1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910820040603321

Autore

Boag Peter <1961->

Titolo

Re-dressing America's frontier past / / Peter Boag

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2011

ISBN

1-283-27831-6

9786613278319

0-520-94995-1

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (270 p.)

Disciplina

306.77/8097809034

Soggetti

Gender-nonconforming people - West (U.S.) - History - 19th century

Gender identity - West (U.S.) - History - 19th century

Homosexuality - West (U.S.) - History - 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

"Known to all police west of the Mississippi" : disrobing the female-to-male cross-dresser -- "I have done my part in the winning of the West" : unveiling the male-to-female cross-dresser -- "And love is a vision and life is a lie" : the daughters of Calamity Jane -- "He was a Mexican" : race and the marginalization of male-to-female cross-dressers in Western history -- "Death of a modern Diana" : sexologists, cross-dressers, and the heteronormalization of the American frontier -- Conclusion : Sierra Flats and haunted valleys : cross-dressers and the contested terrain of America's frontier past.

Sommario/riassunto

Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing-for both men and women-was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century-when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was



created as a category-Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.