One of the ideas that I am playing with a bit in my book is the idea of "body logics." By that, I mean, how do gendered bodies make sense to us--what is the "logic" we use to identify gendered body parts? In today's world, more and more people, especially of younger generations, are identifying as gender nonbinary, gender fluid, genderqueer, or trans. And yet, we live in a world very much dedicated to the idea that there are two genders, and when we can't immediately identify the gender of a person, many of us feel frustrated, angry, or ashamed because we have been taught from a very young age that gender is an inalienable binary. Some people have even argued that the gender binary of male/female, masculine/feminine is a building block of society, and that to deny that is to destroy our reality. Because so much of the world is still so dedicated to this idea, I find it fascinating that the stories of female cross-dressers were so undecided on these many points. On the one hand, stories of female cross-dressers like The Female Soldier; or the Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (London, 1750) emphasized over and over again that without a beard, without a penis, and in the possession of breasts, Snell was constantly worried she would be discovered to be a woman on board a ship full of lustful men. On the other hand, when Snell is whipped shirtless, the narrator of her tale tells us that because her breasts were "drawn up" (her arms extended overhead), her breasts did not appear so large and therefore, combined with facing a wall, they were not recognized as female breasts. This is a fascinating moment. It suggests that there are female bodied people whose bodies do not always "read" as female. In the story of female soldier Christian Davies (The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, Commonly Call'd Mother Ross, London, 1741), a surgeon recognizes the "marks" of breastfeeding on Christian's breasts when she is wounded by a bullet--and her cover is blown. But Hannah Snell had also had a child before turning soldier (the baby unfortunately died in infancy, we are told). So why did no one notice these same "marks" on her breasts? Throughout Sapphic Crossings I look at such contradictions because they suggest quite potently that writers of the past had a very difficult time writing about gender as they showed that even supposedly gendered body parts like breasts are, in fact, not always recognizable as belonging to one gender or another. To me, this opens up fascinating opportunities for re-thinking gendered embodiment and our investments in gender binaries in our own time. What if, indeed, the "body logics" we rely on to recognize gender are merely fictions that fall apart under greater scrutiny?
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AuthorUla Lukszo Klein is the author of Sapphic Crossings, and this blog provides a sneak peek into the book, as well as related content. Archives
April 2021
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