Making room for loons
The Loon wasn’t at ALA this year (she’s only been once, and will only go again if she must), so she missed all the fun attacks of the vapors over supposedly unprofessional conduct.
If you ask the Loon (which you didn’t), the library profession needs to sit down and have some lengthy and uncomfortable conversations about “professionalism.” All too often, “professionalism” is a weapon wielded against those who do not look, act, or think Just Like Us, where “us” is often code for “me, but the Lurkers Support Me In Email.” And on the other side of the ledger, genuinely hurtful and damaging conduct can escape scot-free in certain under-regulated subcommunities, or among supposed “rockstars.”
Librarianship cannot afford to drive away at least some of the people it drives away with these shenanigans, nor can it afford to let the Professionalism Police continue feeding its uptight image by overcontrolling other practitioners’ dress and behavior (online and off-), nor can it continue to overlook incursions by the kyriarchy while paying minute attention to minute peccadilloes.
What the Loon wishes librarians would do is ask themselves, really ask themselves, Cui malo? Who is harmed? Who is harmed if a librarian drops a cussword or two in a presentation? Who is harmed if a university librarian doesn’t wear suits every day? (Suit wearing can be protective coloration, certainly. When that is the case, the Loon favors calling it that, rather than imagining the practice part of Professional Holy Writ.) Who is harmed if a librarian gives way to emotion in a non-public interaction? Who is harmed when librarians act human online?
Conversely, who is harmed when librarians fear to speak passionately, or to express frustration, lest they fail collegiality tests? Who is harmed when librarians and potential librarians are driven from the profession, from fear and loathing of the interminable behavior and appearance policing? One of the reasons the Loon fears and loathes ALA is the endless criticism and mean-spirited joking around other librarians’ sartorial choices. The Loon is not a sartorially-gifted creature, possessing only two outfits which she rotates seasonally. Nor are the Loon’s feet such as to occasion much choice in footwear. Nor is the Loon wealthy enough to follow fashion. Why any of this has the least bearing on the quality of the Loon’s librarianship—why any of it is fair game for opprobrium, for that matter—the Loon cannot fathom.
Who is harmed when those driven out are demographically disproportionate? Most of the sartorial and demeanor policing the Loon knows about has been aimed at women, individually and collectively. The Loon can’t speak to other demographic groups disproportionately affected, but she would be interested to hear examples. She wonders particularly (though not exclusively) about the social construction of accents disproportionately affecting librarians of color.
Sometimes, indeed, there are harms. None of the scenarios the Loon suggested, in her estimation, is guaranteed to be innocent of harm. (“Damn” may not be overly troublesome in a public presentation, but what about the gender-loaded curses “bitch” or “dick,” for example?) The Loon would like harm thought about clearly, though, rather than obfuscated in clouds of “but that’s unprofessional!” or “it harms our image!” Nobody died and made you Dui, and librarianship assuredly doesn’t need another Dui anyway. Dui was a loon, and not the good kind, where the limits of permissible appearance and conduct among librarians are concerned.1
The Loon came into being because the allowable boundaries of “professional” discourse forced her invention. She is, in other words, the creation of fear. She asks herself, today and always, Cui malo? and works hard not to cause undue harm, knowing herself to be an irascible and quick-reacting bird. She does believe, however, that some claimed harms are spurious… and that librarianship is impoverishing and wrongly homogenizing its stock of professionals by its own lack of tolerance.
- Garrison, Dee. Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920. New York: The Free Press, 1979. ↩
Your characterization of the criticism of “unprofessional behaviour” as “a weapon wielded against those who do not look, act, or think Just Like Us” allowed me to connect the dots: the demand for “professionalism” from critics, especially critics who do not act or think Just Like Us, is a very specialized, context specific form of privileged derailing of the discussion.
It is, but that is not all it is, the Loon thinks. It is not used only to exclude expression, but to exclude people as well.
Hear hear. You are not the only one who came into existence because of the fear and the lack of professionalism from certain so-called professionals. I read this today somewhere else, and it seems applicable. When it comes to ALA (and those celebrity folk, so on), you can be public or you can show candor. You can’t do both at the same time (not if you expect to come out unscathed).