Trans Erasure and the Old Bailey

[steepholm]

Trans erasure happens in all kinds of places, but it happens most to those who lack a voice: children, the poor and ill-educated, and the dead.

A young child gets bullied at school for preferring dolls to football. Teachers can know nothing about the child's future sexuality. Nor can they know whether the child is trans. Maybe the child just likes dolls, end of? But the form on which they record the incident has only one box, and it is marked "homophobic bullying". If she was a trans girl, that fact is erased.

Then there's the case I blogged about a year ago, concerning Malawian Tiwonge Chimbalanga, possibly trans, possibly intersex, but pretty clearly not (pace most of the Western media) a gay man. But then, what would she know about her own identity? According to the New York Times's unnamed Western "experts" (who have never met her) she is "a gay man in a repressed society desperate to think himself a woman".

Now we have BBC Radio 4's series Voices from the Old Bailey, which draws on the Old Bailey transcripts to give us a glimpse of eighteenth-century criminal life. This week they did a programme about homosexuality. Except that one of the cases, about "Princess Seraphina" (the segment starts at 27.30) sounds to me as if it's actually about a trans woman. (If you want to look at the actual Old Bailey transcript for this case, it's here.)

The year is 1732. The woman, known to herself and her friends as Princess Seraphina, was not in fact in the dock. Having been robbed, she was told by her assailant that if she tried to prosecute he would say that she had tried to bugger him - but she went ahead and prosecuted anyway. In the event, the man was acquitted - but as one of the show's guests remarks with surprise, Seraphina herself wasn't prosecuted for sodomy. Perhaps that might be because she hadn't done it?

Seraphina clearly lived as a woman in so far as was possible, had a close circle of female friends, and was well liked and accepted. (The show refers to these women as "admirers" and "a bevy of female acolytes", but they sound very much like friends to me.) However, the presenter Amanda Vickery and all three of her guests assume throughout that she is a crossdressing gay man. Now, this reading is possible, but the possibility (probability, I'd say) that she might be trans occurs to none of them. Kudos to Vickery for referring to her as "she" on the grounds that that's the pronoun she clearly preferred, but guest Rictor Norton in particular continually misgenders her. There's a lot of twaddle about pantomime, camp, theatricality, etc, and how she was a "parody of a woman" engaged in a "performance" (not in a Judith Butler way), and also an attention seeker. Says Helen Berry: "I personally think that Princess Seraphina was nothing if not a drama queen, and I think she absolutely relished her moment in the spotlight with all those judges and everybody looking at her." You think? None of this is evidenced by the transcript, which shows that she prosecuted under some duress from witnesses who wanted their share of any potential reward. All this superstructure of motivation, etc, is built on assumption that she must have been a camp gay man. One of the speakers is reminded of Kenneth Williams.

The programme also refers to a telling incident, involving not Seraphina herself but one of her acquaintance: "t'other went to the Masquerade in a Velvet Domine, and pick'd up an old Gentleman, and went to Bed with him, but as soon as the old Fellow found that he had got a Man by his Side, he cry'd out, Murder". I don't know very much about gay culture, but this doesn't sound like a gay pick-up to me. Isn't it more usual for gay men to go to bed with other gay men, rather than with heterosexuals? It does, however sound very much like a "trans panic" reaction - 250 years avant la lettre.

This erasure of real lives is bad in itself; but it also has the effect that being trans can be dismissed as a specifically-modern, specifically-Western phenomenon, "invented" by male sexologists for their own sinister purposes.

Comments

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

18th century is way too modern for me, but I've read some accounts of women living as men from prior to that era. I'm not sure if there are fewer records of men living as women--this seems likely, intuitively, because the stigma is far greater on men 'feminising' than the other way round. Some of the women-as-men are for very simple, non-identity reasons like not wanting to be able to work at certain occupations or have basic rights, but not all. I'm reminded of one whose name escapes me, but who was so adamant that he was a man that (when being prosecuted for cross-dressing) he claimed, when the doctors examined him, that his penis was taken by God in the course of a mystic vision, but would be returned when the whole trial was done.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Being a historian and a trans woman, I've read most of what has been published on 'trans' history (I use the quotation marks advisedly as a great deal of our history gets erased accidentally or deliberately by gay or cis writers) which is precious little, in truth. I've even written a little myself for so called 'LGBT history week' (mostly G with a little L less B and almost no T and wondered, in the end, why bothered :o(

Trans men are thought not to exist for many of the same reasons.

[perdix.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a fascinating glimpse into an 18th century life - and an apparently timeless social injustice. Thanks for posting/analyzing.

Also, @cmcmck, I have a friend who is a trans man and the idea that he doesn't exist - or rather belongs in some other category (lesbian?) - is pretty laughable! I guess he's "lucky" that pretty much everyone in his community / social group accepts him for what he is - a trans man! - including his parents.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I also have transguy friends and they definitely exist! :o)

It frustrates me deeply that the some radfems are intent on erasure because tranguys don't fit their cosy little view of the world.

[perdix.livejournal.com]

Agree!

P.S. I saw my transguy friend yesterday evening. Yep, still exists. :-)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I heard that programme too and you are being selective: there was also a case of a man prosecuted for sodomy who was convicted despite his ex-father in law giving evidence on his behalf, and there *being* no evidence that he had committed sodomy, only that he was seen going into a male brothel.

Furthermore, one of the refrains in this programme was that none of these people would have understood "gay" as it is defined today.

Also, old definition of a bi man? A straight man after ten pints. I can tell you horror stories of friends (and also myself) who thought we were chatting up willing partners who freaked afterwards because their self-proclaimed identity didn't match up. I was involved with three women who used me as their test case; all then panicked, insisted they weren't gay and that it was all my fault, and all three then ended up dating women (two apologised, but it was damn unpleasant).

So, while your points may be valid this post has just as many ahistorical and unhelpful assumptions.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you're getting at by bringing up the case of the man caught in a raid on a molly-house. I didn't mention it because it wasn't relevant to my post about trans erasure, but if you can show me otherwise, feel free. Ditto with the fact that some straight people turn out to be bi when their inhibitions come down. I don't dispute it, but don't see how it tells against this post - which wasn't cast as a general review of the show, but took issue with one part of it.

On the question on terminology, you're right of course that these terms (sodomy excepted) are ahistorical. You're also right that this was brought up, at least as regards sexuality, in the show itself. (Not so much in the publicity on the R4 web site, which tells us: "Amanda Vickery uses court cases to explore the lives of gay men in the 18th century", and "[Lincoln's Inn was] a notorious gay cruising ground".)

But yes, terminology: gay, homosexual, drag queen - none of these terms were current in 1732, and the cultures that gave rise to them aren't a perfect fit for that time. Of the guests on the programme, Helen Berry was the most cautious in identifying (in Vickery's words) a "coherent gay identity in eighteenth-century England". Peter King talked of a "smorgasbord of sexual identity", painting a picture sexual fluidity and shifting sexual identities. Rictor Norton was at the opposite extreme, speaking of the subjects of the programme as:

a group with which I [as a gay man] have a cultural affinity... I really do recognize them as gay men in the modern sense of the word 'gay'. I really do think you need to reclaim your past before you can fight for the good gay future.

So, the programme represented a range of approaches, from Berry's academic caution to Norton's wish to reclaim a lost gay history.

All that's fine, but the point of my post is that none of the contributors even brought up the question of gender identity. None of them mentioned the word "trans" - which is neither less nor more ahistorical than "gay" or the rest. Everything was assimilated to the question of sexuality (which in Seraphina's case is a moot point: all we know is that she was attracted to men, which may mean she was homosexual or heterosexual, depending on whether she was a man or a woman).

The programme was based on the premise that these people were acting in ways which, if they acted that way today, would identify them as gay. It seems to me that Princess Seraphina, if she existed today, would (on the evidence we have) very likely be recognized as trans. (Or, to put it the other way round, if a trans woman were alive in 1732 I would expect that her life might well look like that of Princess Seraphina - if she were very lucky enough not to be dead.) Norton wishes to "reclaim" a gay history as an prerequisite of fighting for the "good gay future", and I've no quarrel with that. My question is, where is the trans history? If the possibility that Seraphina might be trans is erased, as it was in this programme, it becomes invisible.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

All that's fine, but the point of my post is that none of the contributors even brought up the question of gender identity. None of them mentioned the word "trans" - which is neither less nor more ahistorical than "gay" or the rest. Everything was assimilated to the question of sexuality (which in Seraphina's case is a moot point: all we know is that she was attracted to men, which may mean she was homosexual or heterosexual, depending on whether she was a man or a woman).


But you made that point by excluding the other evidence given which demonstrated that assumptions were made all over the place, at the time as well, and picking and choosing your interpretations, and I reacted as a historian not as an activist.

One other thing: how do you think Seraphina earned a living at a time when the only work for women was domestic service, sewing or sex work (and I include marriage there)? The complication is that sodomy was an *act* in the eighteenth century. Oral sex was considered wrong but not a crime.

An even more complicating aspect is that this is generally a very performative period, and what we know about the Molly Houses is that they were fascinated by performance.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm still not sure what you mean about my excluding evidence. Yes, people in the eighteenth century made assumptions (sometimes wrongly) and so do people today, in radio studios or tapping at their computers. What evidence did I exclude that was germane to the point of the post?

As for your question about work - it's an interesting one. Seraphina did not live full-time as a woman (which is why I said she appears to have done so "as far as possible"). From what I can gather she may have worked as a butcher at one time. She is described on Norton's own site as "a gentleman's servant, and a kind of messenger for mollies (gay men), and a bit of a hustler" - though it's not clear what his sources are for that. I've seen no evidence that she engaged in sodomy, although if she did (in those pre-SRS days) it isn't evidence of much except a wish not to be celibate or, perhaps, short of funds. Her taste in clothes would clearly have required financing, though equally clearly she and her girlfriends were used to sharing. I suppose I have to ask, since you raised the question, how do you think trans women at this date would have earned a living?

As for performance, there are two different senses of "performative" in play here (which is why I mentioned Judith Butler). In the sense I think you mean, yes, Seraphina was clearly interested in performance. Her choice of name, her interest in her appearance, both indicate that she cared about the impression she made, as many people did and do. But "performance" is a slippery word, and in discussions of trans people it can very quickly slide into "pretending to be something you're not". This was the sense it was frequently used in in the programme - e.g. she was a "parody of a woman", etc. And that's the erasing move - she's not a woman, she's just a man performing as a woman.

Bottom line - there's no doubt that men existed in eighteenth century who found other men sexually attractive. There's equally no doubt that there were male-bodied people who identified as female. I said in the post that understanding Seraphina as (to shoehorn it into modern terms) a gay man was a possible reading. It is at least as if not more plausible that she was a trans woman. Why, in a programme populated by experts and academics with a special interest in the subject, was that possibility not even mentioned? And how is that not erasure?

Interesting ...

[airmarshall.livejournal.com]

However you can hardly expect any better from an ego conscious world so consumed with it's own arrogance, as to expect "feckin' nutters," as I would call them, to look through the pages of ancient text, that make quite plain such matters as nature herself devises are nothing new but just as sadly meets with the same prejudicial responses, perhaps only differing in measure.

"Begin" it's one of those funny words, a bit like, "Once upon a time .." but when was once upon a time, perhaps it was two times, or a time and a half they was having, what do you reckon?

[jadelennox]

*nod* It's a delicate balance to walk even if you aren't writing transness out of history as the news media has a tendency to do. If you claim that the visitors to molly houses are equivalent to 21st-century gay men or 21-century trans women, either way, you're misreading history; historical context is entirely different. But if you go too far down that route, you write those queer folk right out of history. Surely there is a nuanced way to recognize their gay/trans/queer nature.

(Besides, insisting too much on nuance ignores the fact that the sexuality and gender self-expression of most 21st-century hetero Englishmen resembles that of their 18th-century counterparts just as little. Unless they are showing their masculinity by wearing powdered wigs, and expressing their sexuality by sexually assaulting custodial staff while they wait for an innocent young thing to look interesting enough at a local party.)

I've seen the same erasure/attempt at nuance when people are having conversations about two-spirit people or other third gender folks. On the one hand, not the same thing as contemporary Western transness. On the other hand, in many conversations, insisting on that difference ... misses the point entirely. (In that case, the conversation is made less (or more, depending on how you count) complicated by the presence of LGBTQ/two-spirited people from Native traditions who either do or don't insist on identifying as trans as well as two spirited.)

*sigh* Nuanced conversations are difficult. That doesn't mean we get out of having them. Shame on you, BBC.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Very true. (I like your point about the difference in heterosexual expression that date.)

In a way this is part of a much more general problem that crops up whenever we talk about the past, or indeed about unfamiliar present-day cultures. "Class", "family", "education", "courtesy", etc etc all have differences of meaning that we need to be mindful of, and which can lead to different kinds of erasure (e.g. "There were no well-educated women at this date" - iff "well-educated" implies having attended university); but to speak of the past at all suggests that there is some ground sufficiently common for us to be able to build understanding upon. It's a delicate balance, as you say.

[gair.livejournal.com]

If you claim that the visitors to molly houses are equivalent to 21st-century gay men or 21-century trans women, either way, you're misreading history; historical context is entirely different... insisting too much on nuance ignores the fact that the sexuality and gender self-expression of most 21st-century hetero Englishmen resembles that of their 18th-century counterparts just as little.

YES YES YES YES YES. I can't tell you how many academics I've heard earnestly explain that we can't say Shakespeare was 'gay' or 'bisexual' or 'homosexual', and then use the term 'heterosexual' - which is of course even more anachronistic - to refer to people from the same period. SO MUCH RAGE.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

As someone who currently claims a sexual identity label that pretty much wasn't in usage at all at the time I was first old enough to be thinking about sexual identity (admittedly, even now, you can't really say it's in common usage), this is an issue I think about a lot. Probably if I had been born even only ten years earlier than I was, I would have been thinking of myself as straight at the age I am now, even though to the me that actually exists that label seems laughably inaccurate. I guess that this is the tension between labels and actual people, who are obviously much more complicated than most labels - it's nice to feel like I'm living in an era when there are sexuality and gender labels that I feel are a very comfortable fit for me (although obviously gender is probably less complicated for me personally given that I'm comfortable identifying as the gender I was assigned at birth), but it's quite possible that, even with a similar actual sexuality and gender to what I have now, I would have felt more comfortable than seems instinctively true living in a different era with a different set of labels available.

Just curious...

[transadvocate.livejournal.com]

Any chance I could post this over at transadvocate.com as a guest post? Great post. It reminds me of how lesbians try and appropriate J.D. Cashier even though he was obviously a trans man and lived all of his life after transition as a man.

Re: Just curious...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'll pm you.

Re: Just curious...

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

They attempted the same with the late Billy Tipton, the jazz musician.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like 'Seraphina' took her name from a character in LeSage's picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715; first English translation 1716). Just a detail.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Not one I've read, I must admit!

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Seraphina is a beautiful young lady. Gil Blas was very popular in eighteenth-century England.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

out of curiosity, did they talk about Eleanor Rykener, who was trans and bi, as far as we can tell? Or is 1394 too early?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Alas no, they were sticking to the eighteenth century and the Old Bailey transcripts.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I haven't listened yet, but that's a bit what this reminded me of, including the question of performance of gender as expression of gender vs a sort of opportunistic performance that might still include the expression of gender, if that makes sense.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I like to think of it as the difference between "Reagan's performance as Custer" and "Reagan's performance as President". He was playing both roles professionally, but no one ever said he wasn't really President (though they may have wished it).