Female Husbands - SFBA Book Club

Hardcover, 350 pages

English language

Published March 2020 by Cambridge University Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-108-48380-3

(1 review)

Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned female who transed gender, lived as men, and married women - were true queer pioneers. Moving deftly from the colonial era to just before the First World War, Jen Manion uncovers the riveting and very personal stories of ordinary people who lived as men despite tremendous risk, danger, violence, and threat of punishment. Female Husbands weaves the story of their lives in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments in the United States and the United Kingdom while also exploring how attitudes towards female husbands shifted in relation to transformations in gender politics and women's rights, ultimately leading to the demise of the category of 'female husband' in the early twentieth century. Groundbreaking and influential, Female Husbands offers a dynamic, varied, and complex history of the …

Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned female who transed gender, lived as men, and married women - were true queer pioneers. Moving deftly from the colonial era to just before the First World War, Jen Manion uncovers the riveting and very personal stories of ordinary people who lived as men despite tremendous risk, danger, violence, and threat of punishment. Female Husbands weaves the story of their lives in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments in the United States and the United Kingdom while also exploring how attitudes towards female husbands shifted in relation to transformations in gender politics and women's rights, ultimately leading to the demise of the category of 'female husband' in the early twentieth century. Groundbreaking and influential, Female Husbands offers a dynamic, varied, and complex history of the LGBTQ past.

Charts the rise and fall of female husbands from the 1740s to the 1910s in a clear and accessible way
Reveals key turning points in the history of gender and sexuality in the United States and United Kingdom
Draws on a diverse source base that includes all references to female husbands in US and British print culture

1 edition

bluestocking reviewed Female Husbands by Jen Manion

We've always been here!!!

4 stars

This was a fascinating read. It charts 200 years of women's (and "women's") queerness in the US and UK. It never goes so far as to label the female husbands it selects as particular subjects of study in specific ways (e.g. "She was definitely a lesbian!" "He was for sure a trans man!") and also uses they/them pronouns for each of them, and I appreciated how much it centered the ambiguity of what being a "female husband" meant. The ways that the term changed, both as it came into fashion and then eventually fell out of it, the ways it and the female husbands themselves interacted with waves of feminist politics and social mores--just a thoroughly good read (or, in my case, listen). Definitely a book I'd like to own a physical copy of for reference at some point.

Subjects

female husband
transgender history