Masculinization or transgenerization?
George was born a woman, back there in the Paris of 1804. Her real name was Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin. Later on, she acquired the title of Dudevant Baroness when she married Baron Casimir Dudevant, with whom she had two children. The marriage lasted ten years, after which they got divorced. Since then, Amandine preferred masculine clothes, which allowed her to walk more freely around the city and gave her access to places where no woman would enter.
George Sand was the literary pseudonym that she used to publish her novels, which were very well received while it was a secret that it was really a woman's voice. Later on, she passed on to be “the greatest writer of his time” to have her works regarded as “peasant novels” (01). George was an eccentric woman, who challenged the social conventions of her time; divorced, writer, scandalous… She was known for preferring men's clothes and for her various love relationships, amongst which was the one she had with Frédéric Chopin.
Also George Eliot, Charlotte Brönte and many other women used male seudonyms to publish their works in order to be recognized for their literary value, although they didn't adopt a male identity, as George Sand seems to have done, out of rebelliousness or conviction.
Gabriela Mistral
Her real name is Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, but she was known around the world as Gabriela Mistral. She was a well-known Chilean poet, diplomat and teacher, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize of Literature, in 1945.
A very interesting and well-documented study (02) shows the hidden side of Gabriela Mistral, dressed in men's clothes and showing lust for other women. That side was inconvenient for her public image and for the national image that she represented, so that image of her was hidden and even erased from history, only remaining the Gabriela mother of all, generous, principled, brave. As opposed to George, the feminine image gave Gabriela the respect and the political role she sustained, sacrificing her erotic desire for women and her preference of masculine clothes.
It would be worth considering if any of these women had a real desire to belong to another gender and another sex; having lived in a world in which biology was inalterable, their chances were few. We would also have to consider to what extent this impulse towards masculinity is enforced by the restrictions that society imposes on women. As Stryker
(03) reminds us in her recent publication , the first feminists considered that the desire of some women to be men was a desire to share in their privileges rather than a profound identity conviction. Which leaves without explanation the transformation of the feminine trans who deny their masculinity.
But what seems most dangerous is Stryker's definition of transgender as the leaving behind of a gender to go towards the undetermined, to belong to the opposite gender, or only to question the established patterns. Under this conception, when you open the concept in such a way, not only these writers and those who resisted conventions would enter, but also any other person who questions social roles, and thus the political capacity of trans identity would lose all deconstructive and critical possibilities. It is a risk worth taking care of, because it wouldn't be the first time in which the demands of those who are trying to understand and live reality in a different way would be underestimated by the system.
Sources:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sand
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Mistral
Notes:
(01) Planté, Christine. “The suspicion of gender”. Conjuring oblivion. Writing and feminism . Edited by Nieves Ibeas and María Ángeles Millán. Barcelona: Icaria, 1997. 75-88. pg 77.
(02) Fiol-Matta, Licia. A Queer Mother for the Nation. The State and Gabriela Mistral . London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
(03) Stryker, Susan. Transgender history . Berkeley: Seal Press, 2008.
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