Transgender Vikings

[Igneococcus]

Because no woman ever, anywhere could possible be or have been a fighter:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9d5d3654-de3c-11ea-a18f-15f41f6d2fa7?shareToken=e20112ff611d35bbb9ea3a4900f4b37f

God dammit

So people like Boudicca didn’t exist?

Next up in History of the Projectionists, they will "uncover" that shield maiden were really "transmaidens."

Yep, Joan of Arc should be John of Arc.

It’s an attempt to strip women of their history.

Women have fought in pretty much every conflict, ever. Sometimes on the front lines (Kurdish women fighting ISIS); as resistance fighters; disguised as men or as war leaders in their own right.

The German Night Witches were an all-female aviation bomber unit - and that’s within living memory.

When push comes to shove, women throughout history have taken up arms, voluntarily or because they had no choice.

But if you deny that archeology can tell a woman’s skeleton from a man’s, by transing the skeleton, you support the agenda that biology isn’t real.

By denying the possibility of female warriors, suggesting that the only possibilities are trans or “gender fluidity”, you deny both the richness of women’s history and their agency, even repressive cultures. You also deny the richness and strangeness of history itself, by suggesting that all times and cultures must reflect only what you believe now, in this minute.

And you deny women as fully human, capable of the full range of human emotion; including rage, violence and aggression.

I’m not sure why you’d doubt that in a culture based on raiding and battle, there would be women able and willing to be warriors. It would seem more sensible than not, to be able to defend yourself, your children and your home.

Meant to add this link.

www.rejectedprincesses.com/women-in-combat

Pleased to see that the commentators aren't buying it

Sexist bollocks.

If you read the quotes, it's not presented as Gospel. The archaeologists make three suggestions and this is just one of them. Archaeologists form hypotheses based on the available evidence but are also prepared to be wrong. It's not unreasonable to explore theories beyond what seems obvious.

And no one is denying the existence of Boudicca, Joan of Arc or the Night Witches ffs.

DanceLikeEmmaGoldman, just a bit of pedantry, but, The Night Witches were Russian, not German.

But you’re right. Women have always fought. The transwashing of women’s history makes my shit itch.

Awful article with bugger all evidence for these assertions. Yes, archaeologists should speculate, but by grounding their speculations in something - anything! Love the comments. They reassure me that there are at least some sane people in the world and love the list of warrior women.

For anyone interested in the experiences of woman who go to war, this is the most extraordinary book:

www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295606/the-unwomanly-face-of-war/9780141983530.html

It is so powerful I could only read it in short bursts. I've never read anything else like it.

It's the logical evolution of trans ideology. Anyone who steps outside the gender norms in a given culture is 'trans'. Therefore feminists shouldn't be trying to change the cultural perception of women's role but should accept males who are attracted to playing that role as women.

In scientific research you don't typically ignore the simplest explanation which fits the evidence. Which in this case is that these were non-gender conforming women.

It could be that in a society which had penalties for breaking gender norms that there might be a 'legal fiction' type of arrangement but that would not make these women 'transgender men', it would be something more like 'honorary men'.

This stuff makes me so cross. They weren’t trans, they were just women in a culture that had more open roles. The vikings that settled in Iceland permitted women to hold property and to Occupy leadership roles. That history is probably a factor in their current international performance on sex equality: a culture where roles are less boundaried. You see women in leadership roles and ‘manly’ occupations like engineering and men pushing prams on the streets of Reykjavik and playing with toddlers in parks during the working day, not because there’s been a mass outbreak of men with ladybrain and women with manbrain, but because they have an equal society and men have the same entitlement to parental/maternity leave. It’s such bullshit.

Those who control the narrative of the past control the future.

Sorry LangClegTheBeardedVulture, I was lazy and didn’t look it up!

I meant to add that one thing that's so good about The Unwomanly Face of War is that the first-hand accounts it contains are decidedly female experiences in a male world.

If you were to have told any of those women they were gender-queer men because they had fought in a war, you would have had a situation on your hands.

The comments are really cheering. Loved them. On the book, making a woke comment to get your article read must be a real low point in anyone's academic career.

I love Jo March’s comments on the times... I wonder if she’s on here?

So by this reasoning, any woman who does a ‘mans job’ is likely to be trans? I worked as a Systems Developer so I must be transgender.

I like seeing Jo March’s comments too - always to the point.

Found this gem in the comments:
"We should treat this branch of academia the way that Boudicca treated London."

The comments are great, thank goodness, because that article is a load of offensive nonsense. It's getting to the point where I feel like I need some kind of tattoo or something to stop people from accusing me of being a man because I have short hair and a job.

Thanks for the book recommendation - I saw that it's by Svetlana Alexeivych who also wrote a brilliant though extremely harrowing book about Chernobyl. She is an extremely powerful and overlooked writer. Will definitely be getting this.

Why are males who display/ed nurturing behaviour never suspected of being transwomen?

I've read about this before... that because shieldmaidens were outside what we consider a "suitable" gender role for women, they therefore had to constitute a separate gender identity. And that women are defined and socially located in reference to their husbands. Not that Vikings had high levels of gender equality and women had high status in those societies. The fact that the genderists can't conceive of women being badass warriors in their own right shows how regressive the whole ideology is IMO. I found this article a few years ago and saved it to my HD, I was spitting teeth about how ridiculous it was. We are ONE sex grouping... introducing gender categorisations splits us and undermines us... classic divide and rule tactics.

The archaeologists make three suggestions and this is just one of them. Archaeologists form hypotheses based on the available evidence but are also prepared to be wrong. It's not unreasonable to explore theories beyond what seems obvious.

this is not just a bad theory, it is also a very offensive, misogynistic bad theory.

"Price said there were other indications that the Vikings thought in less binary terms about gender than was once believed. These include laws preventing men and women from breaking gender norms in terms of dress and behaviour, which he said showed that a few people did subvert these traditions."

You might as well argue that Jim Crowe laws are evidence of a sophisticated understanding of racial identity, and that any black person who did not fit into these narrow confines was 'trans racial'.