"Was Casimir Pulaski a woman?" Topic

…Polish-born general Casimir Pulaski, the "Father of the American Cavalry" who died fighting for America's freedom, may have been born an intersex female, according to Smithsonian Channel's "America's Hidden Stories: The General Was Female?" that airs Monday…

link

Since he chose to be male he was and is.

And exactly why should we care? Why would researchers have specifically searched for this condition? There are a lot of "may have" statements in the story.

Like searching for yeti. Nice story and this is the first we heard of this?

Saw this earlier. Every medical specialist finds historical figures that had whatever their specialty was.

I guess the lead in sentence could also have read "may not have been born an intersex female…."

Some veterinarians believe he may have been a Labrador Retriever.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

One is born one sex or the other, perhaps with some characteristics of the other sex, but he did not choose…he was obviously born with all the essential equipment that an 18th Century parent needed to declare him a male or female.

Well I hope the articles and the documentary get the researchers all the publicity they need to advance their careers. Best of luck!

"Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!"

- The Microbe
by
Hilaire Belloc

Even made the BBC:

link

I can hear it now…

You got beat by a girl!

Well, short-arm inspection would have interesting.

All I do is 6mm Sci-fi … so generally it's hard to really tell their gender. But since I also do a lot of 6mm Aliens … So … who knows !?!?!?

So if Pulaski is the father of American cavalry, how come he got fired from the job? Further, how come his Legion was the most expensive unit in the Continental Army and was a hot disaster?

and we have pools , high schools and towns named after him/her here in Wisconsin oh my does that make us a blue state now

'how come his Legion was the most expensive unit in the Continental Army and was a hot disaster?'

An honourable tradition maintained by G.A Custer.

Now, there's a thought……

The answer to why he got "fired" is he didn't…he quit in frustration with the lack of understanding of the proper role of cavalry, starting with Washington and going down the the chain of command. Combine that with the fact that, with the exception of Light Horse Harry Lee, the cavalry regimental commanders were largely incompetent and the troopers poorly trained and then top it off with the all too common xenophobia, especially against a non English speaking Catholic, and you have a difficult situation.

With regard to the performance of his Legion, he was forced to recruit largely from deserters, mostly from the Hessians, who were poor horsemen at a minimum and traitors who betrayed the Legion whenever possible. There is no question they underperformed but so did every other American cavalry unit.

Bit harsh ONS. By the time Pulaski arrived the four regiments of Light Dragoons were already in the field. Between Virginia and Continental service the First had been in the field over a year. Moylan who commanded the Fourth had held other important assignments and had attained the rank of colonel before he was given the Fourth Dragoons. When he was made Brig. Gen. and given command of the cavalry Pulaski jumped all of these. Resentment should have been expected.

I think there was also a story about Akhenaten having a similar physiological condition .

The study is a stretch. The only argument they have is that "the skeleton had female characteristics" and matched Pulaski's family DNA. That's quite a leap to asserting the individual was indeed female, or had the condition mentioned. Questions I would ask:
Are there other factors which could cause a male skeleton to have "female characteristics" other than the claimed condition? Could disease, diet, genetics, or even simply the fact of being nearly constantly on horseback as part of formative years and adulthood produce deformations of the skeleton which would appear "female" in nature? (One rather suspects that the only "female" characteristics would necessarily be the pelvic bones and hips. I don't know, but I suspect that constant riding might well cause these to deform into a wider condition. After all, horseback riding does produce bow-leggedness in cowboys.)

While it doesn't really matter (whether hero or heroine or simply inflated adventurer/adventuress, the male/female question is all the same to me), one does suspect this claim may have more to do with the current modern obsession with so-called "gender identity" than it does with actual science.

Either way, Count or Countess, maybe we should simply let this fellow human being Rest In Peace?

They got enough DNA to confirm the identity, but couldn't determine XX or XY and are using skeletal featurs instead???

Ask the Lithuanians.

I can tell you on good account, they have Opinions about Poles, Germans, Russians….

Just saying.

Eric

I was led to understand that gender was a social construct so women don't actually exist.

The NY Times article has a good summary of the study: link

At any rate, there appears to be no question that he lived his life as male no matter what his genetic sex.

From The NY Times article.

"Just imagine if Casimir Pulaski were born today," Ms. Zieselman said. He may have been raised as a girl, she said, making it unlikely that he would have joined the military and helped Washington.

"Arguably, if urologists had tried to ‘fix' Pulaski's body, the U.S. could still be a British colony."

Well, maybe.
I think I can detect a tongue in cheek at that remark.

I'll defer to your reading on Pulaski, but my understand was that the Continental Cavalry, often made up of wealthier and upper class members, couldn't agree among themselves who should be in command, and placing a foreigner (the army was overrun with foreigners seeking general's commissions) did not go over well, especially considering he did not speak English.

The very good point you bring up about the Continental cavalry being a mess is true – it never really came together during the war, though it had greater success in the South, as you well know – albeit on a smaller scale. That said, the Crown cavalry was hardly any better. North American was not great country for large cavalry tactics. Didn't really happen much in the ACW period either. It certainly never had much impact on the major battles. Point being, the Americans did no worse that the British regular cavalry. In fact, the British seemed to accept this situation by 1778 and relied more on Loyalist mounted units to do the grunt work around NYC for the rest of the war.

You also make a valid point about Pulaski's Legion being given less than the cream of the crop in man power, but that situation was common on both sides. Look at what populated the BL, and their supposed refusal (perhaps common sense) to charge at Cowpens. Both sides carried deserters as the war progressed.

I guess my reaction was to the title about father of U.S. cavalry. Since it was such a mess I'm not sure why anyone would be awarded such a title for such an under-performing unit.

My favorite AWI Pole was a certain engineer. :-)