terminology question

[lotesse]

okay, I'm in England in 183? - anyone got an idea of what words I'd use to describe crossdressing? The OED is attributing "transvestite" to Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910, so not that.

Comments

[oursin]

I happen to be reading Alison Oram's Her Husband Was A Woman, in which she talks about press reports of the end of the C19th/beginning of the C20th using the terms 'impersonator' and 'masquerade' when describing women cross-dressing as men, either on stage as variety acts or to live as men. I'm not sure how far that would date back, though.

Also, I haven't started it yet but I have Kaplan's Sodom on the Thames to hand, and looking at the chapter on the Boulton and Park case, reports used the expressions 'Gentlemen Personating Women', 'The Young Men in Women's Attire', or 'The Men-Women'. The term 'drag' was apparently in use in Boulton and Park's circles but probably not popularly understood.

[legionseagle]

Molly?

[oursin]

I think there's an early to mid C19th sources which talks about 'Margeries and Poufs', but I'm not sure cross-dressing is implied.

[sarasvati]

Colin Spencer's Homosexuality in History mentions that the term "molly" was used to describe a male dressing as a female well into the 19th century, so that may work. There's some additional information in the Wikipedia article on molly houses that may be of interest. It's typically only used as a term for people frequenting molly houses, though, so as a casual term it might not work, but it could certainly be thrown about as an insult.

[mecurtin]

Who is speaking? age, gender, class? (especially class) Is it man-dressed-as-woman, or woman-as-man? Is it for sex, or access to a gender role?