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).

This is why I am on Mumsnet.

Thank you so much to all you learned women.

My reading list is now set for the summer - WS, Wolf and the Brontes.

This is another example of the appaling treatment of women. The trans movement will not allow any female heroine (history or arts) to be female. They did the same repugnant maligning of Joan of Ark, claiming she was trans. In their perverted mindset any female who has acheieved anything of note must really be male. Stonewall has a lot to answer for.

Yes it's odd isn't it. Trans men don't get a lot of the limelight generally, but they're suddenly everywhere when it comes to trying to deny gender non-conforming women's achievements of yore. And yet they don't seem to be endlessly trying to make transwomen out of historical long-haired men, or men who were effeminate or romantic. "We were always here," as long as that involves erasing women.

The only 'sneering condescension' I could see was you saying 'No shit' when another poster pointed out that Virginia Woolf was a different person from William Shakespeare, writing centuries afterwards, and therefore her works were irrelevant to his.

Fluid sexuality simply means your sexuality isn’t fixed. He seems to swing both ways and it’s not possible to pin down which is most representative. The cross dressing and playing out of different roles is a way of exploring this fluidity.

I wouldn’t say the homosexual bawdy relates much more to the relations between the characters.

Homosexuality has been around forever so has gender non-conformism. Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders - the Hijra in India, the Muxe in Mexico, the Winkte in Native American culture to name a few. Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

I couldn’t possibly speculate on Shakespeare’s approach to gender identity, he blurs the boundaries more than any other writer of his time. Either way I differentiate his approach to the Brontes.

they don't seem to be endlessly trying to make transwomen out of historical long-haired men, or men who were effeminate or romantic.

Funny that. It's not as if they'd be short of options if they wanted to.

Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders - the Hijra in India, the Muxe in Mexico, the Winkte in Native American culture to name a few. Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

Oh, here we go.

What do all these 'traditional third gender cultures' have in common?

1. They are always ones with incredibly rigid sex roles (and generally ones that are particularly awful to women).

2. The 'third gender' is always just that. A third one. Men do not become women, women do not become men - they become whatever the third option is, which is a separate thing with its own equally rigid rules.

And in almost all cases the third option is below men in the social hierarchy. If it's a role for women to move into they end up above ordinary women but always a long way below men. If it's for men to move into they may end up above or below women, but below ordinary men.

It has little or nothing in common with the modern western concept of trans.

Damn good point.

My local museum is wheeling out an exhibition about a woman who they claim was a lesbian - and she probably was, although spinsters living with female companions can just as easily be just that and nothing more.

I'm sad for the person at the centre of the exhibition though, because even if she was a lesbian, she most likely wouldn't have wanted to have been outed. There's something very disrespectful IMO about making claims about dead people's sexualities, especially on scant evidence, and especially when in their time it would have been severely punishable to be outed.

Living as a different gender to your birth sex has apparently always been with us.

See this is the problem. This is why it's harmful and regressive. You can only "live as a different gender to your birth sex" if you believe that your sex HAS a "gender", and that gender, i.e. set of restrictive stereotypes, actually belongs to that sex and should rightly accompany it. Therefore to leave that stereotype behind is to somehow leave your sex behind and "live as" something other.

No. A woman can be a woman and say no to gender stereotypes. As Charlotte Bronte so rightly said, women should be free to "seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex". Doing that doesn't make you not a woman. It just makes you a free, unrestricted woman. And if you do think it makes you not a woman, but some other "gender", then you're betraying all other women because you're essentially saying restrictions and stereotypes are fine for them, and for women in general.

Historically, there have been cultures with more than 2 genders

Historically, there have always been two sexes, and a whole lot of people who either did or didn't adhere to or fit within the stereotypes and expectations prescribed for their sex by their society. People conformed or rebelled to varying degrees. "Gender" and gender expression has always been a huge spectrum. It's part of the promulgation of stereotypes and prescribed roles to pretend that hasn't happened, but it has.

Special "gender" groups and categories evolved in some societies as a place to put awkward customers who weren't fitting in and remove them from mainstream society. It is as far from "acceptance" as you can get. Different societies had different solutions - for example in Europe gay men could be bundled off into the priesthood, and women who refused to marry to a nunnery. (Where some of them probably had a happy lesbian life.) More recently, theatre was a subculture where gay men could be more accepted and also conveniently sidelined them.

@NoBinturongsHereMate The discussion was not about trans but about gender in Shakespeare. I haven’t mentioned trans once. My point was simply that “gender non-conformism” and “living as a gender different from your birth sex” has been around for a long time.

I don’t disagree with the rigidity in some cases, but that is a general feature of ancient/traditional cultures - like the caste system; and the claim about the status of these genders isn’t necessarily true - the Lakota Winkte could be elders and medicine men, the Hirjas were involved in religious rites and educating spiritual initiates. Either way it’s not relevant to the conversation.

The world would be a better place without gender, and a truly progressive society would recognise that instead of reinforcing it through concepts like gender identity & preferred pronouns.

@MrsWhattery I think you’re mainly having a rhetorical argument with yourself. I’m far more interested in Shakespeare than I am in trans.

But “living as a gender different from your birth sex” is a gender ideology concept. It assumes there is such as thing as a gender stereotype that should go with a sex. That's sexist, regressive and opposes feminism, which is about being free to ignore "gender".

If you can use a phrase like that and not see how it's regressive and sexist, well, that's why I think it should be pointed out. You may not have been talking about trans but gender ideology is where that concept has come from and they embody the same basic approval of gender stereotypes.

@Mirabai
My point was simply that “gender non-conformism” and “living as a gender different from your birth sex” has been around for a long time.

These are two different things.

Gender non-conformism has been around for a long time. This is simply people not conforming to the gendered stereotypes expected of them in the culture they are living in. Gender is imposed on people by society. Some people push back against this and want to live in a way which is inconsistent with those expectations. In some societies which have very strict rules about how the sexes should behave, some accommodations have been made for some of those people who find the gendered expectations imposed on them unbearable.

The idea of living as a gender is a new one. This is the novel idea that people can choose a gender for themselves and live as that self chosen gender. It has made gender into something which appears to be based on individual choices and preferences and ignores the social and cultural expectations which are the root of gender. It makes "having a gender" a desirable concept, rather than something imposed by society to place limits on the behaviour of individuals. As far as I am aware, this has never occurred in other times or places.

The groups of people you mention who were/are living outside the gender norms for their society aren't living as a self-chosen gender. They are still living in a gendered way which is deemed acceptable by their society, even though it's different from the way most people live.

Yes, this. You've articulated this really well.

Gender non conformity = rejecting gender stereotypes.

Identifying as/living as a particular gender = actively embracing gender stereotypes.

It doesn't matter if you're actively embracing different gender stereotypes to the ones society attempts to impose on you. You're still embracing them.

It is now. But historically people have lived as if they were a man/woman when they were born a woman/man to different degrees, in different ways and for different reasons regardless of gender ideology. Historically, birth sex did go with very narrow gender stereotypes and roles that they do not now. And in societies with a further gender/s, that too had its own narrow stereotypes and roles.

Exactly. It's sexist and in some cases homophobic.

If you don't wear dresses you're not a proper woman so we have to find a different box to put you in.

If you don't fancy women you're not a proper man so we have to invent a new category for you.

Get rid of gender and all you've got is "if you're female you're a woman and if you're male you're a man".

Enjoy!

My very favourite Woolf is her last novel, Between the Acts, but as a result of this thread I also fancy giving Orlando a re-read. This was when she really started coining it, and they extended and replumbed Monk's House (which I recently visited and is well worth the trip) with the proceeds.

The most undersung Bronte IMO is Anne. Villette is also a cracking novel: better IMO than Jane Eyre.

@OldCrone They are two different things which is why I expressed them in different sentences.

I don’t think that living as a different gender is a new idea. But it has never taken the form it has, never been widespread or mainstream, never been politicised, and never had the current flawed ideology applied to it.

I don’t think you could say that the Winkte were not living as a self chosen gender though, they chose to live as women - taking on women’s narrow gender roles in that culture, and also chose to live as this third concept - which had its own role boundaries too.

However - trans ideologues have seized upon these ancient niche practices, made claims for them way beyond their original remit, and used them to justify nebulous and deeply questionable concepts.

@NoBinturongsHereMate But the discussion would be more interesting if there were.

However - trans ideologues have seized upon these ancient niche practices, made claims for them way beyond their original remit, and used them to justify nebulous and deeply questionable concepts.

So would you agree that the world would be a better place if we could ditch the whole stupid concept of gender altogether, Mirabai?

The idea that a little girl must really be a boy because she prefers short hair and comfortable clothes goes beyond insane into the realms of psychotic. And yet that’s where some people are.

But historically people have lived as if they were a man/woman when they were born a woman/man to different degrees

but this such a narrow, gendered view. Yes, some people took on the full disguise of the opposite sex, like James Barry, but for an ulterior motive.

Charlotte Brontë objecting to the restrictions and expectations placed on her as a woman and arguing she should be free to learn, write and be taken as seriously as a man would, and going on to do so, isn’t “living as a man”. It’s refusing to conform to gender stereotypes, and wanting to dismantle and oppose them, so that all women can have more freedoms and be respected and so on. And ideally the same should go for men so they are less restricted by unnecessary limits.

saying “no I won’t spend my life knitting and cleaning and birthing because that’s what women are expected to do” isn’t choosing to live as a man. It’s choosing to live as a freer woman. If you just jumped into the stereotypes expected of a man to avoid the stereotypes of a woman, you’re embracing stereotypes. That is not what 99% of gender non-conformity is.

I include myself in that. I was a short-haired girl who loved tree climbing, airfix, trousers etc. but I wasn’t a boy, nor was I embracing a boy stereotype- I was just me. I also liked drawing, sewing and art. I just wanted to do what I liked without restrictions. These days I’d have been told I was a boy and needed body parts cut off and praised for being wonderful and special if I went along with it.

can you really not see the problem with “living as a gender different from your birth sex”? It strongly implies these gender boxes are appropriate and good, and that everyone who isn’t your special non-conforming self should stay in them.

the aim should be to open up the boxes so people are free to be in or out of them to the extent they like. Gender is a whole range of cultural stuff that changes over time and from place to pace - it isn’t innate. It’s just as bad as if you expect people to behave in a particular way and have particular likes and dislikes because of their ethnicity, age, disability etc.

The implication is unfortunate, which is that because the books are (1) good and (2) not ladylike the Brontes are not “woman gender”. A bit like Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I being “queered” because of their unladylike behaviour. Begone with your fatuous stereotypes I say.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is also good - and an exposure of how women were badly treated in marriage, too.

Great essay on this sexist nonsense on the Brontes from the new SEEN in publishing network.
https://seeninpublishing.substack.com/p/why-didnt-women-write