Women's Gender-Crossing in Twentieth Century British Popular Culture

从二十世纪之交到六十年代，大众媒体经常反复报道跨性别妇女的情况。她们成功地在日常生活中扮演了男人的角色；从事男性工作，也许娶了其他女人，或者为自己的国家而战。男性模仿也是流行娱乐中一个持续的主题。追踪女性跨性别在大众媒体和其他文化形式中的表现变化，这项研究将发展我们对历史上女性之间的欲望和跨性别认同的理解方式。它将极大地改变对现代性别和性别认同历史的假设，特别是女同性恋主义和变性人。跨性别女性在性史上不是小人物。持续不断的新闻报道反映了人们对20世纪不断变化的性别关系和对同性欲望的理解的焦虑。到目前为止，关于性的新观念的传播在很大程度上是通过与专业和官方话语有关的方式进行的，包括医学著作和哈弗洛克·埃利斯在英国开创的新的性学“科学”，以及受过教育的中产阶级可用的小说和其他文学作品。大众文化和通俗的性知识领域仍然没有得到充分的研究，尤其是关于女性同性恋欲望和变装的想法。历史学家们关注两个时刻--1928年审查女同性恋小说《孤独之井》，作者是看起来很阳刚的拉德克利夫·霍尔，以及1929年对《巴克上校》的审判，因为他伪装成男人并娶了另一个女人-断言这两个时刻是社会对女同性恋主义的认识和变性人历史的关键转折点。虽然这些事件无疑意义重大，但重要的是要审视大众媒体和其他媒体上关于变装、性别变化和女同性恋的整个背景，以判断大众知识和公共叙事发生变化的速度。这项研究表明，虽然变装可能存在得更早，但直到第二次世界大战之后，变装才被明确地与流行文化中的女同性恋和变性人联系在一起。这项研究调查了英国三家发行量很大的星期日报纸-总共200多篇不同的报道-关于变装的故事，并分析了这些报道反复出现的主题、解释、语言和风格，将它们置于大众娱乐，特别是综艺戏剧和日常医学话语的更广泛的背景下。它将发展这样一种观点，即戏剧性的框架、幽默和模棱两可在这么长时间内保持女性跨性别表面上的无辜表现是重要的，同时也与科学和医学一起促进了现代的性身份概念。跨性别女性自己说的话也很重要。在记者和编辑的调解下，他们的自我呈现可以显示出关于工人阶级文化中哪些关于性别交叉的观点是当前和可以接受的，以及女性如何在自己的生活中发挥作用，并积极为新兴的性别身份观念做出贡献。这项研究将对我们理解性别关系历史变革的关键时期和现代性别身份观念的发展做出重大的原创性贡献。

Reports of gender-crossing women appeared regularly and repeatedly in the mass media from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1960s. They successfully passed as men in everyday life; working in masculine employment, perhaps marrying other women, or fighting for their country. Male impersonation was also a continuing theme in popular entertainment. Tracking the changing representation of female gender-crossing in the popular press and other cultural forms, this research will develop our knowledge about the ways in which desire between women and cross-gender identification were understood historically. It will significantly revise assumptions about the history of modern gender and sexual identities, especially lesbianism and transsexuality.Gender-crossing women are not minor figures in the history of sexuality. Continuing press reports reflect anxieties around changing gender relations and understandings of same-sex desire during the twentieth century. Until now, the dissemination of new ideas about sexuality has largely been explored in relation to professional and official discourses, including medical writings and those of the new 'science' of sexology pioneered in Britain by Havelock Ellis, and in fiction and other literature available to the educated middle class. The area of mass culture and popular sexual knowledge remains under-researched, especially for ideas about women's same-sex desire and cross-dressing.Historians have focused on two moments- the 1928 censoring of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, written by the masculine-appearing Radcliffe Hall, and the 1929 trial of "Colonel Barker" for passing as a man and marrying another woman- asserting that these were key turning points in the social awareness of lesbianism and the history of transgender. While these events were undoubtedly significant, it is important to look at the whole context of stories about cross-dressing, sex change and lesbianism in the popular press and other media to judge the speed at which changes in popular knowledge and public narratives occurred. This research shows that while there might have been earlier "knowingness", it was not until after the Second World War that cross-dressing was explicitly linked to lesbianism and transsexuality in popular culture.This study surveys all the stories of cross-dressing in three mass circulation British Sunday newspapers- over 200 different reports in all -and analyses the recurring themes, explanations, language and style of the reports, placing them in the wider context of mass entertainment, especially variety theatre, and everyday medical discourses. It will develop the idea that theatrical frameworks, humor and ambiguity were important in maintaining the ostensibly innocent representation of women's gender-crossing for so long, while also contributing alongside science and medicine tomodern concepts of sexual identity.What gender-crossing women themselves had to say is also significant. While mediated by journalists and editors, their self-presentation can show which ideas about gender-crossing were current and acceptable in working-class culture, and the ways in which women could exercise agency in their own lives and actively contribute to emerging ideas about sexual identity.This research will make a major and original contribution to our understanding of a crucial period of historical change in gender relations and the development of modern ideas about sexual identity.