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 Merge to the appropriate articles as proposed in the discussion. Consensus is that this is a WP:SYNTH problem in its current form. Sandstein 10:33, 18 May 2022 (UTC) reply

Animals in LGBT culture

Animals in LGBT culture (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Article is entirely synthesis of unrelated topics. There are no sources that cover this topic as a whole to establish notability or the relevance of grouping these. The fact that LGBT people own pets has nothing to do with some LGBT people dressing as furries, which has nothing to do with hairy men being called bears, which has nothing to do with Arthur showing a gay character, which has nothing to do with LGBT people taking part in the Unicorn trend. Animals are relevant to many parts of human life, language, and media, and grouping them in this way is not a cohesive, notable topic.

Most of the slang terms are already at LGBT slang and the rest should be added, and the lines about unicorns can be added to LGBT Symbols#Unicorns. The fictional animals have little to do with animals in particular, with sources like [1] discussing the LGBT presence and queer coding in Disney films in general, with nothing distinguishing animal characters from human characters (or hybrids like Ursula). I just don't see any encyclopedic basis for this grouping of disjoined topics and standalone facts, none of whose references paint a broader picture of what established their relationship "in LGBT culture." Reywas92 ^Talk 17:13, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements and Animal. Reywas92 ^Talk 17:25, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Merge content from sections with a see also/main article template into the main articles, since its largely duplicative, and as Reywas92 noted, there isn't much tying them together. Keep section on Pets, since it seems there are several sources giving it notability as its own topic (and maybe rename this article). Consider splitting LGBT fictional animals into a new main article for Category:Fictional LGBT characters. Politanvm ^talk 18:12, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
  • Merge LGBT fictional animals into History of LGBT characters in animation. Politanvm ^talk 20:06, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    I suppose, as that could get that article more attention, as the person on that article who has been the big editor on there for a while now. Historyday01 ( talk) 22:01, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

• Merge in line with nom. LGBT people just having pets and parts of LGBT culture referring to animals are not a topic, or we could say the same for every subculture in existence. Animals in goth culture, anyone? That is, there do not appear to be any academic studies or thinkpieces or even tabloid columns that claim that "animals" has a unique connection to LGBT culture, nor even, which would be the bare minimum to justify, any sources saying that animal motifs have prominence within LGBT culture that they don't in just normal human life. Like, lesbians often having cats isn't worth an article, and if that is all that could be said to be connected here, just stick it at the article on lesbian stereotypes? Because the rest of the pets section is more about emotional support animals in general, with the stats about LGBT groups being plucked from wider studies, i.e. the sources haven't considered it a topic. Kingsif ( talk) 18:23, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
  • Or whatever process that involves moving some content to different places, then deleting, because this title as a redirect is worthless, and would be misleading to send anywhere in particular. Kingsif ( talk) 18:24, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    @ Kingsif What say you about the LGBT fictional animals content? Asking because Politanvm suggested this is a potentially notable topic. --- Another Believer _{( Talk)} 18:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    • I think that between this and the TV project, there has been far, far, far too much creating, deleting, merging and on, articles about different categorisations of LGBT characters. By sexuality, by genre, by decade, alphabetically, and it is too messy for me to want to consider adding more to that. If somebody wants to userfy a list and build it into an article to suggest creation once all the other lists-cum-articles have been cleaned up, they can, but I think it would be more effort than recreating anew at some point in the future when it wouldn't itself be quickly debated for deletion or merging with any of the other LGBT characters pages. My opinion of it is notable is probably no: I also think Polianvm makes a point of the animal nature of at least some of the characters not being a defining feature of the characters, so the intersection of animal + LGBT wouldn't be notable or populated enough to justify a standalone article. LGBT characters that happen to be animals can go in the same place as other LGBT characters. Maybe there will be an abundance in the animated character pages, if any of them are still around. Kingsif ( talk) 18:39, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    There's History of LGBT characters in animation with subarticles by decade and sublists List of animated films with LGBT characters and List of animated series with LGBT characters. A subsection there about animal characters could be appropriate (can't think of any non-animated ones) but concur there should be sources describing LGBT animal characters as an intersection. Reywas92 ^Talk 19:02, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    Thanks Reywas92 - I knew there were existing articles about LGBT animated characters but I couldn't remember what they were. To clarify, I wasn't suggesting creating a new article just about animal characters. Politanvm ^talk 20:03, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    I mean, as a big editor on the History of LGBT characters in animation page, I suppose I wouldn't be opposed to having a sub-section for fictional LGBT animals, there, as that page isn't as bulky as the split off ones for the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Update: I created a section on the talk page to discuss adding this section to that article, if you are interested in participating in that and what such a section will look like.-- Historyday01 ( talk) 22:59, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

  • I'm a little bothered by just throwing all of the slang terms over to LGBT slang, mixing them alphabetically with the numerous others. The "animal spectrum" part of this is lost when the animals are not grouped. Similarly, the "identity" component would also be lost. Also, we might need to do something about Bear_(gay_culture)#Terminology since this is yet another area of overlap. --- Another Believer _{( Talk)} 21:53, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

    That's why my thought was that there could be a section specifically focused on animal terms... I don't see why not. Historyday01 ( talk) 22:24, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Popular culture and Sexuality and gender. Spiderone ^{(Talk to Spider)} 18:49, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Delete pure WP:SYNTH; I can only see the importance or relevance of slang terms, which we of course have an article for. We need good articles about LGBT culture, not filler cruft talking about “random thing and how it relates to LGBT, no matter how labored the intersection”. I also agree we don’t need more “fictional queer people by random category” WP:content fork cruft. Dronebogus ( talk) 19:49, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Merge/Redirect to appropriate LGBTQ articles, specifically the "Fictional animals" section to History of LGBT characters in animation, "Unicorns" section to LGBT symbols (maybe one day there could even be a whole page on the significance of unicorns to the LGBTQ community? I think there might be enough on that topic), "Animal slang terms" to LGBT slang (maybe create a section for animal slang), "Animal roleplay and furry fandom" to Animal roleplay and perhaps add a section on Pet that would use the content from the "Pets" section of the article. I have to completely disagree with Dronebogus here, but agree with Kingsif and Politanvm on this topic. I don't think a straight-up deletion is a good idea, as it would put all the work done by active editors on the page, like the page's creator, Another Believer, @ User:QueenofBithynia, and the ten discussions on the talk page about various topics to waste. I'd hate to see that. I believe that there should be efforts to continue those discussions on other appropriate pages so the discussions made on the talk page of Animals in LGBT culture are not lost. Furthermore, I see what the OP is saying that "animals are relevant to many parts of human life, language, and media, and grouping them in this way is not a cohesive, notable topic" but I'd have to argue that certain animals have a specific significance to the LGBTQ community. The effort by Another Believer in creating this page is laudable, and even though the content may be moved to other pages, it remains an important topic for pages on here to focus on. Historyday01 ( talk) 22:16, 10 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Merge / Change focus and rename. The article does suffer from some OR, and the sland section should be merged to the slang article, same for unicorn. The pet section is relatively relevant and well cited. The animal and furry roleplay is semi-relevant and I'd support merging the referenced content to the relevant animal roleplay and furry fandom articles. Fictional animals section is bad as it seems like a bad WP:IPC section - an attempt to list all fictional gay animals. While the topic may be notable, the article is written as an OR mixing a number of related concepts. Right now, the scholarly sources cited suggest borderline stand-alone notability for the topics of Pets and the LGBT community, although the resulting stub could also be merged somewhere. Overall, there is some content to rescue from here through merging to others articles, but right now I am not seeing sources in the article suggesting the broad treatment of this very concept is notable enough to warrant a stand-alone article, not to mention, the choice of sections is WP:ORish. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:06, 11 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Merge/Redirect as proposed. desmay ( talk) 23:32, 12 May 2022 (UTC) reply
  • Merge the content and leave a redirect. As there are too many issues involving the article existence. Mayhaps the list section can be in LGBT slang

— Tazuco 23:49, 12 May 2022 (UTC) reply

That's my thought too. I can also agree with Piotr's suggestion to create a Pets and the LGBT community article as well. Historyday01 ( talk) 14:07, 14 May 2022 (UTC) reply

• Merge. Yup, the consensus seems to have already identified the obvious solution here, but I'll lend my voice the chorus in any event: seemingly a fair bit of salvageable content here, but the overall structure of the article itself is an unworkable mish-mash of competing subject matters extremely tenuously united by an overly vague cross-categorization of two descriptors. As Piotr points out above, with a change of name, the article might be preserved on one narrower basis or another, but I think arguably the simpler solution is to have the content of each section merged out into appropriate articles, but without implied prejudice for the possibility of regular editors of those articles (or other editors) spinning that info back out again into more focused standalone articles, if it all comports with WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 22:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC) reply
• Selective merge, per all. The notability of this topic is borderline questionable, and a lot of it is substantially WP:OR that should not be WP:PRESERVEd. But there is a growing consensus that the verifiable parts of this article can be covered somewhere else and it's good to look for compromises. Shooterwalker ( talk) 22:59, 15 May 2022 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.