Talk:James Barry (surgeon)/Archive 2

Pronoun notice
Due to continued, mostly good-faith edits to refactor the article with one type of gendered pronouns or another, I've added an edit notice to the article, which will be visible in Preview mode, until 8 January 2022. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Bulkley vs. Buckley
There have been good faith attempts to alter Barry's family name at birth to "Buckley", a spelling which has some support in sources, especially web-based sources. There are unimpeachable sources that support "Bulkley", including the BBC, and du Preez-2016, and others. If there are reliable sources on *both* sides supporting opposite views, then this calls for the disputed tag to be added, or with less certainty, the dubious tag. I don't believe the state of sourcing supports either of these tags, so I have not added one, but I just wanted to raise the issue here, to show awareness of this. Another tag we might add, if there is a lot of tampering with the spelling in the future, is the not a typo tag, in which case we could code something like this: This template doesn't render anything other than the name itself, but signals editors not to change it without further examination: The template has an optional reason param, and the alias as written is also available. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Barry was born in Cork in 1789, a birth date based on Mrs Bulkley's description of her child...

Birth name
I removed his birth name because it isn't a notable information about him. Same is done in articles about many trans people or people who otherwise changed their names. But my edit was reverted and I was directed into the talk page to discuss about this. I think his birth name should be removed because it isn't a notable information. --Betseg (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * CC who reverted my edit. --Betseg (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the ping! I reverted your edit as this has been a hugely contentious article regarding Barry's gender identity and presentation (and how we as Wikipedians present it). I'm sure you can see that from a quick skim of the talkpage, and I really appreciate your starting the conversation here.
 * MOS:GENDERID mentions that " calls for mentioning the former name of a transgender person only if they were notable under that name. In other respects, the MoS does not specify when and how to mention former names, or whether to give the former or current name first." MOS:DEADNAME as written applies only to living trans and NB people, which is a pity, so that leaves us with a great big shrug as far as the MOS is concerned as to whether Barry's birth name should be included or not. In this case, I lean ever so slightly towards its inclusion, as the specifics of Barry's early life and how (and when) Barry began to go by Barry are pertinent, well-researched, and of interest. I also feel that as written, the article treats Barry's birth name respectfully and without emphasis.
 * Would you mind going into further detail about why you believe Barry's birth name is non-notable? I'd also be interested to hear any rewrite suggestions for the Early Life section, as well. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 00:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Because Barry wasn't known under that name, did not do anything particularly notable under that name, and if his wishes about his body were fulfilled we wouldn't even be having this conversation. --Betseg (talk) 05:11, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * hi? --Betseg (talk) 17:39, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi? Yes? A discussion of two does not consensus make; I was hoping other editors would chime in.
 * For what it's worth, I agree with you that Barry was a trans man, but Wikipedia is about sourcing and verifiability. There are enough dissenting notable sources that the 'he's a trans man so obviously his birth name shouldn't be in here' argument isn't enough (unfortunately). NekoKatsun (nyaa) 17:55, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying "Barry was a trans man," I'm saying "Barry was not known under Barry's birth name for most of Barry's life, and in the period of Barry's life where Barry was known for Barry's birth name, Barry wasn't a notable Wikipedia entry. Barry became notable when Barry adopted the name 'James.'." I think that should be enough reason to not include Barry's name in the article. --Betseg (talk) 03:08, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

"Intersex Controversy" citations
Could someone with authority to edit please adjust the format of citations in this section? Right now they're links to [Author][Year] and a page number, which is not standard Wikipedia formatting. Naming the actual publication with a proper citation format would make things more uniform. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:940:C000:4147:B1C5:1A35:76D2:86F5 (talk) 21:41, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

I've edited the third paragraph of the section, but not the first two, because as it turned out, one of the incorrectly cited sources doesn't even discuss what it's cited as saying. I've removed that source, and left the correctly cited footnote. The first two paragraphs have citations that still need adjusting. SanDWesting (talk) 00:54, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Gender Grammar

 * Is it possible to be a little more consistent with grammar? Although I know there is the problem with actually identifying Barry's gender, but the switching between "female" in the Early Life section and "male" everywhere else just seems to be inconsistent. USS Stingray (talk) 04:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Since Barry self-identified and lived as a male, he should be referred to as male. I made this article consistent before, but people keep changing it. Asarelah (talk) 19:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The sex-related prounouns should be avoided altogether here, in my modest opinion, and if you refer Barry as either female and male you present only one view, which can be seen as biased and should be avoided, as its opposite to the principles of Wikipedia and breach of POV. This should be factual and not about a subjectivity. --83.131.219.210 (talk) 00:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Avoiding gender-specific pronouns is a good idea, but it isn't possible to do entirely... at least not without making the text incredibly awkward. Because Barry was male-identified through most of... his life, and was referred to as "he", male pronouns are most appropriate. - Jason A. Quest (talk) 05:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Did Barry self identify as a male? I thought it was more a case of having to pretend to be a man in order to pursue the education and career she wanted at a time when such things were denied to women.

If we're going to try to avoid gender grammar and present an unbiased view, perhaps they/them pronouns would be easiest to read? Dallas (talk)


 * Yes, I agree that "they/them" would at least be READABLE (especially compared to the article as it is now, since someone apparently got so frustrated with the pronoun dispute that they removed every one of Barry's pronouns). But, "they/them" just aren't CORRECT if they're referring to James Barry, and I'll explain why.


 * We wouldn't call a transgender woman "they" when we knew that she went by "she", would we? We wouldn't insist that even though she clearly considered herself a woman, she was actually a man who was just pretending to be a woman for career purposes, right? The decent thing to do is to take a person's words and self-presentation seriously.


 * Why would it be different with James Barry?
 * We KNOW that for most of his life, James Barry WANTED and EXPECTED everyone to refer to him using MALE pronouns.
 * Isn't it standard practice (and basic courtesy) to refer to a person using their PREFERRED pronouns? Yep! Sure is!


 * Remember, even though he died in 1865 (way before the term "gender" acquired its current meaning) those who knew him continued using male pronouns for him after his anatomical sex was discovered. Overall, people continued to uphold his declared identity. Even the press. So why is that over a century later, Barry is getting misgendered left and right, in different ways, over and over again, mostly by good-hearted people?


 * It absolutely baffles me that anyone thinks it is appropriate to reassign genders of dead famous people by back-projecting the gender-related philosophy of our own time. Who am I to determine any person's "true" gender?


 * Only James Barry himself is able to determine "what" James Barry is, so it IS misgendering if we refer to James Barry as anything other than male. Meaning we all need to use MALE pronouns for him. Unless he comes back to life and tells us otherwise, but I promise you he will not. Nothingtoreallygetfastfor (talk)


 * To try again to impose either masculine or feminine gendered pronouns will re-open the pronoun forever war; singular they/them would incur the wrath of the grammar purists; pronoun-free is a truce allowing each side to content themselves with at least not "misgendering" Barry. Let's not upset that apple cart. Also, pronoun-free is not incorrect, and the slight strangeness wears off very quickly. Cheers, Awien (talk) 16:41, 27 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Singular they/them would incur the wrath of the grammar purists? We use singular they all the time though, even to refer to cisgender people. For example, If you find an umbrella somewhere, you could say for example "Someone forgot THEIR umbrella here". This is perfectly grammatically correct. I really do not understand the issue with the use of singular they/them.
 * However, with James Barry, I do agree that we should use he/him, because that's what he preferred during his lifetime. The use of they/them for transgender individuals who do not prefer they/them is still considered misgendering. If you disagree that James Barry was trans, see my post on the on "Transgender?" above. CutieMar (talk) 13:37, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Change of Main Image
Would it be acceptable to change the article’s main photograph to this one? It is the only other known photograph of Dr Barry, but having been taken prior to his illness, is rather more flattering to the good doctor (the quality is still low, but better than the existing one). It is scanned from Rachel Holmes’ Scanty Particulars, and is without copyright restriction. Unfortunately its date is unknown, but probably late 1840s? Perhaps the existing photo could be used further down in the article? Wilderwill (talk) 13:55, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I support this, but the existing photo should migrate to a chronologically appropriate place in the article.--TedColes (talk) 19:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and updated it and moved the original down to the "Death" section. Comments of course still welcome. Wilderwill (talk) 23:05, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * The image does not look like the other two and is not included in du Preez and Dronfield's book. How sure can we be that it is of Barry? If there is any serious doubt, we should return to the status quo ante.--TedColes (talk) 07:58, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why it's not printed in the other book, but Holmes states in hers that the photograph is inscribed in Barry's own handwriting, and all of the depictions of him are very different to one another - the other photo is from just before his death when he was severely old and ill (and while I hesitate to point this out, he was famous for having tiny hands, an identifying feature interestingly obvious in this photo). I can change it back if there is concern, but I don't think there's reason not to consider Holmes's work a reliable source. Wilderwill (talk) 10:19, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Both of the other images show Barry with a strikingly long nose and small downturned mouth. This person has neither. Before we use this as the lead image, we should be much more sure of its authenticity. Awien (talk) 18:51, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I've switched the photographs back following a request from Awien, and moved this one further down the article. Further input regarding the photographs is welcome. Wilderwill (talk) 19:27, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

To avoid any future confusion, I have edited the photo caption here to reflect that this image is on fact of a Jospeh Barry, not James Barry, as discussed below at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:James_Barry_(surgeon)#Infobox_image AutumnKing (talk) 10:03, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This distillery is claiming that this Joseph Barry was an entrepreneur and the owner of a trading company in South Africa. https://www.josephbarry.co.za/

Revisiting the pronoun question, with an eye to MOS
I'm rather perplexed by the past discussions regarding pronouns on this article, because they all seem to get bogged down in the question of whether Barry was what we would now call transgender, while ignoring what the Manual of Style actually says about pronouns: (Emphases added.) GENDERID is not limited to trans people. The article very clearly establishes that at the time of Barry's death, he was living as a man. George Graham is quoted as using he/him pronouns to refer to Barry in the very inquiry into his sex. No one referred to Barry as a woman until he was posthumously discovered to have a vagina. To me this seems like a very clear-cut application of GENDERID: At death, he was living as a man, therefore this article should refer to him with he/him pronouns. It's really as simple as that. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 22:50, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Checking in two weeks later. Would appreciate hearing others' thoughts. I'm hesitant to BEBOLD given that the status quo is the result of discussion, but at the same time there's never been a particularly strong consensus for it, and I'm also hesitant to start an RfC over a suggestion that is currently unopposed. So, thoughts, anyone? -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 03:01, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * MOS:GENDERID is a guideline, whereas WP:CONSENSUS is a policy. Policies take precedence over guideliines. Therefore you would need to change the consensus. By avoiding pronouns, the people who arrived at the consensus avoided the problems addressed by the current iteration of the MOS guideline well before it was incorporated into the guideline. Thus the editing on this article also represents WP:EDITCONSENSUS that subsequently supported the original consensus. Again, this is policy, MOS is a guideline. Peaceray (talk) 06:41, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I said that there's a consensus, although, as I said, reading it doesn't seem like a particularly strong one. If there weren't some level of consensus I would have just made this change boldly. Which is why I'm asking for input as to whether this consensus should change. You're right that the wording of GENDERID has changed a bit in the past four years, although I'd say what's changed more significantly in this time is the way that it is applied, with much more deference now given to self-identification. Absent an argument for why GENDERID shouldn't be controlling in this case, in my view there's a presumption in favor of MOS. But it sounds like you and I are in agreement that this should be discussed, so: What do you think about my proposal?  -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 09:00, 13 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Support - Regardless of where anyone falls on the gender identification debate, all sources agree that Barry went by a male name and male pronouns and, for all intents and purposes, was a man (until undressed after death against his wishes, kickstarting this whole mess). He/him pronouns are most appropriate. I welcome revisiting the consensus to establish this, though I do think it'll take a RfC at minimum and, more likely, a BOLD change reverted in (hopefully) good faith to actually get the conversation going. But there's my two cents on it. Barry identified as male, let's reestablish consensus with MOS:GENGERID in mind. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 15:11, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I would be supportive of this change. It appears to be a straightforward application of MOS:GENDERID. GreenComputer (talk) 16:11, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * This has been discussed at length on both this Talk page, and others where there are similar issues. There is very much a danger of presentism here. Editors have hit upon a workable compromise, that reflects both the different interpretations of the sources and of the editors. There is very little straightforward about asserting one particular set of pronouns should be used over another. Barry's historical significance is precisely because of the ambiguity over their identity. It is not the job of Wikipedia editors to make definitive assertions, but to present the facts based on sources. Compromising through the use of 'Barry' over pronouns is the logical approach for this article. AutumnKing (talk) 17:22, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * With respect, the facts based on all sources agree that Barry went by a male identity at the end of his life. I fail to see how source interpretation about the rest of his life is applicable, and editor interpretation should have nothing to do with it at all. His latest gender self-expression was male, thus he/him pronouns are appropriate. Do you have sources stating that Barry wasn't exclusively presenting as male? I believe that's the only thing that would run counter to this proposal. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 17:37, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * , I would refer you to the third paragraph of the Gender and personal life section, where it indicates that Barry became a close friend of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and his family. It has been suggested that Lord Charles discovered Dr Barry's secret and that the relationship was more than friendship. The section goes on to note that there was a ourt trial and investigation of the allegations. There is also information that Barry may have been a mother in the first paragraph of the death section.
 * This leads to a lot of questions about What would Barry do? in present day circumstances. I can easily imagine that Barry's true purpose in presenting as a man was to practice medicine in the military, both of which were prohibited in Britain at the time, & that Barry continued attempt to present as a man even beyond death was to protect the loyal men with whom Barry served who may have known about Barry's biological expression. Barry might have been very comfortable with presenting as a woman if these conditions did not exist. If that would be the case, then the British Military would have done Barry a disservice in the 19th-century, & we might do Barry the opposite disservice in the 21st-century.
 * We also tend to assume, rightly or wrongly, that nearly all people who undergo women-to-men transitions are not typically attracted to men.
 * I would caution against a One size fits all all approach in this matter. This is the danger outlined in WP:PRESENTISM & presentism (literary and historical analysis). Will there be pressure to change it again if the pendulum swings to the singular they, s/he, ze or per/ve/xe? Wikipedia is hardly the sole arbiter on this.
 * I think that the current consensus serves this article well, & there is no reason at this time to change it. Peaceray (talk) 18:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I can agree that we need to be aware of the dangers of presentism, but the point I was attempting to make is that whether or not Barry was in a relationship with someone, or had a child, isn't relevant to the question at hand. The question at hand, per MOS:GENDERID, is simply "What was Barry's latest expressed gender self-identification?" The final paragraph of the Gender and personal life section states that Barry repeated a standing instruction that "in the event of his death, strict precautions should be adopted to prevent any examination of his person" and that the body should be "buried in [the] bed sheets without further inspection". (emphasis mine) Barry's latest expressed gender self-identification was male. As such I argue that male pronouns are more appropriate than no pronouns at all.
 * My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that it shouldn't matter why he chose to present as male, and that theorizing that it was simply to practice medicine is as much an application of presentism as assuming a trans identity is. The sources disagree, and we can't know. What we do know is that he did present as male, and my interpretation of GENDERID is that we should respect that. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 18:45, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Altercation with Florence Nightingale
§ Career says
 * From here, Barry temporarily visited the Crimea on leave - as a request to be posted there officially had been denied - where a famous altercation took place between Barry and Florence Nightingale at Scutari Hospital.

If this altercation was famous, or if it's even worth mentioning at all, it should certainly have a citation. I have tagged it accordingly. --Thnidu (talk) 21:27, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed; removed. No way it should have lasted this long. P.S., can you use  or   for breaks, but not  ? It screws up syntax highlighting on the rest of the page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment: Pronouns
For years there has been dispute as to which pronouns this biography should use to refer to its subject. In 2017 edited the article to only refer to Barry by his surname (see ), a compromise that saw no opposition (although also not much support). In the years since, that compromise has become the status quo.

Notably, over the years, there has been no discussion of the applicability of MOS:GENDERID, the guideline that governs biographical subjects' pronouns, which advises (emphases added):

Much discussion in the past has focused on whether Barry was transgender, but GENDERID is not exclusive to transgender people. It is not the goal of this RfC to determine whether Barry was transgender, or what his "true" gender identity was (or for that matter what his sex was). This RfC instead asks two questions: ("Yes" to both would mean switching to he/him pronouns. For any other answer, please state your preferred outcome.) -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 18:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) For the purposes of GENDERID, is it accurate to say that Barry's "latest expressed gender self-identification" was as a man?
 * 2) Should we follow GENDERID in this case?

Survey

 * As initiator, Yes to both questions. To date, the pronouns question has largely been discussed in the context of whether Barry was transgender. However, as I argue in the section above, that doesn't matter. For the sake of argument, let's suppose that Barry privately identified as a woman but lived as a man because it was the only way to be a doctor. Even if that were the case, his expressed gender self-identification at the time of his death was as a man. The guideline doesn't inquire as to whether someone was transgender, or what they felt in their heart of hearts. It inquires as to the identity they expressed, and Barry very clearly presented himself as—outwardly identified as—a man. The day he died, every single person who knew him thought of him as a "he". That is where the pronoun inquiry begins, and where it ought to end. If he was a woman, he was a woman who was referred to with he/him pronouns.Furthermore, I agree that presentism is an issue here. It would be presentism to use the pronouns used in (some) 20th- and 21st-century scholarship over the ones used in 19th-century reality. Just because some sources have referred to him in an ahistorical manner doesn't mean that we have to. We must not be biased against the past, must not hold ourselves to a lower standard than we would in the case of someone who died today. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 18:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Opposed as per my remarks in . — Peaceray (talk) 18:38, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Your comment there is mostly speculation as to his motives for living as a man. And my point here is, it doesn't matter why he lived as a man. He did live as a man, for one reason or another. Also, could you explain the relevance of him possibly having borne a child, and of him possibly having been attracted to men? Even in a discussion of private gender identity (which again this is not), I don't see how either of those would be relevant. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:07, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually those comments are quite pertinent to this discussion, which is far more complex that you are framing it. In your own comment you use the expression his expressed gender self-identification using language and concepts that would be unrecognisable in Barry's lifetime. We should not apply present day thinking to the lives of historical figures. To ascribe pronouns to Barry would be to apply modern day standards. The compromise to avoid them allows for neutrality. AutumnKing (talk) 19:26, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm just quoting MOS there. I'm aware those concepts didn't exist in Barry's day. The concept of gendered pronouns, however, did exist. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:47, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We have a difference of opinion as to the relevance. The fact is that British women were oppressed and prevented from going into medical and military service, & this was central for the need to the presentation as a man. Yes, it is speculation to suggest that it would have happened otherwise were it not for these circumstances, but one for which I think most would agree is highly probabile. I think there is a clear need for a holistic approach to the article, & shoehorning pronouns into it conflicts with this.
 * There is also the matter of policy, WP:CONSENSUS & WP:EDITCONSENSUS prevails over the MOS:GENDERID guideline, which itself is a recent change. I fail to see why we need to force pronouns into the article when IMHO, editors have already arrived at a workable solution. Peaceray (talk) 19:29, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * "most would agree is highly probable"? I wouldn't agree. Many people wouldn't agree. I really feel like you're showing your own bias there. But it doesn't matter. Like I said, if he was a woman, he was a woman who expected people to refer to him as "he". Also, GENDERID has said something similar to this since before the 2017 discussion. Consensus can change, and clearly I'm not the only person who finds the status quo suboptimal. It's not using pronouns that comes off as "shorehorned." Usually that is only done in rare cases where the subject prefers not to be referred to using them. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:47, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, we have a disagreement, specifically as to whether the 19th-century British prohibition on women in medical & military service would require a woman to masquerade as a man in order to serve in that capacity. I strongly feel most would be in agreement with that statement. Peaceray (talk) 19:52, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that a woman in the 19th century would have has to masquerade as a man to become a doctor, yes. One can plausibly ascribe any number of gender identities to Barry. If your point is that the article should not take a position on his gender identity, I agree with that. I just disagree that we should avoid the pronouns used by his contemporaries. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:57, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * For what reason, though? It is plain to see from Florence Nightingale's use of "scare quotes" around the male pronouns when writing about this person that the use of masculine pronouns was merely an indication of what they assumed this person's sex to be. There was no concept of "gender identity" in those days: the only thing anyone cared about was what a person's physical sex was, and gender expression only existed as a method of conveying that information publicly (since going around naked was frowned upon).
 * I also note this person - AFAICS - never explicitly said "I am a man." They just used a name dressed a certain way, and that was the assumption. The only instance of this person stating their gender, AFAICT, was in the letter they wrote when they were 19, in which they self-identified as "a girl".
 * Now, I have to ask you: if all of these various things you say don't matter don't matter - why is this such a concern for you? Was not MOS:GENDERID written for the purpose and with the intent that these things do, indeed, matter? You are wikilawyering over the fine-toothed minute detail of the letter of MOS:GENDERID in order to  prove that it dictates a certain outcome on this matter; and yet, while doing so, you also argue that the reasons and intentions behind the MOS:GENDERID guideline and why it was written in the first place are totally irrelevent. In other words, you are arguing that we should strictly follow the letter of the guideline (as interpreted by you), rather than the spirit of the guideline. For what reason, though? Firejuggler86 (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I've been pretty clear about why I think this matters. The guidelines say that we follow the pronouns according to someone's last expressed gender self-identification. That's not wiki-lawyering. That's the plain meaning of the guideline, in letter and spirit. I've yet to see a good reason not to follow the guideline here, other than some editors' speculation that Barry would have lived as a woman if he could. By your own reasoning, living as a man his entire adult life, in an era where there was no concept of being transgender or nonbinary, was a prima facie statement of "I am a man", and there's no reason for us as editors to speculate as to whether he privately felt this way, any more than there's reason to do so for contemporary people who live in genders different from those they were assigned at birth. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 20:44, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Peaceray's general reasoning. Speculation on Barry's gender identity could go multiples way, and there is no definitive answer for it. This is a contentious issue, and I don't see the benefit in changing to use one particular set of pronouns. I think this RfC is unnecessary, as it seems pretty clear based on all the prior talk page discussions that there will not be a consensus for one set of pronouns over another, which is why the article is written the way it is. At a certain point, rehashing these same discussions becomes a waste of time if there are no changes in the information we have about Barry. – wallyfromdilbert (talk) 18:46, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Clear-cut Support. Barry identified as male, regardless of the reasoning behind that, and I see no reason to not follow GENDERID. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 18:48, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose as per my previous remarks. This is an unnecessary change, where a reasonable compromise has already been reached. AutumnKing (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose There is too much uncertainty about what has occurred post-mortem. It could be that Barry was born a female and chose to identify as a male in order to practice medicine and surgery during a time of great gender discrimination when such positions were not available to women. It could be that Barry was born intersex. It could be that Barry was actually born male and the entire controversy about Barry having been born a female was the word of an individual who examined the body after Barry's death and tried to engage in blackmail for monetary gain. Who actually knows what happened here. The compromise that was reached seems the most equitable, especially when the truth is obscured and Barry is long deceased. Let's not dig up old skeletons and apply modern ideologies to things that happened so long ago. TrueQuantum (talk) 19:39, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What modern ideologies are being applied here? -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:53, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The modern ideology that we must classify Barry according to Barry's latest gender self-identification when in fact Barry died more than a hundred years ago and Barry's gender preference and identity is actually unknown. I support the rights of transgender individuals. I support the rights of transgender individuals to join the sports teams that they identify with, to use the bathroom they feel is most appropriate to them, and more. But I don't need to virtue signal so hard that I go back hundreds of years to assign the proper gendered pronoun to a long dead surgeon who may or may not have been born female and lived as a male. I don't even know if Barry did this to counteract the severe gender discrimination of the time the way that Mulan pretended to be a man to fight in the army. The past is the past and we don't need to remake it in our image to social justice historical mysteries. TrueQuantum (talk) 06:05, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears what you have is an issue with the guideline, for which this RfC is not the proper place. --Equivamp - talk 01:41, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This is the proper place, because there has been WP:CONSENSUS & WP:EDITCONSENSUS here that predated MOS:GENDERID. Consensus is policy, whereas anything from the MOS is a guideline. Therefore we would need to change the consensus here about whether to use Barry's last name instead of pronouns before MOS:GENDERID would be applied here. Peaceray (talk) 04:13, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * To reiterate: 1) This is me trying to establish a new consensus. Saying "We need a new consensus" during an open RfC is perfunctory. 2) The previous consensus was never that strong, as a reading of past discussions will indicate. And 3) MOS:GENDERID predates the past consensus; it's simply that the discussion didn't consider it. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 08:09, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This issue here is not arguing whether MOS:GENDERID is valid or whether the prior consensus was valid. The issue to me is whether MOS:GENDERID is to be so strictly interpreted that we do not consider the spirit and the intent of the wording and just apply the words like a robot even to historical contexts where it would be nonsensical. I argue that, as human beings, we have the ability to navigate the shades of gray that make the human experience so notable. In fact, it is these very shades of gray that makes the LGBTQ community so vibrant and beautiful. TrueQuantum (talk) 14:56, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:50, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose Barry died more than a hundred years ago. The context for the pronouns is completely different. ---CranberryMuffin (talk) 23:22, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What makes you say that? What exactly was different?  ¡Ay vi nd !  (talk) 04:07, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What was different was that in those days, genered pronouns were only used to indicate what the person's physical sex was (or in Barry's case what it was believed by others to be). Pronouns are a cultural construct, just like gender is a cultural construct. There can be as many or as few categories of them as can be imagined, and they can have any meaning any particular people assigns to them, and some languages don't even have pronouns at all, or have only neuter ones; or ones that indicate not gender but something else like age, or social status, or whatever. These things are not hard wired, and every culture and every language defines them differently. Same goes with Ages. It is one thing to expect cultural adherence in the present to the presently assigned meanings of these words, but you cannot apply present day concepts and definitions to past societies that had absolutely no concept of these things which we discuss. Firejuggler86 (talk) 20:08, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support It seems clear that Barry identified as Male, so we should use he/him. However, one alternative would be to use gender neutral they/them, explaining the reasoning in a footnote  ¡Ay vi nd !  (talk)
 * Oppose – this has been discussed at length, not only here, but at other articles like Albert Cashier. The word transgender was unknown until a century after Barry died. Barry may have been what we now call transgender, but we can't ask someone who is no longer alive, and attempting to project our 21st century notions about sex and gender onto a nineteenth century world is doomed to failure. Professional opportunities for women in the time of Queen Victoria were rare, to say the least; we don't know for sure whether Barry presented as male for reasons of identity, for professional advancement, perhaps to have liaisons with women, or for other reasons, and there's no way to find out. Solutions such as singular they are without support here, and in my mind, the question of Barry's gender identity is undiscoverable. The best outcome, is to avoid forcing Wikipedia to come down on either side of this unknowable question. The best solution, is to avoid speculation, and avoid gendered pronouns. Note that we could certainly echo what is done in the last sentence of the lead at Albert Cashier, and allude to any reliable sources that have speculated that Barry was transgender, as long as it's sourceable, and probably with in-text attribution. That would be fine; however, there is simply no policy-based reason to use male pronouns with confidence in this article. Mathglot (talk) 05:04, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support - using he/him pronouns, he chose to live his life as a man, and obviously used male pronouns to identify for 50+ years of his life. It was also his wish to be remembered and buried as a man upon his death. Isaidnoway (talk) 08:19, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This is the most compelling argument I've seen for "Support." It is true that Barry chose to live life as a man and practice as a surgeon, an occupation unfortunately only available to men of that era. Would this, however, erase the historical mystery surrounding Barry's gender? Would it erase the struggles Barry endured as a woman portraying herself as a man so successfully that Barry was able to outperform men and become a legend in the field of surgery? What if Barry really wanted to live as a woman and compromised with that to masquerade as a man just to do the career that she loved? Since this all happened so long ago, it is impossible to tell what is the actual truth. Right now I am torn and can be swayed either way. TrueQuantum (talk) 13:57, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say that is the point. There are an awful lot of 'what if's' in this situation, and it is not the job of Wikipedia editors to resolve them. The compromise of using no pronouns, and just 'Barry', allows the reader to consider those what if's, without being directed to a conclusion. AutumnKing (talk) 15:18, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see using pronouns as an attempt to resolve the 'what ifs'. I often say follow the sources, but in this case, it's a bag of mixed results, some sources exclusively use male pronouns, while others use female, but most use both male and female pronouns, and as usual, Wikipedia editors waaay overthink the issue, not realizing we can walk and chew gum at the same time, by reporting on the 'what ifs', while also using pronouns, and let readers come to their own conclusions. My reasoning for male pronouns is because of his 50+ years identifying as a man, and his desire to be remembered as a man. But I like to chew gum while I walk, so I could live with using both male and female pronouns, but insisting on no pronouns seems a little anal to me. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:24, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see how those 'what if's' are relevant to the discussion at hand, which consists of two questions - did Barry use male pronouns, and per the MOS should we do the same? There's a lot of ambiguity about his life, but those two questions are straightforward enough to me. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 17:26, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess for me it all boils down to whether the gender identification was done out of choice or out of coercion. If Dr. Barry really wanted to be a surgeon and the only way Barry could do it was to portray herself as a man, then it doesn't seem to me that this gender identity was one of choice but more of coercion. After all, the only way to be a surgeon in that time was to be male. If Dr. Barry came out and told everyone that she was actually female, she would have been fired and her life ruined. It is in some ways akin to the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of the 1990s where LGBT people in the army couldn't really express their true sexual orientation for fear of being dishonorably discharged from the military. They would portray themselves as straight out of coercion and not by choice. Now we are applying the context where transgender individuals, by their own wonderful choice, are declaring their pronouns and gender identity. In this context, of course we must respect their decision and their identity. But to apply this to more than a hundred years in the past to what Dr. Barry had to struggle and endure feels like historical revisionism. How do we know if Dr. Barry really wanted to tell the world that she was a proud woman and the best damn surgeon in her field? We don't know. We can never know. And for that reason, I think referring to Dr. Barry as Barry rather than using pronouns makes the most sense in this context. TrueQuantum (talk) 02:06, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Nailed it. And female persons disguising themselves as men for reasons like that happens repeatedly through history, most of which had extremely restrictive gender roles. The spirit of MOS:GENDERID is about respecting how a person sees themselves deep down, not what they do for others under social pressure. That's why pronoun changes are applied to someone's entire life when they come out as trans, not just to the post-coming-out period. To insist that Barry must still be referred to as he/him in our world, when they maybe would have been happy to see they could be a woman and a surgeon, is so, so contrary to the spirit of the guideline. Crossroads -talk- 23:14, 18 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose Unnecessary change. Honolulucb (talk) 01:10, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support change to male pronouns. It seems a lot of the people commenting are speculating about the subject's gender identity in order to complain about such speculation, but as the nomination states, the relevant portion of MOS:GENDERID does not care about whether or not a person was transgender, just about what that person latest expressed. It's abundantly obvious how the subject presented himself at the end of his life; whether this identification was a genuine sense of identity, or one borne out of convenience/ambition doesn't matter, and we don't have to speculate about it at all in order to satisfy the Manual of Style. --Equivamp - talk 01:41, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What about this hypothetical situation. Let's say a transgender Air Force fighter pilot during the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy era told all of his superiors and colleagues as well on official documents that he was a man. Then he gets shot down over the Persian Gulf and dies for his country. But it turns out from all her diaries and personal writings that she lived as a woman. She had a boyfriend in her private life. She couldn't come out as a woman because doing so would cause her to be dishonorably discharged. But according to MOS:GENDERID her last self-identification was as a male according to all reliable sources reporting on it. Would this be fair and equitable? TrueQuantum (talk) 16:07, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * When your argument begins with Whataboutism, you've already lost the argument. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:48, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Whataboutism is using a rhetorical example to expose an opponent's hypocrisy. It's a "you also" logical fallacy. I used a rhetorical example not as an attack nor as a way to expose the hypocrisy of someone else but to illustrate an example to make a point. The only "whataboutism" I am guilty of is using the words "What about this" at the beginning of my sentence. TrueQuantum (talk) 23:31, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * "Lost the argument"? Not necessarily. 's hypothetical is analogous to the experience of some women who fought in the American Civil War, and died having maintained a male identity for some considerable length of time before death. In this case, their motivation was to stay with their husband or fiancé, but the wish to avoid outing is similar. Their last stated self-identification may have been male, but this did not necessarily reflect their actual gender identity; certainly their husbands did not view them that way, despite their wife's Army uniform, musket, dress sword, or male name. See in the #Discussion section below. Mathglot (talk) 23:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I have to say, I'm a little troubled that this is the second comment here to equate dating men with being a woman. Peaceray earlier said We also tend to assume, rightly or wrongly, that nearly all people who undergo women-to-men transitions are not typically attracted to men. I'm not sure who "we" is in that sentence, but at least by 2021 standards, a majority of the transmasculine people I know are attracted to men; empirical data bears this out. Again, my point here isn't to argue that Barry was transgender—to the contrary, I'd oppose any attempt to make such an assertion in the article—but, if we're talking about indicators that someone does or doesn't identify with a given gender, sexual orientation is emphatically not one. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 23:11, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I was opining what the general societal tends to assume about women-to-men transitions & sexual preference. I did take a look at the Transgender_sexuality#Transgender_men section to which you linked. It cites one study of American trans men that speaks stongly to your point. However, I would suggest that generalization from one study is imperfect. There should be more studies to see if the results are replicated, & cross-cultural studies as well. Peaceray (talk) 04:43, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose, change isn't necessary. Idealigic (talk) 18:41, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose The change is really unnecessary. Sea Ane (talk) 22:38, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Notice: Listed at::
 * WT:Manual of Style/Biography
 * WT:WikiProject LGBT studies
 * WT:WikiProject Women
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gender studies
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's History
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Feminism
 * Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:21, 18 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Support Use of He/Him since he identified as male in both private and public life until his death. BristolTreeHouse (talk) 06:23, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose strongly. Mathglot painstakingly explained why in below. WP:V is policy and supersedes guidelines, and it is clear that sources are inconsistent on this matter. Using he/him pronouns is POV. We don't know why Barry said and did what they did, and using either set of gender pronouns runs a high risk of what is today called misgendering. "He/him" is not a safe or neutral option. Barry lived at a time of extreme gender restrictions; as laid out below, at that time there were many female persons who did things women weren't allowed to do and in ways that today carry very different connotations about someone's inward gender; to imply that they were all necessarily men could seem misogynist (by attributing women's accomplishments to men) and is a major anachronism. Maybe Barry would have considered themselves a man (trans man) had they lived today, but also maybe not, and using "he/him" implies the former. Some sources claiming that they were a trans man, by the way, may be unreliable if the authors lack relevant expertise in that period of history and are clearly engaged in activistically trying to claim historical figures as this or that. That first paragraph of MOS:GENDERID clearly needs to be revisited. The clear intent/spirit of that paragraph (I was there during the recent debates over that whole section) is to prevent people from refusing to update a BLP's gender because the majority of already existing sources used the old gendered terms from before a recent transition. It was never meant for quasi-WP:WIKILAWYERING over historical figures and for selectively favoring some modern-day RS over others. Such a claim is invalid as against the policies and pillars of Wikipedia, namely WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:5P2, and WP:5P5. Crossroads -talk- 22:40, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose use of pronouns. Comment by User:TrueQuantum (02:06, 16 June 2021) is the nutshell for me. I am also persuaded by this: "" – "Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time review – an exquisite story of scandalous subterfuge".Wendy Moore, 10 November 2016, The Guardian. Pyxis Solitary   (yak) . L not Q. 13:04, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose use of pronouns. This seems like a unique case as per the comments above where we should just avoid using pronouns altogether considering the complexity and uncertainity of the situation. It seems sources are not clear on this either. Regards  Spy-cicle💥   Talk? 00:22, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support; and, more importantly, strenuously oppose avoiding the use of pronouns in this case as failing not just MOS:GENDERID but WP:V and WP:RS. MOS:GENDERID is clear, and there is sufficient sourcing using male pronouns that the argument that using he / him somehow fails WP:V or WP:RS doesn't pass a sniff test; using pronouns, in any case, carries no particular implication beyond the fact that they were his preferred pronouns, which is indisputable - people's speculation about why he preferred those pronouns is interesting (and can be covered in the article if we have appropriate sources) but has no relevance for which ones we use or for the fact that he did prefer them.  But more importantly, writing around pronouns doesn't actually solve that issue - it carries the implication that he preferred no pronouns, which does flatly fail WP:V and WP:RS.  We have sources indicating that he used male pronouns in life, and sufficient sources that use male pronouns for him today to satisfy RS and V for that option; but we have no sources whatsoever supporting the implication that he preferred to avoid pronouns entirely, which makes it an unacceptable solution. If people want to argue for using female pronouns for him (which is what the speculation above points to, ie. they speculate that it is possible that he actually, deep in his heart, preferred female pronouns), they must make that argument honestly - but suggesting that we could treat his pronouns as "none" is total nonsense unsupported by any sources.  --Aquillion (talk) 05:11, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The idea of having a preference for no pronouns would have been unheard of in the 19th century when Barry lived and indeed for most readers even today. Not using any carries no such implication because unstated things cannot ever be said to implied - in other words, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The argument based on RS won't work because some RS use he/him and others use she/her, as explained above and below. Picking one set of pronouns means elevating some sources over others, which is clearly POV. Crossroads -talk- 05:29, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That's some backwards logic, there. You said, "it [avoiding pronouns] carries the implication that he preferred no pronouns" –  No, it most certainly does not.
 * You said, "we have no sources whatsoever supporting the implication that he preferred to avoid pronouns entirely, which makes it an unacceptable solution." –   We also have no sources whatsoever supporting the implication that Napoleon preferred to avoid use of Ming Dynasty china at his state dinners, and yet the Napoleon Bonaparte article avoids any mention of Ming Dynasty china; I guess it flatly fails WP:V and WP:RS, too. Mathglot (talk) 08:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per MOS:GID and Tamzin below. GreenComputer (talk) 07:47, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is PoV-based OR trying to retroactively "adopt" someone as transgender for having passed as a man in a then-male-gendered profession of military physician. This is just historical revisionism, and is not what we have MOS:GENDERID for. I had wondered if we needed to specify in it that it did not pertain to subjects that pre-date the concept "transgender", but I guess now we know that we need to be that specific.  Anyway, the status quo of using the surname is perfectly adequate.  PS: We should not be censoring pronouns in directly quoted historical writing, either.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Setting aside that there's been no serious consideration here of referring to Barry as transgender... Are you saying that GENDERID could never apply to someone who lived before the concept of transgender-ness? That means it would not cover, for instance, Lili Elbe. She died 20 years before even the term "transsexual" existed, but I don't think there's any dispute that she considered herself a woman. -- Tamzin  (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 08:13, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Every example that old should be handled on a case-by-case basis, not covered by an attempt at a one-size-fits-all rule that was explicitly created for modern TG/NB subjects (and until recently limited to still-living ones). Half the problem here is a rule-thumping mentality in a system that doesn't really have hard-and-fast rules (other than those legal ones imposed on us by WP:OFFICE, like the core elements of the WP:COPYVIO policy).  We vastly prefer to come to a reasoned consensus that fits a particular topic. Here, there is very clearly not going to be a consensus to gender-ize this person one way or the other with pronouns.  For Elbe, I am certain there would not be a consensus to use "he", but I'm not certain there will be a consensus to use "she" rather than the surname, for reasons similar to ones raised about this article.  This isn't even the only sort of nomenclatural anachronism we have to deal with, it's just a highly politicized one right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Obviously it should be handled on a case-by-case basis. That's why we're having an RfC, to come to that "reasoned consensus." -- Tamzin  (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 06:12, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. The argument that we can't know how Barry identified because our modern framework of gender didn't exist then ignores the fact that, under that criteria, we wouldn't know how any historical figure identified, and we don't go excluding pronouns from the article of every person who happened to live before whenever gender identity was supposedly invented. Luckily, as Tamzin says, we don't need to know, because pronouns and identity are separate issues – Barry consistently used he/him pronouns throughout his adult life, so that is our baseline. The main arguments I've seen in favour of deviating from that are ultimately based on speculation about his identity, which, again, you could apply to anyone, including plenty of people for which there's much better justification. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 00:27, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The assertion that "pronouns and identity are separate issues" is contradicted by the emphasis on identity appropriate pronouns in MOS:GENDERID as well as by how misgendering is considered a serious offense. If that assertion were true, there would be no such thing as misgendering; pronouns would be a meaningless stylistic choice. Also, a great many opposes do not even imply anything about being before an 'invention of gender identity'. We know what pronouns to use for historical figures based on what reliable sources use. There is no consensus among them in this case. Crossroads -talk- 01:21, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Some participants are not reading sources, or else they would see that there is no definite consensus among them. (If I had been her, in the times she lived, I would have done everything I could to maintain the disguise and secret. It was either that or a public ass-kicking.) Pyxis Solitary   (yak) . L not Q. 10:10, 13 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Support per MOS:GID and common sense. DoctorJoeE  Stalk/ Talk  01:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes to both questions (i.e. the position people are expressing as "support" for some reason). As OP notes, the issue is more basic than a question of whether Barry was trans, which previous discussions have gotten bogged down in; the MOS is clear that MOS:GENDERID (rightly) applies to "any person whose gender might be questioned", and clearly Barry's "latest expressed gender self-identification" was as a man, so we are to refer to him accordingly. (In turn, WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to not follow general policies and guidelines is moot.) -sche (talk) 17:22, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

The letter and the spirit of MOS:GENDERID
Tl;dr: An overly strict dependence on the exact wording of the guideline MOS:GENDERID, to the exclusion of WP:COMMONSENSE and the requirements of policy such as WP:Verifiability, may lead good-faith editors astray in this case.

I wanted to address a point that I think is leading to some confusion, in some discussion taking place in the section above, regarding the meaning and application of MOS:GENDERID. I see a number of !votes or discussion that seem to rely on a very strict reading of the "last reported self-identification" portion of MOS:GENDERID, leading some to support male pronouns for that reason. Given the current wording of MOS:GENDERID, I think this is a defensible position, and I respect those that have come to their decision based on this reading, even if I don't agree with it. Further in support of their decision, might be the fact that transgender, although not coined till 1965, could be interpreted broadly enough to include anyone from Elagabalus to Chevalier d'Éon to James Barry.

However, I think it violates the spirit of MOS:GENDERID, and perhaps the letter of it as well, to require that male pronouns be used for Barry in this article, or for anyone, based solely on their last used reference, or even their stable, continuously used self-identification over a period of time, especially when the person in question pre-dates the modern concept of transgender individuals, and I wanted to explain my reasoning. Perhaps MOS:GENDERID should be expanded to clarify this point, so we don't have well-meaning editors coming up with opposite decisions based on their reading of the same guideline; but this is beyond our scope here.



It is worth pointing out that a "last identification" or "continuous, stable identification" as say, "male", does not *always* support an ascription of transgender; even if MOS:GENDERID seems to imply that it does. I wanted to raise some examples, as a possible explanation of what I mean, and as a point of comparison to what I think is going on in some of the reasoning above.

My examples concern women who served as soldiers in the American Civil War. It's a well-sourced fact that there were hundreds of such women; one sees the number "400" quoted a lot. Of these, there are very numerous examples of women who enlisted in order to remain with their husband, fiancé, or lover. Others enlisted for patriotic reasons. Mary Owens seems to be a little bit of both, having enlisted with her husband William disguised as his brother "John", and remaining in the regiment another eighteen months after William was killed in battle. After the war, she married and had four children. The article mentions this:"Local newspapers during the war delighted in stories such as Owens's, involving women soldiers inspired by patriotism or the love of their husbands. According to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Owens was 'described as a woman of considerable beauty, and is said to be the heroine of the neighborhood.'&#91;2&#93;" In this case, it's quite clear, even for the "strict constructionists", that Mary was "she/her", based on her remarriage and children. The case of Malinda Blalock is similar in this regard. So, I venture to say, that everybody would be in agreement on these and similar cases, that there is no opportunity for MOS:GENDERID to yield "he/his" even if the only pronoun or self-identification that Mary used for some years during the War was "he/his".



So far, so good. But it's not as clear in every case of women in battle in the Civil War; not all cases of women enlisting to stay with a man took this same course of post-war remarriage or reassumption of female name and identity. These other cases are analogous to 's hypothetical case of a trans service member who dies for his country before coming out, which TrueQuantum may not have realized is not as hypothetical as they had perhaps thought. Take the case of Florena Budwin, who enlisted in the Union Army with her husband in order to stay with him. Budwin was eventually captured and held as a POW, but maintained her male identity through the death of her husband, and her own sickness, which eventually killed her at age 20. A doctor treating her discovered her secret, and her decision to maintain it may have contributed to her death. Another striking case is that of Lizzie Compton, who enlisted in seven regiments and fought at Shiloh and Gettysburg; she was arrested in 1864 trying to enlist again, was told it was against the law to dress as a man, and replied that she could be a gentleman, but she would rather die than be a lady. The case of Fanny Wilson also seems unknowable. Or, what do we make of Elsa Jane Forest Guerin (a.k.a., "Mountain Charley"), who said,"I began to rather like the freedom of my new character. I could go where I chose, do many things, which while innocent in themselves, were debarred by propriety from association with the female sex. The change from the cumbersome, unhealthy attire of women to the more convenient, healthy habiliments of a man, was in itself almost sufficient to compensate for its unwomanly character."

Must we use male pronouns for Elsa/Charley, and is this a declaration of identity? To call Florena "male", because of what MOS:GENDERID says about her continuously maintained male identity until her death seems on very shaky ground, and in my view, violates the "common sense" provision stated at the very top of Manual of Style/Biography, which is the page upon which MOS:GENDERID appears. To me, common sense dictates that Florena is no different than Mary, or Malinda; she just happened to die before she could resume her prewar life. We also have to remember that the MOS is only a guideline, and WP:Verifiability is a policy; even if a strict reading of MOS:GENDERID might seem to require "male" for Florena, both the "common sense" provision of the guideline, as well as the supervening authority of Verifiability would require stronger evidence than this, which we simply don't have. The evidence for Lizzie possibly being transgender is stronger, but we don't know. I find it more than a bit ironic that one of the main tenets of second-wave feminism is to broaden the scope of what is seen as a societally "permissible" role for women; must we now declare Lizzie a "man" because she's "not a lady" and liked soldiering, or Elsa "he/his" because of the emininently reasonable comments about freedom and clothing?



Each case is different, and the case of Barry is not the same of these women, because Barry maintained a male identity for much longer, and to the end. (So did Albert Cashier, for 53 years.) However, we simply don't have evidence for why this is. Was it more like Elsa? What evidence do we have? The cases of female American Civil War soldiers show that some resume a female identity, some don't, and we usually don't know why. Based on current statistics on trans prevalence, we can guess that there may have been over 10,000 soldiers during the course of the war, that we might have called "transgender" had they lived in our time. But we cannot know this, and in particular, in the individual cases, we rarely have direct evidence for it. James Barry seems much more likely to have been trans than the average soldier, but we know from the historical record that many women served disguised as men, that there were various reasons for this, and some resumed a female identity afterwards and others (fewer, but some) did not.

Finally, it's worth quoting The Gnome's closure of the Albert Cashier Rfc on pronoun usage, which was decided in favor of "exclud[ing] gendered pronouns", and which references this article:"'Avoiding gender-neutral pronouns' brings necessarily with it the demon of repetition: The article 'James Barry (surgeon),' as already pointed out by an RfC contributor, offers the right prototype: The subject is referred throughout by name rather by a gender pronoun, which is precisely the road map for this article, too."

From my point of view, the MOS:GENDERID guideline is a good one, but it must be used with WP:COMMONSENSE, and in particular, WP:Verifiability policy must trump the guideline. It should not be up to the opinion, or even a vote, of Wikipedia editors to declare that someone is transgender, if we don't have reliable sources that we can clearly cite to that effect. As to the argument made at the top, and then again in the Survey section, that regardless of gender identity, we can simply apply the words of MOS:GENDERID to "latest self-identification" without considering their gender identity at all, I find that unconvincing, and disingenuous; we all know why we have that guideline, and it's not for people who *don't* have gender id issues. Maybe the MOS:GENDERID guideline should be tightened up to clarify this situation (and I may open a discussion there about that) but if and until that happens, I'd just ask people looking into the situation here, to apply the GENDERID guideline, but with commmon sense, and to not put their own guesses or views of what Barry "could've" or "must've" been, over their allegiance to uphold WP:Verifiability. (Full disclosure: I think there's a pretty good chance Barry was trans.) Unless editors here can come up with reliable sourcing about Barry's status, one way or the other, I think we simply don't know, and it is unknowable. That argues for avoiding gendered pronouns, and that is what I would urge editors to do. Sorry this was so long; if you're still reading, you deserve a barnstar for indefatigable discussant; thanks! Mathglot (talk) 23:25, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll respond at greater length when I've had more time to think on this, but I just wanted to say, thank you for this serious discussion of my points about GENDERID. I didn't want this discussion to turn into a relitigation of "Was Barry trans?", and I've been disappointed by the extent to which it has. (I have my own guess of how he'd identify if you brought him to 2021 and gave him a few months to learn about modern gender norms, but that's not a reliable source, so it doesn't matter. We also run into the unresolved gap between "transgender"-as-identity and "transgender"-by-definition; see Michael D. Cohen (actor) for an example of a living person who is the latter but not the former. Our hands are tied on any of that until/unless RS make their mind up on how to bridge that gap.) -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 00:02, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Forget MOS:GENDERID, how do reliable sources describe Dr. James Barry
It is unfortunate that this RfC is predicated on the belief that MOS:GENDERID should be interpreted and then applied to this article in order to use gendered pronouns for a 19th century historical figure. I can only speak for myself, but my !vote was not based on the MOS guideline, but rather on policy, and how reliable sources refer to Barry. And the unanimous consensus among all the sources is to use pronouns, whether it's male or female, when referring to Barry. There are a multitude of reliable sources that verify that gendered pronouns are preferred and used to describe Barry, so in my view, ignoring that unanimous consensus runs afoul of WP:NPOV, because we are deliberately choosing to discard the prevalent viewpoint of using pronouns when referring to Barry. Books, newspapers, journals, encyclopedias, LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces all take a firm stance and use pronouns, but it appears that Wikipedia is the outlier in refusing to acknowledge that gendered pronouns are acceptable, and there is a clear editorial bias against using them, which in turn implies that Wikipedia exclusively using "Barry" is a fringe view. "Yes, you can make the argument trans is a 20th-century construction that does not extend back into the 19th century, which is true. That being said a person who is assigned one gender at birth, but then lives for the vast majority of their life identifying as another, often including dressing as that gender, using the pronouns associated with that gender, referring to themselves as that gender, preferring the gendered language associated with that gender, choosing a name inline with that gender etc. Describes both our understanding of what it means to be binary transgender and the life Dr. James Barry." "Whether or not historians choose to represent Cashier or Barry in the same terms that they presented themselves to the world, their stories are only known today because they were put on display during or soon after their lifetimes. To be repeatedly, wrongly assumed to be the gender that society projects on to you...is one of the most painful experiences trans people have to contend with. Popular and academic history, unwittingly or not, has played its own part in trans ‘erasure’ by foreclosing the very possibility that some of these ‘cross-dressing’ histories might reveal trans lives in the past." "It is important to recognise that contemporary understandings of gender can complicate the ways in which we view and interpret the past, for we are reliant on the terminology that we are familiar with today. However, Barry lived consistently throughout his public and private life as a man, and it is important to respect that this is how he chose to identify." "Transgender identities in history receive the most debate and outright aggressive erasure of the LGBTQ community. The excuse used for this type of erasure is that none of these identities existed in those days. But here’s the thing- Not having the language to express an identity in a way that makes it palatable today doesn’t mean Trans people didn’t exist." My argument for using gendered pronouns is straightforward, follow the sources that verify pronouns are acceptable and preferred, and not substitute our editorial bias against using them. Isaidnoway (talk) 10:20, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * A small selection of sources that use gendered pronouns:
 * (female pronouns)
 * LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces arguing that a Trans identity is permissible:
 * (female pronouns)
 * LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces arguing that a Trans identity is permissible:
 * (female pronouns)
 * LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces arguing that a Trans identity is permissible:
 * (female pronouns)
 * LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces arguing that a Trans identity is permissible:
 * LGBTQ authors and opinion pieces arguing that a Trans identity is permissible:
 * I think this is an important consideration, though I think it's odd to frame it as merely a question of how many sources use gendered pronouns vs. gender-neutral or no pronouns. To me, the relevant question is what proportion of RS use a) masculine pronouns, b) feminine pronouns, c) gender-neutral pronouns or no pronouns. If any one of these has a clear majority among RS (especially weighting sources that are recent, high quality, and in-depth), we should go with that. If it's more of a wash, then I think it's reasonable to go with option c) as a hedge. Colin M (talk) 16:48, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree with Isaidnoway's reasoning, since GENDERID is an explicit exception to following a majority of RS, but to the extent that it matters:
 * McGill: he/him for the James Barry persona (but once with scare quotes), she/her for the Margaret Bulkley persona
 * U Edinburgh: he/him, even in referring to him as a woman
 * The Guardian: she/her, after a brief period of he/him (once in scare quotes) pre-"reveal"
 * The Irish Times: she/her
 * Canadian Encyclopedia: he/him
 * J R Coll Physicians Edinb: he/him as Barry, she/her as Bulkley
 * Smith: she/her
 * R Coll Surgeons (1884): he/him
 * I do think this one is significant for my own argument, because it shows that people were referring to Barry as "he" well after his death, providing evidence that it's departing from he/him that is in fact ahistorical/presentist.
 * All six pieces framing Barry as trans: he/him
 * But again, in my view this doesn't matter. There's a reason that GENDERID says not to defer to what a majority of sources say. Otherwise we would have had to misgender Ellar Coltrane in the four months between when they first announced (in an ABOUTSELF primary source) that they take they/them pronouns and when it finally was reported in a secondary source; the vast majority of RS referring to Coltrane still uses he/him pronouns simply because they haven't been in the news much since changing their pronouns, which is the exact sort of scenario that that provision in GENDERID is for. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 19:52, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The Irish Times also uses male pronouns, the authors of that article are the same as the book this article primarily relies on. And I don't think Coltrane is a valid comparison, because this article has already settled on his identity, meaning it makes it clear that he identified as a male - entire adult life was lived as a man...lived as a man in both public and private life...a male identity...this identity, and in addition it uses his male name Barry, so there's no reason not to used gendered pronouns, especially in light of the fact that it's sourced and verifiable. And there is nothing wrong with using he/him/she/her either, that's also supported by sources. In my view, it's incredulous to think that this man, whose brilliance and intelligence is widely lauded, wasn't capable of declaring which gender he preferred to be identified by (for 56 years). This book also uses male pronouns.<b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:blue"> Isaidnoway </b><b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:green">(talk)</b> 23:12, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We are social creatures and our choices are not made in a vacuum or out of pure individualism. Choices also carry different meanings in different cultural contexts. There is no basis to think that Barry's choices in their time, to them, carried the same meaning about what they would consider their true inner gender as those choices would in our time. See these comments: Crossroads -talk- 23:21, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Regardless of whether his motivations for living and identifying as a man were based in gender roles or gender identity, the evidence of the longevity of him living in the male gender in every way is definitive. The facts are that throughout his entire adult life, he identified as a man, he lived as a man, he dressed as a man, Barry himself used and wanted he/him pronouns, he died as a man, and wanted to be buried as a man. It was only after his death that people started gossiping, speculating, guessing and deliberately misgendering him after discovering that he was assigned female at birth, and to this day have disrespected his only known preference to be identified as a man, and erase him from history to their own preferred version of history. And the weight of the sources verify that using gendered pronouns is clearly acceptable.<b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:blue"> Isaidnoway </b><b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:green">(talk)</b> 10:00, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed - the article shouldn't be using pronouns based off speculation of what could have been in some alternate history. Even if what Barry would consider his true inner gender might be different in the cultural context of today, there isn't much in the way of reliable evidence what that would've been and how he would've expressed it - and there's no evidence that he would've used a different set of pronouns (there is, after all, plenty of non-binary people and women who have he/him pronouns today). Barry pretty clearly used he/him pronouns during his life and wanted to be referred to as such after his death - that's not speculation, that's fact with reliable sources to back it up. NHCLS (talk) 11:45, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Editors can't have their cake and eat it too with MOS:GENDERID. One cannot argue based on the letter of the guideline to use he/him, while at the same time saying things like Regardless of whether his motivations for living and identifying as a man were based in gender roles or gender identity, against the clear spirit of GENDERID not to disregard the person's gender identity and to avoid misgendering, with "gender roles" disregarded. Then we have the claim that plenty of non-binary people and women who have he/him pronouns today; imagine if someone tried to use this argument on an article about a trans woman. The fact is that pronouns, like all words, are meant to communicate a meaning and be understood, and in line with that, GENDERID requires (in letter and spirit) that pronouns be compatible with the person's gender identity. What Barry wanted after their death, again, has to be understood in their immediate cultural context and the world as it was around the time they died. They had no way of knowing that 156 years later in 2021, women could be surgeons and serve in the military, and that certain statements meant that one was in fact a man regardless of body. Crossroads -talk- 23:24, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * imagine if someone tried to use this argument on an article about a trans woman - I'm not sure what you're trying to get at there, since the point of that argument was that the article should go with what pronouns Barry used (and was documented to have used) instead of speculating "what ifs" about Barry's gender. NHCLS (talk) 12:35, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You stated that it would be no big deal to use he/him for Barry even if they did identify as a woman deep down since some women supposedly use it.
 * Something I forgot to mention is that the argument that 'most sources use pronouns, so we have to use pronouns' is a very odd way of weighting the sources, since the sources use completely opposing sets of pronouns. We can't combine sources that say opposite things and use them as though they are somehow united in viewpoint. Crossroads -talk- 05:17, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Is it in dispute that some women take he/him pronouns? I'm surprised to see that He/him lesbian is a redlink, but it's definitely a thing within the butch lesbian community. Leslie Feinberg was a butch transgender woman woman who sometimes took he/him pronouns. Jack Halberstam is a butch AFAB who primarily takes he/him pronouns and does not consider himself a man, nor has he explicitly referred to himself as nonbinary, to my knowledge. I'm sure there's more on-point examples; those are just the first two that come to mind. Going the other direction, there's cis male drag queens like RuPaul who are okay with female pronouns even when not in-character. Again, just examples for proof of concept. I'm not saying that any of these people's gender has much in common with Barry's.  -- Tamzin  (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 05:40, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Erm, Feinberg was not a transgender woman in the sense defined by that linked article... --Equivamp - talk 05:43, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah. My mistake. I was thrown by the quote about how he/him pronouns "render[ed] [hir] transgender expression invisible", but now I see ze meant it more in the sense of forced binarism/conformity (and, off-topic, I quite relate to that perspective). -- Tamzin  (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 06:04, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * it would be no big deal to use he/him for Barry even if they did identify as a woman deep down - that's entirely not what I'm saying though. What I'm saying is that there's no way for us to know if Barry did really identify as a woman deep down (or if Barry would've identified as anything else) and that we shouldn't be basing an article on speculation about that. NHCLS (talk) 11:56, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

On the identities of the long-dead
I said from the outset that I wasn't trying to argue that Barry was trans, and I'd like to go into a little detail about that. Part of it is a philosophical objection, because even if we could be sure that Barry was something other than cisgender, it would still be binarist to say, "Ah, so he was a trans man."

But the larger issue is one of people's right to decide what to call themselves, a right that persists even after one's death. My support of he/him pronouns here is based on that: Barry chose to live a life where people called him "he", and we should respect that. But he also chose to identify in a certain way, and that was not as a "transgender man". Now, the word "transgender" was coined more than 100 years after his death, so he didn't get to choose not to call himself that. And thus it can be very tempting to look back at a historical figure and say, "Oh, it really seems like this word we have now for some identity would have really suited them." And who knows, maybe it would have. But I'd oppose referring to a historical figure as transgender even if there were no question that they really identified as what we would now call that.

And that's because, look, I've never found a word that adequately describes my gender identity. Perhaps someday I'll be the subject of a Wikipedia article. Perhaps someday I'll die. (Okay, that's more than a "perhaps.") And perhaps someday someone will popularize a word and some well-meaning future Wikipedian (or academic, even) will think "That word sounds like it would perfectly fit everything Tamzin's gender. Let's say they were that!" And who knows, maybe that person will be totally right. Maybe the trendiest xenogender of the 2220s will perfectly describe how I feel.

But I don't want someone to make that call for me after I die. Just like I can only work with the technology that exists in my lifetime and can only think thoughts about the ideas that exist within my lifetime, I can only identify (or not identify) with the gender identities that have been articulated within my lifetime. And the same was true of Barry. He died a &lt;person born female who lived most of his adult life outwardly presenting as male, with unspecified internal feelings about his gender> at a time when there was no word for that. Which is sad. But we can't fix that by retroactively labeling him something he might not have identified as.

Why am I arguing at such length against a position on my own "side" that no one's even arguing for that strongly? Because it gives context to my strong opposition to the "Well maybe he would have lived as a woman if he could" argument. It's not our call. It just isn't. Not for someone currently alive, not for someone who died in living memory, not for someone who died 160 years ago. We're an encyclopedia. We repeat what's been reported in reliable sources, which is that someone who was born Margaret Bulkley later in life started living as James Barry, and that some scholars think this was a purely professional move, while others think it was also borne of personal preference. And we already say that. Good. So then there's the stylistic question of how we refer to this person. And our normal procedure—and I still don't understanding how it's "wikilawyering" to argue for a straightforward application of a guideline—is to refer to that person the way they asked to be referred to. And the only argument I've seen for why Barry should be an exception is that we don't know whether he really meant it when he asked (implicitly through his very presentation, every day for 56 years) to be treated as a man and thus referred to by he/him pronouns, masculine gendered terms, masculine titles, etc.

The other argument is, "Well let's err on the side of caution. We don't know what he wanted, and no-pronouns gets us around that." But there is no "not taking a side" with pronouns and gendered terms. English is a (weakly) gendered language. When an article doesn't use pronouns, that is a deliberate choice, and one that's very obvious to readers. I don't know about y'all, but when I read an article (on Wikipedia or elsewhere) about someone who does not neatly conform to the gender binary, in the back of my head I'm waiting for the first third-person pronoun or gendered term, because that's a basic biographical fact, and one I'll need to know if I want to tell anyone about what I've just learned. If we want to err on the side of caution here, if we want to not take a side, then the default status should always be using the pronouns someone went by in life. Maybe, maybe, if there were some diary entry saying that all those years he wished he could be Margaret again, then avoiding pronouns would be the least of all evils. But what we're doing here is taking "Refer to him the way he expected his peers to" and "Don't refer to him the way he expected his peers to" and "compromising" on "Don't". Which is just as much an ahistorical speculation as it would be to call Barry a trans man. -- Tamzin (she/they) &#124; o toki tawa mi. 06:53, 23 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Very clear and well-written exposition of your PoV; brav@; made me think. A couple of points: you said,
 * Ah, but there is: avoid them. Difficult: yes; impossible: no. (More on this below.) And you added:
 * That's exactly the same reaction most people have when faced with a baby not dressed in pink or blue, and if we don't get a straight answer to the first question everybody asks about a baby, then there's this gnawing discomfort and we feel uneasy, until we get an answer. It's the same unease of ours in that situation that the long-running SNL sketch It's Pat played upon. But in fact, although it may be difficult, you don't need to know Pat's gender or the baby's gender or Barry's gender; and although it may be difficult to write without pronouns, that can be done, too, and without endless repetition. All sorts of aspects of writing are difficult; Georges Perec wrote an entire French novel without the letter 'e', and then in an even more difficult feat, it was translated into English. Plus, several articles at Wikipedia already avoid the use of gendered pronouns; the fact that it's difficult, shouldn't sway us one way or the other. So, yeah, I agree with your devil's advocate quotation of "Well let's err on the side of caution. We don't know what he wanted, and no-pronouns gets us around that." Exactly. And as far as not retroactively deciding on their identity, that solution works well for that, too. Mathglot (talk) 08:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Just want to say that I really appreciate the thoughtful discussions and lively debate here. It's probably one of the best I have come across on Wikipedia so far. It's also very respectful and civil. I think it just means that both sides here have compelling arguments. I never heard of Dr. James Barry before this RfC, but through all of this talk and discussion I've really come to admire Dr. Barry's unique life. I feel like we should preserve this beautiful story and life history for what it is. TrueQuantum (talk) 14:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That's exactly the same reaction most people have when faced with a baby not dressed in pink or blue, and if we don't get a straight answer to the first question everybody asks about a baby, then there's this gnawing discomfort and we feel uneasy, until we get an answer. It's the same unease of ours in that situation that the long-running SNL sketch It's Pat played upon. But in fact, although it may be difficult, you don't need to know Pat's gender or the baby's gender or Barry's gender; and although it may be difficult to write without pronouns, that can be done, too, and without endless repetition. All sorts of aspects of writing are difficult; Georges Perec wrote an entire French novel without the letter 'e', and then in an even more difficult feat, it was translated into English. Plus, several articles at Wikipedia already avoid the use of gendered pronouns; the fact that it's difficult, shouldn't sway us one way or the other. So, yeah, I agree with your devil's advocate quotation of "Well let's err on the side of caution. We don't know what he wanted, and no-pronouns gets us around that." Exactly. And as far as not retroactively deciding on their identity, that solution works well for that, too. Mathglot (talk) 08:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Just want to say that I really appreciate the thoughtful discussions and lively debate here. It's probably one of the best I have come across on Wikipedia so far. It's also very respectful and civil. I think it just means that both sides here have compelling arguments. I never heard of Dr. James Barry before this RfC, but through all of this talk and discussion I've really come to admire Dr. Barry's unique life. I feel like we should preserve this beautiful story and life history for what it is. TrueQuantum (talk) 14:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Full text of Nightingale quote
Does anyone have access to the source who can post the full text. The text on the article seems to have been abbreviated a few times and I'm interested to know what the original source says, and whether the current quote accurately represents that.

The quote was originally included in the article as follows: I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst of quite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute. . . After he was dead, I was told that (he) was a woman. . . I should say that (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met.

I'm particularly interested in what (she) and (he) replace in the source (Or were they written with parentheses?) Not really for the discussion on what pronouns to use,  but more from the perspective of MOS:QUOTE whether the replacements are necessary, and if they are, they should use square brackets not parenthesis as per MOS. Also would be interesting to know whether Nightingale used 'Bulkley' in her letter! JeffUK (talk) 06:49, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

When (and by whom) was Barry identified as Bulkley?
The article doesn't appear to specify when modern researchers learned that Dr Barry was Margaret Ann Bulkley. Was it Michael Du Preez who made this discovery? Muzilon (talk) 11:26, 1 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Contemporary sources seem to suggest at Barry being Granddaughter, or some other direct relation of a 'Scotch earl' which presumably referred to the Earl of Buchan. Mark Twain (who met Barry, this has to go into the article somewhere!) says 'Daughter of a great house' in 'Following the equator' []. The earliest reference I can find to Margaret Bulkley is in June Rose's 1977 "The Perfect Gentleman" [] I think Rose made the connection but Du Preez claimed to have proven the connection.  The book is available on Kindle I'll have a look shortly! JeffUK (talk) 09:54, 16 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Rose explicitly rules out Margaret, talking of '[Bulkley's daughter Margaret ...] and a much younger daughter'  then asserting that Barry was most likely to be the younger daughter.  JeffUK (talk) 10:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The younger daughter being the one called "Juliana" here in the WP article? (Without a citation, be it noted.) Muzilon (talk) 03:34, 17 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Rose never uses 'Juliana'; it does only seem to be Du Preez who says that Margaret is Dr James Barry,  I do wonder if we need to tone down the certainty,  it's been re-reported a lot since Du Preez but I think they're all quoting the same source.  JeffUK (talk) 08:02, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

"birth sex" in lede
"Birth sex" for something two centuries ago is anachronistic and too many people are likely to read alien 2020's connotations into it. It seems almost like a way of (deniably) taking a stance on Barry's "gender identity" (another concept that would be speculative to project backward in time without clear evidence). "Biological sex" or "physical sex" would be unambiguous without any anachronism. Sesquivalent (talk) 03:09, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I would just say "sex". Sex is biological and physical by definition. I could see doing otherwise if medical gender transition had existed and been done, but that obviously doesn't apply here. Crossroads -talk- 05:34, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That terms like "assigned sex" or "birth sex" are in use at all these days suggests to me that at least a substantial minority of readers, although able to piece together what the lede is supposed to mean regardless of their personal language habits, have started using "sex" in ways that aren't exclusively about hardware visible at birth, or chromosomes. I agree that "sex" alone would be an improvement but specifying it as biological/physical sex removes all doubt without relying on any shared convention on what "sex" itself means. Sesquivalent (talk) 07:07, 1 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I recall a previous discussion (here? or about someone else?) which noted that saying someone's "birth sex" became known via post-mortem examination (long after their birth) is also a bit odd in that it's their current-as-of-death sex that becomes known via post-mortem examination, not their birth sex (even though one could infer them to be the same). How about "anatomical sex"? ("Physical sex" would also work; either is clearer than "biological sex" IMO.) I'm not opposed to bare "sex", but Sesquivalent does make a good point that clarity is helpful. -sche (talk) 19:53, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Seconding anatomical sex or physical sex per this salient point. --Equivamp - talk 20:41, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Category:Historical figures with ambiguous or disputed gender identity has been nominated for discussion
Category:Historical figures with ambiguous or disputed gender identity has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. <span style="font-family:Lucida Handwriting,Verdana;color:darkorchid">~Gwennie &#128008; &#xFF5F;💬 📋&#xFF60; 03:51, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Trans men category
I'm highly skeptical that there's any good reason to remove the "trans men" category. Barry has been dead over a hundred and fifty years. There is no BLP concern. Barry was AFAB and lived as a man, and is considered to have been one by enough RS that encyclopedia users interested in the subject of trans men should find the subject in this category to continue their research. If we believe enough sources support the contrary interpretation, where Barry was a female-identified cross-dresser, we can add that category too. But no purpose is served by completely omitting from the categorization the fact that Barry was AFAB. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 23:40, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
 * AFAB is Assigned female at birth, for those who do not speak acronymese. Peaceray (talk) 00:37, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * First off, the WP:ONUS is on those who want such a category. And I only "removed" that which had been added by an IP shortly before. Such a categorization is an end run around NPOV and violates WP:CATPOV. No, there is no scholarly consensus or even close to it that Barry was a trans man. Per WP:CATLGBT, For a dead person, a broad consensus of academic and/or biographical scholarship about the topic is sufficient to describe a person as LGBT. That doesn't exist here. We just got done with an RfC where the proposition to use "he" pronouns for Barry was defeated. In no way are editors going to agree to label Barry a trans man. Category claims, like any other, are subject to the content policies. Readers interested in trans men should read about those who definitely were trans men. Crossroads -talk- 03:35, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * The RFC also did not conclude that the predominant view of the sources was that Barry was a female cross-dresser rather than a trans man - quite the contrary, the RFC close noted that sources varied. Under the circumstances, it is appropriate to include both for category navigation purposes rather than removing, in the face of scholarly sources to the contrary (Heilmann and Holmes, both recently, plus reviews of their work), not only categories about trans men but also any category related to LGBT history in any way. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 19:36, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, that category was not "removed" but reverted. Per WP:CATPOV and WP:CATLGBT, that just isn't how categories work. Appeals to "navigation" do not permit sidestepping the category guidelines. Rather, putting in that category is equivalent to saying "Barry was a trans man". There are no categories here about being a cross-dresser, so talking about needing "both" is irrelevant. Crossroads -talk- 21:33, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That same guideline you linked notes that it is appropriate to categorize people by what is considered to be their defining characteristics. Barry's being AFAB is certainly considered a notable part of his or her biography, very possibly more so than the C-section thing. Like, when you look up Barry, that is what you find. The recent shift in the literature towards referring to the subject as a trans man may or may not yet outweigh older sources referring to the subject as a cross-dressing woman - I'm not interested in taking a position on that right now. But the category is supported by the linked guidelines in that it is verifiable, NPOV, and very much defining. If we had a category that was "AFAB people living as men," I wouldn't see a need to split this hair, but you are insisting on removing the single most notable thing about this individual. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 22:47, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * "Barry's being AFAB is certainly considered a notable part of his or her biography" - okay, but your category goes way beyond that. You can't take "defining characteristic" out of context of the rest of the guidelines. Such a category is a claim that Barry was a trans man, and that is a POV claim. CATLGBT is clear too. Crossroads -talk- 22:53, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I would like to note that you need to cite some significant sources for any particular example. Given this is a deceased individual who actually never wished to be revealed as their assigned sex, and thus never revealed their identity, it's impossible to really know for sure. What is clear is that there exists a debate as to the gender identity and labels to ascribe to James Barry.
 * However there is an angle which might be overlooked, in the fact that Barry is being increasingly looked at as a trans figure in the current day (The Guardian - 25 July 2017, Irish Examiner - 15 Sept 2020, Science History Institute - 20 October 2020, Simon Fraser University/WWest - 17 August 2021) to the point is causes controversy with portrayal in media (The Guardian - 18 February 2019/Bustle - 25 February 2019).
 * Some sources, perhaps older, tend to refer to Barry as a cross-dressing woman, while more recent ones tend to describe them as a trans man. This can often be epitomized by book sources. Books from 1958 and 1977 describe Barry as a woman, which is in-line with trans awareness at the time. A 1970 article critiques the 1958 book saying it was leaning into its sources improperly, and asserting the possibility, as was raised soon after death, that Barry was intersex. A 2002 book frames Barry as a woman. A 2017 book by Jeremy Dronfield and Michael du Preez casts Barry as a woman. A 2019 book analyzes other books and looks at Barry from a trans perspective. Books published in 2020 by Rachael Holmes and Lisa Robinson/Laura Simkin Burke cast Barry as a trans man explicitly. <span style="font-family:Lucida Handwriting,Verdana;color:darkorchid">~Gwennie &#128008; &#xFF5F;💬 📋&#xFF60; 00:52, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * As I noted at length in the recent RfC, I don't think it's our place to call Barry a trans man (or really label him in any way) when he died in an era where none of the potentially applicable terms (other than binary "man" or "woman") existed. If there were a Category:Masculine-presenting people who were assigned female at birth, I would support adding Barry to it. But a trans man is transgender (a term coined in the 1990s) and/or transsexual (a term coined in the 1950s), and neither of those is as simple as "a masculine-presenting person who was assigned female at birth". Even today, you can't reliably make that leap. There are people like Michael D. Cohen (actor) who meet the definition but don't identify as such, without any clear consensus on whether they still "count" as trans; and there are plenty of nonbinary people who present as the opposite binary gender from what we were assigned at birth, without necessarily identifying with that gener. So trying to decide whether someone who died 150 years ago counts as trans, I just think that's fundamentally impossible. If there were a consensus of reliable sources, perhaps we'd be bound to use such ahistorical terms, but absent that, it's not our place to decide whether someone was trans from beyond the grave. -- Tamzin  [cetacean needed] (she/they) 01:00, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Crossroads that the inclusion of this category violates WP:CATLGBT. But I am sympathetic to Roscelese's point about navigation. It does seem odd that the aspect of Barry's life that is the focus of most RS coverage is not represented anywhere in the article's categories. I wonder whether there's a way to address this without tossing out CATLGBT. From a navigational point of view, it seems like it would be really useful to have a category somewhere in the space of historical figures who have been retroactively characterized as transgender, but the last paragraph of WP:CATLGBT seems to strictly forbid such categories (I can understand why it would be a problem for categorizing living people, but it's unclear to me why we shouldn't categorize historical figures according to scholarly speculation about their gender identity or sexual orientation, provided it's a defining characteristic and verifiable). Colin M (talk) 01:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Barry was not a trans man. Barry was a woman born before her time, with aspirations and desires that women of her era were not allowed to pursue. She was a maverick who wanted to become a physician, women could not become physicians, so she assumed the persona of a man so that she could be accepted as a physician. And relying on sources to support this category is futile because sources have different opinions about it. Tagging her biography with this category violates WP:CATLGBT. Pyxis Solitary   (yak) . L not Q. 08:12, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Barry was a woman born before her time, with aspirations and desires that women of her era were not allowed to pursue. There is literally no way to know if this is true. Just like there's no way to know if he was a man trapped in a woman's body who ran away and reinvented himself. IMO, the continued insistence of some on this talk page (on both "sides") to insist that Barry was definitively a man or definitively a woman, almost always without citing sources, borders on a WP:NOTFORUM violation. -- Tamzin  [cetacean needed] (she/they) 09:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Which is why no category should be placed that states either side to be true. If it would be inappropriate to categorize Barry as a woman, then it is inappropriate to categorize Barry as a trans man. Crossroads -talk- 03:14, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Which is why I wrote a whole paragraph agreeing with you about that. -- Tamzin  [cetacean needed] (she/they) 03:18, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
 * True, guess I had forgotten about that in all the discussions around this. Still, my point stands. Crossroads -talk- 03:59, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Those slinging around "defining characteristic" seem to be forgetting what it actually means. There is no doubt that some reliable sources have speculated that Barry may have been a trans man, in the current understanding of the term (let's finesse the anachronistic usage of the term for the sake of this argument) and the article reports that fact. However, it isn't sufficient to find *some* sources making this claim. Here is what WP:CATDEF says:"A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people)..." Thus, a defining characteristic of Barry would be 'surgeon', 'military surgeon', 'person born in Ireland', or 'graduate of University of Edinburgh Medical School', because all of these are characteristics that are commonly and consistently used to define or describe Barry. 'Trans man' is not an expression that is commonly and consistently used to describe Barry, therefore, it is not appropriate as a category for this article. Mathglot (talk) 19:34, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Just saying commonly and consistently isn't the only criteria. If we just used that, we'd end up with articles describing people in horrible ways. However if we use that criteria, expression of doubt regarding Barry's gender is extremely defining, and has been since their death until the modern time where debate and discussion still exists regarding what their gender is. <span style="font-family:Lucida Handwriting,Verdana;color:darkorchid">~Gwennie &#128008; &#xFF5F;💬 📋&#xFF60; 23:37, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It is the single most notable fact about Barry, more than his or her medical achievements. The fact that sources are split (and/or evolving over time) on whether "AFAB person living as a man" means "crossdressing woman" or "trans man" does not change the obvious fact that Barry's single biggest claim to fame is as an AFAB person living as a man. –Roscelese (talk &sdot; contribs) 19:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that "commonly and consistently" isn't the whole criteria (common sense is always a criteria for any policy), but I think that it should be a minimum criteria. I do not think the sources are consistent enough to imply that Barry was a transgender man in Wikipedia's voice, even though I do personally believe that is probably most likely. Maybe a category for individuals or historical figures without clearly known gender identities would be appropriate. – wallyfromdilbert (talk) 23:34, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Ironically enough, I created it and added it to this article. And it has been added to similar figures. However, as you see in the section below on this talk page, it's being argued for deletion. <span style="font-family:Lucida Handwriting,Verdana;color:darkorchid">~Gwennie &#128008; &#xFF5F;💬 📋&#xFF60; 23:37, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , thank you for creating the category. At least there can be a discussion about it. I saw it was up for deletion and also left a comment there, where I was persuaded by your comment to support keeping it. Hopefully others who have participated on this article will also comment there so that there is at least a full discussion by those who are interested. – wallyfromdilbert (talk) 00:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Definitely Barry identified as a man, lived as a man and was burried with the identity of a man. Barry's biological sex became known to the public and to military colleagues only after a post-mortem examination.... So although the term "trans man" did not exist, he should be classified in a category tagged "man" as his genderr was not ambiguous. Nattes à chat (talk) 20:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Capitalising Afrikaans surnames
User:Mathglot, Stellenbosch University's Language Centre explains how the capitalization of Afrikaans titles and surnames works. The surname only without initials or first name takes and initial capital letter. When the name is mentioned with a first name or initials the first part of the surname is in lower case. Stellenbosch University is the academic home and heart of the Afrikaans language so I would say that their language centre's guidance should be taken as authoritive. Waynejayes (talk) 07:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * , thanks for that very interesting and informative explanation. Wikipedia has its own WP:Manual of Style, and we rely on what they have to say in matters of capitalization and other things. In particular, MOS:CAPS says this (in part):
 * I'm more used to names like Charles de Gaulle, where the "de" is always lower case, except when at the beginning of a sentence, regardless whether used alone or together with the first name. When the MOS doesn't have a guideline governing a specific case, then it almost always defaults to how "reliable independent sources" use it, and this may be sufficient to establish what to do in this case. The only caveat I would say for you, is that Afrikaans is another language, and Stellenbosch hosting the seat of language academy about Afrikaans, has no say about 1) how we do things in English, or 2) how English Wikipedia does it. As a practical matter, this means that if there is little to nothing in English language sources, and the remaining sources handle it the way you describe, we could probably follow that pattern, per MOS:CAPS. On the other hand, in cases where there are English sources available, we would follow that pattern regardless what Stellenbosch has to say about Afrikaans usage.
 * As a concrete example, consider English Wikipedia's articles about six du Preezes: in the first four, the du is always lower case (except in sentence-initial position) even when used without a first name; see the articles at: Cornell du Preez, Dillon du Preez, Jan du Preez, Pieter du Preez; whereas for Frik du Preez and Fourie du Preez, when the surname is mentioned alone in those articles, it is capitalized. (This may reflect the native language of the Wikipedia editor who contributed the content to the article, rather than the actual usage in English language sources.) Given this, I think we should probably follow the pattern of the first four articles, and never capitalize, *unless* you can show a different pattern for Michael du Preez in English sources.
 * Finally, if you think an exception is warranted in this case, or if you think the MOS should have some special rule about Afrikaans surnames, you could always bring it up at the Talk page of the appropriate MOS guideline, in this case, that would be at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. If you do, please ping me to that discussion, so I can follow along. Thanks again for raising this interesting issue about Afrikaans names. Mathglot (talk) 08:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is an extremely interesting discussion; I thank for raising the issue. Obviously, what Stellenbosch University dictates is wholly irrelevant to en.wp, but still, thanks!   SN54129  08:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is an extremely interesting discussion; I thank for raising the issue. Obviously, what Stellenbosch University dictates is wholly irrelevant to en.wp, but still, thanks!   SN54129  08:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

"The British Army, seeking to suppress the story, sealed all records of Barry for the next 100 years."
I challenged the assertion "The British Army, seeking to suppress the story, sealed all records of Barry for the next 100 years." and an editor has asked me to expand here. Basically British records which contain personal information (such as census records) are closed for 100 years by law for obvious privacy reasons. In fact, until the Public Records Act 1958, there was no right to inspect government records at all, so "sealed all records" is a misnomer. Atchom (talk) 22:58, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Per the source, Appalled by the idea, army officials locked away Barry's service records for a hundred years and hoped the story would go away. Do you have a reliable source stating otherwise? If you prefer, we can adjust the wording to match the source a bit closer, perhaps "The British Army, seeking to suppress the story, sealed Barry's service records for the next 100 years." How does that strike you?
 * As an aside, I do wish you'd discussed on the talkpage before reintroducing a challenged edit per the typical WP:BRD cycle. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 23:49, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I would also agree that a better source is needed for the assertion that the army tried to "suppress" anything related to Barry or that it sealed Barry's records specifically for 100 years. Frankly it just seems like sensationalist writing. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 05:40, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Should Dr. James Barry's deadname be used in the article?
In the first line, it shows the name that Dr. Barry was assigned at birth. If he was born in the present day, there is no way a Wikipedia article would document him with his birth name before transitioning to a man. If the double standard should be justified, why? JDBauby (talk) 21:59, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, in order to hold Barry to the standards put forth by MOS:GID, Wikipedia editors would have to come to a clear consensus that Barry was a trans man. This is tricky for Barry specifically because a goodly amount of the verifiable sources refer to him as female (see, for example, du Preez and Dronfeld's Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time). Barry being male may be obvious to you and I, but this being Wikipedia, we need reliable sources to back that up. NekoKatsun (nyaa) 20:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * MOS:GID & MOS:DEADNAME specifically state If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page ... Note that this policy applies to the living (& probably the recently deceased like Sophie). Barry has been dead for over 1½ centuries. The subject of Barry's birth name & pronouns has been discussed repeatedly here & here & the consensus has been to include the former & eschew the latter for use of the surname. There is a possibility, as discussed that Gender and personal life section that Barry had a sexual relationship with Lord Charles, which could be construed as heterosexual. What seems certain was that Barry wanted to be a military surgeon at a time when both the British military & British medical school were closed to women. I think that there is more of a feminist than transgender perspective here, that Barry did what it took to become a military surgeon, & that required assuming a male identity.
 * Please check the talk pages of historical transgender biographies before making such changes. I think it would also be wise to read the Recentism essay to consider what impacts an anochronistic approach & selective omission would have on the accuracy of an article or even its reason for being. If one took out the birth gender information about Albert Cashier, Amelio Robles Ávila, or Billy Tipton, one would be removing the primary reason for the subjects' notability. Peaceray (talk) 02:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

"I have asked 65.92.127.4 to take this to the talk page, but this editor has not responded" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peaceray

well that was a blatant lie...

but ok, here I am talking about it *again...* would https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Peaceray care to answer the question I already asked? or are they trying to start an edit war? 65.92.127.4 (talk) 16:59, 19 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Noting that I asked 65.92.127.4 to take this to this talk page with these edits:
 * where I stated As WP:BRD suggests, please address this on the talk page before attempting these edits again.
 * where I wrote in the edit summary As WP:BRD suggests, discuss on the talk page before making further changes of this sort.
 * I placed the uw-ew warning on User talk:65.92.127.4. This warning states: If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes and work towards a version that represents consensus among editors.
 * I leave it up to the reader's assessment as to the veracity of 65.92.127.4's claim that my statement was a blatent lie.

Peaceray (talk) 18:14, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I already answered 65.92.127.4 with
 * You know that you have violated WP:CONSENSUS in this matter because you removed a comment in the Wikitext that specifically addressed the type of edits that you made.
 * This is the text that 65.92.127.4 removed without any edit summary:
 * Relevant discussion concerning this occurs throughout Talk:James Barry (surgeon)/Archive 1 & specifically in the Talk:James Barry (surgeon)/Archive 1 section. Peaceray (talk) 18:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I'm pretty okay with revisiting a five-year-old consensus. I'd also argue we should use male pronouns for Barry, for a pretty basic reason: while he wasn't very clear about what his gender identity was in his heart, he was quite clear that he wanted people to think of him as a man even after his death, as communicated by multiple statements of his directing people not to examine his body after death. As far as I'm concerned, his motivation for saying this is irrelevant: whether his motivation was hiding a secret or because Barry regarded himself as fully a man, we ought to take his wishes at face value and refer to him as a man. Loki (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi Loki, my thinking roughly matches yours. I'd suggest starting a new discussion. This section is technically about a different issue, and it's got some baggage besides. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:28, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * My sense is that the more recent sources are more consistent in using male pronouns for Barry, as well. Newimpartial (talk) 19:30, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Though of course many participants here remember it, just so everyone is aware, there was an RfC not that long ago about this, located here: Talk:James Barry (surgeon)/Archive 2. My own position that male pronouns should not be used was explained at length there and remains unchanged. Crossroads -talk- 00:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Though of course many participants here remember it, just so everyone is aware, there was an RfC not that long ago about this, located here: Talk:James Barry (surgeon)/Archive 2. My own position that male pronouns should not be used was explained at length there and remains unchanged. Crossroads -talk- 00:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The part suggesting that Barry could be his sister's biological parent should be removed.
I removed this section because it is baseless and therefore irrelevant. I think my edit being reversed is the wrong decision, for there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that Barry went through anything suggested in this section. Ideas that are not based on reality should not be proposed in Wikipedia, for, even if they are quickly followed up by assertion that there is no proof, it has already placed the idea of legitimacy in people's minds. If there is no proof for something and it is purely imagined, why should it be posted? Should Wikipedia be filled with people writing whatever comes to their mind and then following up these statements with "unproven." I believe that this section on Barry is purely sensational fiction and should not be given any form of legitimacy. 37.158.9.191 (talk) 16:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)