an unprofitable Dick

hello maudience, the LM Montgomery conference is happening this year at the end of June AND they are letting people watch Megan Follow's Keynote speech for free!! sign up here

the article i just read about lou alcott (louisa may alcott, author of little women) was wild because it was literally like "he preferred being called lou and his whole family always called him that. he never identified with girlhood or liked feminine things and said he had a boy's spirit and longed to be a boy and believed he was a man's soul put into a woman's body. he loved dressing up as a man and passing for a man and being flirted with by people who thought he was a man. he called himself a gentleman and a father to his adopted children and his own father once lamented sending "his only son" to war when he enlisted in the army as a nurse.

Peoples biggest defense is always ‘we don’t know how they would identify in this day’ which IS true but I find it interesting how they have little problem ‘justifying’ Lou’s feelings by calling him a cis lesbian or a nonbinary person or a tomboy.

Some articles I found:

ah, thank you, i think that first article from LGBTQ nation may have been the one i read back in july when i posted this! just from quickly skimming over it, it appears to include all these points i mentioned and argues in favor of lou alcott being a trans man—but then includes a section at the end about the idea that "she was just speaking figuratively and saying she was a trans man is backwards and anti-feminist" 🙄🙄 transmascs existing and living their lives is not anti-feminist. saying that someone who called himself all kinds of masculine terms and enjoyed being seen as a man just might have been a man is not illogical or unreasonable, these people are just transphobic.

One very stupid thing that bothers me in historical romances and fanfic is the fact that male characters often take off shirts but stay in their breeches. The breeches aren’t the last layer of underwear, the shirt is. The shirt is the body linen— that’s the thing that goes against the skin and is the first thing to be put on and the last thing to be taken off— that’s the thing that is sewn by hand by wife/ sister/ daughter/ mother partly out of a lack of extensive manufacturing but because it is the most intimate layer of clothing and you don’t want a stranger’s work against your skin.

bless 2020 emma for giving us a scene of mr. knightly dressing (it was short but loved that it included his valet - upper class men also had help dressing and undressing! - and proper dressing order and him tucking his shirt between his legs as his breeches/trousers go on **infinite chefs kisses**)

Period Seinfeld and George is at the diner pub explaining how he tried to take his shirt off to impress his date?? and Jerry's like "ere your breeches?"