In Female Husbands: A Trans History, Jen Manion explores "female husbands" in the U.S. and England between the mid-eighteenth century and the eve of the First World War. Such people were assigned female at birth, lived as men for at least part of their adult lives, and married women, and were the object of much fascination—by turns contemptuous and sympathetic—in contemporary media.

It’s important to be clear about the scope of what Manion is setting out to do in Female Husbands. The vast majority of the surviving sources about these individuals were written by others (generally speaking either cis men or mediated through the pens of cis men), and it those sources which deploy the term “female husband.” It was therefore not a category of identity but one of identification—one imposed by the gender normative on the gender outlaws. Manion is not arguing for “female husbands” as a term that necessarily had any meaning for these people themselves, but rather explores what the term’s deployment tells us about the times and places in which they lived, and the social roles they chose to play in contravention of their assigned gender.

This is not to say that Manion is uninterested in the “female husbands” themselves—Manion in fact clearly spent a lot of time in the archives pulling out as much evidence as is recoverable about these people, their relationships, and their careers—but rather that Manion is careful to stress how little we can securely recover about their own understanding of their gender or how they might identify if they were alive today—would they consider themselves trans men? Genderqueer? Agender? Trans masc? Butch lesbians? Something else? Manion uses they/them pronouns throughout to refer to the “female husbands”, resisting imposing (or refusing!) any specific modern category of identification on or for them.

I understand from some other reviews on here that others are uncomfortable with Manion’s pronoun choice here, but disagree with the argument that the use of they/them is imposing a modern non-binary identity on the “female husbands”—I think that is a reductive and highly presentist understanding that wilfully ignores how they/them has been used as a singular pronoun in English since at least the fourteenth century. I understood it more as a Schroedinger’s Cat kind of signifier of gender. True, one of the last individuals discussed, Alan Hart—who lived into the 1960s, who medically transitioned and who vehemently asserted a male identity—on balance of probability would use he/him pronouns today and would self-describe as a trans man. I feel Manion uses they/them to refer to Hart more so out of a desire to be consistent in usage than anything else—but even here, we can as conscientious historians only speak in terms of balance of probability, not in certainties! And if that’s the case with Hart, how much more so the case with Frank Dubois, a “female husband” from 1880s Wisconsin: on one occasion, when asked if they would “insist that you are a man”, Dubois responded “I do; I am. As long as my wife is satisfied, it’s nobody’s business”, but on another occasion “with inscrutable pertinacity, insists that she is a woman.”

Equally, I understand the desire to find LGBT forebears in the past, but Manion’s goal isn’t to simply find people who can be placed into particular boxes but rather to understand their experiences. Still less is it to find Heroic Ancestors—the masculinity of the “female husbands” was often expressed through marriages in which normative gendered segregation of labour was rigorously maintained, and sometimes through physical abuse or other forms of coercive control over their wives.

I appreciated that Manion was also careful to spend some time considering the wives of the “female husbands”, women who were often mocked by their contemporaries or overlooked by later historians but who also have a right to be included within a consideration of queer history. Equally, Manion is attentive to issues of class and race. Working-class “female husbands” had differing experiences from wealthier ones, while the intersection of racism and misogyny meant that Black “female husbands” in the U.S. were treated very differently to white ones.

There are points where I had issues with Manion’s approach—some quibbles, some more significant. On the quibble side of things, Manion more than once uses the phrase “throughout history”, one which never fails to have me reaching for the red pen when I’m reading an undergraduate paper.

Even more often, Manion refers to the “female husbands” as being “legally married” to their wives. This doesn’t sit right with me. Do I think that morally their marriages were as valid as any other? Yes! But as we have frequent proof these days, the law is an ass—morality and legality are not identical things. The fact that many of these marriages were annulled once the AFAB status of the “female husband” became publicly known is proof that in the legal systems of the time, they weren’t seen as legally valid and binding. That in cases of separation or widowhood, a wife of a “female husband” might be awarded a financial settlement does not to me seem to necessarily indicate a historical acceptance of trans or same-sex marriage so much as it points to people sometimes being willing to be inconsistent in their reasoning if it was the charitable thing to do and lessened the likelihood of a woman ending up in the poorhouse.

There were also a couple of places where a turn of phrase or similar told me that Manion has perhaps not deeply engaged with the work of early modernists or medievalists on gender and women’s history. While of course no one can be an expert in everything, there were a couple of erronenous conclusions that the eye of a pre-modernist could have caught pre-publication. For instance, at one point Manion asserts that the fact that the obituaries of 18th-century businessman James Howe referred to them not just by their birth name of “Mary East” but as “Mrs Mary East” shows the sheer force of heteronormative assumptions—while legally a spinister, Howe/East is referred to as a Mrs. Manion writes that “The phrase Mrs. Mary East creates an impossible relationship whereby the female Mary East marries male James Howe — except they are the same person.” This would seem to be a paradox indeed! Except that from the late Middle Ages right through to the 18th century, Mistress/Missus/Mrs. was a term that did not necessarily imply marital status. It was used as a term of respect for a mature woman who generally speaking was the head of a household or was being accorded a certain degree of social respect for a skill—the obituary writer was more likely trying to signify Howe/East’s social standing than making a commentary about their marital status.

All that said, though, Manion has written an important book, and one grounded in an impressively wide trawl of the archives; it may not be the last word on these trans and queer forebears, but it’s one that’s sure to help shape the historiographical conversation for some time to come. ( )

A history of “female husbands” in the 18th/19th century US and England: people assigned female at birth who lived as men and married women, until the category fell apart with the rise of discourses about lesbians. Manion uses “they/them” as the pronouns throughout, which highlights the ways in which we cannot know how they really thought about their genders given that even their own words, if we really believe they spoke those words, were produced in response to legal and social threats. Other interesting points: the consideration of the female husbands’ wives, often mocked by contemporaries for not knowing (a position they may have been forced to take to protect their own interests after their husbands’ exposure)—Manion points out that many may have been perfectly content to have a female husband. And Manion suggests that, during this period, female husbands were judged not for being failed women but for being failed men—often effeminate—which in a way accepts their own gender characterization. ( )