![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjThe e-book giveaway for Through the Hourglass was quite a success in encouraging non-spam comments on the blog! I had twelve entrants (which may be a record for any random giveaway I've held to date) and the lucky winner is Andrew Barton.
* * *
Friedli, Lynne. 1987. “Passing Women: A Study of Gender Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century” in Rousseau, G. S. and Roy Porter (eds). Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 0-8078-1782-1
In the initial discussion in this article, Friedli notes the significantly different experiences and motivations of women cross-dressing or passing as men, and men cross-dressing or passing as women. These are, of course, derived from the massively different social and legal positions of men and women at the time. But it is a reminder that research into homoerotic or transgender issues in history can never assume that the issues relevant to one gender will carry over to another. It might even be considered impossible to treat homosexuality as a unified concept, with concerns of equal relevance to men and women, prior to an increasing acceptance of gender-equality. (Which, of course, means that it still can't be treated as such today.)
Friedli provides an extensive examination of “passing women” -- defined as women (using current terminology, it might be better to say “persons assigned female at birth”, but Friedli uses “women” and I will follow that here) who live, work, and/or marry as men for some period during their lives. This is specifically distinguished from theatrical cross-dressing or overt cross-dressing as a sexual signal. While the phenomenon is far from confined to the 18th century, there seems to have been a fascination with it in England, beginning in the late 17th century.
One of the most obvious benefits of passing was access to the greater social and economic opportunities available to men, as well as reducing certain physical risks experienced by women. Clearly, another attraction (or side benefit) for some was the opportunity to pursue romantic or sexual relationships with women under the cover of a heterosexual appearance. There was also a fascination with men cross-dressing during this period, but that was a social (and sometimes sexual) practice, as there were no economic or status advantages to be gained.
The most common source of information on passing women is not from the occasional medical case history or court record, but from newspapers. In general, passing women were not prosecuted unless there were a marriage (to a woman) involved, and the concern was typically categorized as “fraud”. However, the discovery of a “female husband” did not inevitably result in prosecution, or at least, there are news stories of women marrying each other that mention no legal action. In contrast to the treatment of male homoerotic activity, there is no evidence for legal concerns focused on women’s sexual activities, and none of the same overt public disapproval that effeminate men received. [Note that this article is looking specifically at England, and these statements do not necessarily hold true elsewhere at the time.]
Due to the anecdotal nature of the evidence, it is impossible to attempt quantitative studies of passing, and Friedli has also chosen not to consider it in the context of medical debates considering sexual difference. Instead, this article considers three contexts: changes in definitions of femininity and masculinity; medical interest in hermaphrodites and anxiety around gender boundaries; and the use of pornographic representations of transgression that also function to define the limits of acceptable behavior.
During the 18th century, the concept of “wife and mother” as a professional job description began to be defined and addressed in didactic and educational literature. [Although Friedli doesn’t note this explicitly, this discussion seems to focus on the middle class.] The notion of the “companionate marriage,” based on a supportive emotion bond, rather than being primarily an economic contract, contrasts with the negative image of marriage in 17th century intellectual culture. While the idealized mother described and prescribed in 18th century literature was scarcely an achievable ideal, it left little room for a public role for women outside of that framework. Women’s sexuality was not denied, but was circumscribed within the role of wife+mother.
The corresponding masculine role with respect to the family was supervisory: in charge but disengaged. Failures of child-rearing were thus inherently a maternal failure, and the rejection of a material role created doubts about a woman’s inherent femaleness as well as her femininity. It is in this context that passing women challenged the understanding of what it meant to be female.
The focus in prosecutions of passing women on the idea of “fraud” might be seen as an implicit admission of the performativity of gender roles, but must also be understood in the context of a concern with fraud in the fields of religion and medicine. Women were considered to be constitutionally more credulous, and thus more susceptible to religious extremism and medical quackery. But conversely, women were also considered to be inherently more deceptive, taking as examples the use of clothing and cosmetics to alter the appearance. [To clarify, these are characterizations in the literature of the time.] Comparing this last with satires of men for effeminate foppishness, we see that both men and women are criticized for an excess of femininity. Masculinity is increasingly defined by ridicule of characteristics defined as feminine. In contrast to some eras and contexts when individual women’s appropriation of “masculine” characteristics was seen as aspirational, in the 18th century it was characterized as a rejection of the “natural” role of wife+mother and an assault on the clear boundary between male and female.
Friedli examines four case studies to explore these issues. Perhaps expectedly, these are not the more casual journalistic mentions of passing women, meant for sensation and amusement, but instead are individuals for whom significant evidence is available.
Mary Hamilton began passing as a man at 14, served an apprenticeship to a quack doctor, began practicing on her own under the name Charles Hamilton, married a woman named Mary Price in 1746, and in the same year was arrested when Mary Price brought a legal claim that Hamilton was a woman, not a man. The court case when led to her conviction and punishment focused on the matter of fraud, however the story was taken up by novelist Henry Fielding, whose fictionalized treatment, The Female Husband, focused more sensationally on the sexual aspects. (Mary Price testified that she had not at first realized that her husband was not a man, as they had enjoyed penetrative sex.) Fielding seems to have invented a backstory for Mary Hamilton involving being initiated in same-sex erotics by an older woman who is additionally stigmatized as being part of a circle of Methodist lesbians, entangling religious prejudice into the mix.
Friedli’s second example seems a bit marginal in the context of passing women. Charlotte Charke was an actress famous for playing “trouser roles” who also regularly cross-dressed in off-stage life. On some occasions this seems to have been for economic reasons (taking male jobs to make ends meet when not on the stage), in other cases by personal choice. Although Charke did not attempt an extended disguise, she regularly traveled with a female companion (who may or may not have been a romantic partner) as “Mr. and Mrs. Brown”. On a different occasion, her male persona was pursued romantically by a young woman who hoped for marriage but Charke revealed the disguise to defuse the situation. Her autobiography (which was a very self-conscious work of public relations) gives no clear indication of her romantic inclinations, except to note that her brief marriage to the father of her daughter was an utter mistake.
Women passing as men to enlist in the military was a common motif in popular culture but had a solid basis in reality. The two examples of Deborah Sampson (in the American Revolution) and Hannah Snell (in the British army) are noted. Women discovered to be passing in military contexts seem to have been treated more kindly in the public press, though descriptions of them often emphasize their features and habits as masculine in character, possibly to reinforce the gender boundary. There is also a clear effort to assure the public regarding the absence of any sexual deviance in these military heroines, especially if a subsequent heterosexual marriage can be provided.
Friedli’s last example points out the ambiguous nature of the gender boundary, and the contortions given to particular stories in order to fit them to the prevailing narratives. The Chevalier D’Eon first came to public notice as a French nobleman in the 1750s, but in that same era began to appear publicly presenting as a woman. A story circulated that D’Eon was born female but raised as a boy for political reasons and was only now returning to femininity. Historians are unclear on the underlying political and personal motivations involved, but it is known that D’Eon collected newspaper clippings of references to cross-dressing and hermaphrodites. Public fascination with the case created pressure for an expert judgment to clarify D’Eon’s status. During a trial sparked by wagers about the issue, two doctors testified that D’Eon was physiologically female (and some newspaper columnists then held D’Eon up as a critique against cross-dressing women, who were admonished to return to their proper dress as D’Eon had). D’Eon continued living as a woman until death in 1810, at which time a medical examination made a determination of physiological maleness. [I’m sorry about the convoluted grammar here, but I’m trying to remain linguistically neutral.] Thus, although part of D’Eon’s public narrative was that of a former “passing woman”, the story appears to fall in the far smaller category of “passing man” (a small enough category that this doesn’t really exist as a standard term).
A medical fascination with the idea of hermaphrodites and their relation to both gender identity and sexual orientation dates as early as the 16th century. While the popular attitude toward the concept of hermaphroditism ranged from sensational interest to medical pathology, throughout the 16-18th centuries, the idea of the hermaphrodite was used to explore and define the nature of gender. The hermaphrodite motif was intertwined with the motif of an enlarged clitoris either causing or being the result of sexual activity between women. 18th century medical writers began advancing the theory that hermaphroditism had always been a fiction, perhaps originating in an unfamiliarity with the potential for clitoral size. Other writers accepted the existence of a range of hermaphroditic physiologies, but focused their attention on the means by which specific individuals with ambiguous genitalia could be “correctly” assigned to the gender binary.
The article concludes with examples of the lengths to which public narratives tried to exclude women’s transgressive gender performance from the definition of femaleness. The case history of Catherine Vizzani--who dressed as a man to romance a series of women and in the end was shot while eloping with one--was translated from the original Italian into English with a number of editorial changes by the translator who faulted the original author for not more clearly finding an assignable medical cause for Vizzani’s behavior. The question of Vizzani’s physiology was only raised after her death, and the examining doctor found “nothing unusual.” The French case of Anne Grand-Jean had more immediate consequences. Having confessed her sexual desire for women, Anne was told that she must therefore be a man and should dress accordingly. But although Anne received a medical diagnosis of hermaphroditism, this was accompanied by an order to live as a woman. The two cases suggest a drive to “rationalize abnormal behavior in terms of pathology.”
In contrasting the medical and legal reactions to passing women, there is a clear distinction between the medical desire to situate gender difference in the body, and the legal concern with deception, fraud, and policing masculine privilege. Conversely, the many cases of long-term gender disguise suggest that, in practice, the standard for “successful masculinity” was not high. Demographics may have played a large part, with half the male population under 16 --an age at which it was accepted for boys to be economically independent.
The article concludes with a return to the consideration of how policing of gender categories and boundaries was driven and enabled by shifting understandings of gender roles within the family, and the ways in which passing women and the image of the hermaphrodite challenged those roles by existing outside them.
* * *
My primary blog has moved, but feel free to comment in either place.
Full citation:Friedli, Lynne. 1987. “Passing Women: A Study of Gender Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century” in Rousseau, G. S. and Roy Porter (eds). Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Manchester University Press, Manchester. ISBN 0-8078-1782-1
In the initial discussion in this article, Friedli notes the significantly different experiences and motivations of women cross-dressing or passing as men, and men cross-dressing or passing as women. These are, of course, derived from the massively different social and legal positions of men and women at the time. But it is a reminder that research into homoerotic or transgender issues in history can never assume that the issues relevant to one gender will carry over to another. It might even be considered impossible to treat homosexuality as a unified concept, with concerns of equal relevance to men and women, prior to an increasing acceptance of gender-equality. (Which, of course, means that it still can't be treated as such today.)
Friedli provides an extensive examination of “passing women” -- defined as women (using current terminology, it might be better to say “persons assigned female at birth”, but Friedli uses “women” and I will follow that here) who live, work, and/or marry as men for some period during their lives. This is specifically distinguished from theatrical cross-dressing or overt cross-dressing as a sexual signal. While the phenomenon is far from confined to the 18th century, there seems to have been a fascination with it in England, beginning in the late 17th century.
One of the most obvious benefits of passing was access to the greater social and economic opportunities available to men, as well as reducing certain physical risks experienced by women. Clearly, another attraction (or side benefit) for some was the opportunity to pursue romantic or sexual relationships with women under the cover of a heterosexual appearance. There was also a fascination with men cross-dressing during this period, but that was a social (and sometimes sexual) practice, as there were no economic or status advantages to be gained.
The most common source of information on passing women is not from the occasional medical case history or court record, but from newspapers. In general, passing women were not prosecuted unless there were a marriage (to a woman) involved, and the concern was typically categorized as “fraud”. However, the discovery of a “female husband” did not inevitably result in prosecution, or at least, there are news stories of women marrying each other that mention no legal action. In contrast to the treatment of male homoerotic activity, there is no evidence for legal concerns focused on women’s sexual activities, and none of the same overt public disapproval that effeminate men received. [Note that this article is looking specifically at England, and these statements do not necessarily hold true elsewhere at the time.]
Due to the anecdotal nature of the evidence, it is impossible to attempt quantitative studies of passing, and Friedli has also chosen not to consider it in the context of medical debates considering sexual difference. Instead, this article considers three contexts: changes in definitions of femininity and masculinity; medical interest in hermaphrodites and anxiety around gender boundaries; and the use of pornographic representations of transgression that also function to define the limits of acceptable behavior.
During the 18th century, the concept of “wife and mother” as a professional job description began to be defined and addressed in didactic and educational literature. [Although Friedli doesn’t note this explicitly, this discussion seems to focus on the middle class.] The notion of the “companionate marriage,” based on a supportive emotion bond, rather than being primarily an economic contract, contrasts with the negative image of marriage in 17th century intellectual culture. While the idealized mother described and prescribed in 18th century literature was scarcely an achievable ideal, it left little room for a public role for women outside of that framework. Women’s sexuality was not denied, but was circumscribed within the role of wife+mother.
The corresponding masculine role with respect to the family was supervisory: in charge but disengaged. Failures of child-rearing were thus inherently a maternal failure, and the rejection of a material role created doubts about a woman’s inherent femaleness as well as her femininity. It is in this context that passing women challenged the understanding of what it meant to be female.
The focus in prosecutions of passing women on the idea of “fraud” might be seen as an implicit admission of the performativity of gender roles, but must also be understood in the context of a concern with fraud in the fields of religion and medicine. Women were considered to be constitutionally more credulous, and thus more susceptible to religious extremism and medical quackery. But conversely, women were also considered to be inherently more deceptive, taking as examples the use of clothing and cosmetics to alter the appearance. [To clarify, these are characterizations in the literature of the time.] Comparing this last with satires of men for effeminate foppishness, we see that both men and women are criticized for an excess of femininity. Masculinity is increasingly defined by ridicule of characteristics defined as feminine. In contrast to some eras and contexts when individual women’s appropriation of “masculine” characteristics was seen as aspirational, in the 18th century it was characterized as a rejection of the “natural” role of wife+mother and an assault on the clear boundary between male and female.
Friedli examines four case studies to explore these issues. Perhaps expectedly, these are not the more casual journalistic mentions of passing women, meant for sensation and amusement, but instead are individuals for whom significant evidence is available.
Mary Hamilton began passing as a man at 14, served an apprenticeship to a quack doctor, began practicing on her own under the name Charles Hamilton, married a woman named Mary Price in 1746, and in the same year was arrested when Mary Price brought a legal claim that Hamilton was a woman, not a man. The court case when led to her conviction and punishment focused on the matter of fraud, however the story was taken up by novelist Henry Fielding, whose fictionalized treatment, The Female Husband, focused more sensationally on the sexual aspects. (Mary Price testified that she had not at first realized that her husband was not a man, as they had enjoyed penetrative sex.) Fielding seems to have invented a backstory for Mary Hamilton involving being initiated in same-sex erotics by an older woman who is additionally stigmatized as being part of a circle of Methodist lesbians, entangling religious prejudice into the mix.
Friedli’s second example seems a bit marginal in the context of passing women. Charlotte Charke was an actress famous for playing “trouser roles” who also regularly cross-dressed in off-stage life. On some occasions this seems to have been for economic reasons (taking male jobs to make ends meet when not on the stage), in other cases by personal choice. Although Charke did not attempt an extended disguise, she regularly traveled with a female companion (who may or may not have been a romantic partner) as “Mr. and Mrs. Brown”. On a different occasion, her male persona was pursued romantically by a young woman who hoped for marriage but Charke revealed the disguise to defuse the situation. Her autobiography (which was a very self-conscious work of public relations) gives no clear indication of her romantic inclinations, except to note that her brief marriage to the father of her daughter was an utter mistake.
Women passing as men to enlist in the military was a common motif in popular culture but had a solid basis in reality. The two examples of Deborah Sampson (in the American Revolution) and Hannah Snell (in the British army) are noted. Women discovered to be passing in military contexts seem to have been treated more kindly in the public press, though descriptions of them often emphasize their features and habits as masculine in character, possibly to reinforce the gender boundary. There is also a clear effort to assure the public regarding the absence of any sexual deviance in these military heroines, especially if a subsequent heterosexual marriage can be provided.
Friedli’s last example points out the ambiguous nature of the gender boundary, and the contortions given to particular stories in order to fit them to the prevailing narratives. The Chevalier D’Eon first came to public notice as a French nobleman in the 1750s, but in that same era began to appear publicly presenting as a woman. A story circulated that D’Eon was born female but raised as a boy for political reasons and was only now returning to femininity. Historians are unclear on the underlying political and personal motivations involved, but it is known that D’Eon collected newspaper clippings of references to cross-dressing and hermaphrodites. Public fascination with the case created pressure for an expert judgment to clarify D’Eon’s status. During a trial sparked by wagers about the issue, two doctors testified that D’Eon was physiologically female (and some newspaper columnists then held D’Eon up as a critique against cross-dressing women, who were admonished to return to their proper dress as D’Eon had). D’Eon continued living as a woman until death in 1810, at which time a medical examination made a determination of physiological maleness. [I’m sorry about the convoluted grammar here, but I’m trying to remain linguistically neutral.] Thus, although part of D’Eon’s public narrative was that of a former “passing woman”, the story appears to fall in the far smaller category of “passing man” (a small enough category that this doesn’t really exist as a standard term).
A medical fascination with the idea of hermaphrodites and their relation to both gender identity and sexual orientation dates as early as the 16th century. While the popular attitude toward the concept of hermaphroditism ranged from sensational interest to medical pathology, throughout the 16-18th centuries, the idea of the hermaphrodite was used to explore and define the nature of gender. The hermaphrodite motif was intertwined with the motif of an enlarged clitoris either causing or being the result of sexual activity between women. 18th century medical writers began advancing the theory that hermaphroditism had always been a fiction, perhaps originating in an unfamiliarity with the potential for clitoral size. Other writers accepted the existence of a range of hermaphroditic physiologies, but focused their attention on the means by which specific individuals with ambiguous genitalia could be “correctly” assigned to the gender binary.
The article concludes with examples of the lengths to which public narratives tried to exclude women’s transgressive gender performance from the definition of femaleness. The case history of Catherine Vizzani--who dressed as a man to romance a series of women and in the end was shot while eloping with one--was translated from the original Italian into English with a number of editorial changes by the translator who faulted the original author for not more clearly finding an assignable medical cause for Vizzani’s behavior. The question of Vizzani’s physiology was only raised after her death, and the examining doctor found “nothing unusual.” The French case of Anne Grand-Jean had more immediate consequences. Having confessed her sexual desire for women, Anne was told that she must therefore be a man and should dress accordingly. But although Anne received a medical diagnosis of hermaphroditism, this was accompanied by an order to live as a woman. The two cases suggest a drive to “rationalize abnormal behavior in terms of pathology.”
In contrasting the medical and legal reactions to passing women, there is a clear distinction between the medical desire to situate gender difference in the body, and the legal concern with deception, fraud, and policing masculine privilege. Conversely, the many cases of long-term gender disguise suggest that, in practice, the standard for “successful masculinity” was not high. Demographics may have played a large part, with half the male population under 16 --an age at which it was accepted for boys to be economically independent.
The article concludes with a return to the consideration of how policing of gender categories and boundaries was driven and enabled by shifting understandings of gender roles within the family, and the ways in which passing women and the image of the hermaphrodite challenged those roles by existing outside them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 04:21 pm (UTC)Would the author even consider it an option?
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 05:54 pm (UTC)1. What are the models that people had to understand and conceptualize their identity?
2. How much can we trust the evidence we are given about that understanding, considering the circumstances in which that evidence was recorded?
Regarding #1, this is an area where I tend to lean to the "social constructionist" side. While I firmly believe that romantic and erotic impulses are unconsciously grounded (whether in genetics, epigenetics, environment, or--as seems most likely--some shifting combination thereof), I think it's pretty clear that how people understand and frame their impulses in that regard is strongly shaped by the cultural models they are offered.
As a fairly recent example, I think that the demographic shifts in what proportion of individuals identify as a butch lesbian or as a trans man may be better understood in terms of the availability of the cultural models, rather than as drastic shifts in the distribution of the underlying internal experiences.
For that matter, the rise of the cultural model of being non-binary or gender-fluid has made that self-identity much more widely available than when people would have had to invent the concept individually from scratch. (Which they did, on a regular basis, with concepts like "third sex".)
The cultural model of "passing woman" (i.e., AFAB living--though not necessarily identifying internally--as a man) has been available for a fairly long period in western culture. (At the very least, from the 15-20th centuries, possibly earlier depending on how you interpret it.) During various parts of that period, the cultural model of "woman who romantically/erotically desires other women" was also available, but somewhat less commonly. Sometimes the two were imagined as intersecting, sometimes not. And the two models weren't always equally available, depending on place, time, and class.
And all that is without tossing in the cultural model of "hermaphrodite" which may, in some cases, have been inspired by physiologically intersex individuals, but in many other cases seems to have been used to categorize all manner of gender transgressions (as well as being rooted in a vast ignorance of the variety of genital appearance). At the times when "hermaphrodite" was available as a cultural model, people used it as an identity tool, both for themselves and for others. When it ceased to be an accepted cultural model, people generally stopped using it.
So it's my perception that the individuals who fit into the category "passing women" are unlikely to have all had the same motivations or the same internal impulses that led them to the choice. Rather, in each case, it may have been the available cultural model that best fit that person's needs at the time.
Which moves us on to consideration #2.
Looking at people's life stories (as opposed to their formal testimony), it's clear that there were a lot of different motivations for passing: economic, pragmatic, romantic/erotic. Strict notions of appropriate gendered behavior applied to a lot of aspects of life: to occupations, to desire, to behavioral affect.
A large number of passing women indicated that they were driven by the greater economic opportunities available to men (or by active avoidance of prostitution as an occupation). It's even possible that some of the passing women who had romantic or erotic encounters with women were doing so purely as part of the disguise, rather than from romantic/erotic desire.
We also have a number of stories where a person strongly articulates something that can best be understood as transgender identity. And we have an enormous number of stories where we have no first-person testimony as to how the individual understood their identity, or where that testimony is clearly shaped to the expectations of the audience under duress. (This goes in both directions: people affirming a female identity after passing, and people maintaining a male identity in the face of physiological examination.)
[Oops, comment got too long. Will continue in 2nd comment.]
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 05:56 pm (UTC)On the other hand, we see a very loud refrain in literary models that many people (quite likely including the women themselves) found the idea of a woman desiring another woman to be so unimaginable that if they did feel that desire, it automatically meant that they must actually be a man. This is one reason why I'm hesitant to default to a position that all AFAB persons living as a man should be understood as trans men. Similarly, I don't want to default to a position that all AFAB persons who have romantic/erotic desires for women should be understood as lesbians. (It's an interesting aspect that, in pre-modern literature, you can find a fair number of "happily ever after" transmasculine stories while finding essentially no HEA lesbian stories.)
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the idea that we can or should make retroactive judgments about the self-identification of specific individuals. On an intellectual level, because I do think the social categories we tend to use are strongly rooted in their specific cultural contexts. But on an emotional level because it puts lesbians and trans men in competition for "ownership" of historical stories and individuals. And while I understand the impulse, I personally think that embracing historic ambiguity is healthier.
That's why I regularly note that I'm presenting these stories as being "useful" for imagining lesbian characters without making any claims that the characters (both fictional and historic) were "lesbian" in some essential way. I do tend to be sloppy about it in shorthand, I confess.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 06:22 pm (UTC)I realized at the time that not all presenting as man would consider themselves what we consider trans, nor should they.
Instead of having blurted out a "oh what about" thought I should have expanded on it more.
I'm learning from your research and essays, which I appreciate. Thank you again.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 08:25 pm (UTC)Now I'm poundering what it would be like to read a topic through the lens to see how it was treated through the ages.
Which is why I am enjoying what you are doing, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-23 08:05 am (UTC)Stay shiny.