Talk:William Brown (sailor)

LGBT category

The fact that Brown was cross-dressing makes her of interest for the LGBT project. Transgenderism and transvistism are issues of identity, not of sexuality. (this is clearly explained in the Transgender article. Please do not remove the tag. --Zefrog 11:34, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

But it isn't clear if Brown really did identify as a man. Most female wartime crossdressers wore men's clothes purely to have a military career, and some later fought openly as women. Most lived as women before the war, and most resumed living as women after the war. The interpretation that Brown would self-identify as transgender is purely subjective and isn't based on any historical information. Asarelah 18:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

She would not have been able to identify as transgender or anything else of the sort because the concept did not exist at the time. However the fact that she lived as a man (even if she did not identify as such), that she subverted the rules of gender representation, that she was effectively trans-gender, relates to the Trans experience and as such is relevant to the LGBT project. --Zefrog 21:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

In that case, I will put the entire female wartime crossdressers category into the transgender and transsexual people category. Asarelah 03:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Great idea! --Zefrog 22:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)