The National Archives on Anne Lister

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I encountered this post by the National Archives on LinkedIn today (see picture).

The linked article can be found here:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/anne-lister-and-ann-walkers-archival-legacy/

Anne Lister is referred to as 'they' throughout the LinkedIn post, in spite of the fact that the article clearly states that she used female pronouns. It also says that she was a lesbian, and part of a group of women in same sex relationships. On further inspection, the article itself also manages to completely avoid using 'she' or 'her' to refer to Ann Lister, although it is happy to do so for Ann Walker. I find this troubling. Can a historical woman not simply challenge gender norms and yet stil be 'she'? The West Yorkshire Archive Service blog, happily seems able to do so, so why not TNA?

Crikey, they really tied themselves in knots writing that. Or ran it through ChatGPT to exterminate any stray female pronouns.

"This stipulation was also recorded in previous versions of Lister’s will relating to other partners and family members. Many of Lister’s former lovers had married, and Lister’s desire to protect Shibden Hall was clear."

I may write to them and ask about their logic, given Lister is deceased and so cannot have stipulated that Lister preferred non-binary pronouns.

I find the anachronistic imposition of modern attitudes and values onto historical figures infuriating, to put it mildly.

If Anne Lister had been male she wouldn't have faced any of the challenges of inheritance and homophobia she so courageously overcame. Hers would have been a non-story. If the nonsense of non-binary had been a thing in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century she could have stuck her pronouns on the bottom of her letters and had a tantrum if people got them wrong. That wasn't what happened. She was a woman who loved other women in a time when that was socially unacceptable. Why would anyone want to obscure that fact?

They mostly can’t get over the fact that she was most patrician of Tories which I find hilarious.

Fucking cowards. And it's so sloppy; avoiding 'she' and 'her' even though they said she used female pronouns.

So do I. I am on a Masters involved with History and the amount of lenses that we are supposed to view objects, collections, events through is crazy. The other students love it. It tends to be more modern articles and books. I do wonder if it's for the shock value, and also how many copies of the book are actually sold.

Anne Lister is a bit of an inconvenience to various theorists - I remember the discombobulation amongst people who claimed that there had never really been such a thing as a 'lesbian' identity until the 20th century, and objected to contemporary lesbians mapping our recently-created sexual identity anachronistically onto women who may have had romantic, but not sexual friendships, which were not exclusive and which didn't cancel out their basic heterosexuality.

Then along came Anne Lister's diaries and - what was that you were saying about non-sexual??😉

It looks like her femaleness + gender-non-conformity is now discombobulating the gender warriors. Anne Lister was a woman, she knew she was, she referred to herself as such ['used female pronouns' - WTF else would she do??] AND she was a lesbian who was entirely committed to women, and did not have relationships with men.
Y'know, the kind of lesbian who gets called a sexual racist these days..

So by pointedly never referring to her as 'she' or 'her', she is subtly shifted out of the category 'women' and into some kind of not-entirely-woman gender identity.
Thereby undermining who she was, and her historical importance to women, especially lesbians.

I despise this too. I would take all those bloody 'lenses' and grind them under the heel of my boot.

Lister was no saint by any means but she did have the courage to be who she was .

I honestly wonder what has happened to academia.

And of course she used female pronouns!!!!

I wrote to the National Archives, saying,

"I am curious about the rationale for avoiding female pronouns to refer to Anne Lister in the below article. As a lesbian who wore masculine clothing, Anne was subversive, but used female pronouns consistently when referring to herself in her secret diaries."

The reply:

"Anne Lister is an important historical figure whose life has been interpreted in different ways by various groups. Given the complexity of Lister's identity, the framing was intentional and thought through, aiming to stay open to multiple readings regarding sexuality and gender identity, especially in eras where the language and cultural reference points were different from our own.

The goal was to reflect both the definitive aspects known—such as the use of masculine clothing, the consistent use of female pronouns and occasional references to male names—while also giving space to individual interpretations. In aiming to remain neutral the intention was not to make a definitive statement about Lister's gender, but to acknowledge the importance of this history to multiple communities and to acknowledge we will never fully know. I hope this helps you understand why this pronoun choice was made."

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I find this claim to remain neutral a bit dishonest. One perspective was prioritised above others, by the studious avoidance of female pronouns.

A neutral article would highlight the various frames and interpretations openly, and attribute them to specific communities - not embed an interpretation by stealth into the grammar of the article.

The Twitter feed and other articles by the individual who replied (likely the article's author) are heavily trans-positive/TWAW etc, so I guess the article shows this bias.

What a load of old nonsense that reply from NA was.

Why this obsession with constant , anachronistic reinterpretation? It's misleading, lazy and ridiculous.

I agree with you, and with Words.
'neutral' would have made clear that now, some people would probably look at Lister through a lens of gender identity and trans theory, but that when she actually lived these ideas didn't exist.
And it would make clear how her appearance, behaviour and sexuality was viewed in her lifetime.
I'd write back and put all that to them.

Context is everything, as the people at the NA should know more than anyone. It's everything.( I trained as an archivist.)

Rip something or someone out of the historical context and it becomes meaningless. Worse, it produces a political thought-toy for those who can only think in fashionable extremes. It's wrong wrong wrong. And anachronistic.

This does a massive disservice to the subject, to current understanding, and to critical understanding of the past.

Thank you for writing to them Keenovay . What an unsatisfactory reply!

They are justifying playing around with lesbian identity to make it more fashionably fluid.
It was such a breakthrough for the reality of lesbian identity when Lister's papers were discovered, because they put paid to the idea that there weren't really any proper lesbians in the past, it was all just projecting a modern concept of female homosexuality onto the past.

Now that is exactly what the NA is doing - projecting neutral pronouns and 'multiple readings' onto a figure from the past who was a woman in order to 'giv[e] space to individual interpretations'.

I quibble with the suggestion of 'masculine clothing' - I've only ever seen two images of AL, one shows her wearing a frock, with frilly bits around the neck and sleeves, and a sweet little red heart brooch; the other shows her wearing something plain with a frilled collar.

In both pictures she looks like she's wearing women's clothes, which actually accentuate her er... womanly figure [or 'norkage' as it is called in some circles😄]

'Gentleman Jack' on the telly did a lot of impressive striding about in boots and waistcoats and frock coats and so on, but wearing skirts. AL was portrayed as a woman who strode about impressively etc...

In other words, there is no basis for the NA to suggest that AL was anything other than, or was perceived as anything other than, a passionate, non-conforming, strong, and probably very stroppy woman.

I wrote a reply and posted it but it seems to have gone poof.

I trained as an archivist. Context used to be everything. Everything . No one should know this better than the N A.

This nonsense interferes with our proper understanding of the past, and turns the topics or subjects under scrutiny into trendy political toys for those who can only see anything through extremes of trendy opinion.

It breaks my heart.

Lister had the money and status and personal chutzpah to do what she wanted in her private and public life.

Note this would be known today as being a gaslighter, entitled and privileged.

She was known as an extremely cruel mistress , especially to the children in her coal mines ( not unusual at the time.)

Pronouns though? Don't make me laugh. This is twisting history into a third dimension.

And we do have some indication of her feelings about her identity - it's pretty well established that she detested the soubriquet "Gentleman Jack", rightly seeing it for the insult it was meant to be. Surely if she was at all ambivalent about her gender (if you grant the ahistorical imposition of modern theories of gender upon Lister's early 19th century worldview - which I don't) she would have embraced the nickname, not despised it?

I've read your post several times and still don't quite understand it.

Can you shed the fancy word salad and explain to me what you actually mean?

@CompleteGinasaur

Good point, CompleteGinasaur.

The post is agreeing with you. If AL was non-binary or had a male gender identity (whatever ever that is) AL would have probably actively enjoyed the Gentleman Jack nickname. Instead she hated it because she recognised it as an insult. So arguably her dislike of the nickname was and indication that she wouldn’t have embraced the gender identity now being imposed.

Do we have any evidence that she hated it? We may well. But I don't know.

I have not watched any of the modern nonsense films obviously.

Why an insult? A Yorkshire man is A Yorkshireman and if she was offering a good deal, then that's what would be shook upon.

Whether she dressed like a man is irrelevant. They would have gone back and tittered but brass is brass.

I went to read this after reading the comments. Maybe I am missing something but it seemed to me to be about Anne and Ann and their relationship- so they, their and them are just being used to indicate the two women? Mind you this not what the archives response said.

Context is critical in so many spheres. My own is data - just look at how statistics can be spun (even assuming they are correct, which in articles/newspapers cannot always be assumed safely). Part of that context is the basis by which the data has been collected - as seen in the recent census where a casually phrased question caused issues in answers from different defined groups of respondents. If you rely on the data for conclusions, you need to be absolutely certain about its limitations.

Also consider the importance of context in archaeology. A find is great from beach walking, field walking, etc but that is the item alone; the context in a stratified explored layer provides much more depth to the find.

Exactly @socialdilemmawhattodo. Historical and archaeological context are directly analgous.

This is one of the many reasons why some applications of AI are so dangerous. Context and nuance are lost. Critical thinking undermined. Intellectual and creative thinking strangled at birth. Anyway à bit off topic.