History of nonbinary gender/pt-br: Difference between revisions

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall Thomas Hall, who apparently had an equal preference for the birth-name Thomasine] (c.1603 – after 1629), was an English servant in colonial Virginia. Hall was raised as a girl, and then presented as a man in order to enter the military.<ref>Norton, Mary Beth, "Communal Definitions of Gendered Identity in Colonial America", Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, Fredrika J. Teute (eds) ''Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 40ff. </ref> After leaving the military, Hall freely alternated between feminine and masculine attire from one day to the next, until Hall was accused of having sex with both men and women. Whether someone was legally a man or a woman would result in different punishments for that. Several physical examinations disagreed on the details of Hall's sex, and concluded that Hall had been born [[intersex]]. Previously, common law required that if a court concluded that someone was intersex, this would result in an injunction that they must live the rest of their life as strictly either male or female, whichever their anatomy resembled the most closely. In this case, the court ruled that "hee is a man and a woeman," and gave the injunction that Hall must from then on wear both masculine and feminine clothing at the same time: "goe clothed in man's apparell, only his head to bee attired in a coyfe and croscloth with an apron before him"<ref>Floyd, Don (2010). ''The Captain and Thomasine''. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Enterprises. p. 251. ISBN 978-0-557-37676-6.</ref><ref>Reis, Elizabeth (September 2005). "Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620–1960". ''The Journal of American History'': 411–441.</ref> Intersex is not the same thing as nonbinary, and so an intersex person can identify as a man, woman, or some other gender. Hall was apparently an intersex person who did not identify strictly as a man or woman, preferred a [[genderfluid|fluid]] [[gender expression]], and was then given a legal sex that was both.

[[File:Public Universal Friend portrait.jpg|thumb|A portrait of the Public Universal Friend, from the Friend's biography written by David Hudson in 1821.]]  

* "[[Singular they]]" had already been the standard [[English neutral pronouns|gender-neutral pronoun in English]] for hundreds of years. However, in 1745, prescriptive grammarians began to say that it was no longer acceptable. Their reasoning was that neutral pronouns don't exist in Latin, which was thought to be a better language, so English shouldn't use them, either. They instead began to recommend using "[[English neutral pronouns#He|he]]" as a gender-neutral pronoun.<ref>Maria Bustillos, "Our desperate, 250-year-long search for a gender-neutral pronoun." January 6, 2011. [http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/our-desperate-250-year-long-search-for-a-gender-neutral-pronoun http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/our-desperate-250-year-long-search-for-a-gender-neutral-pronoun]</ref> This started the dispute over the problem of acceptable gender-neutral pronouns in English, which has carried on for centuries now.