Beloved by the Vancouver community, the History on Tap series asks you to “raise a glass” and explore the history of the Pacific Northwest. In collaboration with The Clark County Historical Museum and Kiggins Theatre, History on Tap is currently in its third season with several programs that have debuted this year. Their recent event, “History of Transgender People in Washington and the American West”, was headlined by WSU Vancouver’s very own Peter Boag, a history professor, accomplished author and Columbia chair in the history of the American West.
After teaching history for roughly 30 years, and instructing classes at the Pullman campus for 10 years, Boag, a Portland native, moved back to the area with his partner to be a professor at WSU Vancouver. Utilizing his research on society and culture within the U.S., Boag presented at the History on Tap event via a live stream on YouTube that occurred on April 15.
Boag’s presentation, “Redressing America’s Frontier Past”, shared the history and stories of many transgender people located in Washington and the American West. Boag began his presentation on defining what gender identity meant in the past compared to what it means now.
“I would like to start with a definition, a broad, social definition of what transgender means. Transgender relates to someone whose gender identity does not correspond to the gender that they were assigned at birth. Gender identity is completely separate from sexuality or sexual identity, and the term transgender is of relativity recent origins,” Boag said. “As my research uncovered, there were hundreds and hundreds of people living at that time who had been assigned one gender at birth, but later in life took on a gender identity that they felt more comfortable with.”
Boag began his research on sexuality in the early 1990s and later expanded his curiosities to the history of transgender people. Through periods of newspapers and other historical documents, Boag comprised the stories of transgender people and cross-dressers living in the American West and wrote his novel entitled “Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past”.
“The book includes coverage of people we understand as transgender, but it also looks at other people who may have lived or dressed for brief periods who did wear clothing that broader society did not feel was appropriate for their sex. So they might not have been transgender, but they certainly did cross gender boundaries,” Boag said.
Boag highlighted the stories of three specific people from his book, examples that he chose based on the compelling documentation from their lives, the first being Bert Martin who did not fit society’s gender expectations.
Arrested in 1900 for stealing horses in Nebraska, Bert Martin was sent to a Lincoln penitentiary for two years. Martin presented himself as a man, but 11 months into his prison sentence, a cellmate informed a prison guard of suspicions that Martin was female. Because of this, prison officials examined Martin and decided he was a woman. The story was leaked to the press, and Martin was sent to the women’s section of the penitentiary. Boag explained that Martin was most likely intersex, which only happens in about 1% of births today. Boag also explained that had Martin fit society’s expectations of gender identity, the hardship Martin experienced throughout his life would have been avoided.
“I think his story helps to unsettle received wisdom, cultural expectations about the way that gender and sex and bodies correspond with each other. … Regardless of how Martin identified and how he behaved in gendered ways that he felt comfortable with, society thought otherwise based on its beliefs about what the body should look like and how gender should reflect that,” Boag said.
Boag’s second topic of discussion was the story of Harry Allen, a transgender man living in Portland in the 1900s. Allen, born Nell or Nellie Pickerell, was assigned a female at birth but changed his gender identity later in life. In 1898 Allen took on the male persona of Harry Livingstone, later Harry Allen. Allen became well-known across Washington and Oregon due to being repeatedly harassed by the press and police for presenting as a man. In 1912, he was arrested in Portland for dressing as a man and sent to a women’s prison under his former name Pickerell.
“Some cities in the American West by the early 20th century had specific ordinances making cross-dressing a crime. For those cities that didn’t have those specific ordinances, like Seattle and Portland, they used vagrancy laws. [These are] broadly worded ordinances criminalizing all kinds of behaviors, used to harass homeless people and working-class people, trying to get them to move out of the city. The vagrancy laws were typically used to arrest people who were dressed in ways considered inappropriate for their sex,” Boag said.
Boag’s third and final example was Joe Monahan, born Johanna Monahan in Buffalo, New York around 1850. Monahan presented himself as male and was well known in the Owyhee County of Idaho. In January 1904, Monahan passed away, which led to mildly surprised neighbors. They discovered Monahan had the body of a woman as they prepared him for burial, resulting in news headlines reading “Sex betrayed by death” and “Masqueraded many years as a cowboy.” Boag explained that those who knew Monahan were not shocked and had suspicions about Monahan. Instead, the real shock factor was reserved for newspapers in hopes of wanting to sell a story.
“Although they may have had questions, locals had accepted Joe for many years in their community as either a man, or as someone whose gender identity was not really clear, or even as a man who had a woman’s body, but no one seemed to care too much,” Boag said. “Even after Joe’s death, when the truth of his body was known, [friends of Monahan] continued to refer to Joe using masculine pronouns and modifiers.”
Boag currently has an exhibit at the Washington State Historical Society entitled “Crossing Boundaries: Portraits of a Transgender West” which opens May 29 and runs through Dec. 12. If you are interested in learning more about his research on transgender people in the American West, you can find out more information on the exhibit here.