Iris Murdoch and gender fluidity, In Our Time

[Abhannmor]

I only caught the last few minutes but apparently Murdoch described herself as ' a male homosexual trapped in a woman's body' . If she were young and active today would she be annoying gay boys on dating sites? The interviewee was lauding her as an early prophet of gender fluidity. But I think she was probably a bisexual woman who had the misfortune to come of age in the 50s. Sorry if there's already a thread.

It was a load of cobblers. From the description, Iris Murdoch sounds like a bisexual whose sexual orientation shifted over her life between having a preference for men and having a preference for women. That's a fluid sexuality.

A fluid gender is where someone's preference for adhering to gender stereotypes shifts. That's common.

Where the guest* seemed to want to take the audience was when there's an interdependence between sexuality and gender conformity/non-conformity and they both shift in an interdependent way. There are a number of terms for that but if I expand further this post will be deleted.

This was based on the fact that Iris Murdoch used language to discuss things that weren't discussed that much in the past with today's guest translating the language but not necessarily its meaning in context into modern day language only recently coined and put into use.

• Seemingly Anne Rowe, www.chichesterliterarysociety.org/anne-rowe/, who it must be said is a real expert on Iris Murdoch

Thanks for that. Was she the Welsh lady speaking at the end? I'm shamefully ignorant of Iris Murdoch , although I was often in her uncle's hardware shop in Dun Laoghaire , south of Dublin. Yes it all sounds a bit old fashioned and regressive doesn't it. My lesbian friends in the 80s all hated Radclyffe Hall because she seemed to think being gay , or " an invert ' as she called it , was a medical disorder. It's depressing to think we are back in this mindset.

Did you notice how she spoke positively about Murdoch not being judgemental that one of the male characters had dressed up as an adult baby? I wrinkled my nose at that comment.

It is not unusual for straight (or bi) women to imagine themselves as homosexual men. It has everything to do with gender, in the real sense of the word. Straight sexuality is quite fucked up from a female perspective, if you think about it. Bound up as it is with stereotyping, misogyny, objectification and the bind of being sexually attracted to the class of human that oppresses us and has the potential to do us real harm. How liberating it can be to imagine oneself being a gay man. You still get to fuck a person you're sexually attracted to, but with none of the gender expectations and power differentials. You could imagine yourself as the subject, rather than the object of the whole episode. You can meet the male gaze as an equal gazing back.

That might explain the apparent popularity of gay male porn with women alright. As to men dressing as babies , crack away as long as you harm nobody. Although it is a bit strange. But I wonder would Murdoch be so indulgent about a woman who presented as a baby ?

Murdoch described herself as ' a male homosexual trapped in a woman's body'

iirc, didn't Nigella's first husband (John Diamond) describe her as a gay man in a woman's body? Although this was more to capture her joie de vivre and expansiveness more than anything else? I remember seeing her report this long in advance of this news item in 2014.

[Nigella] told The Londoner that she has long held an affinity with the gay community ever since her marriage to the late John Diamond. “My first husband,” she recalled, “always told me that I was a gay man in a woman’s body, and I always agreed with him.”

2000 sighting: www.theguardian.com/books/2000/dec/17/houseandgarden.features

www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/she-s-just-a-gay-man-in-a-woman-s-body-9501164.html