Archiving the Colonial Concept

of the Gender Binary

Status Quo Representation of Gender in Established Standards

German National Library

Differentiated Person gender Gender Value

• male
• female
• not known

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (2019a, 2019b)

ISO 5218

• 0 – not known
• 1 – male
• 2 – female
• 9 – not applicable

International Organization for Standardization (2004)

vCard

Perreault (2011)

Text Encoding Initiative

person
personGrp
persona <sex>
@sex teidata.sex

Suggestion: Use vCard sex or ISO 5218 TEI Consortium (2021)

The other category

• Easy for the modeller
• Stigmatising and othering Kronk et al. (2021), Puckett et al. (2020)

Wikidata

P21 “sex or gender”

Wikidata contributors (2021),
WikiProject LGBT (2022)

Introducing Gender Qualifiers

GSSO

• gender
• gender identity
• assumed gender
• experienced gender
• lived gender
• recorded gender
• gender modality
• gender state

Gender, Sex and Sexual Orientation Ontology (2022)

Adaptation

Qualifiers

Wikimedia Foundation (2016)

Examples

self-identified gender

Laxmi Narayan Tripathi

India

instance of	Person
gender	hijra   gender qualifier	self-identified gender
gender modality	transgender   described by source	Scroll.in (2016)

Yuu Watase

Japan

instance of	Person
gender	X-gender   gender qualifier	self-identified gender

Public Universal Friend

North America
1752–1819

instance of	Person
gender	female   gender qualifier   end date agender   gender qualifier   start date	recorded gender 1776 self-identified gender 1776

assumed and recorded gender

Hastiin Tł’a

North America
1867–1937

instance of	Person
gender	nádleehi   gender qualifier berdache   gender qualifier   rank	assumed gender recorded gender deprecated

lived gender

Murray Hall

Britain/North America
1841–1901

instance of	Person
gender	male   gender qualifier female   gender qualifier   described by source   rank	lived gender self-identified gender recorded gender Nelson (2014) deprecated

• Self-identified gender preferred over recorded and assumed gender
• Additional qualifiers further specify gender values
• Ranks mark recorded gender values as offensive and/or unreliable

Querying

Wikibase Ranks

• – Preferred rank
• – Normal rank
• – Deprecated rank

Queries return the highest-ranked statements by default.

Simple Query

                SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?gender ?genderLabel WHERE {
                  # Get instances of (P1) Person (Q51)
                  # Which have a gender property (P157)
                  ?item wdt:P1 wd:Q51;
                        wdt:P157 ?gender.

                  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }
                }
              

Detailed Query

                SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?gender ?genderLabel ?genderQualifier ?genderQualifierLabel ?rank ?genderModality ?genderModalityLabel WHERE {
                  # Get instances of (P1) Person (Q51)
                  # Which have a gender property (P157)
                  ?item wdt:P1 wd:Q51;
                        wdt:P157 ?gender.
                  
                  # Get rank and qualifier (P160)
                  ?item p:P157 ?genderStatement.
                  ?genderStatement wikibase:rank ?rank;
                                   pq:P160 ?genderQualifier.
                  
                  # Get modality (P158)
                  OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P158 ?genderModality. }

                  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en". }
                }
              

Gender as an Ontological Entity

CIDOC CRM

• Gender class and property removed in 2001
• “There is nothing more important about gender than about any other properties giving rise to a set of people” CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (2002)
• Instead: Person has type Type

CRMsoc

• E1 CRM EntityAll things in the universe of discourse
  • E2 Temporal Entity All phenomena which happen over a limited extent in time
    • socE Phase Phases during the existence and evolution of an instance of Physical Thing
      • socE Gender

CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (2021),
Alamercery et al. (2019)

CRMsoc

• “Examples: Bruce Jenner was a male, and then a female (and took the name Caitlyn Jenner).” Alamercery et al. (2019)
• Distinction: Assigned gender at birth (AGAB) and gender identity Kronk et al. (2021), Mitchell (2017)
• It’s just a phase

Gender as a Conceptual Object

• E1 CRM EntityAll things in the universe of discourse
  • E77 Persistent Item Items that have persistent characteristic
    • E70 Thing Discrete, identifiable, instances of Persistent Item that are documented as single units
      • E71 Human-Made Thing Discrete, identifiable human-made items that are documented as single units
        • E28 Conceptual Object Non-material products of our minds
          • Gender

E28 Conceptual Object

CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (2021)

Thank you for your attention!

Literature