Hmm. I think Hall didn't envisage it as a lesbian narrative - they wrote a narrative about being an invert. I think that readers of The Well came to it later and decided it was a lesbian narrative through their own perceptions of gender and sexuality, at a time when lesbianism was better understood than trans issues. I don't think we can say 'inversion is the language used for lesbianism and homosexuality' without acknowledging that if a modern straight trans man was analysed within that framework and language they would also be diagnosed as an invert.
I would love to know what would happen if Radclyffe Hall was alive nowadays and trying to write about Stephen in our terminology. Is Stephen a butch lesbian? Is Stephen a trans man? My money is much more on the latter than on the former... but maybe the point is that gender and orientation is about people discovering and labelling their own identity. And from that point Stephen is an invert - and to label them as either a trans man or a lesbian is to try and squash their life into our boxes.
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Date: 2013-07-22 10:19 am (UTC)I would love to know what would happen if Radclyffe Hall was alive nowadays and trying to write about Stephen in our terminology. Is Stephen a butch lesbian? Is Stephen a trans man? My money is much more on the latter than on the former... but maybe the point is that gender and orientation is about people discovering and labelling their own identity. And from that point Stephen is an invert - and to label them as either a trans man or a lesbian is to try and squash their life into our boxes.