A comprehensive thread of female warriors, leaders and influential figures who have, in some cases, been declared trans posthumously:

The skeleton found of a female viking warrior is insignificant, because she could have easily been a trans man or nonbinary:

The Pharaoh Hatshepsut:

Like all pharaohs, she presented a masculinised image of herself in portraiture to convey a political message. Her "presenting herself as a king" must have made her a transman.

Joan of Arc: she wore male clothes and cut her hair short. The author at least acknowledges the absurdity of claiming her to be trans outright, but says that her masculinity makes her able to be identified in modern times as "queer".

Carson McCullers:

A female author who, again, presented herself as masculine and may have held a love for other women (though that is not confirmed).

Marguerite Radclyffe Hall:

A lesbian poet and author whose preference for the name 'John' is believed to have made her a trans man.

(I will just say - I used to want desperately to have been named 'Nico' or 'George', because I thought the names were lovely)

Charley Parkhurst:

Born in the 1800s, Charley noticed quickly that men had an advantage over women in life and, so, desired to become a boy. She lived her life as a man and did traditionally male work. She even registered to vote, more than 50 years before the 19th amendment.

Queen Christina of Sweden:

Her father tried for a son, but accepted her; he raised her as a prince, and she was educated as a male of that time. She rejected expectations of passiveness, and didn't marry. She used the titles king and queen, and may have been attracted to women.

Stormé Delarverie:

Stormé was a butch lesbian of colour, who performed as a drag king. She is credited with starting the Stonewall Riot. She was proud of her identity as a woman and a lesbian.

Mary Read and Anne Bonny:

Two female pirates and lovers, whom apparently are apart of transgender history because they presented/masqueraded as men, despite not identifying as men. This is a specifically transgender history site, FYI.

Hannah Snell:

Hannah was a British officer who disguised herself as a man in order to assume her position, because she had no other form of financial support. Despite later exposing what she had done and resuming life as a woman, her gender/pronouns are being speculated today.

Norah Vincent:

She isn't quite the same as the other women on this list, but despite being extremely loud about the fact she is not transgender, her feelings of inadequacy due to her sex have lead to her feelings being designated as "transgender feelings".

You can find more examples here: https://quillette.com/2018/08/31/transgendering-the-dead/

Now, a few articles have claimed that this is harmless speculation. I disagree. The idea that a woman in a position of authority or a masculine woman must not have identified with her womanhood in order to be that way is misogynistic.

Especially when it reinforces heteronormative society: a woman wore suits and loved other women? She must have been a man!

It reinforces strict gender roles and doesn't allow butch lesbians or masculine women to maintain their female identity without adherence to femininity.

Not only that, the word and concept of being transgender is fairly new! The idea of femininity/masculinity is ever evolving - men used to wear makeup en masse, for example. That doesn't make them trans today. We cannot take today's concepts and words and apply them to the past.

It is taking women's achievements and victories in a regressive, patriarchal time, and deciding that, what obviously happened, was that these women were men and that's how and why they liked what they liked, and accomplished what they did. It's extremely disrespectful.

Men have enough of history: let us have ours too, without distorting the narrative to revolve around men and regressive standards of behaviour.

If you know of more, @ me and I'll add them to the thread

https://twitter.com/radicaIize/status/1301754515801083904?s=19

Pauli was a civil rights pioneer, feminist, author, lawyer and considered “the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.” She hated her homosexuality and sought chemical/hormonal treatment as a way of changing her sexual identity.

https://twitter.com/PrezWoodhull/status/1301760130459947008?s=19