Who's cross-dressing in 15C Europe?

The answer is prostitutes, but not for the reason you might expect.

In the late Middle Ages into the early modern era, clothing for men--particularly young men--gradually became tighter and more revealing of the body contours underneath. (AskHistorians love Henry VIII's codpiece questions, as shorthand reference). Women's dress, though it often emphasized the chest, disguised much more shape. So donning men's clothing was a way for prostitutes to show off the goods, so to speak, to potential male clients.

One really interesting aspect of this phenomenon is the handful of women arrested and fined in London for cross-dressing specifically as priests and monks. Right down to a tonsure haircut. Court records make it clear the issue is not "women disguising themselves as men to enter a strict monastic life," as we sometime see in late antique saints' lives. Rather, it's priests' concubines/illicit "wives"/temporary flings who seem to have engaged in this practice. Why is kind of a puzzle. Is it so they wouldn't look suspicious together from far away? So the priests could avoid accusations of sodomy even though they found themselves attracted primarily to men? (Clerical celibacy was as important theologically as it was violated practically as a general rule). Was the connection to the priesthood, specifically, what drew certain women to "unmarry" priests?

People talking about gender role flexibility in fashion tend to focus on the supposedly "boyish" figure and bob of the 1920s or the story of pants becoming mainstream for women, but for me the more fascinating topic is 17th and 18th century women's riding habits. While everyday dress for men and women was very strongly differentiated, riding habits were made up of petticoats with men's coats and waistcoats on top, tailored to fit smoothly over the stays, as well as a cravat around the neck and usually a cocked and beplumed hat. (While riding habits were intended for equestrianism, they were also often worn for traveling by carriage, walking, etc.) This fashion kicked off in the 1660s - Samuel Pepys described it in his diary:

Walking here in the galleries I find the Ladies of Honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up the breast, with perriwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men’s coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever; which was an odde sight, and a sight did not please me. It was Mrs. Wells and another fine lady that I saw thus.

It soon became normalized, though it still had the potential to shock: when Marie Antoinette was painted not only in a riding habit but in breeches, riding astride, it was a big deal and a strong statement. In the 1780s, women began to bring aspects of men's clothing into non-riding dress - redingotes (gowns cut somewhat like men's coats in the torso but extending to the ground), long canes, cadogans, low shoes - and it was again something men scoffed at as ugly and weird but, you know, they did it anyway. It was not done to make a sight that pleases you, Mr Pepys!

One of the open secrets of pulp fiction is that many female writers hid their gender by assuming male or asexual pseudonyms--G. G. Pendarves was Gladys Gordon Trenery, May Eliza Frost was Eli Colter, Ella Howard Bryan was Clinton Dangerfield, Gertrude Barrows Barrett was Francis Stevens, and so on. (C. L. Moore - Catherine L. Moore - wasn't trying to hide her gender, she just didn't want her boss to know she was freelancing.) What is less known is that male authors would also write under female pseudonyms. "Terva Gaston Hubbard" was Trevor Bardette. Frank Belknap Long wrote romance novels under his wife's name, Lyda Long. H. P. Lovecraft ghost-wrote tales published under the names of female revision clients Zealia Brown Reed Bishop and Hazel Heald.

The reasons for adopting a pseudonym were many and varied; house names for magazines were common, as was disguising the fact that a single prolific author had more than one story in the same issue. Many folks didn't want others to know they wrote for the pulps, which were not highly-regarded. And in a few cases it was almost mandatory: the "confessions" magazines were largely marketed to women as by women. The editor might not have cared whether the writer was male or female or a Martian, but they needed to maintain the illusion for the readers - and so, female pseudonyms for male confessions-pulp writers was par for the course (and it spawned a proud tradition: many of the romance comics, marketed to girls and young women, were also written by men).

The confessions stories are a bit more interesting than the rest, because few of the pulpsters writing for science fiction, weird, or western pulps felt the need to tailor their voice to the gender of their pseudonym - but when you're writing a confession, you are presenting a first-person viewpoint and have to do a bit of mental gender gymnastics. Lovecraft never wrote a confession story (although years after Lovecraft's death, Robert M. Price wrote a pastiche under the title "Sally Theobold" entitled "I Wore the Brassiere of Doom!" - which was translated into French as "The Enchanted Bra" and mistakenly presented as an authentic lost tale of Lovecraft's) - but Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Cimmerian, did (although it didn't sell).

This is not exactly the topic, but I did recently discover something interesting regarding gender that surprised me.

In colonial era Cuba, a Cabildo was a sort of town council. They regulated much of the local economy, political issues, etc. The local government was run by important vecinos (literally, 'neighbors'), whose property and status allowed them a voice in local politics.

Recently, while reading Alejandro de la Fuente's book Havana and the Atlantic in the 16th Century, I was surprised to find that vecinos could sometimes be female. Even though the term vecino is itself masculine due to the 'o' at the end (if it ended in an 'a' it would be feminine), it was on occasion applied to women as well. The frequency of such recognition, the exact reasons/policies behind it, etc., are not entirely clear. De la Fuente's study only mentions it in passing and does not go into further detail.

What strikes me as fascinating about this is that you would assume from the fact that we're dealing with 16th century colonial Cuba, looking specifically at Medieval Spanish institutions, that women would be entirely barred from vecino status. While certainly the exceptions, instead of the rule, female vecinos definitely add an interesting added dimension to local colonial politics as well as interesting follow ups.

Further complicating research, in Spanish plurals are often male. A male child is niño, a female one a niña, but the plurals is niños unless all of them are female. Thus, when paperwork refers to vecinos, while it may include female ones, their presence can only be confirmed by identifying them on an individual basis.

Were female vecinos treated as equals to male ones, within Cabildo politics, or was there de juris equality and de facto inequality? Was this practice normal in Medieval Spain or something specific to a specific region? Was this practice continued late into the colonial period or merely an exception during the very early years, allowed for entirely pragmatic reasons?