What do people think of the retrospective "transing" of women in history?

It gives me the towering fucking rage. Ignorant, ahistorical and dishonest. Those arseholes are even after fictional characters like Jo from Little Women, they won't be happy til women have nothing left.

It's a disgrace and completely undermines what many of these women had to endure to be taken seriously.

It was intended to be a cautionary tale about men, and continues to be. Riley would be the perfect wolf, wearing Grandmas skin and telling Red to get over herself when she points out the obvious.

I think second wavers are the Grandma AND the Woodsman who slays the Wolf!n

I was reading about this find the other day, and the first thing that popped into my head was this retrospective transing

You know, the more I think about it, that tale sounds like a cautionary tale for young girls who use the internet on their own for the first time.

Second wave feminism would be the grandmother, the mother is the parents who would prefer for their child to only use websites they have pre-approved (stay on the path), the wolf is a TRA, and the flowers she wants to pick might be funny cat videos and other nice stuff you can find on tumblr.

Riley whatsit would say ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME, it's all the fault of cis-women.

I imagine Riley whatsit would say that although RRH is perfectly free to decide she doesn't want to get eaten by the wolf just because he has a wolf body and she fetishizes Grandma bodies for her own reasons, she does need to address her transphobia.... or at least not go on and on about how Grandma is a wolf, because that can really hurt her feelings and is basically violence

The same paper despises appropriation but has no problem with the appropriation of women, living and dead.

I have heard recently that Cathy in Wuthering Heights is a bit trans, because of the 'I am Heathcliffe' speech

That's an interesting theory.

Are the radfems on mumsnet all a bit trans ourselves? After all, most of us at one time said "I am Spartacus", so ...

It might be more apposite to read the Wolf in Red Riding Hood as an undiagnosed transwoman...

No male who isn't trans would ever don women's clothes to invade women's spaces or gain access to vulnerable young girls, so OF COURSE the wolf is a transwoman. And also, Little Red Riding Hood was an evil terf who clearly deserves being assaulted, because otherwise the TRAs would have to explain how it is possible that both claims - that sex offenders never would wear women's clothes to invade women's spaces, and that all transwomen are saintly and innocent and harmless - can be true at the same time.

Maybe I shall leave special instructions in my will for my remains to be disinterred some years after my death so that the decomposition of my hips can be examined to see whether I was really a man all along.

Okay, slightly off topic, but what is this about the decomposition of hips? Is it common for bones to decompose in a way that makes it impossible to tell the sex of the skeleton or make a female skeleton appear male?
With those skeletons that turned out to be female and have swords with them, such a lack of clear distinction could explain why male scientists made that mistake, but I think it is more likely that they didn't really look at the hips.

I wonder when TRA are going to start claiming these people, identifying as women, as their own:

Never. They operate according to the No True Scotsman fallacy - every transwoman who turned out to be violent never was a true trans anyway. Unless the male violence can be mansplained away, as is the case with dudes like Caitlyn Jenner, who admitted to stealing teen daughters' underpants and is praised for this, instead of being considered a pervy creep, which would be the normal reaction.

But the stupidity and obviously dangerous political implications of doing that means it won't happen, obviously!

I have heard recently that Cathy in Wuthering Heights is a bit trans, because of the 'I am Heathcliffe' speech

It might be more apposite to read the Wolf in Red Riding Hood as an undiagnosed transwoman.....

Offensive and stupid. Really, really, stupid.

What about the men who dressed as women to temporarily gain advantage? E.g Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the US Civil war - he is supposed to have dressed as a woman to elude capture by Union soldiers as the war ended. Was he trans? Utter rubbish.

Maybe I shall leave special instructions in my will for my remains to be disinterred some years after my death so that the decomposition of my hips can be examined to see whether I was really a man all along.

Or - hopefully - by the time I am long gone, such a notion would be recognised for the insanity that it truly is

It's no coincidence that transwomen make a name for themselves in business, arts, politics and sport but transmen are only famous for having babies And so many MtTs wait until they have made it (with male privilege) before the 'big reveal'.

Radcliffe Hall is so sad because that is also about the destruction of dyke history.

Not directly to do with historical women, but I watched a a french film called "Tomboy", about the struggles of a 10 year old girl with short hair who moves to a new area, is mistaken for a boy, and decides to keep up the pretence.

This film, massively, massively resonated with me as how I was as a child. Of course she wants to be a boy, boys get to do all the cool stuff! (To be clear, at no point does she actually say she wants to be a boy). She might grow up to be a lesbian, as there is some childish romantic interest between her male alter-ego and the only other girl in the group of neighborhood kids.

Almost all the reviews of the film I have read refer to her as a transboy, despite there being no evidence of this in the film. Yes, the film is about gender non conformity, and fitting in, but that doesn't make her trans!

Ridiculous

thanks AdalindSchade will try and get it on catch up.

It was a program on the radio a few weeks ago. Part of their queer history season. A woman stated that Radcliffe hall was part of both lesbian and trans history

I wonder when TRA are going to start claiming these people, identifying as women, as their own:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40480305

Historical female pioneers who had to act as men to gain progress for women acted in ways which benefitted all women against stereotypes. I don't think transmen are doing the same thing. It is an interesting question what they are doing and why, but it is definitely not the same thing.

While of course transwomen are reinforcing the stereotype of women while, in the case of TAs, retaining the attitude of male entitlement.

It's the same as the cultural appropriation transactivists practice. It's all trying to "prove" that being trans is somehow innate, across time and culture.

I thought it was really sad. Albert was already living as a man by the time he joined up and stayed living as a man his entire life.

And then at the end, when he had dementia and was all confused anyway he was forced into a dress and he didn't even know how to walk around in it without tripping. Broke my heart a bit. He didn't deserve that.

AdalindSchade
Radcliffe Hall has been claimed as part of transgender history by radio 4. Not a joke.

when was this ?