Thomas Baty


Thomas Baty, also known by the name Irene Clyde, was an English transgender lawyer and expert on international law who spent much of their career working for the Imperial Japanese government. They published Beatrice the Sixteenth, a 1909 utopian science fiction novel, set in an egalitarian postgender society. They also co-edited Urania, a privately printed genderqueer feminist journal, alongside Eva Gore-Booth, Esther Roper, Dorothy Cornish, and Jessey Wade.

Life and legal career

Baty was born in Stanwix, Cumberland, England, to a middle-class family. At school, they were a very gifted student and was given a scholarship to study at The Queen's College, Oxford. They entered that establishment in 1888, and got their bachelor's degree in Jurisprudence in 1892. In June 1901 they received the degree of LL.M. from Trinity College, Cambridge. They got their D.C.L. from Oxford in 1901 and their LL.D. from Cambridge in 1903. Their expertise was in the field of international law. They taught law at Nottingham, Oxford, London and Liverpool Universities. At that time, they became a prolific writer on international law.
Following the outbreak of the First World War, Baty took part in the establishment of the Hugo Grotius Society, established in London in 1915. As one of the original members of that society, Baty got to know Isaburo Yoshida, Second Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in London and an international law scholar from the graduate school of the Tokyo Imperial University. The Japanese government was searching at that time a foreign legal adviser following the death of Henry Willard Denison, a US citizen who served in that position until their death in 1914. Baty applied for that position in February 1915. The Japanese government accepted their application, and they came to Tokyo in May 1916 to start their work. In 1920, they were awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, third class, for their service as a legal adviser. They renewed their working contracts with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs several times, until in 1928 they became a permanent employee of that ministry. In 1936, they were awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, second class.
During their work for the Japanese government, Baty developed the notion that China was not worthy of recognition as a state under international law, a view that was later used to justify invasion of China.
In 1927, they were part of the Japanese delegation to the Geneva Naval Conference on disarmament. This was their only public appearance as legal adviser to the Japanese government, as the rest of their 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. They also wrote legal opinions in defense of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.
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 Baty was exempt from this due to their service for the Japanese government. Baty decided to remain in Japan even following the outbreak of war between that country and the British Empire in December 1941. They rejected the efforts by the British Embassy to repatriate them back to their country, and kept working for the Japanese government even during the war. They defended the Japanese policy of conquest as a remedy to western colonialism in Asia. In late 1944, they questioned the legitimacy of the pro-Allied governments established following the end of the German occupation in Belgium and France.
Following the Japanese surrender in 1945, the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs was considering indicting Baty for treason, but the Central Liaison Office provided an opinion stating that Baty's involvement with the Japanese government during the war was insignificant. In addition, some legal advisers within the British government shielded Baty from possible prosecution on the grounds that they were too old to stand trial. Instead, the British government decided to revoke Baty's British nationality and leave them in Japan. They died in Ichinomiya, Chiba, Japan, on 9 February 1954.

Legal philosophy

Baty's legal philosophy evolved as they worked for the Japanese government and was designed to justify Japanese actions of encroaching upon the sovereignty of China. Their 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 they 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.

Personal life

Baty never married. Some evidence suggests that they hated sex, as they were disillusioned with Victorian sexual norms and disgusted by the then accepted notions of male domination over women. They described themselves as a radical feminist and a pacifist.
In 1916, along with Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth, Baty, using the name Irene Clyde, founded Urania, a privately circulated journal which expressed their pioneering views on gender and sexuality, opposing the "insistent differentiation" of people into a binary of two genders. Baty lived out the gender non-conforming principles promoted by Urania, and for this reason is sometimes remembered as non-binary, transgender or as a trans woman when discussed in connection with Urania. They also wrote under the name Theta.
An important person in their life was their sister, who went with them to Japan in 1916, and lived with them until her death in 1944.
Baty was a strict vegetarian since the age of 19; they were later Vice-President of the British Vegetarian Society.

Works

Books

;As Thomas Baty
;As Irene Clyde