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Before transsexuality: transgender lives and practices in nineteenth-century America
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Bayker, Jesse. Before transsexuality: transgender lives and practices in nineteenth-century America. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-w1gd-3g28

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TitleBefore transsexuality: transgender lives and practices in nineteenth-century America
NameBayker, Jesse (author); Schoen, Johanna (chair); DeVun, Leah (internal member); Fabian, Ann (internal member); Canaday, Margot (outside member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2019
Other Date2019-05 (degree)
SubjectU.S. history, History, Transgender people -- United States -- 19th century -- History
Extent1 online resource (viii, 323 pages) : illustrations
Description“Before Transsexuality” examines transgender lives in the U.S. in the period before the advent of medical technologies for hormonal and surgical sex reassignment. Spanning the antebellum era to the turn of the twentieth century, this dissertation explores how individuals changed their gender socially without changing their bodies and contends that the experience of reinventing one’s gender was not altogether uncommon in the nineteenth century. In order to analyze the strategies that ordinary people employed to cross gender borders, this project brings together a fragmented archive of clandestine transgender practices, tracing transgender lives through local and national press, police and court records, penitentiary records, city directories, personal correspondence, and autobiographies. Geographic mobility was key to success for many, and individuals often migrated in order to adopt a new name and reinvent their gender. This dissertation lays out the practical tools and material culture necessary for changing one’s gender presentation, the assistance rendered by friends and associates, the economic constraints and opportunities of gender crossing, and the role of passion and intimacy in gender crossing narratives. Moreover, “Before Transsexuality” attends to the role of law enforcement and state surveillance in policing the border between male and female through vagrancy codes and laws prohibiting public disguise. It demonstrates how individuals resisted criminalization and began articulating a legal defense of their transgender lives as early as the 1850s. This project contributes a new understanding of the lived experience of crossing gender borders and brings transgender voices into focus. By emphasizing the historical specificity of nineteenth-century transgender narratives, “Before Transsexuality” expands our understanding of the range and diversity of transgender experience.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-w1gd-3g28
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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