The Tate transes Marlow Moss

Great article from Nicole Lampert about this here: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-transing-of-marlow-moss

She points out that Moss isn't the only woman who the Tate has done this to:

A brief glance at the Tate online shows that Marlow isn’t the only female artist who have been “deadclaimed”. Claude Cahun, an androgynous French photographer and artist who assumed a variety of male and female performative characters but always referred to herself as “elle” is also given “they/ them” pronouns.

perhaps we should all write letters to the Director of Tate, Maria Balshaw, and the Chair of Trustees, Roland Rudd, or other trustees, c/o Tate Britain, Millbank, London, GB SW1P 4RG

you can see list of other Trustees here: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/board-trustees

I didn’t know about this artist. An old Guardian article is interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/25/marlow-moss-cornwalls-forgotten-art-maverick-tate-britain

Apologies! Was flitting between here and Twitter and may have seen similar on there too.

I think that kind of approach to historical figures is becoming more common. There has always been some of it, the "Jesus was really a hippy" kind of stuff, but I'm seeing it more in what I'd have thought would be grown-up settings with more nuance.

I think maybe it's in part enabled because so many people do have a poor understanding of history, they make crude comparisons but don't know enough to make better ones. And pop culture is very heavily pushing certain historical narratives even when they are clearly anachronistic or even simple ahistorical. Many people seem to think this is the right way to understand history.

I posted on another thread about Marlow where she was being used to prop up a ‘trans people have always been around’ argument. She was used, as was James Barry, and some women who fought in the Civil War (USA) under men’s names.

This retrospective transing of women escaping negative sexist discrimination really has to stop.

She’s a butch lesbian. Lots of women presented in that way in that historical period. It was fairly standard.

The essay is much better.

I do think it is legitimate to say 'due to x, y and z, Marlow Moss had a masculine persona'. Also an academic perspective on why she very clearly was not a transman in the modern sense, and what has changed in medicine and the culture since then, would be interesting.

Maybe it offends me because it's so stupid. Like saying Oliver Cromwell was a Marxist or something. It flattens the whole of culture and history into a single ahistorical evenly lit scene.

How dare they do that to her. Who the heck do they think they are?!

I wonder if she has any relatives and what they think about this.

Did I read something today pointing out this only applies to the children's texts in the Tate and not the general blurb for the public?

Apologies if I've misunderstood. But somehow the inconsistency is worse?

'We have tonnes of words to describe gender that didn't exist back then'

I wonder why they don't just add a few scribbles to her paintings? A Progress flag icon maybe, or a bit of hentai? After all, we have tonnes of images used to identify queerness now that they didn't have back then.

Oh, ffs, sorry about the spelling above.

The Tate I believe is also the gallery which called The Ressurection: Cooham, a racist painting, because the artist tried to show people of various races rising from the grave.

They don't actually care about art.

Oh FFS. Women are only just starting to get recognised for the achievements men took credit for and then this!

I have a hard time caring if Mormon baptize the dead. Even they say that unless said dead people agree to it in the afterlife, it doesn't count, and really, it makes no attempt to erase the past.

Claiming people had identities they didn't is a rather different thing. Though I wouldn't say this is the first kind of attempt, we often look at historical figures through category lenses that didn't exist at the time. And there have been attempts to make other figures more interesting by completely inventing history for them, like Mary Anning. People seem to think it's ok because it promotes (they imagine) something they believe in, and who knows, it could be true.

Tate St Ives links to Moss's Wikipedia article for her bio, which uses exclusively female pronouns for her. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/marlow-moss-1671

The visitor feedback form links to: [email protected]

This has really upset me. Misogyny, homophobia, gaslighting and indoctrination of children.

I can't remember where I first saw something about this. Absolutely shocking. And yet apparently there is no lesbian erasure going on as a result of the truly homophobic gender identity ideology. Pull the other one!

"Sharing your pronouns is a great way to make people feel comfortable with sharing theirs!"Alternatively, it's a great way to let people know that you're a navel-gazing twat, and to give you a wide berth! 👍👍

They also posthumously baptise Jews murdered in the Holocaust, which makes me feel physically ill.