Trans Men/Mascs in Storytelling, Part One (5) A Love Letter to a Ghost

 

“No one honest has an easy life, Edward, and it’s aching for one that causes the most pain.” James Kidd, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Ubisoft (directed by Jean Guesdon, Ashraf Ismail, and Damien Kieken, 2013)

A man who lived his life as such, presenting and engaging socially in masculine roles for the majority of his life will often be remembered as such after death. As strong, tough as nails, heroic–unless he was trans, then the narrative changes. James Barry is a famous example of a trans man who lived and passed as a man for the majority of his life, but was discovered as being trans after his death. It is worth noting that this was much against his will, he famously wished to be buried in the clothing he died in, and of course, this was not respected.

But James Barry was not the only trans man who experienced this post mortem. Living his entire life as a man, then being written about after death as a “revolutionary crossdressing woman” by esteemed “feminist” writers. We are not talking about him today. This is about Mark Read.

I first heard about Mark Read from a Youtube video:

“Much like Anne, Mary had led a difficult and winding life. But unlike Anne, Mary chose to keep her gender a secret to most, masquerading as a man not just in battle, but around the clock.” - Shane Madej (he/him), in the video The True Story of a Pirate Queen @14:30 The True Story Of A Pirate Queen

This video detailed the life of Anne Bonny, Mark’s story is entwined with hers in the canon of pyrate history. I watched, and re-watched this video, and this line always caught me. That the view of someone who presented and lived as a man full-time must be a crossdresser, that him being trans never crossed anyone’s mind as a possibility.

It was later when I walked in on my roommate playing Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, directed by Jean Guesdon (he/him), Ashraf Ismail (he/him), and Damien Kieken (he/him) that my fascination deepened. I came in during the scene where James Kidd pokes Edward Kenway awake with a stick, the chemistry in their friendship palpable. My first comment was, “Who’s the cute transmasc?” to which I was promptly informed that this was a depiction of a real historical figure, a “famous woman pyrate who cross-dressed as a man for the majority of her life”.

While Black Flag is a very fictionalised depiction of the golden age of pyracy, it is clearly well researched. Reading the ever notable A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson (he/him, presumably) (likely a penname, but the real author is disputed, so I will simply use this name) to compare to the game shows this. Many scenes in the game reflect accounts in what is one of the oldest and most influential contributors to our current mythology of these people’s lives.

James Kidd is named as such because Mark (referred to by his deadname, which I will not use) is portrayed as an assassin disguised as the late Captain Kidd’s son. In his real life, he did use a masculine name, Mark Read, and considering that he did not change his surname, it likely wasn’t a disguise or attempt to hide his identity. Black Flag’s alteration of this to make it look as though he “was crossdressing as a necessary disguise” and validating it with lore from the broader series plays into this harmful idea that our trans ancestors were playing dress-up and concealing their “real identity”–a perception that affects living trans people as well.

It is important to note that James Kidd is unambiguously passing as a man, only being seen as a woman when he chooses to. He has far more autonomy with his gender presentation than most “women disguising as men” in storytelling. He is not outed by someone groping him or seeing him in a state of undress, he chooses to alter his presentation to be more feminine, and tells Edward of his own volition. In this sense, he is somewhat refreshing–that does not change the fact that the game tries to feminize him by changing his face model and lightening his skin tone to differ from his general masculine look, however.

Even after being narratively outed, he still presents as masculine, and even after dying in Edward’s arms in his more feminized look, he appears again as a vision telling Edward to “change the course of his life” as masculine–implying that Edward still sees him as masculine, regardless of him being outed.

In life, Mark Read passed as a man so seamlessly that it was only when he outed himself, or was outed by Anne, in one instance, that anyone even knew, from A General History of the Pyrates:

“…but this intimacy so disturbed Captain Rackam, who was the lover and gallant of Anne Bonny, that he grew furiously jealous, so that he told Anne Bonny, he would cut her new lover’s throat, therefore, to quiet him, she let him into the secret also.” - Captain Charles Johnson (1724)

This is from a scene describing that Anne had seduced Mark and in order to turn her away, he outed himself. A more modern take on this from Rebecca Alexandra Simon (she/her) paints it a bit differently:

“No scene is more famous, of course, than when Anne attempts to seduce Mary when she believes her comrade to be a man. Her disappointment at Mary’s revealed female sex is intended to increase male readers’ enjoyment of this sexual display. The transgenderism and disdain for gender norms enhanced themes of pirates’ rejection of sexual decorum.” - Rebecca Alexandra Simon, Pirate Queens, The Lives of Anne Bonny & Mary Read (2022)

Even in a modern feminist interpretation of this history by a leading pyrate historian, the concept of “transgenderism” is tied to the male gaze. Mark’s life long presentation as a man is dismissed as crossdressing, and in one of the few times the idea that he might have been trans is mentioned, it is depicted as being laced in as a way to “sexualize a woman”. I do agree that Captain Charles Johnson writes about Anne Bonny and Mark Read much differently than the cis male pyrates whose stories he depicts, they aren’t romanticized in as much a heroic way, and there is a stronger focus on their parentage and romantic and sexual relationships. Mark’s masculine identity, however, is also dismissed in his work, just as it is in Rebecca Alexandra Simon’s. Another excerpt from her book:

“Once she could afford to, she bought new male clothing, stripped off her female dress, and resumed the familiar and natural shirt and trousers. She bound her chest and cut her hair back to its boyish length and stole away in the night towards the London docks.”

Mark Read was raised as a boy from a young age. The reason speculated as to why was that his mother was trying to salvage her reputation as her husband was away at sea, and to continue receiving financial support from her mother-in-law. It is important to remember that this account of Mark’s early life is primarily based on A General History of the Pyrates, which is considered highly unreliable; we do not have solid accounts of his early life, only speculation. We know he presented as a boy from a young age, and then a man, the rest is speculation from cis men dismissing him as a man and cis women trying to claim him as a feminist icon (of course, him being a trans man would make him less of a feminist icon to these writers).

These next two excerpts from Rebecca Alexandra Simon were deeply interesting to me, because in fighting for her life to claim Mark as part of women’s history, she cannot ignore his choice over and over, to live as a man:

“Mary was a resourceful, intelligent young woman with a lifetime of experience under male disguise, both as a prepubescent child and a grown woman.”

“It is possible that, unlike Anne, Mary deliberately hid her feminine beauty.”

As I watched through hours of gameplay and story footage from Black Flag, and read through article after article on Mark Read, I found myself hyper-fixated. I wanted a crumb, anything, just one thing that mentioned the possibility of him being trans, one fictional depiction or one historical essay. And I was lost in the reeds. The closest I found was a statement from an artist who depicted Anne Bonny and Mark Read together in a piece:

“Read lived most of their life as a man; I think it’s dismissive and misleading to say they were merely ‘dressing’ as a man.” - Linnea Maertens (they/them), in an interview from Elizabeth Oliver (she/her), The Art of Piracy: A Fresh Perspective on Bonny and Read (I am unsure of the year) https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/pirates/mary-read-anne-bonny-illustration-making-of

The one statement I could find that acknowledged that he likely wasn’t a woman still chose to androgenize him with they/them pronouns and combining masculine and feminine features for his depiction in the art piece. The history of depictions of Mark in artwork is interesting, to say the least. Him and Anne were always feminized, despite being described as wearing men’s clothing in battle (wearing a dress would just get in the way). And as time went on and more artists depicted Mark, he became more feminine, often having his chest bared, the mythology growing to say that he “exposed his breasts” to men he killed. He has never, in anything I could find, been depicted as unambiguously masculine despite passing as a man throughout most of his life. The closest we have is James Kidd.

A common speculation of Mark Read is that he and Anne Bonny were romantic. This speculation comes from an article called Anne Bonny & Mary Read: They Killed Pricks by Susan Baker (she/her). It was published by The Furies in 1972. I will let them describe themselves, so you can understand what perspective this take on Mark Read comes from:

“The base of our ideological thought is: Sexism is the root of all other oppressions, and Lesbian and women oppression will not end by smashing capitalism, racism, and imperialism. Lesbianism is not a matter of sexual preference, but rather one of political choice which every woman must make if she is to become woman-identified and thereby end male supremacy.” - The Furies, 1972 https://web.archive.org/web/20120208114038/http://www.rainbowhistory.org/furies.htm

The view of identifying with womanhood and lesbianism as purely political and as a means of revolution does not leave room for broader queer and trans experiences, and it limits the acceptable expressions of womanhood deemed “revolutionary”. It also overlooks other power structures and the harm they pose to a society we should work towards. There is no room in this worldview for a trans man like Mark Read, so he must be reimagined, re-fictionalized, to suit their view of a “revolutionary lesbian woman”. From Susan Baker’s article:

“Anne was a member of gay culture, and Pierre was the most notorious homosexual in the Caribbean. While a straight man may have been fooled by Mark’s clothing, I find it doubtful that those two would have mistaken Mary for long.” https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/70bc5b876cc66a3181e013f171498aef.pdf

An article that criticizes the sexualization of women for the benefit of men proceeds to describe Mark naked and sprawled out on Anne’s bed as to how Rackam discovered his “secret”, and prior describing a hypothetical view that men must have had where Anne “rips off Mark’s clothing, frustrated by him rejecting her, to discover that he wasn’t really a man”–interestingly, in A General History of the Pyrates, this scene is not described, only that Mark verbally outed himself to Anne to reject her advances. The depiction in The Furies much further sexualizes him and humiliates him by depicting a visual of him being unclothed by force.

In a critique of Baker’s article, we still see the use of misgendering language:

“Baker spends a great deal of time refuting the possibility that Anne ever believed Mary was a man, because apparently ‘a member of gay culture’ like Anne would not be ‘fooled’ by transvestism.” - Jillian Molenaar (unsure of pronouns), Depictions of John Rackam, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read: Anne Bonny & Mary Read: They Killed Pricks by Susan Baker (dissecting Baker’s 1972 article published in The Furies) https://jillianmolenaar.home.blog/2020/03/07/anne-bonny-mary-read-they-killed-pricks-by-susan-baker/

This blog specifically compares retellings of these stories to that of A General History of the Pyrates to document what gets changed over time in their mythology and why. Initially, this was all I could find on Baker’s article, finding the original Furies manuscripts took further digging.

It is a unique and disheartening experience to be a trans man and see yourself in a historical figure, only to find that while all accounts of this figure point to transness, to the point where they cannot ignore his chosen masculine presentation, are laced with misgendering and dismissal of the possibility of his being trans. It makes me realise, somewhere deep in my bones, that if I were to die tomorrow, that this is how people would talk about me too.

Mark Read is only one trans man of history still treated as though he was “crossdressing” for the majority of his life, I have to wonder how many more there must be. When we have article after article with this sort of sentiment:

“Although we cannot fully know Mary Read’s motivation for pirating, we can try to explain it. The rough life of a man at sea was not one typically chosen by women. Mary Read crossed the gender barrier that exists in the pirate world. She embraced the male role and thrived in doing so. We can attribute much of this anomaly to her unorthodox upbringing and her identification with the male gender from early in her life.” - PBworks, 2008 http://piratical2.pbworks.com/w/page/17003204/Mary%20%20Read:%20Crossing%20the%20Gender%20Lines%20of%20Piracy

And when these are what people find first, they are what form the impression of who he must have been. He “crossed the gender barrier” he “hid his feminine beauty” he “anything and everything before we admit that maybe he was a man”. The fact that an article can say bold-faced “her identification with the male gender from early in her life” and have no self awareness, to still portray him as a woman over and over with this underlying truth–it creates an isolation of transmasculine identity.

While James Kidd is a depiction that does not acknowledge his transness, it does at least acknowledge his masculinity, which is far more than any other fictionalization of him I’ve been able to find. Many others do not portray him as masculine at all, many others portray him as a lesbian despite what documentation we have pointing to him seducing and being interested in other men.  Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag was an interesting and emotional experience, a story so close to being a masterpiece and the best depiction we have of Mark Read in fiction to date–but I have to ask, is this as good as we can hope for? Do our ghosts not deserve better?

I’ll keep looking. I’ll let my fascination continue to deepen. I’ll keep looking towards the ghosts of trans history, and even if no one else sees them, sees them for who they were in life–I see them.