I catalog a lot of zines by writers who identify as queer--not gay, not HOMOSEXUAL, not LESBIAN, not BISEXUAL (though sometimes omnisexual or pansexual)--and I am at a loss for how to represent them in Library of Congressese. SEXUAL MINORITIES seems to be the best the folks at SACO have to offer, but I just have to wonder if persons of the queer persuasion are really happy with that. If the answer is no, what would you like the descriptor to be? I'm addressing this query primarily to queer folk and catalogers.
I understand that this may be a generational issue. My fellow genXers and the millennials as well might go for QUEER (PERSONS), or something of that nature, but what of previous generations who have a distancing relationship to the word queer, rather than one of reclamation. Should LC never adopt a term that may be generational or temporary? How problematic would it be to use cross references to keep up with the changes?
Okay, that's all from me. I'm looking for your comments, people, cuz I'm just an ignorant reference librarian and Emily's token heterosexual friend.
Comments
emily (not verified)
Tue, 02/03/2009 - 1:11pm
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To me, queer loses its
To me, queer loses its destabilizing power when it is asked to fix subjects in historical space and time, and that's what we ask it to do when we propose entering it into the catalog. I'm increasingly suspicious that we ask subject headings to do too much work--calcify my shifting and momentary identity *correctly*! Know what I mean? I mean, I'm lesbian-identified when that's the only way my sexuality might be seen at all, like at work. I'm queerishly identified when I'm with other queer-identified folks in my daily life community. And I'm open to changes in my sexual identity and that of others, so understand that the word I use today might not be the word I'll use tomorrow. This stuff is contingent! Contextual! I just don't think there are 'right' words for this, really. (Which I say and then argue with immediately--without a word for me, how can I come into being at all! This is, for me, the fundamental paradox of the classification problem you're posing here.)
I actually sort of like "sexual minorities." It is a small world out here that changes all the time, and a bag of this general size and shape strikes me as one that could hold a lot of shifting content.
What do other people think?
jenna
Wed, 02/04/2009 - 1:54pm
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Hey Emily, Thanks for
Hey Emily,
Thanks for responding to this. I hope other people do, too. I'm interested to hear that you like SEXUAL MINORITIES. I had a knee jerk reaction against it, I think because it defines against the norm, or the majority.
About QUEER, or whatever it might be, do you think though that in the case of zines, or some other ephemeral media, that describing them/their creators by the era-appropriate term helps you find materials so defined and group them together? Did I miss your point, or do I--gasp--disagree?
Then again it seems like you have concerns that are bigger than which term is appropriate for LCSH, and I do, too. Maybe that should be the topic of a future RR Salon.
Emily (not verified)
Thu, 02/05/2009 - 11:38am
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Thank you for responding!
Thank you for responding! (We're a veritable mutual thank you society over here!)
You're right. If we think of new subject headings as coming about as a result of 'literary warrant,' then I would say that a stack of zines about people identifying as 'queer' would suggest we need the heading queer. And it certainly would gather together a group of materials from a particular time and place, and for users researching that subject, that's important and useful. I guess I'm thinking more about the disintegration of meaning in these words. For example, smash-the-state anti-assimilationist queers probably would not find common cause with those folks who today label the marriage struggle a 'queer' struggle and get there books about marriage cataloged with a queer heading because that's what that word has come to mean. So the term that would enter LC via warrant--queer--would likely also be applied to stuff that wouldn't really make sense in the same category the longer the subject heading hung around, thereby creating the need for a new subject heading, and then there'd be some residue back in the old heading so users would have to look a bunch of places, but I guess that's okay, because that's what research is.
Yeah? What a puzzler! We need to get a cataloger in here, Jenna!