Mary Rose Museum's Queer Lense

Assuming I've got the right person, yes. She'd written something about hair and femme and queer elsewhere, so I suspect it is her.

There were 82 in total. These nit combs would have been mainly used by the men to remove nits from their hair, rather than using the comb to style their hair (which would have usually been covered up by a hat).

So what did women do? Just scratch?

Good luck wearing a hat while you rammed shot into a cannon in about 34degrees in the darkness below decks, btw.

Was it a ChatGPT that wrote that guff about hairstyles and nit combs, or was it Google translated via Finnish, Chinese, French and Xhosa?

Who uses a nit comb to style their hair anyway?

It’s embarrassing.

Oh my good Lord. It reads like a parody.

Queer joy at Kew fungis and fungal.

@DontStealTheTeddy That was written by a Doctor? I know it's gender studies but even so...they really seem to have checked out. Calling it lip service is giving it a degree of rigour that really isn't warranted.

You cannot go to an art gallery, theatre or museum now without seeing something celebrating queerness, trans identities or something involving drag. I hate that I sound like Victor Meldrew but it's beyond parody.

It looked like it was written by an adult, I've just googled that name. Dr Hannah McCann is a lecturer in gender studies at the University of Melbourne.

I've no idea how people get paid to actually spout this kind of stuff.

@GrabbyGabby there is such an obvious flower joke there but I somehow think it would be deleted.

Please someone nearby go to this and report back.

I need to know about the queer joy of mushroom cabaret.

https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/queer-nature-after-hours

Kew Gardens also at it.
https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/queer-nature

Its fucking plants!

I gave it a wide berth when we were there. All that neat classification is just so very colonial.

Are there any reviews of this risible attempt at queering,online? I'm off to work with no t'internet shortly,but would like something to look forward to later.

Meh. It's everywhere in museum and gallery-land. It royally Fs me off.

I'm in Italy on my holidays and the Italians have no truck with this guff. It's, "here's a painting" and that's it. Or, "here's an old book with something interesting in it" without trying to pin it on something that's 21st century-trendy. I'm all in favour.

So true. It's all so paper thin isn't it?

I love how they don't assume the gender identity of crew mates or anyone onboard. What a world.

That these little add ones get commissioned that are so ephemeral and have nothing to do with historical content, however much trendy curators would like them to. It's nutty.

"Today, hairstyles are often heavily gendered, following the gender norm that men have short hair, and women have long hair. By ‘subverting’ and playing with gender norms, Queer people can find hairstyles that they feel comfortable wearing. "

They're a museum, and ignoring that while gender norms currently may be short hair men, long hair women, there have been plenty of periods in history where it's been the fashion for men to have long hair. Fashion, not something innate. FFS. Alongside hair been shorn off for fevers and so on. If you want long hair, go for it.

The Mary Rose is plenty interesting as it is, especially all the artefacts and the DNA evidence from where the crew members were from. I went a couple of years ago (after FiLiA.)

Here they are using nit combs to talk about hair.

"Today, hairstyles are often heavily gendered, following the gender norm that men have short hair, and women have long hair. By ‘subverting’ and playing with gender norms, Queer people can find hairstyles that they feel comfortable wearing. "

From the horses mouth, being 'queer' simply means having a haircut.

I think this exhibition is brilliant. Shows the inanity, shallowness and self obsession of the TQ+

It’s such a basic tenet of the study of history: do not superimpose modern ideas &/or mores onto the past. Somehow, though, this stuff is being waved through as acceptable - queering the field, never mind anything else.

@Motorina
Well, those who ID as trans-age might feel age euphoria over nits & nit combs?

(In case anyone reports to MNHQ claiming ⬆️ do not exist; some examples of TW who also ID as trans-age to demonstrate comment is fact-based: middle aged cricketer playing 12yo girls Telegraph, available at archive.ph]; Stefonknee Wolscht who IDs as 6yo girl Daily Star]; Sophie Eastwood who IDs as a baby Daily Record, NB discusses murder they committed] & Janiel Verainer who IDs as a dummy-sucking 5yo girl Kent Online, NB discussion paedophilia].)

I find it genuinely sad that we have regressed so far that some peopel genuinely believe long hair on men and short hair on women s a queer statement. Perfectly normal in 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s...

It won’t be like that at all in the museum!

It’s fabulous - as is all of the Historic Dockyard. Take the boat trip round the harbour because the guides are very good (we had a season ticket and they vary the commentary every time).

Definitely go to the submarine museum part at Gosport (I think they run a water taxi across?). You’ll be amazed at the size of the submarine, the guides are ex submariners and have lots of stories to tell.

Looks like somebody let the intern loose on the website.

That really was the most pointless exercise, and it’s a shame because the Mary Rose Museum is excellent.

Was lucky enough to meet one of the original team who pinpointed where to search in the Solent from contemporary paintings - absolutely fascinating. You can see a copy of the painting in the museum.

Agreed. The last bit (assuming it's true which, based on the quality of the rest of the scholarship, I can't rely on) about the Buggery Act is really interesting. Both the change from church to civil law, but also that it was only used once, to execute someone who was also accused of treason and witchcraft.

That suggests a fair amount of societal tolerance/turning a blind eye, at least up to 1806, when it appears that things changed. Why is that? What happened? Potentially an interesting bit of social history which is almost entirely lost in tosh about mirrors and gendered hairstyles.

That is the biggest pile of guff I’ve read in a long while.

Please write to them and ask. I am agog to hear how they phrase their answer. For instance they might bend over backwards to avoid admitting that they think it’s crap too, or they might let the new intern do it and tell you you are a bigot and they don’t want your custom.

I can’t see anywhere on there online site if this is actually part of the Physical Mary Rose exhibition or if it’s just online drivel

I have waited years until both my kids were interested enough in history to visit the dockyard and we plan to go later this month - they are so excited but I won’t pay the entry price if this sort of shite is spewing forth

Absolutely.
Or else the person who wrote this bilge could have done some actual research about what we do and don’t know about homosexuality in Tudor England and written a necessarily speculative but nonetheless informed piece about how it might have been to be ‘LGBT’ on the Mary Rose.
There are plenty of creative and imaginative approaches that could be used to come up with something both thought provoking and educational.

You're all laughing away, but without this blog I would never have known that sometimes queer people look in a mirror and don't like what they see, and sometimes they do. This is of course totally different from c*sheteronormative people who muddle through life with their gendered haircuts, completely oblivious to their appearance at all.