@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:

Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive

The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.

Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!

I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.

Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.

The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.

Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!

And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"

(They were very divided)

Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":

Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.

The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.

Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):

We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.

In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:

To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life

Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.

Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about

Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡

I'm nonbinary, and in recent years the people who have been the most exorsexist to me have been binary trans people. Binary trans folks, yall piss me off every damn day on this website. And if I was unable to see past short-sighted ideas that prioritized comfort above autonomy, safety, liberation, authenticity, I could conclude that binary trans people are my biggest enemy. But they aren't. Not even close.

It's not trans people following you into bathrooms, it's not trans people shouting shit when you walk past, it's not trans people killing us. If we want to play oppression olympics, I've got more reason to hate you guys than you do to hate each other, but it's such a cowardly position to take. It's so inauthentic.

Not because trans people aren't doing harm in this shit storm, the race to acceptance and assimilation comes with a body count, but the crabs in your bucket are not the ones who put us here.

This is WHY I am critical of ideology and not of groups. Reactionary movements are an attempt to take back power as a powerless group, but it only empowers you to violence over other powerless people, because your power is granted BY the oppressors. We must build power as a collective against them.

Trans unity is not a fake-smile-we-all-love-each-other bullshitfest, it is a recognition that we are not each other's enemies, even when we are not each other's friends. The shittiest trans woman deserves the things I am fighting for, the most vile trans guy MUST have access to what we are dreaming of. That is the point. And my unity extends to cis people, not just because i do not want to be another barrier to the closeted trans person finding people who will take them in, but because the gendered liberation of cis people is tied to my liberation too.

We are on lists, we are struggling to afford our care, we are abused by people and systems beyond our control, and fighting against a massive machine for our right to live. Of course it makes sense that bullying someone you think is doing transness wrong makes you feel big. Of course it makes sense that you think policing hard borders stops people from getting what you are afraid of losing. But it doesn't work like that. We are too intertwined that cutting each other off is like cutting off our own arm out of spite. Our oppressors LOVE that you have one less arm to fight them with--it doesn't do shit to them!

But it feels like control. It feels like action. When you feel stuck and hopeless, doing something, often especially out of anger FEELS like progress--like movement.

We do not preach "loving" our fellow trans people out of a naive belief that we could all just get along, but because the only way to survive is to survive together. The only way to thrive is to celebrate the wins of others. The only way to move forward is with all of us.