
19th-century female husbands - samclemens
https://aeon.co/essays/may-we-all-be-so-brave-as-19th-century-female-husbands
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kerkeslager
One of the things that I've learned from historians is how often they have to
teach people empathy. From Brett Devereaux having to explain to students that
people from other religions _actually believe their own religion_ [1] to Jen
Manion explaining in this post that people defined their gender in relation to
their own upbringing, students don't naturally just _know_ how to empathize.
It's really a difficult thing to put yourself in the shoes of another human
being.

I ran into this myself when discussing historical experiments with regard to
cholera. The person I was discussing was arguing that certain experiments were
unscientific, based on the fact that they weren't eliminating the proper
variables. I'm not sure I really ever got him to understand that the
scientists at that time didn't already know what caused cholera--that they
were asking questions of nature because they really didn't know the answers.

It is cliche that if you don't know history you're doomed to repeat it, but I
think it goes deeper than that: if you can't empathize with history, you're
doomed to repeat it. It's tempting to look at people from the past as quaint
and stupid, but the fact is, evolutionarily, people from 1000 years ago are
barely distinguishable from us: their brains are as developed as ours. If they
are quaint and stupid, then we are quaint and stupid--just as enslaved by our
fears, superstitions, nationalisms, and enmities as they were. History should
teach us to be humble.

[1] [https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-
wasnt-...](https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-
of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-ii/)

~~~
enkid
I liked your example of scientists from history. One of the things I'm minorly
obsessed with is the idea that we've gotten better at science itself recently.
So not only did they not know they weren't eliminating the proper variables,
they had fewer techniques to know which variables to eliminate. This is
similar to the application of statistics. We're just now realizing issues with
publication bias and how to properly due meta-analysis that can help identify
those problems. Think about not knowing how to apply even simple statistics to
science.

~~~
kerkeslager
But that's exactly my point: we _still_ are groping around in the dark on a
lot of issues. Can you explain to me why P=.05 is the ubiquitous standard for
statistical significance? No? Neither can anyone else I've come across. It
doesn't get much more basic than that--we _still_ don't know how to apply even
simple statistics to science.

And what we _as a species_ know, we _as individuals_ don't know. It's true
that the knowledge of the human race has moved forward with regard to applying
statistics to science, but if you make a habit of reading scientific papers
and checking their math, you'll quickly realize that there are critical errors
in lots of papers. And even if the scientists get the math right, the
journalists and marketing teams who publicize their results rarely do. Better
tools don't do us much good if we don't use them.

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Wowfunhappy
Most critical paragraph IMO:

> When I share news clippings of so-called ‘female soldiers’ or ‘female
> sailors’, students are quick to say that these people were not ‘really’
> trans. When I ask why they think this, students offer two reasons: the
> soldiers and sailors were motivated by some other need (patriotism and/or
> poverty) or they didn’t live as men for very long. It is my job, of course,
> to help students unpack and contextualise these newspaper accounts [...] I
> think one of the most powerful insights is the absence, for the most part,
> of a concept of ‘gender identity’ in the 19th century. Distinguishing
> ‘trans’ from ‘not-trans’ is futile and, in many ways, the least interesting
> route to approach this rich and varied material. What can we – in our
> ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ 21st century – learn from an era when this
> distinction was murkier?

I sometimes wonder if, in some ways, the emphasis we place on gender today is
actually putting people in more of a box. Identifying as "non-binary" is one
way out of that—but why should it even need a special designation?
People—everyone—should dress and act as they wish.

~~~
TehCorwiz
Special designations evolved as they always do. Initially by those who sought
to insult. There is a wide collection of vulgar terms for what we now refer to
as trans, lgbt, etc. if you do not choose a name, someone will choose one for
you.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
But imagine a world in which a boy who wants to wear a dress one day can just
go ahead and do that, without it saying something critical about their
identity. It shouldn't matter whether the child feels innately feminine, or
isn't sure yet, or just wants to _try on a damn dress_ because why the hell
not?

It seems to me that transgender labels preclude such a society, where you are
whoever you're presenting yourself as at that moment.

~~~
TehCorwiz
You don't need to be LGBT to wear a dress. I (Male) wore calf-length skirts
for a good chunk of my 20s and didn't need a label. There are ways of feeling
out who you are and what you're about without labels, privately or within your
peer group. But when you want to live publicly that way. When you want your
boss, store clerk, principal to know you as that then someone, anyone, will
find a word for you unless you have one for yourself. Especially if your
public transition is a rarity in the community you live in.

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DoreenMichele
_Lobdell wound up in the poor house in Delhi, New York state where they met
their love – Marie Louise Perry – in 1860 or 1861, and partnered with her for
nearly 20 years._

Currently, being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless. Perhaps not a
new phenomenon.

 _Relatives and neighbours began citing Lobdell’s gender and marriage to a
woman as evidence of their insanity._

Calling people "crazy" is a frequent means to invalidate everything about
them. It was done to Semmelweis, though he had studies to back up his claims,
and it is a common meme that "homeless people are all just junkies and
crazies."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)

 _Here we see their neighbours and community members turning on them and
describing them in the harshest possible light before a judge who held the
power of life (freedom) and death (forced institutionalisation) over them._

Claims that someone is insane seem to frequently be a means to de facto
justify atrocious treatment of them which would be deemed _abusive_ if their
claims were viewed as valid in some manner.

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wazoox
Also for a long time women used to dress as men and pretend to be one when
travelling alone. It was perfectly admitted and the polite thing to do when
you had a doubt (or accidentally discovered it) was to simply pretend to be
none the wiser.

~~~
mkl
This is one of the things described in the article.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I didn't realize from the article that it was so commonplace, though!

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laurex
I find it continually frustrating that there is a perceived, or sometimes
enforced, idea that there are rigid or binary rules around cultural
constructions such as race and gender, and that questioning those constructs
somehow denies the harm done to people who were on the “wrong side” of the
power imbalance these constructs enabled.

~~~
shredprez
I'm not sure how to interpret this comment... it seems to me people on the
"wrong side" of a constructed power imbalance are often the first to question
the validity of the construct.

Can you elaborate?

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wrnr
Also Albanian sworn virgins, and in the Hebrew bible intersex people had to
follow both the commands for men as for women.

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WillDaSilva
The idea that we were "born this way" has never sat right with me for a number
of reasons, so I'm glad to see this article call some attention to it. In
particular, the insistence that we were "born this way" and thus our gender or
sexual orientation cannot be changed is underlined by the idea that being
queer is a negative thing. I see no inherent reason for that to be the case,
and would prefer to live in a society that didn't really care what gender
people identified as, nor what genders/sexes they're attracted to. What does
it matter whether we were "born this way" or not? What's wrong with choosing
to be this way?

n.b. as the article noted, we obviously can't change our gender and sexual
orientation at will; I want to be clear that that's not what I'm claiming.

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Spivak
A lot of these issues haven't gone away. There are still plenty of people,
worse doctors, who hold the theory that a trans man is just a homophobic
lesbian. But the fact that there are trans men and women who are gay, bi, and
ace you would think speak to the fact that such a theory can't hold
absolutely. Oh well.

I think it's a bit of a cop-out to just say something like "gender was just
different in the 19th century" when gender dysphoria is a very real thing that
people suffered from long before it had a name. Just because the language to
talk about these things developed isn't inherently a reason to say that the
idea of gender changed. It's incredibly common for trans men and women, before
they're out to themselves, to just grope at their dysphoria not knowing why
their body repulses them, or why being reminded of their assigned gender
causes them pain, or why certain activities give them this comforting peace.
That kind of stuff is only obvious in hindsight when you have the experiences
of other people who've gone through the same thing.

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totetsu
The author Terry Pratchett collected a lot of material on this topic, and
eventually wrote the novel Monstrous Regiment about it.

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codeslave5
This could be construed as an attempt at the normalization of abnormal human
behavior. People 500 years ago did “x”, so you’re opinion on that now should
be dictated as such.

I this see across media platforms. Not blatant support of an idea, but a
perspective on it that assumes a specific reality. Not that this is
necessarily what is going on here, but I am seeing it everywhere. Call me
crazy...

~~~
totetsu
I'm getting an "Infinite loop detected in logic" error trying to understand
your point here.. Normal is just what most people are doing at the moment?

~~~
Izkata
GP is referring to the "argument from age" fallacy, the belief that prior
generations had better knowledge/wisdom on certain topics simply because it
lasted for so long before it disappeared in the modern age.

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082349872349872
also,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_marriage)

