Gotta love a painting of an 18th century transvestite french spy made by a British theatre buff!
Here’s how D’Eon’s transvestitism came to pass: He joined King Louis XV’s secret service in 1755, had his first major military posting in London in 1763, before being appointed Plenipotentiary Minister to London. However, within months, he had a falling-out with the ambassador appointed to replace him in London, accusing the ambassador of trying to murder him. D’Eon also made public secret documents and ended up being sent to prison, which he escaped.
Once escaped, D’Eon concealed his identity, reportedly, by dressing as a woman. Gossip about his gender began in 1770, with rumors that people were even betting on whether he was a man or a woman.
“D’Eon refused all offers to confirm or deny the rumor,” Simon Burrows, professor of modern history at the University of Leeds, said in a statement in 2010. “He also demanded the French government pay off his debts and they agreed, terrified he would betray state secrets, including plans to invade England.”
And after that, apparently D’Eon was forced to adopt female dress, and others accepted him as a female. So much so, that the truth was only revealed upon a medical examination after his death on May 21, 1810, which revealed his very male anatomy. Reportedly, his housekeeper did not “recover from the shock for many hours,” according to the gallery.
Maybe Oscar Wilde should have just thrown on a dress and he would have been left alone?
The EU is finally making LGBT rights a prominent part of admission criteria to the EU. Now if Russia could stop arresting people and homophobes could just give in and make with the gay loving, maybe there would be real progress.
The Oxford Press is carrying an interesting story this week about a transgender (F2M) Miami University student that was accepted as an RA but told he had to live in an all female dorm.
He filed a discrimination complaint, stating his gender identity should be recognized and accepted and he should be placed in the all male dormitories.
They responded by saying they have gender neutral housing and he was welcome to stay there.
The conundrum is how far universities should be required to go and if there should be some form of certification required to prevent abuse of whatever system they do construct.
There is also, politically correct or not, a question of potential violence. I can easily see the one anatomically female allowed in a building at all hours being at heavy risk of rape or personal violence.
That would be a very heavy risk for any university or corporation to take in an environment known to include alcohol abuse on a regular basis.
The New York Times recently posted an article about the rash of “emo” murders in Iraq. Iraq apparently labels all kids who sport western clothes, may be considered effeminate, or have longer hair as emo.
These kids are under 18 usually and have been murdered by hammers or bricks to the head. Flyers are being posted with the location of the surviving kids and their names, making them easy targets.
Some of this is blamed on apparent sexuality, but the government is actually making things worse. They apparently have issued a statement that they need to eliminate the “emo” menace and used the word as a synonym for satanists. A plan has been proposed to enter schools to locate and eliminate them. I’m not sure how literally they mean this, but it doesn’t look good.
Reports have the number of murders between 14-100 and largely caused by militia groups.
There are two websites that specifically track these occurrences, but I don’t want to post the information from them because it is very graphic.
If you do want to read more:
Both contain very graphic images of the murdered children and translations of some of the releases on the subject.
St. Petersburg just passed a law banning “Gay Propaganda.” It legalizes fines for anyone promoting alternative lifestyles to minors. It seems minor, but some studies show that an accepting environment decreases the chance of a teenage suicide in the GLBT community by up to 20%.
This law makes that illegal.
It’s not the first move towards discrimination in Russia. Russia actually put together a bill in 2008 to ban goth/emo people from entering public buildings and to ban certain bands (My Chemical Romance, etc) from performing/selling their music in Russia. However, anyone can dance to this:
One of the first questions parents are asked when about to have a child is, “is it a boy or a girl?”
What if it’s neither?
Variations on the gender spectrum are more common than most people know or would find it easy to believe. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a noted Brown University Professor/Researcher, is known for proposing the idea that sex and gender is not a binary but should feature 5 or more sexes as an option.
The number of people born not distinctly male or female vary depending on one’s standard. Some children are born with partial insensitivity to gender relevant hormones. Some children are externally one sex and internally another. What we do know is approximately one in a thousand children born require a gender specialist to determine the “best” gender for them.
This is equivalent to about 320,000 Americans or the same amount of Americans being non-male or non-female by birth as being from Hawaii or a Pacific Islander.
Approximately 1:100 births deviate from standard male or female. This would be about four times the amount of Americans not conforming biologically to male or female as being bi-racial. (African-American/Caucasian)
To put it on a local scale, about 400 people at the University of Texas deviate from male or female biologically on some level.
It makes the sociatal enforced gender roles and gender assumptions a bit more off-putting when you realize that other should be a valid option.
It also adds a biological question mark to sexuality.
This video is a bit dated, but gives an overview. Thankfully, the somewhat enforced surgeries have been curtailed some since.
I recently found an article on the Smithsonian on the evolution from gender neutral clothing for babies to distinct male and female clothing for them. It not only mentioned the “Pink is for boys, blue is for girls” theory but had this picture of President Roosevelt as a child:
At the time, boys and girls both wore dresses up to about age six. Another article on straightdope.com cites that pink remained a male color until the 40s.
What changed?
One theory is Hitler and homophobia. Hitler designated the then masculine color of pink to the triangles used to identity homosexual prisons in Nazi Camps. Homosexuality became not only more acknowledged around this time, but became intricately linked to the color pink. Homosexuals being seen as effeminate, pink became too girly for men.
Everyone knows about the no fly lists in America, but there’s been a recent outrage over the Canadian version which bans those who do not conform to a binary gender as listed on their passports.
The Huffington Post recently posted an article by Emerson Whitney on the subject titled, “Canada Won’t let Gender Variance Fly.”
It’s interesting to note, however, that Australia has an X option on their passport for those who aren’t feeling particularly male or female and Britain has been considering completely dropping gender altogether and only including an X as an option.
The claim for keeping gender listed and immediately identifiable is security, but I’m not sure that will fly much longer.
I don’t want to cloud the impact of this video by a lot of commentary. I do recommend you watch the preview video and if you are interested, watch the full video on PBS and comment here afterwards.
On certain occasions, I find myself watching bad reality television. The show most likely to draw me in, of course, is Project Runway. I’m a sucker for anything even ostensibly creative.
Of all of the designers, one of the most interesting is Austin Scarlett. He reminds me of every boy one of my best friends has ever dated.
Anyway, last week they designed for Ms. Piggy. Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen and it inspired Monsieur Scarlett to do this:
I don’t really think I need to say anything more. But it’s interesting to note he recently came out of the closet as “not completely gay.”
I love America.
chunter2 