Transgender History: Into the Modern Age (1700s - 1932)
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/02/transgender_history_into_the_modern_age.phpFiled by: Guest Blogger
February 26, 2008 9:55 AM
[EDITOR'S NOTE:] Frequent guest blogger Mercedes Allen has written a six part history of transgender people for the Project that is running weekly on Tuesdays. A listing of the other sections is at the bottom of the post.
As society evolved toward the modern age that we know now, trans expression did not disappear, but did become far more subversive. The last surviving remnants of festival behaviour developed into what we now know as Halloween, Mummer's Dances, and Carnaval / Mardi Gras. Several outbreaks of civil disobedience also used transgender motifs, led by groups known as the Abbeys of Misrule (France and northern Italy, where leaders took titles like Mother, Dame and Princess), the Lords of Misrule and Abbots of Unreason (England and Scotland), Mère Folle and her Children, Mère Sotte and her Children, Mère d'Enfance, Madge Wildfire and Lady Skimmington, and later inspired other bands, such as Rebecca and her Daughters. Other military actions were directed by modern Joans of Arc, such as Captain Alice Clark and La Branlaire. It can't be certain if everyone participating in these uprisings were truly transgender in any way or simply relied on crossdressing as a convenient disguise, but the consistency still suggests early peasant-held matriarchal and trans-reverent customs. Some, such as the White Boys of Ireland, also make the claim to be faeries, leading one to wonder if early stories of fee might also indicate early transgressive beliefs and traditions.
