True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

by Emily Skidmore

Overview

"A fascinating, humanizing look into the lives of trans men at the turn of the 20th century." —Library Journal
 
In 1883, Frank Dubois gained national attention for his life in Waupun, Wisconsin. There he was known as a hard-working man, married to a young woman named Gertrude Fuller. What drew national attention to his seemingly unremarkable life was that he was revealed to be anatomically female. Dubois fit so well within the small community that the townspeople only discovered his "true sex" when his former husband and their two children arrived in the town searching in desperation for their departed wife and mother.
 
In True Sex, Emily Skidmore uncovers the stories of eighteen trans men who lived in the United States between 1876 and 1936. Their stories are surprising and moving, challenging much of what we think we know about queer history. By tracing the narratives surrounding the moments of "discovery" in these communities, this book challenges the assumption that the full story of modern American sexuality is told by cosmopolitan radicals. Rather, True Sex reveals complex narratives concerning rural geography and community, persecution and tolerance, and how these factors intersect with the history of race, identity and sexuality in America.
 
"Skidmore . . . provides well-drawn and sympathetic profiles of the compelling trans men considered   . . . offers a critical assessment of the press of the day and how it helped foster a new morality . . . and . . . engages in an ongoing critique of . . . LGBT scholarship."—New York Journal of Books
 
"This brilliantly written and meticulously researched book should be part of all university gender curriculums."—The Washington Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479897995
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	424
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Emily Skidmore is Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Harry Gorman's Buffalo 1

1 The Last Female Husband: New Boundaries of Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century 15

2 Beyond Community: Rural Lives of Trans Men 43

3 "The Trouble That Clothes Make": Whiteness and Acceptability 68

4 Gender Transgressions in the Age of U.S. Empire 101

5 To Have and to Hold: Trans Husbands in the Early Twentieth Century 138

Conclusion: Kenneth Lisonbee's Eureka 172

Acknowledgments 181

Notes 187

Selected Bibliography 233

Index 249

About the Author 253

Editorial Reviews

"True Sex is an important addition to queer and gender history and an insightful study of trans men that . . . challenge[s] several prevailing gender and queer theories. This brilliantly written and meticulously researched book should be part of all university gender curriculums."

The Washington Bookreview

"The personal accounts are presented in compelling detail and with compassion, living up to the promise of intimacy suggested by the cover photo of trans man Kenneth Lisonbee and his wife Stella Harper from the unlikely year of 1929."

The Gay & Lesbian Review

"The best sort of history surprising and delightful. Emily Skidmores True Sex reveals ordinary American communities at the turn of the twentieth century to have been much queerer than commonly imagined. By reconstructing the lives of trans men whose stories appeared in newspapers between 1870 and 1930, Skidmore makes a major contribution to our knowledge of queer history."

Rachel Hope Cleves

"True Sex is a truly phenomenal book. Expansive in scope and implication, Emily Skidmores meticulously researched study of gender non-conformity in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States is all the more impressive for its dogged insistence that local entanglements often mattered more than expert opinion where Americans shifting beliefs about gender and sexual difference were concerned. A major contribution to the study of rural and small-town Americas little explored queer history, and an equally significant contribution to our understanding of rural and small-town Americas crucially important place in the history of queer life in the United States."

Colin R. Johnson

"Emily Skidmore's True Sex is an important addition to the literature on transgender history, offering a fresh approach to studying the subject and a wealth of new information that will help to broaden our understanding of sex and gender roles."

Popmatters

"True Sex explores the varied histories of American trans men long before that designation even existed. Reviewing newspapers and the literature of the field then known as sexology, as well as census data, court records, and trial transcripts, Skidmore weaves a tale of American gender that is far more complex than many might think, one that reveals that [gender]has never been a fixed reality."

Timeline.com

"Dynamic, compelling, and wholly original,True Sexis an invaluable addition to LGBTQ studies."

Foreword Reviews

"A lucid, compelling, and counterintuitive exploration of transmen at the turn of the twentieth century. In showing that many transmen were accepted by their communities, both in life and in death, Skidmore complicates a number of the accepted tenets of queer historiography: that queer people were persecuted, that sexology informed that persecution, and that queer people necessarily flocked to places where they might find community with people like themselves."

Nicholas Syrett

"Skidmore offers a three-fold critique. First, she provides well-drawn and sympathetic profiles of the compelling trans men considered; second, she offers a critical assessment of the press of the day and how it helped foster a new morality . . .and third, she engages in an ongoing critique of her field of study, LGBT scholarship."

New York Journal of Books

"In this important account of the 'unexceptional queerness' of transmasculine people living, loving, workingand dying in non-metropolitian locations throughout the United States around the turn of the last century, Emily Skidmore makes brilliant use of the searchable online databases of historical newspapers that have revolutionized our understanding of the past to tell us a newstory about what the world was once like."

Susan Stryker

"Though an influx of bathroom bills would have us believe that disrupting the gender binary is a new phenomenon, trans people have been hereliving, assimilating, and creating families that protected them . . . Youll be engrossed by their lives, and how Skidmore interweaves American history with their decisions."

Bitch Magazine

"In True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century, Emily Skidmore describes how manhood in that day was as much a moral status as a sexual category. . .an especially intriguing . . . analysis."

Inside Higher Education

"Tracking revelations of true sex in the decades around the turn of the twentieth-century U.S., Emily Skidmore recovers a history full of surprises: one in which people assigned female at birth lived ordinary lives as men, often in small towns and rural outposts. Newspaper revelations about trans men, Skidmore proposes, invited debate about queer embodiment and the porous boundaries of the gender binary. True Sex contains provocations and insights for queer history, for trans history, and for American history."

Regina Kunzel

"This book is not just lucid and easy to follow but also compelling and eye opening because it shows that our past generations were not only tolerant to non-normative sexual practices but also celebrated sexual inversions and differences."

Sexuality and Culture

"A lucid, compelling, and counterintuitive exploration of transmen at the turn of the twentieth century. In showing that many transmen were accepted by their communities, both in life and in death, Skidmore complicates a number of the accepted tenets of queer historiography: that queer people were persecuted, that sexology informed that persecution, and that queer people necessarily flocked to places where they might find community with people like themselves."

From the Publisher