The Brontes have been 'queered'

[biddyboo]

For Pride month, the Bronte Parsonage museum has posted a number of Facebook posts exploring the Brontes and 'gender identity'

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/eGENRmGQPkz7omY5/

The posts talk about the Brontes using 'androgynous' pseudonyms, rather than the male pseudonyms they were necessitated to use due to the sexism of the times they lived in 😕

It hasn't gone down well. Comments were disabled, and the museum posted about commitment to equality and diversity and not tolerating bullying and hatred (I haven't seen evidence of this, just a lot of people outraged about history being rewritten to suit a narrative).

They always muddle sex and gender when it suits them and then jump on critics to correct them on the usage.

The museum uses the term ‘gender identity’ which in the context of Pride has a very specific meaning related to someone’s innate feeling about their gender. To use that about the Brontës is at best presumptuous.

But so what? It was a work of imagination. If she had written a story from the perspective of a dog having human thoughts and emotions would we have to conclude that she was actually a furry?

Having to look at everything through the lens of gender ideology is so tiresome and such a clunky way of trying to prove that it is real now because it was supposedly real in the past.

Actually the Brontë pen names can be much more realistically compared to JK Rowling, who also published under an ambiguous name (with the K inspired by another woman) because she was told by publishers that a female name would mean less success.

Yes, as surnames they were known to the Brontës but I was more reacting to the derail around 'they weren’t ever used as given names'. It's nice to think they chose the surnames of women, though!

I am waiting for someone to take their life in their hands and re gender JKR, after all, JKR chose a male pseudonym to write the Cormoran Strike books. Isn’t that sending a secret message to everyone, shock horror!

Because “gender identity” is a recent, postmodern invention, with no basis in reality.

It is being used here to obscure the extreme sexism of the time the Brontë sisters lived in. To suggest they were “playing with their gender identity” when the fact is that they were forced to assume pseudonyms to even be considered for publication is a frivolous and insulting suggestion.

But so what? It was a work of imagination. If she had written a story from the perspective of a dog having human thoughts and emotions would we have to conclude that she was actually a furry?

'Black Beauty' is written in the first person as the autobiography of a horse.

Next up: Anna Sewell was a furry.

Exactly. You have put it better than I ever could.

https://paulineclooney.com/2016/12/30/the-mystery-of-the-brontes-pseudonyms/

In which year did common sense officially die?

These names were masks, totally unrelated to sex/gender identity. They were terrified of being discovered. Interesting that their father also adapted his surname Prunty to Bronte and it seems the children may have used the same idea with Bell adapted from the French "belle" which has female connotations. See above link for these and other far more interesting and believable reasons for the Brontes' choice of pseudonyms. Currer and Acton were probably inspired by people they knew.

Well even JK Rowling was chosen as it was unclear what sex she was. Not as much has changed as we could have wished over the last 200 years.

That's a middle name. Surnames are often given as middle names for both sexes, as with the Bronte sisters' brother Branwell, who was actually Patrick Branwell Bronte, Branwell being their mother's surname before marriage. Sometimes, as in this case, the person becomes known by their middle name.

It's ridiculous.. they're doing the same with Shakespeare I heard on the radio last night

Forcing a gender identify on someone and ignoring the sexism they face is bullying
.. oh they said the comments were bullying ?

They are saying something pretty odd about Lucy Snow.

Agree with this

Don't tell me! Shakespeare was really Elizabeth I in doublet and hose?

Already been done. Including on this very forum.

Or at least accusing JKR of hypocrisy because "she has no issue changing her sex to serve her purposes, yet she castigates those who do".

Due to her noms de plumes.

AND with the multitransgaywhatever flag banner displayed right over the museums own comments....

It's not meant to be masculine, she describes it as an 'ambiguous choice'.

Adverse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women – without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine’ – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice[.]”

That reads to me as though they didn't want to pretend that their books were written by men, but at the same time didn't want to declare that they were written by women. Many female authors have done this, even a lot more recently (JK Rowling).

True.

Wherever fits pushing the agenda. 🙄

This.

Discussing their need to disguise their sex, to overcome sexism, would be an absolutely approriate thing to do in Women's History Month. It has nothing to do with Pride. Implying that it does obscures the sexism they faced and the bravery it took to overcome it. It's belittling their achievements and it's offensive.

Gender gender gender. When the word they are looking for is SEX. Idiotic nonsense. As for gender queer - my brain switches off and my eyes roll so far back in my head.

Of course they had to change their names.

Pride month is destructive. People keep creating performative roles out of twists and manipulations to fit in with it.

It has come to the point of searching around for more and more to feed the beast.