"We have always been here"

[DiamondThrone]

Been noticing this a lot. It seems to be the new #TWAW #nodebate #bekind, after those didn't work.

I mean - lots of things have "always been here". Like women, for instance 😄

Just interested in new terms that arise, and how they are used to try and shut down comment.

Great idea. All those trans people who've always been here must surely be waiting in their skeletal form somewhere...

I imagine that a mummified bog trans person, complete with a spinny skirt and wig, must be waiting to be discovered in a bog somewhere.

Yes, funny how gay men become transphobic when they're expected to be attracted to them?

Imagine the cognitive dissonance...

Well, plenty of bodies have been excavated alongside artifacts that were typically attributed to a different sex.

A famous example of this (although not British) is the 'Moche Lady of Cao' who was given the burial of an elite male warrior.

Obviously we can't know for sure how these people identified. But if you're interested in archeology you probably know that notions of masculinity and femininity have been quite fluid throughout the ages.

But if you're interested in archeology you probably know that notions of masculinity and femininity have been quite fluid throughout the ages.

And with a single sentence you've erased trans people entirely.

Well done!

People imposing modern thoughts regarding sex/gender stereotypes on the people of the past is a problem for sure.

As a rule, women dressed as men for protection, power and opportunities. Men dressed as women for sexual reasons, either fetishising the role of women directly, or as part of gay subculture in cultures that associated homosexuality with femininity.

On the whole as a woman, and speaking purely of historical cross dressing here, I have fewer problems with the former than the latter due to the former being pretty understandable really and the latter being based on all sorts of fucked up ideas about women.

Moving focus to the present, in our culture despite lip service to the contrary, men are still treated as the "default human" and still gain power and credibility through being men, partly because we are so conditoned to give men more credibility than women, and partly because the conventions of public life (work and the working day, politics and networking) are set up on the assumption that someone else is at home keeping everyone clothed, fed, clean and schooled, and as long as the latter falls to women, public life is dominated by men. To counteract this, women have been given explicit rights and protections which men do not have.

A man who is accepted as a "woman" gains access to these mitigations. Including men in the linguistic, legal and social category of "woman" removes the language needed to express the "non-default-human" perspective. This is significant and harmful to women.

The inverse is not true for women who dress/identify as men. The main damage they cause is in adding weight to the overall belief that man/woman are mental states rather than physical ones, and through that validate the sexist beliefs that underpin Genderism.

And with a single sentence you've erased trans people entirely.
Well done!

I don't think so @OldCrone

What it does seem to prove is that gender identity is a spectrum.

People have been posthumously identified as 'male' or 'female' by today's scientists, but were found to have lived their lives as another gender (or fluidly gendered).

This supports the existence of trans people, in my opinion.

Attributed by who? The people who actually lived those lives at the time, or the archaeologists who came later and basically said "this one has a sword so it must have been a guy"?

Do you think the people who buried her thought she was a guy, or just a damn fine swordswoman?

People have been posthumously identified as 'male' or 'female' by today's scientists, but were found to have lived their lives as another gender (or fluidly gendered).

Scientists? Or anthropologists?

Human remains are either male or female. It is not difficult to sex a skeleton even before DNA testing: the skull and pelvis in particular are so different for men and women.

That doesn't say anything about societal roles which is an area for anthropology.

Whether or not you do the cooking or child care does not determine your sex.

As I said, it's impossible to know how these people identified.

I'm not claiming that they were (what we would now call) transgender.

But if you do some research you can find instances from ancient cultures where both men and women had similar roles (both could fight as warriors for example) and yet some female bodies from the time were still buried as men.

The Lady of Cao though was most likely was just a fine swordswoman. She is a well documented ruler, although the 'male' artifacts in her tomb are frequently overlooked.

You need to prove that these skeletons believed - when they were alive - that they had a 'gender identity' and that the one they had was opposite to their sex.

Edit - Otherwise, she's just a woman who owned some stuff that is typically seen as male (or some stuff that is typically seen as male was put in her tomb), and that tells you sod all about the concept of 'trans' at that time.

Hahahahaha it really doesn't!

Transness requires rigid ideas about gender as a backdrop to define itself against. So if the norm is gender fluid (or rather, agender), then transness isn't a thing, it's just normal people being part of the wonderful spectrum of normal. No special labels required.

The only reason trans people think it's not normal to be gender non-conforming is because they project their own sexist ideas onto everyone else, and assume that because what they see on the outside is people by and large fitting into broad brush gender roles, those people must be gender conforming on the inside as well.

But again, who decided they were "male artifacts"?

If we did grave goods today, you'd probably find most people buried with gaming paraphernalia are men. Does that make them "male artifacts"? There are still plemty of women gamers who might be buried with their favourite merch and tech - would they be therefore somehow trans?

Obviously not, that's ridiculous right? But when you are assuming that because most of the time thing X is found in men's graves, that means when it's found with a woman it means the woman was somehow being coded in male ways, that is exactly what you are doing.

Goodness, just noticed that I am being deleted all over this thread!

Don't recall what I said, but it must have been awful.

But anyway, here's our new mantra:

GCs have always been here

Is the 'gaming paraphernalia' large-breasted statuettes of an anime waifu?

Asking for a friend.

Or truth bombs.

They can cause great harm dontcha-kno.

Can you prove that they didn't though?

If you want a more recent example, in the middle ages a woman named Eleanor Rykener was discovered to have been born as John Rykener. She lived her entire adult life as a woman (with male partners) and was socially accepted as a woman. The document detailing the discovery about her birth was on display at the British Library recently.

There have always been men and women who play around with gender stereotypes, push boundaries, cross dress, and even live as the opposite sex but how this is viewed by society changes.

Nobody actually believed people WERE the opposite sex by dressing as them. Women who pushed boundaries, dressing as men, were living as a pretence. They were suppressed as women so disguised themselves as men so they could live in a way that would not be allowed as a woman. That could be because they were gay or because they wanted to do work that was men's territory.

Vice versa. Some men dressed as females. There were the mollies in Georgian times and that culture would reflect their society then.

The difference now is that the trans movement tries to apply modern concepts to historical figures retrospectively...like claiming Joan of Arc was trans. There was no concept of trans then. It is a modern concept.

It is also a recent phenomenon to reclaim the word queer and the concept of queer relationships. These are not just homosexual relationships. We have transwomen in relationships with women calling themselves lesbian, when actually this is a heterosexual but yet queer relationship, in the modern sense of the word queer. It seems very recent that we've gone from talking about the gay community to the LGBTQia+ community, too.

So yes, trans people have always existed and no, they haven't, not in the way trans is viewed now.

Gender reflects society, so it's a concept and it will change according to the times you live in.

It's distinct from sexuality

Anthropologists of the future would know that gaming was not a strictly male activity based on other evidence about our lives.

I'm talking about female warriors and male warriors receiving different burials. Based on this, scientists can assume that these burials were gendered.

So when there are instances of female bodies receiving a typically 'male' burial, it is a possibility that they lived as men. Based on other evidence from the time as well.

That's all.

'Can you prove that they didn't though?'

So, you are offering an unfalsifiability fallacy as your argument?

I'm sure we will soon discover Viking graves containing pronoun badges and wee rainbow lanyards...

Gender fluidity falls under the trans umbrella.

Gender critical people are the ones who tend to argue for a strict 'male/female' gender binary.

Now I know that you don't understand what 'gender critical' means, even though the clue is in the name.

They don't.

They recognise a sex binary.

Gender is a social construct and GCs would argue against the labels and stereotypes