December 27, 2022 - 11:30am
Too many women have been written out of history, their work forgotten or attributed to men. One of the triumphs of 1970s feminism was to rediscover neglected female authors and artists, restoring the reputations of everyone from the painter Artemisia Gentileschi — subject of a recent exhibition at the National Gallery in London — to the novelist Antonia White. So it’s infuriating to see the process going into reverse, thanks to a campaign by trans activists to claim famous women as transgender.
The latest target is Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. ‘Did the Mother of Young Adult Literature Identify As a Man?’ asks an opinion piece in the New York Times. I’m not sure that ‘young adult literature’ was a thing in the 1860s and I doubt whether any human being ‘identified’ as anything — man, woman, St. Bernard — until the last decade. But the paper is evidently back on message, showcasing trans ideology after a recent article dared to question the use of puberty blockers in gender non-conforming children.
The most popular character in Little Women, Jo March, is exactly that. She has been adored by girls ever since the novel was published, with a climactic scene in which Jo refuses the marriage proposal that was supposed to be the cherished prize of every Victorian woman. She expressed Alcott’s own frustration about the limitations imposed on women at a time when separate sex roles were believed to be immutable.
For gender warriors, however, such feminist stirrings must mean something else. The real purpose of the NYT article is to ask a much more explosive question, which doesn’t appear until the fourth paragraph: ‘Is Alcott best understood as a trans man?’ The answer is obviously ‘no’ but the paper is coy about the identity of the author, Peyton Thomas. He says he is writing a novel described as ‘a contemporary interpretation of Little Women’, but the NYT doesn’t mention the fact that Thomas is a trans man.
‘I haven’t yet seen an adaptation that gives Jo the gift of transition she’s spent 154 years begging for,’ Thomas wrote in an earlier article for the Oprah Daily website. ‘So I’m writing my own.’ (There may, I think, be quite a bit of projection going on here.)
Alcott was known as Lou to her family, talked about having ‘a boy’s spirit’ and said she longed to be a man. She might have felt very differently if she had been born in another century, when many more occupations were open to women, but that doesn’t suit the trans agenda. ‘Why not take Lou at his word?’ Thomas demands in the NYT.
I assume that the use of a male pronoun for a celebrated female author is intended to be daring and clever, but it’s actually erasure. No historical figure is safe from an ideology so invested in traditional sex roles that it insists successful women from the past must have been…something else. Joan of Arc got the treatment earlier this year, in a production at the Globe Theatre in London that presented her as non-binary and used they/them pronouns.
This practice of trans-ing famous women from the past exposes the suffocating orthodoxy at the heart of gender ideology. It presents history as a dressing-up box, full of female figures just waiting to be stripped and dressed as men. Famous women are disappearing before our eyes — and it’s misogyny in its purest form.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeThe likelihood is that China will absorb/invade Taiwan sometime in the next ten years and that the US will accept it as a fait sccomplt.
I believe that Trump’s trying to shift the balance of power away from multipolarity to a dual consensus between China and the US – cutting Russia out of the picture entirely, raiding its resources and reducing it to a stub of its former imperial grandeur. Note that after demanding a ridiculous amount of Ukraine’s natural resources (and if anyone took that seriously, ditto Canada and Greenland being annexed to the US, I have some rocking horse faeces to show you), Russia leapt forward eagerly and offered their rare earth minerals to Trump? Putin has destroyed Russia: its manpower is significantly reduced (they’ve been deploying medics to the frontline, for heaven’s sake, still using that Tsar Alexander I habit of throwing wave after wave of whom they see as expendable bodies); its economy, off a war footing, in tatters; its people miserable and betrayed; its allies subdued or withdrawing; its goods sanctioned; its imperial dreams crushed. Whom can Russia turn to – the global south? Yes, of course, they orchestrate coups and military operations to shore up allegiance to Moscow; but China is heavily embedding itself around the world, its global supply chain without a single weak link. All these posturing speeches from Trump, Rubio, Musk et al seem like the opening gambit of a massive deal to be made – and China is on the ascent, despite economic turbulence. Just my opinion, naturally, but I think the Cold War is finally drawing to a close.
Amazing how many people actually want war with China and/or Russia. You should all go talk to some combat veterans before you agitate for something you don’t really understand.
I would much rather see the three of them sitting, drinking tea and talking for as long as they want. Pretty soon they’ll start talking about women or golf or whatever, and forget about all this war nonsense.
The perspective from which an article is written is not only significant but also deeply misleading. This piece frames the U.S. as negotiating from a position of strength over China, when in reality, the opposite is true. China is supplying critical components for the very weapons the U.S. is sending to Ukraine while simultaneously providing weapon parts to Russia. In effect, China has assumed the role the U.S. once held—serving as a key supplier in a major conflict.
The U.S. does not need to end the war in Ukraine because it wants to; it must do so because it has no choice. The country is increasingly dependent on Chinese manufacturing, while China continues to support both sides of the conflict. As a result, the U.S. finds itself in the paradoxical position of fueling China’s economy while depleting its own resources for a war of questionable strategic value.
Adding insult to injury, the notion that China’s economy is ‘stagnant’ is laughable. The assumption that sanctions against select Chinese entities would cripple their economy is based on wishful thinking rather than reality. The evidence clearly tells a different story.
A nuanced understanding of global power dynamics is essential, especially when mainstream narratives fail to capture the shifting balance of influence.
Of course Trump and Xi want to sort out Ukraine asap. Trump wants the USA to make money from their surrender, and China want to ratchet down from opposition to occupying an independent sovereign nation (as indeed does Trump). Both of them want to be pals with Putin. Dictators together with similar aims – never mind the actual people, they are just disposable pawns to money and power for the old men.
Why just China? India, Indonesia, Brazil, UAE, Saudi Arabia- in fact most of the non Western world has long called for an end to the war. Higher food and fuel prices affect all.
Only Neo Cons and MIC fattened lobbies who don’t care for the hardships of everyday life; and whose slush money profits increase with war have called for its continuance.
“Only Neo Cons and MIC fattened lobbies who don’t care for the hardships of everyday life; and whose slush money profits increase with war have called for its continuance.”
Also dumb European leaders who, having dug themselves into a hole with ‘whatever it takes’ commitments to Zelensky now have no idea how to stop digging (let alone get themselves out of said hole).
Interesting to think of the China angle to the Ukraine war. Ukraine, Russia, the US, the EU, the UK, NATO, China, etc. Lots of variables to consider all interrelated in complex ways.
A war like this one does affect the rest of the world. We in the US should be careful not to treat other countries as adversaries unless we are at war with them. We gain nothing by standing on ideology rather than pragmatism.
Speaking of China, I wonder how the sale of TikTok is going. Donald Trump put in place a 75-day stay. Half that time has gone, but nothing seems to be happening.
One things for sure, these are not the boring times of Joe Biden. TikTok may have stopped ticking, but there are plenty of other bombs on a short fuse that need to be defused. Exciting times.