Abstract Book of the 12th International Conference on New Findings in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Beyond Sexual, Gender, and Professional Boundaries in Irene Clyde’s Beatrix the Sixteenth: The Genesis of LGBTQ＋
Prof. Masami Uusui
ABSTRACT:
Irene Clyde’s Beatrix the Sixteenth (1909) is a utopian/dystopian novel beyond sexual, gender, and professional boundaries. Irene Clyde is a female penname of Thomas Baty (1869-1954), a scholar of international law who was invited by Japanese government as a legal advisor in 1916, was deprived of his British citizenship as a traitor after the Second World War, and ultimately passed away in Japan in 1954. An expert with his own vision of international law is also a creator of the Genesis of LGBTQ＋. Baty’s professional pursuit in the male-dominant academia of law is integrated with Clyde’s private desire for a sexual/gender free society. Baty was educated in both Oxford and Cambridge in order to establish himself in academia. During his lifetime, he published about ten books, most of which argue international laws during a critical period of two world wars. As a transgender, however, Baty is a radical activist of feminism as he founded the Aëthnic Union in London in 1908, a member’s club of gender binary, and also issued a privately circulated journal, Urania, between 1916 and 1940. In fiction, furthermore, Baty creates an idealized genderless country, Armeria, in Arabian Desert, discovered by a woman explorer. This seemingly utopian country is, however, proven as a dystopian world with slaves inside the country and enemies outside the country. Baty’s criticism on Western-based international law that oppresses the territories is integrated into Clyde’s resistance to patriarchal norms that suppress both men and women in a form of fiction.
Keywords: utopia/dytopia literature, 20th century literature, gender studies, women’s studies, queer studies