T is for Token

It's LGBT History Month, and here in Bristol, as in other places all over the country, it is marked by events and stuff. As the City Council mission statement says,

For many years the discrimination and hostility towards LGBT people has caused many lives and achievements to pass unrecognised. This has often meant that images of LGBT people and their contribution to society have been distorted and stereotyped. This ignorance has in turn led to prejudice that shows itself in homophobic bullying and negative discrimination. By presenting an honest appraisal of LGBT lives we hope to replace ignorance with knowledge and understanding.

Which is a very good thing, of course. I approve of replacing ignorance with knowledge and understanding. For instance, take Barbara Janke, Leader of Bristol City Council, who said "This month of events offers an opportunity for people, no matter what their own sexuality, to celebrate, discuss and re-examine the contribution made by lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people." She might learn that transsexuality is an identity thing, not a sexuality thing. Though where would she learn that? In a book? Hang on-

I was at the library the other day and picked up their list of Recommended Reads for LGBT History Month. (click on the images to make them larger)




The list might possibly be admired for its steering clear of the obvious... sometimes, anyway. Gertrude Stein's Alice B Toklas is jolly good stuff. Though I tried reading Herman Melville once and found him quite hard going; but no doubt Billy Budd has got something useful to contribute to our knowledge and understanding, as it was written in 1887 and has been suspected to have some homoerotic content, in there somewhere.

Patricia Duncker's historical novel about James Barry, the nineteenth century surgeon who was apparently born female, is presumably the T element of the list. Or can you spot anything else?

Meanwhile, over in Norwich.....

the view from the specimen jar

After a nice weekend in deepest Oxfordshire, I'm shuffling pieces of paper around and wondering where this week will go. To start with, let's look at the state of play with the Campaign To Rescue Books With Transsexual Content From Stupid Categories In The Dewey System.

Must think of a snappier and acronym-friendly title. Hmm.

Anyway.

As mentioned earlier, it appears that biographies and autobiographies of people with a transsexual history tend to get lumped into Social Sciences: Culture and Institutions. That's if they're lucky. If they aren't, they might well find themselves among the paedophiles over at Mental Health: Personality Disorders.

Previous posts are here, here and here.

I have written to Bristol Library, whose stock officer accepted that the latter category 'is now incorrect and unacceptable', but stated that Becoming Drusilla, the book in which I have an interest, is about a change of sex, and is therefore correctly assigned to 306.768, where it can presumably be studied by students of social science. He expressed the hope that it clarified things for me.

Alas, it did not, as my reply explained.

But answer (from Bristol library) came there none. And two weeks later, Jan Morris' Conundrum is still listed in the 'incorrect and unacceptable' 616.858 category in the library catalogue.

I still await a reply from the British Library.

Thanks, though, to SteveL, who posted the link to this article, which deals with ways of ordering information, and which introduced me to the word ontology, which is a good word.

I feel rather less alone when I realise that 'othering' is an inevitable side-effect of hierarchical ordering, performed by 'experts', as in the Dewey System; here, for instance, is the category Religion

Dewey, 200: Religion
210 Natural theology
220 Bible
230 Christian theology
240 Christian moral & devotional theology
250 Christian orders & local church
260 Christian social theology
270 Christian church history
280 Christian sects & denominations
290 Other religions

...can you see what it is yet? -as Rolf Harris used to say....

As Nose In A Book commented,

I assume there is a biography section in the Dewey system? What's in there? Perhaps it's considered lazy to use it; not trying hard enough.

How come plays all get classified under 'plays'? Perhaps Hamlet should get moved to 'mental health disorders'. Most of David Hare's output could go under 'politics'...

Indeed.

class consciousness

not a librarian

The correspondence with Bristol City Library, concerning the classification of books with transsexuality in their content (for the story so far, go here and then here), continues. Here is my latest e-mail to them.

Dear NXXXXX,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I am glad that you recognised the unsuitability of the old listing for Jan Morris' "Conundrum"; its reclassification is a welcome step forward.

I do still question, though, whether 306.768 is the right place for a biography. The position of the Transsexuality category within the Dewey system is itself questionable, as a sub-group of 306.7 (Culture and Institutions: Sexual Relations). Transsexuality has nothing to do with sexual relations. However, accepting that, as a topic, it has to exist somewhere, surely this is a section which should deal with the condition itself? There are books dealing with the medical, social, and even political aspects of transsexuality and transgender; and you have some in Bristol; and they are indeed in this section, and rightly so.

But I would argue that, in biography, transsexuality may be an element, and even an important element, of the subject's life; but it is not the defining element. And I am concerned that, by placing biographies of people with a transsexual history into the 306.768 category, those people are being 'othered'. This can and does happen in everyday life, where some people are too ready to see the 'transsexual' in the individual to notice that they are in fact just people too: and, in doing this, they marginalise, exoticise and isolate them.

It was at least in part to address these concerns that I worked with Richard Beard on "Becoming Drusilla", and it seems sadly ironic that the book has been pigeonholed as it has been, when the subject matter is as much the biographer as the biographee, and the book is as much a travel book as it is a biography.

It was only when I noticed the library classification of this book that I started to look more deeply into the subject, and recognised, as you have, that there have been decisions made in the past that, with hindsight, were misguided or just plain wrong. I do urge you to look again at the matter of biography and its categorisation.

Yours sincerely,

Dru Marland

the Dewey Dewey fog

I was thinking about the Dewey system the other day. As you do, you know.

And if you don't know, the Dewey decimal classification system is that set of numbers you find at the bottom of the spine on a library book, which defines where it lives on a shelf and who its neighbours are going to be.

Down at Bristol Central Library not long ago, I noticed that Becoming Drusilla, that lively tale of an expedition across Wales undertaken by Richard Beard and me (but with some biography thrown in) was jostling between Sexual Metamorphosis- an anthology of TS memoirs, and The Phallus Palace. Strange bedfellows, perhaps, particularly in the latter case. It got me wondering.

In Bristol's libraries, Becoming Drusilla has the Dewey number 306.768

the 300's are Social Sciences
306 gives us Culture and Institutions

and then it gets interesting; we find that the Dewey people have been tinkering with terms, and what was formerly Transsexuality is now something rich and strange- and a bit of a minefield.


306.768 Transsexuality Transgenderism and intersexuality
Standard subdivisions are added for transgenderism
and intersexuality together, for transgenderism alone
Including female-to-male transgendered people,
male-to-female transgendered people, intersex people
Class here transsexuality; transgendered people
(cross-dressers, transgenderists, transsexuals)
Class practices associated with transgenderism
and intersexuality in 306.77

Crikey! It's either a travel book or a biography, for goodness sake!

OK, I am being a little disingenuous; I am a transsexual woman, after all; but the book seems to have been ghettoised. There is more to life - my life - than that.

A little test. Think of famous person who was gay. Noel Coward. Right. Look in library catalogue. There. The Life of Noel Coward, by Lesley Cole. Dewey number 792.028

700's are The Arts

792 is Stage Presentations

How odd. So the library does not define Noel Coward by his homosexuality....


On the other hand, we seem to have got off lightly in comparison with Jan Morris' autobiography Conundrum. Jan Morris is of course a travel writer and historian, with a transsexual past. Her Dewey number in Bristol Library has been assigned as 616.8583

Now anything in the 600's is Technology.

616 narrows it down to Diseases.

The 8 after the decimal point puts us in Mental Health,

and to round it off, 858 is Personality Disorders.

The book is sandwiched between Treating Child Sex Offenders and Victims: a practical guide and The Courage To Heal Workbook: for women and men survivors of child abuse.

Very cheerful making.

And this isn't just Bristol Library; checking the British Library catalogue shows that these classifications are the standard ones.

I wonder what Jan would think?