What gives the Tate to "trans" a deceased woman artist - Kathleen Stock

[IwantToRetire]

(As sign of the times, still, this article is in the Dailly Mail)

A page on the Tate's website speculates that: 'Perhaps if Marlow was alive today, the artist would identify as transgender, which means that your gender is different to the one that the doctors or midwives presumed you were when you were born, or non-binary, which means that neither the word "boy" nor "girl" are a good fit for you.'

Shorn of today's gobbledygook gender-speak, this means that because she loved women, dressed like a man and gave herself an androgynous name, perhaps she was transgender and not really a woman at all.

This is anachronistic nonsense and an insult to the memory of a stellar artist who lived boldly and unconventionally. ...

Hundreds of Arts Council grants – many taxpayer-funded – go to projects with 'queer' in the name, further incentivising others to apply in a similar vein.

It's become a mind-numbing racket making a mockery of equality – but just as importantly, it produces boring and predictable work of interest only to virtue-signallers. ...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12106615/KATHLEEN-STOCK-asks-gives-Tate-right-decide-deceased-artist-trans.html

What gives the Tate the right to "trans" a deceased woman artist - Kathleen Stock

Sorry messed up the title.

More quality scholarship from Kathleen Stock.

“The fact that the Tate describes Marlow Moss as 'Marlow' says it all. Imagine a serious gallery referring to Picasso as 'Pablo' – you can't. It is belittling and childish.”

Is it also belittling and childish for a gallery to refer to artists like Michelangelo, Raphael, or Rembrandt? Those are all examples of artists who are known by their first names.

Kathleen Stock is implying that a female artist is only worthy of being known by her father’s name. Yuck.

It's like the Mormon practice of baptising the dead into their faith, like Ann Frank. Infuriating. They've done it to many gnc artists, but especially women who felt understandably frustrated with the freedom men had and craved it for themselves.

In an article in the Graniard in 2015, it is clear that Marlow Moss is called by her full name or by Moss. Though one of the enduring stories told about her was she insisted on Miss Moss with at least one person. That might just spike the Tate's desire to virtue signal.

I went looking to see just how she was referred to as I suspected Kathleen Stock wouldn't have made a point of this without evidence. Dr. Stock was probably much more thorough than I.

It's also clear that her androgynous style, her lesbianism and direct manners put people off at that time. She was called "it" by one curator who blamed her for being forgotten.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/25/marlow-moss-cornwalls-forgotten-art-maverick-tate-britain

In 2015, Marlow Moss is a lesbian with a known lover, in 2023 she is no longer afforded the courage and grit that it took not only to be an artist, but an out lesbian.

No erasure here, can't imagine what I was thinking.

Mind you in the case of Michelangelo Italins will ask "which one?"

Wow, every day a school day on MN - I never knew Rembrandt was his first name!

Oh dear. Not such quality scholarship from you.

A quick google will tell you exactly why these artists were known by their first names. Surnames were not used in the same way as they are in modern times. Look how they signed their work, for instance. However it will also show you (as a pp said) how Marlow Moss addressed herself as and how she has been in the past.

No one ever refers to a man's surname as his father's name. Apparently men's names are their own. Women's name are not. How progressive...

A page on the Tate's website speculates that: 'Perhaps if Marlow was alive today, the artist would identify as transgender, which means that your gender is different to the one that the doctors or midwives presumed you were when you were born, or non-binary, which means that neither the word "boy" nor "girl" are a good fit for you.'

Kathleen Stock calls this paragraph 'gobbledygook gender speak' (which is accurate), but it does show how absurd genderism is.

your gender is different to the one that the doctors or midwives presumed you were when you were born

So according to genderism, everyone 'is' a gender. Do they not understand that sex and gender are different, and what everyone actually has, which is observed at birth, is a sex? Since when did people describe themselves as 'being' a gender? Gender is something which is culturally and societally imposed on people because of their sex. It's not something that people 'are'.

And the assumption that children can choose whether 'boy' or 'girl' is 'a good fit' for them (or whether to reject them both). When all 'boy' and 'girl' indicate is whether that child is male or female. 'Girl' fits every female child, because that's what it means.

A quick google will tell you exactly why these artists were known by their first names. Surnames were not used in the same way as they are in modern times. Look how they signed their work, for instance. However it will also show you (as a pp said) how Marlow Moss addressed herself as and how she has been in the past.

I always feel mildly irritated when people refer to Leonardo da Vinci as "da Vinci" when, as any fule kno, it should be Leonardo. Anyway, as you say, that was a very long time ago and the convention now is to refer to artists by their surnames. It's typically infantilising that a woman is referred to by her forename, but perhaps more chilling is the desire to erase lesbianism by retrospectively transing Moss. Why, in 2023, is a major art gallery allowed to get away with such blatant homophobia?

Transing the Dead could be a whole new area of curation. (Not funny)

An excellently written piece by Kathleen Stock, as always. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, very good from KS. Not surprising, though, sadly, as galleries have been up to this sort of stuff for ages - remember the Burrell Collection a couple of years ago, transing a statue of a Buddhist goddess?

Take a look at this report from the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester, which has been industriously driving the 'queering' of our arts institutions for some time now. Professor Richard Sandell is at the forefront, and quite the activist. Oh, and the curator behind the Burrell Collection incident, Laura Bauld, is quoted in it.

It is like the posts this week about retrospectively claiming James Barry as trans.

Completely erasing the extreme negative sex discrimination at the time experienced by women and girls and the extreme actions of women and girls to escape this. While erasing the pioneering efforts of James Barry as woman who was a military surgeon!

Your lack of understanding of a feminist perspective as well as historical naming conventions becomes ever more clear in your rush to disparage a woman.

Can your misogynistic style of posting be any clearer?

Sadly it’s not a new thing. I was really looking forward to watching “Ammonite”, the film about Mary Anning’s life. Except the director had decided to “queer” her - which he had no fucking right to do since she was a real person and may well have found that depiction of herself upsetting or offensive - and I couldn’t bring myself to watch.

I've just seen on twitter links to both the Tate page on Moss for adults and the one aimed at children. The one for adults uses 'she' throughout and doesn't mention pronouns or gender Id at all. Only the children's page calls her 'they'. Pretty sinister in terms of who they are targeting for indoctrination.

This language also completely disappears the mother that's just given birth to a baby boy or girl. She's completely invisible in this moronic description. As if she can't actually fucking see the sex of her baby and hasn't seen it already in a scan and told the midwife herself.

Anyone speaking this lunatic language is so stupid I don't know how they manage to function.

The one for adults uses 'she' throughout and doesn't mention pronouns or gender Id at all. Only the children's page calls her 'they'. Pretty sinister in terms of who they are targeting for indoctrination.

If that is the case this is even more disturbing. ie effectively they know adults would challenge them, but think they can in an underhand way get children to think she is not she.

It was only for a brief period that women could be talked about and acknowledge being lesbian (ie gay men got more coverage) and now that is being erased again because to be lesbian means you are aware of biological sex, ie being a biological woman attracted to biological women.

This was written in 2021 which implies erasure is increasing:

I am using female pronouns for Moss, as did her partner the Dutch author Netty Nijhoff in published writing and film footage. However there is an argument that a gender-neutral pronoun might be more appropriate, and as language conventions evolve this is becoming more common. Moss could now be considered trans-male, although this terminology was not available during her lifetime, and it is not known if she would have adopted it.

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/queering-constructivism-the-legacy-of-marlow-moss

And like this from 1919!

Upon returning to London, she shaved her head, began to wear men’s clothing and adopted a masculine name. By doing so, she became a new person whose “costume says to the man: I am your equal”, as Madeleine Pelletier famously put it (La Suffragiste, No. 46, 1919).

https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/marlow-moss/

This is such an underhanded way to make all that struggle, all that effort to show women can be as artistic, as intellectual, as daring as men disappear. I'm sick to death of it. One trans brush stroke makes it easier to see women as the oppressor and lesbians a mistake when body and gender soul were spliced together.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4808943-the-tate-transes-marlow-moss?page=3&reply=126302477

Various links on here to articles on Moss, including the one for Tate Kids and ... well, 'Tate Grown ups'.

Infuriating erasure of women.

Thanks for the Stock article link.

Sorry there was an existing thread. I am not sure the mumsnet search functions works that well!

Also the notifications system seems to have become a bit random, sometimes saying a thread has been updated and it hasn't. And other times not bothering to say it has.

Henry 8th perhaps kept getting rid of wives because he was unhappy being a man?

There are often several threads about a topic; it's inevitable on a fast moving board, and not usually a problem!