Talk:Joan Armatrading

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LGBT categories

I have removed the two LGBT categories. While Ms. Armatrading is certainly gay, she is, as the article points out, an intensely private person and her personal life is not part of her public persona. This is in contrast to people like Jimmy Somerville, who includes gay themes in his music and is known as a gay musician, rather than a musician who, if you dig around, you find is gay. Guy (Help!) 18:16, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with that. I'm not sure what value the categorisation adds. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is standard practice here at Wikipedia to include the LGBT categories whenever an individual is undisputably LGBT, which I think it fair to say Armatrading is. We have many other singers, such as Sam Smith, who similarly do not make their sexuality a key part of their music but who nevertheless are listed using such categories. Simply including a category at the end of the article is a very different matter to including a statement of the singer's sexuality in the article lede, for example, and one that we should not shy away from. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It may be standard practice for LGBT editors to claim their own, but Ms. Armatrading is notoriously silent on the issue. It is not a defining quality, it does not belong here because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Guy (Help!) 22:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree, and have removed the category again. She hasn't even (explicitly) come out. Graham87 15:34, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also agree. I do not think the category is justified. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:04, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. Wikipedia and its policies must respect the wishes of the people that WP describes. David Spector (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree. She is widely acknowledged to be an LGBT singer. A 2017 Channel 4 documentary 'Pop, Pride and Prejudice' even included a section on her as such. She hasn't denied being LGBT; far from it - she's very publicly entered into a same-sex civil partnership. Removing the LGBT categories defies logic - her sexuality is common knowledge no matter how 'private' some may claim she is. Vauxhall1964 (talk) 16:08, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not suggesting we add her to the Lesbian category, because as stated she has not publicly identified as anything. However, to me it is incredibly hard to explain Armatrading's civil partnership with a woman without also recognizing that she is at the very least to some degree queer. The idea that we can't even categorize her as LGBT for the sake of usability confuses me. I obviously don't want to assume anything about her identity. But I'm really not sure what the purpose of pretending that her publicly revealing she has a wife isn't "explicit". I'm not a frequent editor, so I don't get all the rules lawyering, but frankly, it just baffles me. TheMonochroma (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've restored relevant categories. We mention that she is in a same-sex relationship, with 4 refs and I've added that she doesn't discuss her orientation (citing one of the 3 refs that was already present); Wikidata also specifies that she is not straight. That she doesn't want to discuss her private life in detail does not mean we cannot or should not include the relatively straightforward detail in categories. Indeed, to quote the Attitude interview:

The artist ... married her partner, artist Maggie Butler, in the Scottish Shetland islands two years ago, and made no attempt to hide the engagement. Being a lesbian doesn't seem to be an issue for Armatrading.

The consensus to remove was weak, so I'm comfortable adding the categories back in and bringing it up again here. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 11:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That works too. I'm more meh on the issue of categorisation these days. Graham87 15:31, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hah, that's certainly valid. I agree that categories are just as important as text-content in terms of BLP policies, but I think we're at the right point on the balance between her privacy and detailing information that's publicly known. Certainly, if she were avoiding any public acknowledgement of her queerness then I would agree that categorisation would be inappropriate. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 09:54, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]