Malcolm Clark Profile picture
Jun 23, 2021 17 tweets 7 min read Read on X
1./ What can we learn about "gender identity" from the past? I was wondering about this when I paid a visit to one of the strangest places in Britain; one where you can simultaneously pay homage both to a pioneering feminist and one of the most fascinating of trans icons. 👇
2./ Old St Pancras church near King's Cross dates back to at least the Normans. Thomas Hardy worked clearing graves here during the building of the station. A tree has since engulfed some of the piled headstones to create a Hammer Horror type memorial. 👇london-walking-tours.co.uk/secret-london/…
3./ The graveyard is a geographical Forrest Gump, marking almost every serious event in the capital's history. William Blake used to walk past it regularly as he followed the Fleet River on his long trips to Hampstead. The river is now entombed under the road beside the church.👇
4./ Rimbaud and Verlaine lived nearby during their absinthe soaked exile from Paris. And it was here in 1814 that 16 year old Mary Shelley met Percy Bysshe Shelley to elope. Their rendezvous was her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave. Today, visitors often leave flowers. 👇
5./ Wollstonecraft spoke highly of someone whose individual grave was cleared from the same graveyard but is now marked in a collective memorial to important people whose headstones were lost. You can just see the name of Chevalier d'Eon etched on the now shabby memorial.👇
6./ At the time D'Eon claimed to be a woman who had hidden the fact she was female to pursue a career as a noted diplomat, warrior and legendary swordsman. Once safe in London he'd reverted to being she, or so she said. The National Gallery has a famous portrait of "her".👇
7./ Wollstonecraft used D'Eon as an uplifting example that proved women could do anything if given the education and skills. The Chevalier became a celebrity in in London in part by exhibiting her skills in swordsmanship dressed as the woman she said she was. He invariably won.
8./ I say he because when D'Eon died it was discovered his body was male and he was denounced as a trickster. Ever since people have argued about his significance. For the trans movement D'Eon is an early high-profile transgender icon. Some historians think that's simplistic.👇
9./ Gary Kames prefers to place D'Eon in the context of the times, noting it was much more gender-bending than we might imagine. D'Eon was sent on a mission to the Empress Elizabeth I's court in St Petersburg where a weekly cross-dressing ball was held. 👇vogue.com/article/cather…
10./ Female power was highly visible and contested with Madame Pompadour in France, Empress Maria Theresa in Austria, and Catherine the Great all in D'Eon's lifetime. Bridgerton's real Queen Charlotte in Britain was no cipher either. vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifes…
11./ And then there were the Macaronis, a wildly effeminate and theatrical contemporary subculture with towering wigs who shocked Britain by out-dandying the dandies. They were so called because they preferred foreign pasta to good English roast beef. Guilty as charged.
12./ Women playwrights were writing for the stage. And while that awful grump Rousseau denounced the "feminisation" of society, D'Eon demurred. His library was full of books celebrating women and he wrote many letters proclaiming women superior.👇
13./ During the French Revolution he even offered to raise a regiment of Amazons to fight for the cause. So what should we think now of this remarkable character? Did he really think he was a woman? Who knows, but there's a much more important point.
14./ Whatever D'Eon believed 'they' (let's give them the benefit of the doubt) tried to increase the space for women and their options. D'Eon wasn't invading the few spaces women had carved out for themselves, like some notable trans icons of today. 👇theguardian.com/sport/2021/jun…
15./ And who can deny the courage and individuality it took to make your own way in life like the Chevalier d'Éon? It was admiration for a similar attitude that would later win trans people their rights, not LGBTQ+ policing of other people's behaviour, views or zir/zie pronouns.
16./ Next time you're near King's Cross pop along to @OldStPancras where you can nod in respect to both a great feminist and a gender-bending trans icon; united by their shared loathing of limiting stereotypes as well as their determination to break free of them.
17./ In the end though try as she might Wollstonecraft could not hope to break free entirely of the limitations imposed on her; while D'Eon could embrace or play with them. Biology also brought its own dangers (she died in childbirth) which he would never face or understand.

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More from @TwisterFilm

May 2
1./ 🧵What does 'Queer' mean? In its new show the Tate claims Leigh Bowery is a queer icon. In my latest article I argue the designer's life and work suggest his kind of pathological narcissism defines Queer. I first met Bowery when I was filmed in a sex scene in his flat. Really.Image
2./ It was 1984 and I was having a fling with dancer Michael Clark who was being celebrated in a Channel 4 film following his life. He asked me to play a bit of rough trade. Typecast again. We would be filmed in Bowery's flat where he lived with his boyfriend Trojan.Image
3./ We are told now Bowery's provocative behaviour and wild designs represent an explosion of 'queer' creativity. Yet it's interesting, to say the least, the Tate ignores his casual racism. He called one of his favourite clubbing costumes 'Queer Pakis in Space'. How creative.Image
Read 10 tweets
Apr 22
1./ 🧵Why was media coverage of the Supreme Court's ruling on sex so biased? My latest article tells the emblematic story of one channel's capture by the trans lobby. Channel 4's subversion is partly down to the social circle its staff move in. Guess who's this guy's best mate.👇Image
2./ Last week Krishnan Guru-Murthy gave two idiot trans activists the chance to malign the Court's ruling with all the critical challenge we might expect from some blowhard champion of the trans agenda like the SNP's John Nicolson. Funny you should mention that poltroon. 👉 Image
3./ Guru-Murthy and Nicolson regularly describe each other as their closest friends. Nicolson says GM is "one of the people in the world who likes me most." A low bar. They met when Guru-Murthy was a 15 year old schoolboy during filming for a TV show Nicolson was presenting. Image
Read 15 tweets
Apr 19
1./ Apologies. It’s welcome that
Mark Smith has said, “men like me need to say sorry”. Everyone makes mistakes. A democratic culture only works if we accept people’s views evolve. There are tho some lessons to be learned from Mark’s original stance. 👉
heraldscotland.com/politics/viewp…
2./ In his column in early 2020 after the launch of @AllianceLGB, Mark opined on our “horrible website”. He complained images of women had been deliberately chosen to look as feminine as possible to emphasise trans male exclusion. Uh? 👀 They really weren’t. Worse was to come. 👉 Image
3./ Smith went on to compare @AllianceLGB’s concern over child safeguarding to Section 28. “Dangerous to children is a phrase that appears on the LGB Alliance website along with multiple uses of the word ‘threat’. We have been here before.” Indeed we have. Heard of PIE anyone? Image
Read 7 tweets
Apr 17
1./ 🧵On a female hero. It’s typical of @HotchkissRhona to hand out well-deserved plaudits to women who helped prepare the ground for the Supreme Court triumph. But no one who went to early public meetings of @ForWomenScot can be in any doubt Rhona herself deserves thanks. 👉
2./ I first met this pocket rocket at a @ForWomenScot meeting in early 2020. In those days all gender critical events were by word of mouth or carefully vetted such was the level of fear. I’d come to talk about @AllianceLGB and was amazed to find a secret, feisty army of women.
3./The first speaker was @HotchkissRhona who talked, as an ex prison governor, about how trans identified men often acted out in sickening ways in women’s jails. Her jaw dropping speech was spiced with Rhona’s biting wit. She then introduced a young woman sitting beside me.
Read 9 tweets
Apr 13
1./ How deep does homophobia run in the trans psychosis? There's a clue in the story of Sofia Taloni, one of the Arab world's most famous trans activists who's now detransitioning back to the bloke he always was. If Sofia looks a bit of a lunatic there's a reason for that. 👉 Image
2./ Taloni was born in Morocco where homosexuality is illegal. Though as many a tourist can attest it's not exactly unknown dans la casbah. Shame and the threat of a jail sentence has led many gay Moroccans to embrace trans, which is not illegal. So here's Taloni not being gay.👇Image
3./ Taloni's internalised self-hate erupted in 2020 when he told his 700K Insta followers to download Grindr, create fake profiles and expose closet gay men. Taloni urged his followers to post the men's images online and then publicly berated them.
attitude.co.uk/news/world/as-…
Read 8 tweets
Apr 2
1./ 🧵Why is the debate about Trans so overdue? It's great to see the landmark book by @HJoyceGender discussed at a Festival at long last and by the legend that is @bindelj. There was though a tragic irony about the location that reminds us why this debate is urgently necessaryImage
2./ In the early hours of the 25th July 2021 a slightly-built 30 year old Spanish engineer Jorge Martin Carreno was separated from his friends and sat down, tipsy, beside the architectural wonder that is the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford where today's debate was held. Image
3./ What Jorge did not know was a 23 year old trans identified male, who called himself Scarlet Blake, was at that very moment scouring the streets of Oxford looking for someone to kill. He was wearing a hooded jacket that hid his face. And then he spied...Jorge. Image
Read 15 tweets

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