amethystinia:

transsafeuserboxes:

makingqueerhistory:

spaceykiid:

nitrosplicer:

jindosh:

jindosh:

i wonder how many historic trans men we’ve lost to “this WOMAN went by a man’s name, wore men’s clothes, took the job of a man, lived as a man… GIRL POWER!”

this isn’t a “pushing my identity on historic people” thing, it’s the fact that every single time i or another person brings up the possibility of someone like us in history, we’re immediately shut down, told that we didn’t “exist yet”, given a billion different reasons why we aren’t ALLOWED to see these people as reflective of us and our struggles and experiences – i get that we didn’t have the vocabulary back then but for so many of you the IDEA that someone who went to the same stretches that we do today to separate from their dead selves and identify similar to the way trans people do is too “far out there” and “disrespectful” to them somehow. they’re dead. we’re alive. we’re trying to connect the pieces. go get your kicks out of isolating us from history somewhere else, away from me.

yeah, there were women who did crossdress in order to take up jobs they would not have been permitted to access

but when people say it about Albert Cashier, who donned Union uniform, bound his chest, and lived as a man even after the Civil War, when he was reclusive and lived in a tiny village, after there would have been no incentive for him to do so, I question their motives.

I also question their motives when they list Alan L Hart, who legally changed his name and was one of the first trans men to pursue a hysterectomy, referring to himself as “a fellow.”

people DONT want historical figures to be trans. they WANT to interpret these historical figures as women, not trans men, because that makes them uncomfortable. 

same with the musician billy tipton, who hid his trans status from his wife and children his whole life, and whose son didn’t know his father was trans until billy was dead. he told his wife that his binding was necessary because he had been in an automobile accident before they met, never disclosing his trans status to her. the number of historians that refer to him by his deadname and call him an “actress” make me feel sick. he was a stealth trans man around everyone but his parents, and it hurts trans men everywhere to call trans men in history “lesbians”.

If you want to learn more about any of these men:

Albert D.J. Cashier

Alan L. Hart, Part 1

Alan L. Hart, Part 2

Billy Tipton and the Question of Gender 

Acknowledging women in history is important, but don’t do it at the expense of other oppressed groups and erase trans people from history. ~🐱

Every time you hear about a “woman who lived as a man” please consider that they might have been a man all along