Week 5: Female Husbands

Allison Brown HIST 4990: History of Sexuality Dr. Hampton September 21, 2022 Reading Response - Week 5: Female Husbands Manion’s Female Husbands: A Trans History (2020) historicizes the past of female husbands in contemporary British and American History. A “female husband” according to Manion is defined as an individual who was assigned as a female sex at birth but presents as a male in society or as gender noncormining. Additionally, Manion acknowledges that this “term that persistently circulated throughout Anglo-American culture for nearly 200 years to describe people who defined categorization” and views these female husbands as challenging “essentialist understandings of sexual difference. They 1 demonstrated by their actions every day that gender was malleable and not a result of one’s Central sex.” to Manion’s argument is that “gender is relational, external, and often out of our control. Female husband 2 narratives attest to the importance of external recognition in defining and stabilizing gender.” In Female Husbands, Manion crafts three different explanations for why individuals decide to present as male. One of which is that individuals wanted to live as men, or really just did not want to live as women for reasons other than sexual or romantic reasons. Manion argues that “financial security, geographic mobility, and/or gender identity were all motivating factors. Gender, not sexuality, was the salient category.”3 Of the reasons in which Manion determines an individual may want to present as a female husband, I believe that financial security is a primary driver. In the example of Libdell and their work of The Female Hunter, there is a connection between their poverty and how in turn that may have led to them being able to exist as a female husband more easily in society, “ there was one clear upside to Lobdell’s slide into poverty amid the scrutiny of family, neighbors, and even the national press: the love 4 and companionship of a woman.” By being of a lower class or as Manion writes “in poverty” Libdell 1 Jan Manion, Female Husbands: A Trans History (Cambridge University Press, 2020) pg. 1 2 pg. 10 3 pg. 260 4 pg. 218 was able for some time to avoid the scrutiny an individual may have faced if in a higher class or area of a society. This is indicative of class issues at the time and the freedom in some ways of the lower classes of a society prior to more strict regulations and laws regarding gender expression and sexual orientation. In terms of social mobility, these individuals were bound by their class, but by identifying as males even in a lower class of society, they were able to more freely work and have gender, not sexuality, be the determining factor. Additionally, in Manion’s work she alludes to Libdell’s participation in westward expansion, stating that it’s “ironic and even a little sad” that they imposed the gender binary on Native American communities.5 Manion goes on to write, “through land theft and municipal expansion, Native American communities—known for embracing a wider range of gender expressions and identities beyond the binary 6 —were marginalized, and in some cases destroyed.” Manion’s statement regarding these indigenous communities stands in contrast to the work of Gutiérrez who argues that “the lives of the berdache were 7 lives of humiliation and endless work, not of celebration and veneration.” Manion doesn’t continually refer to two-spirited/gender-nonconforming Native American practices expect for in this passage. It’s interesting to consider how the statements made in Gutiérrez’s work contrast that of Manion, and how the collective memory of gender-nonconforming indigenous populations may be shaped and applied in different historiographical contexts for different use. 5 pg. 211 6 pg. 212 7 Ramon A. Gutierrez, "Warfare, Homosexuality, and Gender Status among American Indian Men in the Southwest," in Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, ed. Thomas A. Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2007), pg. 20 Discussion Questions 1. Mannion concludes: “In the 18th century, female husbands were less threatening because the prospects for widespread gains in women’s education, economic opportunities, and political rights seemed dim. But advances in women’s advocacy, autonomy, and mobility made the prospect of a world without men more imaginable … New concerns about female homosexuality motivated doctors and psychiatrists to protect white women who ascribed to conventional gender norms from the threat of those who transed gender, especially if they were African America. Medicine threatened potential female husbands with a diagnosis of ‘abnormal’ and forced institutionalization. But such policing and stigmatizing efforts themselves never fully deterred people from transing gender.” (pg. 263) → What role do white women play during these period in continuing the assumptions, persecution, and/or ___violence against individuals who are “female husbands” or gender-nonconforming? → Is this an active or a passive role? → What role (if any) does white supremacy in turn play in upholding the heterosexual/gender binary? 2. Throughout her work, Manion alludes to women who claim they were unaware of their spouses’ sex some time into a relationship. Do you agree with Manion’s final assessment that these women were aware of their spouses’ sex? What are the impacts of this knowledge, and what motivations would a woman have in “outing” their spouse?