Hello, I hope you don’t mind me replying in a public reblog. I thought it'd be interesting to expand a little bit on this history for people who haven't heard of them - and on why I sort of think all of this is simultaneously true, and considering gender variation expansively can be useful for thinking about queer history!
I definitely don’t mean to say the Ladies of Llangollen were specifically punished for what they wore, or that they didn’t also wear skirts! The writing is mostly talking about other cases, just using this picture I already drew for the full history section to break up the text, but I totally see why the placement may look misleading here.
In the book itself, this is in the fashion section after explaining short hair was fashionable on women, and next to a caption that just says they “wore riding habits and hats considered more ‘masculine’.” (We have 17-19thC records of men generally disliking women’s riding clothes because they viewed them as not feminine enough, something that still happens with women’s sports clothes today.) Personally I found a lot of even French fashion plates with women’s riding hats in this style still had some kind of softer shape or element of decoration at this time, and saw the Ladies of Llangollen picture as really looking quite like men’s hats when seen side by side.
(These were the absolute most masculine ones I could find while researching the book, among many other more decorative ones, though I’d be interested if you’ve seen more!)
I’m sure I know much less about them, but my impression was also that their having to escape family expectations in Ireland is a way in which you might say they were to some extent outcasts, insofar as they ended up having to live outwith the society they grew up in (though the wording is a bit strong because it's really discussing other figures!) Of course, they were very much famous and quite beloved, lots of big names came to visit as a curiosity - but I think we can at least agree they're still people who did actually have to leave the country to get away from gendered expectations of them.
Mainly I think we might just mean different things by ‘gender non-conforming’, which I don’t mean as ‘equivalent of non-binary or genderqueer’, but in its broad and literal sense! I would say not marrying and going to live with a woman IS inherently not conforming to what’s expected of women at this time, and so was short women’s hair, even though it was a trend.
I don’t know if this is a source you don’t rate, but from whatever image - like Anne Lister - IMO their presentation is both not way beyond the bounds of what’s generally acceptable, but I also don’t think you could say it’s wholly conforming to the ideal of what most of society expected for women then. People are even still weird about straight, cis, traditionally 'feminine' women having short hair in the 21st century, and I think 'gender non-conforming' can be a useful phrase even just to talk about elements that only relate to appearance.
As a bit of a sidebar, we also live in a time now where anti-trans legislation attempts to confine all women to a narrow presentation range, but affects cis women who'd not see themselves as anything but women in terms of their identity at all. So I suppose I see pushing any boundaries of gender presentation as very linked now and historically, and broadening out definitions can often bring new possibilities. Most queer and particularly trans historians I’ve read take quite a broad view of what to consider when thinking about the many ways gender was historically more expansive than some people might think, including trends, and don't consider one interpretation as precluding any other.
Anyway, basically those mini instagram graphics are shortened from an 8-page illustrated history notes section at the back of a historical fiction book. It's a story using real history (and my modern experience) to imagine someone who does have an internal sense of gender at odds with what they're assigned - but it doesn't actually put a label even on the character, and I hope is pretty clear that we can never know the feelings of real people in the past, who existed with their own societally-specific ideas about gender and sexuality. (Though personally I don't really have beef with say, a big researcher of Anne Lister calling her 'the modern equivalent of a butch lesbian' as a way to get people interested.)
My book just has very short introductions that don’t include all the nuance - I’m not a professional historian and wanted them to be accessible to total beginners and young readers. (Though it does include sections about romantic friendships, as well as why we can't really label historical figures in a modern way!)
Mostly I wanted to point people towards finding out more for themselves, and hope it gives interested readers specific figures to look up and resources to get into!
