Talk:Sissy

Archive 1: 2004 - September 2010

Merge

Dear all, see below. I'm new to this game. My point, I'll repeat it here, is that the Wikipedia article on the name Sissy is all nonsense. Sissy is a girls' name, meaning dear little Cecilia, a diminutive. Sissy was the courageous heroine in "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens. Her formal name, Cecilia, is given there. If you wanted a credible 19th-century historical reference to "Sissy", here is the first. Yes, it is used pejoratively by the bullies at school to insinuate that another boy is an effeminate coward by bestowing a girl's name on him, but that is only a derivative usage. --Miggle, 2 October 2017.

The article Sissy (transgender) doesn't discuss a significantly different concept than this one, except perhaps for the forced feminization aspects (called feminization (activity) here). I don't think that "Sissy (transgender)" is justified as a separate article. It just duplicates info that properly belongs here or at the feminization article. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:44, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that the Sissy article describes any specific cohesive topic. It is, for the most part, a dicdef. Sissy (transgender), on the other hand, describes a specific topic in a decent amount of detail. I'm not convinced that lumping a bunch of nonspecific information in with specific information will improve this little area of Wikipedia. Riverstones (talk) 12:31, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I somewhat concur, as the defining characteristics of a "sissy" are exactly what play into the base concept. I'm not certain the disambiguation "transgender" is appropriate, as many "sissies" as defined by this article are Hetrosexual. I believe that the contents of the transgender disambiguation would be also help in understanding the base definition of sissy. mhungry 23:03, 16 March 2011 (PDT)

I vote for keeping the articles separate, but perhaps "Sissy (gender play)" rather than "sissy (transgender)" would be more appropriate. --Rebroad (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

All nonsense. Sissy is a girl's name, the diminutive of Cecilia. Sissy was the courageous heroine in Dickens' "Hard Times. -- Miggle

LGBT depiction in Code-era Hollywood

The Celluloid Closet mentions the rôle of sissies in Hays Code-era Hollywood, but they are wholly absent from this piece. Could someone with more knowledge than I expand this? — OwenBlacker (Talk) 13:54, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:Alternative title: "Tomgirl"

DexDor, regarding this edit, what do you mean? We include alternative titles for articles that are about words as well (as also currently seen in the lead of this article), so I don't understand your reasoning on this matter. Nowhere does WP:Alternative title state what you have stated on this matter. Neither does WP:WORDISSUBJECT.

On a side note: I won't WP:Ping you to this section again. So if you want to read replies, then you will need to check back here or temporarily put this article on your WP:Watchlist. Flyer22 (talk) 06:02, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Other examples of alternative titles in the lead of articles about words are two noted at WP:WORDISSUBJECT: Political correctness and Homosexual agenda. Flyer22 (talk) 06:07, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

This article is about the word "sissy" so including derived terms ("sissy baby, sissy boy, sissy man") makes sense, but not words with similar meanings. E.g. the Orange (word) article doesn't say "or tangerine" in the lead sentence. DexDor ^(talk) 06:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with your rationale, per what I stated above; tomgirl is the same thing as sissy. We don't create Wikipedia articles for every alternative name of a term; that would be creating WP:Redundant forks. Instead, we cover those names in the same article and include them in the lead if need be, or create a separate section for them. The Slut article is an example of that; it will be more so an example once I re-include the word slattern there. That stated, I already mentioned when reverting you that I'm not hard-pressed regarding this matter. I might include something about "tomgirl" lower in the article so that readers know that they are being directed to the correct article via the tomgirl Wikilink. Flyer22 (talk) 08:29, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Differences between tomgirls and sissies, and a collective term for both types: girly boys

Actually, there are some significant differences between a tomgirl and a sissy. A tomgirl is less "girly" and feminine than a sissy, and has a mixture of masculine and feminine interests, and still wears the same clothes that other, more masculine boys wear. A sissy, on the other hand, is very feminine, to the point of actually being "girly", has mostly or completely feminine interests, and wears makeup and clothes that girly girls would normally wear. The only reason why a tomgirl is called a tomgirl is because he is the conceptual opposite of a tomboy, which is a boyish girl; however, he is not quite as "girly" as a sissy. The collective term for both tomgirls and sissies would be girly boys. In terms of sexual orientation, a tomgirl can be straight, gay, or bisexual, but is usually straight, while a sissy, on the other hand, is usually gay. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.156.6.30 (talk) 18:41, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Image warring

There has been some edit-warring over the image at the top of the article recently, so I had a look, and for the great majority of the history of this article, there has been no image. And rightly so. This article, as described in the lead, is about "...a pejorative term, especially in the U.S., for an effeminate boy or man". The rest of the article supports this definition.

There is a secondary meaning of "sissy" that involves a fetish subculture related to cross dressing, sometimes involving aspects of bdsm, forced feminization, erotic humiliation, and other sexual fetishes. In addition, in this secondary sense, it is not a pejorative term. The article has only one sentence related to this secondary meaning, and it is near the bottom of the article; except for this, the whole article is about the first sense.

Although there has been edit-warring over the image at the top, what is notable is that all of the image choices being inserted are related to the second, fetishistic sense of sissy, and not the primary sense. Since the article has historically had no top image, and because a top image should be related to the main topic of the article and not something else, I have removed the image entirely, and left a hidden note about this. Conceivably, an image could be added to the bottom of the article to illustrate the secondary sense, but only if it validly illustrates it, and not for self-promotion at this article. Mathglot (talk) 10:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Mathglot: there is two paragraphs about what you call "the secondary meaning", and that meaning holds a strong connection to and is really intertwined with what according to you would be the prevalent meaning, so you are entirely wrong there. I came to this page from Commons over the most recent image, that was uploaded today, thinking it should be removed because it was the only image of what I thought was a non-contributor, but the photo was used here and I thought it somehow was a match, even if the quality of the photo was low, and at least I didn't see the need to remove it. It is a pity that you seem to have misread the article and think you can push the apparent use of the term in a corner of "only one sentence related to a secondary meaning", because that is just not true. Eissink (talk) 11:46, 21 September 2020 (UTC).

@Eissink:, I'm not pushing any point of view or meaning, and I certainly have not misread the article. I'm merely describing what the article is about now, based on its current content. Afaic, you can completely reverse the article if you wish, and make it 95% about the fetishistic meaning, and 5% about the pejorative term; in that case, the images recently inserted at the top would be entirely appropriate. But that's not how it's constituted now.

In reality, there are two separate topics covered by this article, so either it should be recast as a WP:BCA, or probably better, there should be two articles, one for the meaning currently described at the top and occupying almost the whole article, and another for the meaning described near the bottom. Then nobody would have to argue about what image is appropriate. As both meanings coexist and likely neither one is the primary topic, the term itself should probably be a disambig page, with the current page moved to Sissy (pejorative), and a new article should be created based on the brief content towards the bottom of the page, with a name t.b.d., but probably something on the order of Sissy (fetish), or similar, which would then sport one of the recent images at the top. Mathglot (talk) 12:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I have no particular interest in this subject, Mathglot, so I will certainly not reverse or even alter the article. I would not recomment splitting it, since I think the different uses of the word only reflect aspects of one and the same thing, which is why I protested against your view that the photographs only depict the fetish: the fetish is, in my opinion, just a realisation of the pejorative (and maybe it's only photographable appearance). Eissink (talk) 13:51, 21 September 2020 (UTC).

@Eissink:, thanks for your comment. They are two very different things which share very little except the name. The pejorative, for one thing, is an insult that can be used to describe almost any boy at one time or another that fails to meet boyish gender role expectations. Use of the pejorative sissy, is akin to the use of the pejorative girls by a Marine drill sergeant to insult his bootcamp recruits because they haven't snapped to attention or scaled an obstacle fast enough. The Marine recruits are not mostly gay, not mostly fetishistic, not mostly cross-dressers, and not mostly effeminate. Calling Marine recruits girls is an insult by a prototypically strong, powerful, authoritative, masculine figure, and has nothing to do with either the recruits' sexuality, or their orientation; it has everything to do with their perceived weakness as measured against a supposed ideal masculine standard. The primary use of sissy as a pejorative, is precisely this same sense of failing to live up to some masculine gender role standard in the eyes of boys (such as not being good enough at sports, or becoming interested in "sissy" pastimes like cooking, gymnastics or playing the violin) as is the use of the term girls for failing to live up to a Marine standard of masculinity. That is nothing like the use of the fetishistic sense of sissy, which rather than being a failure at anything or a pejorative, is a non-pejorative self-description for a constellation of desires or behaviors which some might describe as a paraphilia.

According to article title policy, the "title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." The whole reason that there is disagreement about the top image is because this article isn't about one thing, it's about two things, and since it is an ambiguous title, we can't quite decide what belongs here, or where and how to place it. Fruitless discussions of this type about what articles are "really" about are typical for unfocused articles that need disambiguation. But maybe this deserves a wider discussion; I may make a split proposal and we'll see what others have to say about this. Mathglot (talk) 18:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is, that the sissy-"fetish" is highly connected to the pejorative, namely in the sense that the former seems – to me – in a way to be kind of a roleplay on the latter. That is of course just my understanding, that would need to be sourced to get some form in the article, but I don't think it is far fetched. Someone identifying as a 'sissy' may very well be, consciously or not, exactly incarnating what is otherwise a pejorative, whether one describes it as paraphilia or not. That's why I don't really see how one could effectively split the two in a meaningful way, but please make a proposal. I will follow the discussion, but I don't think I will further participate, not in the least because I find it hard to discuss rather difficult topics in English, but also because I believe my point at the moment is clear. At least I hope you understand why I decided not to remove the image, even though I do agree that it should not be on top of the article. Greeting, Eissink (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2020 (UTC).

I came to the attention of this article due to the image warring. In hindsight considering Mathglot's remarks, removing the image entirely would have been better, than just replacing the bad self-promo image with a less bad one. Reading the article and the definition in the Cambridge dictionary, to me the mainly covered meaning of the word sissy corresponds with Mathglot's comments and I find the analogy he draws to the usage of girls in the Marine quite helpful. In my eyes, the little coverage of the word's meaning in a fetish way does not justify splitting the article. However, I would not object to adding a picture to the last part of the article. That won't solve the issue of people replacing the picture with promotional self-portraits though .. NJD-DE (talk) 19:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Unfocused article

This article appears to be about two different topics, and may need to be split. Much of the reasoning has already been described in the #Image warring section above, but as they may be archived separately. So I'll quote portions:

• "This article, as described in the lead, is about "...a pejorative term, especially in the U.S., for an effeminate boy or man". The rest of the article supports this definition."

• "There is a secondary meaning of "sissy" that involves a fetish subculture related to cross dressing, sometimes involving aspects of bdsm, forced feminization, erotic humiliation, and other sexual fetishes. In addition, in this secondary sense, it is not a pejorative term."

These are two very different topics. It's not clear which, if either of them is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, so they may both require parenthetical disambiguation, with a disambig page occupying the main title. Possibly Sissy (pejorative) and Sissy (fetish). The main question would be, if there are enough reliable sources to support an article on "Sissy (pejorative)". If not, this should be converted to a WP:BCA. Mathglot (talk) 03:49, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Note: there use to be an article, Sissy (crossdressing), which was turned into a redirect to the article Feminization (activity), which I don't view as the same thing. A conversation started ages ago at Talk:Sissy (crossdressing) and just picked up again, may be related to this. Mathglot (talk) 07:53, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Images

Im an independent artist and I am a sissy. I want you to use a picture I did to illustrate how is the real aspect of a sissy. I think there's a confusion between crossdressers and sissies. I'm open to give a picture to a wikipedist to upload it. My Twitter is @sissybarbiepau if you want to get in touch with me.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2800:810:558:10DF:9D52:C001:9755:CC63 (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2021 (UTC)