If women taking on male identities can be explained away for practical reasons (safety, economics, social power) then where is the explanation for men taking on female identities where those advantages are reversed? If women taking on male identities can be explained as a necessary requirement for desiring women, then where is the explanation for their female partners desiring them? If women taking on male identities can be explained by innate inborn gender identity, then what of the life histories that begin with a parent imposing the gender presentation which later is exaplained as "feeling natural?" Applying the simplest explanation: historic people changed their gender presentation for a wide variety of reasons and motivations, in a variety of contexts, and with variable permanence. This greatly complicates the "naming and claiming" approach to queer history that has prevailed for almost every flavor of queer that tackled the question of "what are our historic roots?" It's why that bug-a-boo of conservative historians "we just can't really know" can't be dismissed out of hand. In some cases, there is enough evidence, rooted in the individual's own testimony, and without the shadow of compulsion or legal threat, to be fairly confident about how they viewed their identity (if "identity" is even an accurate term in their context). But that still leaves the question of how much their own identity was shaped by the models and options their society offered to them. In the big picture of history, there is always clearly a spectrum. At one extreme are those whose identities and desires are rooted in their individual being and will come out in some fashion regardless of their cultural context. At another extreme are those whose expressions of identity and desire are built from the tools their specific society offers them. But it isn't a simple binary sliding scale, for desires and identities operate independently.
Boag points out that even within the fairly constrained scope of US history on the Western frontier in the later 19th century, the cultural explanations for the interplay between gender and desire were messily various, depending greatly on larger social movements and anxieties. And fictions of gender set in the "Wild West" were part of that interplay. Keep that in mind when writing your own Western fictions.
Comments