Classifying Our Whole Potentiality:
Examining Bibliographic Justice for Intersex Communities

INTRODUCTION

Intersex is an umbrella term that refers to differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. It can refer to many different genital, hormonal, chromosomal, and other variations. It is also an identity term used collectively by the intersex community who share common experiences and beliefs in agency about an individual's body and healthcare (interACT, 2021). While many people may not be familiar with the term, they most likely know an intersex person, who consist of ~1.7-2% of the population (interACT, 2021). This lack of knowledge about such a common human phenomenon has been facilitated, in part, by systematic erasure and exclusion of intersex bodies, experiences, and most pertinently, epistemology. This proposal seeks to navigate how the modern guidelines of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, known as WebDewey, hierarchically categorizes intersex as an access point, as well as how the DDC classifies various books with self-described intersex subject matter. Past literature has solely looked at these cataloguing phenomena from the perspective of institutional guidelines and written feedback from intersex advocates when their voices are prominently featured in the updating process, however, this proposal would use a methodology of direct human subject involvement in the form of interviews with intersex activists, in order to facilitate research that is both relevant to today’s tribulations facing the bibliographic justice of the intersex community, and to further encourage the precedent of amplifying intersex voices and their involvement in the information environments that personally affect them.

Until the last ~15 years, if one wanted to learn about anything “intersex” in a library, they would have to exclusively refer to obfuscated medical materials that pathologize intersex variations without any input from intersex people themselves (Fox, 2016, p. 586). This obfuscation of intersex materials being identified as such and presented accessibly compounds the pre-existing hurdles that intersex people face; These include but are not limited to (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 4; Fox, 2016, p. 585; Swarr, 2023, p. 113):

• Medically unnecessary surgeries and other coercively enacted medical care to intersex infants and adolescents.
• Difficulty seeking and maintaining appropriate and informed medical care later in life alongside social discrimination based on intersex status, including being barred from participation in sporting events unless they are willing to undergo cisnormative medical treatment.
• A distinct difficulty in finding a supportive community with other intersex people if the individual has been told their variation is not considered a “true” intersex variation, or the term intersex has never been introduced to them.

While social visibility for intersex people has become exponentially more prominent since the 1990s, little research has been conducted on how it has been indexed, classified, and/or catalogued by library systems in the last 10 years. As a result, it is imperative that the role of information organizations like libraries in disseminating relevant and equitable information about intersex identities be analyzed with explicit input from those who deeply understand and participate within this community.

Definitions

1. Intersex- An umbrella term that refers to differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. It can refer to many different genital, hormonal, chromosomal, and other variations. It is also an identity term used collectively by the intersex community who share common experiences and beliefs in agency about an individual's body and healthcare (interACT, 2021).
2. Perisex- A non-intersex person, making up the majority of the population. Synonyms include "endosex" and "dyadic", and are commonly used throughout literature interchangeably. A phrase such as "normal sex" is not used and discouraged, as it pushes the concept that intersexuality is not "normal" or "natural" (interACT, 2021).
3. Hermaphrodite/Hermaphroditism- A slur with documented use against intersex people since the Middle Ages (DeVun, 2021, p. 7), referring to the mythological Hermaphroditus and mythological individuals who possess fully functional male and female reproductive systems, which cannot occur in human beings. Because of this wrongful physiological understanding, among other factors, "hermaphrodites" were often subjected to "corrective" surgery to their detriment (DeVun, 2021, p. 121) and alienated from society for this status from the medieval period to even today. Present in both older medical documents and some current systems, and was the previous subject heading used by the DDC for the term intersex. This term is a slur against intersex people and should not be used.
4. Disorders/Differences of Sex Development (DSDs)- A phrase commonly used in medical contexts for intersex traits. Many intersex people reject the term as it further pathologizes their variations, as "disorderly" or to be "fixed" (interACT, 2021).
5. Queer- A nebulous term and reclaimed slur. Often synonymous with "LGBT" and other variants, but is typically based on a perceived alienation from societal norms about gender and sexuality (Dobreski et. al., 2022, p. 494); For example, an effeminate man or tomboy may be labelled as queer- particularly by bigots or gender essentialists- even if they would not personally identify as queer. Often used in tandem with the field of "Queer studies".
6. LGBT- An acronym for "Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" and the community of identity groups and support this entails. Often synonymous with "queer" and explored through "Queer studies", and commonly includes further letters such as QIA+ for "queer, intersex, and asexual", with the "+" standing for further letters (Dobreski et. al., 2022, p. 491). LGBT as an acronym has been used for years, and this less inclusive version is included in the paper explicitly to bring attention to the specific issues the intersex community faces that other LGBT groups may not; However, this paper strongly considers intersex as part of the wider LGBTQIA+ community.
7. Cataloguing- "A list of library resources contained in a collection, a library, or group of libraries, organized according to a definite scheme or plan" (Salaba & Chan, 2023, p. 752).
8. Classification- "A logical system for the arrangement of knowledge" (Salaba & Chan, 2023, p. 753). May be used interchangeably with "categorization" or "cataloguing", but they all mean slightly different things.
9. Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)- Conceived in 1871 by Melvil Dewey, the DDC is the most widely used classification system in American libraries, organized by subject matter (Fox, 2016, p. 586). Similarly, the Library of Congress (LOC) is also a numbering system that organizes by Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), mostly used in academic institutions.
10. Critical/Radical Cataloguing- A style of cataloguing with an emphasis on social justice, communal outreach, and the importance of maintaining relevancy in information (Dunbar & Snow, 2022, p. 650).
11. Critical Race Theory (CRT)- A theoretical framework that, "accommodates critiques that illuminate how the perspectives and products of dominant cultures negatively impact non-dominant cultures" (Dunbar & Snow, 2022, p. 648).
12. Intersex Studies- An emerging field of academia, hallmarked by, "the depathologization of medical guidelines, protocols, and classifications, training from depathologizing and human rights perspectives, and non-pathologizing psycho-social and peer support" (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 12). May have overlap with Queer studies, Disability studies, Ethnic studies, and others.
13. Biopolitics- A theoretical framework in which human bodies and lives are understood to be regulated through medicalization or pathologization, and within this paper's scope, the administration of sexual dimorphism and binary gender (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 10).

LITERATURE REVIEW

It is important to look at how these ways of organizing both an individual library's collection as well as vast cataloguing databases, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, think of intersex people as more than just a stigmatized pathologization, and how the input of intersex and other queer or marginalized advocates have been incorporated. 

Historical Discrimination within the DDC

It is important to begin by explaining how intersex and other marginalized groups have historically lacked, and still lack, information justice and self-determination. Dr. Melodie Fox's exploration of intersex classification changes in the DDC showcases numerous ways that the topic and subject matter has been shifted around before. Intersex people and variations were formerly classified as "hermaphrodites" or "hermaphroditism", an inaccurate term now understood as a derogatory slur (interACT, 2021), until the 23rd DDC edition (Fox, 2016, p. 588). These controlled vocabulary terms were reclassified in 14 out of 23 DDC editions, including under headings like "Monstrosities" and "Sexual diseases" (Fox, 2016, p. 587). The harmful proliferation of, "knowledge around intersex people epistemically most frequently originates with them as objects rather than knowing subjects" (Fox, 2016, p. 583), and only was changed to an identity group in the 23rd edition by intersex advocacy input on the DDC blog (Fox, 2016, p. 591). While this background on intersex ontogeny is absolutely crucial for further research, more focus needs to be drawn to modern intersex epistemological justice with the understanding of the subject itself having been in categorizational limbo.

Intersex people are not the only group who have been pathologized in categorization without their input. Autism and intersex as subjects are argued to be more alike (Pákozdi, 2024, p. 614) in their categorical discrimination than autism and general queer (LGBT+) terminology because, "while the social aspects of autism has indeed changed over time, unlike queerness, autism is neurological... queerness is no longer medically pathologized in most of the English-speaking world" (Pákozdi, 2024, p. 622). This speaks to the complicated issue of how pathologized variations of human physiology continue to be studied from an institutional medical perspective, but the subjects themselves are begging for their identity and experiences to be recognized.

Additionally, one cannot discuss marginalized visibility in library catalogs without discussing the racist and colonial origins of the systems themselves. Pathologization is simply one way in which identity groups have been categorically silenced, with the overall white and colonial face of libraries excluding other groups only coming under scrutiny through critical cataloguing in the mid-20th century. The history of critical cataloguing is deeply entwined with the efforts made by black librarians; Dorothy Porter and Sanford Berman in the 1930s and 1970s respectively called attention to the racist categorizations in the DDC and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), founding the movement of radical cataloguing as we know it today (Dunbar & Snow, 2022, p. 650). There is now a push past radical cataloguing into the blending of CRT with LIS into critical race information theory (CRIT) (Dunbar & Snow, 2022, p. 649), seeking to enhance these indexing discourses with a combined perspective. It is important to understand that CRT is used in academia today to challenge a given dominant culture, which is typically whiteness (Dunbar & Snow, 2022, p. 648), but could also entail perisex (non-intersex) norms, expectations, and privileges.

This has intersectional implications, as it has often been white and Western social constructs of what are appropriate traits for men and women, assigning the label of intersex much more commonly to black people and people with racialized traits (Swarr, 2023, p. 49). Through it all, these knowledge organization systems, in their attempts to be relevant and academically-backed, may instead perpetuate harmful ideas and norms about their human subjects (Pákozdi, 2024, p. 622). Yet because of the absolutely crucial efforts of black librarians in the past, marginalized people of all backgrounds can be emboldened to take epistemological justice into their own hands, including intersex communities.

Developing and Implementing Accessible Practice

Because of these milestone achievements by activists before them, intersex and queer activists and librarians have made numerous efforts to develop their own epistemology and categorization practices. Amets Suess-Schwend first examines the way intersex and human rights activists have created a body of critical knowledge for study in its own right. With the delineation of Intersex Studies as a field all its own in the late 2010s (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 2), the particular pillar of taking back biopolitical power from overmedicalization has emerged (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 9). With the interdisciplinary approach of intersex activists in the field, their primary means of achieving biopolitical autonomy is through a combined human rights effort to destigmatize documents and records while also providing communal and academic support against the horrors (Suess-Schwend, 2024, p. 12) that have overwhelmingly shaped the modern intersex experience. These medical classifications are also what shapes research and public institutional databases like libraries, emphasizing the firsthand approach needed to make these systems finally equitable. 

On the ground level, libraries benefit most from this flexibility when it comes to identity groups as common classifications, instead of medicalized ones. One can see how an individual library may try to collect circulation data about how to better represent and provide for an LGBT patronage, for example, when the tensions of traditional categorization methods promote only a small image of what constitutes as queer, which is also limited in the temporal and spatial scope by those same methods (Guyan, 2021, p. 9). It is where, "failure to introduce new categorization practices which better serve LGBTQ library users might mean that collections default to historical biases" (Guyan, 2021, p. 12), and instead the suggestions that this same patronage be allowed to share their own self identities in a voluntary manner could be of much more benefit to the practicing cataloguing librarian (Guyan, 2021, p. 14). What this comes back to is a sense of queer autonomy over experience and representation, which Intersex studies especially needs now as this field booms in publications and research through this approach, as it hasn't existed as such for longer than a decade, and the activist precedent was only set in the 1990s.

Incorporation of Queer-Specific Datasets

Having established historical and disciplinary basis as well as common practices, a short examination of existing alternative catalogs illustrates how intersex knowledge may be indexed without the traditional constraints of the DDC, and to what effect. While the DDC may be among the most widely used indexing guideline for libraries to implement, the addition of specific linked datasets such as the queer-made Homosaurus may greatly fill in information gaps. This has implications particularly for intersex subject matter as well, as the depathologized approach has the added benefit of expanding and allowing intersex in sociocultural contexts to be explored for what they are, instead of flattened into a singular, stigmatized existence like the DDC implies. One limitation they acknowledge however is how queer studies, in and of itself, has an overwhelming white and Western bias (Cifor & Rawson, 2021, p. 2180), perhaps calling for the necessity for these datasets to continue to be flexible and employ the voices of even the most marginalized amongst the queer community, including its black, indigenous, and intersex members. 

Nevertheless, the Homosaurus has already seen great success as an inclusive tool, especially when compared alongside two of the Library of Congress (LOC) controlled vocabularies. Through a process of comparison of analogous terms, the Homosaurus was determined to not only contain 618 identity terms, but that the LOC vocabularies only contained 153 (Dobreski et al., 2022, p. 501). One term of particular note is "Intersex authors", found to have no analogous subject heading in the LOC databases (Dobreski et al., 2022, p. 502); this implies that while the Homosaurus makes bountiful room for the various facets of intersex identity as it pertains to what position that assumes in the information environment, it is completely flattened in these traditional classification systems, not only ignoring what information justice it could provide but also ignoring the very pivotal ways that users may want to navigate a catalog in the first place.

CONCLUSION

As intersex identities become more visible in the contemporary period, it is vital that societal institutions be aware of our existence in a cognizant, informed manner. This extends past the stacks of libraries, and is an important discriminatory hurdle to overcome in the practices of healthcare, education, and law, amongst countless other settings. It is not that there is a lack of intersex people involved in these practices or familiar with their culture(s), but a lack of receptiveness to the change that would allow them to speak in the first place. It is my hope that, through this project and others like it, the groundwork can be laid for further intersex and other marginalized activists to articulate and pinpoint the debilitations within institutions like libraries and library systems and work towards them being more equitable for all patrons.

REFERENCES

Cifor, M., & Rawson, K. J. (2023). Mediating queer and trans pasts: the Homosaurus as queer information activism. Information, Communication & Society, 26(11), 2168–2185. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2072753

DeVun, L. (2021). The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/devu19550

Dobreski, B., Snow, K., & Moulaison-Sandy, H. (2022). On overlap and otherness: a comparison of three vocabularies’ approaches to LGBTQ+ identity. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 60(6–7), 490–513. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2022.2090040

Fox, M. J. (2016). Subjects in doubt: The ontogeny of intersex in the Dewey Decimal Classification. Knowledge Organization, 43(8), 581–593. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-8-581

Guyan, K. (2021). Diversity monitoring in the library. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 5(4), 6–20. JSTOR.

interACT. (2021). Frequently Asked Questions. interACT - Advocates for Intersex Youth. https://interactadvocates.org/faq

Pákozdi, D. (2024). Sort of People: Considerations about the ontogeny of autism in the Dewey Decimal System, 1942–2023. Knowledge Organization, 51(8), 613–625. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2024-8-613

Salaba, A., & Chan, L. M. (2023). Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction (Fifth edition.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Snow, K., & Dunbar, A. W. (2022). Advancing the relationship between Critical Cataloging and Critical Race Theory. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 60(6–7), 646–674. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2022.2089936

Suess-Schwend, A. (2024). Intersex Epistemologies? Reviewing relevant perspectives in intersex studies. Social Sciences, 13(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13060298

Swarr, A. L. & Amanda Lock Swarr funder. (2023). Envisioning African intersex: Challenging colonial and racist legacies in South African medicine (1st ed.). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478024248