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One of the academic mailing lists I subscribe to had the following forthcoming book announcement:

As editors of the forthcoming volume Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), we are delighted to share the pre-print version of the Trans & Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide which we have worked on over the past two years along with a number of trans and genderqueer medievalists and allies. The final version of the guide will be included as an appendix to the volume, and will also be available to download as a free PDF from the Amsterdam University Press website.

The guide is written for a target audience of medievalists who are interested in trans theory, and in employing trans/genderqueer optics in their analysis of medieval texts, but who may not yet be familiar with the nuances of this terminology and its usage. 

The pre-print version of the guide can be accessed and downloaded here: bit.ly/tgqsguidejune19

Please share widely - we hope that the guide will be interesting and useful to many of you!

With all best wishes,
Blake Gutt (University of Michigan)
Alicia Spencer-Hall (Queen Mary University of London)

The "please share widely" is my basis for including their announcement here, as both the book and the guide may be of interest to LHMP readers.

Given how often I encounter ambiguities and instersections of gender and sexuality issues in topics I present in the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, this sounded like a very useful resource for aligning the language I use for historic subjects and topics with current approachs in the field. I've developed my own approach, which is somewhat inconsistent. Sometimes I use the language that the contemporaries of my historic subjects used, sometimes I reflect the language used by the authors of the publications I'm summarizing, and sometimes--and especially when I'm specifically focusing on ambiguities of gender and sexuality--I'll use very technically precise language that distinguishes bodies, identities, behaviors, perceptions, and all the other layers.

Gutt & Spencer-Hall's language guide does provide a few useful approaches on that end, as I'll discuss below, but it felt like the substantial majority of the guide was focused, not on language about historic subjects, but on language for one's academic contemporaries. In other words, the current standards of linguistic politeness around contemporary gender identity. And while that is a valuable and useful set of guidelines to have gathered in one place, it isn't quite as useful as what I thought I was going to find, which was guidelines for how to talk about and refer to historic subjects that both takes into account different historic models and understandings of gender, and integrates that understanding with the standards of modern polite and respectful reference. The material that did cover discussions of historic subjects and topics was highly focused on relatively modern concerns, rather than on the medieval subjects of the book it will be included in. This perhaps makes sense in terms of trans and genderqueer studies in general, but was another point where my expectations were disappointed. So here's my very brief overview of the guide, noting the parts I found most useful and the places I felt it had weaknesses as a historian's apparatus. If you're interested in the topic, I encourage you to follow the link and read the original for yourself.

The guide begins with the premise that "linguistic violence" is done to marginalized communities by disrespectful, othering, and offensive language. This harm can be done either deliberately or through ignorance of the meanings carried by choices of terminology. All language use is inherently political. The key is to be aware of how language choice normalizes and reinforces certain perceptions while delegitimizing and erasing others.

This guide is intended as a resource for respectful and inclusive ways of discussing trans, genderqueer, and intersex topics, either with respect to specific individuals or to groups. It's not meant to be a set of fixed rules. Language changes, and communities have a variety of opinions and reactions to specific terms. Terms that were viewed as slurs in the past may be reclaimed and embraced; terms that were previously considered positive and affirming may become outdated or reframed as problematic. Rapid shifts in the current linguistic landscape create the risk that analytic writing that is considered neutral at the time it was produced may be considered distractingly inaccurate or offensive by near-future readers, but the answer is not to turn away from making the attempt.

The granularity of language may mean that different terms apply differently at various levels of specificity or particularity. Terminology may carry culture-specific meanings and be misleading or inapplicable when used to describe other cultures. Language that is descriptive in one cultural context may not fit other contexts well or at all. The authors of the guide recognize that as white Europeans, their understanding of the field will necessarily be shaped by that background.

The guide also hopes to distinguish between language that is generally appropriate for use by everyone, and language that may be potentially offensive if used by those not in the group it applies to.

This work is specifically grounded in, and aimed at, the work of medievalist scholars and their interactions with modernist theories of gender and sex. A number of foundational scholars are noted for their work in the field and for the theoretical grounding in which the guide is rooted. Certain basic vocabulary terms are presented to support common understanding of the guide. In particular, "sex" is used to refer to socially-assigned, biologically-based categories, while "gender" is used to refer to the individual's subjective sense of identity.

The majority of the guide is an alphabetic glossary of vocabulary that discusses the context in which the term has historically been used, the overt and covert meanings it carries (denotation and connotation), and discussions of alternate wordings and phrasings if a term is considered potentially problematic.

For example, the entry for "passing" (in a transgender context) discusses various layers of meaning, synonyms that may have more specific social contexts, comparison to parallel language as applied to sexual orientation, and suggestions for alternate wording that reframes the concept in terms of exterior perception rather than intent. For example, rather than saying "so-and-so passed as a man" consider "so-and-so was read as a man". [Note: This is definitely an term I'm going to work on adopting for exactly that reason--because it describes the social outcome rather than implying a particular intent.]

This is followed by a bibliography of further reading on specific vocabulary or  topics.

* * *

My comments as a potential user for this guide.

This appears to be an excellent and detailed guide to language around gender identity in contemporary society. Most of the material was familiar to me, but I probably spend more effort than the average person to listen to current discourse around terminology and politeness strategies around gender. For those who feel confused about the current state of the language, it is likely to be very useful.

With regard to academic discourse, the discussions are not always clear whether the context is the historic material being presented and analyzed or whether the context is talking about the contemporary academic community. For example, in the entry for "Names" there is a detailed discussion of how to handle references to scholars who published both before and after transition, but rather less consideration of how to refer to historic subjects who are potentially readable as trans. And no advice at all on how to distinguish the handling of individual identity (i.e., the individual's own identity) in historic sources from the historic interpretation of how identities were read (i.e., how their contemporaries understood them).

Let me expand on that. One of the topics that I'd love to have more guidance on is how to discuss transgender motifs as presented in historic literature. Sometimes this can involve trying to determine how the literary character understood their gender (that is, within the story-context, how was their understanding of their own gender depicted?), but more often I'm analyzing how the historic author understood and depicted gender and transgender motifs. And that depiction is often based on ideas that are not currently considered acceptable, whether it is the idea that trans women are actually cis men engaging in deception or whether it is the idea that trans men are higher on the great chain of being than cis women. (This is touched on in the entry for "gender-critical" with regard to contemporary applications of the concepts, but that entry provides no guidance for discussing the underlying ideas in a historic context.)

This issue is touched on briefly under "assigned sex" with a caveat about being aware of whether a literary character is assigned a sex within the text or is being assigned a sex by the reader/scholar. There is, unfortunately, no real discussion or examples on how one might approach the question.

Some entries do provide very useful guidance on usage with regard to historic subjects, such as the one for the term "cross-dress(ing)" which explains why to avoid it in transgender contexts (because with regard to gender identity, the clothing isn't "cross") but discusses other contexts where it is appropriate and neutral (such as in dramatic presentations). The discussion of the term "hermaphrodite" is also detailed and useful.

In general, this seems to me to be an excellent guide to the contemporary use of language for contemporary people. But I had anticipated more consideration of how to discuss historic lives, motifs, and textual materials themselves in ways that are clear, informative, and sensitive. There was enough of a taste of that content that I don't think I was mistaken in expecting it, but not enough to feel that expectation had been fulfilled.

I picked this book up more for general background research on women's lives and expectations, but since I'm doing a thematic run of publications on singlewomen and on social and economic contexts in which women had the possibility of living lives independent of marriage and patriarchal control, it fits in well enough to include.

Reading through the details of what daughters were inheriting, how those inheritances reflected their life expectations, and how they fit into the social and economic structure of the time, we can easily construct a number of scenarios in which a woman could establish and enjoy a stable, comfortable life, with family bonds and positive community relationships, without ever marrying a man and--here's the key element--without that state being considered unusual, scandalous, or suspicious. And given the structure of households, she would almost certainly share her life with other women: with unmarried sisters or more distant relatives, with female servants, with apprentices (or apprenticed to someone), or even with "very dear friends" who preferred not to live on their own.

You don't need to require your lesbian protagonist to reject her family. To leave her community. To be an outcast or considered "peculiar" if she lives on her own without marrying. Have her parents leave her a few income-producing tenements. Perhaps a house with a "rent" shop attached to it. Her brother and married sister expect that the property will make a good dowry some day, but if she isn't that "lucky" then at least she won't need their charity. Maybe she feels underfoot in her sibling's house and chooses to live on her own. She's learned a trade and maybe even has an apprentice or two of her own. She'll hire a few servants and be very combortable in that house. And the young widow who's set up shop in the "rent" is industrious and friendly and...lonely. There's your premise. Go write!

I am frustrated in my desire to love this series. I love the concept (all the sff/fantasy/gothic novels of the 19th century were true in the same universe) and I love the characters (the daughters or female creations of the men in all those novels come together in a found family and have adventures). But this is the second book in the series in which I found the plot thin and the narrative style ponderous and somewhat bloated. The characters do a lot of traveling around across Europe and having episodic encounters with the antagonists, but I found it hard to get a sense that there was an overarching storyline. And (without spoilers) I felt that Our Heroines didn't really do much in the final climax other than show up.

Goss has a fractally detailed familiarity with the literature she draws on, and with the historic and geographic settings she uses, but those details were included in the narrative at about two levels above what would have worked for me. Rather than sketching out the setting just enough for the reader to get an impression and fill the rest in, we are told in detail exactly how the rooms are furnished and what the characters are eating, and are repetitively told things about their relationships to each other that we already know. This adds to slowing down the narrative sufficiently that I wasn't sure I was going to stick with it to the end. (I did.) Often at this point in a review, I'll say something about how the writing was solid and the story just didn't hit my sweet spot, but in this case the overall concept was totally sticky with my sweet spot, but the writing kept getting in the way of enjoying it as much as I wanted to. 

I was also disappointed for a very personal and completely unfair reason. Other readers had promised me that this all-female-protagonist series was getting a bit of same-sex romance in book 2 and I was totally there for it, despite there being no hint of the fact in the promotional copy. But--and I don't consider this a spoiler--the same-sex element was simply the inclusion of Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla among the literary characters who make up the supporting cast. Carmilla is canonically attracted to women and comes from exactly the sort of literature this series is based on. But I confess I was hoping that maybe we'd get a bit of queer rep among the protagonists. Who are all fascinating and indiidual characters. And who I'd love to read about in a story that had a more engaging structure.

Sometimes I have a run of LHMP entries on a particular topic simply by chance, sometimes I'm organizing a large number of items and grouping them by topic is simply a fun way to approach them. At the moment, I've tackled a series of articles and books revolving around cross-dressing themes for two intersecting reasons. Firstly, I'm working on developing my paper on cross-dressing narratives into an article for publication, so it makes sense to become familiar with as much background information as I can. Secondly, with that theme in mind, I picked up a number of publications on this theme at Kalamazoo this year, and I'm trying to prioritize new acquisitions on the blog.

This one marks the end of the current theme, for now. In looking at various cross-dressing/gender-disguise motifs in history, the "transvestite saints" motif stands out as somewhat distinct from other contexts and this article rather hits the nail on the head as to why. The stories mostly normalize the idea that to be female is to be lesser and imperfect. That saintliness is an inherently masculine characteristic. And moreover, that even for saintly women who are trying to leave behind their femaleness, their bodies are necessarily sexualized and disruptive. When de facto same-sex erotic desire intrudes into these tales, it isn't a comedic-tragic story of misdirected romance (as it typically is in chivalric romances and drama) but instead raises themes of predatory, sexually voracious women who then punish "men" with false accusations of seduction and rape when they are spurned. (Now there's a theme we'd all be happy to retire from the stage finally. Alas.)

It's hard to see this genre as empowering women as women to live better, more fulfilled lives. And like a number of historic cross-gender motifs, the underlying messages in this genre contribute to perceptions that cross-gender performance by AFAB people is a misogynistic rejection of female identity--a perception that is being used in devisive and hostile ways in our contemporary world. But the thing is: these pernicious motifs exist and have deep roots. They inform our cultural understandings willy nilly in the same way that pernicious fairy tale motifs do. We can subvert them and try to uproot them, but to do that we also need to acknowledge and understand them.