LHMP: A Guide to Gender-Inclusive Language for Historians

One of the academic mailing lists I subscribe to had the following forthcoming book announcement:

As editors of the forthcoming volume Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), we are delighted to share the pre-print version of the Trans & Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide which we have worked on over the past two years along with a number of trans and genderqueer medievalists and allies. The final version of the guide will be included as an appendix to the volume, and will also be available to download as a free PDF from the Amsterdam University Press website.

The guide is written for a target audience of medievalists who are interested in trans theory, and in employing trans/genderqueer optics in their analysis of medieval texts, but who may not yet be familiar with the nuances of this terminology and its usage. 

The pre-print version of the guide can be accessed and downloaded here: bit.ly/tgqsguidejune19

Please share widely - we hope that the guide will be interesting and useful to many of you!

With all best wishes,
Blake Gutt (University of Michigan)
Alicia Spencer-Hall (Queen Mary University of London)

The "please share widely" is my basis for including their announcement here, as both the book and the guide may be of interest to LHMP readers.

Given how often I encounter ambiguities and instersections of gender and sexuality issues in topics I present in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, this sounded like a very useful resource for aligning the language I use for historic subjects and topics with current approachs in the field. I've developed my own approach, which is somewhat inconsistent. Sometimes I use the language that the contemporaries of my historic subjects used, sometimes I reflect the language used by the authors of the publications I'm summarizing, and sometimes--and especially when I'm specifically focusing on ambiguities of gender and sexuality--I'll use very technically precise language that distinguishes bodies, identities, behaviors, perceptions, and all the other layers.

Gutt & Spencer-Hall's language guide does provide a few useful approaches on that end, as I'll discuss below, but it felt like the substantial majority of the guide was focused, not on language about historic subjects, but on language for one's academic contemporaries. In other words, the current standards of linguistic politeness around contemporary gender identity. And while that is a valuable and useful set of guidelines to have gathered in one place, it isn't quite as useful as what I thought I was going to find, which was guidelines for how to talk about and refer to historic subjects that both takes into account different historic models and understandings of gender, and integrates that understanding with the standards of modern polite and respectful reference. The material that did cover discussions of historic subjects and topics was highly focused on relatively modern concerns, rather than on the medieval subjects of the book it will be included in. This perhaps makes sense in terms of trans and genderqueer studies in general, but was another point where my expectations were disappointed. So here's my very brief overview of the guide, noting the parts I found most useful and the places I felt it had weaknesses as a historian's apparatus. If you're interested in the topic, I encourage you to follow the link and read the original for yourself.

The guide begins with the premise that "linguistic violence" is done to marginalized communities by disrespectful, othering, and offensive language. This harm can be done either deliberately or through ignorance of the meanings carried by choices of terminology. All language use is inherently political. The key is to be aware of how language choice normalizes and reinforces certain perceptions while delegitimizing and erasing others.

This guide is intended as a resource for respectful and inclusive ways of discussing trans, genderqueer, and intersex topics, either with respect to specific individuals or to groups. It's not meant to be a set of fixed rules. Language changes, and communities have a variety of opinions and reactions to specific terms. Terms that were viewed as slurs in the past may be reclaimed and embraced; terms that were previously considered positive and affirming may become outdated or reframed as problematic. Rapid shifts in the current linguistic landscape create the risk that analytic writing that is considered neutral at the time it was produced may be considered distractingly inaccurate or offensive by near-future readers, but the answer is not to turn away from making the attempt.

The granularity of language may mean that different terms apply differently at various levels of specificity or particularity. Terminology may carry culture-specific meanings and be misleading or inapplicable when used to describe other cultures. Language that is descriptive in one cultural context may not fit other contexts well or at all. The authors of the guide recognize that as white Europeans, their understanding of the field will necessarily be shaped by that background.

The guide also hopes to distinguish between language that is generally appropriate for use by everyone, and language that may be potentially offensive if used by those not in the group it applies to.

This work is specifically grounded in, and aimed at, the work of medievalist scholars and their interactions with modernist theories of gender and sex. A number of foundational scholars are noted for their work in the field and for the theoretical grounding in which the guide is rooted. Certain basic vocabulary terms are presented to support common understanding of the guide. In particular, "sex" is used to refer to socially-assigned, biologically-based categories, while "gender" is used to refer to the individual's subjective sense of identity.

The majority of the guide is an alphabetic glossary of vocabulary that discusses the context in which the term has historically been used, the overt and covert meanings it carries (denotation and connotation), and discussions of alternate wordings and phrasings if a term is considered potentially problematic.

For example, the entry for "passing" (in a transgender context) discusses various layers of meaning, synonyms that may have more specific social contexts, comparison to parallel language as applied to sexual orientation, and suggestions for alternate wording that reframes the concept in terms of exterior perception rather than intent. For example, rather than saying "so-and-so passed as a man" consider "so-and-so was read as a man". [Note: This is definitely an term I'm going to work on adopting for exactly that reason--because it describes the social outcome rather than implying a particular intent.]

This is followed by a bibliography of further reading on specific vocabulary or  topics.

* * *

My comments as a potential user for this guide.

This appears to be an excellent and detailed guide to language around gender identity in contemporary society. Most of the material was familiar to me, but I probably spend more effort than the average person to listen to current discourse around terminology and politeness strategies around gender. For those who feel confused about the current state of the language, it is likely to be very useful.

With regard to academic discourse, the discussions are not always clear whether the context is the historic material being presented and analyzed or whether the context is talking about the contemporary academic community. For example, in the entry for "Names" there is a detailed discussion of how to handle references to scholars who published both before and after transition, but rather less consideration of how to refer to historic subjects who are potentially readable as trans. And no advice at all on how to distinguish the handling of individual identity (i.e., the individual's own identity) in historic sources from the historic interpretation of how identities were read (i.e., how their contemporaries understood them).

Let me expand on that. One of the topics that I'd love to have more guidance on is how to discuss transgender motifs as presented in historic literature. Sometimes this can involve trying to determine how the literary character understood their gender (that is, within the story-context, how was their understanding of their own gender depicted?), but more often I'm analyzing how the historic author understood and depicted gender and transgender motifs. And that depiction is often based on ideas that are not currently considered acceptable, whether it is the idea that trans women are actually cis men engaging in deception or whether it is the idea that trans men are higher on the great chain of being than cis women. (This is touched on in the entry for "gender-critical" with regard to contemporary applications of the concepts, but that entry provides no guidance for discussing the underlying ideas in a historic context.)

This issue is touched on briefly under "assigned sex" with a caveat about being aware of whether a literary character is assigned a sex within the text or is being assigned a sex by the reader/scholar. There is, unfortunately, no real discussion or examples on how one might approach the question.

Some entries do provide very useful guidance on usage with regard to historic subjects, such as the one for the term "cross-dress(ing)" which explains why to avoid it in transgender contexts (because with regard to gender identity, the clothing isn't "cross") but discusses other contexts where it is appropriate and neutral (such as in dramatic presentations). The discussion of the term "hermaphrodite" is also detailed and useful.

In general, this seems to me to be an excellent guide to the contemporary use of language for contemporary people. But I had anticipated more consideration of how to discuss historic lives, motifs, and textual materials themselves in ways that are clear, informative, and sensitive. There was enough of a taste of that content that I don't think I was mistaken in expecting it, but not enough to feel that expectation had been fulfilled.