Archive History Nonfiction Photography Theory

Unconcealable Realities of Desire: Amelio Robles’s (Transgender) Masculinity in the Mexican Revolution

One can almost see it: a smile of satisfaction spreading across Amelio Robles’s face as he looks at the studio portrait in which he poses like a dandy: dark suit, white shirt, tie, wide-brimmed black hat, leather shoes, and a white handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket.¹ Standing with a cigarette in one hand…

Archive History Nonfiction Theory

Lorenza Böttner: From Chilean Exceptionalism to Queer Inclusion

Although critical efforts since the end of Chile’s dictatorship have successfully deployed narratives of dissident gender comportment to disrupt the country’s neoliberal discourse of economic exceptionalism, some queer narratives of the postdictatorship period that are not contingent on Chile’s dictatorial, violent past have been excluded from this debate. The story of Lorenza Böttner, a transgender…

Archive Biography Nonfiction Theory

Passing to América Antonio (Née María) Yta’s Transgressive, Transatlantic Life in the Twilight of the Spanish Empire

In 1803 in the colonial South American city of La Plata, Doña Martina Vilvado y Balverde presented herself to church and crown officials to denounce her husband of more than four years, Don Antonio Yta, as a “woman in disguise.” Forced to submit to a medical inspection that revealed a woman’s body, Don Antonio confessed…

Archive History Nonfiction

The Hirschfeld Archives

nfluential sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld founded Berlin’s Institute of Sexual Sciences in 1919 as a home and workplace to study homosexual rights activism and support transgender people. It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. This episode in history prompted Heike Bauer to ask, Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? The…

Archive Humanities Natural Sciences Nonfiction Social Sciences

Der Erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Die Transvestiten)

Im textlichen Teile des Buches: „Die Transvestiten“ sprachen wir die Absicht aus, in einem besonderen illustrierten Teile die in diesem Werke bekundeten Ausführungen durch instruktive Abbildungen zu ergänzen, sofern danach in größerer Anzahl Wünsche an uns heran­ treten würden. Solche Anliegen sind uns bei dem über Erwarten großen Interesse, das dem Buche „Die Transvestiten“ entgegengebracht…

Archive History Nonfiction

Women in Men’s Guise

In a former work, “Men in Women’s Guise,” we dealt with some curious examples of the human species: the Abbé de Choisy, the Abbé d’Entraignes, Philippe d’Orléans, the Chevalier d’Eon, Savalette de Lange, and many others. Of those strange personalities, we propose to select two to serve as a kind of introduction to the present…