Uhhhhno.
Victorian boys were gender-fluid, museum claims
Yeah sure, and they told each other so on their phones.
Subhead:
The Bowes links 19th-century breeching practice to LGBTQIA+ ideology but gender-critical campaigners say it is ‘rewriting history’
Because of course it is. “Gender fluid” was neither a concept nor a condition that 19th century people discussed. They were too busy wishing they had fast cars and Buddy Holly and the internet.
The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, tells visitors that “gender fluidity” was a feature of 19th-century childhoods because some boys wore dresses up to the age of eight.
A leaflet produced by the museum claims the fashion trend – known as breeching – was equivalent to the modern phenomenon of gender nonconformity.
Well gender nonconformity is not the same thing as gender fluid. But in any case having small boys wear tunics instead of trousers when a lot of other small boys were doing the same thing is not gender nonconformity, it’s just a minor trend in children’s clothing.
The LGBTQIA+ leaflet is offered to visitors at the museum and art gallery, which opened in 1892, and contains pictures of two boys’ dresses dating to the 19th century.
“It’s often assumed that gender binaries (the classification of gender into two opposing categories: male and female) have always been strictly enforced and that gender fluidity is a recent development,” it reads.
“However, this is not true. Throughout history, gender distinctions in children’s clothing were less rigid, especially in early childhood.
“Both boys and girls commonly wore dresses during infancy and toddlerhood for practical reasons.
Yes, for practical reasons – for ease in changing diapers/nappies, to be exact. Being able to put the kid on a flat surface, hoist its bum into the air, remove the used diaper and replace it with a clean one, is obviously simpler if you don’t have to undo buttons or zippers and then peel the garment down the legs, trying not to smear poop everywhere. It’s all about the poop. (For more see: dogs, passim.) It’s not about “gender”. It‘s about poop.
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, told The Telegraph: “The idea that Victorian children were ‘gender fluid’ because of practicalities relating to clothing is absolute nonsense.
“The so-called ‘opposing categories’ of male and female, as the museum puts it, are to do with biology and have nothing to do with little boys wearing dresses instead of trousers because elastic was a brand new invention and not widely used.”
Elastic. Good old Victorians. Imagine not having elastic! We wouldn’t have sweatpants. I couldn’t stand not having sweatpants. I hasten to assure you I don’t wear them in public, but at home I live in them. Jeans are too cold on the legs. That too is not a genner idenniny choice, it’s a practical one.
Anyway. Christopher Robin was not “gender fluid”.
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