Thanks, Steven—you said a lot of things that I was thinking but didn’t get down, and brought up a lot of points I hadn’t even thought about.
Pete Wilson
Vanderbilt University
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Stephen Hearn
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 12:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
The entity attributes in RDA are not just just recorded when needed to break conflicts. They are also intended to aid identification--to answer the question, "I wonder if this John Smith is the one I'm looking for?" RDA sees assisting the
user with identifying persons, families, and corporate bodies as part of its mission. We don't establish names just for the name anymore--we want the authority description to include enough characteristics to make the entity recognizable.
Gender is one of the characteristics which make a person recognizable. There are many names in our catalog which to me convey no sense of gender. Having that indicated on an authority record as one of a variety of attributes could be an
aid to me in determining that I've found the person I'm looking for.
I'm also certain that there are researchers who will be glad to make use of the kinds of categorical retrieval for persons which the new RDA attributes will make possible. Just now I did searches of authorities in OCLC specifying "rda"
as the Descriptive convention, "college teachers" as the first Entity attribute, and "male" or "female" as the second Entity attribute. The numbers: Male college teachers, 27,110; female college teachers, 11,392. In other contexts, we could readily see
the importance of this kind of data--as evidence of gender disparity, say, in the faculty of an academic department. Should the acknowledged delicacy of an in depth discussion of personal gender identity with an individual be an obstacle to recording this
kind of data in all cases? I'd argue that for individuals being able to assert gender through culturally encoded names and styles of presentation is a way of associating themselves with a social group. Being part of a social group is desirable for lots of
reasons. Arguably, even for the exceptional cases much discussed in this conversation, taking of a different name and style of presentation is as much about claiming group membership as it is about revealing self. Are we really doing anyone a favor by refusing
to recognize such claims?
It's been argued that recording a person's gender is 1) an invasion of privacy and 2) an act of stereotyping and 3) a reinforcement of narrow and limiting social constructs.
1) I'd agree that discovering gender is no justification for invading privacy; but recording gender based on published self presentation is not an invasion of privacy.
2) Stereotyping is bad because it seeks to infer a whole set of characteristics for a person on the basis of one categorization. The new, more richly descriptive approach to authorities should work against this tendency. We record a range
of attributes for the person on the basis of a evidence for each one. We don't say, "372 Medicine, 375 female; must be 374 Nurses". That would be stereotyping. On the other hand, if our evidence also reports that the person works as a nurse and we record
that fact in 374, we are not stereotyping.
3) The challenge of changing narrow social constructs, making them more flexible and reflective of the variety which they contain, is arguably better accomplished not be rejecting a construct like male/female, but by gathering and presenting
evidence of how varied the members of such categories are. In collective terms, that is the sort of project that RDA authorities can contribute to--demonstrating that each of these gender terms can correlate with many different fields of study or occupations.
In the aggregate and over time, the effect of recording all these personal attributes will be to erode the monolithic notions of gender and make gender difference less powerful as tools of stereotyping and discrimination.
I'm open to proposals that for some people, the gender terms used and the ways of applying them need to be improved in RDA. But to use that issue to argue against the value and utility of recording gender in all cases is the result of
seriously flawed analysis.
Stephen
On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:53 AM, Young,Naomi Kietzke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Pete,
But it’s only necessary if there is another “Dame Edna” who is MALE already IN the AF.
You keep begging the question; trying to make coding gender more “handy,” when what Kevin (and Shana,
and others) are saying is that we should not code gender at all unless it breaks a conflict or is necessary because of the language (as with Chinese).
Naomi
Breaking her promise to herself to let this lie
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Wilson, Pete
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 6:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
No, no. What I was saying would “come in handy” was the UNDERSTANDING or definition of the 375 as
being used for “perceived sex,” not a guess at the person’s “real” sex or gender. That makes a decision of how to code a 375 for Dame Edna pretty obvious, I think. Thus, the definition is handy.
Pete
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Kevin M Randall
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 5:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
So you mean using the field will come in handy for determining whether the use of the field is correct?
Sounds sort of circular to me.
Kevin
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Wilson, Pete
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 4:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
For making clearer that the 375 should be “female” rather than “male,” no matter what sex/gender
Barry Humphries may consider himself to have.
Pete
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Kevin M Randall
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 4:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
"Handy" for what purpose? I'm totally lost here.
Kevin
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Wilson, Pete
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 4:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] More Caitlyn Jenner and 375s
Ted,
Actually I forgot that we don’t actually have an authority record for Dame Edna. I don’t care whether
we do or not, really. But if we decide she merits an authority of her own for having been the ostensible author of books, the “perceived gender” concept might come in handy.
Pete
--
Stephen Hearn, Metadata Strategist
Data Management & Access, University Libraries
University of Minnesota
160 Wilson Library
309 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Ph: 612-625-2328
Fx: 612-625-3428
ORCID: 0000-0002-3590-1242