Talk:Cruel and Unusual (2006 film)

Clarification is needed: biological vs. preferred gender

In the interest of factual accuracy, I feel it makes the most sense to refer to people by their biological gender, or to at least retain biological gender as part of the phrasing. As written, this article jumps back and forth between biological gender and adopted gender so many times, it is difficult or impossible to follow. I understand that gender identification is sometimes a touchy subject that deserves some sensitivity, but clarity and fidelity to facts should be paramount here.

Thus, I edited "...the experiences of male-to-female transsexual women..." to instead read "...the experiences of male-to-female transsexuals...". The earlier version was both confusing and counter-factual, and I feel my edit was both properly respectful of their status while retaining appropriate allegiance to biological reality.

Similarly, the sentence "The documentary focuses on five trans women, three incarcerated and two recently released from prison." leaves the reader not knowing the actual gender of the persons mentioned, which is crucial to the subject matter. A casual reader not versed in transsexual nomenclature could hardly be blamed for not understanding that the sentence is actually talking about five males.

Belchfire (talk) 23:33, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

You're right, we certainly don't want readers to be confused while they're reading this article, so let's find the best wording to clear up any ambiguities. I must admit that having written the article originally, it's perhaps a little difficult for me to see exactly where it might be confusing, so you can help me there. To be honest, your edit last year didn't improve anything in my opinion. Simply calling them "men" surely adds to the confusion, after all why would there be a problem with men being incarcerated in a men's prison? It would make me wonder what the film was all about.

Focusing on yesterday's edit. The first part, ""male-to-female transsexual women" → "male-to-female transsexuals" seems awkward to me, just because we're then using transsexual as a noun rather than a verb. To me, it's slightly more respectful to describe them as transsexual people, men, women, whatever, rather than just "transsexuals". (In the same way, I'd generally say Black people, Jewish people, gay people, Polish people rather than Blacks, Jews, Gays or Poles. I realise the second way is not incorrect, perhaps it's just my preference. In my view, that sentence is already clear because of the presence "male-to-female", a term that was added with the intention of clarification.

The second part of your edit, "trans women" → "trans men" is incorrect and would actually confuse things even further as trans men refers to people who are born biologically female who undergo a sex change to become men.

So where do we go from here? As I say, it is hard for me to judge because I wrote the article, and because I was already familiar with the terms being used. I understand that not all of our readers will be, but don't forget that we have articles on transsexualism, trans woman, trans man, Gender identity disorder and gender identity, all of which are appropriately linked to from this article. I was careful to try to write this for a general audience (obviously I haven't completely succeeded!). For example, the people in the film are never described as "women" without the prefix "trans", which is overkill in my opinion, but perhaps necessary here to avoid confusion. I really think that the opening part of the "synopsis" section does a reasonable job of explaining the facts. Do you honestly come away from that not knowing what we are talking about?--BelovedFreak 11:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

In the Release and Reception subheading, does the last sentence regarding a review of the film go along with the no-bias rules in writing these articles? I'm sure there were negative reviews of the film too, so including only one positive one is only sharing one side's point of view.Bgrampp8 (talk) 05:25, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

The link to Reference 2 is no longer valid, but I could not find a suitable replacement.Bgrampp8 (talk) 05:38, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

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