“There was sex but no sexuality
1
:” Critical Cataloging and the
Classification of Asexuality in LCSH
Brian M. Watson
Department of Information and Library Science, Indiana University Bloomington,
Bloomington, United States of America
briwats@iu.edu
1
Phillips, Kim M., and Barry Reay. Sex before Sexuality: A Premodern History. Themes in History.
Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA, USA: Polity, 2011, 6-7.
“There was sex but no sexuality:”
1
Critical Cataloging and
the Classification of Asexuality in LCSH
This paper examines the addition of 'asexuality' to the Library of Congress Subject
Headings as a case study from which to examine the critical cataloging movement.
Beginning with a review of some of the theoretical and practical issues around subject
access for minoritized and marginalized sexualities, this paper then contextualizes,
historicizes, and introduces the critical cataloging movement to the literature,
situating it within a larger and longer history of radical cataloging. It will define
critical cataloging as a social justice oriented style of radical cataloging that places an
emphasis on radical empathy, outreach work, and recognizes the importance of
information maintenance and care. This paper introduces the concept of “catalogic
warrant” to characterize the process of “reading” the catalog in order to examine the
harm or benefit of terms on users and the wider library community.
Keywords: asexuality; radical cataloging; critical cataloging; Library of Congress
Subject Headings; catalogers; subject cataloging
Introduction
In the summer of 2016, the typically-overlooked work of cataloging and classification became the
work of national politics. That March, the United States Library of Congress (LC) announced the
planned cancellation of the subject headings “Illegal Aliens” and “Illegal Immigration” and their
replacement with “Noncitizens” and “Unauthorized immigration” in the LC Subject Headings
(LCSH).
2
In June, the Republican-led House of Representatives inserted a provision into an
Appropriations Bill that instructed LC to not change the heading. Even though this provision did not
survive the Senate, LC bowed to political pressure and allowed the headings ‘illegal’ and ‘alien’ to
continue discrediting the catalog—a decision that could be reversed at any time LC chooses to do
so.
3
For many Americans, this likely seemed like a strange political episode in an already-strange
year. American librarians, or those familiar with library work likely found themselves agreeing with
the words of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who noted in a speech that the Library of
Congress
changes thousands of subject headings each year without interference from Congress. Why
this one? Why now? …the library is in the business of language and nomenclature, and
should be free to make these decisions without political interference.
4
For catalogers, however, this demonstration of the political nature of “the power to name,” likely
echoed a much longer history, dating back nearly a century. There is even a marked similarity in the
tactics used by present-day catalogers and the work of earlier ones like Sandy Berman and the ALA
Task Force on Gay Liberation in the 1960s and 70s.
5
As the struggle over “Illegal Alien” is still ongoing,
*
and has been discussed at greater depth
elsewhere, this paper will instead focus on another pair of terms that were, through a series of
coincidences, silently paired with “Noncitizen” and “Unauthorized Immigration.” In March of 2016,
the same time LC initially announced the cancellation of “Illegal Aliens” and “Illegal Immigration” it
also considered and rejected a proposal for the addition of “Asexuality” and “Asexual People” to
LCSH. Then, in July, Asexuality was approved at the same time that LC was reversing its cancellation
decision. The fact that asexuality, which is still treated with skepticism in some professional
domains (such as the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual),
passed official examination with barely a ripple, whereas similar revisions decades earlier triggered
nearly as strong reactions provokes the same question that Representative Wasserman Schultz
asked: “Why this [term]? Why now?”
In order to answer this question, this paper will situate the critical cataloging effort within
the larger library and information science (LIS) literature. It will begin with a review of some of the
theoretical and practical issues around LGBTQIA2S+ (henceforth queer) subject access facing
*
Indeed, as this paper was being revised—in June of 2020—the Association for Library Collections &
Technical Services, Cataloging and Metadata Management Section issued a working group report on
alternatives to “Illegal Aliens” and how libraries across the country were addressing revisions locally. See
Violet Fox et al., “Report of the SAC Working Group on Alternatives to LCSH ‘Illegal Aliens,’” Report
(Subject Analysis Committee, June 19, 2020), https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/14582.
members of the community, as well as catalogers. Following that, this paper then contextualizes,
historicizes, and introduces the critical cataloging movement to the literature, situating it within a
larger and longer history of radical cataloging. It will define critical cataloging as a social justice
oriented style of radical cataloging that places an emphasis on radical empathy, outreach work, and
recognizes the importance of information maintenance and care. Rather than bibliographic
warrant, critical catalogers read cataloging and classification systems with an eye for catalogic
warrant, reflecting on the potential harm or benefit of each term on the catalog, users, and the
library community as a whole. Critical catalogers understand the catalog in a “holistic manner,” and
see systems like the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal Classification as living documents that
can be revised and improved.
6
The remainder of the text will focus on one such improvement: the
addition of “Asexuality” and “Asexual people” to the LCSH.
Literature Review
Sexuality and Issues in its Cataloging and Classification
Researchers such as Melissa Adler
7
, Hope Olsen
8
, Ellen Greenblatt
9
, Erin Baucom
10
, K.R. Roberto
11
,
Analisa Ornelas
12
and others
13
have illustrated the fallacies, inconsistencies, failures, mistakes, and
incorrect information contained in LCSH, especially around gender and queer sexualities. Drawing
on the work of Michel Foucault and Eve Kovosky Sedgwick, these scholars argue that the top-down
essentialist classification of queer sexualities does not reflect the understandings of queer
communities and that under- or misrepresentation in and by catalogs can be marginalizing. For
example, before the events discussed below, the preferred identity term ‘asexuality’ or ‘asexual’
returned results about “Plants—Reproduction, Asexual.”
Additionally, some have proffered solutions directly relevant to subject catalogers, such as
Rawson
14
, Nichols and Cortez
15
, and Nowak and Mitchell
16
, who have suggested the creation of
alternative vocabularies, ontologies, and taxonomies (respectively) to address these problems. It
remains unclear how these systems would grapple with the issues that Ben Christensen identified
in his 2008 article “’Minoritization vs. Universalization,” which points out that queer-specific
terminology is prone to a definitional vagueness and shifting definition (a queerness, in other
words).
17
J. L. Colbert’s remarkable 2017 study demonstrates that even highly-educated doctoral-
level researchers do not depend upon or use subject headings in their research process, and
indicates that subject access “should also consider other forms of access, such as local headings or
tagging systems.”
18
Indeed, the most significant branch of proposed solutions (by Adler
19
, Ornelas
20
,
Wexelbaum
21
, and Bates and Renley
22
) have also advocated for the development and use of tagging
folksonomies, especially for queer material. However, as Keilty convincingly argues, tagging and
folksonomies
are not free of disciplinary forces; they are not entirely free of control…however productive
folksonomies are for counteracting ‘information imperialism,’ and however productive they
are for retrieving information, they are also highly regulatory.”
23
This is not to say that folksonomies cannot be useful, powerful, or emancipatory. However, it does
mean that any community-developed term is problematized by the fact that it exists within the
society that minoritized that community. Additionally, as Gross, Taylor and Joudrey have
demonstrated, there is “still a lot to lose:” the removal of controlled vocabularies from catalogs
results in the loss of nearly thirty percent of the hits in a keyword search, which would have a
deleterious impact on users.
24
Over the past few years, however, the cataloging literature has reflected a growing
realization of bias that verges on abnegation. As Crystal Vaughan puts it, prejudices still exist and
“will always exist in taxonomies because language systems are representative rather than
definitive.”
25
As she explains:
when classifications are created, they inherently reflect the predominant biases of
society…To categorize something is to define what it is not, yet what something is or is not
is subject to change depending on the socio-political climate. Consequently, representation
is a fluid construction.
26
Emily Drabinski argued among similar lines in her now-classic article “Queering the Catalog: Queer