Redressing the American West by Peter Boag

[violsva]

Lots and lots of interesting case studies, not the best prose style.

From a letter to the editor of the Portland News, 1912: "This old story about more wages because she wears men's clothes is not the main part of the drama at all. There is many a good man who would marry such a woman as Nell Pickerell [aka Harry Allen], but she will not have it that way." (p 30) Would there actually be that many men happy to marry a woman who had served multiple prison sentences and given birth to an illegitimate child? I mean, maybe, there was a heavy gender imbalance in the American west.

"A quick search through this newspaper [the Idaho Statesman] reveals no fewer than forty stories related to cross-dressing appearing between 1890 and [1908]." (p 205 n33)

"Often western women sex-workers wore men's clothing as by custom it provided an indication to others of the wearer's occupation. Among such women were the nine prostitutes of the Williams Creek district of western Canada's Cariboo gold rush who, according to an 1862 news item, put on "great airs" when they would "dress in male attire and swagger through the saloons and mining camps with cigars or huge quids of tobacco in their mouths, cursing and swearing, and look like anything but the angels in petticoats heaven intended them to be."" (p 35) [emphasis mine] Note how class and gender are conflated here--the suggestion is not just that they should dress like women but that all women are naturally the innocent middle-class angel in the house.

M, an MTF case study in "Transvestism: A Contribution to the Study of the Psychology of Sex" by Bernard S. Talmey: "When "so dressed [as a woman], I can always think more logically, feel less encumbered, solve difficult problems in a manner next to impossible under any other conditions."" (p 61)

"By the turn of the twentieth century Americans had gained an international reputation for, as the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld put it, blaming "one or the other ethnic group for homosexuality."" (p 147) This is in the course of a discussion of how the Chinese Exclusion Act and various laws prohibiting interracial marriage prevented Chinese-American men from forming heterosexual families. (Canada was doing the exact same thing, incidentally.)

Chapter 5 spends a lot of time talking about "the apparent spread of prostitution, public indecency, and other transgressive sexual activities as the nineteenth century advanced" (p 168). Which, I assume, had a lot to do with the spread of literacy, urbanization, and the popular press, and makes an interesting comparison to how mass media, social media, and population growth now is making it look like the world is getting worse and worse, whatever your definition of "worse" is.

Also, wow, you don't realize how quickly Lamarckism was wrapped up into evolutionary theory to help out eugenics.
... In other words, we have reached the "fucking assholes" part of any history of sexuality. I may not have much to say about the rest of this book except swearing.

That said, "Viraginity and Effemination" should be the name of a queer bookstore. Or a zine.

Comments

[breathedout]

Oh this has been on my "of interest" list for some time! Thanks for the teasers. Did you find the prose style distractingly bad, or just less than ideal?

[violsva]

Mostly just less than ideal, and with a tendency towards repetition. But when he's actually telling people's stories it's fine and gets out of its own way.

[breathedout]

That sounds manageable. And the content certainly seems fascinating. I may move it up my list!

[enemyofperfect]

That sounds fascinating. And in a weird way, it's reassuring to be reminded that this isn't the first time there's been an explosion in visibility, either for good or bad.

[tripleransom]

That does sound like an interesting book, however turgid the prose is. I am moved to wonder, however, just why dressing in male clothing was "an indication of the wearer's occupation." I mean, I get why cross dressing might indicate that here was a woman who existed outside of societal norms, perhaps one who was game for anything, but I'm not sure why wearing men's clothing would appeal to the prospective customers. Does he go into that at all, or just present it as fact?

I don't believe I've ever seen a photograph showing a "fallen angel" dressed in men's clothing. It certainly runs counter to the Hollywood image of all those low-cut dresses, doesn't it? (not that that has anything remotely to do with reality anyway)

[violsva]

He doesn't get into it, unfortunately, just that it was "to cheaply advertise" their profession. Probably it was a way of saying "look, I'm not respectable." He does cite several other new stories of the same kind of thing, though, so it may have been widespread.

On the other hand, there were also a bunch of assigned-female people who wore trousers and hung out with/dated/protected sex workers despite not doing much or any sex work themselves (like butch lesbians sometimes did a century later according to Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold), so the newspapers may have been lumping them all together?

[tripleransom]

Hm. It seems kind of counterintuitive, but perhaps cross dressing was as far away from respectability as you could get. It sounds like an interesting book. I'll look it up. Thanks!