Close, But Not Quite

This week, Andrew Sullivan published a 19th-century photo (c. 1870s) submitted by a reader who claimed that it depicts "a would-be transsexual." The person in question (far left) has not been positively identified, but he/she has short hair and the photo is labeled, "Howard."

Another reader wrote in to make the eminently reasonable point that we should not jump to conclusions when we view historical materials with 21st-century eyes:

Sometimes viewing things through a 21st century lens can be very misleading. I think there is a pretty good chance this young man is just a late bloomer and not a transsexual.  Most noticeably, he does not appear to be making any attempt to actually look like a girl.  He's just in a dress.  Of course I may be wrong, as I'm not an expert on the history of the practice of breeching, but I remember seeing pictures of my grandfather in a dress when he was at least five or six and nobody assumed he was a transsexual.

Close, but not quite.

First, dresses were for children — boys were breeched when they were kindergarten age. The person in the photo is an adolescent, not a child. Victorian boys sometimes wore military-style tunics over blousy pants until age 10 or 12, but this person is wearing an adolescent girl's dress.

Second, the reader is wrong when he/she says that there is no "attempt to actually look like a girl." As we've seen before, hair parted in the center is a strong indicator that the subject is female. The other adolescent in this picture has a more cutting-edge hairstyle: bangs. The prop, a parasol, is also a strong signifier of femininity.

The second reader makes a good point about the conclusions drawn by the first, but his/her supporting evidence falls short. Still, I am inclined to be skeptical about the possibility that the photo depicts a young boy. The original poster just makes too many assumptions. For instance, the person on the left looks like a boy to us because he/she has short hair. Yet, Victorian girls sometimes sported brutally short haircuts, particularly when they were recovering from serious illnesses. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

Could this be a photo of a boy in a dress? Sure. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Slate on Pink and Blue

Slate has published a slideshow on this history of pink and blue as gender-specific colors.

Related posts:

• Boy or Girl? 
• Gender-Neutral Clothing
• Victorian Pronouns

Victorian Gender Pronouns

I recently read Kate Summerscale's intriguing The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher for the class I'm tutoring. It's a great read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in Victorian England, detective fiction, or the beginnings of modern law enforcement.

The book concerns the 1860 murder of 3-year-old Saville Kent, a crime that captured the attention of the nation and inspired the genre of Victorian detective fiction.

One peculiar thing that caught my attention was the tendency of all of the participants — family members, neighbors, detectives, reporters — to refer to the murdered child as "it," as in, "Its little head fell almost off" (pg. 17) or

the child has woke and recognised its Father that the Father through Fear of an Exposure in the Family strangled it in the Room after the Nurse Maid had gone to sleep that  he there carried it to the Closet and cut the Throat (pg. 166).

The use of a gender-neutral pronoun does not seem to indicate that the speaker wished to dehumanize young Saville. Rather, the widespread usage makes me think that Victorians considered a 3-year-old to be more of a gender-neutral child than a gender-specific boy or girl. A few of the court records and press reports do call Saville a boy, but most call him a child and use gender-neutral pronouns.

I can't imagine calling a modern 3-year-old it without being punched by its mother. We talk about infants and toddlers in very strongly gendered language from birth, if not earlier. We dress them in gender-specific clothing and provide them with gender-specific toys. Despite our apparent return to some elements of Victorian mourning culture, a wide gulf separates us on this issue.

Last Words

Just across the path from Joshua Chamberlain's grave stands a heartbreaking memorial to two toddlers who died in 1858. Charles Parkinson (age 4) died on May 20 and his little brother, John (age 2), died four days later. Their gravestone preserves their last words:

"Charley's tired mamma."

"Tarl gone me go too."

The top of the monument is a sculpture of two sleeping children holding hands. It has deteriorated over time, but it's still quite touching.

Anonymous Baby

This Victorian baby's stone in Grove Hill Cemetery in Waltham, MA, is probably for a still-born or miscarried child. No name appears on the stone (front, back, or top), which stands only a few inches tall.