The research presented in this monograph documents the life of five individuals who were clearly gender nonconforming in either their personal or professional lives, or both. Using the "performativity manufactures gender" quideline based on Judith Butler's theory concerning gender and performativity, each person is shown to have performed acts that were normally associated with the opposite biological sex. Framing it in this way, most everyone researched was to some degree queer.
The Chevalier d’Eon, unquestionably falls outside the heteronormative gender binary. Mary Frith’s combination of crossdressing, drinking in taverns, and smoking seem to point to Mary also landing squarely outside the gender norms of their day. Though Julie d’Aubigny’s frequency of performing en travesti is low, her thrilling personal life, both romantic and platonic, was full of performative acts that leave little doubt as to their queerness. Madame Vestris seems to have used crossdressing as a vehicle to fame but that is where the queerness ends. However, her entrance into and ultimate success in a male dominated theater scene was an important break from hegemonic gender constructs. Although Eugene d’Ameli’s career in blackface calls into question compassion and decency, it is a fact that he was one of the best minstrel performers of his generation. As a female impersonator and possible dandy, he lived both his professional and personal lives in the queer realm.
I partially agree with Butler’s simplified assertion but in my own experience as a queer person/artist/musician, I recognize that there are feelings and intuitions, admittedly based on preconceived social constructs, that inspire the performativity referenced by Butler: that gender is not just a doing but also a being. However, there is a value in the simplified version as it provides an objective framework by which we can offer alternative readings to individuals that were undeniably fantastic in their being, fantastic as in outside of the ordinary, whose observable performative acts were undoubtedly not in line with their contemporary binary construct.
Even with the limitations encountered with traditional resources, as the research continued it became even clearer that queerness has existed at all times and in many different areas of the music performance universe. Fortunately, in the last thirty years with the addition of gender and queer studies in higher education institutions, printed and web-based literature over gender nonconformity has become more readily available making further study possible.