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Historic Cross-dressing: Passing/Transgender Themes

Examples of cross-dressing where there is significant evidence for an alternate interpretation as a trans man, but where marriage is not a core element of the story.

LHMP entry

MOYENS.

L’Accusé demande à être renvoyé de l'accusation intentée contre lui, & cette accusation le suppose profanateur du Sacrememt de mariage. Il faut donc établir, pour la justification de l’Accusé, qu'il ne s'est point rendu coupable de cette profanation.

MEANS.

The Accused asks to be dismissed from the charge brought against zir, and this charge presupposes that he is a profaner of the Sacrament of Marriage. It must therefore be established, for the justification of the accused, that he was not guilty of this profanation.

Mais voici le moment de l'infortune.

But here is the moment of misfortune.

{HRJ: In phrasings such as this, we can envision this text as representing a speech directly to an audience. Given the framing, it doesn’t seem to be purporting to be the actual presentation made to the court, but perhaps a cleaned-up, dramatized version. It would be interesting to know more about this type of publication and how it relates to actual court proceedings.}

Grandjean & Françoise Lambert allerent à Chamberry; & le 24 Juin 1761, après trois publications de bans, sans avoir découvert aucun empêchement légitime, ainsi que l'atteste le Curé de la paroisse, ils furent mariés avec les formalités ordinaires.

Grandjean & Françoise Lambert went to Chamberry; & on June 24, 1761, after three publications of bans, without having discovered any legitimate impediment, as the parish priest attests, they were married with the ordinary formalities.

Memoire POUR ANNE GRAND JEAN, connu sous le nom de JEAN BAPTISTE GRAND JEAN, Accusé & Appellant.

CONTRE M. le Procureur-Général, Accusateur & Intimé.

{HRJ: We begin with the title page. Although no author is listed here, some catalog entries list the author as the M. Vermeil whose name appears at the end of the text and I have followed that practice.}

Mémoire pour Anne Grandjean, connu sous le nom de Jean-Baptiste Grandjean, Accusé & Appellant.

Contre Monsieur le Procureur Général, Accusateur & Intimé.

Question

Un HERMAPHRODITE qui a épousé une fille, peut-il être repute profanateur du Sacrement de marriage, quand la nature qui le tromoit, l’appelloit à l’état de mari?

This chapter focuses on an individual who story is relevant to a transitional period in US history with regard to trans identities. In 1883 a man named Samuel Hudson showed up in the small town of Waupun with two children, and claimed that Frank Dubois, who had recently married Gertrude Fuller, was actually his wife and the mother of the children. It’s a tribute to the speed of communications and the extensive network of local newspapers that the story broke simultaneously, not only in the local paper, but throughout the US.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the social and legal systems that operated to police gender expression and identity. The post Civil War era involved an expansion of official police intervention with regard to moral and social crimes, not only crimes of violence and property. These systems operated overtly against the transing of gender in small everyday ways, not only those cases where complete gender crossing was involved.

The general topic of this article is the ways in which women who had sex with women in 17-18th century Britain were marginalized from the category of “women” via the imagined figure of the hermaphrodite, combining in the image of the tribade who was endowed with a penis-equivalent, either in the form of an enlarged clitoris or sometimes a prolapsed vagina capable of performing penetration. This article traces that image through various genres of literature, both popular and professional.

This chapter looks at the role of imagination, spectacle, and accusation in shaping understandings of female same-sex relations. These understandings, in turn, could create or enable same-sex erotic possibilities for their consumers. There is a contrast between writers who denied the possibility of desire between women and the regular use of female homoerotic imagery in popular culture. Spectacles involving female homoeroticism were meant to warn and punish, but could also inform and educate.

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