Dear Gay Cataloging Mafia and other concerned parties:
The Lezbrian Yahoo! group is a talkin' about subject headings. Brenda J. Marston wonders why if "Bears (Gay culture)" has been adopted as a Library of Congress Subject Heading, why not "Butch," "Femme (Lesbian culture)," and "Butch and femme." Me, too!
I might argue for "Femme (Queer culture)" though, since the femmes whose zines I catalog use Queer almost exclusively over Lesbian. Brenda tells me that Cornell has a 653 for "Butch and femme (Sexual orientation)."
When asked by a list member what I recommend doing about establishing a subject heading, I advised that get a cataloger to make a SACO proposal and/or that they send emails to Barbara Tillett and the generic address.
That's what I did for Fanzines vs. Fan Magazines, and it didn't work at all, unfortunately. They responded to me this week that they still think that not only are Fanzines and Fan Magazines almost the same thing, but that Fan Magazine is the more appropriate term, and Fanzine merely a cross-reference. But I digress. I'm bitter. And angry. And they are wrong wrong wrong!
Now back to our scheduled rant...Brenda identified the following books as warrant to back up her suggestions (each linked to its LC record):
- Femme-Butch Reader
- Butch/femme : eine erotische Kultur
- Butch/femme
- Dagger : on butch women
- Stone butch blues
- Butch
- The lesbian erotic dance : butch, femme, androgyny, and other rhythms
- Butch and femme on and off the Takarazuka stage : gender,sexuality, and social organization in Japan
- The butch manual : the current drag and how to do it
I can also dig up some zine warrants for butch and especially femme if anyone wants to hear them!
Comments
jenna
Fri, 12/04/2009 - 12:04pm
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Someone asked for it, so
Someone asked for it, so here are some (relevance ranked) results from a CLIO search for <zines femme?>:
Note that few of the authors identify as lesbians. Many are male, genderqueer, bisexual, or use other descriptors for their sexuality.
I'll do the <zines butch> search next.
jenna
Fri, 12/04/2009 - 12:12pm
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<zines
<zines butch>
tara robertson (not verified)
Sat, 02/06/2010 - 1:45pm
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how new subject headings are
how new subject headings are created is still a mystery to me, along with a lot of other things about cataloging.
i'd argue that femme and butch are more gender expressions than sexual orientations.
holy shit! i was involved with the Femme Affinity Group zine. it's exciting to see it have a proper MARC record and everything. it didn't actually have a title, but we put various stickers that we made around the multiplicity of femme (femme vitale, fierce femme, faggoty femme, trans femme, sissy-something-something faggoty femme sucker, something-something). i'm amused that the femme vitale one ended up at the library and that a cataloger dutifully cataloged the item in hand.
there's quite a few published books around femme including:
Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity
With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn
I Am a Red Dress: Incantations on a Grandmother, a Mother and a Daughter
Red Light : Superheroes, Saints, and Sluts
jenna
Sat, 02/06/2010 - 9:09pm
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Thanks for the feedback on
Thanks for the feedback on gender expressions vs. sexual orientations, Tara. But either way I'd still like to see the headings established. Or maybe I want to smash the de facto state catalog. I'm not sure which.
If you have any more info to share on the Femme Affinity Group zine, I'll add it to the record. It's so cool that you were part of it--and are glad that it's been cataloged! I see it's available from Vancouver PL, too.
Milo (not verified)
Tue, 05/17/2011 - 10:13am
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After thinking about it for a
After thinking about it for a while, I'll second Tara's suggestion for "Gender Identity." Here's why:
I ID myself as Femme. Others in the queer community (and I suspect it's true for others as well) may self ID as Femme or Butch respectively, but they may also get externally ID'd as "Butch" or "Femme" as well. Often it's as a pejorative — "Look at that bulldagger... she's so butch."
"Gender Expression" to me is drag (as in performed gender.) Some days I express myself as high femme (glitter, eyeliner, skirts and corsets, etc.) and some days I express as more butch (steel toed boots, scruffy face, "masculine" clothes, etc.)
I'm not sure how that plays out in RadCatalogLand, but that's my thinking on it.