The Brontes have been 'queered'

@MrsWhattery I think you’re mainly having a rhetorical argument with yourself. I’m far more interested in Shakespeare than I am in trans.

The world would be a better place without gender, and a truly progressive society would recognise that instead of reinforcing it through concepts like gender identity & preferred pronouns.

@NoBinturongsHereMate The discussion was not about trans but about gender in Shakespeare. I haven’t mentioned trans once. My point was simply that “gender non-conformism” and “living as a gender different from your birth sex” has been around for a long time.

I don’t disagree with the rigidity in some cases, but that is a general feature of ancient/traditional cultures - like the caste system; and the claim about the status of these genders isn’t necessarily true - the Lakota Winkte could be elders and medicine men, the Hirjas were involved in religious rites and educating spiritual initiates. Either way it’s not relevant to the conversation.

Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders

Historically, there have always been two sexes, and a whole lot of people who either did or didn't adhere to or fit within the stereotypes and expectations prescribed for their sex by their society. People conformed or rebelled to varying degrees. "Gender" and gender expression has always been a huge spectrum. It's part of the promulgation of stereotypes and prescribed roles to pretend that hasn't happened, but it has.

Special "gender" groups and categories evolved in some societies as a place to put awkward customers who weren't fitting in and remove them from mainstream society. It is as far from "acceptance" as you can get. Different societies had different solutions - for example in Europe gay men could be bundled off into the priesthood, and women who refused to marry to a nunnery. (Where some of them probably had a happy lesbian life.) More recently, theatre was a subculture where gay men could be more accepted and also conveniently sidelined them.

Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

See this is the problem. This is why it's harmful and regressive. You can only "live as a different gender to your birth sex" if you believe that your sex HAS a "gender", and that gender, i.e. set of restrictive stereotypes, actually belongs to that sex and should rightly accompany it. Therefore to leave that stereotype behind is to somehow leave your sex behind and "live as" something other.

No. A woman can be a woman and say no to gender stereotypes. As Charlotte Bronte so rightly said, women should be free to "seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex". Doing that doesn't make you not a woman. It just makes you a free, unrestricted woman. And if you do think it makes you not a woman, but some other "gender", then you're betraying all other women because you're essentially saying restrictions and stereotypes are fine for them, and for women in general.

Damn good point.

My local museum is wheeling out an exhibition about a woman who they claim was a lesbian - and she probably was, although spinsters living with female companions can just as easily be just that and nothing more.

I'm sad for the person at the centre of the exhibition though, because even if she was a lesbian, she most likely wouldn't have wanted to have been outed. There's something very disrespectful IMO about making claims about dead people's sexualities, especially on scant evidence, and especially when in their time it would have been severely punishable to be outed.

Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders - the Hijra in India, the Muxe in Mexico, the Winkte in Native American culture to name a few. Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

Oh, here we go.

What do all these 'traditional third gender cultures' have in common?

1. They are always ones with incredibly rigid sex roles (and generally ones that are particularly awful to women).

2. The 'third gender' is always just that. A third one. Men do not become women, women do not become men - they become whatever the third option is, which is a separate thing with its own equally rigid rules.

And in almost all cases the third option is below men in the social hierarchy. If it's a role for women to move into they end up above ordinary women but always a long way below men. If it's for men to move into they may end up above or below women, but below ordinary men.

It has little or nothing in common with the modern western concept of trans.

they don't seem to be endlessly trying to make transwomen out of historical long-haired men, or men who were effeminate or romantic.

Funny that. It's not as if they'd be short of options if they wanted to.

Fluid sexuality simply means your sexuality isn’t fixed. He seems to swing both ways and it’s not possible to pin down which is most representative. The cross dressing and playing out of different roles is a way of exploring this fluidity.

I wouldn’t say the homosexual bawdy relates much more to the relations between the characters.

Homosexuality has been around forever so has gender non-conformism. Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders - the Hijra in India, the Muxe in Mexico, the Winkte in Native American culture to name a few. Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

I couldn’t possibly speculate on Shakespeare’s approach to gender identity, he blurs the boundaries more than any other writer of his time. Either way I differentiate his approach to the Brontes.

The only 'sneering condescension' I could see was you saying 'No shit' when another poster pointed out that Virginia Woolf was a different person from William Shakespeare, writing centuries afterwards, and therefore her works were irrelevant to his.

This is another example of the appaling treatment of women. The trans movement will not allow any female heroine (history or arts) to be female. They did the same repugnant maligning of Joan of Ark, claiming she was trans. In their perverted mindset any female who has acheieved anything of note must really be male. Stonewall has a lot to answer for.

Yes it's odd isn't it. Trans men don't get a lot of the limelight generally, but they're suddenly everywhere when it comes to trying to deny gender non-conforming women's achievements of yore. And yet they don't seem to be endlessly trying to make transwomen out of historical long-haired men, or men who were effeminate or romantic. "We were always here," as long as that involves erasing women.

This is why I am on Mumsnet.

Thank you so much to all you learned women.

My reading list is now set for the summer - WS, Wolf and the Brontes.

I think I was the first to mention Shakespeare. Introducing another writer doesn’t justify sneering condescension.

You're the one who brought up Virginia Woolf when everyone else was talking about Shakespeare...

But her given name wasn't Ellis. It was Minnie.

@Flickersy

You didn't say anything about their legacy being queered. You said the Brontës had been queered

You are seriously splitting hairs here...

Cunk on Terf

I think we need Cunk to do a mockumentary on queer history. She could do some cracking interviews with these museum professionals writing all this bollox.

The only reason they chose sexless names, was because they wouldn't be published under their own female names. The trans movement have no scruples or sense. They won't miss a trick to promote their deceitful ideology.

This is another example of the appaling treatment of women. The trans movement will not allow any female heroine (history or arts) to be female. They did the same repugnant maligning of Joan of Ark, claiming she was trans. In their perverted mindset any female who has acheieved anything of note must really be male. Stonewall has a lot to answer for.

FWR field trip anyone??😁

There may not be a Bakewell Pudding Museum but I can recommend the Bakewell Pudding Shop (on its pages you will find a brief history of the eponymous pudding, and the difference between a Bakewell Pudding and a Bakewell Tart).
https://www.bakewellpuddingshop.co.uk/

There is also the Bakewell Old House Museum for those who prefer the genuine museum experience
https://www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk/

@JustSpeculation
I think they were male names, but with just enough ambiguity for the Bronté sisters to believe that they had not practised a deception on their readers.

Androgenous and unisex don't mean the same thing. Unisex means have no sex markers, while androgenous means having characteristics of both sexes. So were the Brontes' literary monikers unisex or androgynous? I'm a bit confused after reading this thread.

His own sexuality was famously fluid

He may have been attracted to men/a man as well as being married to a woman. That would make him possibly gay (lots of gay men lived normal heterosexual-seeming lives in the past) or bi - not "fluid". Our understanding of his sexuality may well be fluid and/or uncertain. It doesn't mean he was.

And yes there may have been some homosexual-themed joking and visual comedy in some of the scenes where boys are playing women - though as PPs say, not all, as boys would also play serious dramatic or tragic parts like Gertrude or Hermione.

But what does that have to do with gender identity? Homosexuality really has been around forever. Queer theory, and "identifying as" a sex you are not in some kind of mystical way that means other people are supposed to believe you literally are the opposite sex (as opposed to wearing a disguise for logical reasons), have not "always been here" at all. Shakespeare, like Charlotte Bronte, would have had no truck with someone's idea of themselves as the opposite sex trumping their actual sex. People's actual sex was core to the stories.