Gender terminologies on actresses' Creator pages

Another thought: it feels odd to de-gender pages based around accepted gendered professions, like Millennium Actress referring to the titular character as an actor, Waitress referring to the titular character as a waiter. Again: descriptive, not prescriptive: we can't force gender neutrality for these words when they have not, well, been phased out in common usage.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 16th 2021 at 8:46:14 AM

@carolyn_sawyer: I feel like you've probably gotten a lot of D Ms in the past week; I know you've been tagged into a couple threads, and I'm afraid that might be overwhelming and seem like you are being attacked. I really don't want these discussions to come off that way.

You have started a discussion, and these threads have been very civil in trying to settle on how to handle the language moving forward.

The issue is that it's not something a single user can unilaterally apply as a one-size-fits-all solution to every article. I entered the conversation because of my concerns with how the edit impacted the discussion of transgender actresses, and I see others have brought this up, too. You are absolutely right that the media is sexist as hell and women have very restricted roles available to them. But calling a trans woman an 'actor' to make it gender neutral is not doing anything to help that situation. All it does is take away a gender signifier from someone who has had to fight to have it.

So I don't think the solution is to set back all your edits on every page to "actress", but there has to be a discussion of where these changes make the most sense and if there is any other impact caused by the change.

This is a valuable discussion and I hope we can continue it.

Edited by ciyinwanderer on Jun 16th 2021 at 5:04:20 AM

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands." ~Anthony Bourdain

Yeah, it's a worthy discussion, but context is important here. We can't go scorched-earth on the term "actress" when A) the term is used in certain works and it'd be misleading to not quote it directly, and B) the gender is more relevant in certain cases and/or it'd come across as erasure to make things gender-neutral, such as the case with insistently calling trans women "actors" instead of "actresses" — it may not be intentionally offensive, but a lot of people who would make that change would make it for transphobic reasons.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

The matter of whether or not to revert carolyn_sawyer's edits is really kinda a big part of this issue considering her edit history shows the vast number of edits she has made on various creator pages makes up the bulk of the issue at hand.

Kinda lean on reverting them due to a number of reasons:

• She kinda broke the "first come, first serve" rule that most people seem to be in consensus with as the majority of the pages she has changed were pretty much all old pages that were originally written with "actress".
• She has given her reason on why she changed actress to actor. The reason mainly being that she sees that "actress" is a sexist term and she clearly decided to right a wrong.
• She pretty much decided to unilaterally change actress without proper consensus from the wider community at hand.
• Her recent edit in the transgender page where she changed all mentions of actress shows that her edits have now tread into an issue that really might be perceived as transphobic if not handled correctly.
• Looking simply at a few of the pages she has edited, her actions have already resulted in a few edit wars from what I have so far investigated. Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Grace Kelly are so far a few of the pages that I have found wherein she edit warred with other tropers on whether to use actor or actress.
• A number of her edits have resulted in either unnecessary linguistic juggling, confusing info, or possibly wrong info. Some examples include:
  • A Judy Garland edit, wherein she changed the statement "While nowadays she is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses of her era, with her Girl Next Door charm," to "While nowadays she is considered to be one of the most attractive actors of her era, with her Girl Next Door charm,".
  • A Grace Kelly edit wherein she changed the statement, "Her next film was Dial M for Murder (1954), a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock; she became his favorite actress." to "Her next film was Dial M for Murder (1954), a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock; she became his favorite female actor." She then changed it to"Her next film was Dial M for Murder (1954), a thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock; she became one of his favorite actors." after another editor changed it back.

Considering the debate and issues carolyn_sawyer has brought up, I kinda don't see why her edits shouldn't just simply be reverted. Making multiple discussions for each and every one of her edits also seems more tiresome than it's worth.

I'm sorry if this comes off as mean but her edits really can't be separated from the overall discussion at present.

Edited by Elfkaiser on Jun 16th 2021 at 6:19:08 AM

That is unfortunate, and I'm afraid the message she'll take away from this is that we were all opposing her efforts when that clearly isn't the case. But I have already requested the Transgender page be reverted, and like you said it doesn't make sense to have to hold a discussion for each individual edit made.

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands." ~Anthony Bourdain

Other edit wars that I've just found that carolyn_sawyer participated in regards to this issue at hand that maybe worth mentioning.

• Jean Harlow
• Lauren Bacall
• Lillian Gish
• Natalie Portman
• Keira Knightly
• Barbra Streisand
• Olivia de Havilland
• Carole Lombard
• Rita Hayworth
• Ginger Rogers
• Ingrid Bergman
• Bette Davis
• Katharine Hepburn
• Olivia Munn

That's kinda way too many edit wars to ignore.

I'm of the mind not reverting on female Creator pages where it's already been changed and there's no Edit War, but definitely use "actress" in regard to transwomen actresses and for any new pages should try their best to use "actor."

Right now, I'm removing myself from this issue. And again, I will stop changing "actress" to "actor" from now on. I have learned that I didn't know nearly as much about the TV Tropes community as I should have before doing something like this.

Umm, kinda of some questions.

Okay, you just stated right here and in another statement that you'll stop changing actress to actor. Did you make this statement before or after your edit in Mae Whitman wherein you changed the word again?

I'm a bit unclear on timestamps but going by your edit history, it seems that you at very least did the edit again after you stated you wouldn't do so in your second to last statement of yours.

Umm, what gives? I could understand if the reality is that you did this edit before making your above claim that you won't be continuing to do so, but apparently it seems you did it again after your second to last claim wherein you said the exact same thing.

If your edit on Mae Whitman was to match the word actor earlier in the article, I have to point out that you changed the word to actor in the first place. The article is yet another preexisting article wherein actress was originally written but you changed the word to actor.

If your edit was to clarify things then no it was an unnecessary edit. Going by at least Tinker Bell's wikipedia page, Tinkerbell has so far been portrayed and voiced only by actresses as in women not men. The Disney iteration specifically was indeed first voiced by Mae Whitman therefore making the statement "the first actress to give a voice to Disney's iconic pixie Tinkerbell." still factually accurate.

---

If you're going to claim that you're going to stop doing something then please stop doing it.

While I think carolyn should stop changing existing words due to edit warring potential, it's also not inaccurate to say she's the first actor to give Tinker Bell a voice. We've already discussed that "actor" can be gender neutral, and in fact emphasizes that this is the first time anybody, regardless of gender, has voice acted Tinker Bell.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

True, the sentence is still grammatically and factually correct.

The change though feels really unnecessary as there was absolutely nothing wrong with the sentence beforehand. I mean what is the problem with just leaving "the first actress to give a voice to Disney's iconic pixie Tinkerbell." as is if both sentences are correct?

The bigger problem I guess at hand is that carolyn gave her word that she wouldn't be continuing this course of action several times in this very discussion. Looking at the timestamps, at least from my end based on my monitor and understanding of dates, it however looks like she broke her word and further continuing to add fuel to a fire that she started.

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This latest edit of hers also further makes me lean to reverting all of the creator pages and others such as GLOW 2017 wherein she changed the word "actress" to "actor".

I know most of her edits related to this issue are grammatically correct except in some cases like in an edit in Carole Lombard wherein amidst her pursuit of "purging" any instance of actress, she changed

to

However, is it really okay to keep her edits given the actual reason that she gave behind her essentially unilaterally mass scorching of the word "actress" in practically every page she could find, the 18 edit wars that I have so far found her in, and the various debates that have propped up because of her actions.

Both

and

for example are indeed grammatically correct on the surface however, the latter seems like it's rewarding the efforts of a person who has gone on a mad political correctness spree throughout the site given the context behind the change.

If you're gonna keep one, I guess maybe keep the one not saddled with the behind the scenes baggage.

I dunno. I kinda feel like it would be in bad taste to not revert edits that have been disruptive and unnecessary just because they fit modern day progress. Feels almost like end justifies the means which can be a bad thing.

Edited by Elfkaiser on Jun 18th 2021 at 1:18:16 AM

Decided to look and list down the various articles that I could find wherein carolyn_sawyer changed "actress" to "actor" and similar edits to get a better sense of scope of how closely she's tied to this overall discussion in light of her apparent recent edit wherein she changed the word "actress" to "actor" yet again despite saying she won't.

Dear God. Having found at least 325 articles wherein carolyn changed the word "actress" to "actor" in preexisting articles, that is way too big to ignore. It really does feel like she went on a crusade to unilaterally scorch the word actress throughout the entire site.

Also found some other things:

• If it's mentioned that someone is both an actress and a voice actress, carolyn merged them both into actor. This is kinda wrong as there's actually some differences between a regular actress and a voice actress. A person who can do regular acting doesn't necessarily mean they can automatically voice act and vice-versa.
• In some articles, it's mentioned that the person it's about won Best Actress and such. Carolyn doesn't change the award name in those cases but still changed other instances of the word actress which appeared. Kinda very inconsitant to say someone won a Best Actress in one place but not call her an actress elsewhere.
• If there are other words that denote gender such as "comedienne", Carolyn changed those too to gender neutral words.

Because that actually does imply they are not the first actor who voiced Tinkerbell. It implies that they are merely the first female actor to have done so, with the assumption that a male actor has already done so.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I wouldn't say that it implies that a male actor has voiced her, but I agree that it does create ambiguity.

Just "The first" then?

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

Elfkaiser, is your purpose to undo every single change she made? Because we've agreed this isn't a big enough deal for a mass revert (I'm worried that'll only encourage more Edit Wars) and we can move forward with a "first come first serve" attitude. At this point, it comes across either like you have an issue with the gender-neutral "actor," or that you're itching to get carolyn punished. I don't approve of the agenda either, at least not without further discussion, but I'm pretty sure carolyn stopped and we can discuss this with more nuance than "go scorched earth back on the person who went scorched earth."

I do agree that "actor and voice actor" can be kept separate though.

Not necessarily. You shouldn't change the name of the award category, obviously, but it still gets the idea across to call them an "actor." We've already discussed that award categories are kind of antiquated anyway.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jun 19th 2021 at 1:46:09 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Looking at one of her most recent edits in Taran Killiam, she apparently is still doing it just not as frequently.

I dunno, the stance I got from the mod and from most apparent people was that the community can't just let a single person with an apparent agenda unilaterally change things on preexisting articles without a good reason. However, it seems almost like some individuals just turned a blind eye and allowed that to happen which seems almost hypocritical. Even more so, if it seems like no one is planning to do something about someone whose actions have caused disruptions and edit wars

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As for edit wars specifically, it seems like most of them so far commonly involved carolyn. Including Scarlett Johansson which I have relatively recently found, she has been involved in at least 19 separate edit wars.

I don't know fully know the policy on edit wars but it might kinda seem inconsistent to let one person who has done several similar edit wars go when there have been times where having just one single edit war can get a person immediately suspended.

I also am not getting a line of logic. Carolyn's changes have caused edit wars and thus could be considered disruptive. It's therefore thrown that she should stop changing things as it has edit war potential. I have also observed that when an individual does a lot of disruptive edits, these specific edits are mass reverted. However in this case, we shouldn't mass revert her edits as it has edit war potential even though they're edit war potential and disruptive in the first place, and that based on the edit wars that I have found, it seems like it's primarily if not only carolyn who's edit warring for "actor" to stay.

So her changes have been shown to cause edit wars (specifically with her and others apparently) but we shouldn't mass revert them on that reasoning because it would cause edit wars. Umm, so edit wars if tails and edit wars if heads.

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Yeah but it really seems inconsistent to have some places wherein a person is referred to as an actress but as an actor in others such as in Cate Blanchett which is another page that carolyn edited in. I mean if you're referencing things wherein a person is called an actress then unless there's a good reason like transitioning, why not just use that term consistently especially when it was as such in the first place.

It kinda comes just as clunky as saying "female actors" instead of just simply "actresses".

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I dunno. I think it may have more to do that carolyn's changes come across as gender erasure in an almost totalitarian sense than actual gender equality.

Besides no matter how you slice it, the word "actor" despite people accepting it as gender neutral, is still seen as male gendered also. So in pages like Norman Reedus and Elliot Page, the word "actor" is more than likely gonna be seen by most being used to refer to their gender rather than in a gender neutral sense. The same thing can't be said when "actor" is used when referring to a woman. Thus I think a Double Standard might be seen. Men get to be acknowledged as men by a term that can be seen as male gendered but women don't get the same luxury.

I also see a Double Standard that could also be seen if actress is only used for Transwomen and not for anyone else. It could be argued from both sides that this might be seen as problematic. On one side, it could be argued that ciswomen's gender aren't being acknowledged while transwomen's are. On the other side, it could be argued that transwomen are being specifically othered if everyone else is called an actor but they're the only ones called actresses.

Edited by Elfkaiser on Jun 19th 2021 at 1:41:35 AM

If carolyn went against their word, than maybe holler a mod or make another ATT post to call out their edit warring and lying.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jun 19th 2021 at 6:50:35 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I think someone already did that.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Here's the link.

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

I really did mean to stop changing "actress" to "actor". The only reason I made the change to Mae Whitman's page was since she was described as an "actor" early in the article and then "actress" later, I thought I should fix that for consistency. Same with the edit on Taran Killam's page: Cobie Smulders was described as an actor on her own page and an actress on Killam's page. And I am sorry if I came across as dishonest. I wish I could delete my account, as this whole ordeal has caused me so much anxiety and stress. For now, I'm going to stop editing pages altogether.

Edited by carolyn_sawyer on Jun 21st 2021 at 8:44:48 AM