Название: True Sex
Автор: Emily Skidmore
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9781479897995
isbn:
Beyond rethinking the notion that rural areas and small towns are inherently dangerous spaces for queer individuals, this chapter will also challenge the notion that these spaces are “backward.” It might appear on the surface that rural spaces were less likely to pathologize queer individuals at the turn of the twentieth century because they were “behind,” or unaware of the emergent sexological discourse on sexual inversion or homosexuality. However, this is not what I wish to argue. I do not mean to suggest in any way that the inhabitants of rural areas were any less savvy about sexuality or gender than their urban counterparts, nor were they ignorant of the emergent discourse of sexology. In fact, individuals in small towns were aware of the emergent sexological discourse of the day, as illustrated by the Waupun Times reproduction of Dr. P. M. Wise’s article “A Case of Sexual Perversion.” The fact that within a year of its initial appearance in the Alienist and Neurologist Wise’s paradigm-setting article would go on to appear in a small-town newspaper like the Waupun Times disproves the idea that rural communities were isolated from the emergent scientific discourse on sexual and gender deviance. Just as significantly, the Waupun Times editorial staff did not reproduce Wise’s article to serve as the last word on the Dubois case; instead, they offered the article alongside accounts from Dubois’s mother-in-law, neighbors, and other family members, and the testimonies from community members were granted just as much weight as the theories of sexual and gender deviance articulated by Wise.
This example suggests the utility of Martin Manalansan’s notion of “alternative modernity” in thinking through the realities of gender and sexuality in rural areas, rather than the “backward” framework that all too often colors discussions of small towns and rural spaces.4 Brock Thompson has deployed Manalansan’s notion in his work on Arkansas, in which he explains, “Arkansas was never behind; Arkansas never played catch-up to modern alternatives found elsewhere in the nation. Rather, Arkansas offered and operated under specific social and cultural conditions that shaped it as an alternative modernity … Arkansas … operated within its own framework of modernity, buttressed by and defined within specific cultural circumstances found in the rural South.”5 Thompson’s notion of Arkansas as an “alternative modernity” allows him to debunk the “rural is to urban as backward is to progressive” framework that has all too often guided work in queer history. This chapter will argue that Manalansan’s “alternative modernity” can help us rethink rural spaces throughout the nation as well. Indeed, rural Waupun, Wisconsin, was not isolated from the rest of the country, nor were its inhabitants ignorant of the theories being presented by sexologists. Sexological theories circulated, and were combined with more colloquial ways of defining normative behavior, to create alternative means of regulating social membership, in ways that should not be considered “behind” or “backward” but rather “alternative.” This alternative means of boundary definition, as this chapter will show, provided opportunities for trans men to gain acceptance and/or toleration in rural spaces at the turn of the twentieth century.
This formulation is dependent on a widening of Thompson’s application of “alternative modernity” from a state-specific application to refer instead to rural spaces and small towns more broadly. This is a significant shift in the historiography within the “rural turn” of queer studies. With the notable exception of Colin Johnson’s scholarship, much of the work within rural queer studies has been regional in its approach. For example, Peter Boag’s Re-dressing America’s Frontier Past investigates cross-dressing in the American frontier and argues that the specific historical realities of the frontier allowed for greater acceptance of gender transgressions than elsewhere in the nation. Boag correctly identifies the acceptance of cross-dressing in frontier communities, as well as common tropes through which Western cases of cross-dressing were discussed in national newspapers (“nineteenth-century sources typically found reasons for these female-to-male masquerades in the exigencies of western American settlement”).6 While this observation is absolutely true—national newspapers did commonly utilize tropes of the mythic West when discussing frontier cases of cross-dressing—the tolerance that cross-dressers found in frontier communities was actually quite similar to the tolerance that trans men were able to negotiate and build for themselves in rural communities throughout the nation.7 Indeed, as this chapter will illustrate, trans men were able to find tolerance in rural communities throughout the United States, from Virginia to Montana, from New York to Mississippi.
George Green
In the mid-to-late 1860s, a trans man who went by the name of George Green married Mary Biddle in Erie, Pennsylvania. There is little trace of the details of how they met, or the nature of their relationship, but we can glean something of their lives together from extant census records. It appears that George Green was born in England in 1833 and immigrated to the United States in 1865 at the age of thirty-two.8 Less is known about George’s wife; newspaper reports published upon George’s death suggested that she was married once before her marriage to George, but the veracity of those accounts cannot be determined. However, what is clear is that when Mary and George tied the knot around 1867, they both were above the average age of first marriage (Mary being twenty-six and George being thirty-four).
It is unclear where George and Mary lived immediately following their Pennsylvania marriage, but at some point in the 1870s the couple moved to the rural countryside seventy miles outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.9 The couple lived in this poor, racially mixed area for about twenty years, and by 1900 they were listed as having a mortgage on their own farm.10 At some point between 1900 and 1902, the couple moved 140 miles to the north, to the small town of Ettrick, Virginia, likely to be with family who lived in the area.11 Once they arrived in Ettrick, the couple blended in with their rural neighbors. Despite the fact that George was approaching seventy by this time, he worked as a farmhand. No one, from the neighbors to the men George worked with, suspected that anything was amiss. However, in the spring of 1902, George passed away after a brief illness. Given how seamlessly the couple had blended into the Ettrick community, their neighbors and friends were very surprised when they arrived to help prepare George’s body for burial, as it was only then that they realized his body lacked the anatomical components generally associated with masculinity.
Local newspapers12 suggest that the revelation of Green’s “true sex” was met not with condemnation, but rather with support for the fact that Green had been an honest and hardworking individual during his life. In fact, the Index-Appeal of nearby Petersburg, Virginia, suggested that any sensation elicited by the story was due not to the case itself, but rather was entirely driven by newspaper correspondents and editors of big-city papers who descended on the small town once word of the story had gotten out. The Index-Appeal reported, “The quiet and orderly community of Ettrick is about the last place that a newsmonger would look for a sensation, but as usual as it is the unexpected that has happened. Ettrick will wake up this morning to find itself famous all over the country wherever the Associated Press reaches and the enterprising correspondent has access. Ettrick has a genuine sensation.”13 Tellingly, the Index-Appeal chose to publish the story not on the front page, but rather in the “local news” section at the back of the paper, thereby suggesting that the widespread attention Green’s story was receiving was not entirely warranted.
Newspapers in Richmond devoted a bit more attention to Green’s story, and as with Petersburg’s Index-Appeal, this coverage was marked by sympathy rather than sensationalism. Richmond’s Times and Dispatch both emphasized how well Green played the part of a man. The Times remarked, “Daily has Green worked with men, and never [was there a] a suspicion that their companion was a woman.”14 Additionally, СКАЧАТЬ