“Transvestism also used to be practiced by shamans in the Vietnamese countryside, Burma, in India among the Pardhi, a hunting people, and in the southeast, by the Lhoosais, as well as in Korea.” (Construction)
Transgender in religious ceremony is still reported in areas of West Africa. “One of the principal deities of the Abomey pantheon is Lisa-Maron, a figure which incorporates both man and woman; the great god Shango can be represented as either male or female; and contemporary shamans in Brazil worship Yansan, who is the ‘man-woman.’” (Dressing Up)
“The mugawe, a powerful religious leader of the Kenyan Meru, is considered a complement to the male political leaders and consequently must exemplify feminine qualities: he wears women’s clothing and adopts women’s hairstyles; he is often homosexual, and sometimes marries a man. Among the Kwayama, a tribe of Angolan Bantu cultivators and herders, many diviners, augerers, and diagnosers of illness wear women’s clothing, do women’s work, and become secondary spouses of men whose other wives are female. South African Zulu diviners are usually women, but roughly 10 percent are male transvestites.” (Construction)
Male-to-female transgender that doesn’t appear to have a special religious significance has been reported in the pastoral Nandi of Kenya, the Dinka and Nuer of the Sudan, the agricultural Konso and Amhara of Ethiopia, the Ottoro of Nubia, the Fanti of Ghana, the Ovimbundu of Angola, the Thonga farmers of Zimbabwe, the Tanala and Bara of Madagascar, the Wolof of Senegal, and the Lango, Iteso, Gisu, and Sebei of Uganda. (Construction)
Cross-dressing is still a feature in Brazilian and Haitian ceremonies derived from West African religions. (Construction)
The Chukchee, Kamchadal, Koryak, and Inuit—all Native peoples of the Arсtiс Basin—had male shamans who dressed as women.
“In India, the Vallabha sect, devotees of Krishna, dressed as women. … Reports, of the 1870s and 1930s, describe the priests (bissu) of the Celebes who live and dress as women.” (Dressing Up)
In his ground-breaking book The Golden Bough, James Frazier noted that in the Pelew Islands, “a goddess chooses a man, not a woman, for her minister and her inspired mouthpiece. … He wears female attire, he carries a piece of gold on his neck, he labors like a woman in the Taro field.” Frazier reported that this custom was widespread among indigenous peoples.
Passing for survival
By the time the Industrial Revolution in Europe had forged plowshares into weapons and machinery, prejudice against transgendered women and men was woven deep into the tapestry of exploitation.
But mercantile trade and early industrial capitalism created opportunities for anonymity that seldom existed under feudalism, where the large serf families and their neighbors lived and worked on the land.
Capitalism unchained the peasants from the land—but chained them to machinery as wage slaves, or sent them off in armies and armadas to conquer new land, labor and resources.
Not only transgendered women but men now had the opportunity to pass. The oppression of women under capitalism forced many thousands of women who weren’t transgendered to pass as men in order to escape the economic and social inequities of their oppression.
The consequences for passing were harsh. At the close of the 17th century the penalty in England was to be placed in the stocks and dragged through the streets in an open cart. In France as late as 1760 transvestites were burned to death.
Despite the criminal penalties, women passed as men throughout Europe— most notably in the Netherlands, England and Germany. Passing was so widespread during the 17th and 18th centuries that it was the theme of novels, fictionalized biographies and memoirs, art, plays, operas and popular songs.
One of the most famous passing women of the 17th century was Mary Frith— known as “Moll Cutpurse.” This bodacious character fought and drank with the men in the underworld districts of 17th century London. They never realized she was a woman. She supported herself by reading fortunes, fencing stolen items and relieving passersby of their purses and wallets. After her exposure as a woman, Moll Cutpurse published her diary and was twice portrayed on the stage before her death at the age of 74.
Angélique Brulon passed as Liberté and was a decorated officer in Napoleon’s infantry, serving in seven campaigns between 1792 and 1799 that liberated much of Europe from feudalism.
Charley Wilson was born Catherine Coombes in 1834 in England and lived as a man for over 40 years. At age 63, Wilson was forced into the poor house and her sex was discovered. The authorities made her wear a blue-print dress and red shawl. “If I had money,” Wilson reportedly told a visitor, “I would get out of here in men’s clothes and no one would detect me.”
Many women became pirates and highway robbers.
Transgendered expression persisted among men, as well. German historian Johann Wilhelm von Archeholz described a London pub called the Bunch of Grapes in the 1770s: “On entering the room the guard found two fellows in women’s attire, with muffs and wide shawls and most fashionable turban-like bonnets. … it turned out that each member of the club had a woman’s name.”
At a transvestite ball in Paris in 1864, “there were at least 150 men, and some of them so well disguised that the landlord of the house was unable to detect their sex.” (Dressing Up)
Transgender was central to one of the most famous 19th-century scandals in Victorian England—the Vere Street coterie. This 1813 account described the patrons of a pub: “Many of the habitues took on female appellations as well as female dress…” Hollingway said that the police raided one of their meetings but were so fooled by at least one of the patrons that he was discharged by the police and magistrates as a woman. (Dressing Up)
Many such accounts of widespread transgender “clubs” were reported in 19th-century Victorian London.
A famous case in 19th-century England was the arrest of Stella (Ernest) Boulton and Fanny (Frederick) Park outside the Strand Theater on April 28, 1890. They were tried on charges of “conspiracy to commit a felony.” Boulton’s mother testified in defense of her son and explained that he had dressed as a girl since age 6. Stella and Fanny were both acquitted.
While it is biologically easier for a woman to pass as a young man than for a man to pass as a woman, many transgendered men have lived successfully without discovery.
Mrs. Nash, for example, married a soldier at Forte Meade in the Dakota Territory. After her husband’s transfer, Mrs. Nash married another soldier. After she died, it was discovered that she was a man. (Vested Interests)
Capitalism wields old prejudice
In capitalism’s early competitive stage, when the new bourgeoisie were fighting feudalism and all its ideological baggage, they prided themselves on their enlightened and scientific view of the world and society.
But once in power, the capitalists made use of many of the old prejudices, particularly those that suited their own divide-and-conquer policies.
“Liberty, fraternity and equality” soon became a dead letter as hellish sweatshops expanded into the factory system. Colonized peoples were seen as subjects to be used up in the production of wealth. As the new ruling class established itself, it demanded conformity to the system of wage slavery, and shed its radicalism.