Learn all about how interesting women were really men and how trans women are even more interestinger!
Introduction
The session was organised by Melanie Holloway, Diversity, Inclusion & Participation Manager, at NHS England (soon to be defunct). She is also Chair of the National LGBTQIA+ Staff Network. NHS England has achieved ‘Gold Champion’ status from the LGBT Foundation training programme (see here).
Holloway was emotional, more than 600 NHS staff had signed up to the session with about half watching live a trans awareness session called ‘Trans History (and why it matters)’. After the session the video was circulated to everyone who had signed up and is now posted on YouTube for posterity, though I note not through an official NHS channel. It had also been the busiest LGBT+ History Month of Holloway’s career so far, so she was pumped about that too.
We were reminded that things were very bad at the moment (‘things’ being one particular Orange Thing over 4,000 miles away). Also, anyone who voiced any kind of critical dissent would be promptly removed from the webinar. This was followed up by a flimsy assurance that any poorly expressed questions about trans issues would be tolerated. Fortunately, everyone on the webinar seemed just absolutely nuts, so everything was fine.
The lecture was delivered by James Davison, a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool, who delivered a whistle stop tour over a huge chunk of history, starting with the Egyptians and ending with the Stonewall riots.
The talk
What is transness?
Davison’s preferred term to discuss all things trans was the nebulous-sounding ‘transness’. Really this was so he could go ‘ooh, that’s a bit trans’ about everything. Material reality wasn’t really a thing, Davison told us, quietly introducing the concept of ‘cisness’ to the assembled horde of NHS workers, using the cryptic example of ‘some people having a much more complicated relationship with their bodies’.
Ancient Egypt
Egyptians were a bit trans, weren’t they? Especially Haspheput, ‘cos when she ascended to the throne she changed her name to a male honorific, which is well queer, innit? Mummies are quite queer too. Ooh, so much history, James.
Next up, the Roman Empire
Introducing the topic, Davison told us that the myth about Romulus being wet nursed by a wolf was ‘very unlikely’, thereby missing the opportunity to bring furries into the conversation.
Recently the Roman Emperor Elagabalus (born 202 AD) had been reclassified as a trans woman by the North Hertfordshire Museum. Davison informed us that Elagabalus’s reign was characterised by sexual deviancy and that he liked saying ‘I’m a lady’ whilst in make-up and wigs, so the Museum’s take isn’t actually as nuts as it sounds.
Davison also claimed that Elagabalus offered a sum of money to any doctor who could perform ‘what we call a vaginoplasty today,’ even though this operation was only attempted recently.
Anglo Saxon England, early Medieval period
Lots of information given about battles, invading groups and the establishment of the Church but very thin on anything trans, until we finally got onto burials. Some archaeological digs had revealed an incongruence between the sex of the person versus their gender (you know, men being buried with a beaded necklace or a woman with a spear, that kind of thing, so not relying on modern day sexist stereotypes at all). Davison had a stab at reinterpreting this argument though, I’ll give him that. This was the subject of his PhD.
High Medieval Period
Time for medieval trans saints, today known as trans masculine people. These were women who refused marriage, or entry into a convent, and instead posed as male and entered monasteries. Davison felt the case for transness was strong, as it didn’t explain why these women didn’t just go into a convent instead (I suspect it was to do with monks having a better standard of living and access to education and you would expect a historian to at least consider this).
Davison said St Joseph of Scherma was a trans man monk living in 12th Century Germany which drew no matches when I asked Mr Google. Davison reassured us that he wasn’t arguing that the Catholic Church was a positive space for trans people but that it was.
Early Modern Period, Shakespeare
Women were not allowed to perform on stage and therefore female roles were played by boys and men. This apparently allowed trans people to live their lives authentically (not women though, but who cares about that?). As proof of this, male actors who had been known to play female roles weren’t able to transfer into male roles once they had gotten older (no one wants depictions of older women, and what’s wrong with that?).
Davison seemed astounded that some of these men also crossdressed when out socially and that they bothered to put their heart and souls into the roles, to show that the characters were living and breathing human beings. All this Davison saw as ‘transness’, rather than (likely homosexual) actors having a bit of sympathy (possibly) for the female characters their sisters and mothers were forbidden.
The Long 18th Century
This was when biological sex was ‘constructed’ and ‘violently enforced’, said Davison, telling us Britain had transmitted this ideology to the rest of the world via Empire. Male and female bodies had now become defined by their opposition to one another, he said, and a new idea which was part of a larger conspiracy to impose hierarchies, especially of race. And whereas before people had quite a bit of scope to be whatever gender they wanted to be, it became closely policed in the 18th Century.
Dr James Barry
Cue the transing of Dr James Barry, a woman who pretended to be a man so that she could study medicine, and who performed the first successful caesarian section. Her secret was only revealed after death, when the charwoman looked under the sheets wrapping her body. There was no reflection from Davison that Barry might have wanted to keep it secret after death to protect those she was close to from any subsequent scandal. Instead Davison’s reflection was that Barry lived at a time when ‘transness’ was more constrained.
Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science
Davison described Hirschfield’s Institute as if it were a Butlin’s holiday camp, rather than a place where homosexuals were experimented on to get fixed, though did admit it was the place where ‘gender affirming surgeries were developed’. As per the usual trans activist narrative, we were told the Institute’s books were burned (in fact, it is much more likely the library was plundered).
Davison also claimed that gay men and trans women were officially lumped together and forced to wear pink triangles, ditto gay women and trans men with black triangles, in Nazi concentration camps. These groups were treated more harshly than other prisoners. He also claimed that after the liberation of the camps, these prisoners were transferred to normal prisons in East and West Germany respectively. (With no thought given to the millions of Jews and others unavailable for transfer.)
Mid 20th Century
A very quick whizz through as we were running out of time. Christine Jorgensen was the first to have the sex change op. Police making arrests for public cross dressing led to the Stonewall riots in 1969, with drag queens and trans women at the forefront, namely Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson (both mentally ill gay men with drug problems).
Negative feedback
Someone once told Davison that the Anglo Saxons knew as much about transness as they did about antibiotics and that his theory was ridiculous. Davison had an answer for that: the Saxons once made an ointment which was effective at treating eye infections, researchers tested it and it killed bacteria and MRSA. So nur.
Right now
Things were terrifying just now. Many anti-trans laws were being bought in and as an example he showed a slide pertaining to the US legislature. Davison also claimed that trans people (he meant children really) had to undergo ‘conversion therapy’ before they could get access to ‘treatment’. Things were less safe now for trans people than they were ten years ago. Over $7 million had been ploughed into anti-trans groups, not realising this is a piffling amount. Conversations about sports and toilets had been sponsored by ‘incredibly rich and influential people’ and was reason for us to be very worried. Trans wasn’t new, nor a threat. Watching this webinar would equip the audience to deal with trans patients better and would help us identify transphobia in healthcare. It would help us protect the rights, the dignity and safety of trans people, which was something really needed at the moment. Also, read Judith Butler.
No Q&A time
Melanie Holloway came back to tell us that she hadn’t timed the session properly, it was originally 90 minutes long but now was only an hour, so there wasn’t any time for Q&A. Holloway offered Davison a further opportunity to do more training, this would be paid for from an NHS England training budget, thereby confirming (I think) that Davison was indeed paid for the bilge that day.
Comments from participants
I had a good look through the comments made during the live session. This included dozens of ‘hi, my name’s Sarah, how are you all today’ type drivel and inane observations like ‘great session so far’. But also: ‘It’s interesting that modern historians would project modern notions of transphobia and trans hate onto historical perceptions of gender,’ and ‘Fascinating how no one ever says we don’t have enough information to classify someone as cis, by the same logic they use to dismiss the option someone was trans.’ A male nurse, who continued to work whilst ‘transitioning,’ claimed his colleagues’ response was that ‘it was so normal’. Until finally: ‘Morning all I am a volunteer at Mermaids.’
There was one question though. How important were trans role models in the trans debate? Davison said that history should be the first port of call. He also recommended the Museum of Transology but was unclear of its location, which suggested to me that he had never visited it or its website (most of the artefacts are online and relate to the last ten years).
The video has been posted publicly to YouTube.
Reflection
This webinar would have been widely touted by senior management teams across NHS Trusts at the behest of the LGBT+ network system. Six hundred people is a sizeable number. I suspect the core audience was ancillary rather than clinical, fancying an hour off work whilst at work, but clearly both make up the cohort of healthcare professionals. Worrying. As for Davison’s historical illiteracy …
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