Overview
Schlesinger collections document the lived realities and activism of women, as well as changing societal ideas and laws around sexuality and gender. Since its earliest days the library has actively collected papers documenting lesbian lives, from 19th century diaries of erotically charged female friendships to lesbian political activism and community building in the late 20th century. More recently our collecting focus has encompassed the many expressions of sexuality and gender within the LGBTQ+ communities. In light of this, we want to evaluate and reassess our descriptive practices – both historically and currently -- in order to ensure that how we identify and describe the LGBTQ+ individuals and communities in our collections is both respectful and accurate.
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The Civil Rights lawyer and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was gender non-conforming and favored a masculine presentation. Some scholars have defined Murray's gender identity as transgender although many acknowledge that it can be problematic to apply a contemporary term to an historical figure if it was not available to them. Other scholars openly identify Murray as transgender in that they believe Murray would have probably embraced the term. From what we know from the collection, Murray did not self-identify. While we should try not to make assumptions about identity we can still explore descriptive options to help researchers better understand creators and their collections.
The Pauli Murray Papers were originally processed in 1992, and the finding aid did not address Murray’s gender nonconformity or Murray's early experiences with gender identity. In November 2022, archivists updated the finding aid by adding language surrounding her identity. For example, the Biography now includes the sentence: Throughout her life Pauli Murray was gender non-conforming and favored a masculine presentation. While there is evidence that she questioned her sexuality and gender, she did not publicly self-identify. And the Scope and Content note for Series I includes this explanatory text: This series also includes materials related to Murray’s questioning of and thoughts surrounding her gender and sexuality. Folder #71 includes Murray’s notes and correspondence describing her feelings of gender dysphoria, her efforts to seek medical help, and her attempts at psychological self-analysis. While some scholars of Murray’s life and work have defined her gender identity as transgender and some have applied male or gender-neutral pronouns when referring to Murray, within this finding aid the archivists chose not to add any terminology that Murray did not use to describe herself or her relationships.
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Item level cataloging of photographs or visual materials can bring up additional questions regarding naming. The photographer Bettye Lane photographed Bruce Jenner in 1977, almost 38 years before Bruce had transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner. Lane's caption on the slide includes Jenner's pre-transition name, "Bruce Jenner 1/10/77." In order to help us determine whether we should retain "Bruce Jenner" in the description for the catalog record, we did research on whether Caitlyn had ever addressed dead naming and her former identity. Since Caitlyn Jenner is a known personality we were able to find online an interview in The Guardian (May 8, 2017) where she states she does not mind being referred to as Bruce, “'I had a life for 65 years. OK?' Besides which, 'I liked Bruce. He was a good person. He did a lot in his life. Oh, ‘he didn’t even exist’. Yes he did exist!...'" Given this information, we kept Lane's caption "Bruce Jenner" and added: "[pre-transition name, as captioned by Bettye Lane in 1977]; 1-10-1977."
When to describe
There are situations where a collection doesn’t contain directly related content about the creator’s sexual or gender identity but the individual does identify under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. For example, The description of the Angela Davis papers does not address her sexuality since the collection does not contain materials directly related to it. Davis has publicly identified as lesbian since 1997. Is identity description always warranted in the creator's biography or in LCSH in order to ensure LGBTQ+ visibility? This is a question we are currently exploring.
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