Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Perverse Modernities #1)

Clare Sears

Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
4.33 · 3 ratings · 216 pages · Published: 01 Dec 2014
Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco by Clare Sears
In 1863, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed a law that criminalized appearing in public in “a dress not belonging to his or her sex.” Adopted as part of a broader anti-indecency campaign, the cross-dressing law became a flexible tool for policing multiple gender transgressions, facilitating over one hundred arrests before the century’s end. Over forty U.S. cities passed similar laws during this time, yet little is known about their emergence, operations, or effects. Grounded in a wealth of archival material, Arresting Dress traces the career of anti-cross-dressing laws from municipal courtrooms and codebooks to newspaper scandals, vaudevillian theater, freak-show performances, and commercial “slumming tours.” It shows that the law did not simply police normative gender but actively produced it by creating new definitions of gender normality and abnormality. It also tells the story of the tenacity of those who defied the law, spoke out when sentenced, and articulated different gender possibilities.
 
Amazon Other stores
As an Amazon Associate thebooknaut.com earns from qualifying purchases

Tagged as:

    romance tags

    crime tags

    literary-fiction tags

    historical-fiction tags

    fantasy tags

    sci-fi tags

    action-adventure tags

    thriller tags

    horror tags

    Collections/Custom tags

    Report duplicate books, missing or wrong information

    The 'Perverse Modernities' series

    4.00 · 3 ratings
    urban · lgbtq · social-commentary · non-fiction · politics
    Perverse Modernities reading order and complete book list  ❯

    Reviews

    Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco by Clare Sears

    Report duplicate books, missing or wrong information