True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the 20th Century

Available Summary:

Frank Dubois was known as a hard-working man, married to a young woman named Gertrude Fuller in Waupun, Wisconsin. In 1883, his seemingly unremarkable life drew national attention when it was revealed that he was anatomically female. The townspeople only discovered his "true sex" when his former husband and their children arrived in the town searching for their departed wife and mother.

At the turn of the twentieth century, trans men were not necessarily urban rebels seeking to overturn stifling gender roles. In fact, they often sought to pass as conventional men who lived in small towns and led ordinary lives. They were, in a word, unexceptional.

In True Sex, Emily Skidmore uncovers the stories of eighteen trans men who lived in the U.S. between 1876 and 1936. Despite their "unexceptional" quality, their lives challenge assumption that the full story of modern American sexuality is told only by cosmopolitan radicals. By tracing the narratives surrounding the moments of "discovery" in these communities, True Sex reveals how complex factors such as rural geography and community and persecution and tolerance intersect with the history of race, identity, and sexuality in America.

-Book blurb.

Note from Jack:

I've read this book, and I really enjoyed it. I also appreciated the author's nuanced qualifying statement about the individuals discussed in this book:

I refer to the historical subjects of this book with male pronouns because each of the subjects herein chose to live as a man for many years prior to his appearance within the public record, and many continued to live as men even after their queer embodiment resulted in arrest, incarceration, or other hardship... Furthermore, I refer to my historical subjects as "trans men" because they chose to live their lives as male even though they had been assigned female at birth. Thus, trans here suggests the ways in which the subjects of this book transitioned from the gender assigned to them at birth to the one with which they identified. I refer to them as "men" because they all expressed the sentiment that they were men despite their anatomy.

The author goes on to acknowledge that some of these historical individuals are argued, by some scholars, to be butches. Either way, modern commentary on historical gender-transgressive individuals inevitably places modern perspectives on non-modern experiences. That's somewhat unavoidable, but that doesn't mean modern conversations about butches, trans men, transmasculine people, and crossdressing women shouldn't dare to discuss historical individuals.

In my opinion, the history discussed in this book belongs to all of those groups, should those groups find relatability in how female-born, male-presenting historical figures lived. There isn't one correct way to talk about this history. I appreciate this book for primarily discussing these people as trans men, and I appreciate that others will discuss them as butches.