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Our readings this week focus on two chapters by Peter Boag about changing awareness and responses to "same-sex affairs" between men in Portland during the early 20th century, along with a truly optional chapter providing more national context.

At the bottom of this page, I offer a few ways of exploring partial answers to the recurring question: Where are the women, female-bodied, trans*, and non- genderbinary people -- particularly with regard to people who might have identified as trans if that had been an option during their lifetimes as well as those whose lives seem analogous to contemporary gender nonbinary identities? Knowledge of the past is evolving, what counts as evidence is changing, and interpretations are never unanimous--but I hope you find the material interesting and provocative.

These two chapters are from historian (and Portland native) Peter Boag's book Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Sexuality in the Pacific Northwest (which, despite its title, focuses almost entirely on men).

Peter Boag (he/him), Chapter 2: “Sex in the City: Transient and Working-Class Men and Youths in the Urban Pacific Northwest”

Boag, Chapter 3: "Gay Identity and Community in Early Portland"

Endnotes to Boag chapters 2 and 3

I encourage you to review this 6-page timeline in which I summarize local events as well as state and federal laws that (I hope) will help to contextualize the readings: Hutchison, Race, Immigration, Sexuality and the History of Oregon, 1788-1927

Bonus: Folks interested in learning more about the sexual geography of GLBTQ communities in Portland spanning the 20th century can check out the information collected and presented by volunteers with the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN) in their "1999 Portland Gay History Walking Tour"

In other terms, I've assigned the following chapter as well, but I recognize that's

WS-370U-001: HISTORY OF SEXUALITIES (Sum…

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In other terms, I ve assigned the following chapter as well, but I recognize that s not realistic timewise for most folks. Still, I think it's interesting and useful, demonstrating how, by the late 19th century, U.S. immigration law was shaped and enforced specifically to surveil and exclude immigrant bodies considered unfit for a variety of reasons relevant to sexuality and gender:

Margot Canaday (she/her), “’A New Species of Undesirable Immigrant’: Perverse Aliens and the Limits of the Law, 1900-1924” (19-54)

Where are the Women, Trans and Gender queer folk? Optional yet important

A recurring issue in tracking non-heteronormative relationships based on romantic/sexual desire and contact is answering the question "where are the women, female-bodied people, and other trans* and other gender-queer people?"

As we've already seen, before such people and their other-than-biologically reproductive sexual desires/behaviors were publicly discussed and documented in surviving sources, court records of crimes associated with non- heteronormative behaviors are probably the most important source--which means by definition, the stories of scores of people who managed to avoid notice from the police are lost to us. Here are 3 types of examples:

1. This brief excerpt from Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past, also by Peter Boag, focuses on a resident of Washington State and Oregon who was named Nell Pickerell at birth, but who was better known as either Harry Livingstone or--as Boag usually refers to him--Harry Allen. I've appended some images from newspaper coverage of the time to give you an idea about the range of Livingstone/Allen's legal travails and how avidly they were covered by the press.

2. We've also seen that in general, "native-born" status (tacitly understood as meaning white and of "respectable" appearance and behavior) provided cover for behaviors that otherwise would have created public notice and legal jeopardy. In addition, as we saw last week, being upper class and female made romantic/sexual friendships between women more palatable even as awareness of "homosexuality" caused more scrutiny of such relationships in general, particularly among men.

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