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?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-04-23 11:56 pm (UTC)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?