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Hypothetically speaking...butch and femme
Play along with a hypothetical situation, if you will.
If you happened to strike up a friendship with the Godfather of the Gay Cataloging Mafia who also happens to be a God (Cataloging) of SACO, and if he were willing to work with you to pitch butch and femme subject headings to the Library of Congress, what would you want those headings to be?
The headings would want to be separate, right? Something like
Butch (Gender expression) and
Femme (Gender expression)?
Should they be plural?
Should the parenthetical be Gender identity?
Something else entirely?
Comments
#1 Jeremy
For what it's worth (since I'm neither an expert on cataloging nor one on gender politics), I would use "gender identity" rather than expression - I think it captures a larger range of meanings of the terms, and leave "butch" and "femme" as singular. Pluralizing it seems to imply a reference to the people that identify, rather than the identity itself.
And thus, my $0.02 for you.
Jeremy
#2 jenna
Thanks for the pennies, Jeremy!
#3 FG
I like the singular butch and femme. However, I would use both expression & identity in the parentheses (Gender identity/expression). People I have talked to are divided about how they experience their butchness or femmeness -- some people feel like they take it on and off, some people feel like it is an intrinsic part of them, immutable and innate. Sooo...there's my two cents as well!
#4 Adam
I can tell you that LC would not approve a parenthetical of the type (Gender identity/expression). The qualifier should be one or the other, especially it would likely be preferred to be an existing LCSH term itself.
#5 Adam
Follow up: just checked LCSH and there is no term for Gender expression in it. Do we need to propose that as a separate term or would it be a cross-ref to Gender identity? It is not currently in the LCSH vocabulary at all.
#6 jenna
Thanks for following up. I've been meaning to...
So, would LC have to establish the parenthetical separately before it could go into a subject heading?
I hesitate to make the call on identify vs. expression. I'll try again to scare up feedback from people who know better than me.
#7 Emily
How about just Butch and just Femme? No matter how you further clarify, it will be wrong to someone. Like for me femme is an identity a hundred ways to Sunday--until I use it just to describe my own expression. Does the subject heading need to say more for some reason?
#8 Adam
I think that there would need to be a qualifier in this case. The words by themselves could mean something else, particularly in the singular. For example it Femme could be the concept we're talking about, or one could have a work about the word itself, in which case the qualifier would be Femme (The French word). I don't think LC would approve the terms without qualifiers.
As to whether the qualifier has to be established itself, I'd say no it doesn't, but since the term has to be put into a hierarchy, if the Broader Term would be Gender identity, I think the qualifier would need to match it.
#9 jenna
That makes sense to me. It seems like the most viable (without being too horrible) headings would be
Butch (Gender identity) and
Femme (Gender identity).
If the BT is Gender identity, what should RTs be?
Do we even go there with
Bisexuals, Gays, Homosexuals, Lesbians, Sexual minorities, etc.? Or with pejorative terms that people might use?
Are there terms more often associated with gay men that we should be pushing for along with Butch and Femme?
#10 Adam Schiff
Weekly List 19 was just posted and on it was the following:
Butch (Dog) [Not Subd Geog]
So you see, I was prescient in saying that Butch would need to be qualified!
#11 jenna
Mind blowing.
#12 Adam Schiff
The proposal for Gender expression is on Weekly List 22: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/wls11/tentative/twls1122.html Once we get a result from that, I'll do some serious focusing on butch and femme.
#13 jenna
Yay!
#14 Bill
You should probably research whether anyone finds these terms derogatory. (And I don't mean just among people who read librarian blogs.) I suspect there are people of a certain age who apply the terms to themselves, but would be offended if the library catalog did. Granted these might be just the people hardest to find and ask, but you could ask an organization like GLAAD if they have an opinion.
#15 Adam Schiff
I will check dictionaries too to see if the terms are labeled in any way as offensive.