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".

According to trans dogma, a transman is actually male. Not a woman presenting as male. TRAs would be offended by that definition.

Floral, sure but I doubt Dr Barry would have adopted the name James had it not been for wanting to present a male persona to the world. Surely that is wrong too if it was done solely in order to practise medicine?

Pronouns are a linguistic feature. There is no inherent link between them and biology for instance. There are languages which do not have gendered pronouns.

Ant NotTerf, sure, but we all know that not all trans people subscribe to the ideology, and we all know in real life what a trans man and a trans woman are.

Why not refer to her by her birth name as well then, rather than using the masculine name that she adopted?

George Elliot, George Sand, Vernon Lee, Lionel Shriver, James Tiptree. There are several female writers that are referred to by their masculine pen name rather than their birth name. Should we use their birth names as well?

Pronouns are a linguistic feature. There is no inherent link between them and biology for instance. There are languages which do not have gendered pronouns.

Is the book written in a language without gendered pronouns, or in English which does? They are not an individual choice like personal names are. My chosen name is Floral. I am at liberty to change it to anything I want, and most people will eventually come to know me by that name because that's the purpose of names - they are an identifier of a specific person.

That's not the purpose of third person gendered pronouns. They aren't chosen personally by each individual, they function as a collective means to discuss something factual about a person, namely, which sex they are, which is usually pretty relevant in biographies, especially ones where the sexes are treated in very different ways.

Yes, Barry wanted to be referred to by male pronouns. But that's not a sovereign command and nor should it be when someone is attempting any kind of objectivity.

The world doesn't actually run on wishes and dreams. It is what it is.

Levys book is going to be a novel rather than a biography so I assume the relevance of pronouns is for the narrator.

It would be interesting to hear from the recent biographers or other academic publishers on this but I am sure they are keeping their heads down especially if they used she too.

This whole situation with woke liberal (illiberal) twitter mobs, cancelling people and publishers, black and white thinking, tribalism and intolerance of discussion (or inability to discuss) is very harmful to our broader culture. Its not just about trans issues though we see it alit there. I'm sure the format of twitter has helped fuel it.

Levys book is going to be a novel rather than a biography

That's why I mentioned Patricia Duncker's novel as a comparison rather than the biographies.

A novel is even less bound by the original wishes of the subject, surely? It's a creative work of fiction, and the author hasn't even said how she will be using them, she's just referenced exploring gender stuff in her book, and used objective pronouns in talking about Barry.

It's quite remarkable that we're at point where we're told to accept that the content of a novel must comply with a particular ideology. Now where have we heard that before? Funnily enough, it was the subject of a Radio 4 documentary over the past couple of weeks:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002blh

All this info comes from the Du Prez/Dronfield 2016 book, mainly chapter 4. Well worth a read.

Firstly regarding the name James. Margaret Bulkley's mother, Mary Anne Bulkley was sister to James Barry, painter, and eccentric. James Barry the painter was Dr James Barry's (previously Margaret Bulkley) uncle, who died in 1806. Elder Barry's connections provided significant opportunities for Margaret Bulkley to become Dr James Barry.

Upon his death a friend of Uncle J Barry, Dr Fryer undertook Margaret's education, which as she was a woman contained no science, mathematics, philosophy, classical languages or literature. Women of the time were not supposed to need a broad or deep education!

This education was a great stepping stone along with the circle of wealthy supportive men with somewhat revolutionary ideas who had admired her uncle. This fertile 'bluestocking' ground was how the unthinkable occured, a woman, in disguise studying medicine. There was a prototype, Lady Mount Cashell (Margaret King) had disguised herself as a man for a couple of months in 1806, to attend medical lectures in France...her exploits were widely discussed at the time.

Women had limited opportunities.
For the tin-eared rewriters of history Mary Somerville a talented mathematician and astronomer, wrote in a recollection of her life in 1874 of how she "resented the injustices of the world in denying all those privileges of education to my sex which were so lavishly bestowed upon men".
More about Mary on wiki en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville
Again Somerville was able to do well because of education and her class connections.

Chapter 5 also provides some excellent quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft regarding the humiliating work opportunities available to educated young women...

Womens history is not going to be rewritten to placate men. Hands off!

Floral - yes agreed a novel should give even more leeway and flexibility for the author to make her own choices. And it's not even published yet. The whole situation is ridiculous.

Ridiculous but predictable.

nauticant, that's a head wobble. Wow. I'd managed to forget.

There is an excellent book called Scanty Particulars about Barry written by Rachel Holmes. I live in Cape Town and have made a point of visiting the places associated with Barry, especially Alphen Hotel which has the original painting of Barry. She was a remarkable person, a brave, bold, strong woman, who lived as a man to allow her to fulfill her potential.

Dr Barry's story has been well known for many years (as see in the link below) so it is sad that one author's imaginative take on that story should raise such ire now when it hasn't done so in the past.

Dr Barry chose to live as a man so one respects that, but trying to label that choice in the light of modern transgender ideology seems futile, and is certainly not an excuse for abusive behaviour.

thelondondead.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-changeling-fairy-born-and-human.html

I found this brief item on the 1918 play on Dr Barry in Papers Past where the female pronoun is used throughout.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19191016.2.80?query=dr%20james%20barry%20play&snippet=true

Another intriguing story is that of Mary Victor Mayfield, who practised medicine as a man, and whose identity was only discovered when she became seriously ill. She was buried in male clothing at her wish.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19291021.2.143?query=male%20doctor%20a%20woman&snippet=true

www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4779

I had a look at the twitter responses to Levy, and it's insane. Hundreds of abusive tweets howling that Barry was a man and how dare Levy misgender him. The entire point of Barry's remarkable story is that she was a woman who had to disguise herself to succeed, but to TRAs she dressed as a boy and magically became a real boy.

I think the TRAs are mixing up Dr Barry and Pinocchio.

The emerging theme of the criticism is that mentioning Barry was a woman is disrespectful to her. She disguised herself as a man until death, therefore it's literally act of violence not to keep her secret.

So studies of history need to be shut down then, because knowledge is violence.

Try this for a representative tweet.
I swear to god that if this transphobic book about James Barry uses his (probable) sexual relationships with men or his (possible) pregnancies or his (reported) femme-ness as """evidence""" of his gender I am going to scream. (I'm going to scream anyway. I'm already screaming)

I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or join in the screaming. Being pregnant is no proof that a person is a woman.

They have been at her Wikipedia page now. What the hell is wrong with these people? I'm sickened, I really am.

Woke twitter is also furious that Rachel Weiss is slated to play Dr Barry in a forthcoming film. And not a male actor.

FFS that wikipedia thing is horrendous. WTF is wrong with these people.

Great news about the film, though!

I think they have deleted the Wikipedia thing now.

Yes, the Wikipedia edit has been deleted. Though I wouldn't describe myself as a Wikipedia editor, I sometimes correct Wikipedia articles and can say that the editors there are zealous about maintaining accuracy and balance. To get a flavour, here's the discussion between editors on the Talk page of the article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:James_Barry_(surgeon). There are some very good points made, and most of them have a good grasp of the difference between sex and gender.

Apparently they are slating her in Good Reads too. Anyone know anything about that site and whether they can be wtopped?

Trans have been repeating for years now the lie that "there have always been trans people in every time and era and we have only just come out of the closet." The reality is that transness is a recent phenomenon and real GID was always an extremely rare problem, so rare as to be almost unheard of. I am almost 50 and never heard of it at all until 1990 and never met a trans person until 1995. Suddenly in the mid 2000s there were increasing numbers of trans people everywhere. It's a cultural phenomenon and simply didn't exist until the 1990s.

New article in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/18/new-novel-about-dr-james-barry-sparks-row-over-victorians-gender-identity

At least it gives the last word to someone half way sensible.

I notice the Guardian article inaccurately uses "gender" rather than "sex". No surprise there.

In the interests of research I did a bit of a trawl through Papers Past NZ with the tag words 'women living as men' and found plenty of examples, such as the ones recorded below, including Dr Barry. It seems that it was quite possible for some women to live out most of their lives successfully as men, and only illness or death revealed that they were otherwise. An astonishing group of women, whose stories should not be hijacked for the purposes of a narrow ideology.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MS19290504.2.43?query=dr%20barry%20living%20as%20a%20man&snippet=true