Talk:Gender nonconformity

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology of Gender

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 28 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Walvarez2 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Zisha68 (talk) 02:33, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Walvarez2: I just did a cleanup to your recent addition; I felt the use of the word 'deviant' didn't fit the overall tone of the article and I tried to clean it up a little (for example, to phrases like 'non-conforming' individual').

I don't have access to some of the linked references, so I would look to others to also comment on the specific content.

CaptainAngus (talk) 01:31, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 12 July 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to "Gender nonconformity", as originally proposed. (closed by non-admin page mover) Frost 15:52, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

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Gender variance → Gender nonconformity – According to Google Ngrams, gender nonconformity is the more commonly used term. The article should be named with its common name. Urchincrawler (talk) 16:32, 12 July 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:35, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support - also supported by note hits in scholar gender noncomformity vs gender variance, so agreed per WP:COMMONNAME we should rename the title. Raladic (talk) 17:08, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
• Request Can someone offer 2 sources which support a position? I would like to see more evidence than just a count of Google Ngrams. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:23, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not really sure how else I would go about comparing use besides Ngram and Radalic's comment with Google scholar hits, but here are a few things that could count for evidence towards it.

  The APA dictionary includes gender nonconforming but not gender variance or gender variant.

  The article for childhood gender nonconformity uses "nonconformity" for its title rather than "variance", so the move would make the pages more consistent with one another.

  Searching "gender nonconformity" gets 373,000 results on Google while "gender variance" has 234,000. Urchincrawler (talk) 01:27, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support, preferring the hyphenated version:
  • "Gender non-conformity" is clearer than "Gender variance". "Gender variance" sounds like it could mean gender diversity, which is about ratios and representation. Non-conformity also hints at choice, helping distinguish it from the topic "distribution of intersex conditions".
  • Hyphenated is easier to read than unhyphenated. MOS:HYPHEN suggests taking readability into consideration, not just common usage. MOS:CONFORM recommends ignoring source usage on punctuation specifically, although it's primarily about quotations. Many publications write for a specialized audience or primarily native English speakers, while Wikipedia seeks a broader audience. GLAAD, who are thoughtful about communicating to audiences less familiar with gender topics, recommend the hyphenated form, although they do not comment on punctuation explicitly. We can survive future debates about whether the adjective form uses a space/hyphen/dash ("gender–non-conforming people") by rephrasing if necessary. Jruderman (talk) 21:44, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure if MOS: HYPHEN is applicable here as it says "Hyphenation clarifies when the letters brought into contact are the same (non-negotiable, sub-basement) or are vowels (pre-industrial), or where a word is uncommon (co-proposed, re-target) or may be misread (sub-era, not subera). Some words of these sorts are nevertheless common without the hyphen..."

  Nonconformity does not have the same letters or vowels come into contact. I also would argue it's not an uncommon word considering there are several articles with the word in the title but not hyphenated. (Nonconformity, Nonconformity in Wales , Nonconformity to the world, etc.)

  While I'm not strictly opposed to hyphenating it to be gender non-conformity, I would need a more compelling explanation as to why that should be the case. Urchincrawler (talk) 23:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

  I think you're right that I went overboard with my interpretation of "uncommon" in my reading of MOS:HYPHEN. The examples there are super weird.

  Fwiw, there are some examples of the hyphenated version on Wikipedia: Non-conforming mortgage and Non-conformists of the 1930s. However, they are fewer and less prominent than your examples. Anyway, consistency within Wikipedia isn’t the main concern here, because the other articles can be changed if there’s a strong argument for one style or the other.Jruderman (talk) 01:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Social status for men vs. women

In section “Social Status for men vs. women”, the article states “Gender nonconformity among people assigned male at birth is usually more strictly, and sometimes violently, policed in the West than is gender nonconformity among people assigned female at birth.” and cites citation #31. Citation #31 does not support this claim at all apart from a single mention: “Rates of threatened physical violence in such studies range from 24% to 48%, typically demonstrating a similar gender difference (Berrill, 1992).” However, this is immediately undercut by the very next sentence in citation #31: “However, other investigations have found that lesbians experience more lifetime victimization than gay men, possibly due to greater rates of childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual assault (Balsam, Rothblum, & Beauchaine, 2005). Thus, sex differences in victimization of lesbians versus gay men may depend partially on the type of victimization measured.”

Additionally, the “(Berrill, 1992)” citation is, of course, from 1992, which is hardly an up-to-date source on the current state of social acceptance of gender nonconformity in “the West”. And regarding the reference to “the West”, there is absolutely no mention of “the West” in citation #31; at best there is a single mention of the United States and no other mention of any other Western countries, citation #31 can hardly be used as a basis to claim that gender nonconformity is “usually more strictly, and sometimes violently, policed in the West than is gender nonconformity among people assigned female at birth.”

I suggest that this article is updated to more accurately reflect what the citations actually say, as well as to reflect what recent literature has to say, since society’s attitudes towards gender nonconformity have massively changed since these citations were first published. Zombychicken (talk) 04:23, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology of Gender

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2026 and 9 May 2026. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Idean04 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by 27MMD (talk) 01:39, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Australia section

Not a huge fan of this. Seems too in-depth and country-specific for the article as a whole. I was thinking maybe to move it to another page where this is more relevant e.g. Third Gender? PitterPatter533 (talk) 10:12, 15 April 2026 (UTC)