OK, everyone: close your eyes if you're never seen a penis before (ha!). I'm guessing this was shot sometime around the 1920s, possibly earlier judging by the setting and style of the photo - a very amazing find (and a bit scandalously X-rated for Bilerico - hope my editors won't mind too much). It's not safe for work.
I would give anything to know more about these people and what led them to pose for this photo. It might have been part of a series of photos shot for a particular patron, or simply the work of a photographer who was as fascinated by gender fluidity a hundred years ago as some of us are today.
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"I would give anything to know more about these people and what led them to pose for this photo."
Both models appear to be circumcised, indicating they might well be Muslims: North African, or possibly from the Balkans. The photographer is most likely a wealthy European, as the necessary equipment and skills were centered in Europe at the time the photograph appears to be taken.
Or they might be Jews, Arabs, East/West/Southern Africans, or Americans. You're jumping to a conclusion without any evidence.
I wouldn't even say conclusively that they're circumcised.
Again Gloria, while I appreciate the interesting imagines you find and post, I continue to be disturbed by the often thoughtless labels you assign to them. Just because someone is in 'cross-gender' clothing doesn't make them a transsexual woman. Moreover, I feel as if you're using the label as some kind of titillation factor kind of the same way 'shemale' is used. It bothers me even more that you're an academic and continuing to do this type of mislabeling with so many (supposedly) trans-related images. I enjoy the photos, I just wish you would let them speak for themselves and stop trying to either get attention for them or make them more queer-hip... believe it or not, you'd get more people positively commenting on your thread that way.
correction: imagines -> images
Gina, and others --
I'm just catching up on comments here and wanted to apologize to you and any others I may have offended with clumsy wording or inaccurate labeling. My only purpose in sharing such photos is, simply, to acknowledge and honor the eternal historic reality of people who do not fit the heteronormative model. I will try to do a better job with my descriptions and hope you will continue to correct me or call me on mistakes. Meanwhile, I hope you will also have a little faith that I have no agenda here other than to share what I believe (rightly or wrongly, readers may judge) are important bits of evidence that sexual and gender diversity are and have always been normal.
Gloria
As a transwoman I can asure you these two subjects are not transsexual women. They are men in drag preforming.
The image is insulting to me in that your post is labeled 'TransSEXUAL: Early 20th Century Genderplay [NSFW!]'.
Got it NSFW. No problem. I expect to see some level of nudity. I am ok with that. But the image shared is outright porno. It has nothing to do with transsexuals.
This picture has nothing to do with transsexual women, I'm sure. Could these be young transsexual men? I doubt it somehow; penile prosthetics were not that good a century ago.
Why make it "trans" anything? The picture can stand alone. I suspect it's two gay boys in drag, posing for a pornographer.
As a transwoman I find the pictures beautiful, and I could guess that the woman standing is a transwoman and the person lying down is a crossdresser or gender fluid person. I do not know why pictures like this threaten us. Let us rejoice in the beauty and diversity they depict.
I was just gonna say, "like, what's up with this?" but I already know. The message has been a consistent one - button pushed - now I suppose we are all supposed to resort to a standard dialog commonly resorted to when a "trans" person has had their feelings hurt and use words like "triggering". Fu . . .hgdat.
Gloria, you illustrate all the problems that exist with the expression trans. You demonstrate your contempt for women of transsexual history with your wordplay. You don't have a clue, do you? Or, are you just mean?
Genitals make a huge difference. Honestly, how much differently would you have been affected if those images of two feminine people had been photo shopped to turn their penises, into vaginas, unbeknownst to you? I know how I would have been affected. Transsexual women have real vaginas, not ones that have been digitally altered, mind you. Being transsexual isn't about some stupid boob job, either.
I too, did not understand the headline's relevance... Though I had to look at that picture several times before I noticed the clothing... The hassock, pillar and wainscoting absorbed all of my attention :-P
Hmmm . . . it's obviously a bit of early 20th century porn, made for the delectation of "straight" men but clearly not representing anything beyond fantasy. Naming it as transexual is a mistake.
I think it's much more productive to ask heterosexuals what enjoyment they get from these images rather than assign them a transgendered past it doesn't clearly represent. It's clear to me that cisgendered heterosexuals yearn for a bit of gender transgression themselves, but find it more comfortable to project that onto an Other and then objectify that Other for their own titillation. "I'm not queer, but let me look at these pictures of these queers (already a transgressive and furtive act, since it's porn and not 'suitable for the office, etc.') and get my jollies off on how queer THEY are."
I actually think the images themselves are pretty exciting and even complex. The boys are pretty girlish and certainly well endowed but . . . . then there is the message conveyed here which is very distorted.
I get confused over terms like "male bodied". In this case, I would say yes certainly and no, I don't think so at the same time. I kind of wonder how old they are, which raises other issues. Many androgynous people masculinize quite a bit when they age. In any case, if these two are above the age of consent, I would have difficulty describing them as men. Regardless, that would not make them transsexual.
The genital issue can be a very complex one in the case of intersex. When something is so obviously there staring you in the face, however, denying it won't erase its existence. Even in the case of intersex, genitals do matter. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as intersex. I think I subscribe to Harry Benjamin's definition of transsexual which does not always involve genital surgery. The thing is, genitals are very much involved with a person's sexuality.
One does not have to make a value judgement about genitals to say someone's female sexual capabilities shouldn't be erased for the sake of a false sense of equality. A person's sexuality is up to them. Adequate, affordable healthcare is an entirely separate issue. It is an important one for many people, not just those who are transsexual. There is nothing to justify the theft of someone's sexual attractiveness by fostering misleading expectations about a person.
I agree with the others about the somewhat awkward naming of many pictures you post. I enjoy the pictures, but reading some trans 101 should do the job--
The image is part of a series of at least 13 images that has been reprinted in several gay male porn anthologies. As far as I know it was circulated in the gay male underground. They are probably French. Date is 1895.
I ignore your posts, Gloria, due to the 'cutesy' and breathless titles and glosses at the least, and if 'trans' is in the title, I try to jump over them and not think about them or look at them due to what I know will be content I consider transphobic if men-playing-women is involved.
I really wish I knew your motivation for being so consistently wrong in your use of trans in your posts. To me, esp since you have been corrected many, many times, it seems willful or dismissive, particularly since you have never (that I have seen anyhow) responded to a single criticism. It seems that you work to consistently be reflexively transphobic. I don't know if you don't care, or are just that out of touch.
I have managed with great effort to not comment on your inappropriate posts in the past, largely b/c I see you as not likely to listen, and have managed to hold back all day today on this one, but I am just fed up with the crap you post.
It's a continuing mystery to me how that a site that has what I consider far better than average goodwill towards trans ppl and trans issues publishes your 'trans' posts. You are by far the thing I dislike the most about Bilerico, and I continue to hope that each post of yours I see is the last. It hasn't happened so far, so I guess I will just have to continue to try to pretend your posts aren't staring back at me all the time.
Without the comments of the two depicted, we will never know. Besides, how they identified is really not much of the issue here. I actually think it's very sweet, genitals and all.
~post op transgender woman, who really doesn't even like the word transsexual anyways. Neither does my transgender fiancée. It's still beautiful.
The question is not how these two identified. The question is how these two were identified objectively. You are entitled to your own solipsistic reality. Who cares if you "identify" as Napoleon with a vagina? That's your business. If someone characterizes others in a way the people characterized have good reason to believe is objectionable, expect dissent.
While I am at, you've described your partner as "transgender". What does that tell me about the person? What should one expect with the person's clothes off, or on, for that matter? Are we to imagine Helen Boyd, Ru Paul, Joan of Arc, Dennis Rodman, Caroline Cossey or Stephen Whittle?
"If someone characterizes others in a way the people characterized have good reason to believe is objectionable, expect dissent."
I don't think I expressed that sentiment strongly enough, actually. I should have said expect dissidence, particularly political dissidence, no matter how small the constituency, no matter how tyrannical the majority.
I mentioned my partner because she doesn't have an account here, and she just wanted me to add her agreement in here. We both identify as transgender women because we feel it fits us. However, that wasn't even the point of my post. And what either of us look like without our clothes really doesn't matter here.
My original point was just that I don't think the label is all that important here. The piece is what it is. I think the reason why the word "transSEXUAL" was used as it was in the title really had more to do with the fact that two apparently "trans____" people were displaying a sexual act. Otherwise the capitalization makes no sense.
My personal view is that I don't like the word "transsexual" anyways, because I think it focuses too much on "sex" and less on gender and personal identity. That was just an afterthought to the whole thing. I'm actually a pretty sex-positive person, too. I just disagree with the word. But I'm not going to stop anyone else from using it.
You should read up on the "sex/gender" distinction. Before there is any discussion of gender there should be a discussion of what sex is, in general, and what it means in relation to humans. Wikipedia definitions that go on about gametes won't do, either, because there are only two possibilities regarding the way humans are classified when in nature the possibilities are much more wide ranging. Such rigid classification also fails on a fairly regular basis when humans are classified on the basis of their genitalia at birth who may not have gametes at all, the gametes of the sex opposite the one they're assigned to at birth, or gonads which exist as combinations of both those that generally produce gametes that are sexually complementary to each other, etc, etc, etc. Chromosomes, in many cases, are no more reliable in determining sex.
Where a sex/gender distinction is made the line drawn is usually between behavior and biology. Anatomy and physiology are biological, thus,the biological reality a transsexual person is faced with is denied and eventually erased, very often, in a patronizing, disingenuous and confusing way when sex attributes are referred to as gender. Heino Meyer-Bahlburg does that with his treatment of "DSD With or Without GI" in his discussion of "GID" in the DSM. There is a long history of clinicians like him denying the sex realities of people because the complexities of their sex nature exist way beyond the boundaries his colleagues impose on people at birth.
Transsexual and intersex people will never be treated with any kind of justice until the complexities of sex are acknowledged. Allowing oneself to be lulled to sleep with patronizing theories about gender will never change that fact.
As far as Gloria Brame goes, she may think she knows what she's doing but she doesn't. Being willfully ignorant keeps one from understanding how mean they are. "Base" is a synonym for mean, so is the expression "small-minded", as is "common".
I wrote: "DSD With or Without GI". Actually, it should read the other way around. "GI With or Without DSD". I know the significance of this escapes most people but in the case of intersex it means the sex assignment is always correct when it is made by a doctor at birth, even if the sex is actually at a point where it could be determined as in between. If the determination made by the doctors is rejected by the person for whom the determination is made, Bahlburg characterizes the new assignment as a gender assignment rather than a sex assignment even though though the only difference between the two is that the person who has to live with such a determination is the one who makes the determination when a sex assignment is rejected. Making a determination that might cause a person distress later in life has implications for the medical professionals who make the determination. This provides opportunities for those with a vested interest when sex and gender are treated as a false dichotomy..
"This provides opportunities for those with a vested interest when sex and gender are treated as a false dichotomy.."
another correction, "this" doesn't provide opportunities. I meant sex and gender as a false dichotomy provide opportunities.
What I was referring to is this:
"The term “sex” has been replaced by assigned “gender” in order to make the criteria applicable to individuals with a DSD (Meyer-Bahlburg, 2009b). During the course of physical sex differentiation, some aspects of biological sex (e.g., 46,XY genes) may be incongruent with other aspects (e.g., the external genitalia); thus, using the term “sex” would be confusing."
from here:http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=482#
Maybe I shouldn't be quite as critical of Dr. Brame as I have been here. It seems to me Meyer-Bahlburg, et al have made sex and gender even more confusing than it already is. To me it does, anyway. How many things does the quote above from the DSM-V revision pages imply? It seems at least:
!. Intersex people do not have a sex if they choose to reject a sex assignment and their sex is too confusing to call it a sex to begin with so their sex shall be referred to as a "gender".
2. The situation Meyer-Bahlburg describes as intersex would also be descriptive of most transsexual women.
3. There are only two sexes and if yours is too confusing you have a gender but every one else has a sex?
What are the legal ramifications? Do I misunderstand? Is sex to be considered confusing in only a few cases or is sex just so confusing that no one has one? Does this have relevance beyond the DSM? When it comes to sex determination for legal purposes who will be called in to provide expert testimony? If there are only two legal sexes what relevance do the APA proposals have in legal proceedings?
Sorry Dr. Brame, but words, genitalia and sex are awfully complicated for some people. Language matters.
Mostly; just for the sake of being au contraire?
I love your stuff, Gloria. I don't much care at all how you label things since my eyes see what they see of their own accord. It's not especially important to me that I perceive things 'correctly', (a smug blessing of my old age, perhaps?) nor that you do. Photos are an art form, and art is in the eyes of the beholder. I experience art viscerally and don't need it labelled. Even in real life I sometimes find myself doubting that folks 'are' what they proclaim themselves to be from their very own lips. So anyone's projections on an ages old photo are bound to be off the mark. All of it forgiveable, in my eyes.
Well Rory,
Americans didn't start circumcising boys routinely until after WWII, long after this photo appears to have been taken. Africans south of the Sahara would have darker skin.
Arabs tend to be Muslims. And while there seems to be remotely possible they are Jewish boys, European homosexual men had a long history of going to Mediterranean and North African colonized cultures as sex tourists in the time that photo was taken.
I admit the photo could be photoshopped or even a modern photo made to look antique. I guess it could even created by aliens. That's why I used the phrase 'might well' in my original post.
While everyone seems to be hung up on whether it is appropriate to use the word 'transsexual' to describe it, I believe the photo is interesting as a relic of how colonizer and colonized once interacted in complex ways involving sex, power, and technology, and how those interactions evolved and survive to this day.
None of the transsexual women I know are so fond of their penises as to have them photographed for public display.
But then you're the "sex" expert. May I assume that's sex as in sexual activities?
I have recently seen another photo from this shoot BWT. My guess is that it is English and taken around 1900. I am a transgender female myself. I found the photo to be very sweet and endearing. My own reaction! A transgendered female can still have a penis! And the truth is hormone replacement therapy and sexual reconstructive suregery were not available to us then, were they!!! So making SRS and HRT unavailable unavailable means that we cannot be transgendered??????
" In any case, if these two are above the age of consent, I would have difficulty describing them as men."
Are you having vision problems? They are slender young men. The penises and pubic hair are a bit of a giveaway.
You are so right, though, to point out how we must censor our own feelings towards these pictures of young men who've been dead sixty years, since we have no proof of their actual ages at the time of the shooting. Perhaps the the DA in the relevant state should be alerted.