#but it's anti english nationalists and the goverment as whole

[just-an-enby-lemon]

While it is problematic to see events based only on our experiences even more the ones related to prejudice I'll admit that England prohibition of the Scottish gender affirmative laws scares me on way more than it's transphobia and opression towards the scotish people. It makes me think that if England isn't afraid of imposing their will on a country that on papper they consider their equal how do they react towards the people and countries they don't. That on my case means would England do an U.S similar move and help stabelish dictatorships on latin america if we did something that they considered against their values or that somehow affected their control? But on a general case it goes to ask about their relationship with India or how the goverment as whole treats imigrantes specially people of color and muslins (mostly muslins of color) and many more questions and fears related to racism and xenophonia.

This situation is of course about transphobia first as England doing all that to stop my fellow trans people from having measures that could drasticslly improve their life is a clear act of hate against us (and I don't know even how to conceptualize it, Brazil is if not the one of the countries with the higher rate of trans people being killed for our gender identity, we have few representation and transitioning while legal is quasi impossible even people who support trans rights outside the comunity are mostly either uninformed or do unintencional casual transphobia (for instance when I still identifield as nb and not trans a dear normally supportive friend wished me happy woman's day), the idea of having this bill is something out of a fairy tale to me and it likely was for older scottish trans people and to finally see this fairy tale becaming reality and by popular vote as well showing that your society is learning and caring only to have it took from you must be the worst feeling ever). I'm not trying to disminish this fact or put trans issues in second place. But there is no fight if we aren't all on it and it's important to understand how systemic those prejudices are. It's important that a trans white person understand what this implies to trans non white people and to cis non white people as well. Just as it is important that cis non white people understand how this impacts the trans comunity. We need to look at all angles and stand together.

[yndigot]

I have thoughts!

Tom is of a generation where many Irish had either very English names or the names they were registered under at birth were the Anglicized version of Irish names. Giving your children Irish names, especially spelled the Irish way, I believe was just barely starting to come back into vogue when Tom would have been born. So -- there’s a good chance his birth was registered as Thomas Branson. (See also that Kieran’s name when we see it listed anywhere in show materials always seems to be Kieran not Ciarán.)

HOWEVER, Tom was also of a generation that tended to adopt the Irish version of their names (certainly first and often last as well) in adulthood as a political statement, at least among nationalists (so Tom is definitely the demographic for this), so there’s a good chance that he puts Tomás Branson on his documents as an adult. (There doesn’t seem to be a lot of need for legal name changes at the time -- your legal name is the name you’re consistently using in legal matters, and there’s a lot more wiggle room re: whether it matches your birth registry.)

I know all that doesn’t have much to do with Sybbie. I’m getting there. Tom’s generation is also the generation where you start to see them giving their kids very, VERY Irish names. For example: the explosion of the name Saoirse in the 1920s, an overtly Irish and overtly political name (means “freedom,” so naming your kid that in the middle of an independence struggle was definitely a statement.) Saoirse is probably a good candidate for what Sybbie would have been named had Sybil lived, assuming Sybil was happy to give her kid a very Irish, very political name. (I’d certainly put it among the names Tom would suggest, anyway.) 

All of that was, admittedly, just background info I felt like sharing -- now we get to Sybbie’s encounters with anti-Irish sentiment.

Sybil Branson is not a distinctively Irish name. If Sybbie had gone through life as Saoirse Branson, I imagine she may have personally attracted some anti-Irish sentiment as she went through life. Now, as a young child, I kind of doubt anyone in the village is going to go up to the Earl’s granddaughter and say anything rude, and I imagine she’s either going to be educated at home with a nanny/governess/tutor or go to a Catholic day school (in Ripon?). If she’s educated at home, anyone who says something nasty about the Irish to her would be sacked pretty quickly, and in a Catholic school, I doubt she’s the only kid with one or more Irish parents, so she’d probably be kind of insulated from it as a young child. As an adult, though, if she’d had an Irish name, I definitely think she’d have attracted a bit of attention. I’m assuming she’d take after Sybil and not be particularly interested in being coddled by the family her whole life, and once she was out in the world ... well, you’re always going to run into someone with something to say.

HOWEVER, she’s not Saoirse Branson -- she’s Sybil Branson. And she will probably grow up with a relatively posh British accent. (I’d love to talk somewhere else about how much opportunity there was for Irish expats and their kids to interact with Irish culture and the Irish language in England during this time period, but that’s a whole other post and I think that, regardless of her exposure to all things Irish beyond her father, the household she grows up in will shape the way she sounds and carries herself, so she’s going to read to strangers as posh and English).

I actually think this might increase the amount of anti-Irish sentiment she hears. But it won’t be directed at her! People who don’t know who her father is will assume that a posh, English girl will share their anti-Irish sentiments, and will think it’s safe to assume she agrees, or at least doesn’t see anything wrong with their bigotry. They’ll feel free to make comments to her the way bigots do when they assume you’re a part of their group and share their prejudices. And THAT is when she’ll get the “hey motherfucker guess what” moment. 

(I’m assuming that’s the scenario you were picturing all along, I just got really in to dumping a bunch of random history and my hypotheticals into the mix, especially given the recent mention of ‘Sybbie almost had a different name!’ because I think that might have made a difference in what her encounters with anti-Irish sentiment would look like.)

Do you think Sybbie ran into more anti-Irish sentiment in her life after Nanny West or was she protected by her status as an Earl’s granddaughter?