“The body is not a fact” -Simone de Beauvoir
Up until the 18th century, the biological sex model espoused by the medical, philosophical, political communities adhered to a one-sex theory. The theory is first recorded by Galen, a Roman physician, surgeon, and philosopher from the second-century, who postulated that “women were essentially under-developed men. Men’s genitals were women’s turned inside out: like a flower, the ovaries would turn out and turn into testes; the vagina would bloom into a penis."
However, in the 18th century, a major paradigm shift had taken place “whereby the male/female binary replaced the hierarchical notion of women as imperfect or underdeveloped men” and the two-sex model came to be accepted. This new model of biological sex created two sets of distinctly separate genitalia and with that “Enlightenment science would naturalize the notion that sex determined gender behavior and sexual desire.” This model was a catalyst for discourse and requirements about modes of dress and behavior that further ensconced the masculine and feminine ideals of (and for) the cis-gendered heteronormative hegemony.
This meant that those who fell outside of these prescribed ideals fell into one of several other categories. In the 18th century the “fop” and the “beau” were men who were deemed effeminate due to their interest in fashion. This group of individuals did not dress in women’s clothing but would wear hyper fashionable men’s clothing and adhere to stringent rules of grooming. Effeminacy though would not be linked to homosexuality until the late 19th century.
Different from the socially acceptable fop and beau of the early 18th century, the lifestyles of the “molly” and the “tommy” of the 18th and early 19th century were associated with the stigma of criminality and homosexuality. A tommy, or a biological female who dressed in men’s clothing was essentially considered a lesbian. A molly was a biological male who dressed in women’s clothing and was considered a homosexual.
Since the early 1700’s cross-dressing men would congregate in molly houses. Molly houses existed in the less desirable neighborhoods around what became London’s theater district. They were essentially establishments where cross-dressing men could go to a safe environment free to enact female gendered performative rituals in the company of like-minded individuals. Many times these acts were highly romanticized and heteronormative in nature like weddings or births. The adherence to this heteronormative performativity is not surprising considering the limited number of relationship and gender models known and tolerated by the general public.
While men dressing as women weakened the contemporary male archetype they presented no imminent threat to the cisgendered male's privilege. The tommy, however, and especially an individual who could pass as biologically male, posed the greatest threat in that if they could live as convincingly as a man they could potentially usurp cisgender heterosexual male privilege at all levels.
During the last half of the 19th century the “dandy” would assume the previous century’s role of the fop and the beau. The dandy was a man who was known for his love of material things, his vanity and considerable preening, as well as his penchant for theatrics. A common example of a dandy were the “macaronis”; men who had traveled abroad and then returned in outlandish fashions, for example, a very large wig paired with a tiny three-cornered hat.
Next Chapter: Mary Frith