![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(I explain the LHMP here and provide a cumulative index.)
I have sometimes previously put LHMP entries under a cut with a "NSFW -- no, seriously, more than usual" tag due to explicit sexual content. I think this is the first time I've added a trigger warning (for rape and rape-like medical examination). The warning applies even more strongly to the original article.
This is also another "marriage between women" case that, in modern terms, falls far more on the "probably transgender" side than on the "lesbian subterfuge" side, despite the eventual resolution to a female presentation. The author has tried to be very conscious of pronoun/name use in the article, but as part of the analysis is of gendered language as used in the historic record, it may not always be clear in my summary when the language use reflects those records as opposed to the article. I have leaned toward using the surname "Evans" as reference, as this name was used at some point during both male and female presentations, and using "Ellen" and "Edward" when referring to specific presentations. I'm almost certainly going to screw this up at some point, but this will be my fault and not Chesser's.
* * *
Chesser, Lucy. 1998. "A Woman Who Married Three Wives: Management of Disruptive Knowledge in the 1879 Australian Case of Edward De Lacy Evans" in Journal of Women's History vol 9 no 4: 53-77.
This article concerns an individual who may more properly be interpreted as transgender, however as noted a number of times before, in a historic context where heteronormativity is so strong as to impede the ability to self-define as a woman-oriented woman, interpretation can be ambiguous.
The basic story is given in the article's abstract: Edward De Lacy Evans was born female but lived as a man for 23 years (1856-1879) in Victoria, Australia. During that time Evans married three women and was father to a daughter. Evans' biological sex was discovered on being sent from the town of Bendigo for admittance to a lunatic asylum for reasons that--as eventually discovered--related directly to social pressures around living a gender-transgressive life.
( Cut for trigger warning: rape )
I have sometimes previously put LHMP entries under a cut with a "NSFW -- no, seriously, more than usual" tag due to explicit sexual content. I think this is the first time I've added a trigger warning (for rape and rape-like medical examination). The warning applies even more strongly to the original article.
This is also another "marriage between women" case that, in modern terms, falls far more on the "probably transgender" side than on the "lesbian subterfuge" side, despite the eventual resolution to a female presentation. The author has tried to be very conscious of pronoun/name use in the article, but as part of the analysis is of gendered language as used in the historic record, it may not always be clear in my summary when the language use reflects those records as opposed to the article. I have leaned toward using the surname "Evans" as reference, as this name was used at some point during both male and female presentations, and using "Ellen" and "Edward" when referring to specific presentations. I'm almost certainly going to screw this up at some point, but this will be my fault and not Chesser's.
* * *
Chesser, Lucy. 1998. "A Woman Who Married Three Wives: Management of Disruptive Knowledge in the 1879 Australian Case of Edward De Lacy Evans" in Journal of Women's History vol 9 no 4: 53-77.
This article concerns an individual who may more properly be interpreted as transgender, however as noted a number of times before, in a historic context where heteronormativity is so strong as to impede the ability to self-define as a woman-oriented woman, interpretation can be ambiguous.
The basic story is given in the article's abstract: Edward De Lacy Evans was born female but lived as a man for 23 years (1856-1879) in Victoria, Australia. During that time Evans married three women and was father to a daughter. Evans' biological sex was discovered on being sent from the town of Bendigo for admittance to a lunatic asylum for reasons that--as eventually discovered--related directly to social pressures around living a gender-transgressive life.
( Cut for trigger warning: rape )
