Wookieepedia > WookieeProject: Pride > Character categories
Yaa-yaah, y'all! Welcome to our first discussion! Some of you are familiar with this already, but to bring people up to speed/refresh—various people have suggested over the years that we have a category for characters who we, in the real world, would consider LGBTQIA+. These suggestions have been rebuffed, with a common reason being that we haven't been given an in-universe term in an official source that applies to these characters.
For instance, this was raised when StarWars.com posted the Pride month covers announcement. As RattsT pointed out on Discord, the article uses "LGBTQ+" to describe the characters. On International Trans Visibility Day, various official social media such as Instagram presented a cover of Ceret and Terec that described them as "trans non-binary" specifically. This led to Ayrehead02 creating the category Category:Trans individuals. Some people felt these social media posts did not count as in-universe information regarding the characters' gender, citing our canon policy for social media.
We're basically saying: the policy is wrong. This is important, and we're making categories accordingly. If we're given any in-universe terms in the future, we'll simply rename them.
So, this topic is to discuss what we would name the parent category for these characters—the rainbow umbrella, if you will—and any subsequent subcategories. Aside from the new trans individuals category, we also have Category:Non-binary individuals (that'd be my creation); both of these would be likely subcategories.
(This is, of course, only for characters, not real people.)
In a prior discussion of this topic, SamanthaJo made several observations which I will quote in full here:
- "Hi, I just joined Wookieepedia, so I'm obviously late to the discussion. But if you're looking for someone to help you on this, well, I'm a lesbian trans woman, so... Just reading through this discussion, I've already got a couple ideas as far as names for a new category. A common term is "sexual minority". This most often applies to LGB people, but can include trans and gender-variant folks. I should mention though that some people take issue with the use of the word "minority", and some trans people take issue with the term as a whole because being trans technically has nothing to do with sex as far as orientation, which is usually what the term means. As I threw in above, "gender-variance" is another term, but is the inverse in that it only applies to gender and not sexual orientation. Granted, if we wanted to create more than one category, or subcategory if you have those here (like I said, I'm new), then we could use both those. But from what I've read and what I'm aware of, there are so few such characters at this point that it wouldn't be necessary. Still, I just wanted to throw those out there. The other term that many actually feel should replace LGBT is GSD or GSM, which is "gender and sexual diversity/minority" (obviously, the issue with the word "minority" comes up again with the latter term). There's also GSRM, which is "gender, sexual, and romantic minorities". Personally, I like "gender and sexual diversity", as I feel it really includes anyone along the gender spectrum and sexual orientation spectrum. I realize it's still a tad wordy, though maybe not quite as much as "persons attracted to the same sex" lol. In any case though, that's my take on this. I would also point out, however, that the page for Sinjir, under the "personality" section, uses the term "homosexual". And the page for Eleodie uses the term "gender-neutral" to refer to Eleodie's use of the gender-neutral pronouns zhe and zher (Eleodie is not a "hermaphrodite", as someone earlier claimed). So you already have such real-world terms in use. Though perhaps they're not supposed to be? I don't know. But anyway, let me know what you guys think or if you have any questions, etc. Thanks and sorry for the long post."
Personally, I'm a fan of her suggestion of incorporating "gender and sexual diversity," in part because gender and sexual diversity is an existing umbrella term that sounds like some of our existing categories. So as a first idea for consideration, maybe "Individuals of diverse genders and sexualities"? (We do love our clunky category names here at the Wook!) Immi Thrax (talk) 04:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Personally, I don't see why we couldn't have a category that doesn't use an in-universe term. After all, no source (as far as I know) uses the term "unidentified fathers" yet we have a category for them. Also, since these individuals do share a trait that doesn't seem to be shared by most characters, I would argue that "Individuals of diverse genders and sexualities" or something of the sort would be appropriate and would not constitute original research, or at least not any more original research than we use for other categories on the site. VergenceScatter (talk) 05:13, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well said, Vergence! It's also a trait/set of traits that are shared by many characters—still not done listing everyone from Toqgers's spreadsheet—showing it also isn't too few examples to categorize. Many of our category names use the "duck test" rather than an in-universe source for naming. Immi Thrax (talk) 05:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, there's definitely enough for multiple categories. VergenceScatter (talk) 05:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Ooo, ooo, I had a thought! We could have whatever-we-call-the-parent-category. In that, subcategorize the existing "Trans individuals" and "Non-binary individuals." Add others we've been given a specific identifier for like "
DisasterLesbian individuals" for Chelli Lona Aphra or have been told which genders they're attracted to . For characters without a specification, just use the parent category; if ever specified later, move to the subcategory. A point was raised in prior discussion that assumptions might get made that a character is, for instance, lesbian based on a single relationship when they're actually pansexual, but... how are we to know they're pan based on limited information? We can go with what we've seen, and change it if a later portrayal shows otherwise. ... Quack. Immi Thrax (talk) 05:53, 4 April 2021 (UTC)- Sounds good to me! VergenceScatter (talk) 06:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- The definition of transgender I've seen most frequently goes something like "identifies with/as a gender other than the one assigned at birth." By this definition then, wouldn't all non-binary individuals from species with the traditional male/female majority also be trans? -ZapikCZ (talk) 20:56, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, but I'd argue that without an in-universe definition, it makes more sense for us to keep Category:Trans individuals and Category:Non-binary individuals separate for the time being, and simply include them in the same overall category. VergenceScatter (talk) 20:58, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- The definition of transgender I've seen most frequently goes something like "identifies with/as a gender other than the one assigned at birth." By this definition then, wouldn't all non-binary individuals from species with the traditional male/female majority also be trans? -ZapikCZ (talk) 20:56, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sounds good to me! VergenceScatter (talk) 06:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Ooo, ooo, I had a thought! We could have whatever-we-call-the-parent-category. In that, subcategorize the existing "Trans individuals" and "Non-binary individuals." Add others we've been given a specific identifier for like "
- Yes, there's definitely enough for multiple categories. VergenceScatter (talk) 05:40, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well said, Vergence! It's also a trait/set of traits that are shared by many characters—still not done listing everyone from Toqgers's spreadsheet—showing it also isn't too few examples to categorize. Many of our category names use the "duck test" rather than an in-universe source for naming. Immi Thrax (talk) 05:35, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- I was going to suggest "Queer individuals" or something along those lines, but we should probably avoid that one without a wider consensus. (That word's complicated, and I'd hate to alienate users.) SamanthaJo's suggestion of GSD individuals is much better. Also, love the duck test idea.^ - Cwedin(talk) 06:05, 4 April 2021 (UTC)
- I do love and use "queer" myself, but yeah, probably best to avoid a term that has such mixed views for NPOV as well. (Also, some people might read the category and mistake it for vandalism.) And I guess this is a sign I'd better watch some classic Queer Duck for the nostalgia! Immi Thrax (talk) 13:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- So, how about: Category:Individuals of diverse genders and sexualities, for a description: "Individuals whose gender identity was not part of a binary system, who experienced attraction towards beings of their own gender or beings of multiple genders, and/or did not experience attraction towards other beings." To support, please quack ;) Immi Thrax (talk) 10:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'd like to go back to the point Immi cited from me for a moment. Personally, I think the title "Category:LGBTQ+ individuals" would be our best choice for several reasons: 1) Lucasfilm uses the term. This is the most obvious reason for me. To quote the SW.com article, "This Pride Month, gay and transgender artists will pay homage to some of the LGBTQ+ characters inhabiting a galaxy far, far away in a special line of variant comic book covers. I know how we are about taking info from SW.com articles, but this feels pretty definitive to me. As noted above, the social media post from the official SW account used the terminology "trans" and "non-binary," and we've picked those terms up. Why not this one? 2) It's much more recognizable. "Individuals of diverse genders and sexualities," while factually correct, is a lot of words, whereas "LGBTQ+" is a simple signifier that's easily identifiable to most readers. That leads me to 3) People are more likely to search for this. I've seen people asking for a long time why we don't have a category like this already; using an easily searchable name will help them find what they're looking for much more quickly. RattsT (talk) 06:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- I am entirely fine with that. VergenceScatter (talk) 07:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Quack for you, RattsT. Although I realized, "+" is a special character for Mediawiki, but there are ways to deal with that, right? Immi Thrax
(talk) 07:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- We have Disney+, so I'm sure there's some workaround there. RattsT (talk) 07:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Heh, looking at it, the actual URL is "Disney%2B"—but since you've demonstrated it's linkable anyway, YAY! Immi Thrax (talk) 07:24, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Heh, looking at it, the actual URL is "Disney%2B"—but since you've demonstrated it's linkable anyway, YAY! Immi Thrax
- We have Disney+, so I'm sure there's some workaround there. RattsT (talk) 07:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's also a quack from me. Don't want to goes into boring you with linguistics/semiotics reasoning, but it's only reasonable IMO that we should use a concept recognizable/identifiable by everybody. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 14:25, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yeah, these are some reasonable arguments. I'm happy with this. Minnabird (talk) 14:11, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'd like to go back to the point Immi cited from me for a moment. Personally, I think the title "Category:LGBTQ+ individuals" would be our best choice for several reasons: 1) Lucasfilm uses the term. This is the most obvious reason for me. To quote the SW.com article, "This Pride Month, gay and transgender artists will pay homage to some of the LGBTQ+ characters inhabiting a galaxy far, far away in a special line of variant comic book covers. I know how we are about taking info from SW.com articles, but this feels pretty definitive to me. As noted above, the social media post from the official SW account used the terminology "trans" and "non-binary," and we've picked those terms up. Why not this one? 2) It's much more recognizable. "Individuals of diverse genders and sexualities," while factually correct, is a lot of words, whereas "LGBTQ+" is a simple signifier that's easily identifiable to most readers. That leads me to 3) People are more likely to search for this. I've seen people asking for a long time why we don't have a category like this already; using an easily searchable name will help them find what they're looking for much more quickly. RattsT (talk) 06:49, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- We're about to hit two weeks of this project (!) and nearly 2 weeks for this thread, so I think we can safely call for Category:LGBTQ+ individuals unless something gets raised very soon.
A suggestion that came up in the new projects channel on Discord is for categories with conjectural names to have a banner like articles do. IDK if that's happening, but regardless, perhaps a disclaimer (italics?) such as: This parent category and subcategories use terminology from the official Star Wars website and social media accounts; however, these exact terms have not been used in narrative appearances. If/when this changes, they will be renamed accordingly.
I also want to check in on how other people feel about characters where the information is BTS-only or subtext that gets dismissed (like Tonra, Versé, or to quote Toqgers re Lando "Word of god lol"). I 100% consider them within the scope of this project! For category purposes, however, I believe we should require an in-universe depiction, though it may come with an additional word-of-god confirmation that yes, Ferus and Roan weren't just good friends. Immi Thrax
(talk) 19:50, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Or something like this!Immi Thrax (talk) 08:05, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yeah, the category should only be used for chracters officially confirmed to be LGBTQ+. For the template, I can create a new parameter in {{Conjecture}} to be used for category pages (like the different parameters in {{Conjecturetrans}}) OOM 224 ༼༽talk༼༽ 08:18, 17 April 2021 (UTC)