A respected tavernkeeper who served thirsty locals for decades. A hardworking dockhand. A skilled hunter, teacher and writer. All of these diverse characters had one thing in common: they were known as ‘female husbands’
The transgender rights movement has achieved widespread visibility and recognition in the past decade. For some people, this issue seems very new and modern – a 21st-century development. They reminisce of earlier times, perhaps their own childhoods, when most people accepted the distinct expectations and opportunities outlined for boys and girls. In hindsight, the movements for women’s rights or gay and lesbian equality seem modest in their critique of gender: none demanded the eradication of the distinction between men and women in public spaces, an ability to change one’s sex legally or medically, or a shift away from gendered language towards gender-neutral terms such as ‘they’.
From this perspective, the demands of the transgender rights movement seem novel, as if the emergence of the community itself was triggered by the dawn of a new century and little else. But exploring the history of ‘transing’ gender shows us that nothing could be further from the truth. While the transgender community in recent years has somewhat coalesced around a certain set of experiences, concerns and language, an exploration of historical instances of transing reveals that people took a wide range of paths in challenging gender.
One particular branch that caught
