What struck me was not that a woman might be a famous general, but that the anthropologist theorised that “I don’t think, at any time in his life, did he think he was a woman,” Merbs said. “I think he just thought he was a man, and something was wrong.” On the basis of no evidence at all, instead of this being yet another example of a woman who has to camouflage herself as male in order to be able to fully experience the world, express her skills and achieve her ambitions.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/06/casimir-pulaski-polish-general-woman-intersex?CMP=fb_gu
I suppose I’m angry that the trans narrative always seems to trump the ability and agency of women. If you were a woman in the 18th century, with a natural genius for the military, pretending to be a man would be your only way of being able to express your talents.
The idea that she must have thought she was a man, is misogyny writ large, ignoring the reality of female oppression. It’s as if no-one really believes in the capacity of women unless they can claim to really have a “male brain”.
Instead of celebrating the skill, courage and ingenuousness of a singular woman, her femaleness is dismissed. And of course, if Pulaski was intersex, then once again the reality of that existence, which has a real, physical manifestation, is ignored in favour of a feeling.
I’m beginning to think this is why men in power have done so little to protect women’s rights from aggressive TRA activities. They think so little of women, and pay them so real little attention, that there is no interest or insight into the nature of female existence.
I’m surprised at just how angry that comment made me!