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This is a dissertation exploring gender non-conformity in its various expressions, not all of which are relevant to the Project. The author’s thesis, as noted in the abstract is that “the fragmented approach historians have previously taken when examining the lives of gender non-conforming individuals has been inadequate and could be improved by envisioning the individuals not as individual anomalies or aberrations, but as participants in a long cultural tradition of gender non-conformity and transgression throughout western Europe.”

Both normative gender and gender non-conformity are culturally bound, tied up in concepts of gender and sex, but understood differently within different strata of society. Thus medical, religious, and popular concepts of gender could approach and define non-conformity in different ways. The fact that a theory of gender was expressed in specific writings didn’t automatically mean that all people had access to that theory. There are hints that medieval people considered gender a thing that could be “taught” and learned, rather than always being a natural phenomenon, and further that gender performance and physiological sex could affect each other materially.

The study covers 1300-1720 and focuses specifically on “individuals who lived for an extended period of time as a gender other than the one to which they had been socially assigned.” This excludes theatrical cross-dressing, and behavioral or sartorial gender transgression with no expectation of being read as a different gender. The author also excludes women who cross-dressed for a specific purpose without the intent to live permanently as the perceived gender. It does include people with ambiguous bodies (as perceived by authorities), but as the author notes we can’t always rely on the documentary evidence to know whether someone was genuinely intersex or simply perceived by the authorities to fail to conform to binary categories.

We begin with the required literature review, not only covering the source materials but queer theory in general. Some topics that are discussed in this section include the following. Medieval authorities paid more attention to bodies than behavior in assigning gender, which relates to narratives of physical transformation in connection with gender non-conformity, either as explanation or justification. Anxiety around gender non-conformity often took the form of concern for same-sex acts. Two key factors in gender non-conformity were clothing and occupation, as both were strongly gendered. Religion and magic were both prominent themes in gender non-conformity, including cross-dressing saints.

The study moves on to medical and legal theories of gender, which could be self-contradictory as well as conflicting between the two realms. Medical theories, in particular intermixed various models according to the purpose of the text. The chapter discusses the history of various medical theories of sex/gender in detail (including the one-sex and two-sex models), as well as the increasing reliance on direct observation in the 17th century. Humoral theory is discussed as well as the fascination in the 16th century and later with the role of the clitoris in understanding gender ambiguity of female bodies. Some medical models allowed for the possibility that bodily sex might not align with behavioral gender. The increasing reliance on anatomical knowledge in the 16th century and later gave more authority to physicians with regard to determining “correct gender” assignment.

Legal theories around gender allowed for less nuance and ambiguity than medical models. A binary classification must be imposed by some means and both rights and behavior were judged according to that classification. Legal gender assignment made little allowance for re-categorization as that would affect the legality of the subject’s prior life. The significance of this can especially be seen in rare cases where the law determined it was unable to assign either binary gender and therefore placed the subject entirely outside the law with regard to sexual and gender performance.

The idea of the “hermaphrodite” (whether genuinely intersex or simply uncategorizable) was a flashpoint for gender discourse, providing a testing ground for theories and a battleground for gender enforcement. Anxiety about hermaphroditism waxed and waned according to other social forces that gave gender ambiguity symbolic significance. While earlier attitudes gave it a quasi-mystical significance, the Enlightenment shifted it to a medical “problem” to be corrected to a less ambiguous alignment. Physiological ambiguity became a symbol of gender anarchy, and by contagion of social anarchy in general. The physical became conflated with the behavioral, with the term “hermaphrodite” being broadened to apply to any sort of gender-transgressive behavior.

A belief in the reality of physiological sex change informed medieval and early modern ideas about gender non-conformity. If a body changed physical sex, then gender categorization was expected to follow. Conversely, behaving according to a different gender category had the potential to cause physical change. Misogyny informed attitudes towards such transformations, with female-to male changes being viewed as “becoming more perfect” and male-to-female changes generally being considered impossible. Ideas about the mechanism of such changes often invoked humoral theory, or relied on the one-sex model in which all the organs of male or female were present and their superficial configuration could change by accident or spontaneously. Some religious texts supported the potential for such changes (but always female-to-male). Literature of all types featured sex changes as a trigger for or consequence of gender non-conformity. Sex-change narratives frequently occurred at puberty, pointing to possible medical explanations, but on a symbolic level they represented the malleability and instability of the body.

Cross-dressing occurred in many different contexts with varying levels of social acceptability according to context. Theater and carnival offered the most legitimate contexts. Outside of such contexts, cross-dressing was variously considered immoral, to violate sumptuary laws, or to be a form of fraud. Cross-dressing might be associated with specific other anti-social behaviors in specific cultures, such as the English tendency to see it as a symptom of sexual immorality, but simple cross-dressing, as such, was generally not illegal in the absence of aggravating factors. When set apart from everyday life, cross-dressing could be considered a positive act, as in religious mythology or literature. But in general female cross-dressing was viewed as an appropriation of male authority. Male cross-dressing occurred in theatrical and carnival contexts, but was also used as a literary motif to achieve access to a gender-segregated woman. Much more rare are narratives of male cross-dressing that can be read as positive transgender identities. In general, though, real-life female cross-dressers were motivated by economic advantage or in pursuit of a romantic relationship (either same- or opposite-sex). A new context for male cross-dressing came with the rise of male same-sex social venues (Molly houses) in the 17-18th centuries.

Moving from the realm of clothing to two other types of gender non-conformity, we have a combined chapter discussing physical male-coded characteristics (primarily facial hair) and male-coded behavioral characteristics, including sexual aggressiveness, bravery, and virtue. Such behaviors might, in some cases, be considered positive, with an underlayer of misogyny.

The conclusion sums up all the prior discussions and notes that gender non-conformity was a context in which rules and attitudes towards appropriate gender categorization were developed and tested. The author returns to a narrow definition of gender non-conformity (the intent to live as a non-assigned gender for an extended period of time) and identifies 36 individuals that fit the definition, noting the biases in the data and the “overrepresentation of failure” as successful lives left few traces.