Slight side step, because my head's in the eighteenth-century today :P
I've taken this from wikipedia, because I havent the heart to go searching through texts:
Quote:
In 18th century England, a "molly" referred to an effeminate usually homosexual male.[1][2] Mollies, and other third sex identities, were one precursor to the broader 'homosexual' identity of the 20th and 21st centuries.[3]
The most famous molly house was Mother Clap's open for two years from 1724-1726 in the Holborn area of London.
Patrons of Molly houses who dressed in women's clothing were called "Mollies", they would take on a female persona, have a female name, and affect feminine mannerisms and speech. Marriage ceremonies between a Mollie and his male lover were enacted to symbolise their partnership and commitment, and the role-play at times incorporated a ritualised giving birth.[4]
At the time, under the Buggery Act 1533, buggery was a capital offence in England, and court records of buggery trials of the period provide much of the evidence about molly houses.[5]
On 9 May 1726, three men (Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright) were hanged at Tyburn for buggery following a raid of Margaret Clap's molly house. Charles Hitchen, the Under City Marshal (and crime lord), was also convicted (in 1727) of attempted buggery at a Molly house
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Two things strike me about this. One, is that gender performance has always been problematic for those whose sense of self did not conform strictly to the culturally constructed norms of the day. And second is that, whilst right now what is at stake is at worst violent assault and at best the experience (hopefully temporary) of shame described by Pam, the stakes have been much higher at other times and yet...those people still engaged in gender performance which put them at risk of utter ruination or capital sentence.
It has taken a very, very long time, for our culture(s) to accept something which it has always had within it. I hope, one day, discussions like this one will seem as odd to contemporaries as discussions on women's wandering wombs, and the genetic inferiority of the black man do to us now. Both of which, incidentally, had scientific 'facts' to give them weight.