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Jeanne d’Arc

15th century French woman who cross-dressed openly for the purpose of taking a military leadership role. Her trial testimony indicates she may have had a non-binary identity.

For a full list of LHMP event / person tags click here.

LHMP entry

Gender-Queer Historic Motif Project: 81a Krimmer 2004 - In the Company of Men: Cross-Dressed Women Around 1800 (Introduction)

(blogged by Heather Rose Jones)

Krimmer’s primary focus is on the motif of cross-dressing women in 18th century German literature (novels, plays, etc.), but as part of the background, she reviews a great many historic cases. The issues of theory that are covered in these opening parts of Krimmer’s work, with the complexities of gender theory and clothing as signifiers of all manner of social classifications, are thoroughly covered in the analysis of chapters 2-5. The present summary is simply a rough catalog of the examples she cites.

Sautman, Francesca Canadé & Pamela Sheingorn 2001 Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #19 - Sautman & Sheingorn 2001 “Introduction: Charting the Field”

In my opinion, the article overstates the lack of a vocabulary for women to express same-sex desire though it points out tendency for records to be filtered through hostile lenses. As a symbol of the problems with the evidence, it looks at an image of two women kissing while dancing from the Roman de la Rose as symbolic of desire being evident and overt without being clearly categorized or named.

Gender-Queer Historic Motif Project: 81a Krimmer 2004 - In the Company of Men: Cross-Dressed Women Around 1800 (Ch 1)

(blogged by Heather Rose Jones)

This chapter focuses primarily on the history of women participating in military contexts in male dress, whether actual disguise was the intent or not.

Starts off with Joan of Arc, as usual.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #35 – Hotchkiss 1996 Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe

This review will necessarily be somewhat cursory, as the entire book is relevant to the LHMP project. In general, I will summarize data not covered in detail elsewhere, and include references to the rest.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #93 Crane 1996 “Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc,”

One of the most commonly-cited cases of medieval women openly dressing in male clothing is Joan of Arc, not only because of her prominent place in general history, but because both her practices and her reasoning are unusually well documented, not only by her contemporaries, but in her own words from the trial transcripts. She wore male clothing almost continually from the time of her first attempts to contact the Dauphin throughout most of her trial.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #38 – Bullough 1996 “Cross Dressing and Gender Role Change in the Middle Ages”

The article begins with a survey of the discussion of, and attitudes toward distinguishing biological sex and gender behaviour in professional literature. Especially in distinguishing transvestism, transexualism, gender non-conformity, and more situational uses of cross-gender behavior. This article focuses more on those situational uses rather than cross-dressing as a feature of gender or sexual identity.

Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #33 – Bullough 1974 “Transvestites in the Middle Ages”

This article looks at gender-status issues in the context of medieval crossdressing motifs (both literary and historical). It begins with a consideration of crossdressing as psychopathology with an essentialist approach (keep in mind this was written in 1974!) then shifts to looking at the role of culture in reactions to crossdressing, especially differences between the reactions to crossdressing men and women.

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