Revert

Reverted recent change due to consensus in favor of avoiding gendered pronouns. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For the record: these changes (misleadingly summarized as "fixed some grammer mistakes"), and this consensus. Mathglot (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Roscelese:, this keeps happening, over and over. I've added an edit notice to the page, based on the recently expired edit notice from the Military history project, and added information about gender pronouns. It's currently set to expire in a year. Please click the Edit tab on the article page to see the notice at the top of the Preview window. If you (or anybody) would like to change the wording, feel free to do so, or discuss below if we want a consensus-based wording for it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

250 others

"Cashier was only one of at least 250 soldiers who were assigned female at birth and enlisted as men to fight in the Civil War". Were they "assigned female at birth" or were they women? Do we know anything about their gender identification? Do we have any reason to suppose that they were not women who were just happy to serve their country? Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Without taking a position on whether or not the editorialization is appropriate, I want to clarify that saying they were assigned female is not saying that they weren't women. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:20, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We don't know if they were women; we do know that they were assigned female at birth. The balance of evidence presented in this article points to Cashier at the very least not being a woman, and to identify Cashier as a woman in the lead is inaccurate at best. I'm curious as to your reasoning for wanting to change from the more accurate and neutral "assigned female at birth", too, I don't believe you've presented it yet. Care to share? NekoKatsun (nyaa) 17:09, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The given source says nothing about "assigned female at birth". The given source *does* say, "women"; in fact, it says "women" twenty-seven times.[a] You are substituting your own deduction of what must have happened,[b] for what a reliable source says, which is contrary to verifiability policy, and is original research on your part. You might try suggesting better wording, that hews more closely to the source as a compromise. What about the wording in revision 883460664 by KamillaŚ for example? I would be fine with that one, and it uses words found in the reference. You've reverted a couple of times now to a version that is unsupportable by sources; that version definitely will not fly for policy reasons, and I will revert it back to a policy-compliant version, if no compromise is found in this discussion. Mathglot (talk) 18:32, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The consensus for Cashier is to avoid gendered terms. "Woman" is pretty gendered. "Assigned female at birth" isn't (and sex assignment dates back to ancient Rome; your claim of anachronism is wildly misguided). The WaPo article refers to Cashier as "biologically female", which is synonymous with "assigned female at birth". AFAB does hew close to the source... as in it's a paraphrasing of what the source says. Doesn't hew much closer than that. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 20:29, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Laurel, regarding

Do we have any reason to suppose that they were not women who were just happy to serve their country?

In most cases, I would agree with you; this may very well be the case for the majority, perhaps almost all of the women who disguised themselves and enlisted. Cashier's case may well have been different; some scholars think so, anyway, and that is covered in the article. The problem is, we can't state it unequivocally in Wikipedia's voice (previous discussions have gone over this point in great detail; see the archives). But more to the point: since this article is about Cashier, and not about the "other women", that question doesn't really have to be answered here. I'd like to see an article devoted to Women soldiers in the American Civil War, then your question would rise to the surface again. See these two categories. Feel like starting one? Mathglot (talk) 19:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ 27 occurrences – typical of those (emphasis added):
    • Hundreds of women concealed their identities so they could battle alongside their Union and Confederate counterparts, or
    • Even though women weren’t legally allowed to fight in the Civil War, it is estimated that somewhere around 400 women disguised themselves as men and went to war
  2. ^ You appear to assume that Hodgers was "assigned female at birth", but this term refers to a doctor or other birth attendant's formal pronouncement; we don't know who was present at the birth, or who, if anyone, declared the baby's sex. In 1843, the overwhelming number of births were home deliveries, and in all likelihood nobody declared the baby's sex; they merely observed the anatomy and raised the baby as a girl, which was what always happened. Nobody sat around waiting for assignment by someone in a position of authority. In addition, the term did not exist then and is an anachronism; to say that Hodgers was "assigned female at birth" isn't only unattested, and original research, it is also very likely false.
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