Frank/Mary

I love the fact that I get to read sentences like this in my program: "So I don't posit that among all those 'passing women' are people who were in essence genderqueers or boydykes or trannyfags who would have figured that out if only these terms in use now were available then."

The quote above is from The Ellis Island Snow Globe by Erica Rand, which we're reading part of in my Sexuality and Representation class. It's an interesting look at the concept of gender policing (and quite accessible for scholarly gender studies work -- in other words, it's not like reading Judith Butler), specifically the case of female-to-male cross-dresser, Frank Woodhull (Mary Johnson), detained at Ellis Island in 1908, 'revealed' to be a woman, and named as such by the state and the press. It was quite the scandal, especially since he'd already been living as a man in the US for 15 years (he was returning from a trip to France when something about him triggered suspicion -- marked him as alien -- and he was forced to undergo a medical examination at Ellis Island). As far as pronouns, Rand chooses to refer to him as 'he' since it seems to have been his preference, based on his presentation, and perhaps as a way to sort of undo the gender policing that had been done to him.

One of the most interesting aspects of Woodhull's story is that his image is still displayed as part of the Ellis Island tourism center (the American Family Immigration History Center, or something like that), but without explanation -- the "Mary Johnson" part of his story (which is written on the original photograph) is cropped from the blown up photograph that's on display (and used in brochures) -- in a sort of normalization of the 'freaks' of the past. The picture was actually part of a photography collection of the 'freaks' that came through Ellis Island taken by a particular photographer at the time, Augustus Sherman, which included: woman with 55 pound Russian baby; tattooed German stowaways; a body builder; and a VEGETARIAN.