Editorial - Amusing Pictorials - Flights of Fancy - Articles and Miscellanies - Cntd

Famous Crossdressing Women Throughout History

Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.
- Virginia Woolf

Recommended reading on the subject
Heroines and Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail by David Cordingly

Note: I have also listed some individuals who would be better described as trans men. As the sources for their lives are few and unreliable and because Europe did not always even have a vocabulary to describe transgenderism, there's not always a way to know which of these people were trans men and which cross-dressed for the sake of social or political advantage. If you see reason to question my pronouns, by all means, let me know - I'd love to be corrected. You can email me at hyelpochi at gmail dot com.

Joan of Arc
     Perhaps the most famous female crossdresser, though not the only crossdressing female saint, Joan of Arc - Jeanne d'Arc - took up male attire to become a soldier of God, but never pretended to be anything but female.
     From Wikipedia.org: (January2 1412 – May 30, 1431) (also styled the Maid of Orléans) is a national heroine of France and a Saint of the Catholic Church. At just 17 years of age, she commanded the the French Royal army. She convinced King Charles VII to drive the English out of France, and he gave her authority over the army in the siege of Orléans, the Battle of Patay and other engagements in 1429 and 1430. Those campaigns enabled the coronation4 of Charles VII. As a result, he awarded her family with ennoblement. The Burgundians captured and delivered her to the English. Clergymen condemned her for heresy and executed her at the stake in Rouen. In 1920 Pope Benedict XV canonized her in recognition of her innocence5 as found by an earlier appeal after her death. Her posthumous reception history is a lengthy one: she was revered by the Catholic League in the 16th century, embraced as a cultural symbol in French patriotic circles since the 19th century, became an inspiration to Allied forces during the First and Second World Wars and an official Saint to Roman Catholics since the early 20th century, and is currently the focus of considerable interest in the United States of America, England and other nations. Many people, therefore, regard Joan of Arc as a prominent woman of valor, vigor, and faith.

Anne Bonny
     Anne Bonny was born Anne Cormac in Ireland around the year 1700, as an illegitimate daughter of a lawyer. She married James Bonny at 16. Her husband tried to claim her father's plantation in her name, but her father disowned her before he could succeed. The couple left the plantation for Bahamas.
     Anne met Calico Jack Rackham, a pirate, and became his lover. Rackham tried to buy her freedom, but Bonny informed the governor, who had Anne flogged. After this ordeal, Anne eloped with Rackham, dressed in male clothes, and joined him in the life of piracy. She worked and fought along the men, and once killed a pirate for discovering and complaining about her sex.
     Anne met and befriended another female pirate, Mary Read, aboard Rackham's ship. Legend calls them lovers as well as friends, but legend is much addled by romance. The two women, along with rest of the crew, were captured in 1720. The women claimed to be pregnant and so avoided hanging. Mary died in prison, but Anne disappears from records at this point. According to one theory, her father ransomed her, and she re-married and began a new life. According to another legend, she refused marriage and went back to piracy. It is even said that she became Batholomew Roberts, gentleman pirate, infamous by the name of Black Bart.

Calamity Jane
     Frontierswoman Calamity Jane, born in Missouri around 1852 as Martha Jane Cannary, dressed like a man, rode like a man, fought American Indians and fooled around with Wild Bill Hickok. Reason enough for fame!
     She signed under General Custer in 1870 as a scout and adopted a soldier's uniform, but it's not clear if she ever signed into the army. She earned her nickname rescuing a superior from ambush.
     She went on to work as a rider for the Pony Express, and claims to have married Wild Bill and born his child, who she put up for adoption. She later married (again), and for the rest of her life she performed with the touring Wild West shows. A hard-drinking woman, she died at the age of 51 of pneumonia.

Eleno de Cespedes
     More correctly described as a trans man, Eleno lived in the 16th century in Spain. A court in 1587 in Toledo tried Eleno de Cespedes, a surgeon, for a number of crimes, including sodomy, bigamy and acts against nature. It turned out that he had a female body, and a virgin female body too, according to the midwives who examined him at the court's request.
     Eleno, born into slavery, was named Elena de Cespedes at the age of twelve, when her mistress of the same name died and left her freed. She married at sixteen and gave birth a year after, making a mystery out of the midwives' later finding. Her husband had already left her by then. She, in turn, left her son to the care of others, beginning to pursue male occupations. Dressed in man's clothes, she - now he - fought in the War of the Alpujarras, and eventually got into the medical profession and all the way to the respectable position of surgeon. At this point he married again, this time to a woman named Maria. Before the marriage, he was examined and declared male.
     To the court, Eleno explained that he had indeed been born female and been so until the birth of her son. After the birth he found himself spontaneously growing a penis. Thus, accordingly, he had taken up a male life. His male genitalia, Eleno explained, had been withered only recently by a cancer caused by a riding accident.
     The court's interpretation of his sex became clear when he was moved into the women's cells, at which point also he began to be marked down as female, and as Elena instead of Eleno. However, since his report could not be disproven by what was then modern medicine, and since highly thought of scientific literature of the era supported the idea of spontaneous change of gender, they could not prove that he had not been male when he claimed to have been. Eleno was finally condemned of bigamy, since he could not produce papers to prove that his husband was dead. Eleno's sentence was ten years' service as a nurse.

Catalina de Erauso
     A Basque born in 1592, Catalina escaped from a nunnery aged fifteen, dressed as a boy. She took ship to America's colonies and enlisted as a soldier. She fought in the Arauco war, but took later also to commerce, often using Basque contacts. She was finally discovered by a priest, but promised clemency if she allowed him to put her life story on paper. As her story spread, she became something of a celebrity, and was granted special permission by the Vatican to merrily commit the sin of crossdressing for the rest of her life if she so chose. She did.

Hatshepsut
     Maatkare Hatshepsut was the fifth Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt and lived 1504-1458 BC. Before her, Egypt had only had one queen regnant, Sobeknefru, who used the title "king's wife". In order to become Pharaoh and full ruler rather than a king's wife, Hatshepsut chose to call herself "king" - there was no word for queen. She took up male clothing and insignia in order to cement her position.
     Hatshepsut was a great builder, and also reconstructed the trade networks. Her follower on the throne, Thutmose III, was her half-brother's son by a lesser wife. Historians theorise that her monuments were defiled by Thutmose III in an attempt to legitimise his own reign.

Pope Joan
     It is not clear if there ever really was a female pope, but the story was widely told - possibly, historians suggest, as anti-papal satire.
     According to legend, after Pope Leo IV, a woman who had for years successfully impersonated a monk, was chosen pope, took the name Pope John VIII, and reigned 847-855. She was revealed when her horse was startled by the eager crowds during Easter Procession and threw her off, causing her to go into labour in the street. She was stoned to death by the enraged crowd and buried under the street on the spot where she had been revealed. She was succeeded by Pope Benedict III who, according to the tale, had her name struck from the records. Another pope later took the name John VIII.
     As an interesting sideline, according to medieval law, not only must the Pope be male, he also must have testicles. Eunuchs were denied the office.

Mademoiselle Maupin
     Also known as La Maupin, this 17th century adventuress was the star of the 19th century romantic novel Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier. The real woman, however, existed. She was gently born with the name Julie d'Aubigny in 1670 and led a life of swashbuckling adventure, including crossdressing, swordmanship and bisexual love affairs - and to top it off, she was an opera star! To learn more, read Brons's excellent webpage devoted to La Maupin.

Ququnak patke
     Gender variance was a common feature among Native North American tribes: it was usual for the people to recognise three, four or five genders. Men who chose to live women's lives, performing women's tasks, were recorded more often than women taking on the male social role, though there is plenty of documentation of both practices. People who chose a gender identity not in keeping with their physical sex were referred to by a special name, denoting theirs a new gender. Thus, a tribe might include men, women, women-men (known as alyha among the Mohave, i-wa-musp among the Yukli, nadleehe among the Navajo), men-women (hwame to the Mohave, musp-iwap-naip to the Yukli, warrhameh to the Cocopa), and sometimes hermaphrodites.
     Ququnak patke lived in the early 19th century. Her tribe, the Kutenai, had a tradition of women-men, but not of men-women. Ququnak returned to her tribe after having lived a year married to a white man, and claimed to have been turned male. Her, now his, tribesmen initially thought him insane, but he led a successful male life since then, becoming a warrior, a courier to white men, a shaman and a prophet. His case was so exceptional among the Kutenai that the story was passed on for generations.

Mary Read
     Mary Read was an American pirate who lived in the turn of 17th and 18th century. She sailed with the infamous Calico Jack Rackham, dressed as a man and working alongside men - and another female pirate, Anne Bonny. The women were captured by a pirate hunting party and took to prison, where they plead their bellies and so avoided the death penalty, which they faced for both piracy and crossdressing. Mary Read died in prison, but Anne Bonny's end remains shrouded in mystery.

Deborah Sampson
     At first an impoverished child, then an indentured servant, then a schoolteacher, Deborah Sampson bound her breasts and joined the army in 1782, at the age of 21.
     As "Robert Shurtleff", she marched off to West Point with the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army and was wounded in a battle in Tarrytown. She tended her own wound, which as a result was never fully healed, but this kept her secret intact. This was not revealed until later when she was treated for fever and the physician discovered her gender. Deborah was honourably discharged in 1983.
     About nine years later, after she had married, she was granted U.S. pension. She later travelled the country, talking about her experiences in the army, and wearing a military uniform. At her death, her children received a compensation customary to the children of a soldier of the Revolution.

George Sand
     Born 1804 as Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, George Sand was a French romance novelist. She's known, now, not so much for her work as for her affairs, which included the composer Frederic Chopin, and her dresscode.
     Aurore married Baron Dudevant at 18, but left him 12 years later, taking their two children with her. After this she began to appear more in men's clothes, which she much preferred. This caused her to lose prestige, but she persisted, continuing also to take lovers and pay little heed to how public a secret the affairs became. She died at the age of 72.