Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Human–goat sexual intercourse

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete and redirect. The policy based consensus is clear here as the topic, while it "might" barely meet WP:GNG, it is perfectly covered in other articles and doesn't deserve a split on its own. Many of the keeps is WP:INTERESTING territory that ignores the sourcing conserns explained by DC and some of the later rationales (I discounted the last delete as a IDONTLIKEIT). Considering the sourcing issues and a prime target for BLP violations, I'm deleting this article and redirecting, but if someone gives me a plausible reason why to keep the content on a subpage, let me know. Secret ^account 04:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Human–goat sexual intercourse

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There has recently been edit-warring over this article, with attempts to blank it and turn it into a redirect without any consensus or discussion. I have no particular views on the matter myself, but purely as a procedural matter I have brought it to to AfD for discussion. I expect the parties to put forward arguments themselves on why it should be kept, deleted or redirected. Please note that the article must not be blanked or redirected while this discussion is underway. Prioryman (talk) 11:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep with full protection until consensus is reached on article talk page. Zoke (talk) 16:44, 11 April 2013 (UTC) Comment was intended procedurally, does not reflect my position on the worthiness of the article. Zoke (talk) 20:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There's no reason that this article should be kept instead of being redirected to the Zoophilia article, with any of its content being merged there. Flyer22 (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to zoophilia. Not an encyclopedic topic, this is a smorgasbord of trivia. Carrite (talk) 02:00, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

......... Make that poorly sourced trivia...., per Delicious C. below. Carrite (talk) 22:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I expected it to be baaad, but it is surprisingly well-referenced and wide ranging. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: You should be trout-slapped for that one. However, I'm too lazy to actually go through with it. Consider yourself trout-slapped in spirit. Zoke (talk) 02:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, well-referenced and wide-ranging article demonstrating significant coverage in secondary sources over a period of time. — Cirt (talk) 15:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Question. Might there be a better topic buried here? Notice that in the infamous sculpture of Pan doing the goat, Pan himself is portrayed with distinctly goaty features. (Pan isn't a human.) The theme in classical mythology isn't about "zoophilia" as such (that is, it isn't about an actual desire to mate with goats), but about the contiguities of human-animal sexuality, or sexuality as part of our animal nature. It's why satyrs have goat features. So while there is certainly a legitimate theme of "goats as tropes in the representation of human sexuality" (note "representation"; not sex acts per se, which goes to zoophilia), I have no idea what such an article would be called, or how to establish its scope. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. — Cirt (talk) 15:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Nothing in the sources indicates a special or heightened notability for specific species. It can be covered in zoophilia. Tarc (talk) 16:37, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - There is no reason to arbitrarily lump together all the articles you possibly can under an umbrella where they will then be said not to "fit". The topic is notable, though as has been pointed out some of the sources may not have been up to par. What remains is sufficient. You might make a better argument for merging "Sudanese goat marriage incident" into this article (as was proposed in the talk) because there will be room for the content, and nobody actually looks up "Sudanese goat marriage incident". Wnt (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/Redirect. I don't see why this topic should be elevated from Zoophilia. --Conti|✉ 19:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect - This is a valid search term and should redirect readers to the main Zoophilia article. As it stands now, however, it is nothing more or less than a collection of trivial mentions of human-goat sex and not an encyclopedia topic. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Expanding on a comment I made elsewhere, here are some specific problems with the current lede:

The statement "Human–goat sexual intercourse is one of the more common types of bestiality" is completely unsourced.
The statements "Of male zoophiles, 28% admitted sexual attraction to goats, ranking fourth. In female zoophiles, sexual attraction to goats is very rare or non-existent. Actual levels of sexual use of goats were lower than this however" are sourced to a document on a zoophile website which purports to be a report of some kind from a sexology conference (although one might question whether it is an accurate copy of the source). Upon reading this source, one discovers that these figures come from a single, small study. The generalizations are inappropriate even if the numbers are accurate within the study.
The statement "The act is usually performed by a male human upon a goat of either sex; male goats do not commonly take the initiative to copulate with a human female, although some cases have been reported" is sourced to an essay by Havelock Ellis, written in the 1930s. It appears to be a misstatement of Ellis' summary of a comment by Herodotus.

Any suggestion that this article is well-referenced is nonsense. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:28, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Awww, where's the hilarious naughtiness with that sort of attitude? It has some footnotes and a picture, it must be an encyclopedic topic, yes? < /s > Carrite (talk) 22:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect Doesn't seem to be seriously discussed as a subject unto itself. Most mentions cover instances of this occurring or being depicted so any article would effectively become The Men Who Have Sex with Goats, rather than an actual encyclopedic work on this form of bestiality.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 00:09, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article explains why it fits general notability guidelines and it seems to be backed up by reliable sources. If you want to delete it you need to come up with better reasons in my opinion. Pass a Method talk 02:47, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GNG is not a valid argument for keeping a sub-page of another article. You have to explain how this subject is independently notable of the main subject of bestiality/zoophilia. If you can't then the appropriate response would be a merge or redirect to the main article.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 04:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Every article is a sub-article of something else (or multiple other things). So either WP:GNG actually describes what we have an article about, or else the only guideline is "whatever I feel like deleting is toast". Wnt (talk) 04:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The association of goats with Satan and Pan puts it on a somewhat more notable level than other critters. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:04, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and improve. The reasons given for deletion seem to be insufficient; any article can indeed be seen as a sub-article of something. A Google search reveals several incidents along the same lines in Malawi in recent years, well-documented in the local press and court proceedings (the Sudanese solution of marriage to the goat not being considered, apparently). Oculi (talk) 11:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No one has disputed that some humans have had sex with goats. What we are discussing here is whether this is sufficiently different from the general sexual abuse of animals covered in Zoophilia to merit its own article. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:38, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've taken the liberty of collecting some of these citations - by no means do I believe I have them all. [1] Zoophilia is a huge article and it doesn't have room for this kind of blow-by-blow analysis of one kind of zoophilia in one country; nonetheless, it is only by collecting and viewing the actual data that we learn that most of the time the people prosecuted are having sex with others' goats while they're tied to trees and are caught because of the unusual bleating. These details belong in an article specifically about the phenomenon of goat sex. I know it sounds silly but silly doesn't matter! For example, if you're going to make decisions about whether your state should actually pass a real law that will really allocate money that amounts to the entire livelihoods of multiple taxpayers to put a few silly people in jail, you should know all the details, understand how it works in countries that do it. If someone at the CDC is looking at a new STD they just isolated yesterday and puzzling out how it might have jumped into humans, they should be able to brainstorm on Wikipedia for ideas and have our best effort waiting here in response! He shouldn't be left scratching his head for three days saying "I wonder if anybody really does that?" out of somebody's sense of propriety. There is simply no topic too ridiculous that we shouldn't allow ourselves to look into it dispassionately and pull out the data. Wnt (talk) 16:55, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wnt, I've removed that section. If you think it's a good idea to list individual cases of people arrested for having sex with goats, you are crazier than I thought. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:20, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that removing data from an article while you're trying to get it deleted is an abuse of process, except from what I've seen of these things the past year I'm feeling like as a matter of procedural policy it is an integral part of the process - I wonder how things would get deleted without it. I do, however, note that covering reports of crime is within WP:WELLKNOWN. Wnt (talk) 23:37, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whether the article is up for deletion, under construction, or appearing on the front page, I'm going to remove blatant BLP violations. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:20, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I took a look here after I saw the discusion on AN/I and on Jimbo's page. It seems to me that you do have notable incidents where people have sexual intercourse with goats. Not all of these incidents can be classified as cases of zoophilia. The impression I get from reading this article is that the typical cases involve lone farmers who just use goats as a masturbating devices. Count Iblis (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Cirt put a note about this discussion at the ancient Egypt project talk page, presumably because of this passage in the article: "In Ancient Egypt, at the temple in Mendes, the goat was viewed as the incarnation of the god of procreation. As a ritual of worship, the male priests would use female goats for sex, and the female priests would do likewise with male goats." Regardless of whether the article is deleted, I'm concerned about this statement. The source is a sexological study (not a historical one) that deals with ancient zoophilia only as background, and its source for this claim is unclear. A web search turns up only one remotely credible source (this website about ancient Egypt, written by a well-informed amateur), which refers to this same study. It also mentions two ancient sources: one mention in Herodotus of a single instance of human-goat intercourse in Mendes, and a passage in Pindar that suggests Mendes had a reputation among the Greeks for such activity. But that website also mentions the suggestion, from a 1949 book on sex and religion, that the "goat" involved in these incidents may have been a man dressed as a goat. So the notion that "As a ritual of worship, the male priests would use female goats for sex, and the female priests would do likewise with male goats" is dubious, to say the least. Unless some other source is out there, it's a serious exaggeration of vague statements in Greek sources. A. Parrot (talk) 19:24, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:NOTCENSORED. Meets WP:GNG without any question. Qworty (talk) 04:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- You offered the same reason for reverting my redirection of the article to Zoophilia - what do you think is being censored here? Is this a conspiracy to hide the the fact that some people have sexually abused specific types of animals by pointing readers to the article which discusses the general subject in depth? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - fails WP:NOTABILITY. There is no way it fulfills GNG. Scattered old artworks depicting the act and a few modern news stories do not constitute significant coverage of it as a concept, any more than 'falling down stairs' or 'crossing a fence' are notable because they are occasionally portrayed in art and reported in historical sources. The only cited study of it, as a concept, is as part of a larger survey of bestiality or even of sexuality in general, and not as a stand-alone topic of analysis. The entire article synthesizes scattered references to sex with goats and is not based on a secondary analysis of the subject. Agricolae (talk) 04:10, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Agricolae. Insufficient sources to establish notability. Those arguing "keep" aren't producing good sources, and those arguing "delete" are able to show why the sources are insufficient and misrepresented. For instance, the source used for the reference to Pan and the goat doesn't meet RS standards for ancient art, sexuality, myth or religion; it would be challenged and almost certainly rejected in any article on the ancient world. Besides, Pan is not a human. He's a deity with goat features. I asked above whether there was a legitimate way to approach theriomorphism and sexuality as a "goat" trope, but the insistence has been that the scope of this article is "humans have sex with goats", har har, which necessarily excludes fictional or symbolic treatments such as Albee's in which "human-goat intercourse" is a literary device (as the subtitle "Who Is Sylvia?" indicates: anyone who'd ever seen an Albee play would know the play isn't "about" having sex with a goat). "Not censored" doesn't mean that if it's about sex it doesn't need to meet usual standards of notability and verification. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:10, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The article is indiscriminate and its sources are poor. "Human–goat sex" just isn't an encyclopaedic subject. Srnec (talk) 01:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.