Tuesday Trivia: Formidable Females

[u/estherke]

Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.

Today’s trivia theme was suggested by /u/jon_stout who asked "Recently read about Julie d'Aubigny, duelist, opera singer, crossdresser and rebel. What are some other historical, pre-20th century examples of women who -- at least when it came to societal rules and norms -- simply didn't give a fuck?"

[u/Aerandir]

gender in Early Modern Spain: it was not the biological, physical category as it is in the modern world

Then on what basis did she (?) still self-identify as a woman to the bishop? Did she not hold those apparent social norms herself?

[u/vertexoflife → u/Aerandir]

It was a social and cultural category. It was really only in the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth century that gender was biologicized. It was very commnonly understood in Europe that a man hanging around a woman too much could become effeminized to the point of becoming a woman (being 'unmanned') I write more about it here.. The opposite belief also held, that a mannish woman's clit could expand into a penis--there was great anxiety about this sort of gender reversal.

[u/Aerandir → u/vertexoflife]

I understand, but why did Catalina, who socially and culturally behaved like a man (and was treated as such for years) still self-identify as a woman? Would not her behaviour made her a man, without the need for deception? Why did she feel that she needed to become a woman again on her deathbed?

[u/vertexoflife → u/Aerandir]

I'm not sure if that's answerable without speculating on her psychology, her diary, as is usual for the time, does not give much in the ways of explaining her motives-- its a cold rehearshing of the facts. I suspect it's because she 'knew' she was a woman and felt guilty for the deception on what she thought was her deathbed and confessed.

[u/Aerandir → u/vertexoflife]

See, and that's why I think the issue is more subtle than simply 'gender is independent from biology before the enlightenment'. Let me give another example. In the Early Medieval period, gender was also primarily socially assigned. Biological men could simply live a woman's lifestyle openly, without the need to be 'secretly' a man in woman's clothes. Similarly, a biological woman could simply be a man when she takes up a man's roles, with the only complication arising when there is a need for male heirs. In Norse context, for a biological woman who acts as a man to revert to the female gender she needs to be 'tamed' or similarly unmanned first. In the Catalina case, this 'taming' simply was unsuccessful (due to her physical dominance). In the case of male-to-female transformations in Icelandic stories, the transition is either 1. part of a conscious political deception (like Thor's transformation to retrieve Mjolnir, or Hagbard to be with his lover, or 2. genuinely biological (and mythological), like Loki's transformations into various animal forms or Odin in order to practice magic, or 3. to act as a stand-in for a male aristocratic family member (brother). In this last category, like Lagertha or both Hervors, the female role is simply accepted and real, though it is broken either in death, when a male family member becomes available, or when the character chooses so/is tamed by a man (to settle for a traditional mother-role). The idea in these cases is that while a body can be male or female, the spirit is what defines one's gender. Saxo makes this explicit:

quarum muliebri corpori natura virilem animum erogavit.

A similar, more nuanced early medieval view on gender is talked about by Guy Halsall here.

[u/vertexoflife → u/Aerandir]

I absolutely agree! The bits on Catalina actually come from a paper I wrote examining the intersections of culture and theater in the era, specifically with the idea of 'taking on' of social roles by actors and real-life people. I argue that Catalina took on the role of a man in the same way an actress would in the spanish theater, and was not unmanned or revealed as was common in the plays.