Talk:Jack Jackrum

The wiki entry is rather uncommonly erroneous, there is a deal of speculation over the sex of Jackrum who could either be male or, as is suggested at the end of Monstorous Regiment, female.

Yes, I thought the "he" was misleading. Perhaps the idea is to avoid spoilage, but I'd rather see it re-done on a spoiler template. ...--Old Dickens 16:09, 4 December 2006 (CET)

Another overhaul of terms and pronouns has been done, but I wonder if there's a solution for everyone. Perhaps in an age of overwhelming correctness they should all be called "they". --Old Dickens (talk) 16:15, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I started to edit, thinking that Old Dickens might be on to something... and he was. We could rewrite with a “they” throughout, and that would be neutral. But I think the recent revision by User:DictionaryWrites got things reasonably spot on. Their point is, I think, that since Jackrum overtly identifies as male once he joins the army, that it would be “misgendering” to refer to Jackrum as “she” or even “they”. Now, I’d argue back that Jackrum doesn’t truly identify as male by choice - that’s their only option in Borogravia if they want to join the army. Nevertheless. I think the more important job here as wiki authors is to consider the readers’ reaction. To use anything but male pronouns above the spoiler line would be to, well, spoil. Below the spoiler line, I think the article communicates well by using the pronouns with with Jackrum presents herself or himself - female until she joins the army, male thereafter. So I didn’t make any substantive changes, just some copyedits. Moishe Rosenbaum (talk) 02:01, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Rabbi Rosenbaum is as astute as ever; I can't fault the current edit (surely better than "they"), but I'll bet some can. It's an old problem. --Old Dickens (talk) 03:48, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Possible Roundworld connection

Came across an article on Wikipedia about Hannah Snell. Not all her life story matches up to Jackrum's but there is the aspect of the wife continuing a military career in an effective disguise after her husbands death, surviving and retiring and the image could be thought similar to Jackrum's description. There's also mention of a pub - though I know that's more to do with Polly Perks. --Verity (talk) 17:37, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

See also Monstrous Regiment/Annotations on Christian Davies. --Old Dickens (talk) 18:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)