So Donny Trump wants to emasculate the American military by firing all the trans soldiers. (I see what I did there.)
This desecration of human rights is not something that can be casually brushed aside to start a conversation about the history of trans people fighting for their countries. Even if no evidence existed of transsexual, transgendered or two-spirited soldiers becoming battlefield heroes, this hideous embrace of discrimination would still be immoral.
Therefore, please consider this post to be part of a secondary argument: that women who biologically started life as boys and men who biologically started life as girls have served in armies with integrity and courage. The war against terror (or whatever it’s being called these days) will become harder to win (if that’s even possible) by Trump’s transphobia; in short, he is putting the lives of Americans at risk for the sake of his prejudices.
There’s a problem of language when examining the lives of this cadre of soldiers. Dr. Harry Benjamin coined the word transsexualism in its current meaning in 1953, while transgenderism does not appear in the lexicon until the late 1980s. In the absence of accurate words, it is difficult to distinguish between disguise, cross-dressing and sexual or gender identification. For Alonso Diaz Ramirez de Guzman, a conquistador, and British army surgeon Dr. James Barry (later Inspector General of Hospitals in Canada), I’d suggest trans is the appropriate term as they lived their entire adult lives as men.
Ramirez’s secret was revealed when he was wounded in 1624 while serving with the Spanish army in South America, but he had demonstrated such heroism–albeit in a cause we now consider despicable–that Pope Urban VIII issued a special dispensation that allowed Ramirez to continue to present as male.
Florence Nightingale recalled Barry (pictured below) as the “hardest creature I ever met.” The discovery of his typically female genitalia didn’t happen until his death of natural causes in 1865.
By contrast, I don’t think trans is the right word for Deborah Sampson, who enlisted in the American revolutionary forces as Robert Shirtliffe in 1778. She returned to her female identity after a doctor discovered her ruse and relayed his findings to George Washington, who discharged her from duty. She went on to marry a farmer and received a land grant and pension in recognition of her service. She was a woman who donned a disguise to help a cause she found inspiring, not someone whose gender and sex mismatched.
Memories passed down by elders as well at the accounts of missionaries confirm the participation of two-spirited people in tribal wars. The Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, Mohave, Navaho, Zapotec and Zuni nations all have words for gender-variant people, suggesting they were more enlightened in some things than the Europeans who attempted to “civilize” them.
As an antidote to the phrase, “fights like a girl,” I’d like to offer a short recap of the life of Philippe I (top), Duke of Orléans and the younger brother of Louis XIV, the famous Sun King. I will use male pronouns to be consistent with the way Phillipe was addressed as a nobleman (and because it’s not clear whether trans or some other term would serve as the best descriptor.)
Queen Anne recognized her son’s disinterest in traditionally male activities when Philippe was young and encouraged him to dress in feminine clothing. Affectionately, she addressed him as “my little girl” and Anne’s friend, the Duchess of Montpensier, called Phillipe “the prettiest child in the world.”
(Below: Phillipe with Louis XIV, who ascended to the throne when he was four years old.)
When the young duke was old enough to participate in court society, he attended parties and dances clothed in female attire. For lovers, he chose other men, an acceptable practice as long as such dalliances remained discrete. Phillipe’s flamboyance made that difficult, particularly after he was married to Princess Henrietta of England, youngest daughter of Charles I. Whenever her husband became overly-infatuated with a new paramour, Henriette complained to the king. He would usually send Philippe’s boyfriend abroad, but after much pining and pleading, the duke would be able to get his brother to relent.
After Henrietta died, the pattern repeated during Phillipe’s second marriage to Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of Palatine, the daughter of an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Phillipe fulfilled his dynastic duties, fathering seven children of whom four survived infancy. (A direct descendant of his, Louis Philippe, became King of the French in 1830.)
In his memoirs of Louis XIV’s court, Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon, offers a description of the adult Phillipe:
He always dressed as a woman and was covered with rings, bracelets and precious stones everywhere. He wore a long wig, black and powdered, and ribbons wherever they could be placed. He was redolent of all kinds of perfumery and… wore rouge.
Historians would probably have dismissed Phillipe as a dandy but for one thing: he was an excellent military commander.
France invaded the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) in 1667, claiming that Spain’s failure to pay Louis a dowry of 500,000 gold pieces made him the rightful ruler of the territory. Members of the royal family were expected to lead their troops and Philippe did not shirk his duties. It was an easy campaign–Spain had just lost Portugal in a war of independence–but Philippe was able to gain a share of the glory through his courage and calmness under fire. Indeed, the soldiers under his command noted he had no fear of being killed, but instead worried about getting sunburned or having his clothes besmirched by gunpowder.
The War of Devolution was a military triumph for France but the peace treaty disappointed Louis. An English, Dutch and Swedish coalition, intent on preserving the balance of power, demanded the restoration of Spanish control over most of the conquered territory. France was only allowed to keep a few gains on the periphery.
Louis seethed for revenge, particularly against the Dutch, who had previously been French allies for more than a century. He invaded in 1672, this time with support from England and Sweden: bribing their kings proved to be a useful diplomatic tool. Again, France won a series a quick victories, which brought other European powers into the war to keep Louis in check and prompted his allies to withdraw their forces.
The decisive battle was fought at Cassel in 1677. Philippe, promoted to lieutenant general on merit, commanded a force of 30,000 soldiers facing an army of similar strength under William of Orange, the future King of England. The French won an overwhelming victory, killing or wounding 8,000 of their opponents.
Thus, Philippe became partly responsible for making his brother the most powerful man in the world.
Almost 450 years later, Cassel remains a French town. It served as Marshal Ferdinand Foch headquarters for part of the First World War.
His mission fulfilled, Philippe returned to his lands and his dresses. As good with money as he was with a sword, he brought in so much revenue that his branch of the family would eventually surpass the wealth of Bourbon royal line.
A stroke ended Philippe’s life on June 9th, 1701. His widow burned all the letters he’d received from lovers over the years, noting that their perfumed scent made her feel nauseous.
Not a mother’s instinct, nor a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, nor a touch of rouge on the cheeks are sufficient to declare someone trans. As for sexual orientation, it is independent from gender identity as a concept.
As Commander-in-Chief, would Trump welcome someone with Philippe’s qualities in his military? The answer is obvious, as are the consequences of refusing to enlist the person who potentially could change the world.
