Talk:Edward Carpenter

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Could you add something on his poetry? Bmills 17:34, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Misspelling of Housman?

I'm reasonably sure that the "Laurence Houseman" mentioned in this article really is Laurence Housman.

- VanArtGuy (talk) 23:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Great call! Not sure why you didn't just make the edit (Be bold!) still it would be nice to have a citation for it. Pjefts (talk) 11:38, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Carpenter's case history in Havelock Ellis' "Studies in the Psychology of Sex"

Chushichi Tsuzuki in Edward Carpenter 1844-1929: Prophet of Human Fellowship (Cambridge 1980),[1] quotes Carpenter's anonymous case history published in Havelock Ellis Studies in the Psychology of Sex, volume II: Sexual Inversion,[2] which full version is as follows:

HISTORY VII.--"My parentage is very sound and healthy. Both my parents (who belong to the professional middle class) have good general health; nor can I trace any marked abnormal or diseased tendency, of mind or body, in any records of the family.

"Though of a strongly nervous temperament myself, and sensitive, my health is good. I am not aware of any tendency to physical disease. In early manhood, however, owing, I believe, to the great emotional tension under which I lived, my nervous system was a good deal shattered and exhausted. Mentally and morally my nature is pretty well balanced, and I have never had any serious perturbations in these departments.

"At the age of 8 or 9, and long before distinct sexual feelings declared themselves, I felt a friendly attraction toward my own sex, and this developed after the age of puberty into a passionate sense of love, which, however, never found any expression for itself till I was fully 20 years of age. I was a day-boarder at school and heard little of school-talk on sex subjects, was very reserved and modest besides; no elder person or parent ever spoke to me on such matters; and the passion for my own sex developed gradually, utterly uninfluenced from the outside. I never even, during all this period, and till a good deal later, learned the practice of masturbation. My own sexual nature was a mystery to me. I found myself cut off from the understanding of others, felt myself an outcast, and, with a highly loving and clinging temperament, was intensely miserable. I thought about my male friends--sometimes boys of my own age, sometimes elder boys, and once even a master--during the day and dreamed about them at night, but was too convinced that I was a hopeless monstrosity ever to make any effectual advances. Later on it was much the same, but gradually, though slowly, I came to find that there were others like myself. I made a few special friends, and at last it came to me occasionally to sleep with them and to satisfy my imperious need by mutual embraces and emissions. Before this happened, however, I was once or twice on the brink of despair and madness with repressed passion and torment.

"Meanwhile, from the first, my feeling, physically, toward the female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion. Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or cohabitation with any such has always been odious to me.

"As a boy I was attracted in general by boys rather older than myself; after leaving school I still fell in love, in a romantic vein, with comrades of my own standing. Now,--at the age of 37,--my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger--preferably of the working class. Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels me very decisively.

"I have never had to do with actual pederasty, so called. My chief desire in love is bodily nearness or contact, as to sleep naked with a naked friend; the specially sexual, though urgent enough, seems a secondary matter. Pederasty, either active or passive, might seem in place to me with one I loved very devotedly and who also loved me to that degree; but I think not otherwise. I am an artist by temperament and choice, fond of all beautiful things, especially the male human form; of active, slight, muscular build; and sympathetic, but somewhat indecisive character, though possessing self-control.

"I cannot regard my sexual feelings as unnatural or abnormal, since they have disclosed themselves so perfectly naturally and spontaneously within me. All that I have read in books or heard spoken about the ordinary sexual love, its intensity and passion, lifelong devotion, love at first sight, etc., seems to me to be easily matched by my own experiences in the homosexual form; and, with regard to the morality of this complex subject, my feeling is that it is the same as should prevail in love between man and woman, namely: that no bodily satisfaction should be sought at the cost of another person's distress or degradation. I am sure that this kind of love is, notwithstanding the physical difficulties that attend it, as deeply stirring and ennobling as the other kind, if not more so; and I think that for a perfect relationship the actual sex gratifications (whatever they may be) probably hold a less important place in this love than in the other."

—Ana Bruta (talk) 12:12, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Controversial statement

The statement that Carpenter slept with Whitman is presented as fact whereas it is highly controversial. John S Moore (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Essay-like tone and lack of references

I'd not heard of Edward Carpenter before, but this article is clearly a bit unwieldy. Amazingly there are 36 instances of the "Citation Needed" tag and numerous other instances of unreferenced, POV comments. After a bit of searching, I think this person is notable for Wikipedia, but this article needs some serious tidying up. My instinct is to usually leave content with a Citation Needed tag, but the template at the top has been there since 2008! I'm going to be bold and cut a lot of the unreferenced information out. Seaweed (talk) 15:43, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems unlikely that this material would have been just "dreamt up" by editors. I wonder if it would be worth trying to ask major past contributors exactly what their sources were? I see there are six separate books, which cannot be easily checked, and two on-line sources, as well as two printed journal papers in "Further reading". But you would certainly be acting within policy to remove unsupported material. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Or, alternatively, just go ahead and remove 17.5K (i.e. 50%) of the entire article without looking for any possible sources. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:49, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I know what you mean. It does seem a bit dramatic to chop so much out! The thing is though is that so many of those CNs are from 2011. I sometimes think it's just as bad to have so much content just sitting there for four years and unverified. I don't normally delete content, if anything I normally spend hours trying to find references for just one thing. It's just after reading through the whole article, I kept saying to myself "Says who?" and "So much detail, but nothing to verify it". I also thought it was very essay-like. I think this article is better for some heavy pruning. Seaweed (talk) 19:03, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Some heavy pruning now means the article has 50% less content. It's "better" in terms of wikipedia policy. I'm very sorry you decided to take the quick option instead of the slow one. It took me two minutes to find that source for just one sentence you removed about Lawrence. And I'm pretty sure that one could be bettered. That's just a tiny example in a sea of pruning. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Fair point. It's just that it troubled me that so much unreferenced content had been here for so many years. I'm sure you know how Wikipedia content leaks out onto the rest of the web and becomes "fact". Edward Carpenter does seem quite an interesting person and I will see what verifiable information I can find out. Seaweed (talk) 19:26, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I guess you must now feel less troubled. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

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