Guidance for writing about LGBTQ+ people in UK cultural heritage

This guidance is an initial draft developed by Charley Matthews during their internship with the National Library of Scotland in 2023. It is intended to spark discussion for cultural heritage professionals working on LGBTQ+ materials. Ideally, this guidance will be further developed by the wider community of LGBTQ+ researchers, cultural heritage professionals, activists, and community organisers. Contributions, changes, and edits are invited – please see How to Use the Chew Glossary and Community Guidelines for information on how to do this.

Histories of sexuality and gender are complex, non-linear, and expansive. Descriptions of people, places, and materials should try to reflect this.

Multiply your terms

Language is dynamic, and new terminology is created to accurately represent queer lives every day. Embracing the proliferation of terminology by using multiple descriptive terms avoids shutting out intersecting marginalised interpretative perspectives on material.

When describing historical materials that pre-date modern identity labels (terms from the LGBTQ+ acronym), It can be especially difficult to decide which of the many terms available is most appropriate. Many historic identities (such as “invert”) and historic practices (such as “cross-dressing”) do not map smoothly onto modern identity labels. Historic language also often elides gender and sexuality in ways that are difficult for us to understand today, or are even self-contradictory in their original contexts.

To address this problem, it is often a good practice to include multiple terms to invite multiple possible interpretations, and to make the material discoverable to as wide a community as possible.

For example, how might we describe material that relates to a self-described “male impersonator” from the Victorian music-halls, who also cross-dressed in private life and had romantic relationships with other women, with whom she used a male pet-name? Terms such as “lesbian” and “trans” were not available to this person, but if we only use the phrase “male impersonator,” then it risks obscuring this person’s queerness and perpetuating archival silences. Therefore, a cataloguer may also choose to include a few sentences along the lines of:

"This gender-nonconforming person self-described as a 'male impersonator.' They were assigned female at birth and had relationships with other women. They cross-dressed professionally and there is evidence that they also cross-lived in their private life. Modern users may interpret this person as a lesbian, as a transgender man, or using various other queer identities."

Decide on umbrella terms as an institution

It can be helpful to decide on a set of key umbrella terms as an institution, or department. This provides a consistent framework for tagging queer materials, which bolsters confidence for cataloguers and aids discoverability for users.

Some suggestions for umbrella terms include:

• LGBTQ+ (or longer variations of the acronym)
• queer
• trans/trans*
• sexual and gender minorities
• gender-nonconformity

All of these terms are widely recognised, but none are without problems. Read the contextual notes in 3.1.1 LGBTQIA+ Communities and History for further discussion and guidance.

When deciding on key umbrella terms, make sure you consider the following:

• the prevalence of LGBTQ+ materials in your collections
• the types of LGBTQ+ materials in your collections (contemporary or historic, community or medicalized?)
• the kinds of users who are likely to be accessing this material, or with whom you would like to develop engagement
• the reasons why you want to describe LGBTQ+ materials in your collections
• the broader social and cultural contexts of your institution

Once this has been decided, it is good practice to write a statement explaining decisions made around key terms, and to make this statement available to your users. This is in the interests of transparency, but also to help your users when searching your catalogue.

Review these chosen umbrella terms regularly, in order to keep up with rapidly-changing terminologies, and to ensure that your chosen terms accurately reflect the changing needs of your users and any new collections.

Self-description is paramount

Queer people’s lived experience should always be prioritized over others’ interpretations of them. Therefore when describing contemporary materials, always replicate the terms a person uses to self-describe. This can be accompanied by umbrella terms to aid discoverability, such as “LGBTQ+” or “queer.” The only exception to this is where someone is not open about their identity in public, as accidentally “outing” someone can have serious and distressing consequences for a queer person.

When describing historic people, self-descriptions that were appropriate at the time may no longer be easily recognisable, or may be euphemistic or even offensive. In this case, retain self-descriptions as far as possible, placing them in quotation marks or using the phrase “self-described,” in order to indicate that this is their terminology, not the cataloguers. Where appropriate, accompany with modern terms alongside to aid discoverability (see “Multiple your terms”). This also applies where a contemporary person uses a slur to self-describe.

Quotations marks are your frenemy

Where a problematic, outdated, or offensive term is necessary, place it in quotation marks to show that this is not the cataloguers term, and then contextualise why you have included the term. For example, an offensive term may be part of a document title or other identifier, be a self-description, or be used repeatedly in material and therefore a necessary keyword in description.

However, be cautious using quotation marks when describing living people or using contemporary best-practice terminology, as this may inadvertently suggest that the person’s identity or lived experience is not fully valid or real.

People, not pathologies

Avoid reducing people to their sexual/gender identities. Words like "bisexual" and "transgender" should always be used as adjectives not nouns ie "bisexual people" not “bisexuals,” and "transgender woman" not “transgenders.” "Bisexuality" is a noun, because it describes a sexual orientation in abstract, but "bisexual" is an adjective that describes a person's identity or behaviour.

The impulse to reduce people to an identity roots pathologizing medical and legal institutions, such as psychiatry. Sometimes people may only be referred to by identity in collections materials, for example in sexologists’ papers, but reproducing this in description perpetuates the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ people.

See queerly

The default position of researchers and archivists for a long time was a cisheteronormative perspective, which demands “proof” that someone is LGBTQ+, or they are assumed to be straight. Though usually done without malice, this remains a kind of cultural violence that erases queer people from history. There is no “neutral” position in this context – by avoiding describing something as “potentially queer” when there is not absolute certainty, the burden of proving our own existence is laid upon queer people.

To address this, try to acknowledge queer possibility in collections when acquiring, arranging, cataloguing, and describing materials. This can be done with a sentence as simple as “some users may interpret this material as queer, or related to LGBTQ+ lives.”

Engaging with queer perspectives on people and materials from members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially queer researchers and colleagues, can be helpful. However, make sure that you do this in a way that does not cause additional unpaid workload for the people you consult, as this contributes to contemporary inequalities.

Retain previous descriptions

If you come across previous collections descriptions that use outdated, offensive, or obscuring language, these should not be destroyed. It is important to retain a record of how queer materials were described, as this is important not only for good records management practices, but also for understanding queer history in itself.

Instead, one of the following methods may be appropriate:

• Replace or rephrase problematic terms in your catalogue, and keep a record elsewhere of the original wording, and why the decision was made to change it.

• If the description is a historic document itself, such as a handwritten or pdf handlist, do not make changes to it, but retain the document as it is. Then add a separate note to the file or to your catalogue that uses more appropriate terminology, and contextualises the original handlist (and possibly provides a content warning).

• Try to identify whether a problematic piece of description is quoted from the material itself, or was produced by an archivist. Where this is not possible, put into quotation marks and provide a contextual note to explain the doubt.

Be multi-lingual

To quote poet Harry Josephine Giles, UK institutions are "appallingly and aberrantly monolingual," [1] despite the fact that we have many native languages (including Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic, plus we share an archipelago with Irish speakers). As a colonizing country, UK institutions hold collections from all around the world, often with unethical or uncertain provenances that repositories are increasingly addressing. Part of the violence of colonialism was (and continues to be) the enforcement of cisheteronormativity as a social system. Queer people in colonized countries have always fought to maintain/regain intellectual power over their identities, and western queer theory has acknowledged and wrestled with this almost since its inception. [2]

• Always follow people's self-description in their own language, with phrases like "self-described" to indicate this where appropriate.
• Where a person from a colonized country has been described in English terms for LGBTQ+ people, check if you can find good-practice guidance for referring to queer people from their culture or linguistic community.
• If many non-English terms are needed, consider including a short glossary on your website or in individual handlists, etc, to encourage unfamiliar users to engage with/use correct terminology.

The subsection 3.1.3 LGBTQIA+ Non-English Language Terms provides some limited guidance, but requires substantial and ongoing development.

Make mistakes – and adapt to criticism

We only learn to use the best terminology by using it. This means that the cultural heritage sector needs to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and willing to make mistakes. If you try and use more LGBTQ+ terminology, and occasionally get it wrong, the majority of LGBTQ+ people will assume good faith and not malice.

It is also important to respond promptly and gratefully when queer people correct your mistakes. This does not mean automatically changing things at someone’s request, but considering every piece of feedback respectfully and asking for help when you need it.