5 - Taxonomizing Desire

Summary

The Oxford English Dictionary is the focus of this chapter, which combines an examination of the printed dictionary with an exploration of the draft materials that went into making it. From 1884 to the appearance of its first Supplement in 1933, the OED’s documentation of same-sex lexis far outstripped that of any earlier dictionary. Yet the editors’ commitment to objectivity did not prevent them from reproducing many of the traditional biases of their precursors. At the same time, the rise of sexology in Britain led to the emergence of new taxonomies of erotic desire, ushering into public discourse terms such as homosexuality, bisexuality, inversion, and uranism. While much of the scientific literature cast same-sex attraction as a psychological disturbance, other discourses soon emerged in the writing of apologists and activists who rejected pathologization, whether by reclaiming taxonomic terms, coining new, affirmative identity labels, or refusing to be classified altogether. The chapter inspects how the OED’s compilers grappled with representing these dominant and dissident usages, pulled as they were between the demands of scientific principles and social scruples.