LHMP #484 Manion 2016 The Queer History of Passing as a Man in Early Pennsylvania

Manion’s book Female Husbands: A Trans History came out in 2020. This is something of a “teaser” article in what appears to be a local history magazine (rather than an academic journal) presenting information from that research that is specific to Pennsylvania. See the Project’s coverage of the later book for a broader picture.

The current article starts with a discussion of Charles Hamilton/Mary Hamilton’s career as an itinerant doctor in the Colonies, supplemented with their background in England which was fictionalized in Henry Fielding’s The Female Husband. The details provided are essentially identical to what is in Female Husbands, so I won’t repeat them here.

The second example presented in this article is Joseph Lobdell/Lucy Ann Slater who spent various stints toward the end of their life in Pennsylvania (though the majority in other locations—so the tie-in for this periodical is somewhat tenuous). I’m going to cheat a little, since Lobdell’s life history is provided in much greater detail in chapter 5 of Peter Boag’s Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. So I’m not going to re-iterate it here.

The major addition that the current article provides is an extensive excerpt from the medical case study published about Lobell, based on their sessions with a doctor at the Willard Asylum for the Insane. (Wise, P.M. 1883. “Case of Sexual Perversion,” in Alienist and Neurologist: A Quarterly Journal of Scientific, Clinical and Forensic Psychiatry and Neurology, vol 4, no 1: 87-91.) The doctor uniformly genders Lobdell as female, but has an overall sympathetic tone, within the context that Lobdell clearly had mental health issues. Although the doctor describes Lobdell’s gender-crossing as a “form of insanity” he does appear to distinguish between the psychological issues that landed Lobdell in the asylum (depression and mania) and their gender identity.

Also of interest is the language the doctor uses.

“During the few years following her [i.e., Lobdell’s] return from the West, she met with many reverses, and in ill health she received shelter and care in the alms-house. There she became attached to a young woman of good education, who had been left by her husband in a destitute condition and was receiving charitable aid. The attachment appeared to be mutual and, strange as it may seem, led to their leaving their temporary home to commence life in the woods in the relation of husband and wife. The unsexed woman assumed the name of Joseph Lobdell and the pair lived in this relation for the subsequent decade; ‘Joe,’ as she was familiarly known, following her masculine vocation of hunting and trapping and thus supplying themselves with the necessaries of life. An incident occurred in 1876 to interrupt the quiet monotony of this Lesbian love. …”

I want to call attention to the three bolded items. The doctor recognizes the marital nature of their relationship, though he clearly distances it from “real” marriage. Although describing Lobdell’s presentation and activities elsewhere as “masculine” he calls Lobdell “unsexed.” This is a characterization that appears regularly from the later 18th century on to describe women who move away from or reject stereotypically feminine things. Sometimes it is neutral or positive, in a sense of “stepping free from the restrictions of gender roles” but more often it has a negative tone. But the third item is quite fascinating as it gives us an 1883 citation for the phrase “Lesbian love” in an unambiguous sense of “a romantic and erotic relationship between two women.” Of course, one of the things I regularly harp on is that this sense of “lesbian” is much older than the myth of “invented by sexologists,” but solid citations are always useful.

Wise’s case history is also interesting in that it concludes with a discussion of the theories of Krafft-Ebing about same-sex desire which perhaps provides a basis for the doctor’s more clinical approach to Lobdell’s life history. He writes of Krafft-Ebing’s work that he “suggests they should be excepted from legal enactments for the punishment of unnatural lewdness; thus allowing them to follow their inclinations, so far as they are harmless, to an extent not reaching public and flagrant offense.” A somewhat mild endorsement since Wise continues with a discussion of Lobdell’s condition as insanity. (Note that neither Krafft-Ebing nor Wise are clearly distinguishing cross-gender presentation from same-sex desire in their discussions.) Wise concludes with, “The subject possesses little forensic interest, especially in this country, and the case herewith reported is offered as a clinical curiosity in psychiatric medicine.”

Of course, as the century turned over and the sexological view of homosexuality became more widespread in the public consciousness, the idea of considering it a “curiosity” gave way to greater persecution.