I wrote a review of the movie Albert Nobbs, based on a true story of a man who was discovered, after death, to have been a woman all along.
You can check it out here: http://urb-banal.livejournal.com/443938.html
I still won't go to see the movie but I have to say also, there are enormous differences in what gender signifies and how we judge it depending on the time and culture we are viewing it in. Largely, to be a woman historically (and in many cultures even today) meant that you were likely to have very few freedoms and were to be "dressed up" in some fashion that could be easily identified even from a distance. I have no doubt that many people would have slipped from one cardboard cut out to another because it was so ingrained as to the silhouette of each sex that once a person took it on it was fact in the mind of the observer.
It makes more sense for a woman in those times to play the part of a man to gain independence and freedom and yes even some sexual autonomy regardless of whether she has been born with male genitalia as so many women died then in poverty or childbirth or domestic violence.
Albert Nobbs
You can check it out here: http://urb-banal.livejournal.com/443938.html
I still won't go to see the movie but I have to say also, there are enormous differences in what gender signifies and how we judge it depending on the time and culture we are viewing it in. Largely, to be a woman historically (and in many cultures even today) meant that you were likely to have very few freedoms and were to be "dressed up" in some fashion that could be easily identified even from a distance. I have no doubt that many people would have slipped from one cardboard cut out to another because it was so ingrained as to the silhouette of each sex that once a person took it on it was fact in the mind of the observer.
It makes more sense for a woman in those times to play the part of a man to gain independence and freedom and yes even some sexual autonomy regardless of whether she has been born with male genitalia as so many women died then in poverty or childbirth or domestic violence.