I would like to call your attention to this part, specifically:
"From a young age, Keys struggled with self-esteem issues, hiding little by little when her differences made her vulnerable to judgment, and later uninvited sexual attention. Living in the rough neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, she was, from an early age, regularly exposed to street violence, drugs, prostitution, and subjected to sexual propositions in the sex trade- and crime-riddled area. "I saw a variety of people growing up, and lifestyles, lows and highs. I think it makes you realize right away what you want and what you don't want," Keys said. Keys recalled feeling fearful early on of the "animal instinct" she witnessed, and eventually feeling "high" due to recurrent harassment."
- I want to first state that this is not my subject area and I just stumbled upon this page and these issues at random. First, I was taken aback by the latent misandry present in the description of Keys' childhood neighborhood. I visited the cited sources and noted that the summaries in the article overstate the "harassment" that she endured as a teenager (she never actually used that word). Looking specifically at reference 27, Keys never mentions any specific or tangible action taken by anyone toward her and instead cites feelings that she had and assumptions that she made about men that caused her to "hide herself". That is a major point of what that blog post she made is trying to convey. Near the end where she has her awakening and realizes that she no longer needs to hide, why is that? The men didn't change. Therefore, they could not have been the problem in the first place! She changed. That's the point. Her problems as a teen weren't the fault of random men hitting on her due to the unwelcome intrusion of puberty, they were caused by not growing up with a father figure to socialize her to being around a mature male presence, so it scared her. As she matured and had more experience with men, she realized that her teen self had over-reacted. The article should be changed to reflect this perspective. But I'm not volunteering because, as I said, this ain't my area.
- To further prove the case about misandry, I would like to call your attention to the last underlined sentence in the quote above. This statement is a jumble of multple statements made at different times about different things. The "animal insinct" part is in reference to how she felt about guys leering at her on the streets. That then implies that 'guys on the streets' is the subject of the sentence which goes on to talk about "feeling high due to recurrent harassment". The only source that quotes Keys as saying anything about feeling high is the short movie The Gospel at 14:56 - 15:10 which is given as reference 33. The exact quote is: "I grew up around a lot of pimps and prostitutes. They solicited[sic] me all the time and it made me, um, it made me high. Like it made me not want to be a woman." So it wasn't men doing what men do and her having a coming of age crisis as the article seems to be implying. Instead, she's having a very specific - and quite alien to most readers - experience of being recruited (not solicited) into sex work. To me, this is no minor issue. The article reads like its skewing her words to support an anti-male agenda. But this is just a talk page and I've said my piece.
Note: I apologize in advance that I likely didn't fully support an accusation of fictitious references. I just don't know what else to call what's going on here. Adam Takvam (talk) 14:21, 4 August 2024 (UTC)