Thinking deeply
Truly changing sex is possible, says Berkeley trans scholar Grace Lavery
No it isn’t. Next?
An associate professor of Victorian literature, Lavery first became interested in trans studies after reading the work of George Eliot, a 19th-century writer — born Mary Ann Evans, who went by a masculine pseudonym.
“There was this thread that I couldn’t stop pulling on,” said Lavery. “We know that Eliot was read as a male writer by many, many people and wanted to be read as a male writer. Those things are interesting and important. It was something that I thought very deeply about.”
She didn’t “want to be read as a male writer” as such, she wanted not to be dismissed as a female writer. She wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted to be understood as an intellectual as well as a novelist. None of that was available to her as a woman at that time. That does not mean that she wanted to be a man, much less that she was a man or thought she was a man.
Trust a man who thinks he’s a woman to fail to understand that.
After reading several unsatisfactory explanations about why Eliot used a masculine pseudonym, Lavery began to do her own scholarly research on the subject and is now one of Berkeley’s experts on trans studies.
That must have been some shit “scholarly research” then, because Eliot’s reasons for using a male pseudonym are pretty god damn obvious.
Grace Lavery: … There is a kind of conservative feminist position that argues that sex is set in stone, is assigned at birth. And I don’t agree with that. Most scientists I’ve spoken to seem pretty comfortable with the idea that sex, like any other biological category, is not a cast-iron law, but rather a sort of set of contingencies that can be played with and culturally reinforced or not culturally reinforced.
Nice manipulative choice of metaphors – set in stone, cast-iron law. Also nice unmarked shift from the reality of female and male sex to play and cultural reinforcement. Of course we don’t disagree that sex can be “played with” and culturally deinforced. We disagree that it can be literally swapped.
One of the things that I encountered in some of the literature when I was beginning to transition was that people would say, “If you want to be treated as a woman, speak less and ask more questions and direct comments more specifically to other individuals.” And I was like, “Well, to me, that feels fairly misogynist, actually” — that I was supposed to make myself smaller, and I’m not really prepared to do that. I do understand how these things work, but that’s not a deal I’m willing to make.
Good. Great. Now take that thought and apply it to women in general, and turn your energy to demolishing those stereotypes instead of trying to make them apply to you.
Ah yes, more of the same.
“I want to be part of a marginalised class but not the part where I’m actually marginalised.”
“I want to be a woman but not the part where I’m told to shut up and make the sandwiches.”
People like Lavery make it easier to see how we ended up where we are.
A professor of Victorian literature speaking out on what is and isn’t science. Right. Because that makes her an expert in Biology, right? Or at least more of an expert than people who actually spend years of their lives studying, researching, and working within Biology.
“She” found the explanations for Evans masculine name unsatisfactory, but does not explain what those reasons are or why they are unsatisfactory. I suspect that is because the reasons given mostly come back to wanting to be able to publish, as you said, and Lavery is aware that the vast majority of scholars, and probably any lay people aware of George Eliot, or aware of women taking male personas, would find them highly satisfactory reasons. It wasn’t uncommon.
This is a way of trying to take women’s history away and turn it into men’s history…because TMAM, and therefore a transsed George Eliot could not be read as a woman.
Well, some men may have entertained the delusion that they are women, and have come with encouragement from like-minded others, to believe so. Some succeed in shutting down on reality in one aspect of their lives while remaining pretty realistic in the rest. So ‘trans scholar Grace Lavery’ might tell the world that he / she / it is a woman, while secretly hoping that the elephant in the room would just go away.
More likely IMHO, Grace Lavery wishes he / she / it was a woman, and portrays that wish via dress, mannerisms and so on, but has about as much success in that enterprise as your average heavy-shouldered drag queen.
XY can only be XX in Fantasyland.
iknklast @ 2 – being published wasn’t entirely out of reach for women, so it wasn’t really that, so much as it was not wanting to be seen as a Lady Novelist, and wanting to be seen as an intellectual heavy-hitter, more like John Stuart Mill than Mary Elizabeth Braddon. She started out working for The Westminster Review, as a managing editor but in practice the editor, and she wrote a lot for it. That was far less acceptable for a woman than writing novels.
I bet many TiFs start out like that today, as well, and the difference is that there’s a whole ideology now telling them: “Guess what! You can actually be men!”
Goerge Eliot might have been swept up in that if she had lived today. But she didn’t, so she wasn’t, and therefore Lavery’s presentation is not worth my time.
But today there is far more space for women to be intellectuals in public.
George Eliot wrote under her pseudonym for various reasons. She was in a scandalous relationship with George Henry Lewes and wanted to hide her identity. She did not want the condescension given to woman novelists – Charlotte Bronte said the same about her own pseudonym. She did not want to be classed among the Silly Lady Novelists that she had great fun with in her essay. The ones who confuse “vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality.” – which could also be applicable to some English academics.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/silly-novels-by-lady-novelists-essay-by-george-eliot
Far more than in the past, yet still far too little. :-(
There is more space for women today in intellectual pursuits, but it is still often a good idea to adopt an ambiguous persona. I submit plays using my first initial and middle name. My middle name is not common for women; in fact, I’m not aware of any woman that has had that middle name. It is a name that has been used for males, though rather anachronistic.
Any playwright’s chance of getting their plays read when they submit them is low (I read somewhere you have about a 17% chance of getting it read). If it is a female writer, it goes substantially down (about 17% of the male plays). If the submissions are anonymous, women writers tend to make up half of those chosen; if it is not, women are scarce.
And there is still an expectation that things written by women will be interesting only to women, and will be light fluff.
Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (great TIF names, now that I think of it) would like a word.
I was given the advice early in my career to sign my name with a first initial only–I still do it out of habit, though everyone I work with knows who (and what sex) I am.
Anyone interested in the adventures of Grace Lavery and ‘her’ ‘husband’ Daniel Lavery (formerly Mallory Ortberg–interesting that the TIF took the TIM’s name when they married) will find a rich source of amusement or horror or both on Kiwi Farms.
I keep thinking about Material Girls chapter 6; Immersed in a Fiction. Seems to apply here, or Lavery is being deliberately dishonest, which I as a skeptic, find much more likely. I never could manage to be convinced of such obvious fictions, maybe I’m lacking the requisite brain function? I don’t think so though, as I can enjoy a good work of fiction, or get swept up in a play or a movie without any trouble, which has to do with suspension of disbelief, a temporary state of mind (for me anyway). So maybe it’s something deeper, some little brain accessory that I was born without. Probably a genetic defect. I only entertain this possibility to avoid screaming “You are so full of shit!” at (particularly religious) people constantly. :P
KBPlayer @ 6 – oh thanks for the link! I have (and prize) an Oxford Classics paperback selection of her essays but I didn’t think to look for the silly lady novelists one online. I’ll have to do some sharing…that essay is a joy.
guest – when Currer and Acton Bell showed up at Smith and Elder that morning, George Smith had a very hard time believing Charlotte when she told him she was Currer.
Middle 1960’s, High School English Literature, and “Mill On The Floss” was one of the assigned readings. We were told of Elliot’s real name, but really as an afterthought, and the book was studied for its content and not the identity of the author. In that respect, to us, George Elliot / Mary Ann Evans was similar to George Orwell / Eric Blair, a writer who chose a pseudonym.
OB@12 – it’s very entertaining, probably the funniest thing she ever wrote. Her essays are terrific – thoughtful and humane and full of common sense as well as learning. It says something for the Victorians that there was a good market for that kind of serious writing.
They are available at Gutenberg.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28289/28289-h/28289-h.htm
“The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. “
Hahaha I was sharing that right around the same time you were.
J. K. Rowling hid her identity behind a gender-neutral name. Does that make her trans?
Colin: That would ‘splode the minds of some of the more fervid activists, wouldn’t it?
Not a doctor, not a biologist. So does that mean we should be listening to random, unqualified people telling us that things considered impossible aren’t? Should I believe an oral hygeinist who says “Travelling faster than light is possible”? How about an accountant’s opinion on time travel? What if the cashier at my supermarket asks me to invest in her perpetual motion machine? I’m so confused.
Wait! Have you seen his head-tilt?
– A surgeon? A professor of biology? –
Oh.
Lavery began to do her own scholarly research on the subject and is now one of Berkeley’s experts on the properties of angels and how many of them can dance on the head of a pin.
Good for Grace.