Last week I wrote three encyclopedia entries for the upcoming SAGE Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World. The mission of this encyclopedia is to "cover the spectrum of defining women in the contemporary world". Sounds great so far, right? Not when it comes to non-heterosexual women, or transwomen...or feminism...
One of the articles that I wrote was about the professional association Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR). Last summer I had written the entry for this publication on the pioneer culinary association for women, Roundtable of Women in Foodservice (RWF). The upcoming encyclopedia will have many entries on women in the culinary and hospitality industries, and so it is relatively painless to cross reference one of those entries to "Chefs, Female" or "Women in Hospitality" or some other related entry in the same encyclopedia. No problem with those.
The problem came when I wrote an entry for this encyclopedia about "Lipstick Lesbians". (A lipstick lesbian is a feminine lesbian who is attracted to other feminine lesbians; quite often she is also a "power lesbian" in a white collar profession as well.) Anyway, it is impossible to talk about lipstick lesbians without talking about butch and femme lesbians, as well as lesbian feminism and mainstream feminism. The encyclopedia editors had no entries on those topics. Instead, they had one entry on "lesbian experimentation". I had a serious problem cross-referencing "lipstick lesbians" with "lesbian experimentation" because it implies that lipstick lesbians are not real lesbians, which many people in the straight and gay community believe. I did not want to perpetuate a negative bias. And so I could not cross-reference my entry with any other in the encyclopedia.
The other problematic encyclopedia entry that I had written was on "Transgenders and Suicide". First of all, transgender is an adjective. Transgender people call themselves "transmen", "transwomen", or "transpeople". Second, there were no other entries in this encyclopedia about transpeople. While it is true that transpeople are at high risk for contemplating and attempting suicide, this is not what should define them, and definitely not what should define transpeople in the 21st century. They did not include any biographies of the recently elected trans-government officials in New Zealand, Australia, Poland, and other countries...all transwomen. They did not include Dana International, who is a well-loved Israeli transwoman pop superstar in a nation of macho men. They had no entries on transwomen prostitutes, or the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (which was up for discussion last year because a decorated military hero who applied for a high level job at the Library of Congress was denied the position simply because he transitioned and became Diane Schroer). So I could not cross-reference this entry to any other in the encyclopedia.
Shame, shame, shame on SAGE Publications. I emailed my entries to the encyclopedia editors over the weekend and voiced my concerns. Hopefully someone will listen. For $650.00, a traditionally published encyclopedia should be comprehensive.
I can see how you feel about the bias in the encyclopedia you read, which was published by Sage Publications. Do encyclopedias have really value this days? or better still, which encyclopedias is bias free?
ReplyDeleteHi Taiwo,
ReplyDeleteEncylopedias still have value these days, but just like any resource, we cannot make a generalization that all are good or bad. We have to evaluate whatever encyclopedia that we use, then evaluate the quality of the entry that we are interested in for our research.
The upcoming women's encyclopedia that I wrote entries for has many strengths. It has entries about a lot of contemporary women's rights activists and organizations that are not available anywhere else. Unfortunately, when it comes to the queer women, it bombs. I haven't heard back from the editor yet in regard to my criticisms...I will give them another week.
Sincerely,
Rachel Wexelbaum