To feel sympathy to the National Trust volunteers at Felbrigg Hall?

Trans women are men

It's all a bit of a gimmick really

I was thinking about James Barry too, apparently English Heritage have decided she was a trans man. Ludicrous is the kindest description.

I said before, it wasn't one incident it was the last incident, like the final straw.

I think it was mainly to do with the response granny got when she mentioned it later on.

TestTubeTeen, as I said before I chose not to make a fuss at the time as I didn't want to embarrass the friends who had chosen where to meet up. I let the NT know afterwards but they really weren't interested. I won't support them, plenty of other nice places to go. We have some nice English Heritage places we go to and their staff/volunteers are lovely.

lucydogz could you be anymore patronizing?

Granny: I'm not telling you how to react.
Observing that you risk 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' is an observation / opinion of mine, and I am entitled to it.

It is outrageous that your family we're treated as you were. They belong to all of us. You have chosen never to enter NT properties (and land?) again. That is your choice. You could have filled in a visitor card as your choice as an alternative.

TestTubeTeen, I'm not cutting off my nose thanks. I can live quite happily with the NT, plenty of other things to do. I'm glad you haven't experienced the same thing but please don't tell me how I should react.

She had to pretend to be a man to do what she needed to do, that doesn't make her trans imo. We are all individuals and this labelling feels wrong

Oh, yes! I wasn't thinking of Barry but I agree, it's the same thing. So many people will insist on saying she 'is' trans. The reality is that we do not know. I agree with you saying we're reducing people's experiences when we do this.

LRD that makes me think of Dr James Barry who lived as a man but was born a woman. She qualified as a doctor, joined the army, improved conditions for wounded soldiers and the native inhabitants, and performed the first caesarean section in which both the mother and child survived. An incredible woman who could not have done any of this as a woman in the 19th century and instead had to pose as a man. The trans movement wants to claim her as a trans hero, but I think that is revisionist as there is no evidence she assumed a male persona for anything except expediency. She apparently had male lovers and may have given birth. A nineteenth century life is nor the same as a 21st century life and in trying to make historical figures represent our current issues we, in fact, reduce them in trying to fit them into a box too small to accommodate their individual, amazing, experience.

Bemused it states:
There’s a scarecrow for roughly each continent plus a few extra historical characters to add to the fun. So alongside Ari the Maori, you’ll also find Vadik the Viking staring fiercely out from amongst the vegetables.
Regulus the Roman is keeping watch over his section while Pierre the Parisian is riding high on a bicycle atop one of the sloping beds.
All 12 scarecrows have been given authentic names from the nations they represent and it may be that visitors recognise a name from their own country.
Personally, I would struggle to be offended by that, but I can see how some people might take offence by the mix of historic and present day.

Incidentally, when you thought that someone's sexuality was 'alluded to' in his house, it makes me wonder. There's a character I've done some work on, who everyone in the 1990s was convinced was a gay man. There were loads of articles written about it - because he slept with men and cross-dressed in order to hang around soliciting men to sleep with. Loads of people interpreted the cross-dressing as an 'obvious' part of gay culture, by analogy to Canal Street.

These days it is the fashion to claim, instead, that this character is patently trans. She cross-dressed, and even had sex with men while cross-dressing, so clearly she identified as a woman.

In just a couple of decades, there's been a total about-turn in terms of interpretations, and there are people who get very acrimonious and very certain they're 'right' about the sexuality/gender of this person, who died centuries ago.

Myself, I'm pretty sure we simply can't know - and more than that, we can't even begin to expect that a long dead person would have understood or related to our terminology and our concepts, used to describe their lived experience.

I don't think having an heir is proof of anything very much. Certainly not proof he would have wanted the NT to do this. Plenty of people don't procreate (and some notoriously otherwise-inclined people, such as Oscar Wilde, do procreate).

I'm saying it's anachronistic to apply terms like 'gay' to people who lived in times where the term (and the reality it describes) weren't in use.

We can certainly talk about histories that are of interest in a LGBT context. I can think of various places (Sissinghurst, but also Anne Lister's home) that would seem suitable - because their owners left us enough evidence to suggest that they were interested in making their sexuality visible and were conscious of it being a same-sex sexuality. Even there, though, I would shrink away from slapping on anachronistic labels like 'gay' or 'LGBT'.

The problem with a term like 'gay' is that it describes a reality that might be totally different from Ketton-Cremer's actual life or feelings about that life.

How do you know if someone is gay? They have sex with men? Well, so did many Ancient Greek men who saw it as an entirely routine part of every man's sex life and entirely compatible with sex and marriage with women. They form intense relationships with the same sex and discuss how physically attractive those other men are? There was a huge fashion for this in the 1920s (not coincidentally, just after WWI), and many men did not see it as anything but an aesthetic and affectionate practice.

It's really hard to know how to interpret the sexuality of someone who lived in a different time. To take clues and say 'oh, they were clearly gay' is fundamentally wrong, especially when that person might find it upsetting or hurtful. We must remember that, even if we all think being gay is perfectly acceptable, it may have been a source of real shame for this man, and not how he would have wanted to be remembered.

Granny.
My family are not white. Thankfully in tne many trust houses we have visited we have not encountered any dodgy behaviour at all, though the description of one famous residents colonial attitudes and behaviour had me raising my eyebrows at one point.

The NT actually belongs to you. The NT holds these properties on OUR behalf. They are given to the nation. All you have to do is fill in the visitor feedback card to give them a chance to deal with it. They are not a commercial company you are boycotting and blocking profit, you run the risk of cutting off your nose to spite your face!

LRD: he planned, consciously, to give Felbrigg to the NT because he would not be having an heir.

It has been known for people to marry and have heirs as 'cover ', to keep the line going etc DESPITE their homosexuality (arguably much of the history of Sissinghurst sits here).

Are you saying that there have been no LBGT owners / residents in the history of properties now owned by the NT? How is it anachronistic to point out that there must have been?

I went to a property not mentioned on this thread this year. You can only visit by arrangement and go on a guided tour. After a while it became obvious that the former owner had been gay. So many things were 'alluded to', and in the end I felt as if the (hugely informative and passionate volunteer) was avoiding the actual statement because our visitor sensibilities might need protecting. Which is surely insulting and ridiculous. Why didn't they just say? It influenced the way he lived and socialised and therefore built his house!

ShatnersWig I know it is easier if you report it at the time but it was a day out, I didn't want to embarrass the friends who chose the location. I can't do battle every day, although some days it feels like it and I've done my share over the last 40 years. For me I chose not to support them any more, their volunteers are their problem.

If that is the case, then my bad! I think, however, there was a placard giving the name of the scarecrow as a Muslim (they all had names, e.g. 'Pierre the Parisian').

I'm doubting myself now though! I'll have a look at my pictures when I get in.

n this case, the theme was supposed to be nations of the world, which apparently include France, the 'Viking' nation, the 'Roman' nation (?!), as well as the 'Muslim' nation.

The link clearly states that the scarecrow in the headscarf is representing India, not some "Muslim nation".

Bemused Now, I get you. It sounds a bit 'Allo 'Allo (but that hasn't been banned from repeats yet but then every single nation is stereotyped so perhaps that's why).

But then this is the stuff I don't get. It has fuck all to do with the NT's charitable aims. Invite a local school to make scarecrows, fine. Pay an artist to oversee some vaguely historical theme which has fuck all to do with both the NT charitable aims of the history of the particular property? Barking mad tick boxing exercise and a waste of money.

Shatners - sorry, I should have been clearer. I believe that the NT organised the whole scarecrow thing and choose the theme and that an artist 'helps' the schools.

In this case, the theme was supposed to be nations of the world, which apparently include France, the 'Viking' nation, the 'Roman' nation (?!), as well as the 'Muslim' nation. The problem is the total mixture of historical and folk dress with modern dress worn by average people in the UK every day (in what way is a Viking like a modern Muslim?), as well as the xenophobic 'othering' of using scarecrows for children to explore other cultures.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/trengwainton-garden/features/around-the-world-in-12-scarecrows-at-trengwainton-garden

What the volunteers need to understand is that it is entry fees that keep the NT alive and telling gay people they aren't welcome is obviously a bad idea

How is not wearing a badge telling anyone they aren't welcome? Don't be so silly.

. But amongst them there was a stereotypical xenophobic caricature of a Frenchman (stripy top and garlic) and a 'Muslim' scarecrow (dressed in a normal headscarf and Shalwa Kameez, of the kind you see every day in any major UK city). It felt very 'othering', bordering on insulting, particularly because these were actual scarecrows in an actual garden

I can see the issue with the French scarecrow, but how is a scarecrow in a headscarf a bad thing? It's not othering, its the exact opposite, its presenting it as a normal part of the make up of society. It's quite possible it was made by muslim children to represent themselves.