by Evelyn Bailey
This month Shoulders to Stand On continues the history of Transgender men and women as they come to the fore in the 19th century.
Joseph Lobdell was born Lucy Ann Lobdell in Westerlo, Albany County, NY in 1829. Lured by cheap land, Lucy’s family moved to Delaware County when Lucy was young. Her father was unable to do much work. Lucy took up hunting to provide food for her family. She felt sorry for a man by the name of George Washington Slater and married him. He mentally abused her and deserted her when their infant child was a few weeks old. Lucy again took up hunting and lived as a man for 60 years. Joseph was arrested and incarcerated in an insane asylum. He was, however, able to marry a woman.
In 1850, the Crow nation “woman chief” Barcheeampe was spotted by appalled white travelers in Wyoming and Montana; she was renowned for her war exploits and for having several wives
In 1860, Herculine Barbin who lived in Europe was studied by her doctor, who discovered that the intersexed woman has a small penis, with testicles inside her body. It was not until 1930 that genital reconstructive surgery became an option for intersexed men and women. Barbin was declared legally male against her wishes, became the subject of much scandal for having previously taught in a girl’s school, moved to Paris but continued to live in poverty, and ultimately commited suicide in 1868. Suicide is often seen by those who are different gendered as the only choice they have
During the American Civil War (1861–1865) at least 240 biological women are known to have worn men’s clothing and fought as soldiers. Some of them were transgender and continued to live as men throughout their lives. One such notable soldier was Albert Cashier. Born Jennie Irene Hodgers, Albert D. J. Cashier (1843 – 1915) was an Irish-born immigrant who served as a male soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cashier was born female assigned at birth, but lived as a man. In 1914 Albert developed severe dementia and was institutionalized at the Illinois state hospital for the insane. It was then that Albert’s secret was revealed. Officials at the Illinois state hospital forced her to wear skirts for the first time in over 50 years; she found the garb restrictive and humiliating and perhaps more dangerous than the sniper fire she had outwitted so many years before. Unused to walking in the long, cumbersome garments deemed appropriate for her sex, she tripped and fell, breaking a hip that never properly healed. Bedridden and depressed, her health continued to decline, and she died on Oct. 11, 1915, less than two years before women gained the right to serve openly – if minimally – in the Armed Forces.
Franklin Thompson, born Sarah Emma Edmonds, also fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. During the war, Franklin served as a spy, nurse and dispatch carrier and later was the only woman mustered into the Grand Army of the Republic. Dr. James Barry dies in 1865, and is discovered to have female sexual characteristics. He had been a surgeon with the British Army, and had been passing as male since at least 1809.
In the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified in 1868. The equal protection and due process clauses in Section 1 would implicitly include transgender and transsexual persons, as well as any other identifiable group. While the Supreme Court has not fully embraced the Amendment’s implications for transgender rights, these clauses will presumably form the basis of future rulings
The term “homosexuality” appears in print for the first time in 1869 in a German-Hungarian pamphlet written by Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824–1882). Also in 1869, Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal publishes the first medical paper on transsexuality, describing two cases of what he termed “die contraire Sexualempfindung” (“contrary sexual feeling”), one being a male transvestite (the other was a lesbian).
In 1895 a group of self-described androgynes in New York organized a club called the Cercle Hermaphroditos, based on their wish “to unite for defense against the world’s bitter persecution”.
The year 1897 saw Henry Havelock Ellis of the Fabian Society, a supporter of sexual liberation. write his six volume “Studies in the Psychology of Sex”. The books, published between 1897 and 1910, caused tremendous controversy and were banned for several years. In this same year Magnus Hirschfeld starts the mostly homosexual Scientific Humanitarian Committee in Germany.
The history of the Transgender and Gender Variant community is steeped in the history of the world. Shoulders To Stand On applauds the many men and women who lived secret lives in order to be free to be who they were. This incredible history of courage overcoming fear will continue next month into the 20th century.