Mon Dewey!

[steepholm]

They're doing a stock review at my university's library. Amongst the class marks up for culling are:

305.3 Gender and also men
305.4 Women including feminism
305.90664 Lesbians and Gay men

Admittedly this has the look of a piecemeal, evolving, much-tinkered-with system, rather than something anybody's thought up from scratch, but even so - who could find in this a satisfactory approximation to reality? John Wilkins would be spinning.

Comments

[gair.livejournal.com]

Though of course lesbians are not women.* I think gay men are men, though (although I met an awesome gay medievalist who referred to himself as an 'old boy' - actually, where is the classmark for 'boy'???).

*(c) (TM) Monique Wittig, though it works better in French where the word for 'woman' is the same as the word for 'wife'.

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

Un homme sur deux est une femme!

You know, that never occurred to me about Wittig's statement, and it really should have. Thinky!

[gair.livejournal.com]

that never occurred to me about Wittig's statement

I know! Someone used it as a put-down in an argument with me (Chuh, I've read Wittig in FRENCH, you know, and she meant WIVES), which wasn't the most fun way to find out, but it did make a lightbulb go on over my head...