This week, rainbow flags colour the city centre of Växjö.
Växjö Pride presents an array of lectures, films, debates, concerts and
lastly, a parade through town. I was happy to be invited to give a talk as part
of the Linnaeus University Pride programme. I chose to speak about ”sexual
diversity and the heteronormative library”. A point of departure
was taken in the social norm reproduction of public libraries, and how this affects
groups and individuals who are not heterosexual. The following is a summary of
the lecture.
Public libraries are political institutions, but not just
that; they are also moral and normative institutions, set to support the social
order of which they are part. It is only during the last couple of decades that
the traditional moral and normative aspects of libraries and librarianship has
been questionned by a more user orientated approach, pushing back traditional
preferences seen in acquisition and reference service in libraries throughout
the westen world. At the same time, the idea of public libraries ”serving all”
in society has changed. That an institution as the public library reproduces
certain values is in itself nothing strange – this is somenthing all public institutions
do. What is interesting to see is how those people, ideas, values and movements
that do not fit into the reproduced norms and values are treated.
Traditionally, public libraries have defined themselves as
extraordinary inclusive, stating ”all citizens” as their users. Norms and
values of the majority has thus been taken for granted and alternative views
and habits have been, basically, made invisible. That which is the norm is
everything, and deviations do simply not exist (officially). If an alternative wants
or needs to become visible in this enironment, it has to present itself as just
that - an alternative.
Today the situation is slightly different. Libraries refer
to ”all citizens” as their users to a much lesser degree than just a few
decades ago. Instead, citizens are divided into defined usergroups, that may or
may not be subject of certain attention and/or activites. Teenagers, book
lovers, small children, parents, immigrants, various minority groups, elderly,
homeless people and non-heterosexuals are just some of the groups frequently
discussed within contemporary librarianship. Not all of these groups
necessarily break with majority norms or values – but non-heterosexuals do. We
may call this trend of prioritizing specific groups ”inclusion through
distinction” or ”inclusion through separation”.
Instead of making a normative deviation or alternative
invisible, it is instead the norm itself that hides behind these distinctions.
The heterosexual majority is not considered a ”group”, but instead an invisible
norm. Both of these approaches have their pitfalls, and the question is of
course which is most beneficial to the minorities and alternatives.
When Library and Information Science scholars study sexual
diversity and LGBTQ issues it is mostly within three different areas: knowledge
organization (documents and their classification/indexing); the reference
situation (focusing on librarian/user interaction and acquisition) and;
information needs of non-heterosexual groups and individuals (user studies). In
all, however, not much research is done, even on an international level, and
and it is not until the late 1990’s that LGBTQ issues become visible in
LIS research at all (but for some singular earlier exceptions).
Although public libraries have proven to be very important
for non-heterosexual individuals for their coming out process, for their own
identity shaping and as places where information and gay/lesbian (non-heterosexual)
fiction can be found and ordered without pressure, there are a number of things
that are still being pointed out by research as problematic. Classification and
indexing systems are generally exclusively heterosexual bias in tebles and term
choices, even if progress now is being made; when encountering librarians, the
best service is provided to those who are most like the librarians themselves
(in looks as well as in morals); information behaviour varies significantly
within the LGBT community - one thing we do know however, is that transgender
people have significantly more difficulties
to find their use of libraries comfortable in the way that cis-people* have.
Instead they turn to the Internet in a more exclusive manner than other LGBTQ
groups.
How then are libraries approaching issues concerning non-heterosexual
individuals and the LGBTQ community? As research and social development have
made librarians increasingly aware of the specific needs of gays, lesbians and
transgender people, we have slowly begun to see more and more attempts to
attract these groups into ordinary library activities. In some cases, the creation
of a ”rainbow shelf” is considered enough. This is of course not unproblematic
in that such a shelf (or corner, or place) on the one hand creates visibility
for these groups, but on the other separates them on a quite visible and
physical level within the library room. Is that really what the LGBTQ community
needs? What most people want, regardless of sexual, politcal or moral orientation,
is to be included in their local community without predjudice and without
distinction – to be like ”everybody else”.
Lately, a couple of libraries in the Stockholm area has
taken the question one step further and applied for a LGBT certificate. Such certificate
is provided by RFSL -The Swedish Federation forLesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, and includes education and
critical analysis of the activities of the organization in the light of LGBT
needs and values. Even though there is always a risk that such certification
can be used to gain cheap political points, it is, if taken seriously, an
alternative that goes way beyond just putting up a ”rainbow shelf”. It remains
to be seen how this work will turn out in Swedish libraries. Perhaps it is indeed a way to include non-heterosexual
individuals in the general norm of society on the same terms as anybody else –
if so, that would be a significant step towards a new norm reproduction, not
only for libraries, but for society as a whole.
*cis-pepole = those who identify with their birthgiven sex –
the term is used to distinguish transpeople from those who are not.
