tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post3131387045226535187..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: How Should We Refer to the Chevalier D’Eon?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-80829464379112558932016-07-31T17:08:09.814-05:002016-07-31T17:08:09.814-05:00I'm now a PhD candidate, but when I was workin...I'm now a PhD candidate, but when I was working on my undergraduate thesis on "male impersonators" (people female assigned at birth who lived as men) in early America, I, of course, ran into these issues. The interpretation I offered in my thesis is that a strict association between anatomy and identity should be understood as historical. I often was accused of "presentism" referring to the individuals in my thesis with male names and pronouns, but I contended that to refer to them with female names and pronouns because their anatomy meant they were REALLY women rested on the assumption that "men have pensises, women have vaginas" as an ahistorical universal truth.True that it's important to recognize contemporary constructions; in other words, yes, it's critical to recognize that in the eighteenth century, that strict association between genitals and gender did exist. But the difference between recognizing that as historical and assuming that as biological fact is very subtle, and very important. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11094575082450857919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-86988015352309046652016-07-25T15:14:09.933-05:002016-07-25T15:14:09.933-05:00The English translation I linked to uses “his/her ...The English translation I linked to uses “his/her sex” as its translation for “son sexe,” recognizing that aspect of French genders. Terms like “spinster” (or whatever the French equivalent was) and “demoiselle” are therefore more indicative.<br /><br />I didn’t mention it here, but a couple of years before returning to France there was a court case in Britain ruling that D’Eon was female. The chevalier wasn’t a party to the lawsuit that produced that ruling. Rather, two men had bet on whether D’Eon was male or female, and then sued all the way to Lord Mansfield on the question of whether that was a valid gamble. J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-10586131247256805242016-07-25T14:02:25.292-05:002016-07-25T14:02:25.292-05:00"The French court, convinced by persistent ru..."The French court, convinced by persistent rumours about D’Eon’s gender, only agreed to give him a pension if he wore ‘clothing appropriate to her sex’."<br /><br />It would be interesting to see the original French language version of the court's ruling.<br /><br />The single words (possessive pronouns) in French that translate to "his" and "her" are identical — "son", "sa", and "ses". The pronoun instead agrees with the gender of the object that is possessed. For example, his/her father; son père; his/her mother, sa mère; his/her children, ses enfants. Additionally, the French word for sex or gender, sexe, is masculine so it always takes a masculine pronoun: son sexe could mean either "his sex/gender" or "her sex/gender".<br /><br />There are other ways of phrasing possessives that can be used to define the gender of the owner, but the phrasing is convoluted and wordy and is generally not used unless the author specifically wants to make that sort of distinction — for example, "le sexe de lui", his sex/gender, vs. "le sexe d'elle", her sex/gender.<br /><br />Alas, the use of an English translation here tells is nothing, it only obfuscates the court's original language.Charles Bahnenoreply@blogger.com