LGBTQ+ Librarianship in the 21st Century

Emerging Directions of Advocacy and Community Engagement in Diverse Information Environments

Bharat Mehra

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787564756
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Biblioteconomía y ciencia de la información

Libraries are at the heart of many of the communities they serve. Increasingly, it is important for them to adjust to serve minority groups, including LGBTQ+ communities. This collection presents original scholarship on the emerging directions of advocacy and community engagement in LGBTQ+ librarianship. With contributions from library and information professionals, this volume explores how librarians and library professionals can embrace a more proactive role as social justice advocates, and help promote fairness, justice, equality, equity, and activism on behalf of LGBTQ+ people. Starting within the library space, the volume offers an introduction to terminology and resources around LGBTQ+ information, before moving on to explore examples of how LGBTQ+ librarianship can adopt innovative approaches to better serve their patrons in select settings around the world. Including case studies on health services, historical archives, and LGBTQ+ homelessness, this collection dispels misperceptions and myths surrounding social justice research and is vital for any researcher or practitioner interested in supporting evolving communities.

PART I

EMERGING SCOPE

INTRODUCTION

Bharat Mehra

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ+) individuals have experienced a long history of human rights denial and persecution around the world (Montague & McKeever, 2017). Nothing new, right? Shockingly, even in today’s modern age, we continue to suffer hate-motivated trials, violence, ­ridicule, and discrimination owing to enveloping cultural/social norms of heterosexual hegemony, patriarchal taboos, heterosexism, and homophobia (Mehra et al., 2018). Are we surprised? Probably not! In a recent occurrence, on September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court of India unanimously dismantled a colonial legacy of one of the world’s oldest bans on consensual gay sex, and ruled all the protections of the Constitution to LGBTQ+ people moving forward (Gettleman, Schultz, & Raj, 2018; Kidangoor, 2018). Reporting from the operative section of the court’s verdict, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra indicated that “Social morality cannot be used to violate the fundamental rights of even a single individual .... Constitutional morality cannot be martyred at the altar of social morality,” (Sinha, 2018). It has taken the highest court of the world’s second most populated country, with its long civilized history and self-proclaimed, righteous spiritual and religious tolerance, more than 70 years of freedom from imperialist rule, to awaken from its slumber toward this realization only now in the second decade of the twenty-first century. A joking commentary on the state of affairs if it was not so tragic.

In his speech Tryst of Destiny, the astute politician Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, noted to the Indian Constituent Assembly in The Parliament, on the eve of the country’s independence on August 15, 1947:

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity (“Great Speeches of the 20^th Century,” 2010).

I guess LGBTQ+ people have not been considered part of this humanity for a long, long time. Obviously, from law formulation to shaping change in people’s prejudiced behaviors and heterosexist attitudes is another story (Mehra, 2016). Not even a month had passed from the groundbreaking judgment when on September 27, 2018, the Allahabad High Court that has jurisdiction over the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in India with its more than 200 million inhabitants, turned down a request for police security cover of protection sought by a gay couple from their parents’ intimidations and threats (Pandey, 2018). The roots of heterosexism are long and deep. Indicative of probably a slow and tortuous journey, a potential for educators and librarians, among others, to play an important role to challenge centuries of dogma, patriarchy, stigma, and cultural brainwashing in the traditionalist country (Mehra & Hernandez, 2016).

This scenario, however, reflects a trend all around the world. Even closer home in the United States, though lately LGBTQ+ people have won the battle of marriage equality, yet, they face ongoing and constant threats of political and legal disempowerment as well as hateful rhetoric from right-wing religious factions and conservative vote bank constituencies (Irby, 2017; Montegary, 2018; Sethi, 2018). The reverberating LGBTQ+ implications of targeted political bombast, politics of threats, fake news, and social media attacks in the aftermath of the 2016 American presidential elections at the local, regional, national, and international levels in terms of challenging actualities and potentialities of damage do not look pretty (Byne, 2018; Cahill & Makadon, 2017).

Why do I use the word “shockingly” to capture this present-day moment of LGBTQ+ marginalization in today’s society across every corner of the globe? Because, we assume that in our so-called enlightened cultures that our politicians and leaders do not hesitate to speak about in glorious terms, the reality that a segment of the population marked by their sexual orientations/gender identities has to constantly watch over their shoulders and “walk on eggshells” not knowing when their lives, their securities, and everything of who they are as human beings, can get threatened and taken away, is a phenomenon that is, indeed, shameful and shocking. Nothing for us human beings to be proud of, irrespective of the “growth” and “progress” that we have made. No other way to say it, in my “non-Western” English and all. Indeed, apt even today, from a different time and culture, are the last lines from Robert Frost’s (1922) famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” We still have miles to go before we sleep.

Really.

Seems better days of the America of the nineteenth century, represented in the 44 years’ union of Charity and Sylvia (Cleves, 2014), that provided a rare glimpse of an unexpectedly diverse society of the past, more compliant than the contemporary public might choose to imagine. Historically, trailblazers wearing their two hats as librarians, archivists, historians, and other information professionals, on the one hand, embracing their roles as advocates and activists in promoting change on behalf of LBGTQ+ people, on the other, have been few and far between. Sanford Berman, Ann Curry, Israel Fishman, Barbara Gittings, Cal Gough, Ellen Greenblatt, Steven Joyce, Yolanda Retter Vargas, and others, come to mind who have “carried the torch of liberty” in their attempts to get library and information science (LIS) to open up its privileged doors of inclusivity and acknowledge the existence of the “LGBTQ+” from its margins. In the process, these beacons have significantly extended and mobilized library discourse and practice. And, they did indeed struggle in getting their voices heard, “shouting and screaming” and “doing a jump and dance,” to finally receive some recognition of LGBTQ+ existence in their esteemed mainstream collegiate networks. A bow of gratitude to these LGBTQ+ information movers and shakers throughout history for their continued efforts in poking holes in our moralities and prejudices. We would not be here but for their courage and perseverance.

Only now, as a profession with our diversities and varieties of form in the delivery of information-related work, are we moving forward, cynically stated, thanks to the globally widespread climate of fear and repression of LGBTQ+ people (and others), coming out in the face of hostilities that have become so blatant due to the political directives emerging even from the highest office in the United States (Brown & Keller, 2018; Ng & Rumens, 2017). So, we are beginning to see in recent years of the twenty-first century, the progressive LIS professional embracing a more proactive role as a social justice advocate, venturing out of their institutional bastions of privilege and power to promote fairness, justice, equality, equity, and activism on behalf of LGBTQ+ people (Hill & McGrath, 2018; Lymn, 2015). The silver lining of the recent politicized pomposity of hate targeted at LGBTQ+ people (and others) has brought diversity and inclusion towards the center of attention in our short-term cultural memory span. This is reflected at least based on the ubiquitous “lip service” verbiage across institutions we are beginning to see. These are also gaining self-congratulatory representations in becoming part and parcel of our mainstream LIS professions that have historically tried to get by with their cursory and feeble past attention, however well-meaning their intentions (Hennessey, 2017). Unfortunate, in that we had to reach such a state of political siege for our consciousness in the mainstream LIS professions to even awaken to this need. Well, better late than never, I say.

As a result, there have been some passionate and strong convictions in the last few decades integrating LGBTQ+ to newly acknowledged and re-envisioned constructs and core beliefs in LIS related to diversity and inclusion, freedom of speech, information ethics and social justice, intellectual freedom, human rights advocacy, and human information behaviors, to name a few. We are also now observing more libraries and information agencies actively acknowledge, identify, represent, and integrate LGBTQ+ needs, wants, expectations, behaviors, and practices in the design and development of many of their programs, services, systems, resources, and collections, among other efforts, as compared to the isolated few of our historical past. This small collection provides a glimpse of some of the new kinds of alliances involving the LIS professional in community engagement that are getting forged and consolidated across all forms of individual, social, organizational, and institutional boundaries. It represents “out-of-the-box” collaborations, partnerships, and relationship-building with a variety of stakeholders to further support and inclusion of LGBTQ+ content, issues, concerns, and representations.

Additionally, LGBTQ+ is getting acknowledged in the core mission of mainstream librarianship surrounding the information creation–organization–­management–dissemination processes that has got re-invented in traditional library settings (i.e., academic library, public library, school library, and special library – medical, corporate/business, law) with the integration of new technologies and social media, increased user involvement and user-centered design, and positive service responses to the community’s changing demographic characteristics. The “LGBTQ” is also now emerging from the dark realms of “invisibility” in core librarianship as it has expanded in diverse non-traditional information environments including cultural heritage memory institutions (museums, archives, historical societies, and special collections), organizations in the public and private sectors, research centers and educational institutions, non-profit community agencies, and others. Interdisciplinary convergences of information studies (including librarianship) are helping us better incorporate LGBTQ+ elements as re-strengthened ties emerge to psychology and sociology, communication and public relations, advertising and journalism, computer science and software development, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, business an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I: Emerging Scope
• Part II: New Roles and New Technologies for the 21st Century Librarian
• Part III: Recognizing the Needs of Emerging Communities
• Part IV: Creating Communities Coming Together
• Index