Are you saying that no women successfully passed themselves off as men? Ever in history?
No woman lived as a man successfully enough, despite “my boobs, feminine facial features, high-pitched voice, and the likelihood that blood is flowing from my cooch right now”?
James Barry and Billy Tipton might disagree, as well as others who were only discovered to be female after death.
Is this thing on?
Yes, you, the researcher in question, me and probably most people who know about this think it’s most likely that she was a badass woman warrior who earned her high male-like status by being a badass warrior woman. Some people are wondering about other possibilities.
I’m sorry I read your reaction as offense, when it is merely ridiculous.
No I didn’t say that. In fact, earlier I mentioned that Harriet Tubman disguised herself as a man sometimes. That kind of suggests I understand the concept of passing oneself as a man.
Trans acceptance is what I’m saying is sociologically implausible in the Viking’s era. It requires evidence to believe.
Just a little contemplation would make this obvious. The notion that a woman could convince anyone she is an elite male warrior is about as improbable as a female passing as an elite male athlete. Not even T-shots would make this likely, but without T shots? It’s a joke. These are Vikings we’re talking about. Not doctors.
But even passing oneself off as a male should not be taken as evidence of transmaleness, given the horrible treatment that women have faced historically. Why wouldn’t we be able to find many examples of female living as males given the hardships and constraints placed on women?
I actually think why this is why so many detransitioning narratives seem to be coming from biological females. If you are suffering only from unhappiness over gender norms and you start taking HRT to become more male, you may suddenly begin to experience gender dysphoria and then realize that you you’re just a female who is unhappy over gender norms. Social dysphoria <> gender dysphoria.
History is filled with examples of individuals who lived as a member of one sociopolitical group but are later discovered to have been a member of another group. Like this person.
But what I am saying is that it is possible that she lived her life as a man. Harriet Tubman dressed as a man in certain circumstances. This warrior may have done the same - or may have lived full time as a man. It’s not necessary that Viking culture accept transgenderism for this warrior to have lived as a man. Billy Tipton is one example-his children didn’t know! The several women he called Mrs Tipton didn’t know.
Maybe like certain native tribes, there was some sort of acceptance in some circles. Likely not, based on what we know about the culture. Yet this woman broke the law and defied gender norms. How? Why did she “get away with it”?
I want to know, and I’m willing to look at different possibilities. I like the one were she is just that badass the best. I’m not dismissing other possibilities.
That’s been a core part of my point all along. With the guy living as an Indian pianist, I’d call him a fraud, not transethnic or transracial. I wouldn’t, however, call James Barry a fraud. I don’t know what the difference is, but I wouldn’t. I’
ETA misread a kind of key point.
I explained why I think that is unlikely. “Living as a man” only works if you’re not constantly engaged in activities that select for attributes overwhelmingly found in men but not women. Viking warriors were built for blood thirsty battle. They weren’t your average dude; these were the guys we put on football teams today. These weren’t soft bodied men with hairless faces. Not even your butchiest woman can pass as a linebacker.
Did you see my comment about certain women living as men in patriarchal regions of the Balkans with rigid gender roles? They didn’t have to “pass” as anything, but they did have to live as a man, because rigid gender roles (so one couldn’t live as a “normal” woman and have the right to own land, work at certain jobs, etc.)
Pandit/Redd lied about himself, sure. He told some lies and he also allowed people to see whatever they wanted to see. A female in history who passed themselves off as male would have had to do the same thing, though. They went by aliases, fabricated stories about their past and omitted others, and allowed people to see whatever they wanted to see.
I think the difference between Pandit/Redd and a female living as a male is that we have a biological concept of one that we don’t have for the other. We can easily conceive of a “male” brain stuck in a female body. We don’t have this concept for race. But since gender and race are both social constructs that are subjected to oppressive forces, it seems highly unfair to me that we would call Pandit/Redd a “fraud” but not assume the same for someone subverting their birth-assigned gender. Both individuals have to engage in a similar degree of chicanery. Both individuals are likely motivated by a desire to escape social constraints. Neither one is really stealing anything or doing anything unethical. But both are breaking the codes of their respective societies.
I look at Pandit/Redd and cringe because he engaged in cultural appropriation at the expense of another stigmatized minority group. Also, I wish he had been bad-ass enough to fight for his people rather than leaving the fight for others. But I can’t fault him for doing what he felt he had to do to escape the circumstances of his birth. Which to me is no different than a female passing themselves off as a male to escape the circumstances of their birth.
I’m sure there are many female-bodied people in history who had the quintessential transgender narrative. But without actually having those narratives, the more likely explanation is they simply chose an extreme way of dealing with female oppression. It is not disrespectful to transgenderism to say that there are more likely explanations out there.
If them “living as men” is the only mechanism by which women inherit land and access employment opportunities, I don’t know how to relate this to transgender people. This is not gender identity stuff, this is escaping oppression.
I don’t find it disrespectful of women to acknowledge other possibilities. Sometimes, unlikely things happen.
The motivations are super important:
There are many reasons why someone might take this vow, and observers recorded a variety of motivations. One person spoke of becoming a sworn virgin in order to not be separated from her father, and another in order to live and work with a sister. Some hoped to avoid a specific unwanted marriage, and others hoped to avoid marriage in general; becoming a sworn virgin was also the only way for families who had committed children to an arranged marriage to refuse to fulfil it, without dishonouring the groom’s family and risking a blood feud.
It was the only way a woman could inherit her family’s wealth, which was particularly important in a society in which blood feuds (gjakmarrja) resulted in the deaths of many male Albanians, leaving many families without male heirs. (However, anthropologist Mildred Dickemann suggests this motive may be “over-pat”, pointing out that a non-child-bearing woman would have no heirs to inherit after her, and also that in some families not one but several daughters became sworn virgins, and in others the later birth of a brother did not end the sworn virgin’s masculine role.[11])
Moreover, a child may have been desired to “carry on” an existing feud, according to Marina Warner. The sworn virgin became “a warrior in disguise to defend her family like a man.”[13] If a sworn virgin was killed in a blood feud, the death counted as a full life for the purposes of calculating blood money, rather than the half-life a woman was counted as.[14]
It is also likely that many women chose to become sworn virgins simply because it afforded them much more freedom than would otherwise have been available in a patrilineal culture in which women were secluded, sex-segregated, required to be virgins before marriage and faithful afterwards, betrothed as children and married by sale without their consent, continually bearing and raising children, constantly physically labouring, and always required to defer to men, particularly their husbands and fathers, and submit to being beaten.[6][9][11][15]
Dickemann suggests mothers may have played an important role in persuading children to become sworn virgins. A widow without sons traditionally had few options in Albania: she could return to her birth family, stay on as a servant in the family of her deceased husband, or remarry. With a son or surrogate son, she could live out her life in the home of her adulthood, in the company of her child. Murray quotes testimony recorded by René Gremaux: “Because if you get married I’ll be left alone, but if you stay with me, I’ll have a son.” On hearing those words Djurdja [the daughter] “threw down her embroidery” and became a man.[11]
Being a sworn virgin is an escape hatch from oppression. While it is also true it could be a socially acceptable form of transgenderism, it could also be an socially acceptable for homosexuality/asexuality. But I am guessing that the vast majority of sworn virgins were females who cared more about having more freedom than they did about wearing women’s clothing and starting a family.
It is all very interesting though.
Another example here:
It seems partly fraud and partly genuinely preferring/identifying with a different culture. But when people are dead they aren’t around to tell us what they were thinking, how much was expedience and how much identity; that’s true of Barry as well, who couldn’t have become a doctor and certainly couldn’t have joined the army as a woman. It’s interesting, if we didn’t have transgenderism as a model we’d assume historical crossdressers were frauds living as the opposite sex for some benefit.
James Barry wanted to be a doctor and would not have been able to do that if society saw her as the woman she was. So she posed as a man.
I’ve mulled this over in my mind the last few hours and I can’t see how this doesn’t make her any less of a fraud as the black man that pretended to be Indian so he could be a respected musician. These two people were members of oppressed groups whose desire to access a certain kind of opportunity outweighed their desire to disclose their true identities. This is a story as old as time for minorities ambiguous enough in appearance to pass as non-minorities.
Maybe it’s just me, but there is something troubling about the assumption that Barry was trans. Like those sworn virgins on the Balkans, it’s highly likely wanting access to male privilege motivated Barry to pass. I’m asking this sincerely: Is this the same thing as having a male gender identity?
I don’t know if Barry had a male gender identity. We know that for some reason, he lived utterly as a man, and we don’t know if that was oppression, independence, or a male identity (because it wasn’t really a concept as such, and plus, you know- secret). There are many motivations for the sworn virgins.
Perhaps I erred in calling the Indian musician a fraud. For some reason, adopting a racial persona that isn’t yours strikes me as worse than living as a different sex. So my initial reaction is that Barry was not a fraud, and the musician was. I’m examining that reaction of my own. I wouldnt have considered him a fraud in a kneejerk way if he had passed for being white, for instance. Perhaps it is that he fabricated an exotic backstory, instead of relying on talent alone? Maybe that it seems like he was seeking fame? I don’t know. It feels different somehow, but that may be my own shortcomings in play.
But I’m saying “I don’t know if Barry, Tipton, Viking warrior are trans” and you seem to be saying it’s ridiculous to even consider it, much less discuss it (which what that researcher was trying to do -discuss it) and frankly, at this point I’m just tired of justifying why a conversation is worth having.
You don’t have to justify it. This is a voluntary discussion and no one is demanding anything from you. We are exchanging ideas and mulling over others people’s ideas as they are conveyed through this platform.
Any historical figure could have been trans, based on how loose and ill-defined the concept of trans is. If your only point is that we don’t know if this Viking commander was a transman but we can’t rule that out, okay. I get that.
My point is that it is silly to devote an article to make this point, especially when doing so reinforces the toxic notion that being a gender nonconforming female is incompatible with being a woman. Do you get this?
I understand your point, and I’ve argued your side of the discussion as well. I think certain aspects of the transgender discussion can reinforce toxic gender roles, but I have had enough experience with people who are trans to know that whether or not I understand it from a personal perspective doesn’t matter. I’m a grown ass woman who has always been a tomboy, who probably has more masculine qualities than many women (certainly my sisters) and I don’t “get” being transgender without body dysphoria, but I’m not living in anyone’s head but mine. I suspect we as a society might be way better off if EVERYONE was nonbinary.
I re entered this conversation because you introduced an interesting topic- even as you rolled your eyes at it.
I don’t think it is ridiculous to speculate about the motivations of gender non-conforming individuals in historical times. But I just think in the absence of personal narratives, transgenderism should always be treated as the least likely explanation.
I appreciate you being honest about your feelings, @raventhief. I wouldn’t blame the people who Pandit/Redd lied to for thinking he’s a fraud (though I would hope they would have some sympathy for him). And I don’t think everyone who tries to pass as something they aren’t is immune to the “fraud” label, even when they are a member of an oppressed group. Like, if we were talking about a modern day black guy from Missouri pretending to be an Indian, I probably would feel like he was a fraud. But in the time and place we’re talking about, I don’t see what he did as being fraudulent. Just subversive.
But, Matrix 4 (in production) would?
Yeah, I think so.