> For example, defending homosexuality as a legitimate life choice would have gotten you packed and sent away to the crazy house, and no paper would have ever written about this before the late 80s or so.
Quite to the contrary. The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft [1] was a research institute dedicated to human sexuality. Histories have long been "cleansed" of records of gay and transgender people; look no further than the bible for evidence that homosexuality was quite normal in society a very long time ago. After all, there's no need to invent a rule against something that people don't want to do.
I was thinking about American culture, though I probably exaggerated things there as well. Still, if we pretend I was talking about the 1880s, I think my point still stands.
Also, sure - other cultures had different perspectives on sexuality. I don't think there is any argument to be made that biblical era jewish society was more respectful of Freedom of Speech than modern America or Europe, so I don't think this is very relevant in context.
It's pretty interesting looking at the history of that article[1]. For the first decade or so, the article pretty clearly states that Jemima was a woman. All the sources cited treat Jemima as a woman as well.
Around 2014 you get the first mention that she once said she once said she had mixed together with Christ and was neither male nor female. After 2014 you gradually get more and more edits from the point of view that Jemima was nonbinary or trans (all of the sources for this are post-2010).
The Friend did not proclaim genderlessness once, as you claim here. The Friend did not answer to the name you use so obtusely here, ever after a "rebirth." That historians such as Susan Juster (the publication ca. 2000) would disrespect the Friend's wishes as you do here, insisting on a name and gender that had been disavowed, is little surprise. There is a long history of erasure of LGBT identities, which Juster continues. However, she makes an effort towards an honest history, at least, in representing what the Friend wanted despite the disrespect she pays. You don't even try that hard, because the narrative doesn't fit your agenda. It wasn't until 2015 that another historian revisited Public Universal Friend and found the language that had previously been used to be discordant with the content of that same history. Language evolves, and Public Universal Friend was a frontrunner of this particular linguistic evolution: we now have words to describe people who do not find a place within the gender binary. And so, Wikipedia reflects the history of that evolution in its own edit history. Thank you for sharing that, anyway.
> The Friend did not answer to the name you use so obtusely here, ever after a "rebirth." That historians such as Susan Juster (the publication ca. 2000) would disrespect the Friend's wishes as you do here, insisting on a name and gender that had been disavowed, is little surprise.
That's not true, she uses both names on her last will and testament (and uses "her" there as well). And I'd caution against pretending to speak on behalf of someone who's no longer around. Many who do so have little interest in the deceased beyond them being a tool for their own ends.
To this day, you will find transgender people using a deadname on legal documents because they cannot legally change their names, or because it is a legal necessity to list all previous names. A lawyer wrote that document according to the legal strictures of the time. It isn't the evidence you portray it to be.
Quite to the contrary. The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft [1] was a research institute dedicated to human sexuality. Histories have long been "cleansed" of records of gay and transgender people; look no further than the bible for evidence that homosexuality was quite normal in society a very long time ago. After all, there's no need to invent a rule against something that people don't want to do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...