Talk:Hikaru Utada

Recent coverage

I just took a look through the RS coverage of Utada's Coachella performance, and the sources overwhelmingly use they/them pronouns in the RS's editorial voice (or in a few cases, no pronouns at all). At first I was confused by a few she/her pronouns, but in the higher-quality sources (e.g. Billboard, NME) these only appear in direct quotations. Vice took the alternative course of (apparently) replacing she/her with GNL in the interview excerpts they published, which perhaps illustrates the context for other sources leaving gendered pronouns in quotations while using they/them in the publication's editorial voice.

Now that we have a sufficiently large corpus on this, I think it is time to switch this article to they/them, following the substantial preponderance of reliable sources since Utada's announcement of nonbinary identity. Newimpartial (talk) 18:32, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

With MOS:GENDERID, we go by self-identification rather than sources. The self-ID remains the same: "she/they". At minimum, this means she has equal preference for either, and sometimes people list first the one they prefer, which would mean using "she". It's not consistent to argue that now sources tip the scale and we have to go through all the work of changing everything to "they" when there is no evidence the BLP holds such a preference (and the one bit of evidence we do have could be read as implying the opposite). We went over this here. Crossroads ^-talk- 02:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

What has changed since then is that we now have a dozen good RS using "they/them", the subject's authorized website (which you had previously argued to be authoritative) using they/them, and three major RS interviews all using they/them with reference to Utada. There is now no sourcing suggesting that Utada prefers "she", and considerable sourcing supporting "they/them" as preferred. I suspect that WP:CONSENSUSCANCHANGE will be borne out by the next RfC on this, particularly since many participants in past discussions stated that they were waiting for better sources. We have them, now. Newimpartial (talk) 02:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Her authorized website was already discussed at the previous discussion which I linked to. I only argued it was authoritative when we lacked her self-statement on her social media, which obviously supersedes all else. Regarding considerable sourcing supporting "they/them" as preferred, no, we have sources that happen to use "they", but none supporting any preference by the BLP herself. And no sourcing suggesting that Utada prefers "she" is not the case since her own statement of "she/they" might indicate a preference for "she". Crossroads ^-talk- 02:25, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that Billboard, NPR and MTV are have all published recent interviews with Utada using pronouns that Utada does not prefer, and that the official website was updated from she/her to they/them against Utada's preference? That series of events seems much less likely than Occam's interpretation: that "she/they" on Instagram does not, in this case, express a preference for "she". Also, if there were doubt whether "she" or "they" were the correct pronoun, contemporary English requires that "they" be used in cases of uncertainty. There is simply no reason to use "she" unless it is clearly preferred by the subject, and there is simply no evidence of this since Utada's nonbinary announcement last year. Newimpartial (talk) 02:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I also think the existence of so many RS interviews using "they/them" is a sign we should be too. Utada's website was brought up earlier, but the fact that it continues to reliably use "they" is adding to the case. I think we have the very real weight of the RS and website pushing for "they" and the possibility of the IG preference being deliberately ordered pushing for "she". It's clear to me that the RS/website win out here. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not "against" her preference since both "she" and "they" are her "preferred pronouns". Regarding if there were doubt whether "she" or "they" were the correct pronoun, contemporary English requires that "they" be used in cases of uncertainty - no, there is no such rule because there is no doubt about "whether" - they are both "correct".

Regarding her website, this was discussed here, and many editors there made other good points. For example: as a general rule, when two terms are equally valid on Wikipedia, we favor the status quo of whatever is already in the article. Much like an article switching from American English to British English, or MDY dates to DMY, we generally shouldn't change the pronouns used in a biography if the ones currently in use are not shown to be deficient. And: We have a direct statement from Hikaru now, which supersedes any secondary source, showing that both she and they are acceptable to her, so we have absolutely zero reason to change to they/them pronouns...until Hikaru says she no longer wants to use female pronouns. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Crossroads, the topic of pronouns went to a malformed RfC at a time when Utada had not posted "she/they" pronouns to Instagram, when their official website had not been updated to they/them pronouns (a fact that you used rather grandly as an argument why we should not change pronouns in the article), before three major news outlets had published English-language interviews with Utada using they/them pronouns, and before there was a clear preponderance of post-nonbinary-announcement RS using they/them. All these things have now changed.

The rule is not that we use she-her until Hikaru says she no longer wants to use female pronouns. The rule (MOS:GENDERID) is that we use gendered words... that reflect the person's latest expressed gender self-identification as reported in the most recent reliable sources. That is very clearly "they/them" at this point, and your hypothetical argument that "maybe Utada prefers she" is simply not supported by anything but your own WP:OR, which policy requires us to ignore. Newimpartial (talk) 06:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Having had a look at recent reliable sources involving Hikaru, what is on their Instagram and website, and the text at both MOS:GENDERID and MOS:IDINFO, on balance I agree that we should be using they/them pronouns in this article. There seems to have been a rather prominent shift in pronoun use in reliable sources sometime around late January to early February of this year, and the most recent sources seem to use they/them exclusively. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be another shift with this statement that Utada's not hung up on pronouns so no preference in either direction?

This also seems to be why Utada's official account in other languages such as Chinese uses feminine pronouns even when gender-neutral versions exist. ZigZagZoug (talk) 13:46, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Utada certainly seems enthusiastic about they/them in the first tweet you cite. Newimpartial (talk) 14:00, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

She literally says I’m personally not so hung up on pronouns but it’s really cool for a Japanese label to be doing this, as in she doesn't care about the pronouns used for her, but is seemingly more excited about the pronouns of other people. Newimpartial, stop trying to make extraordinary claims to fit your viewpoint. Unnamed anon (talk) 17:20, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Ummm, Utada's enthusiasm is directed at the pronouns their label is using for them, AFAICT. This isn't actually about other people. Newimpartial (talk) 17:36, 12 June 2022 (UTC)