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).

And I have the relevance of my posts questioned. 😂

I was obviously wrong when I thought this was an intelligent discussion.

It's literally not relevant to anything.

The character in Orlando who "changed sex" also lived for 300 years.

Different author, different genre, different century.

Nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

I have a degree in English literature and if my tutors had been spouting this kind of nonsense I'd have dropped out. There was enough bullshit already without genderwoo, and that was nearly 20 years ago.

I have a degree in English literature

As do I. Two in fact. We were encouraged to explore ideas, not shut them down.

So why do TRAs have such an issue with Robert Galbraith?

I do hope you don't teach either history or Shakespeare. In sixteenth-century England (not mainland Europe) the convention existed that women did not act in plays (stems from mystery plays perhaps, again an English convention, for it is probable that Hildergard of Bingen's morality play 'Circle of Virtyue' was performed by women - + one man who was likely the chaplain and played the Devil). Boys played women's parts. There were companies of boy actors, the most famous being those of St Paul's School. They were trained to act like women as well as dress as women (and there was traffic in them as rent boys dressed as women, part of the brothel and prostitution side of theatre) and played the women's parts. There is no gender-bending, they are playing women because women are not allowed to play themselves - 'cross-dressing' made it easier to carry off the part if the boy who was pretending to be a woman played a part in which the 'woman' pretended to be a man. No trans characters at all.
I wonder, do you also not realise that all WS's plays were performed in modern dress? Togas on top for the Roman ones, I think.
I've read 'Orlando' (and seen a film of it) and it is a fantasy, involving transmutation of matter AFAICS. The story takes place over several hundred years and has nothing to do with saying a man can be a woman. It's a magical fantasy written by a woman who wished heartily that women were allowed the same ability to meld into the world that men have. Woolf does not think that Orlando is a woman.

Thanks for that nice little bit of womansplaining @Grammarnut.

I decided to do something with more real world relevance for my second degree.

I was encouraged to develop critical thinking skills. Something the people who peddle gender nonsense are sadly lacking.

Because Robert Galbraith is really JK Rowling, who doesn't believe in the female penis.

Since I do not know your sex I don't see the point of that comment. But you were making unhistorical assumptions about Shakespeare, that have no traction in the world he inhabited.

It’s for Pride month. The implication could not be clearer.

In 'Silkworm' a transman is very sympathetically portrayed as both troubled and deserving of help and consideration - the detectives strive to find the truth about the horrible book which has been published about the transman and her friend, and do so. It is only with 'Troubled Blood' that JKR came under threat from trans activists (the murderer is not trans) because she had stood up for women.

played with gender

Shakespeare like many other writers, and of course the panto tradition, addressed the fact that males were playing females on stage (also vice versa in panto), using it to make jokes and asides. He also, like many writers, raised questions about the things that are expected of males and females via social stereotypes and expectations, and because of their bodies - eg Lady Macbeth talking about her behaviour not matching her role as woman, mother etc.

If that is "playing with gender" (i.e. interrogating and studying stereotypes and how they affect characters, and having characters who don't fit every gender norm like a cardboard cutout) then pretty much any writer worth bothering with will have done that. That's normal and is nothing to do with queer theory or people not accepting themselves for the actual sex they are.

You were indeed.

Basically yes. There is money around for this at the moment. Somewhere I worked is doing a queering of the collections project. There is zero evidence in the group they are looking to (apart from statistically some must have been gay) so basically are making it up. It’s poor practice.

Orlando is not a "trans character" FGS. Orlando naturally changes sex - much like a clownfish. She finds she has a different body - she doesn't have a female "gender identity" as a male, and she doesn't do anything to her body to simulate the opposite sex. She just changes sex, as a fantastical and metaphorical character.

The fact that gender ideology is appropriating this as being "trans" shows how ridiculous the whole concept is. It's taken magic and fantasy and is trying to make everyone believe that's what makes someone "really" the opposite sex.

What about Kafka's metamorphisis. Hey, a fantastical, allegorical character in a story turned into a giant insect. That must mean it really happens! Duh.

"The only one which is more traditionally male is Ellis Bell, but Ellis is often used for girls as well, so it's a unisex name. "

It absolutely wasn't a unisex name at the time. It was entirely male.

Ellis was a male personal name, from Elis, an Old French vernacular form of Elias, the Latin and New Testament Greek form of Elijah.

It came to be a surname also, with the meaning "child / servant of a man named Ellis".

Much better explained. In each time period 'Orlando' is a different sex, and behaves as that sex, there is no suggestion that Orlando is female, or that the females he becomes are in any way male. Nicely put.

It was common at that time that a baby boy might be given.as a first name the surname of his grandfather.

Here are some of the more unusual museums in the UK:

British Lawnmower Museum, Southport
Dog Collar Museum, Leeds Castle (in Kent, not Leeds)
Sewing Machine Muesum, London
Narrow Guage Railway Museum, Tywyn
Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, Fraserburgh
Pencil Museum, Keswick

Spare a thought for their staff, who may have to rainbow up their exhibits in order to tick a box for funding.

Glad you’re sufficiently self aware to acknowledge the inanity of your post.

Queering Keswick's Pencil Museum? Eek

Although, following the pattern of the Mary Rose museum and its queer hair combs...

"By drawing self-portraits which play with gender norms, people can experiment with looks that express their inner gender identity."

They could go down the Mary Rose nit comb route to create an entirely forced relevance to gender ideology.

'These lawn mowers would have been mainly used by men to mow the lawn.
However, for many people today, how we cut our lawn is a central pillar of our identity. Lawns are often heavily gendered, following the gender norm that men like short grass, and women like longer grass with flowers in it. By ‘subverting’ and playing with gender norms, people can find the lawns that they feel comfortable having outside their house.'

Wuthering Heights was much praised as a tale of obsession when first published. When the author was revealed to be a woman, it was condemned in some quarters as the work of a diseased deranged mind. The Brontes were wise to understand that their work would be judged differently than men's.

That is utterly brilliant. You could get a job writing this shite.
Perhaps you have? 😁