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Friday, June 6, 2025 - 07:00
The concluding chapter of Boag's book on cross-dressers on the American frontier uses the case study of Joseph (Lucy) Lobdell to illustrate how stories of gender-crossing began being turned into stories of psychological illness. Lobdell was right on the cusp: considered a "curiosity" at first but then pathologized. (Though it doesn't help that Lobdell seems to have suffered from genuine mental illness, separate from their gender and sexuality.)
Tomorrow I start with a run of shorter articles, though it turns out that several of them repeat information covered in more detail elsewhere.
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Full citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Chapter 5 – “Death of a Modern Diana”: Sexologists, Cross-Dressers, and the Heteronormalization of the American Frontier
Our kick-off biography for this chapter is a long, convoluted story about expert hunter and frontiersman Joseph Lobdell, who left home in New York in 1855 for the wilds of Minnesota. Lobdell was famed for his hunting and well-liked, until by chance it was discovered he had a female body. His Minnesota neighbors took this badly and shipped him back to New York. But Lobdell had been running ahead of discovery before, and had even published a feminist treatise under his birth name, Lucy Ann Lobdell, complaining of an abusive husband, of the wage discrimination faced by women, and arguing that if women were being forced to step up to be the primary support of their families, then society should accommodate them.
[Note: Lobdell’s story shows the difficulty in trying to apply modern identity labels to historic individuals. While Lobdell lived most of his adult life as a man, the autobiographical treatise not only was written under a female name, but from a female social identity—very emphatically.]
After returning to New York, Lobdell continued living as a man and became a music and dance teacher. At one point he became engaged to one of his female pupils, but a rival suitor dug up Lobdell’s background and was planning a tar-and-feather party. The fiancée got wind of this and warned Lobdell and he was on the run again. Ill health led Lobdell to return to a female identity in order to live in a charity house.
In the same area, one Marie Louise Perry, abandoned by the unsuitable lover she had eloped with (though additional details are confused and conflicting) also ended up in the same charitable institution. Perry and Lobdell took a shine to each other and left the institution together in 1869, found a preacher to marry them, and started an itinerant, somewhat feral lifestyle with Lobdell hunting and doing odd jobs as they tried to live off the land. They spent several stints in jail for vagrancy or more nebulous charges, with Lobdell’s sex being a point of contention when discovered. Despite a mistaken report of Lobdell’s death, he ended up in an insane asylum in 1880 due to what appears to be genuine mental illness (depression and dementia), but exacerbated by attitudes toward his gender presentation.
Various dates for his eventual death in the asylum are given, ranging from 1885 to 1912. After Lobdell’s commitment, his wife continued to live on their farm for a while, then returned to Massachusetts until her death in 1890. A newspaper interviewed her about her “strange” relationship with Lobdell, at which she argued that there was nothing strange in two women living together. [Note: Once again complicating the question of Lobdell’s gender identity.]
The doctor who treated Lobdell in the asylum wrote him up as a case study in “sexual perversion,” referring to his relationship with Perry as “lesbian”—one of the earliest American case studies in the sexological tradition. Lobdell claimed at one point that he had “peculiar organs” that supported his claim to male identity. [Note: There’s no suggestion in the book that Lobdell might have been intersex, although that is mentioned in the context of an entirely different case study.] The doctor took this at face value and recorded it as the mythic “lesbian with enlarged, penetrative clitoris” which has haunted the historic record. The doctor drew connections between Lobdell’s mental illness and his sexual inversion in support of the theory that inversion could be a byproduct of some other medical or psychological misfortune (in contrast to another theory that inversion was always congenital).
When originally documented, Lobdell’s case was considered an anomaly. But as sexologists identified increasing numbers of cases in the 1890s, they concluded that some historical force was causing a rise in perversion. [Note: As opposed to the possibility that, having discovered the hammer, they were now going around identifying lots of objects as nail-like.] This just happened to coincide with the era when people were declaring the end of the Western frontier. It was—they concluded—the passing of the West that was generating a wave of sexual inversion. By this means, they could neatly erase the presence of queer people from the West itself by claiming that sexual inversion only arose as the West disappeared.
The chapter spends some time exploring the connections the sexologists made between inversion, “degeneracy” in both a moral and eugenicist sense, and the alleged decline of western civilization (primarily in the context of Europe). This image of degeneracy was in contrast to American ideals of progress and expansion. Sexual degeneracy might be contributing to the fall of Old World civilization, but America could stand firm and hold the moral line, thus avoiding the same fate.
Vigorous rural manual labor was the way to avoid the enervating effects of urban life that led people to the neurasthenia that caused inversion and other ills. (I’m doing some serious condensation of this discussion.) “Urban” life was also a dog whistle for immigrants, non-white communities, and the working class, all of whom were potentially susceptible to degeneracy. The frontier, the outdoors, (and whiteness) were the cure for these ills!
Conclusion—Sierra Flats and Haunted Valleys: Cross-Dressers and the Contested Terrain of America’s Frontier Past
This brief chapter sums up the main themes of the book, tying them together with examples of mid-19th century fiction (e.g., by Bret Harte) that reflect reality more than the later mythologizing Western fiction that erased queerness entirely.
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Thursday, June 5, 2025 - 09:00
This chapter returns again to AMAB stories, focusing on the way those stories were explained away from the "real history" of the western frontier.
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LHMPFull citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Chapter 4 – “He Was a Mexican”: Race and the Marginalization of Male-to-Female Cross-Dressers in Western History
This chapter looks at one way in which male cross-dressers were sidelined in histories of the West—specifically, by focusing on racialized histories of cross-dressers, and so assigning the practice to non-white populations.
The biography that kicks off the chapter follows Mrs. Nash, a woman of Mexican origin. An army captain had hired Nash as a laundress in New Mexico and then recognized her some years later in 1868 in Kansas when she was presenting as a man, which she explained she had done out of economic necessity to get work driving ox teams across the plains. The captain once again hired her to do laundry for his troop, enabling her to return to female dress. In addition to having a great reputation for her laundry skills, she was in demand as a cook, specializing in tamales and baked goods. She also did sewing and dressmaking, making all her own clothing.
Nash spoke of having had two children back in Mexico who had died, but did not much like sharing quarters with children, though she also turned her hand to midwifery. With all these side hustles, she brought in a significant income, which had the unfortunate side-effect of attracting mercenary men who married her then absconded with her money. (This happened twice, once with the man who gave her the married surname of Nash.) Her third marriage was more successful. But after 4 or 5 years of marriage, Nash fell ill with appendicitis while her husband was away. Knowing the end was near, Nash asked for a priest and requested that she be buried quickly in whatever clothes she was wearing at the time. But after her death, her co-workers wanted to honor her better. When they were preparing the body for burial, they discovered that Nash had male anatomy, much to the astonishment of the witnesses. The army surgeon confirmed this observation. When her husband returned from patrol, he was questioned about his wife but indicated that he knew her to be a woman. He implied that they had a sexual relationship. But he was mocked and teased so relentlessly about his marriage that a month after Nash’s death he committed suicide.
After that, stories began being invented to explain Nash’s cross-dressing, including the assertion that it was a disguise to escape consequences for a mass murder. News accounts asked the question that confronts the “progress narrative:” what practical benefit would there be for a man to masquerade as a woman, losing male privilege and economic opportunity?
Notable in the news accounts is how Nash’s ethnicity (Mexican) was emphasized and highlighted. Along with this, she was assigned negative stereotypes that should have been contradicted by the regard her associates actually had for her.
This was a common pattern in accounts of male cross-dressing: if the person was not white, their race was emphasized; if white, it was not mentioned. (In one exception, the cross-dresser was noted as being white in the context that he regularly associated with Black men.)
After her death, accounts of Nash claimed that there had been suspicion about her sex, referencing unusual facial hair (and her habit of wearing a veil across her face), a large build, and a low voice. But these later claims are at odds with the genuine surprise felt during her laying out.
One racialized motif that was particularly prevalent was the “Mexican bandit” who cross-dressed to evade the law, invoking a stereotype of Mexican men as simultaneously criminal, deceitful, and unmanly. “Indian blood” was another motif that was invoked, drawing from genuine Native traditions of cross-gender social roles.
The Mexican motif also worked in the opposite direction, depicting Mexican men as unmanly because they were prone to cross-dressing.
Non-whites, in general, were “de-masculinized” by denying them the rights accorded to white men in American society, such as the right to own property and to vote.
A strong example of this was the feminizing of Chinese men. Due to migration patterns and motivations, the male-to-female ratio among Chinese immigrants was enormous, even before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 froze immigration. Combined with anti-miscegenation laws, this meant that Chinese immigrant communities were largely all-male. Other factors that contributed to the feminization of Chinese men was a tendency to sparse facial hair, the long, braided hairstyle (but see the political history of the Chinese queue), and loose, non-European clothing styles. The exclusion from land-owning and many white-coded occupations, combined with the general scarcity of women in the West, forced many Chinese men into female-coded occupations such as cooking, laundry, and domestic service.
There was also a sexual element to the framing of racialized cross-dressers, as they were sometimes (whether accurately or not) accused of cross-dressing for the purpose of prostitution. Once again, this intertwined with white reactions to Native “berdache” traditions. (Although Native American alternate gender traditions also included women taking on a male social role, this does not appear to have become part of the official “story” about cross-dressed women.)
Another side of the fictionalization of Western masculinity was how it became a stand-in for what was perceived as an erosion of older models of masculinity. Becoming a “pseudo-cowboy” via reading and re-enacting Western literature created new models of manliness that were coded white. [Note: compare also the erasure of non-white “cowboys” from popular media.]
Overall, the narrative was: the West was “won” by virile (straight) white men. Non-whites were marginalized as villains, criminals, deviants, and effeminates, and queer men were subsumed to one or more of these. Thus “men” were all straight because anyone who wasn’t straight could be reclassified as “not a man.” Ideals of masculinity were equated with the “men of the West” which influenced even those not on the frontier to support and maintain these mythic archetypes as a historic reality that they could adopt as an image. [Note: see, for example, the “Marlboro man” which one could become by smoking the right brand of cigarettes.]
Touching back on the story of Mrs. Nash and her husband from the beginning of the chapter, the (white) husband’s sexuality was never questioned in the press, only his supposed gullibility (he didn’t know) or greed (he only cared about her income and cooking). He was normalized as a “regular man,” just as those who cross-dressed for dances or entertainment in all-male communities were normalized (regardless of their individual motivations).
There is a discussion of how the “progress narrative” (i.e., cross-dressing is done for social practicality) is gendered and breaks down when applied to men.
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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 - 08:00
History must not only be studied, but continually re-studied and re-surfaced. We have all seen how easy it is for something "obvious" to become memory-holed even in as short a time as the last five years. How much easier when the primary sources were shaky to begin with and the myth-makers have a social and political agenda that they may not be entirely conscious of themselves. How easy it is to re-write history "as it should have been" (a phrase that has always grated on me in the context of the Society for Creative Anachronism, regardless of the direction of one's "should").
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LHMPFull citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Part Two – “The Story of the Perverted Life is Not Attractive”: Making the American West and the Frontier Heteronormative -- Chapter 3 – “And Love is a Vision and Life is a Lie”: The Daughters of Calamity Jane
This section of the book examines how the reality of cross-dressing in the West was erased from the historic record. As usual, the chapter begins with a detailed biography.
Joe Monahan died of a sudden illness in rural Idaho in 1903. The friends who prepared him for burial were surprised that he had a female body and buried him quietly. But another local felt that Monahan had been done a disservice and brought the matter to the attention of a newspaper, extoling his ordinary, virtuous life. Few facts were known about him at that time and only a few more can be found in the archives. He was born around 1850, probably in New York, and had been living in Idaho since at least 1870. He was spotty about picking up his mail—but he did receive mail—and had voted in 1880. (Women did not have the vote in Idaho at that time.) An acquaintance noted that the letters he received were possibly from a sister in Buffalo New York, to whom he wrote occasionally. This friend wrote to an official in Buffalo hoping to locate his family (in part, to deal with his estate). This turned up a foster mother and foster sister, who confirmed that “Johanna Monahan” had gone West around age 14 and had corresponded regularly. Their letters were later found in Monahan’s cabin.
But searching the archives in Buffalo for a Johanna Monahan only added some further confusion about her birth family and identity. In any event, the foster mother reported that Monahan’s mother had dressed her in boy’s clothes and had her earn a living with jobs typically performed by boys. When her foster mother took Monahan in, he was sent to school. In her version, Monahan left in 1869 first to California, then to Idaho.
As the story made its way into the Idaho media, other people began adding details to Monahan’s history, including that many had suspected he was a woman but no one made a fuss about it. People in that region were aware of many cross-dressing women, for various reasons. Even in correspondence discussing this issue, Monahan’s associates used male pronouns for him.
All of this is backstory for how Monahan’s story was picked up in popular media. In the 1950s, Monahan’s story was revived in newspapers, theater, and eventually movies with the 1993 film The Ballad of Little Jo, all of which include a large amount of invention and no hint of queerness. Monahan is made fully heterosexual and “man troubles” are offered as the motivation for her transformation.
This framing was begun in 1904 when uneasiness about the sexual implications of cross-dressing led newspapers to “reclaim” Monahan as essentially feminine, including fake images in a hoopskirt and an invented romantic betrayal by a man. (The fiction is embellished by many details with no connection to Monahan’s actual history, including the addition of an illegitimate child.)
The chapter moves on to provide more examples of how the actual biographies of cross-dressing women were re-written in the late 19th and early 20th century to disarm concerns about gender and sexuality.
Existing fictional genres were adapted, such as the seduction motif in which the woman both flees and cross-dresses to escape her shame. Such a fiction was assigned to Charley Parkhurst when a post-mortem not only identified his bodily sex but indicated a previous pregnancy. (Motherhood was a strong motif for feminizing the subject.)
Dime novels of the 1870s were fond of using heterosexual relationships as the motivation for cross-dressing, as with fictionalizations of the life of Martha Jane Canary (Calamity Jane). The real life Canary rarely cross-dressed and identified as female, but her fictional twin is more cagey, implying either inversion or non-binary identity, and cross-dressing regularly in order to hunt down the man who betrayed her.
Several other fictional examples of “betrayal and escape” or “betrayal and revenge” are listed. Such stories solidly establish the heterosexual credentials of their heroines. Such overt inventions then sometimes were resurrected as “true” news stories.
Fictional cross-dressing narratives sometimes re-normalized their protagonists with marriage and a return to female presentation. Often this includes a return to the urban East, symbolically localizing cross-dressing to the peculiar logistics and needs of Western life.
Another subgenre involves a woman cross-dressing to join a male lover in criminal activities—a genre that has roots in a number of actual biographies. (Note: these are all cited from newspaper accounts, and it’s unclear whether the author considers them wholly fictional or simply sensationalized and “straightened.”)
Even as the fictional genre of cross-dressing women came to popularity, the acceptance of real-life cross-dressing women waned, with women in San Francisco and other locations facing arrest for cross-dressing by the early 20th century.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of whether cross-dressing destabilized gender or enforces it by aligning activities and characteristics rigidly with gender presentation. I.e., women could participate in the “Wild West” but only as men. This alignment must then be undermined by re-feminizing the participants once they were separated (by time, space, or reality) from the actual frontier.
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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 08:59
Today I finished revisions on the sixth Skinsinger story. I only have the final novelette left to go. Plus several more specialized revision passes, a separate copyeditor, drawing up all the additional material, coming up with a cover, and learning book formatting. You know, the trivial stuff.
When I created a publication entry for the website and reached the field for "publication date" I realized that I have two months to get this all finished to hit my target of having it out for Worldcon. Doable, but no room for dawdling. Guess I'd better find a cover artist and copyeditor!
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Skin-Singer: Tales of the KaltaovenTuesday, June 3, 2025 - 07:00
I haven't blogged this chapter in as much detail, as it runs crosswise to the topics the Project is interested in. But it's always useful to see the ways in which structurally parallel topics in male and female queer history (if you will forgive me for applying an inappropriate binary) are so very non-parallel in how they played out. A very brief slice of very recent history has convinced us that queer history can be viewed as a unified subject. But apparent/assigned gender has always been a stronger force than any theoretical similarity in non-normative experience. This continues to play out in the study of queer history. In another publication by Boag that I'll be blogging after I finish this book, he notes that when he was studying the 20th century history of same-sex relationships in the Pacific Northwest, he found so little data on women that he decided to focus his book entirely on men. Thus, an initial disparity in data becomes compounded to complete erasure. That disparity in data is why it's so important to have historians working specifically on women's experiences (and those assigned female). Because otherwise there's a temptation not to do the extra work to hunt down the relevant data and to make erroneous assumptions that conclusions about male data can be generalized. There was a delightful explosion of work and publications on lesbian history specifically in the first decade or so of the 21st century, but it's as if the fashion has passed. (Oh well, maybe I can get caught up on the reading?)
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Chapter 2 – “I have Done My Part in the Winning of the West”: Unveiling the Male-to-Female Cross-Dresser
As this chapter focuses on male cross-dressing, I will be skimming it more briefly. As in the first chapter, we begin with an extensive case history. “M” began dressing in female-coded clothing as a youth, and left home for the West at age 15 due to family conflicts. M preferred playing with dolls, cooking, and sewing rather than male-coded activities, but didn’t back down from fighting his bullies. Further questioning indicated that M’s mother had initiated both the cross-dressing and needlecrafts. A similar story is found around the turn of the century about a different boy whose mother had strongly desired a daughter and treated him as one. Regardless, M expressed a strong preference for living as a woman.
Male cross-dressing occurred in a variety of contexts, including Native American alternate genders, temporary cross-dressing during dances and entertainments in all-male communities, as well as those doing it out of personal preference or identity.
Theatrical cross-dressing was performed for audiences who also enjoyed blackface acts, as well as “exotic” acts by Chinese performers, so the interest was part of a general taste for disruptive and non-normative performance.
Outside of performance contexts, local laws might prohibit male cross-dress as noted in 1882 in Nevada. In mid 19th century San Francisco, arrests for cross-dressing document its prevalence. While reasons given to the authorities must be viewed with some skepticism, they include evading pursuit, “for a lark,” as a disguise during criminal activity, to escape prison, but also some more unexpected reasons, such as to avoid the constriction and warmth of male clothing for medical reasons.
The gender imbalance in the West meant that someone presenting as a woman with female-coded skills such as cooking, sewing, and housekeeping might make a good living with few questions.
Moving into the 1890s, cross-dressing men came under greater scrutiny with regard to sexuality and mental health. The idea of the “sexual invert” was spreading and might be applied or even adopted as an understanding for cross-dressing. In this context, those who cross-dressed for theatrical performance came under pressure to present a more normative image off-stage.
There is a discussion of the dynamics and hazards of male cross-dressers inspiring, encouraging, or pursuing flirtations or sexual relationships with men. There is a discussion of certain cases that may have involved intersex people who presented as different genders at different periods of their life.
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Monday, June 2, 2025 - 07:00
If women taking on male identities can be explained away for practical reasons (safety, economics, social power) then where is the explanation for men taking on female identities where those advantages are reversed? If women taking on male identities can be explained as a necessary requirement for desiring women, then where is the explanation for their female partners desiring them? If women taking on male identities can be explained by innate inborn gender identity, then what of the life histories that begin with a parent imposing the gender presentation which later is exaplained as "feeling natural?" Applying the simplest explanation: historic people changed their gender presentation for a wide variety of reasons and motivations, in a variety of contexts, and with variable permanence. This greatly complicates the "naming and claiming" approach to queer history that has prevailed for almost every flavor of queer that tackled the question of "what are our historic roots?" It's why that bug-a-boo of conservative historians "we just can't really know" can't be dismissed out of hand. In some cases, there is enough evidence, rooted in the individual's own testimony, and without the shadow of compulsion or legal threat, to be fairly confident about how they viewed their identity (if "identity" is even an accurate term in their context). But that still leaves the question of how much their own identity was shaped by the models and options their society offered to them. In the big picture of history, there is always clearly a spectrum. At one extreme are those whose identities and desires are rooted in their individual being and will come out in some fashion regardless of their cultural context. At another extreme are those whose expressions of identity and desire are built from the tools their specific society offers them. But it isn't a simple binary sliding scale, for desires and identities operate independently.
Boag points out that even within the fairly constrained scope of US history on the Western frontier in the later 19th century, the cultural explanations for the interplay between gender and desire were messily various, depending greatly on larger social movements and anxieties. And fictions of gender set in the "Wild West" were part of that interplay. Keep that in mind when writing your own Western fictions.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Part 1 – “Females in Male Attire, and Males in Petticoats”: Remembering Cross-Dressers in Western American and Frontier History -- Chapter 1 – “Known to All Police West of the Mississippi”: Disrobing the Female-to-Male Cross-Dresser
This chapter is probably the one of most interest in the book, cataloging and discussing cases of female cross-dressers. The text alternates between detailed case studies and general discussion.
In 1912, in Portland Oregon, Harry Allen (alias Harry Livingstone) was arrested and eventually charged with violating the Mann Act (transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes) due to having written to her partner (who presented herself as his wife) Isabelle Maxwell in Seattle, asking her to come to Portland, where she then engaged in prostitution to support them both.
During interrogation, Allen was recognized by a federal agent who had dealt with him previously regarding a bootlegging charge, under the identity Nell Pickerell. The authorities dropped the transporting charge and, given that cross-dressing was not illegal in Oregon, fell back on a vagrancy charge.
Allen became a media sensation, noting his ability to pass and history of male-coded, physically demanding jobs. His previous brushes with the law were dredged up, including press coverage of his gender-crossing as early as 1900, when he was a teenager. A great deal was made of two women who had fallen in love with Allen and then, on learning his assigned sex, committed suicide in despair. Newspapers offered various speculations on the reason for Allen’s gender-crossing, including dress reform, disappointment in (heterosexual) love, and to enable his criminality. Allen offered the straightforward explanation that it was to gain better jobs.
While in prison, Allen was interviewed by an anthropology student working on a thesis about alternative gender expressions in primitive societies, who argued that Allen was criminalized by society solely due to not fitting in, and that in a different society, Allen could have been offered a social role aligned with his desires. This interpretation fictionalized Allen’s life as much as the newspapers had, inventing events and details to support the theory. The student denied that Allen sexually desired women (despite evidently being a lesbian herself), which was contradicted by other observers.
Other reports described Allen as a “sexual invert”—a category that could include both lesbians and trans men at that time. Allen’s own testimony indicates that he considered himself to have changed sex.
Overall, society wanted to fit Allen into a “progress narrative” (i.e., economic motives) but Allen’s assertions contradicted this.
In 1908, in Montana, Sammy Williams—a lumberjack and cook—died at age 80 and was discovered to have a female body. Despite occasional teasing about beardlessness, Williams’ gender had never been questioned. Like many similar cases, the story spread in newspapers across the country, which framed it as a progress narrative with a certain amount of sympathy.
Gender-crossing stories of this type were relatively common in newspapers in the second half of the 19th century, generally locating the subject in the West. Progress narratives were the typical framing and the media might disapprove, but often were merely curious. The reasons offered for cross-dressing both by the subjects and by the reporters focused on practicality, safety, or for economic advantage. Some returned to female dress when no longer traveling.
Another context for more obvious cross-dressing was sex work, where either partial or full male clothing was used as an advertisement, with their identity as a woman not being concealed. Ironically, cross-dressing was used both to engage in, and to avoid engaging in, sex work.
Other motivations for cross-dressing included to participate in “slumming” tourism, or to assist in changing identity after encounters with the law. Women might cross-dress to track down a male betrayer, to elope with a disapproved suitor, to escape an abusive husband, unwillingly as a kidnap victim, or to avoid detection. All of these motivations existed, but when moving past media sensationalism, we also find sexual and gender motivations—details that newspapers were more reluctant to promote.
Newspaper accounts of women in same-sex sexual relationships framed them as mentally unstable and potentially violent, as with the case of Alice Mitchell. While cross-dressing stories of the 1850s to 1880s generally avoided suggesting sexual motives, by the end of the century, this aspect was increasingly mentioned. This paralleled the development and spread of sexological theories that linked sexuality with gender presentation.
A news item is offered from 1889 describing a young woman complaining about the obsessive and unwanted physical attention of her older female cousin with whom she shared a bed. The older woman expressed a wish to marry her and proposed cross-dressing for this purpose.
News accounts often worked to feminize cross-dressing individuals, once their identity was known, giving and impression of “we could tell, of course.” This framing typically accompanied a positive attitude toward the person, especially when they were not perceived as claiming male identity.
The depictions in the press align with specific timelines. Feminized descriptions are common more toward the mid-19th century, but by the end of the century there was an increasing focus on sexuality and on gender identity, emphasizing masculinity. By the 1890s, cross-dressers were more likely to be described as appearing and acting masculine, and were more likely to be given backstories involving an early interest in male-coded activities. By the 1910s and 1920s, unmasked cross-dressers were more likely to be described as physically robust and to be awkward and unattractive if required to wear women’s clothing. And in these later decades, they were more likely to be described as flirting with women or having female romantic partners. [Note: the chapter has more specific case studies than I am noting here.]
This pattern of reporting around the turn of the century aligns with increasing anxieties about “new women” usurping men’s place in society.
This new era of cross-dressing stories includes Milton Matson, arrested in 1895 on a fraud-related charge. His original gender was revealed and he explained (though we may feel free to be skeptical of the details) that his parents had dressed him as a boy after his brother’s death, for reasons related to inheritance, and he’d been cross-dressing so long that it felt natural. He had always preferred male-coded activities and enjoyed courting women.
Eugene De Forest, arrested in 1915 for “masquerading as a man” had a similar story and had been living as a man for 25 years, including marriage to a woman (as well as an earlier marriage to a man).
Jack Garland, on the other hand, avoided charges of gender impersonation by freely admitting that she was a woman who chose to dress in male clothing. Garland first gained media attention in 1897, but later did appear to be passing as a man.
The author discusses what types of evidence we can have regarding how cross-dressers understood their own gender identity, as well as evidence for how their associates interacted with them with regard to gender. Individuals who were long-term members of a community were generally taken at face value, even if circumstance revealed their bodies. Whereas individuals who moved frequently and had no community ties were more likely to be shunned and treated as a sensational curiosity. But not all long-term community members enjoyed acceptance once revealed. Responses might include ridicule or ostracization.
The chapter concludes with a summary of the main themes and chronology.
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Sunday, June 1, 2025 - 18:00
I'm starting coverage of a new book today, about how queer the Old West actually was and how that got hidden. At this point--thanks to my retirement work-schedule--I'm keeping my blog buffer full enough that I can commit to posting something every day for Pride month, just as I did when I kicked off the Project back in 2014. Well, actually, in 2014 I started posting on June 9, so I didn't actually post every day that month. I think maybe I did the whole month in some other year?
2014??? I've been doing the Lesbian Historic Motif Project for over a decade! I think last year I only noticed that well after the anniversary had passed, so I didn't do anything special. I like celebrating significant numbers, but I'm not so good about noticing when they happen.
On the fiction side, I've revised the first 4 (of 7) stories for Skin-singer: Tales of the Kaltaoven and am feeling quite confident about the project. I'm also noticing that I'd done at least one previous revision pass. Well, there's always something more to improve. It really is proving that what I needed wasn't so much time as the mental energy to get back to the fiction writing.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
Introduction: A Trip Along the Pike’s Peak Express – Cross-Dressers and America’s Frontier Past
The chapter opens with an anecdote about Horace Greeley (tagline: Go west, young man!) in 1859 checking out those who had actually followed his advice and speaking with a Colorado gold prospector who had decided to return back east. After the interview, he was informed that the prospector he’d been talking to was a woman.
This book explores such people in the American West who crossed gender in various ways. A major theme is that cross-dressers (the author’s term) were a common part of daily life in the West. A secondary topic is how, when, and why this simple fact was erased from US history. [Note: In conflating a wide variety of motivations and understandings of gender-crossing, Boag uses the term “cross-dressing” without intending to apply any particular interpretation on the individual instances. Thus “cross-dressing woman” is a person assigned female who dresses in male clothing and vice versa. I will follow this terminology for clarity. This is not meant to indicate any interpretation about individual identity.]
One inspiration for doing this study was the debate around the movie Brokeback Mountain regarding whether the same-sex relationship depicted was historically accurate—a debate grounded in generations of hyper-masculine cowboy characters in media. In contrast to the Hollywood image, Kinsey’s survey of sexual behavior found that male same-sex relations were more common in rural communities than urban ones.
The disconnect, Boag posits, comes from the conjunction of two events: the ending of the overall westward migration that defined the “frontier,” and the rise of sexological understandings of homosexual and heterosexual—both factors occurring around the turn of the 20th century. Both events are somewhat illusory. The end of the “Frontier” stood in for a variety of economic and social changes. And the popular embrace of sexological models was gradual and inconsistent. Even as westward movement slowed, the fictionalization of the “Wild West” began through performances and popular media.
Changes in the popular understanding of sexuality came from a combination of the shift from the one-gender model to the two-gender model (see Laqueur) by around 1800, and the theorizing that same-sex desire was caused by “inversion” of the sexual impulse, developing in the later 19th century. The medicalization and pathologization of same-sex desire became linked to theories about social decay and the stresses of modernization. Thus, according to this theory, same-sex desire would not occur in the “unspoiled” “natural” environment of the western frontier.
This framing required explanations for the observable fact of frequent cross-dressing in frontier cultures, which were resolved by a program of redefining the participants as heterosexual. Women who cross-dressed, by this framing, did so because success in the West required male disguise. Men who cross-dressed were a more difficult problem. It was addressed variously by erasure and the association of gender variance with non-white populations. Historians colluded in revising the story of the West as being the triumph of white male farmers, marrying and building communities.
The introduction finishes with a detailed case study of one individual who illustrates the issues and explanations discussed in the book.
Alberta Lucille Hart was born in 1840 to parents who had recently “reverse-migrated” from Oregon to Kansas. After the death of the father, the mother and child returned to Oregon where they had relatives. Hart enjoyed male-coded play and activities, enjoyed sports, despised housework, and began self-identifying as “the man of the family” (despite her mother remarrying). In addition to desiring to dress in male clothing and adopting a male hairstyle, Hart had a series of crushes and erotic fantasies centered on the female domestic servants in the household.
In response to teasing at school, Hart focused on excelling academically and graduated at the top of her class, continuing the pattern of crushes on female teachers and classmates. Academic success continued at college, where Hart formed a close relationship with classmate Eva Cushman. Their relationship was the subject of semi-friendly teasing and gossip. It became sexual, and when they were apart Hart wrote daily love letters to Cushman. Due to an inheritance from her late father, Hart was not only able to attend Stanford University, but to pay for Cushman to attend with her.
At university, Hart began adopting more masculine dress and activities, such as smoking and drinking, which resulted in Cushman gradually drawing away. [Note: Cushman’s reactions suggest that she understood herself to be involved with a woman, and the Hart’s increasing shift to male-presenting identity was not what she had signed up for. However it’s also possible to interpret her behavior as reacting to specific behaviors, rather than to female masculinity itself.] Hart regularly visited San Francisco for its nightlife and began a sexual relationship with a dancer there. This profligate lifestyle left Hart broke by graduation. She returned to Oregon and worked a variety of jobs to return to solvency then entered medical college as the only woman in her class. Again, she dealt with hazing by excelling academically and gaining highest honors.
The relationship with Cushman was completely over by this point and there was a series of unsuccessful romantic and sexual relationships with women and one extremely unsuccessful experiment with a man.
Hart’s medical studies led her to sexological writings, which resulted in depression regarding her own sexuality. She sought psychological treatment, but she laid out as a condition that she had no intention of changing her “masculine ambitions and tastes.” Her doctor agreed to focus on completing Hart’s transition into a man, including a hysterectomy. Hart chose to use the name Alan and shifted completely to a male presentation. In 1918, Hart gave a newspaper interview about his history and experiences, stating that he realized he must be one sex or the other, not “dual sex.”
This publicity raised questions of how law and society should treat Hart—for example, would he be subject to the military draft (which women were not)? Of course, “passing women” in the military were a long tradition.
Hart enjoyed a long medical career, with some speed bumps when rumor or notoriety caught up with him. Hart also published four medical-related novels, including one involving a gay man that may have been somewhat autobiographical. Eventually Hart settled into a long-term position in Connecticut where he served as director of a state health office up to his death in 1962 at age 72. Hart had one brief marriage in 1918, then a longer one starting in 1925 and lasting until his death.
Hart’s well-documented life was characterized in various ways by others: cross-dresser, homosexual, and “invert” (as “transsexual” was not yet in use until much later in his life). There is no clear documentation of how he categorized himself other than clearly considering himself a man. Across Hart’s lifetime, nomenclature and categories developed, shifted, and proliferated.
The author discusses Judith Butler’s ideas about gender as performance. In this context, to perform as male is to be male. Yet performance is not permanent or stable. In this context, cross-dressing can simultaneously disrupt the binary while also confirming it.
Popular media is the key source of information, not only for the existence of cross-dressing, but for documenting its reception. The author notes his potentially problematic use of “cross-dressing” to cover a disparate range of behaviors and identities. He notes that his use of pronouns will follow the understanding of how the person identified, but will sometimes reflect how they presented at various life stages.
Boag also takes note of the term “progress narrative,” which refers to framings of a personal story that characterize cross-dressing as done for a practical purpose unrelated to sexuality or gender identity.
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Saturday, May 31, 2025 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 315 – The House of the Women by Jeannelle M. Ferreira - transcript
(Originally aired 2025/05/31 - listen here)
Every time I encounter a new story by Jeannelle M. Ferreira, today’s author, I’m impressed with the breadth of historic settings she can tackle, from the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars in her novel The Covert Captain, to Jewish communities in Russia in her previous story for us, “Your Fingers Like Pen and Ink,” to early 20th century New York in some of the stories in her collection The Fires and the Place in the Forest. Today’s story takes us back to ancient Crete in the Minoan era, among bull-leapers, brightly-painted frescos, and the ever-present threat of volcanos. If you do an image search on “Minoan,” “fresco,” and “saffron” you’ll get some lovely visuals to keep in mind as you listen to “The House of the Women.”
Jeannelle writes queer historic romance and poetry and comes as something of a matched set with today’s narrator, Violet Dixon, who has done several stories for use previously, as well as narrating the two books of Jeannelle’s mentioned previously.
This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.
The House of the Women
Jeannelle M. Ferreira
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
“Get out of my light.” Iset lifted the hand she could. Bone-black sifted from her fingertips. Her other hand held the linen sketch taut over plaster, and nothing could fall yet.
“Iset, it’s hours past dark.”
There was only one lamp, and a ghost in its flicker. Iset more than half turned, to glimpse her. Her weight was all in her shoulder, pinning the sketch, when Sira said Iset again, and the earth shook.
The earth shook and Iset unbalanced as if she were not island-born, with a cry and a dizzy dread for the landing. Her back went into her workbench, hard enough to shift the stone mortar and make the pestle roll. The cup full of bone-black hit the floor. Her lump of blue frit rolled and shattered, breaking the dish with tomorrow’s grind of red. She was not reddened, herself, only stunned; a second tremor had gone before Iset blinked at the darkness; the last one, Geb and Poseidon tipping the cup out, before she thought to look for the light.
Sira stepped over the mess, not a fleck or a shard against her bare feet, and scooped up the fallen lamp before Iset’s luck slipped worse. She kept the flame close to her hollowed hand – she must have calluses yet – and lifted it safely far from her own skirts and the pigment-powder blossoms on the floor. As if the light wasn’t Iset’s and paid for, Sira moved from wall to wall, from figure to figure there, so slowly her bracelets and anklets were silent.
“She finished the ones downstairs.” Sira would not name the dead. “But all these are you. All these are – Iset –” She stopped, and lifted her hand – there was lily-red, somehow, on her fingernails. She would have touched; no harm to pigment and plaster, but the world was still wrong-ended, still shaking through Iset’s palms and the soles of her feet, and it felt too intimate to allow.
“Well done you, knowing a gryphon from a monkey.”
“Go to the crows.” Sira came to stand over her, so the light spilling down onto Iset was almost blinding and the room around them was lost to the dark. She looked as if she’d curse the mountain into shaking again – but when she did speak, it was as if it hurt to breathe. “What happened?”
“Color-makers’ cough.” Breathe stone-green or glass-blue all your life and it showed red in the end. Iset’s own cough was hollow, but not every morning; not every night, as Nefret’s had been too.
Iset would not have chosen to meet again. Not like this, with lime-splashed cheeks, in an old bag tunic stained with ochre and bone char. She hadn’t bought hot water in a week. Her hair was still shorn down for her mother, born in the Black Land, and Nefret, too young to give up her doll to the Huntress or do any harm. Sira had come over with the dawn boats, had no right not to reek of fish, and might have stepped down off the wall. Her kohl and powder couldn’t mask her pity.
Not pity, thought Iset. She carried Nefret front, back, and sideways into the hills, and rolled down with her. She ate at Mother’s hearth more nights than the sky has stars.
“Why’ve you come back?” It was harsher than Iset meant, as if she’d forgotten how to talk to a person; a splinter of a question, too sharp after so many years.
“I’m not a prisoner.” Sira stared. “I came to count the harvest.”
“Numbers, still – for a goddess? You could do that here for your sister.”
“I didn’t choose. Did you think I – my sister said this was your commission now.”
They’d never spoken to one another like this, so coldly Iset thought she wouldn’t see color by morning. If they had, better to forget. Sira set down the lamp and offered her hand to Iset – never bending.
They’d grown up together tumbling, leaping, learning to get a body through space: everyone on the island did. Iset was tired, childish, and in love to the ends of her eyelashes still. She reached, wrapped her hand above Sira’s elbow, and pulled.
***
Siraya knew where she wasn’t. Not the temple, because silence was no real thing when supplicants, merchants, clergy and clerks shared time and space. Not on a couple of goat-skins at the back of Neriya’s warehouse: she didn’t feel crowded-in, or smell unwashed wool. Her overskirt was rolled up for a pillow, and someone else’s head held it down too; her traveling cloak had come up under her chin, the clean salt scent of open water mixed, a little, with a hold full of squid. No one had shuttered the windows last night, and a cool wind rose off the bay – it must be almost cold, outdoors, but Siraya was warm.
Beside her on the floor of the empty building, Iset made a little cat-gesture against the curve of Siraya’s neck, and she knew where she was.
All the memories she carried with her were of Iset in motion, in feeling, in flight – her eyes and eyebrows smoke-black, bitter-black, her nose straight and sharp and her cheeks struck with color, from paint powder or a fight. Stillness made Iset almost unfamiliar: she looked a little softer, a little sad. Tiny traces of blue and white were on her cheeks and eyelids; a rosy mark – light as a sketch – lay over the fawn-reddish skin of Iset’s shoulder, and the linen there was notched, a little.
Siraya let her fingertips hover over Iset’s mouth, the painting-perfect curve of her lower lip. There were very few ways, over salt and under sky, to make Iset shut up; Siraya had never taken the chance to start from perfect quiet.
She had time. Her time, here, wasn’t woven through a hundred others’. The morning light was still pale at the windows’ edges. She was so spoiled, from her time on the big island, that she let herself picture a real bed and pillows to soften it. Heat crept across her face, she had to close her eyes, and noise rose from the street below.
Iset curled away from the sounds – away from her – and when she moved she coughed, hard. Her hands caught and scraped at the floorboards; she touched a bit of Siraya’s bundled-up overskirt, and sat up like the room’s guardian-gryphon come to life. “...Sira?”
Carefully, carefully she offered her shoulder, and waited for Iset to rest there. “Breathe, meryt.”
She shook herself, hard. “No. You shouldn’t say those things –”
“Someone else should?”
“No,” Iset said again. “But I – in my dream, we were in Kemet. I’ve never seen it. Don’t know it from chalk on a wall. We were there because we couldn’t be here. Just… just nothing, between Kesiya and this side of the bay.” She tried to run her hands through her hair; her fingers splayed in the soft stubble, instead, and Siraya didn’t dare reach to make it lie smoothly again.
Iset wouldn’t look Siraya in the face. “You must have things to do.”
“We,” Siraya answered. “We are going to my sister’s place before she sends the watch out. We’re having a decent wash. We’re getting breakfast. I’m starving.”
“Neriya’s going to stick you with the baby. Or the books.”
“She can cook her own books. I’m not here on the business of mortals.” She couldn’t make that stick, not with Iset. “Or I’ll do them while you find something to wear. Isha gives her new dress lengths every time she has a child. If he wanted to get out of this life cheap, he shouldn’t have picked her.”
***
Iset was sure of it: if Sira had been so nimble ten years ago, she’d have been given to the bull dance. They’d sprinted through the nearest bathhouse inside twenty minutes, so she reached Neriya and Isharu’s place with her tunic stuck to her skin and sand all over her oiled feet. Sira flew up the stairs to the family’s rooms as if Iset would follow, and stopped on the second landing to shout when she didn’t. “I left my bag here last night. Come and say hello, at least!”
Neriya was two or three years older than Sira, no more. Still beautiful, fifteen years into a business marriage, and dressed as if eight children were no matter. Whenever Iset saw her, Neriya looked sweet-eyed and sleepy, until it was too late; now she turned a mood like fresh coals on Sira. “Out all night, and late this morning! What if I had left the latch open for you?”
“You never would.” Sira kissed Neriya’s hands and cheeks. “So I knew you were all quite safe.” They were not very like each other in temper, but each sister could have been the other’s undersketch: fair as milk, with bright-brown eyes and black hair. Sira had a strong nose and Neriya’s was a snub; after so many children, Neriya stood with her weight settled into her hips, while Sira was always half-forward, balanced almost on her toes.
“Sit and have tea. A little while more won’t matter once you’ve seen the fields. Painter!” Neriya called, “See that Madu doesn’t throttle himself on the loom.” She gestured indoors and Iset moved a step or two without thought, as though Sira’s family had been the ones to hold her mother’s debt, as if a well-dressed landlady had the power to command.
Sira caught Iset’s hand, her voice light as thrush-song, her eyes sharp and cold. “Oh, no, I can’t spare Iset today. If I’m by myself, the elders will talk me to death.”
“She can’t go with nothing to wear!” Neriya said it as if there were princes out there, not sharp stones, drowsy wasps, and a bellyful of dust – as if proper flounces and ribbons were what brought the crocuses in.
“Agreed.” Sira twisted one earring free, then the other, and held them in her sister’s sight: bees, with fluffy basalt shoulders and onyx stripes across their tiny gold bodies, gold-wire wings almost thin enough for flight. “I’ll take five minutes in your wardrobe.”
They were not invited to breakfast with Neriya and her children.
Iset didn’t know what to do with the pile of wool and linen Sira chose – striped petticoats, blue-and-white overskirts, a dress printed all over with papyrus blossoms in red and green. Every tying-tape had a pattern woven through it, flowers or stars; every pin was gilt or dipped in bright colors. It was more cloth than she’d ever possessed, and suddenly Iset knew how it was to be warm in the first of winter.
“There’s a cape, but it isn’t hemmed or finished yet.” Sira patted her bag, bulkier now than a couple clay tablets and styli could make it. “Tell me if you’re cold, and I’ll try to find a pin.”
“There must be twelve on me!”
“All load-bearing, unless you want to turn so many heads, meryt.” She went on uphill, laughing. Under her veil she’d braided and twisted her hair almost tamely down her back, and she hadn’t left home so covered in gold and fine stones, but Iset thought Sira must be much the same, despite years. Springing toward the shoreline, off the cliff’s edge, to the next thing, without even sandals to slow her.
She was beautiful, the ivory-and-earthen way Kefti women liked to be painted, though her eyebrows would never lie neatly and in paintings, ladies never had soft dark hair along their upper lip. She adored being gazed-at, would dance rather than be still, loved to flirt by touch; Sira had every art of dress and gesture. She’d practiced them on Iset, younger, and surely other women since, even if the Lady of Owls was one of the chaste gods –
“Barley water or twelfth-part wine, I said?” Sira balanced two clay cups in one hand, two skewers of grilled eel in the other, and tossed her head to keep eel sauce from her veil.
“Whichever you don’t,” Iset began, stumbling, and got weak vinegar. “And tell me what I owe –”
“You lent me your bed. Now I’ve fed you. Nothing’s owed.”
“There wasn’t a bed.” Iset’s ears went hot.
“And we weren’t sleeping. We say polite things in the street, Iset-Like-Sunrise.” Sira had done that almost from always, put another name on Iset’s own, the way other people’s lovers might say dear. Some of them had made Iset’s mother laugh into her hand, and some made her thoughtful and quiet: one day she’ll curl her hair at the shoulders and say she’s your husband. I don’t mind that wild girl looking after you, sayti, but who’s looking after her? She talks to more gods than wise people do.
I look after her, Iset said, for all the years until it wasn’t true. Now, under cold clouds and a wind off the mountain, as the street became a pebbled path into the hills, Iset wondered what held true again and what was lost. She was still weaving and unpicking when, beside her, Sira fell out of step. She put a hand on the nearest stone, then sat down in the dust with her veil over her face. The gauze was second-dye saffron, to lend gold to her pale skin, but now a flush like fever showed through the cloth.
“Sira, Siraya, what’s wrong?”
“I forget if you’ve ever given me my whole name. The last bit’s not a sound in Kemic, is it? The way you draw it out, it’s pretty.”
“I’ll say it again some time. Answer me?” Iset knelt and touched Sira’s throat and the nape of her neck, as if a fever or broken breathing might take hold in ten minutes’ walk; she found her skin only a little warm, and no one had ever been set tipsy on barley water.
“It’s nothing. It’s only I don’t spend so much time under the sky,” she said. “The temple’s just built like that – covered up, built over – as if when they started, they thought holy and secret were the same. Some of the oldest bits don’t want anybody there. I’d swear the stones move to make us lose the way.”
“Take a ball of flax with you; pay it out as you go.”
“You think that’d break the magic?” Sira lifted her veil, as if to let Iset in; she looked sincere, and her cheeks were still clover-blossom pink.
“What do I know of your people’s magic? But you could follow it back the way you came.”
Sira laughed, the light, young-girl’s laugh that made Neriya and a hundred others see her for a pretty little fool, until she hit back with the cold proof of numbers or both fists; when she reached for Iset her hand was cold, but not shaking. “Come back with me, meryt, and save us from ourselves.”
“I’ll think on it. Better, now?”
“I must be spoiled. Poor me, the light’s too bright and the air’s too –” Sira sat up, and fell back again on one elbow. “I’d swear the air is wrong. I was fine in town. Will you give me your arm, or do you think it’ll make people talk?”
“It’s my hand you’re meant to ask for, if you want gossip.” Iset only spoke to cover her concern, and it sounded silly and scared and brittle.
“All right, that too.” Sira fell against her, only a little on purpose. “Are you not dizzy?”
“I breathe pretty rocks and at least one bug that makes you see the gods. If I’m dizzy, it’s too late.”
The hills looked like a wash-day: linen spread over the most level places, twenty girls with baskets and their skirts tucked up at the waist. Everywhere small fires were burning, visible only by their smoke; the daylight was bright but bone-white against the face of the mountain. There was ash in the wind.
Even now, after some days’ harvest, a purple veil should have rested over the curves and hollows of the mountain’s slope. The earth lay in long, bare striations as far up as Iset could see. There were patches of saffron-flowers, but too few to call a crop; grit blew along the rows where green plants should have been. The girls with their baskets jostled past, teasing the elders sent to mind them, laughing and leaping into a game of huntress-and-hounds. They were younger and a little older than Iset remembered. Young enough to ring-dance around Iset and Sira and see old women. Old enough, settled enough in themselves that the strain of their muscles, the sting under their nails counted as an offering, but there was almost nothing to offer.
Sira, just ahead, pushed her traveling bag over her hip and knelt by one plant – alone, and Iset might have stretched to reach another. Sira brushed away ash like snow, pinched the flower from its stem and shook it apart in her hand. She showed Iset the three red strands, for the girl, the bride, and the elder; petals for the purple-workers, pollen for the dyers, and what was green to die again. Sira breathed one low hmm like a midwife come too late, and let purple, gold, and red fall to the ground. “You try. Maybe the white ones are better?”
Iset felt too tall and twice too old. Her new skirts weren’t meant for climbing, even kilted up by her knees, and the air seemed to waver when she looked ahead. Sheltered by a half-moon of piled stones – a shepherd’s sleeping place, long ago – was a cluster of saffron-flowers, without cloaks of ash to dim their white. Iset’s wrist, thumb and first finger found the arc of remembered motion, the gentle gathering-in and the pinch. The weight in her hand was too little, the petals’ plush already gone.
“They look all right, poor things, but they’re dry.” The three red filaments crumbled, a bright-clay-colored smudge across Iset’s palm.
““Not dry, dried. Did a frost come?”
“Come from where? The ground’s hot.” Iset kicked through a layer of pale, fragile pebbles. “And there used to be a stream by the wall, here. I know it.”
“I remember.”
“I was here,” said Iset, “with my hands in the stream, when you left. Mother wanted a shell-full of the leavings – to make yellows – and someone asked me, why are you here and not the harbor? Nefret had to tell me you’d gone to the owls.”
“Gone to the owls.” Sira sat on the wall’s crumbling edge, put her weight on her hands and lifted her face to the thin afternoon sun, as if she’d set down her basket for a minute’s rest and no years had passed at all. “She’d take you too, you know.”
“That’s not – that wouldn’t be –”
“Say Neit, then. She doesn’t care. The eldest of elders came from Larsa when she was a tiny girl, and she says Ištar. The wine pours the same.” Sira took out a tablet and stylus, as if naming the Lady of Owls recalled her to her work, but only looked down at the smooth surface and rested the stylus’ end against her teeth.
Iset gave herself three breaths to trace and rough-in that life, with strangers – with her, and let it go again. She sat in Sira’s shadow and let their shoulders touch. “What will you tell them?”
“That something’s wrong.”
Little owls dipped and curved through the twilight overhead. There was enough wine to make the night warm, even cut for young girls and old women. Sira had traded one of her long pins for honeycomb and a pomegranate. When she stretched out beside the fire, her head just-resting on Iset’s knee, her dress lay open almost to her hips. More than pomegranate or honey, Iset wanted chalk and charcoal; more than to sketch, Iset wanted to touch.
“You’re allowed.” Fast enough her bracelets rang together, she set Iset’s hand just below her ribs. Sira’s breathing was firm, not even wine-touched, and her bare skin cool as moonlight against Iset’s palm. Her beaded, braided hair and her veil twisted together in Iset’s lap.
“You’re a priestess!” Iset died four different ways, while people watched, in the firelight.
“What’s that to do with what’s mine – or yours?” Sira lifted a cupped palm of pomegranate arils to Iset’s lips. Rude to refuse them, a mess to accept; Iset’s tongue brushed the hollow of Sira’s hand and made her tremble. “And why should I lie? All these ladies know us. None waited for me to take a husband.”
Iset swallowed, the darkly-sweet and the bitter too. “What’s the truth matter, if you go back to your owls and I stay here?”
“Maybe I won’t go back. Maybe you won’t stay here.” Pomegranate juice shone on Sira’s mouth and fingertips. Along her wrists carnelian, garnet and gold were alight. The Lady of the Mountain might have laid her head in Iset’s lap, her veiled hair the net of the stars, her eyes dark and ancient as the bay. “Iset-in-All-Your-Names, we don’t have to know everything tonight.”
***
It was her last night in town, maybe for years, and her sister’s accounts were across Siraya’s knees. The work wanted every lamp in Meryamun’s workshop – Iset’s workshop – and what stayed in the shadows wasn’t much, a bedroll and a little household shrine. Renenut with no food to watch over, Bes and Taweret, cracked, and a doll that had been Nefret’s: a patient gaze, a crimson mouth, and a tiny costume no one in town could have paid for in the proper size, even Neriya.
“I don’t know how we made that,” Siraya said. She could never, from years of the stylus and pen, manage such tiny stitches now. “I forgot doing the fringe. Where did we get silk?”
“Stole it off your sister’s floor.” Iset needed no lamplight to grind ochre; she was a neat arc of motion at the corner of Siraya’s vision, reaching and returning like a wave in the bay.
“She ought to have had a doll that looked like her.”
“They don’t make –” Iset flipped the grindstone and banked a small hill of reddish-brown pigment out of the way. “We’d been free for half a minute. She was lucky to get it.”
Siraya tried to get from under last quarter’s scroll, whether it tore a seam or not, but Iset had gone on working; she looked up, at the scrabbling sound of reed paper, and what had been in her voice was not on her face.
“Anyone skimming from the woven goods trade? Payments to dark-eyed girls marked export tax?”
“Oh, Isharu’s boringly upright. He keeps my sister from swindling anyone too hard. Does get a bit off his port tax, coming and going – he serves his hitch in the navy when the king asks – and some of my wage comes over, for your…” She’d grown too used to reading for the temple’s weavers, talking-balancing-talking with the other keepers of accounts; she stopped her mouth too late. The grindstone fell silent with one sharp scrape, and this time Iset sat back on her heels.
Siraya shrugged. “I make more than I need. I don’t pay for a bite I eat or a thread I wear. I love Neriya, but she’s greedy, meryt, she’d take it from you if she could –”
“She lowered my rent by three fleeces two years ago. Lowered it again, this year, and someone – you settled the bill for Mother’s rites.”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about anything. I don’t want you to. I don’t want you in debt to my kin. Not for one room that lets the rain in off the street!”
“All right.” Iset was cutting-quiet. “Me and the gods and the neighbors know what you want. I would have wanted to know it was you. I would have thanked you, somehow.”
“I asked them to give you my love. Every time!”
“Not one for passing a message, your sister.” Her eyes closed and her lips pressed thin. Siraya knew Iset was keeping something hurtful behind her teeth, really trying, shying away from a fight like the edge of a cliff. “You couldn’t put sent you a little something, darling and chuck it at a fisherman? You have nice writing. You might even have fit my name.”
Siraya breathed with care, to keep tears at bay, and she would not bring her veil over her face. She sat in Iset’s one chair, lips parted dumbly as yesterday’s fish, and searched too long for the words to unravel her mistake. She’d gone red – or white – in the lamplight; she could feel it, hot and cold, sick and awful. Iset was up from the earthen floor, and her anger was still sharp but her worry was quicker.
“I’m sorry.” She said it before Iset could. “I didn’t know if… I never asked you if you could read.”
“Can.” Iset brushed her hands clean and took up one of the lamps. “Well. I’m for work, then. I lost today – and yesterday.” With you went unspoken, but the silent weight of it was between them.
“Work?” Siraya reached for her. “It’s pitch dark. It’s half tomorrow by now.”
“The women’s guilds want their new building, and your sister wants the credit for donating it. The plaster-paintings come last.”
“Iset. Please, we don’t have – please, let it wait. I insulted you and I’m sorry and you can take it out of me all the way to the harbor.”
“I’m not insulted.”
She knew, from Iset, that no one’s eyes were truly black but a thousand colors in a hundred different lights – but Iset’s were flat, flint dark in the shadowed room, as if they had no light to give back; then they looked silver-lined, because Iset was trying very hard, in front of her household gods and Siraya, not to cry.
“I thought you kept quiet because you weren’t allowed to –” Iset bit at her lip. “To be with anybody, or it hurt you too much to think of us, or you were just trying to bear it – the way I tried. I am not insulted by someone who couldn’t be bothered!” She swept up her bundle of brushes and the roll that held her plaster knives and scrapers, and was out the door so fast it caught her heel.
Siraya could still hear Iset, cursing in pain in the street, as she banked the tiny hearth and blew out the lamps. She lost her footing, a little, when the stones trembled beneath her; the Lady of the Mountain was sleepless. She thought the swaying might slow Iset, too, at least enough to catch up while they were both stumbling. Then the ground creaked, a thing felt as well as heard, and under Siraya it rose and fell like a wave.
“Not now.” She picked herself up, palms stinging, and closed her eyes against daybreak in the middle of the winter night. Mother of the Bay, Siraya thought, when the wind pushed her down again, Bastet-Who-Rises, for Iset’s sake, and then the sound struck her ears. Please don’t kill us yet. She had to look, because to be blind while the mountain had driven her deaf was more than Siraya could bear; her veil was full of ash and sand, and to the height of the houses everything was lost in a cloud of plaster. Siraya dared a few steps uphill. She tried a shop’s stair, to see above the dust, and then she would have called on every god she knew; all that came, helpless-small and half trapped in her throat, was a whimper.
Fire spun into the wind like sea-spray at the mountain’s summit, saffron-red, seething white, and molten gold.
***
Iset was dredged in plaster, bleeding here and sore there – one great gust had carried hot ashes downhill. There was so much work undone, so much paint shaken free and so many cracks to fill in, Iset stood still and watched the colors up on the peak: reds she’d never capture, a white at the edge of violet. She cried from dust, from tiredness, from having to begin again; but she’d been crying before the mountain woke.
The ceiling was still falling onto the stairs, but Iset thought she heard footsteps below. Slow, and struggling – but a human sound, not lath and plaster breaking. “Iset? If you’re dead I’ll kill you, meryt, please say –” Sira, covered in scrapes and shrapnel-stung, went deathly still in the doorway. “Oh, no.”
It was pure heartbreak – the echo of Iset’s own heart – and Sira reached down for a fallen curve of plaster as if she could set it right.
“Don’t, my own. Nothing’s to be done.”
Sira caught her by the waist, curled her hand at the nape of Iset’s neck and drew her in for a kiss. It wasn’t like the hundred kisses of the past few days, not fevered, not fierce, nor making up for lost time; it was I’m here, I’m sorry, I love you.
“What are you – why were you out in the –” Iset stopped. She didn’t need answers while Sira stood quietly bleeding. Clean rags and a pot of water were under her workbench, to damp out mistakes; she soaked a bit of old linen and got to work. Sira kept still, without a flinch or a sound, while Iset unpinned her torn veil and wiped the dust from her face, blotted her forearms and the heels of her hands, and bent – as long as she could bend, without shaking – to press the wet cloth against Sira’s skinned knees.
“I had to see you. I had a question. Doesn’t matter now. You’ll stay here, I know, until all this…”
Iset shook her head. Couldn’t say it; couldn’t not know it either.
“You’d go with me? You’d try, for a season or two?” Sira caught up Iset’s hands and held tight, though it must have stung. “Please, Iset. Live with me or don’t. Talk to me or don’t.”
“Siraya –” It was still not-right, but Sira’s face lit with her trying. “What if it doesn’t matter, my leaving, our starting over? What if this is the world ending, and all we can do is wait for what comes?”
“Then wait with me, even if we fight from sunrise to moonset.” She put her head down on Iset’s shoulder, as if she’d fall asleep amidst paint fragments and ruin. “But I’d as soon do without the fighting, meryt.”
Show Notes
Major category:
LHMPFriday, May 30, 2025 - 09:00
This concludes Wendy Rouse's book on queer people and themes in the American women's suffrage movement. I found this book rich and useful, because while the specific lens Rouse uses is suffragists, there is nothing about these women and their lives that is specific to the suffrage movement, as opposed to being specific to a particular era and context in US history. Studies of 19th century queer women's history sometimes leave the impression that there are two poles: polite, acceptable romantic friendships and Boston marriages, and transgressive female masculinity and "passing women." But both themes are present in the suffrage movement, intertwined and reacting to each other, which this study demonstrates admirably. If you're writing sapphic historical fiction set in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, I'd consider this book essential background reading.
And on a more personal note: second day in a row working on rivisions of my skinsinger stories! I think the rhythm that I'm settling into is working on fiction first thing in the morning, over breakfast. Then a combination bike ride and LHMP reading at a coffee shop. Then some time doing housework and misc. projects. Then yard work when it starts cooling down in the evening. I knew going into retirement that I would be essential to develop a standard schedule, but I'm still sorting out the details.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Conclusion
There is a summary of the themes of the book and a discussion of the variety of ways in which queer suffragists engaged with the rising sexological theories regarding same-sex love, in parallel with the various attitudes toward “respectability politics.” Some came to identify as homosexual, others distanced themselves from what they considered “unhealthy” desires. Some defiantly displayed their queerness within the movement, others felt that it was important not to distract attention from common goals.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most queer women could avoid close scrutiny as there was broad latitude for women’s friendships, but in the post-WWI era, there was an increasing awareness of, and hostility towards, relationships perceived as homosexual.
After the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, and especially in the context of queer-baiting of the 1940s and 1950s, some surviving suffragists turned on former comrades, or worked to purge evidence of queer elements in the movement, or even purge evidence of their own past same-sex relationships. This has meant that reconstructing the truth of queer elements in the suffrage movement can require triangulation from the more candid records of friends and associates, or from tangential public records. The question of who is reconstructing those lives affects what is reconstructed, as biographers bring their own agendas and prejudices.
The author emphasizes the importance of queer persons and practices to the success of the suffrage movement, while also acknowledging the enormous variation in those lives, practices, and attitudes. The cyclicity and persistence of the themes of “respectability politics” and the “lavender menace” is noted.
Place:
Thursday, May 29, 2025 - 09:00
Another chapter in the America's queer suffragists book. I almost have the next book all written up and ready to go. And--hey!--I worked on a fiction project today! I'm doing revisions on my "skin-singer" stories with the goal of self-publishing them as a collection, combined with a concluding never-before-published novelette. Mind you, I've been saying for years, "This is the year I get the Skinsinger collection out," but for real this time. My goal is to have it available by Worldcon (makes a nice target). In addition to the revisions, I'll need a cover, and working up the formatting, and confirming my understanding of the distribution system I plan to use. Since the previously published stories have already been paid for (and in some cases, are still generating royalties), I'm less concerned about it making money and more focused on using it to learn the ropes.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 6: Queering Death
This chapter looks at how female suffragist couples commemorated their shared lives (or had them commemorated by friends) after death. Loves that women might not have felt safe expressing during their lifetimes might find an acceptable expression in the context of mourning rituals, such as memorial poetry, shared graves, or the erection of funerary monuments with dedications mentioning both parties. Fellow suffragists might support such mourning in a context where society did not recognize that there was a relationship to mourn.
Rituals around death, funerals, and mourning offered a space in which female couples could co-opt practices that typically were associated with heterosexual marriage, and thus both make their relationship legible and claim the right to be understood as widows.
As usual, the chapter is illustrated with many specific biographical examples.
Conversely, death sometimes was a context in which a romantic/sexual relationship was re-written into “friendship” or “companionship,” either by the media, by surviving friends or family who worried about the deceased’s reputation, or by the surviving partner.
Relationships were also commemorated in wills that ensured the right of the surviving partner to their common goods and household. This could become a point of contention with birth families, from whom the deceased might have been estranged, or who were simply given a lower priority than the surviving partner.
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