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Last revised 17:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC) (29 days ago) by Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist (refresh) | ||||
Anti-trans advocacy on Wikipedia (Part 1)
Some have attempted, or been successful, at using Wikipedia to promote anti-trans misinformation and pseudoscience for over a decade. In this first part of a 2-part series, I analyze an arbitration case from 2013 which set a precedent for Wikipedia's handling of transgender topics for years to come.
Sexology (2013)
The lead up
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sexology (2013) focused on the interactions between two editors who were notable enough for their own Wikipedia articles: User:Jokestress (Andrea James) and User:James Cantor (James Cantor).
James Cantor was recently described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as part of an "old guard" of sexology researchers which advocated treating trans identity as mental illness with associated conversion therapy-style “cures”
[1] - he worked at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, later shut down due to gender identity change efforts, with Ray Blanchard, and Kenneth Zucker.[2][3] Cantor's professional focus was the research of paraphilias (an experience of recurring or intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, places, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals.
) He has been described as one of the leading researchers proposing that pedophilia is biologically rooted.[4] He was an avid proponent of Blanchard's transsexualism typology, which posits that all transgender women who aren't exclusively attracted to men transition due to a paraphilia called "autogynophilia".[5]
In 2003, J. Michael Bailey (another part of the "old guard"[6]) published The Man Who Would Be Queen, a book promoting Blanchard's typology, which was not well received by the vast majority transgender community or trans healthcare community. Cantor positively reviewed it, describing it as a sympathetic portrayal of "autogynephilic transsexuals" that explored the roots of their development.[7] Andrea joined Wikipedia in 2004, making approximately 50,000 edits prior to the case.[8] She edited a variety of topics, including some NPOV additions to Autogynephilia, in her first 500 edits before disclosing her identity on her userpage in mid-2005[9] having made some NPOV edits to the AGP article until 2008 when a COI was noted.[10] [11][12] In 2008, Alice Dreger wrote an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (the editorial board containing Zucker, Bailey, Blanchard, and Cantor) [13] that accused Andrea James, Lynn Conway, and Deirdre McCloskey of attempting to ruin Bailey over the book and censor scientific inquiry.[14] Within the same issue it received a dozen critiques from a range of disciplines for 1) downplaying how offensive the book was, 2) attributing the backlash against the book to three individuals, and 3) partisanly promoting Bailey.[15]
Cantor joined in 2008 pseudonymously as User:MarionTheLibrarian, making 1,000 contributions aiming to edit articles he had conflicts of interest on without disclosure until taken to the COI noticeboard whereupon he began to go by User:James Cantor.[16] The COIs in the top-edited pages as Marion are obvious: Blanchard's transsexualism typology (115 edits), Autogynephilia (66), J. Michael Bailey (36), The Man Who Would Be Queen (24), and Ray Blanchard (21). For talk pages it was Talk:Pedophilia (35), Talk:Conversion therapy (26), Talk:J. Michael Bailey (19), Talk:Autogynephilia (13), etc. A clear pattern emerges. The comments on conversion therapy were arguments that it shouldn't be mentioned that Zucker's practices were, even then, described as conversion therapy.[17] Moreover, a mediation case was opened due to his POV editing of the articles for James, McCloskey, and Conway through citations to Dreger.[18] In 2009, a paper was presented at the International Foundation for Gender Education Conference which stated Cantor "apparently spends a great deal of time trolling on Wikipedia" and seemed to the author to be "obsessed with trying to spin every entry that concerns transgender people and especially theories of trans etiology to conform to Blanchardian and Zuckerian ideology."[19]
In 2009, Cantor wrote an article on the Feminine essence concept of transsexuality. An editor tried to delete it on the grounds of WP:SYNTH, WP:OR, and WP:COI - but it was kept as editors argued there was enough sourcing - we'll revisit it later. In 2011 he tendentiously tried to delete Androphilia and gynephilia, making 55 edits disagreeing with the near unanimous opposition. The same year, he was blocked for COI editing.[20] In 2012 was the only one to call for the deletion of the Benjamin Scale, one of the first medical typologies of transgender people which defined people's lives for decades. Also in 2012, Andrea attempted to delete the article Gynandromorphophilia as a POVFORK of attraction to transgender people, but the discussion found no consensus. It was re-opened in 2013 on the same grounds but deferred due to ARBCOM case. We shall also revisit this. The precipitating moment for the Arbitration committee case was an a 2013 discussion at the Administrators Noticeboard proposing topic bans and sanctions for Cantor, James, and a number of involved parties.
The Arbitration Committee and ARBSEX
As the Signpost reported at the time, the dispute between the two began on the hebephilia article and involved articles on paraphilias and "transgenderism" - Cantor was accused of excessive self-citation and negatively editing Andrea's article, Andrea was accused of promoting WP:FRINGE theories.[21] The Arbitration Committee found the two were involved in advocacy and activities relating to sexuality and it was the primary topic they edited on Wikipedia. The committee found Andrea is a prominent party to an off-wiki controversy involving human sexuality
and imported the controversy to the detriment of editing environment. No findings of fact were proposed for Cantor.[22]
Andrea and Cantor were given a mutual interaction ban; though unlike Cantor Andrea was banned from human sexuality (later expanded to include gender in 2019), and mostly ceased editing then[23]. The committee proposed indefinitely prohibiting him from editing Hebephilia, biographies of sexology researchers, and related advocates
while allowing him to edit talk pages, but it didn't pass as there 3 supports, 3 opposes,and 2 abstentions - the latter 5 saying his misbehavior could be covered by the discretionary sanctions.[24][25] This was despite his behavior as MarionTheLibrarian and evidence provided by multiple editors during the case that Cantor had COI issues.[26][27][28][29][30]
Discretionary sanctions were enabled for all pages dealing with transgender issues and paraphilia classification (e.g., hebephilia).
This case would soon be folded into GENSEX after a meander through the Chelsea Manning Naming Dispute clarifying it applied to pronouns and names. That may be the subject of a future article. In 2013, an arbitrator had wisely noted the decision in no way implies a side is "right", hence the reason for the "limits of arbitration" principle. There are issues here with discussions over what constitutes reliable sources and fringe theories that are not addressed by the decision.
[31] And thus, the can was kicked down the road. At least, right after the case the 3rd AGD for Gynandromorphophilia saw it deleted.
The aftermath
While Andrea's contributions dropped off, Cantor continued editing until 2021 and made a total of approximately 8000 edits across multiple accounts - nearly all containing major conflicts of interest.[32][33][34][35] He created at least two new accounts[36] to continue his COI editing, particularly to skirt the IBAN with Andrea, in 2013[37] and 2015 [38]
In 2013, Cantor launched an AFD for Margaret Nichols that failed, Cantor being the only one to want it deleted with 6 editors disagreeing - he bravely bludgeoned almost all of them. For context, in 2008 Nichols had sharply criticized Bailey, his book, and Blanchard's typology.[39] In 2016 he used a sock to relaunch the AFD, agreed with himself, and two real editors agreed and thus the article was deleted. In 2015 he bludgeoned and unsuccessfully tried to delete David Oliver Cauldwell, arguing he wasn't notable.
In 2015, he reported User:Sceptre, a transgender editor who'd participated in the sexology case, for referring to Zucker as a child-abuser for his conversion practices after the clinic closed - they were blocked.[40] In 2019, he was taken to ANI for accusing all critics of the Blanchard typology of being "autogynephilic mtfs" - it was found to be an acceptable way to refer to people.[41][42][43]. One wonders how explicit his insults would need to be to receive sanction: would all the people who oppose the theory I support are people who get off on being women
have been enough? That year, he also removed his non-binding pledge to avoid a subset of COI articles from his userpage.[44]
In 2021, his two sockpuppets, User:Starburst9 and User:Banglange, were discovered and he was blocked for violation of sockpuppeting policies and his IBAN with Andrea.[45] The top edited articles for Starburst9? Those include Sexual addiction, James Cantor, and Andrea James. For Banglange? The top three are literally Kenneth Zucker, James Cantor, and Andrea James. In 2024 I successfully nominated the Feminine essence concept of transsexuality for deletion on the grounds it was a clear POV fork where half the citations never discussed the concept and the the other half was letters to the editor from Cantor, Blanchard, and Bailey.
Take-aways from sexology
A WP:FRINGE sexologist, known for his pathologizing views on transgender people, edited wikipedia's articles on trans topics, his critics, and the researchers he worked with for over a decade. Like Al Capone getting got on tax evasion - Cantor's years of COI editing, offensive comments, and civil POV pushing was not enough, but the use of sockpuppets was. One wonders if it is only coincidence that since 2021 (the year he was banned from Wikipedia) he has testified in 25 cases seeking to restrict transgender rights in the U.S after being approached by the Alliance Defending Freedom?[46] What should we make of this?
Some I've spoken to have suggested it belies a shift in what is WP:FRINGE: his views, while deeply offensive, were in vogue all those years ago. But reliable sources were clear, even then, that the majority of the LGBT community found those views offensive. Perhaps in 2008, his views were slightly more notable, but he was editing until 2021, when his work was considered FRINGE for a decade.
Others chalked it up to early Wikipedia's deference to experts and greater rein given to them in their topic areas. But that doesn't explain how he got away with the WP:COI - he didn't only write about his theories citing himself and his colleagues, he wrote about his colleagues, his critics, and crossed the line between personal and professional all to often. And it doesn't explain why he was considered an expert.
I think the take-away is clear, Wikipedia prized a small clique of sexologists and their thoughts on a minority demographic over the demographic itself, who overwhelming said their work was pathologizing and didn't represent the community accurately. It does not matter if Wikipedia lagged behind the times in allowing their FRINGE nonsense, or kept up with the times which allowed their offensive nonsense, the point still stands they allowed it. As Sceptre put it in WP:ARBSEX, a facet of the case was encyclopedic treatment of a maligned minority, especially when said maligning comes from otherwise reliable sources.
[47]
We are still undoing his damage to our coverage of transgender topics years after his block, which came over a decade too late - in no uncertain terms the arbitration committee let him get away with it with abusing Wikipedia and more heavily sanctioned editors who tried to stop him. In the next report in the series, we'll explore how much and how little has changed.
- YFNS
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