Historically Claiming People as Trans

Wow. Fascinating: www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/06/28/how-castration-and-opera-changed-the-skeleton-of-19th-century-singer-pacchierotti/#7f2544962b75

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Cashier

Irishwoman Jennie Hodgers who disguised herself as a man to join the US army at a time when women could do pretty much nothin, has been retrospectively transed.

Like the man in the recording. They will have the same physical structure, eg taller than they would naturally be, longer bones, longer chest. Lengthened male body with vocal cords still at pre puberty. So not the same sound as a woman.

I've variously seen Joan of Arc, the (possibly fictitious) Pope Joan, Raclyffe Hall and Elizabeth I posthumously declared trans (I think the one on Elizabeth I was that she was intersex thinking about it)

I read something very interesting on the BBC about vasectomy the other day

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-44632151

"One of the biggest reasons Africans have not embraced vasectomy, according to experts, is that many men are still ignorant and misinformed.

"Some people equate it with castration, because they think all the genitals are cut off and you remain like a woman," says Dr Charles Ochieng, a vasectomist at Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK), a sexual health NGO."

This statement jumped out at me. It demonstrates nicely:

Male as default
Woman as like a man but substandard - with bits missing

The rest of the article shows up the issues around extreme masculinity (gender) - essentially forcing poeple into having children they don't want, women having to go though all the pregnancies etc - and all to "prove" the masculinity of the man.

The entire atricle is rendered menaingless if you try to put newspeak terms onto it.

But my main point - is a boy without a willy a girl? No, a girl is a distinct entity in her own right, not a "non man".

lol @ bots.

Women and girls are not oppresed because of our gender , come on.

Tell us more about how biological sex is a social construct and distinct from reproductive class please.

SirVix, that's an interesting point. Will male children who have puberty delayed and are then castrated (sorry, have their gender confirmation surgery) sing like women or like the man in the recording? Like the man in the recording, I'd imagine. We'll find out soon enough.

I am another who was also thinking that castrati voices will now be audible again, with boys chemically castrated at ten. Incredibly sad.

Also the reduction to all women and girls in the world to "members of the reprosuctive class that generally can gestate babies when mature and before menopause" - while that's what woman / girl / female used to mean - really does reduce us absolutely to our reproductive role. Reproduction is what our oppression is abased on - so women girl female no longer means that, so trans people with those names can aviod oppression, that will be reserved for "reproductive class that can gestate babies" which of course includes transmen, confirming that no they can't opt out of oppression.

Trans people can avoid oppression by using etymology games?

Is anyone actually living in the real world on this forum or is it bots??

The sum total of all oppression in the world is not that just put onto women for their reproductive capability, multiple groups are being oppressed.

And yet the current GC brigade are fighting tooth and nail to uphold a binary where that distinction of oppression continues to be front and centre.

Whereas trans people across the binary and non-binary spectrum, are literally the ones blowing it wide open.

That would be a no from me as well - but that's partly our cultural background playing into that.

Caffarelli - is one castrato from a wealthy background who despite having an income left him by a grandmother chose that path.

Um, maybe. Although lots of people do terribly disfiguring things to themselves in the pursuit of fame/notoriety eg those women who had impossibly large breast implants that massively impacted their health and well-being etc. Wealth doesn’t not protect from self-esteem/mental health problems or rampant ambition.

Plus, Caffarelli must have, by definition, been a child when making that decision. Can we know that it was truely informed consent or that he wasn’t groomed by an adult who may have stood to materially gain from that decision?

Perhaps he was happy and had no regrets. Regardless of cultural context though, I’m fairly comfortable with labelling it an abusive practice and tbf so must the operatic world otherwise it would never have fallen out of fashion (or perhaps the novelty just wore off -I don’t know).

I spot a new change to language that has been introduduced into this thread.

So, biological sex and "reproductive class" are to be decoupled.

Biological sex is to be defined as a social construct relating to primary AND secondary sex characteristics, presumably as surgery / hormones etc can impact these things and disupt their function / the look of them, it can be claimed that trans people who have had any such treatments are literally the oppisite biological sex.

Male / female is a sex marker so that has gone.

All that is left is "biological class" and I don't hold out much hope for that either given we have had trans women saying that their inability to gestate babies puts them in the same category as infertile women. In fact, with the new categorisation, yes they are infertile women (while possibly simulataneously being able to impregnate a woman in practice or in theory).

Also the reduction to all women and girls in the world to "members of the reprosuctive class that generally can gestate babies when mature and before menopause" - while that's what woman / girl / female used to mean - really does reduce us absolutely to our reproductive role. Reproduction is what our oppression is abased on - so women girl female no longer means that, so trans people with those names can aviod oppression, that will be reserved for "reproductive class that can gestate babies" which of course includes transmen, confirming that no they can't opt out of oppression.

Interesting to see how these ideas develop.

First girl / woman went
Now female
The word that is for "reproductive class etc" - there isn't one (yet). I suspect there won't be one, but the oppression will ocntinue as is.

This is the end point that many feminists have been pointing to for years - literal erasure from language and therefore how to identify issues & organise - and for years have been told don't be silly it won't come to that.

I think keep pressuring to lock the page. It is probably something they are reluctant to do (given the nature of the site), but some pages do attract (false) editing. Nearly every feminist one for starters. They love digging the edit boot in there.

OP - that suggestion to lock the wiki page sounds like an excellent suggestion.

That castrato clip... just disturbing, I made it just 30 seconds.

And sadly, they will have quite a number of castrati skeleton in the future to 'study' (making it clear, that's a 'no' from me, doing this to children). The long term health problems these children will suffer, gets swept under the rug. All in the name of "progressiveness". Call me a dinosaur then.

I do think there is an underlying “men can do woman better than women” trope underpinning it all

I am of that opinion. Why else?
I love female opera singers. Really don't like male ones.

*Explain - how do other mammals reproduce? How does the male and the female recognise each other, mate and rear young in each species? Are they all deluded as well?

You seriously can't argue with this level of deceit. Believe this rubbish if you want, but stop trying to indoctrinate other people with it.*

I already said reproductive class is one thing.
Sex is based on primary and secondary sex characteristics, all of which we currently use in discussions of medicine/social patterns etc are groups of man-made distinctions, and amongst others that were discarded....... those are arbitrary man-made decisions, about where we draw the line between different clusters of outcomes.

Quote..
"This entry examines the relationship between the concepts of “sex” and “gender” as used in theory and research. When scholars initially distinguished these two concepts, sex represented “biological” differences, while gender represented “social” differences. Today, many gender scholars problematize this distinction and understand both sex and gender as socially constructed categories of difference. Gender is the preferred term to refer to masculine and feminine identities as well as average differences between men as a group and women as a group. Intersex, transgender, and non‐binary gender identities have been used to theorize the relationship between sex and gender."

People ignore the oppression of women; but as soon as men decide they are affected, they suddenly give a shit. Go figure.

Anyway... I see you are completely unable to engage with the substance of the discussion, preferring to instead continue tub thumping re your ideology and deploying whataboutery.. this makes you look like a fundamentalist and if there is one thing that is consistent across societies it’s a distaste for fundamentalists TBH.

lol, someone disagreed with your ideology and you went off on one?
I'm the fundamentalist?? Your joking right? jeez.

garam Mon
binary sex isn't material reality its a social construct as much as gender

Explain - how do other mammals reproduce? How does the male and the female recognise each other, mate and rear young in each species? Are they all deluded as well?

You seriously can't argue with this level of deceit. Believe this rubbish if you want, but stop trying to indoctrinate other people with it.

Would that sound be worth mutilating a child for though? That would be a no from me.

That would be a no from me as well - but that's partly our cultural background playing into that.

Caffarelli - is one castrato from a wealthy background who despite having an income left him by a grandmother chose that path.

Senesino is more typical castrated by his parents in hope of lifting his family out of poverty.

I do think there is an underlying “men can do woman better than women” trope underpinning it all

I have wondered if that was there as well - but then there is only one recording and it's not great and despite caveats that the guy was past it does make you wonder if it was all or some of it was in the audience perception.

We are not talking about other types of oppression. We are specifically talking about gender based oppression.

Binary sex is not a social construct, never mind the claim it is as socially constructed as gender.

Anyway... I see you are completely unable to engage with the substance of the discussion, preferring to instead continue tub thumping re your ideology and deploying whataboutery.. this makes you look like a fundamentalist and if there is one thing that is consistent across societies it’s a distaste for fundamentalists TBH.

Having a bigger chest is not massively helpful in singing really high notes though.

To sing soprano/flute or whistle notes you need thin vocal chords with good chord closure. You use a tiny amount of air, released at high pressure. If you use to much air the vocal folds blow apart and the voice would crack. A larger lung volume would help with sustaining a note though and the larger skull of a male would change the resonance somewhat and would give a unique sound, I’m sure. Would that sound be worth mutilating a child for though? That would be a no from me.

That choral clip was beautiful but it is not impossible for a counter tennor, with good technique, to be able to extend into the soprano range even without castration. I do think there is an underlying “men can do woman better than women” trope underpinning it all. I remember reading years ago that the notion that church choirs needed to be all male because prepubescent boys voices were more pure than girls but when blind tested, you couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

If you can’t understand that giving people gender based labels, not binary sex which is material reality, is how the oppression works whether those labels are based on binary sex or based on identity then that is where you come into conflict with GC people and that is also why these proposed reforms will fail to remove the oppression - for everyone, all the trans people under stonewall’s umbrella...

binary sex isn't material reality its a social construct as much as gender, it's based on an arbitary list of characteristics.

If you want to say reproductive class is a material reality, you may have a point, but people are not just oppressed because of their reproductive class, especially in social settings where someone trans can pass as a woman and face the same oppression's regardless of 'born reproductive class', yes women face the brunt of it because of numbers and their reproductive class, but so do lgbt people across the spectrum.

This is plain common sense, and the majority are beginning to understand more and more how this plays out in terms of trans identities around the world.