These 3 Historical Figures Show Us Why Trans+ History Is So Important
Gender diversity isn’t new — recognising this helps challenge our erasure and give us hope
Thanks to the good folks at QueerAF, the UK has just celebrated its first ever Trans+ History Week, which runs from 6–12 May.
According to Queer AF, the event is ‘dedicated to celebrating the rich history of transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex individuals’.
‘Trans+’ serves as an umbrella term which recognises that gender-diversity differs by culture, time and place, with ‘transgender’ being only one of many ways to understand that diversity.
In this article I take a look at the reasons for transgender and gender-diverse erasure and explore the lives of three historical figures to illustrate why events like Trans+ History Week are so important.
Who controls the past controls the future
Transgender and gender-diverse people are increasingly demonised as the subject of a toxic moral panic in the UK. As a result we’ve experienced a rise in discrimination, hate crimes and attacks on our basic rights.
As Munroe Bergdorf points out, often ‘when we see progress from a marginalised community at speed, there will be pushback’. Though disheartening, the UK’s transphobia is a sign that, despite many setbacks, we are making progress.
One way transphobic groups try to push back against this progress is by portraying trans and gender-diverse people as something new — just a ‘trend’ or ‘fad’.
Trans people have even been referred to as an ‘epidemic’ by the UK’s Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, and the UK’s Cass Review into healthcare for trans youth promotes the idea that trans identity is a ‘social contagion’.
To the British establishment, trans people aren’t just a trend but a dangerous trend.
Although transphobes insist that we’re a risk to cisgender women or an ideological cult corrupting the youth, the reality is the opposite: cisgender society and its increasing transphobia is a risk to us.
The threat that trans folks really represent is the challenge our existence presents to the gender norms, the sex/gender binary, and the systems of power that rest on that binary.
And so they’d really rather we would stop existing. Ultimately, trans erasure is the goal, and denying our history is one way of achieving that goal.
Re-examining cis-tory
It’s not just present-day politicians and ‘gender critical’ feminists erasing our history. Cis society has been at it for centuries — and that includes cisgender scholars.
The lives of gender-diverse individuals throughout history have been misrepresented via what M. W. Bychowski refers to as the ‘compulsory cisgender assignment of history’ through which historical figures are ‘coded through cisgender norms’ (pg. 95) and their gender-diversity is erased.
Thankfully, trans scholars have been re-examining the claims of cisgender historians and wider society in earnest.
Three cases that shed light on the history of Trans+ and gender-diverse erasure are that of Eleanor Rykener, Amelio Robles Ávila, and Joan of Arc.
Before getting into their stories, though, I want to be clear that applying contemporary labels to those in the past is problematic and, to my mind, misses the point: we don’t have to ‘claim’ someone as trans for their experiences to be relevant to our own.
And so, I’m not claiming these people were transgender but highlighting their lived experience and what it says about Trans+ and gender-diverse erasure in both the past and present.
Eleanor Rykener
‘Se Elianoram nominans veste muliebri detectus’ (discovered in women’s attire, she named herself as ‘Eleanor’).
— From Eleanor’s interrogation (1394) (quoted on The Lone Medievalist)
Eleanor Rykener was assigned male at birth but, from what little we know about her, seems to have lived out her life in 14th-century England as a woman.
She dressed in women’s attire and worked as a barmaid and embroiderer, considered predominantly female jobs at the time. Eleanor was also a sex worker. She had both working and personal sexual relationships with men and women. (Her sexuality is also often erased by historians.)
Records of her arrest for engaging in sex work have heavily influenced the way modern historians have understood her life. Despite living as a woman, Eleanor is referred to as a man and by her male name in court records following her arrest for prostitution and sodomy.
Sex workers weren’t usually arrested during this period, so it’s possible that her arrest and later interrogation had more to do with her gender variance.
The erasure of her lived identity at the time has influenced her continued erasure by modern historians operating through a cisgender lens.
Modern historians — even Queer scholars — have chosen to identify Eleanor as a ‘male transvestite prostitute’. She is also described as a gay man who ‘tricked’ other men by pretending to be a woman. Some have tried to erase her entirely by suggesting she didn’t exist.
As Bychowskie points out, the invalidation of Eleanor’s lived gender and her depiction as being ‘deceptive’ is echoed in modern transphobic erasure, with trans women often being portrayed instead as ‘deceptive men’.
Coronel Amelio Robles Ávila
Col. Robles was not a transsexual, nor a transvestite, nor a butch lesbian, what you call a women who likes other women — but someone who adopts behaviors that are traditionally masculine.
— Dr Gabriela Cano, cited in Castillo (2020) The Little-Known History of Amelio Robles, a Trans Zapatista Who Fought in Mexico’s Revolution
Amelio Robles Ávila, born in 1889, was assigned female at birth but lived as male from the age of 24 until his death at the age of 95.
He was raised to learn traditionally feminine tasks such as cooking, sewing and ironing, but reportedly preferred horse riding, lassoing cattle and practising marksmanship. Amelio was open about his attraction to women and later married Ángela Torres.
Amelio joined the Mexican revolution fighting for the Zapatistas, at which time he began to present as male, quickly rising to the rank of colonel and earning the respect of the men he commanded.
Amelio was accepted as male by his family and wider society, and several official documents confirm his masculine identity. He was recognised as a veterano — a male veteran of the Mexican revolution — by the military and awarded a pension.
According to Gabriela Cano, ‘his change of identity was not an issue discussed in his family, and even his nieces were oblivious to it despite living under the same roof. Robles’s masculinity was taken as a matter of fact’ (pg. 185).
Despite being recognised as man in his lifetime, upon his death local state agents imposed a female identity on Amelio, erasing his gender-diversity and his lived experience as a man. His grave is marked by his female name and uses female pronouns.
Amelio is remembered for his role in the Mexican revolution, but often referred to as a ‘woman warrior’. Although a school named in Amelio’s honour while he was alive uses his male name, a museum named after him posthumously in the same town uses his female name.
Having one’s gender identity erased in death is a common concern for trans people today — this trans woman included — due to the difficulty of obtaining legal gender recognition.
That Amelio’s history has been rewritten and sometimes claimed solely as women’s history without acknowledging his gender diversity shows that erasure can happen at the hands of other oppressed groups, not just the cisgender establishment (as was the case with Eleanor Rykener at the hands of Queer historians).
Joan of Arc
For nothing in the world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man’s dress.
— Joan of Arc, quoted in Feinberg (2006) Transgender Liberation: A Movement Who’s Time Has Come (pg. 213)
Joan of Arc was born in 1412 and only lived until the age of 19, ultimately being burned alive because of her gender-diverse behaviour.
She is famous for her role as a military commander, donning male clothing and leading French armies against the English in the Hundred Years War at a time when it was uncommon for women to command men in battle.
Joan is also reported to have enjoyed horse riding and the company of ‘noble fighting men’, though she shared lodgings with women and always identified herself as female.
Although historically Joan’s gender diversity —in particular her wearing of male clothes — has been overlooked or explained away by cisgender scholars, Queer historians have more recently given greater attention to exploring both her gender variance and sexual orientation.
Joan’s wearing of men’s clothes has been attributed to many things: a pragmatic way of avoiding sexual assault at the hands of the men she commanded (or her jailers); the result of a commandment by God; or an act of transvestitism related to the suggestion she may have slept with women. It has even been argued that Joan may have been intersex.
All of these suggestions have been contested, but for our purposes, Joan’s motivations are less important than the oppression she experienced for violating the gender norms of the time.
After being handed over to the English following military defeat, Joan was put on trial, not for her role fighting for the French but for her heresy — her cross-dressing.
… a woman calling herself Jeanne the Pucelle (the Maid), leaving off the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominable before God, and forbidden by all laws, wore clothing and armor such as is worn by men.
— Henry VI, quoted in Feinberg (2006) Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come (pg. 213)
In her trial she defended her choice to wear men’s clothes, something she refused to stop doing despite being commanded to.
Joan was burned at the stake for her gender-heresy. Her executioners ensured she was wearing a dress when she was killed.
Joan’s ill-treatment for refusing to abide by the gender norms of her time is something we still see today; we are subject to discrimination and even violence for breaking gender norms around clothing and presentation.
And, like Joan, we sometimes still face the ultimate form of erasure for being open about our trans and gender-diverse lives: death.
Then as now
The stories of Eleanor, Amelio and Joan are important because they show us that gender-diversity has always existed — we aren’t just some modern trend.
These three historical figures pushed back against the gender-norms of their time, and even though some paid the ultimate price, or were erased in their time, others were successful in forcing society to accept them and were able to live out their truth.
Most importantly their stories show that no matter how hard cisgender society tries to erase us, we’re still here, and we’re still fighting.
Re-examining and highlighting our history, the history of gender diversity in whatever form it takes, is invaluable for challenging our erasure — past, present and future.
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