Talk:Peter Sewally

Reseach for German version of this article promoted doubt

Dear creators and editors of this article, I want to discuss first, before anything might be added or changed. As I wanted to create a German version of this article I did some research and I found no evidence or proof that Peter Sewally alias Mary Jones was actually transgender. The person was definetely a transvestite, a sex-worker, a fraudster and one of the first men who apperared in public cross-dressed - thus promoting diversity at a time where there was almost none. However, the sources indicate, that Peter may have used the role of Mary mainly for buisness reasons and not as a result of a personal preference. One of the most detailled sources - ref Nr. 4(by Jonathan Ned Katz) , feeds this doubt by citing part of the conversation that took place in court 1834 and in my opinion there should be room for this doubt in this biographic article. Please share your thought on this. Llydia (talk) 09:10, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Unless you can find a WP:RS that rejects or at least questions the "transgender" description, what you have looks like original research. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Dear Nat, I see your point. Let me try to explain: when I started to look into the (engl) sources in order to come up with a German version, I started to doubt that Sewally actually would have agreed to having a transgender disposition. Katz refers to Mary Jones as "Sewally" and "he", one of his sources - cited in the article - indicates that the motivation to dress like a woman was external: "the Girls of ill fame (...) induced me to dress in Women’s Clothes". So it was not his idea, it was part of a busisness concept. It was the interpretation by Ned Katz, which indicated doubt(ref: Man Monster: "Did the prisoner choose to be tried in female clothes? Or was this the court's doing? We do not know." (...)(same source, acordint to) the Sun, Sewally "generally promenades the street, dressed in a dashing suit of male apparel, and at night prowls about the five points and other similar [poor, disreputable] parts of the city, in the disguise of a female, for the purpose of enticing men into the dens of prostitution, where he picks their pockets if practicable, an art in which he is a great adept." There was a motivation that came along with having to earn a living under harsh conditions only a few years after slavery had been abolished, that is the seed of doubt that Sewally was able to make a conscious decision of choosing, that he would have preferred to be a female. However upon "The spectacle of a cross-dressed black man" (same source) Thomas Neuwirth alias Concita Wurst came to my mind - as he repeatedly stated that he was "not transgender" since his female attire had led to that perception. These are the main reasons, why I think it might be helpful, to at least mention that we simply do not know how Sewally saw himself. In https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8199p209;brand=ucpress (part 3, chapter 9, page 307) the reference also went: Peter Sewally alias Mary Jones, so I thought not mentioning both names and assuming a trans disposition based on the fact he cross-dressed was siplifying things. These are the reasons why I wanted to leave room fro doubt in the German version. I admit that my "Doppelgänger"-interpretatoin was wrong though, alter ego would have been closer. And I admit that there is no statement of Sewally himself on the subject, as he probably didn't even know such a disposition existed. For these reasons, even the title of the entry is misleading, since it doesn't contain both names, while other sources, include only the name Peter Sewally, e.g.: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_324702 Sorry for being wordy - I'm still new here and don't want to give the impression I just worded doubt without having done my research. Llydia (talk) 12:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I can certainly understand your having doubts on the interpretation that has been placed on the subject as a trans person. If there were substantial sources that cast them as trans and others that argued against that interpretation of history, we should be covering both. However, what we're getting instead is your analysis of things, which might be smart, insightful, and/or accurate, and which maybe should have a home somewhere, but Wikipedia is not the place for it, as Wikipedia is not here to host original research. (But if you can get it published in a reliable source, then we can cite you!) --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@NatGertler: I think you'd be completely right in most cases here, if the sources actually did call this person transgender. But I reviewed every source, and the only RS that uses the word "trans" or "transgender" is Zukin in Variety, a non-expert newsmedia source writing about a short film that treats Sewally/Jones as trans. All other sources, including Nyong'o and Katz' fairly in-depth treatments of the person, treat him as a man called Peter Sewally, who used Mary Jones as an alias (one of several) while presenting as female. Was this person a trans woman, a paraphilic crossdresser, a crossdresser of convenience, a gender-fluid person, bigender...? We have no way of knowing, and because we don't know how he presented in daily life by the end of his life, we can't follow MOS:GENDERID's normal guidance. So we should follow Nyong'o and Katz and everyone else; I've reworded the article and moved it. I wouldn't be hugely opposed to taking a no-pronouns approach here, but calling him Mary Jones and using she/her pronouns was definitely original research/non-neutral. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:50, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not finding your summary that Variety was the only source to use "trans" or "transgender" accurate. The Gothamist source refers to Jones as "Considered to be one of the first gender variant/transgender people in New York history". Outhistory says "Peter Sewally/Mary Jones, a Black transgender person in New York City, in 1836", although that is as basically part of a long subhead and not the article body. The Dazed source, the Barnard source... four of the seven sources this article uses at least strongly raise the question of trans.

Having said that, your larger point is fair, and this sort of thing is apt to be a stumbling block on much coverage of individuals who predate our modern terminology. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 13:05, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, I seem to have dropped a "clearly" or "conclusively" when I said "that uses the word". As you note, Gothamist and Dazed equivocate, while in Outhistory's case headlines aren't part of the RS. (I wasn't counting Barnard as an RS, since it's a press release.) So overall, yeah, the posture of sources here is "gender-variant AMAB who may or may not have been [what we would now call] a trans woman". If you have ideas for better ways to express that in the article's prose/footnotes, by all means. The ideal thing here would be some kind of tertiary coverage of how secondary sources gender Sewally/Jones, and the separate but related question of whether they use the anachronistic term "trans woman"; haven't looked too deep into whether such a thing exists. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:13, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Nat Gertler, I see your point. I try to avoid sandtraps, so after I already I have decided to be extra careful about which living people I may want to write about and from now on I will also try to avoid writing anything about people, where the source-situation is difficult, as it is possible to look into that before. In this case I will refrain from creating a German version, which might stirr up another discussion there. If you think it might be an idea to incorporate Marys original name in the title of the entry, that might actually help people who only look for Peter Sewally to find it. Llydia (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

No need to change the title here; I've created a redirect so that people who look for Peter Sewally will end up at this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NatGertler (talk • contribs) 16:46, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

WP:Biography attributes

The only military-relation I can see in the article is in the opening paragraph: "American transgender prostitute and soldier." The MILHIST work group attribute is present in the WP:Biography. What did this person do as a soldier? What years did they serve and did they serve the United States as a soldier? If this does fit into WP:MILHIST, the following should be added: |military-priority= - As for the priority it should be marked as "Low" importance. Once again someone familiar with the subject could add the assessment. Adamdaley (talk) 05:01, 23 September 2022 (UTC)