Thomas Baty
Irene Clyde | |
---|---|
Stanwix, Cumberland, England | |
Died | 9 February 1954 Ichinomiya, Chiba, Japan | (aged 85)
Resting place | Aoyama Cemetery, Japan 35°39′58″N 139°43′20″E / 35.66605°N 139.72229°E |
Education |
|
Occupation(s) | Lawyer, writer, activist |
Awards | Order of the Sacred Treasure (third class, 1920; second class, 1936) |
Irene Clyde (8 February 1869 – 9 February 1954), Formerly Thomas Baty, was an English writer, lawyer and expert on international law who spent much of her career working for the Imperial Japanese government. Clyde was also an activist for feminism, opposing the concept of a gender binary, and has been described as non-binary, transgender, or as a trans woman, by several modern writers.[1][2][3] In 1909, she published Beatrice the Sixteenth, a utopian science fiction novel, set in a postgender society. She also co-edited Urania, a privately circulated feminist gender studies journal, alongside Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade.
Biography
Irene Clyde was born 8 February 1869, in
In 1909, Clyde published Beatrice the Sixteenth, under the name Irene Clyde. Set in Armeria, it describes a genderless land of people with feminine characteristics who form life partnerships together.[8] In 1916, along with Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade, Baty, again using the name Irene Clyde, founded Urania, a privately circulated journal which expressed her pioneering views on gender and sexuality, opposing the "insistent differentiation" of people into a binary of two genders.[9][1][2] She also wrote under the name Theta.[10]
Following the outbreak of the
In 1927, she was part of the Japanese delegation to the Geneva Naval Conference on disarmament. This was her only public appearance as legal adviser to the Japanese government, as the rest of her work involved mainly writing legal opinions. In 1932, following the Japanese invasion of North China and the formation of Manchukuo, Baty defended the Japanese position in the League of Nations and called to accept the new state to league membership. She also wrote legal opinions in defense of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.[14]
In 1934, as Irene Clyde, Clyde published Eve's Sour Apples, a series of essays in which she attacked sex-based distinctions and marriage.[8]
In July 1941, the Japanese government froze the assets of foreigners residing in Japan or any of its colonial possessions in retaliation for the same move against Japanese assets in the US, but Clyde was exempt from this due to her service for the Japanese government. Clyde decided to remain in Japan even following the outbreak of war between that country and the British Empire in December 1941. She rejected the efforts by the British Embassy to repatriate her, and kept working for the Japanese government even during the war. She defended the Japanese policy of conquest as a remedy to western colonialism in Asia.[12] In late 1944, she questioned the legitimacy of the pro-Allied governments established following the end of the German occupation in Belgium and France.[citation needed]
Following the Japanese surrender in 1945, the
Clyde died of a
Legal philosophy
Clyde’s legal philosophy evolved as she worked for the Japanese government and was designed to justify Japanese actions of encroaching upon the sovereignty of China. Her main argument was that the recognition of states must depend on one factor alone—effective control by the military and security forces of the government over the state's territory, and not on preconceived definitions of what the state should be. For that reason she opposed the procedure of according de facto recognition, claiming that only final and irrevocable recognition must be used, and accusing the western international community of hypocrisy in using the de facto recognition as a means to allow some transactions with governments of states unfriendly to them without making the definite commitment to accept them fully into the family of nations.[16]
Personal life
Clyde never married. Some evidence suggests that she was disillusioned with Victorian sexual norms and disgusted by the then accepted notions of male domination over women.[17] She described herself as a radical feminist and a pacifist.[18] Clyde lived out the principles promoted by Urania which challenged the binary conception of gender, and for this reason is known to be non-binary,[3] transgender, or a trans woman, specifically when discussed in connection with Urania.[1][2]
An important person in her life was her sister Anne-Mary Baty, who went with her to Japan in 1916, and lived with her until Anne's death of paralysis at Nikko on January 22, 1945.[5][19]
Clyde was a strict vegetarian since the age of 19; she was later vice-president of the British Vegetarian Society.[5] She was also a member of the Humanitarian League.[20]
Works
Books
- As Thomas Baty
- International Law in South Africa (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1900)
- International Law (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.; London; John Murray, 1909)
- Polarized Law (London: Stevens and Haynes, 1914)
- (with E. P. Dutton and Co., 1915)
- Clarendon Press, 1916)
- The Canons of International Law (London: John Murray, 1930)
- Academic Colours (Tokyo: Kenkyusha Press, 1934)
- International Law in Twilight (Tokyo: Maruzen Publishing Co., 1954)
- Alone in Japan (Tokyo: Maruzen Publishing Co., 1959), memoirs
- (ed. Julian Franklyn) Vital Heraldry (Edinburgh: The Armorial Register, 1962)
- As Irene Clyde
- Beatrice the Sixteenth (London: George Bell & Sons, 1909; New York: Macmillan, 1909)
- Eve's Sour Apples (London: Eric Partridge at the Scholartis Press, 1934)
Articles
- "The Root of the Matter". Macmillan's Magazine. Vol. 88. 1902–1903. pp. 194–198.
- "The Aëthnic Union". The Freewoman. 1 (14): 278–279. 22 February 1912.
- "Can an Anarchy be a State?" American Journal of International Law, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pp. 444–455
- "Abuse of Terms: 'Recognition': 'War'" American Journal of International Law, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1936), pp. 377–399 (advocating the recognition of Manchukuo)
- "The 'Private International Law' of Japan" Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Jul., 1939), pp. 386–408
- "The Literary Introduction of Japan to Europe" Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (1951), pp. 24–39, Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (1952), pp. 15–46, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (1953), pp. 62–82 and Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1954), pp. 65–80
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-87651-3. Archivedfrom the original on 21 March 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
the lawyer and transgender activist Thomas Baty, who advertised his 'Aethnic Union' in The Free-woman. This group explicitly rejected sexual differentiation...
- ^ ISBN 978-0-230-29907-8. Archivedfrom the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
Thomas Baty, a transgender lawyer and later, publisher of the private journal Urania, wrote to advertise his "Aethnic Union," a society dedicated to sweeping away the "gigantic superstructure of artificial convention" in sexual matters, and resisting the "insistent differentiation" into two genders...
- ^ a b Moran, Maeve (16 October 2019). "Unheard Voices: Eva Gore-Booth". Palatinate Online. Archived from the original on 30 June 2020. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-108-03611-5. Archivedfrom the original on 21 March 2022. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
- ^ from the original on 21 March 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
- ^ "University intelligence". The Times. No. 36486. London. 20 June 1901. p. 6.
- ^ from the original on 3 June 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
- ^ a b White, Jenny (18 May 2021). "Jenny White reflects on the legacy of Urania". LSE Review of Books. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
- ISBN 978-1-84718-592-1. Archived from the original on 21 March 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2020.)
{{cite book}}
:|work=
ignored (help - from the original on 4 July 2020. Retrieved 4 July 2020.
- from the original on 3 June 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
- ^ a b Oblas, Peter (December 2005). "Britain's first traitor of the Pacific War: Employment and obsession" (PDF). NZASIA. 7 (2). Archived (PDF) from the original on 28 January 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ Oblas, Peter (December 2005). "Britain's First Traitor of the Pacific War: Employment and Obsession" (PDF). New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies. 7 (2): 109–133. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 5 February 2011.
- ^ "Timeline of Events in Japan". Facing History and Ourselves. 12 May 2020. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
- ^ "British Jurist Baty Dies at 85 in Japan". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 9 February 1954. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
- from the original on 26 February 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ Oblas, Peter (December 2001). "In Defense of Japan in China: One Man's Quest for the Logic of Sovereignty" (PDF). New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies. 3 (2): 73–90. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 January 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
- ^ Daphne Patai & Angela Ingram, 'Fantasy and Identity: The Double Life of a Victorian Sexual Radical', in Ingram & Patai, eds., Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939, 1993, pp. 265–304.
- ^ "Obituary". Nippon Times. 27 January 1945. p. 3.
- (PDF) from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
Further reading
- Oblas, Peter (31 March 2004). "Accessing British Empire-U.S. Diplomacy from Japan: Friendship, Discourse, Network, and the Manchurian Crisis" (PDF). The Journal of American and Canadian Studies. 21: 27–64. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 August 2011.
- Lowe, Vaughan (2008). "The Place of Dr. Thomas Baty in the International Law Studies of the 20th Century". SSRN Electronic Journal. ISSN 1556-5068.
- Gilfillan, Ealasaid (14 June 2020). "Thomas Baty". LGBT+ Language and Archives.
- Gilfillan, Ealasaid (14 June 2020). "Thomas Baty and Gender". LGBT+ Language and Archives.
- Gilfillan, Ealasaid (19 July 2020). "Reflections on Thomas Baty". LGBT+ Language and Archives.
- Millea, Alice (15 February 2022). "Thomas Baty, gender critic". Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.
- Murase, Shinya (11 May 2023), Tallgren, Immi (ed.), "Thomas Baty in Japan: Seeing through the Twilight", Portraits of Women in International Law (1 ed.), Oxford University PressOxford, pp. 403–C34N23, ISBN 978-0-19-886845-3, retrieved 12 January 2024