“ “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott was a transgender man”

[FlatpackHater]

I try really hard to be open minded to transgender thinking.

But reading things like this baffles me.

How can you retrospectively identify that someone who can’t speak for themselves was “a transgender man”.

When half the evidence presented for them being trans is that they didn’t conform to archetypical gendered behaviours, and that being a “tomboy” is held up as evidence of being trans.

How can we be at all sure that someone was trans and not simply rejecting the society’s expectations of how a woman should present and behave?

www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/05/little-women-author-louisa-may-alcott-transgender-man/

The top of my head nearly blew off last night when I read on LinkedIn that some people think Julius Ceaser was a woman because he was supposedly penetrated by another man. Probably the most sexist and homophobic thing I can imagine reading. Just when you think you've heard the worst of it, they manage to find new depths. I'm 100 percent done with being polite about this stuff now. I'm going to call it out whenever I get half a chance.

She wanted to be a man because she wanted the freedom men had. For fuck's sake.

Find it a little bit contradictory/hypocritical that this school of thought (using both these terms in the loosest possible sense, obviously..) is absolutely painstaking in its attempts to retroactively trans every notable tomboy in history no longer able to indicate their own preferences, but somehow completely deaf to all those of us still around to speak who happily colour outside the lines of the blue/pink gender identity picture and are still quite proud to claim Woman as our defining category, thank you very much..

If you believe in trans ideology (that humans "change sex" and also sex is irrelevant; that everybody has a gender identity that is both innate but also based upon the gender stereotypes of the time & place in which they live; that provisions that were previously single sex should now be mixed sex but single gender; that medical notes, crime reporting and sentencing, data collection, should all use a person's gender ID, despite the fact there are apparently over 100 genders; that homosexuality is inherently transphobic) then this is a perfectly reasonable assertion.

If you believe that humans have personalities, sexual preferences and interests that should not be limited by their sex, that they can wear any clothes, fuck any adult human (with consent), do any job etc etc then yes, it's bollocks.

I was a tomboy - I had short hair, hated dresses, watched sport etc. Jo March was my heroine - in fact, I pretty much wanted to BE her.

I was - & still am - very happy to be female.

I've also seen Joan of Arc and George Elliot being historically transed.

It's taking all the kick ass women who defied social expectations and who should be getting celebrated as female heroes/role models and saying 'oh, they defied gender stereotypes, they must have been men inside really!'

It's like Pratchett's Monsterous Regiment. Gender ideology is determined to completely misinterpret the reasons why the women in that book dressed as men.

Ah, so this is where it's come from... I noticed Jake Graf had tweeted this last night and it was re-tweeted by Linda Riley.
Interesting comments below... it's amazing how with one piece of writing it seems to be taken as gospel by some. Transing the dead is becoming more widespread!

All this is just so ridiculously misogynistic isn't it? Basically any woman who managed to defy the restrictive gender norms of her time was really a man? Presumably because actual women aren't really capable of achieving anything? What a load of crap.

Its also really against the spirit of the books. - Little Women and Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom are all about learning to be women. - Jo has to restrain her masculinity and focus it on inner strength and Rose (heroine of Eight cousins) has to realise that other things matter apart from the size of her waist. They are not about celebrating non comformity OR about building a world without gendered expectations

In fact I have often thought that it is the existence of books like this where people "learn to be women" that accounts for the strangleout of gender ideology amongst elite women in the US

Making the boxes smaller and more defined helps no-one.

What's next, men who fancy men are actually transwomen?

100% this, they like to tran successful non gender conforming women who can not longer object but ignore living non gender conforming women

The trans movement is the most regressive ideology ever.

How can you retrospectively identify that someone who can’t speak for themselves was “a transgender man”.

It's fashion not history, real evidence not required. For years now all sorts of famous dead people have retrospectively had autism, and remember Mr "Everything Comes from India" from "Goodness Gracious Me"? "William Shakespeare? Indian!"

Now it's transgender. A friend of mine went on some inclusion training at work and she got told the same about Joan of Arc.

Based on the evidence put forward, an argument could perhaps be made for her being today a (possibly butch) lesbian. I guess we don’t need to ask why this is skated over in the rush to conclude she was trans. Or maybe, when society insists on strict sex/gender roles, it’s natural for a tomboy type woman to question if she is a man on the inside.

Jo, written by Louisa, was a Tom boy and was certainly a woman, who married a man and had two sons. So it doesn't hang together for me.

Fucking ridiculous

Fantastically disrespectful.

No one has any idea how Alcott may have chosen to identify if they had lived in 21st Century USA/England and if they had been fully au fait with all this.

Merely using well known figures to prop up personal choices and desires. Rather like the many ways this politics shows zero respect to others and wishes to use them to whatever purpose suits it.

Cos only a man could have written such great literary works. Misogynist codswallop.

“she loved to participate vicariously in the adventures and discoveries of boyhood.” From childhood to old age, Alcott repeated the same sentiments in her letters and journals: she didn’t care for girls’

Alcott also supported the vote for women.

I hated playing with dolls when I was a child - it was boring. Playing with my brothers train set & scaletrics was more fun and I learnt got more of my parents attention as they also though playing with dolls was a bit pants. I now take part in sports which would be considered more 'male' but I have absolutely no doubt to my female gender.

Seriously, society has dictated gender behaviours since the dawn of time when woman were married off for money to produce children and men were allowed to smoke and drink and get an education. We are just getting over that as many woman (not all) can get an education, have their own money & chose their own lifestyle and 'these people' are now trying to say if you are a girl and like 'boys' things you must be trans. No, it is just people not having their lives dictated by their gender..😠

For the second time this evening I am reduced to looking like I have been peeling onions. I'm so sorry life was so awful for you.

Has anyone leapt on Elizabeth 1 saying 'you will find a man in me!' yet? Surely soon to come.
Such blinkered thinking.

My immediate reaction "oh fuck off".
And I don't usually swear.
As other pps have said, I was a boyish little girl. Most of all, though, I was just myself - being fortunate to have sensible grown ups for parents who let me do what I liked (mainly climbing trees, but also reading, singing, and playing Robin Hood)
I am less empathetic and more spatially aware than my husband, and yet it was i who bore the children, and neither of us is trans. How did that happen?

Isn't it because LMA has written about wanting to be a man? But isn't that as a pp has said, to enjoy the freedoms of a man in a more restrictive age?

I've wished to be a man as recent as a few years ago as I worked in a massively male dominated industry and thought I would be getting better opportunities as a man.

I hate all this retro transing, but I think it does a good job of peaking as it's largely taken as very regressive.

This hurts me to read. Woman bucking against oppressive societal gender norms = must be a man. It is beyond offensive!