Historically Claiming People as Trans

[UglyCathKidstonBag]

Has anyone got any examples of this?
I’ve been reading a bit into Stonewall and how it was set up and one group seem to claim Sylvia Rivera as trans whilst others dispute this.

And Dante Tex Gill (who Scarlett J was set to play) is now being called trans which many people all dispute.

A woman I went to university with (who to be fair I only spoke to a few times) was, amongst the people who knew and lived with, always a lesbian. She was butch and used the unisex shortening of her name and always referred to herself as a woman.
Sadly she died about 18 months ago. Recently people outside of her social circle, at a uni event, starting calling her a “trans man” and have even changed her Wikipedia page to reflect their view point.

Are there further examples?

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

Those poor farm yard animals have yet to receive your memo.

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.

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

Garam (my phone autocorrects your name to “fatal”, funny that), you have very little knowledge of science but did you do a degree in Doublespeak before Gilead took over, you’re very proficient.

I believe they are looking into getting it locked but have come across a few road blocks.

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.

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.

SardinesAreYum

It’s chilling isn’t it?
I’d rather bang myself than let my DC grow up to face that world.

Garam you are despicable.

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).

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.

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

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 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".

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)

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.

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.

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

So any woman from history with 'balls' must a transman now?

What an effective way to write women out of history altogether.

Yes exactly Jaxhog.

By definition women are not "doers" - adventurers, risk takers, nor are they lovers of women.

Therefore any historical women who stepped outside the very very contrained gender role of their time MUST have been a man.

It is simply the latest iteraton of women and girls who achieved anything being removed from the historical record. Which then loops back as all histrorical actors are male, reinforcing the stereotype of women as passive objects (not active).

Did anyone else read that stuff about how Florence Nightingale was "the lady with the hammer" but it got chanegd to "the lady with the lamp" to be more palatable / in keeping with how women - even nurses on the frontline - are supposed to be quiet caring and essentially compliant.

If she were still the lady with the hammer -how long untilt it becomes the man with the hammer - as women don't break rules and and break stuff, do they. That definitely sounds more like the sort of thing a man would do...

Of course the achievements we make that we are allowed to make >> usually around home / children / kindness (charity) - are not deemed as as achiements in a patriarchal society and so these are not noted either.

MRAs say women and girls achieve nothing, they have done nothing for the human race through all of time.

This effort to declare women who acieved things that men recognise as achievements, as men, feeds into that view also.

It's all utterly sexist.

Thinking about gender non-conforming women in history I always recommend the not especially well-known novel Neverhome:

www.amazon.co.uk/Neverhome-Laird-Hunt/dp/0701188790?tag=mumsnetforum-21

Just because you want to live the life of a man, doesn't MAKE you a man!

A lot of us would dearly like the benefits of a man's role in society, without giving up being female. There is more to being female than wearing a dress!

It’ll be Bob from Blackadder next...
*sigh.
Agree so sexist. Handily any women doing anything groundbreaking outside the norms for their time are now in fact, men. So no amazing women at all, oh no.
Lots of stunning and brave men though. Natch.

Appear to have touched a nerve there! Oh dear!

Anyway, there can’t be any such thing as ‘gender non conforming’ if sex is not binary because without sex there is nothing to not/conform too is there... hence the worries of GC (non conforming) women about women and all non conforming people (especially transsexuals)....

Transing of dead people and people from other cultures and the claiming that women’s and gay men’s and lesbian’s achievements through history against the gender heirarchy is particularly diabolical IMO...

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'm happy to label many things as abusive practise – but the values I’m applying are ones I’ve absorbed form the society I’ve lived in and then thought upon and accepted or rejected.

I’m very down on incest – yet if I’d been born into Egyptian royalty at any point over a long time period it would have been normal to me.

changes in operatic taste and social attitudes spelled the end for castrati
Wikipedia suggest the above - sadly more likely fashion than concern for poor boys.

Transing of dead people and people from other cultures and the claiming that women’s and gay men’s and lesbian’s achievements through history against the gender heirarchy is particularly diabolical IMO...
Though this was my main point - put clearly and succulently by Offred.