I'm glad I decided to cover Manion and Skidmore back to back (well, with the exception of that little blip I posted last week) because they cover similar material, use similar research sources, and overlap slightly but not significantly in time scope. Reading them together not only provides a broader picture for the topic, but points out significant shifts in experience and reception that occurred around the late 19th century. While Skidmore's book, in isolation, is much more tenuously relevant to a blog focused on lesbian-like lives than Manion's is, the fuzzy boundaries around gender categories and the ways that different types of experiences shade into each other make it useful for understanding what can and can't be projected backwards based on the 20th century experience of gender and sexuality. And--let us be clear--people are writing historical sapphic fiction set in the early 20th century that involves gender-disguise motifs, and the experiences of trans men during that period will also speak to the possibilities for those who understand themselves to be women but are presenting themselves to the world as men. So this book fits solidly into the type of research material that my intended readership should find useful.
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