It is a comic tradition that persists to this day. What is certain, however, is that the rise of the music hall, first in Britain and then in other dense urban areas from the mid 19th century on, offered opportunities for a new generation of mostly female impersonators to make careers in show business. Despite marriage and children and a string of male lovers who included some of the most famous artists of the day, she also enjoyed a lesbian affair and scandalised society with her male attire and smoking in public.īut were these examples of transsexuality or transvestism? Like so much of unconventional sexuality, much is buried, whispered, rumoured or sniggered about without ever attaining the certainty of fact. One of the most famous figures of them all was 19th century French novelist Amantine Lucille Aurore Dupin, better known as George Sand. She is credited with writing the first female autobiography. It did not prevent her father from disowning her. Even Charlotte Charke, for some the first overtly transsexual lesbian in history, who acted as “Charles Brown” in the mid-18th century in Britain, came from a wealthy theatrical family. Those less fortunate could find some security in the entertainment world where their deviation from the norm was appreciated. Once again, wealth and privilege offered security for transsexuals. On his death aged 81 in 1810, doctors were astonished to discover he was a man. He lived the final 32 years of his life exclusively as a woman, from 1793 in Britain sharing a house with a widow, Mary Cole. The two men became lovers, and d’Eon forged a career as a spy and diplomat for his king. In the 18th century minor noble Charles de Beaumont, the Chevalier d’Eon, as legend has it, caught the eye of Louis XV at a ball he attended dressed as a woman. Discovery would often still mean disgrace, however. Few men sought to live their lives as women however several women lived lives as men, often on the margins of society in the criminal underworld, or finding at least temporary refuge in one of the branches of medicine. Wealthy trans expression continued unabated. Transsexuals were now underground, and in private, at least for the masses. In Shakespearian theatre the idea of females performing was never even considered, and women’s roles were played by men. “Cross dressing” continued in popular festivals and folklore, where old ways and pre-Christian beliefs were still, albeit reluctantly, tolerated, even as the Church and state often sought to ban them. Even when some figures rose to prominence and proved useful for states and rulers, most notably Joan of Arc, once they had outlived their usefulness, they too were sidelined, or worse.īy the time of the Renaissance things had settled down into a status quo recognisable today. Islam, which at its debut found ways to accomodate trans expression, now joined with Medieval Europe as its own elites sought to cement their positions. The advent of class divisions, the acquisition of wealth and power, and the ownership of property fed a movement toward patriarchal governing that felt threatened by the existence of female and transgender spiritual leaders. This period marks the first witchunts, and the first systematic expressions of hatred towards trans people. However the ground had long before begun to shift as Christianity gained influence in Rome.Ĭonstantine I’s fusion of church and state sounded the death knell for non-conformity, as the ruling class sought to legitimise slavery and stamp out old beliefs. Moving on a little, and in the sixth century AD Saint Gregory of Tours wrote a story about a man who had worn women’s clothing as a child and had continued into adulthood by dressing as a nun and living in a convent.
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