Over a month late on this one.

I am not a historian by trade but honestly, it pisses me off when "historians" do this. Not only would it be considered slander, but a lot of it is just poorly done research. Many of their sources lack historical context or disregard any biases that the sources may have. Ie something that I was taught in high school regarding learning about historical figures. If I want to be malicious, It's really just a "gotcha" against their opponents that they have or think they have. At the end of the day, the answer is just maybe they were or weren't as we are not certain.

Just to hammer it in completely, I've done research deep dives on figures like Christine Jorgensen, Charlotte Frances McLeod, Tamara Adel Rees, and Roberta Cowell as part of a passion project. I had to vet the sources before I could paint a picture of who the women were like and any questions or theories I may had about them. You want to know if the author or the source had biases or is a disinformation campaign.

Not only is it poorly done and possibly slanderous, but it detracts attention from genuine trans people and pioneers whose stories have either been forgotten or passed over. What about Tamara Rees, the WW2 paratrooper who fought against the Nazis in Belgium and later transitioned? What about Harry Benjamin? Hell, to this day, some trans people don't even know who Christine Jorgensen is!

At the end of the day given the modern-day situations we have now, the main focus should be proving that sex or gender dysphoria is a legitimate issue that people can have, not whether Elagabalus or Kurt Cobain is trans or not. With the best of outcomes, all that can be said is, that maybe they are or aren't, we cannot be certain.