Dr James Miranda Barry

[mammoon]

Never posted a thread before so apologies if I'm doing it wrong! Anyway, I thought this was of interest. A new book about Dr Barry is causing a meltdown on Twitter - twitter.com/EJLevy/status/1095759928667516928 . As far as I can see, all the books about Dr Barry consistently refer to them as a woman, but this latest book, unlike others, is being called transphobic, and the author and publisher are "cancelled".

There’s no way to prove whether Dr Barry identifies as male or female. The only certainty is that James presented as male in order to be allowed to be a doctor. Apparently the autopsy showed evidence of having given birth, and there were accusations of homosexual affairs, which suggests that Dr Barry had relationships with males.

what a bunch of whiners!

Isn't this just another way of writing women out of history?

Ever since the 1980s, feminist historians have done sterling work in seeking out and drawing attention to many notable women whose lives have just been written out of the record book by male historians.

Now those male historians have found a novel way of erasing those women: by retrospectively transing them. I guess the patriarchy will always find a way.

George Elliott will be next.

While the author is correct on this occasion she has written a lot of nonsense before. For example,

www.salon.com/2014/07/29/im_a_lesbian_marrying_a_man/

hackmum sounds about right.

George Elliott will be next.

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!! Jesus no, don't trans all the women writers too.

thewitchofwentworth woah that article is... I think if you're going to have a relationship with a man, you kind of have to admit to being bisexual.

Despite the accusations of terfery, I don't think this writer is coming from a feminist view particularly - she says she's accommodated the 'trans take' on Barry and doesn't have a straightforward view of gender/sex. But that isn't good enough for the trans cult! Nothing but complete and total capitulation is good enough.

Ok, that's an annoying article, thewitchofwentworth.

It's obviously not unheard of for a lesbian to be married. I made the choice to get married to a man myself when I still thought I was a lesbian, because I was convinced religiously that my sexuality was sinful and I hoped that marriage would solve that. I've since realized that actually, there are men I'm attracted to, and therefore I'm not going to claim to be lesbian, I must be bisexual. It's nonsense to cling to a label that is manifestly not true. I mean, ok, you found just one man in the sea of men who you fell in love with. I'm happy for you. But stop pretending you're a lesbian. It would be like me claiming to be an atheist, even though I discovered there was one God I did believe in.

Dr Barry was an amazing person who did what she had to do in order to provide for her family (her father had died leaving her mother and at least one sister iirc) and succeed in the profession she had chosen. There was an article on this book in the Spectator a while ago, and my recollection is that it was almost family decision that she should masquerade as a man in order to attend medical school. This was borne from necessity, not wokeness or a desire to be a man.

The posters on that twitter thread would do well to look at someone like Pili Hussein for a modern day example, not the Blue haired crew.

From the Twitter thread: There were plenty of places it was legal for women to practice medicine in the 19th century

I don't believe this to be true - does anyone know different?

What TRAs are saying that this woman, who achieved so much, must have had a male brain/soul... she couldn't have been a woman. Which is actually quite insulting.

Even if women were able to practice medicine at the time (I think it was about 100 years too early, maybe more), no woman would have been have been able to join the military and rise to such a high rank. At her death she was the second highest rank possible for a doctor in the army, which would have come with a nice salary and status which were unavailable to her as a woman.

Also, given how women were treated at the time (Barry was raped at age 12 by her uncle and had a daughter at age 13, and her family faced being evicted from their home when she was still a girl) it's absolutely understandable why she pretended to be a man all her life. Any woman with the intelligence and opportunity to do so would make that decision I think.

Trying to apply the modern concept of transgender to a person who lived centuries ago, using e.g. Stonewall's current ultra-inclusive definition, is nothing more than wishful thinking by people who are desperate to claim role models or heroic figures to support their cause. It's a type of "what if" fantasy history.

Obviously, I never met Dr. Barry nor any of their family, friends or associates. All I can give is my opinion: Dr. Barry was a woman who adapted her behaviour to succeed in a role that women were not allowed to do under normal circumstances. I think the social restrictions imposed on women during Dr. Barry's lifetime make it more likely that she was not transgender in the "man trapped in a woman's body" style. I have no idea if my opinion matches the actual truth of Dr. Barry's situation, but the same applies to the people trying to trans Dr. Barry.

Let's not forget how transgender extremists usually react if gender-critical feminists say, "the first transwoman to do X is actually a man".

The transgender extremists shout "T**F die in a fire!" and rape threats.

Trying to apply the modern concept of transgender to a person who lived centuries ago

TRAs would argue that transgender people have existed across cultures, since the beginning of time...

Indeed they do. Fans of other kinds of fantasy and science fiction call that retcon, or retrospective continuity. Can't make the facts fit your current view of the world? Reinterpret known history and impose your opinions anachronistically. We're all susceptible to it, but some of the AWAs make it an art form.

In an area of Afghanistan some girls pretend to be boys when they're growing up as they can earn money for their families that way. Or are all these girls actually trans and pretending to be boys because of their feelz 🙄

So many of those twitter posters openly admitting they know nothing about Dr Barry but he was a he dammit!

my recollection is that it was almost family decision that she should masquerade as a man in order to attend medical school

Yes, there was nothing in her childhood to suggest she struggled with her 'gender identity' and it was a letter from a family solicitor that conclusively proved the link between the girl and the man. Really interesting story actually (didn't know about it until I read Jenni Murrey's 21 women then googled furiously, all the trans stuff now on Wiki has been added fairly recently ).

It's so frustrating that we now can't celebrate women's inventiveness to get around restrictions imposed on them in the past, we need to ignore all of that female ingenuity and talk only about how they were trans and MEN and so their actual accomplishments are no big deal.

I saw the twitter thread this morning. It looked to me like the author had walked in to something she hadn't been expecting. It seems unlikely the publisher didn't realise that using the she pronoun would make them enemy number one of the trans rights twitter crowd - but maybe its possible.
I didn't know anything about Dr Barry. A look on Google scholar suggests some recent academic publishing has used she. But obviously Barry has been claimed as an ancestor of trans people rather than of female doctors.

Yes, I was hoping that she was prepared but it seems not. I won't be surprised if she's bullied into pulling her book.

It looks like Levy has researched her subject and has agreed with the current scholarship that Barry was a she. So does this mean that ANY woman who identified as a man for ANY reason will now be seen as a man or else? Because why stop there? And indeed, how can you stop there? If you retroactively trans one woman on the basis that they identified as a man, you kind of have to trans them all or it doesn't make any sense. Not that it makes sense anyway.

This is making me so angry now. Women can't have anything, not even our own history.

I'm tempted to email the publisher in support of the author.

@CountFosco it's like certain people are trying to paint her mother, Mary-Ann Bulkley, as a Regency Susie Green.

Her wiki states, "A conspiracy appears to have developed between Barry, Mary-Ann Bulkley and some of the late James Barry's influential, liberal-minded friends (General Francisco de Mirandaa^, Dr Edward Fryerr^, who had become Barry's personal tutor, and Daniel Reardon, the family's solicitor) to enable the teenage Barry to enter medical school". Do they really think that all those people would have known about and supported transition because of "feels"? Or was the plan cooked up because she couldn't find a position as a tutor (probably because she was a woman!) which was the original plan? I think the fact that she likely had a child at that stage who needed financial support along with her own mother and sister only adds weight to the fact that this seemed like the best way to make decent money when women had incredibly limited opportunities open to them.

The Dictionary of National Biography entry was written in 2004, and shows how much things have changed in the last few years:

"Barry, James (c. 1799–1865), army medical officer and transvestite, was probably born Margaret, … her paternity is in doubt. From the age of ten she dressed and presented herself as a man, " … "Barry's origins and motives remain a mystery, but she was a passionate reformer and pioneer whose achievements in medicine have been obscured by her lifelong masquerade. ...."

Edinburgh University's 2018 information about Barry avoids pronouns altogether but describes her as a woman who lived as a man, and first female graduate of the university.
www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/plaques/barry

Given that Barry wanted to be called he, to me it would be find to do the same. But it is ridiculous that this author is being so targeted for choosing she, given that it is impossible to know how she saw herself, and because current concepts of gender and identity can't just be overlaid onto past people.

I expect the truth lies somewhere between 'he was a trans man he he he he he" and "she was a woman who dressed as a man to make her way in a patriarchal world" - I expect its more complex than both of those positions. I'm sure the novel makes it more complex too.

After establishing this wasn't thread about the JM Barry who write Peter Pan (believe me I was con-FUS-ed for a while this morning) I remembered who she was.

I always thought the whole point was that she did what she did in order to achieve what she did in her time.

The book and story wouldn't exist if we believed fully and treated the story fully that she was a he.