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Female transvestism and the 17-18 cen Dutch navy
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Linnaeus



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Post Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:21 pm    Post subject: Female transvestism and the 17-18 cen Dutch navy Reply with quote

(Crossposting this from another board for your viewing pleasure
- Linnaeus)

Slightly off topic but not by much:

Several years ago Radio Netherlands broadcast "Crossing the Line", a really fascinating documentary on how and why some women passed as men in 17th and 18th century Dutch society, notably in the Dutch army and navy.

I just found the program archived on the RN website. You can listen to the program here:

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/thenetherlands/weeklyfeature/tv020405.html

The program is based on the following book:

The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe
by Rudolf M. Dekker, Lotte C. van de Pol

The authors present highlights of their work.

Similar studies in British records would be an intriguing topic for a scholar (if it hasn't already been done).

Here's the program outline from RN:

====

Imagine you're a poor servant girl living in The Netherlands in the eighteenth century. Your prospects aren't good. What do you do? Well, you could always become a man. That's what many women of the time did. It was illegal but they felt it was worth the risk. Most became soldiers and sailors and many even became famous.

Two Dutch social historians have now written a book on women who dressed as men in the 17th and 18th centuries. Lotte van de Pol and Rudolf Dekker trawled the Dutch historical archives, mostly records of court proceedings, and found that the phenomenon was far more common than expected.

Most of the time it was purely for economic reasons, where the choice was either prostitution or military service, but for some there was a sexual motive. A few even married other women.

Increasing Income
"Women cross dressing could gain in various ways," explains Rudolf Dekker. "They could earn immense income, they had possibilities for some kind of a career in the army, or navy and if they were successful they had at least shown some male qualities, like bravery, and these were valued in a positive way.

"Of course they have to find an excuse for not having a beard but in general a woman dressed as a man looks younger and most of them, as far as we can judge, looked like attractive young men. They looked like boys but that was no problem because the general idea was that when a child was six years old, he or she should begin to work for a living. So, if a woman of 20 looked like a boy of 14 or 15 it was not a problem to enter military service or to have a job aboard a ship."

Hygiene Problems
The lower standards of hygiene in those days also helped to avoid detection, people didn't undress or wash as much as they do today. But dressing and acting as a man all day every day, proved too difficult for most women.

"They were usually detected after rather a short time," says Lotte van de Pol.

"Sometimes after only a few weeks or a few months. Only a very few managed to live for many years as a man. Sometimes the performance was just not good enough. Or, in a ship in crowded quarters where common sailors lived together it was of course extremely difficult if you had to change your clothes or even go out for a pee, or even worse if you are menstruating."

Exiled Existence
When they were discovered, the cross dressing women often faced severe punishment. It was especially dangerous for those who had been married as they risked the death penalty, but more usually they were exiled from their community. A very harsh punishment for the time.
"Sending people to prison was expensive," says Rudolf.

"And besides there weren't many prisons. These were difficult cases and the judges seemed to think that if these women were out of their jurisdiction then they'd have one problem less. It could be exile from a city or a town but more usually it was from a much larger geographic region. This was really a heavy punishment because theses women were looking for jobs in the economic centre of the country so if you were forced out of that it would be a heavier sentence than we would think today."

Behaving Differently
Of course, even with such harsh sentences some women continued to live their lives as men. But, says Rudolf, for various social and cultural reasons, the phenomenon seemed to die out at the end of the 18th century.

"After around 1800 we only found some isolated cases and there are various reasons for the disappearance of this tradition. Holland because an economic backwater of Europe. There was much less or no female immigration of adventurous women who wanted to try their luck in Holland."

"Also, you started to get passports and registration of people," adds Lotte. "You could no longer just skip from one country to another without confirmed identity and you couldn't go into the army without an medical examination. It maybe that it was a social-cultural thing as well, the idea of what a women is and how a woman should behave was very different from that early modern period."

===
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 7:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For Anglo-saxon world, David Cordingly has written "Women sailors and sailor's women" Random House, 2001, ISBN: 0-375-50041-3
Here is a review http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/article/womensailors.html,
and Joan Druett, "She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea", 2001, ISBN: 9780684856919

Both book are very good.

"Female Tars" by Suzanne Stark, 1996, ISBN: 978-1557507389 is more anecdotic.
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Linnaeus



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Post Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for these references, I find the resourcefulness of these people an intriguing subject.
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Redfish



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Post Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would not be easy to pass for a man, yet bear in mind that anyone in breeches would have been considered male at the time, until proven differently. Or unless ones feminity would be too obvious. Especially when your face and forms would be boyish and you would be resourceful, I believe one could last quite long. Hanna Schnell seems to be a good example of the type. Even nowadays it is not always impossible for a women to pass for a young man/boy, if you have the right look. In those days a tan, not uncomman in the military, especailly the Navy, would be helpfull to look less young. And nature's calls could be at all times be presented as 'one of the sitting nature'. Try to sit down yourself with your shirt on. It proves to obstruct from view everything a woman would wish to hide. Menstruation must have been the biggest problem but if you had to sit down for nature's call so often and groan in the proces, it might very well be assumed that you suffered from constipation and, hence, from piles. And piles can burst...
The answer on "how did they do it?" lies to my opinion in suggestion.
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the long 18th century, the RN counted millions of man.years and the tar impersonators represented a handful.
Feminity certainly was not their first characteristic.
Cases of XXY genotype?
The work was very tough and with women on board that would have been very difficult to keep the pretence.
Crew conspiracies?

About menstruation, these pages http://www.mum.org/pastgerm.htm and http://www.mum.org/whatwore.htm gives interesting comments.
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Linnaeus



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Post Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 4:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PMarione wrote:
In the long 18th century, the RN counted millions of man.years and the tar impersonators represented a handful.


I don't know what a handful is. Is it a dozen? Fewer than 10?

Quote:
Feminity certainly was not their first characteristic. Cases of XXY genotype?


If you're serious - please go on, I'd love to hear more.

.
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Redfish



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Post Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Feminity certainly was not their first characteristic. Cases of XXY genotype?


Like those former Eastern Bloc female weightlifters? Laughing
I prefer looking at Hilary Swank (Boys don't cry). And if it wouldn't be for Keira's face, she could pass for a boy.
I can understand that the slender cross-dressing type would indeed not likely have managed to become listed as "able seaman", yet not all male sailors looked like Popeye or Brutus either...
How tall was Nelson exactly? Wink
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the books quoted, only 5 or 6 cases were reported mostly as phenomena in pamphlets. So even if more went unreported, their cases were very different and more scarce than those of the "hidden" women on board whose presence was just not aknowledged by the Admiralty (who would have to pay them wages) but of whom plenty of evidences has come to light these last years.

The transvestites had different problems mainly concealment. Keira Knightley was not really convincing. Even in ships full of beardless boys it would have been difficult to pass for an AB and perform the duties for a fragile female creature and so I assume that they were more like the famous East German weightlifters. More Grace Jones than Halle Berry.
It's just pure speculation as no portraits exist (that I know of).

People with XXY genetic abnormality (Klinefelter syndrome) look more like effeminated men (they are sexually male) than mannish women. Sorry I had to make a quick refresh google. The genetic abnomality would be more like Turner syndrome: X0 (missing the 2nd X chromosome).
From google:
Quote:
If they survive to birth, these girls have abnormal growth patterns. [...] They are short in stature, averaging 4 foot 7 inches as adults. They generally lack prominent female secondary sexual characteristics. They have exceptionally small, widely spaced breasts, broad shield-shaped chests, and turned-out elbows. Their ovaries do not develop normally and they do not ovulate. [...] They are in a sense postmenopausal from early childhood and are sterile.

This doesn't fit too well to.

So as to motivation I am still puzzled.
In her book, Suzanne Stark give homosexuality as the motive: to be able to seduce women. I am not convinced: female homosexuality was regarded more or less as one of those aberrations you can expect from those stange animals that were women than that death penalty worth abomination that was male homosexuality.
The argument of van de Pol and Dekker seems more plausible: no other choice (I have ordered the book after reading the post but still haven't got it so I can't give an advice) but Illi robur et aes triplex circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci commisit pelago ratem primus (Horace) in short "he must have been completely crazy he who first has gone on the sea". So why to choose such a dangerous job?
Another argument was love: to follow a boyfriend. I prefer that one but it seems to apply more to examples in the army (more easy to conceal her nature on shore).

So for me the question is still open: why would a woman choose to work on a ship as being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned?

Nelson was 5' 6" (1,67 m) not so short for the period but certainly dwarfed by Duncan, Cochrane or Hardy who were more than 6' tall.
Nelson was taller than president Sarkozy: 5' 5"! Wink


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alexlitandem



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Post Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

getting better.
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Redfish



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Post Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PMarione wrote:
So for me the question is still open: why would a woman choose to work on a ship as being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned?

Some random motives that cross my mind: Prizemoney, pay in general. And of course to this must have been added an at least temporary loss of reason for whatever cause. Perhaps a violent husband that would rather kill you than let you go. Wifes did not have many rights. A Man of War would have made a perfect hiding place from anything one wished to avoid on shore. And you were fed and payed as well. Better than living on the streets and run the risk of getting killed, or ill-used by other men ...
And if such a woman should come to regret her choice, she had a great advantage over pressed men: she was not supposed to be there. She might present her case to the Captain, he might well have acted gentlemanlike and suffice with booting the wretched creature of his ship.

As to physical strength:
Indeed women are less muscled, but it does not mean they have no strength. Slender-built woman can have muscles as well (Yet Keira indeed is not the best example Wink ). Besides, not all tasks on board were equally heavy, nor were such task performed by one man. When the sails are hoisted, it is done by a group and many hands make "light" work. Not all men that joined ship were well-fed muscled types. Their muscles and general strength had to be trained just like those of the indeed very few women that might have ventured to take a risk.

So the question that remains:
Are the myths about crossdressing women to be considered "busted" or "plausible"?
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Linnaeus



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Post Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PMarione wrote:
In the books quoted, only 5 or 6 cases were reported mostly as phenomena in pamphlets.


Perhaps those books considered only what was published in pamphlets. I don't know.

The Dutch study using court records revealed that these cases were a lot more common than anyone had expected to find.

PMarione wrote:
Keira Knightley was not really convincing.


Yep, that evidence would tend to rule out the phenomenon…

PMarione wrote:
why to choose such a dangerous job? . . . . Why would a woman choose to work on a ship as being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned?


Why would a man choose to work on a ship?

PMarione wrote:
Even in ships full of beardless boys it would have been difficult to pass for an AB and perform the duties for a fragile female creature and so I assume that they were more like the famous East German weightlifters. . . . People with XXY genetic abnormality (Klinefelter syndrome) look more like effeminated men (they are sexually male) than mannish women.


By "fragile female creature" I presume you're referring to a genetically normal, average, workaday woman. Not an androgyne, not an Olympic athlete. And you think normal women could scarcely have passed as sailors, because normal women can't do heavy physical work. Did I get that right?

A few quotes that come randomly to hand:

Alice Walker observed, “Black women are the mules of the world.” Traveling across the poor African country of Burundi, we see women doing the majority of the hard fieldwork and, of course, all of the labor in the home.
We also drive by women of all ages transporting insane loads of goods and foods on their backs from village to village or to the market. These women are struggling up endless hills, stooped almost parallel to the ground, traveling miles upon miles. (Nick Kristof attempted to carry a 50-year-old woman’s bag and nearly toppled under the weight.)
- New York Times, June 22, 2007

Gender, race, and class identities are important factors in agricultural subsystems. Frequently, certain groups of women - often racial and ethnic minorities - perform hard physical labour that would be considered men's work and unsuitable for women whose families own farms.
- Carolyn E. Sachs

Poor women in most societies continue to undertake heavy physical activity during pregnancy and resume this activity soon after delivery of their children.
- United Nations - Women and Nutrition - Nutrition Policy Discussion Paper No. 6 (1990)

A recent study of the small Himalayan village of Bemru by the New Delhi- based Center for Science and the Environment found . . . that women in the village did 59 percent of the work, often laboring 14 hours a day and lugging loads 1 1/2 times their body weight. "After two or three . . . pregnancies, their stamina gives up, they get weaker, and by the late thirties are spent out, old and tired, and soon die.''
- Washington Post , April 25, 1993


(Doesn't that last bit remind you of something? "It may appear, at first sight, for the State to pay, an enormous sum ; but when it is considered that the average life of a Seaman is, from old age finished, at forty-five years, he cannot many years enjoy the annuity." - Horatio Nelson)

It looks like millions of women in today's world are doing extremely heavy physical labour. And for millennia women have done heavy physical work right alongside the men in the farms and fields and roads, because there was no alternative.

According to your line of reasoning, these women must for the most part be XXY's, or pumped up with steroids, or... what was it you said a couple of posts back?

Oh yes - you said that the 18th century sailor women lacked "femininity".

Why, of course! That's it!

All the millions of women today, working as beasts of burden under backbreaking loads – my god, they must be an ugly bunch!

Thanks for alerting us.

- Linnaeus
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Donnez-moi deux lignes de l’écriture d’un homme et je le ferai pendre…

Curiously this quotation is variously attributed to Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, François Marie Arouet dit Voltaire, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and even Albert Camus and Thomas Moore (I don't know which one: the martyr or the Irish poet).
On ne prête qu'aux riches.
The original probably was from Jean Martin, Baron de Laubardemont (1590-1653), the Inquisitor who instructed the famous case of Urbain Grandier (The Devils of Loudun - see Aldous Huxley and Ken Russell).

The number of lines varies too from two words to six lines.

Quote:
I am still living with my Dalilah, who has only two faults - unpardonable in a woman - she can read and write. Byron, 1808

You are a lucky woman: you have only one fault you can write but not read.
Oooops - that's real sexism. Embarassed

You have forgotten all the courageous women who took the jobs of the men during WWI and WWII.

Reading back this thread, I can't see any allusion to the fact that a woman can't perform the job of a man.
Don't multiply the quotations you are preaching a convert.
I even am a militant of the Front for Mixed competitions at the JO. That would reduce the costs by 2 Confused

@+P

Idea Note: I just understood that for people with ground zero sense of humour it's difficult to understand when a sentence is a joke, jest, pun, silly or childish comment, irony, witticism, amusement, flippancy, wordplay, humourous remark, tongue in the cheek statement, etc.
So from now I will systematically add a smiley after such a sentence.
From now when you see a smiley that means that you have not to read the sentence or not to take it seriously. Idea


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Redfish



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Post Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would like to get back to the question "busted" or "plausible" regarding the myth if women could make it on a man of war.
I presume that Linnaeus considers it plausible, like me. I am still vastly curious whether Patrick is only teasing, or really of the opinion that he considers it busted.

One addition to my former message, in reaction to Patrick's question (why would a woman choose to work on a ship as being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned?):
Why would they choose to work in the mines? During the age of Nelson and beyond, many families were so poor that they had to make a living in the mines. For example, from poor cropp-producing Irish countryside they laid down their lives in the prison called "mine", with the chance of getting buried alive or choked as a result of collapsing parts of the mine. If they were so lucky to survive it, or be spared such hellish events, they endured the hard work a little longer and died at very young age from failing lungs.
Oh how lovely is the fresh sea breeze ...

For Linnaeus:
I am a woman myself, yet I do not mind others to be sceptic about a subject like this, nor the style they adapt. It is challenging to find arguments and suggestions that migth change a sceptical mind. Naturally I do expect to receive good arguments from their side why it is an absolute impossibility for a woman in those days to pass for a young male sailor.
There's no need to get vexed. And in case I misinterpreted the tone of your last reply, I apologize in advance.
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Redfish,

I never said that women impersonating a crew member on a RN ship is to be regarded as a myth: Hannah Snell for example is a well documented case.

Quote:
Lotte van de Pol and Rudolf Dekker trawled the Dutch historical archives, mostly records of court proceedings, and found that the phenomenon was far more common than expected.


I have not yet read the book that Linnaeus referred in her original post (in the post they say), and I don't know if they refer to the military or merchant navy.
All I can say is that from the books I quoted the phenomena appears to be exceptional in the RN. No archaeological study has been done (to my knowledge).
Possibly it was easier to conceal her sexe in the merchant navy: lesser crew, more space, or in the army again more space on land.

But it's all speculation without any proof.



In this well known engraving from Stothard, you can see a woman working a gun.
As I said there were many women on board ships from the wife (or sweetheart) of the captain, the wives of warrant officers to (common-law?) wives of the crew and marines, to harlots.
In the end assuming that concealment was difficult but possible and living outside any problem of ability to perform the service (and like you I believe there was not), we are back to motivation.

Here again it's all speculation and we will never know for sure except if some diary or archives come to light.
I don't believe in the argument of homosexuality given by Stark (could have been cases but certainly not common)
I don't think it was culturally common: today I don't see many female truck drivers or bricklayers (I am not saying that they don't exist just that they are not common at least in our countries) no more than I see many drag queens in my street or salesmen at Victoria's Secrets shops, whilst I have no problem envisioning women working in mines, at farms, in factories etc.

Quote:
Perhaps a violent husband that would rather kill you than let you go. Wifes did not have many rights. A Man of War would have made a perfect hiding place from anything one wished to avoid on shore. And you were fed and payed as well. Better than living on the streets and run the risk of getting killed, or ill-used by other men ...

Possibly but again it would have been anecdotic not common. Some officers (all male - no exceptions there) have reported to have been attracted to the sea after reading Robinson Crusoe.

We can speculate forever but no obvious reason comes to me. Maybe the quoted unread book will give a red thread on how to perform a similar study on the British navy. I'll keep you posted.

Social histories of 18th cent England shows that most of the women were married (most maids were servants) and had a very important economic role. Even today in Ostend, fishermen wives sale at day the fish taken at night. There is plenty of examples of widows continuing the business of their death husband. The work of the women in the cottage industry was also economically important as (even today) their work in farms was.
So they had their place in a very structured family based economy and I don't see why they would have gone searching their fortune in the RN except for some adventuresses.

I rest my case.

@+P
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Redfish



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Post Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I completely agree with you that if there were any cases of crossdresing women in the Royal Navy, they must have been extremely rare. And indeed, it is all speculation whether it actually happened in reality. And if there would have been a case in which a woman managed to stay on a ship without 'getting cought' we will never know. If there would have been a diary of such a person, it would have been known by know. Yet I do like wondering about the kind of circumstances in which such a woman could manage to conceal her sex and about the reasons why she would stay and I tried to share some possibilities in my earlier replies in this subject. That's all.

Danni
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