, fertilization). The article should start out by describing the sexual mode of reproduction. Then describe sexes as special cases. Etxrge 11:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Good idea. Put a section in on this viewpoint please. An encyclopedia article needs to start from a familiar orientation point to be useful for its readers, so I wouldn't replace what is there. Perhaps entitle it A broader, biological view of sex? Thanks. Alteripse 12:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC) .
Just looking at the table under the "Sex among humans" heading, it says that the "Usual sexual orientation" of females is "gynephilic" and that of males is "androphilic". Doesn't that convey the meaning that most people are homosexual? Are they around the wrong way? - Mark 13:48, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yep, you are right. I fixed it. -- -lulu- 17:19, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
This article seems to talk too much about Bee reproduction. Maybe that section should be revised to be less specific. -- Phoenix Hacker 05:48, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
(WikiProject Decency template was here, but has since been deleted)
Any help which could be provided would be greatly appreciated. -Godfearing Parent.
At this moment, none of the anonymous edits have added useful content, working in good will. This article should be blocked to anonymous edits to given responsible Wikipedians some repite. -- Wetman 06:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree, even if reluctantly. Since I placed this article on my watchlist about a week ago, I have seen it vandalized and reverted multiple times a day. Andrea Parton 06:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, someone recently vandalized my comment above, and I just reverted it. I also just reverted vandalism to the article page myself, as I have done several times already. I really think this article should be protected from anonymous editing. Andrea Parton 19:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I've semi-protected for the time being. If there are any objections, please discuss. -- David Iberri ( talk) 02:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
The section "Sex in non-animal species" always disappears after a series of reversions from vandalism. Could anybody think of a good way to avoid it? - wshun 04:52, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I would have thought that this article was crying out for illustration. Seriously. For great justice. 17:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
In accordance with WP:SPP, I'm suggesting we lift the semi-protection of this page soon to confirm that it's still a target of persistent anon vandals. I propose the lift be done on 17 May 2006 (UTC), at which point the article will have been semi-protected for two full weeks. (This time period is somewhat arbitrary; the policy says SP should be lifted after a "brief period"). If there are any objections, please raise them here. Otherwise, I'll unprotect on the date given above. -- David Iberri ( talk) 11:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. The lift needs to be lifted to check if this article is still the target of vandalism. Although I believe this article may always be a target of vandalism, the semi-protection should be lifted but the article monitored before any other action can be taken as far as protection against vandalism. -- SuperLearner 04:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not really sure wether this is the right place to post this, but I'm going to assume it is since the original article is locked.
I think this non-wikipedia wiki should be linked to in the sex article: (link removed)
I found it informative and serious enough, and since you even link directly to goatse like material on the goatse page I don't see any harm in adding this.
I removed the image from inside a table. I really couldn't see how this was relevant. Felixwells 16:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
This does not seem to be neutral point of view ( WP:NPOV), nor does it appear to be verifiable ( WP:V), because the usual sexual orientation is subjective and cannot be reliably externally measured. Also, survey data regarding stigmatized or deeply personal feelings or activities is often inaccurate. Participants often avoid answers which they feel society, the survey-takers, or they themselves dislike. Omgitsasecret 02:07, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry your arguments are not convincing. Orientation can be defined by self-profession, or by behavior. None of the Kinsey data can be interpreted to disagree with the neutral statement that the "usual" orientation is toward the opposite sex, when the usual meanings of the words are used. The table in the article simply reflects the current consensus of recognized authorities about orientation, and does not imply that minority orientation is abnormal, just not "usual". Kinsey nowhere said that a homosexual orientation was as common as a heterosexual one, nor does any other recognized authority. If you think an extreme minority view based on some unusual and not commonly accepted definitions or criteria needs to be explained somewhere, it could probably be accommodated in the article on orientation with references, but does not mean that the general article on sex needs to omit the virtually universal consensus.
alteripse 05:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Central to the entire biological concept of sex revolves around the pairing of male and female for erotic and procreative behavior. While human behavior and human variation is far wider than that, in a simple table in this article, there is nothing wrong with simply acknowledging that a primary erotic orientation toward the opposite sex is the "usual" outcome of that dimension of sexual development. If you take the trouble to review the history of this article the word usually was chosen specifically to make it clear that it is not universal, and the commentary about the table in the article makes this clear as well. You make this article a risible caricature of political correctness when you claim that acknowleging this basic fact is a censorable point of view. alteripse 10:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Material Archived 23 June 2006
Why is "Usually both sexes: Pubic Hair, Underarm Hair" relevant here? It seems out of place to me. I would change it, but I can't (not registered). 61.9.204.168 12:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
1. The primary reason I added the text in this article is that I have been (and will be) working on a series of articles about intersex conditions. (The first completed are sexual differentiation and androgen insensitivity syndrome--- comments welcome. Several articles on various forms of ambiguous genitalia and CAH are underway, which is why the links are red, but will be done soon.) I used the concepts of "genetic sex" and other levels of definition but realized that these weren't necessarily defined or referenced as well as I wanted, so I am trying to rectify this. I am not intending to be controversial and hope no one finds any of it politically objectionable.
2. I note that there are separate articles on gender identity and sexual identity. Both have worthwhile content but I consider the two terms interchangeable and I don't think I have ever heard anyone make a distinction (a preference maybe but not a distinction) in an academic or medical setting. I don't know the history of the two articles, but why not conflate them and post a redirect from the less-preferred term? I will mention this also at Wikipedia:Duplicate articles but I am not planning to do the merge. I wonder if the writers included some of the aspects of sex of assignment or were trying to distinguish sexual behavior from other aspects of gender-associated behavior? Perhaps the terms mean something different to some of the writers here? If so, I am requesting that someone write a brief explanation of the usage distinction to put into the two articles (and link them) to avoid confusing some of us-- the paragraph on semantics of sex and gender already in this article (which I moved without changing) doesn't quite address it. Thanks. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
3. I find the noun "intersexual" deplorable. I realize I am writing from a medical perspective, but people with these conditions are people, not conditions, and I have never heard the term used even informally in a medical setting. When I mentioned this on the [[Talk:intersexual], I got a response that made me wonder if the writer understood the difference between a noun and an adjective. I have gone ahead and "edited boldly" but if community consensus prefers this usage, I won't fight over it here. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
4. As a matter of fact rather than semantics, the paragraph I changed here seemed to confuse discordance of gender role with biological discordance. This is a distinction worth maintaining. Though sometimes congruent, they are two distinct categories of human variation. The other distinction worth making is that between intersex condition and ambiguous genitalia. All three of these categories are inextricably confused in the Intersexual article, which simply needs to be replaced (as I intend to do with a new article entitled intersex). I am making the distinctions here to reduce inter-article conflicts of usage, and offering to discuss and defend it to make sure these distinctions are acceptable to the community and cause no unintended political offense. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
5. I changed the intersex example from one that asserted the old early twentieth century misconception that there is a unitary "biological sex" that is somehow the "real sex" to an example that suggests a more complex and only partly biological determination of sex and gender identity. Alteripse 18:42, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
_____
For sex vs. gender, see the article by Milton Diamond at http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/intersex/sexual_I_G_web.html
_____
§ Problem. The text of this article says:
§ The article needs to be clear about whether the word "women" characterizes the individual's sex or the individual's gender. A person of the female sex is, by definition, someone who can produce ova. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know an XY individual cannot produce ova. And as for the word "boy", if it characterizes the individual's sex then a boy should mature into someone who can produce semen. And as for "an extra X chromosome," does chromosomal status determine sex? If so, XXY individuals should be a third "sex." If not, then what is it about the individual with a rudimentary uterus that makes "him" a boy? Does the writer in fact mean to describe an individual who appears on casual inspection to be a boy but who actually has a uterus or other biological factors that are discordant with the individual's apparent status? P0M
§ Again, this paragraph is quite muddy. If a small subset of the intersex individuals has under- or over-virilized external genitalia, then what characterizes the remainder of the intersex individuals? P0M 03:09, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I have tried to provide a more systematic way to organize information in the article. See what I have produced so far at User:Patrick0Moran/Sex_discussion and edit and/or discuss if you like. P0M 05:35, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The article now looks very good to me. It should safeguard against anyone considering himself/herself or someone else as some kind of abomination due to not fitting into an overly rigid conceptual scheme. Thank you for your good work. P0M
"Sex" could mean either 1) The biological distinction between male and female, or 2) Sexual intercourse or sexual behaviour. Currently we take the approach of "primary topic disambiguation", but I think this is inappropriate, as "Sex" has (arguably) the slightly predominant meaning of " Sexual intercourse", rather than the biological distinction, when in general use. If someone types "Sex" into the Wikipedia search box, what article will that person be looking for? I'd argue that it wouldn't be this current page the majority of the time (it's the looking-up-naughty-words-in-the-dictionary effect...!).
For this reason, I think we should use "equal disambiguation", and have a disambig page at [[Sex]], and move this page article to Sex (biological distinction), or some such. — Matt
I agree that Sex should redirect to the disambiguation page, and that this article be moved to something else, like "Sex (gender)"; "Sex (biological distinction)" is even better. I streamlined Sex (disambiguation) so that it's less confusing and easier to get to the two most common articles of interest. -- Beland 03:44, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Anome's edit and most recently DanP's edit miss the point of the text. Anome wanted to emphasize that orientation is only usual, but this is just as true of the other levels, so I added the usual label to all of them. DanP removed it apparently because he thinks male and female are only defined by karyotype but in fact this is not true and there are other male and female karyotypes besides xx and xy. Read the text. Sex is not defined absolutely by any single level of differentiation. Every level, not just orientation, is usual. No level is categorical. Let's be consistent. Alteripse 23:23, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
§ Aren't we back to the definitional issue we struggled with some time ago? One definition of "male" is "the ones that produces the sperm", and "female" is "the ones that produce the ova." The problems start almost immediately since newborns are routinely categorized as either male or female or dunno, yet they cannot produce reproductive cells until much later, and castrated males, menopausal females, etc. are still called men and women even though they can no longer produce reproductive cells. A somewhat expanded definition follows from looking at what someone is expected to be able to do in the future, or has been capable of doing in the past, or might have been able to do if s/he had escaped the knife. But another way is to look at body morphology and say, "regardless of whether there are really vestigal testes in these labia, this child looks like a girl so she is a girl," etc.
§ What individuals are, in terms of sexual functionality, is quite complicated. Boiling it all down to "male", "female", and maybe "intersexual" leaves out a lot of the details that will determine how individuals will be able to lead their lives. Is it helpful to say of an individual who has only one X and no Y chromosome in each cell that "she" is female? If you want to talk about how people like her generally act, generally look when mature, etc., then yes. But to speak of her that way obscures the fact that she is sterile. That is a defect of language that must be gotten around somehow, both to help her know what to expect and to help prospective husbands know what to expect. In less extreme cases, not everybody's functionality in the reproductive sphere stands close to the statistical norm. P0M 01:17, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Patrick I think you put way too much emphasis on fertility as the criterion of sex. For lots of different reasons, I think your argument that 45X girls shouldn't be described as female without reservation or stipulation about fertility is incorrect and offensive to boot. Alteripse 01:32, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
§ Maybe it is not clear from the way the chart is given its context, but what Alteripse seems to me to be trying to indicate is that any of the factors might be "fudged" a bit without destroying the total picture. Somebody might by XYY instead of XY, for instance, and yet he might function very adequately as a husband and a father, so adequately that nobody would even guess that he might be XYY. Somebody might be XX and come into the delivery room to the observation of a nurse, "I...think...you've got a little girl," and yet in the full course of her life she might make a perfectly adequate wife and mother. The alternative to leaving designationa a little fluid this way is to try to make up different names for all possible configurations and then to add another level of qualification whenever someone can be more or less male or female on a sliding scale (as, for instance, when an XX individual has been masculinized in the womb to a greater or lesser degree). P0M
No, no, no. The most important message of the section is that there is not a single infallible criterion for what someone's "true sex" really is. I know it is counterintuitive and goes against what most people think they know about sex. Not even the chromosomes are absolute. I gave you examples of males with XX and females with XY and it gets weirder than that. There is not a single level of definition of sex which is absolute rather than probabilistic. Thanks for talking instead of changing. If I have managed to persuade you, how can we explain this better so people think, "wow, I didn't realize that," instead of, "that can't be right, I'll fix it..."? Alteripse 02:08, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Guess what, I agree with your suggestion and changed the table. Also, genetically identical twins can vary in some of the aspects of sexual differentiation (such as gender identity) that do not seem to be primarily coded for by genes. In that case, I would probably describe them as "discordant at one level of sex or gender" rather than refer to them as "different sexes" (although I can imagine a couple of contexts in which people might use the latter phrase). Alteripse 19:25, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Could I suggest another change? The row labelled "usual level of sex hormones" doesn't contain levels, but which hormones have the higher levels. Should it be labelled "usual dominant sex hormones" or something like that? JPD 15:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
An unsigned contributor said the following, which I have moved here from the article -- The Anome 22:40, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm. I wonder whether census takers use the "traditional" method of determining sex. ;-) P0M 02:55, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This text is too restrictive. The individuals of many species can be divided into two sexes. This is true. But Sexual processes, sexual reproduction occurs also in species where the partners are practically indistinguishable. The kernel processes are meiosis and fusion (syngamy, fertilization). The article should start out by describing the sexual mode of reproduction. Then describe sexes as special cases. Etxrge 11:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Good idea. Put a section in on this viewpoint please. An encyclopedia article needs to start from a familiar orientation point to be useful for its readers, so I wouldn't replace what is there. Perhaps entitle it A broader, biological view of sex? Thanks. Alteripse 12:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC) .
Just looking at the table under the "Sex among humans" heading, it says that the "Usual sexual orientation" of females is "gynephilic" and that of males is "androphilic". Doesn't that convey the meaning that most people are homosexual? Are they around the wrong way? - Mark 13:48, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yep, you are right. I fixed it. -- -lulu- 17:19, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
This article seems to talk too much about Bee reproduction. Maybe that section should be revised to be less specific. -- Phoenix Hacker 05:48, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
(WikiProject Decency template was here, but has since been deleted)
Any help which could be provided would be greatly appreciated. -Godfearing Parent.
At this moment, none of the anonymous edits have added useful content, working in good will. This article should be blocked to anonymous edits to given responsible Wikipedians some repite. -- Wetman 06:04, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree, even if reluctantly. Since I placed this article on my watchlist about a week ago, I have seen it vandalized and reverted multiple times a day. Andrea Parton 06:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, someone recently vandalized my comment above, and I just reverted it. I also just reverted vandalism to the article page myself, as I have done several times already. I really think this article should be protected from anonymous editing. Andrea Parton 19:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I've semi-protected for the time being. If there are any objections, please discuss. -- David Iberri ( talk) 02:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
The section "Sex in non-animal species" always disappears after a series of reversions from vandalism. Could anybody think of a good way to avoid it? - wshun 04:52, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I would have thought that this article was crying out for illustration. Seriously. For great justice. 17:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
In accordance with WP:SPP, I'm suggesting we lift the semi-protection of this page soon to confirm that it's still a target of persistent anon vandals. I propose the lift be done on 17 May 2006 (UTC), at which point the article will have been semi-protected for two full weeks. (This time period is somewhat arbitrary; the policy says SP should be lifted after a "brief period"). If there are any objections, please raise them here. Otherwise, I'll unprotect on the date given above. -- David Iberri ( talk) 11:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. The lift needs to be lifted to check if this article is still the target of vandalism. Although I believe this article may always be a target of vandalism, the semi-protection should be lifted but the article monitored before any other action can be taken as far as protection against vandalism. -- SuperLearner 04:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not really sure wether this is the right place to post this, but I'm going to assume it is since the original article is locked.
I think this non-wikipedia wiki should be linked to in the sex article: (link removed)
I found it informative and serious enough, and since you even link directly to goatse like material on the goatse page I don't see any harm in adding this.
I removed the image from inside a table. I really couldn't see how this was relevant. Felixwells 16:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
This does not seem to be neutral point of view ( WP:NPOV), nor does it appear to be verifiable ( WP:V), because the usual sexual orientation is subjective and cannot be reliably externally measured. Also, survey data regarding stigmatized or deeply personal feelings or activities is often inaccurate. Participants often avoid answers which they feel society, the survey-takers, or they themselves dislike. Omgitsasecret 02:07, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry your arguments are not convincing. Orientation can be defined by self-profession, or by behavior. None of the Kinsey data can be interpreted to disagree with the neutral statement that the "usual" orientation is toward the opposite sex, when the usual meanings of the words are used. The table in the article simply reflects the current consensus of recognized authorities about orientation, and does not imply that minority orientation is abnormal, just not "usual". Kinsey nowhere said that a homosexual orientation was as common as a heterosexual one, nor does any other recognized authority. If you think an extreme minority view based on some unusual and not commonly accepted definitions or criteria needs to be explained somewhere, it could probably be accommodated in the article on orientation with references, but does not mean that the general article on sex needs to omit the virtually universal consensus.
alteripse 05:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Central to the entire biological concept of sex revolves around the pairing of male and female for erotic and procreative behavior. While human behavior and human variation is far wider than that, in a simple table in this article, there is nothing wrong with simply acknowledging that a primary erotic orientation toward the opposite sex is the "usual" outcome of that dimension of sexual development. If you take the trouble to review the history of this article the word usually was chosen specifically to make it clear that it is not universal, and the commentary about the table in the article makes this clear as well. You make this article a risible caricature of political correctness when you claim that acknowleging this basic fact is a censorable point of view. alteripse 10:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)