Library:Transgender Warriors

Part 1

The Give Away

I found my first clue that trans people have not always been hated in 1974. I had played hooky from work and spent the day at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

The exhibits were devoted to Native history in the Americas. I was drawn to a display of beautiful thumb-sized clay figures. The ones to my right had breasts and cra- dled bowls. Those on the left were flat chested, holding hunting tools. But when I looked closer, I did a double-take. I saw that several of the figures holding bowls were flat chested; several of the hunters had breasts. You can bet there was no legend next to the display to explain. I left the museum curious.

What I'd seen gnawed at me until I called a member of the curator's staff. He asked, "Why do you want to know?" I panicked. Was the information so classified that it could only be given out on a "need to know" basis? I lied and said I was a grad- uate student at Columbia University.

Sounding relieved, he immediately let me know that he understood exactly what I'd described. He said he came across references to these berdache practically every day in his reading. I asked him what the word meant. He said he thought it meant transvestite or transsexual in modern English. He remarked that Native peoples didn't seem to abhor them the way "we" did. In fact, he added, it appeared that such individuals were held in high esteem by Native nations.

Then his voice dropped low. "It's really quite disturbing, isn't it?" he whispered. I hung up the phone and raced to the library. I had found the first key to a vault containing information I'd looked for all my life.

"Strange country this," a white man wrote in 1850 about the Crow nation ofNorth America, "where males assume the dress and perform the duties of females,while women turn men and mate with their own sex!"

I found hundreds and hundreds of similar references, such as those in JonathanNed Katz's ground-breaking Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.,published in 1976, which provided me with additional valuable research. The quotes were anything but objective. Some were statements by murderouslv hostilecolonial generals, others by the anthropologists and missionaries who followed intheir bloody wake.

Some only referred to what today might be called male-to-female expression. "Innearly every part of the continent," Westermarck concluded in 191 7, "there seemtohave been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and per-forming the functions of women. . .."2

But I also found many references to female-to-male expression. Writing about hisexpedition into northeastern Brazil in 1576, Pedro de Magalhaes noted femalesamong the Tupinamba who lived as men and were accepted by other men. and whohunted and went to war. His team of explorers, recalling the Greek Amazons,renamed the river that flowed through that area the River ofthe Amazons.

Female-to-male expression was also found in numerous North Americannations. As late as 1930, ethnographer Leslie Spier observed of a nation in thePacific Northwest: "Transvestites or berdaches ... are found among the Klamath, asin all probability among all other North American tribes. These are men andwomen who for reasons that remain obscure take on the dress and habits of theopposite sex."4

I found it painful to read these quotes because they were steeped in hatred. "I sawa devilish thing," Spanish colonialist Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote in the six- teenth century.5 "Sinful, heinous, perverted, nefarious, abominable, unnatural, dis-gusting, lewd" - the language used by the colonizers to describe the acceptance ofsex/gender diversity, and of same-sex love, most accurately described the viewer,not the viewed. And these sensational reports about Two-Spirit people were used tofurther "justify" genocide, the theft of Native land and resources, and destruction oftheir cultures and religions.

But occasionally these colonial quotes opened, even if inadvertently, a momentary window into the humanity of the peoples being observed. Describing his first trip down the Mississippi in the seventeenth century, Jesuit Jacques Marquette chronicled the attitudes of the Illinois and Nadouessi to the Two-Spirits. "They are summoned to the Councils, and nothing can be decided without their advice. Finally, through their profession of leading an Extraordinary life, they pass for Manitous, - That is to say, for Spirits, - or persons of Consequence."6

Although French missionary Joseph Francois Lafitau condemned Two-Spirit people he found among the nations of the western Great Lakes, Louisiana, and Florida, he revealed that those Native peoples did not share his prejudice. "They believe they are honored ..." he wrote in 1 724, "they participate in all religious cer- emonies, and this profession of an extraordinary life causes them to be regarded as people of a higher order. . . . " 7

But the colonizers' reactions toward Two-Spirit people can be summed up by the words of Antonio de la Calancha, a Spanish official in Lima. Calancha wrote that during Vasco Nunez de Balboa's expedition across Panama, Balboa "saw men dressed like women; Balboa learnt that they were sodomites and threw the king and forty others to be eaten by his dogs, a fine action of an honorable and Catholic Spaniard."8

This was not an isolated attack. When the Spaniards invaded the Antilles and Louisiana, "they found men dressed as women who were respected by their societies. Thinking they were hermaphrodites, or homosexuals, they slew them."9

Finding these quotes shook me. I recalled the "cowboys and Indians" movies of my childhood. These racist films didn't succeed in teaching me hate; I had grown up around strong, proud Native adults and children. But I now realized more consciously how every portrayal of Native nations in these movies was aimed at diverting attention from the real-life colonial genocide. The same bloody history was ignored or glossed over in my schools. I only learned the truth about Native cultures later, by re-educating myself - a process I'm continuing.

Discovering the Two-Spirit tradition had deep meaning for me. It wasn't that I thought the range of human expression among Native nations was identical to trans identities today. I knew that a Crow bade, Cocopa warhameh, Chumash joya, and Maricopa kwiraxame' would describe themselves in very different ways from an African-American drag queen fighting cops at Stonewall or a white female-to-male transsexual in the 1990s explaining his life to a college class on gender theory.

What stunned me was that such ancient and diverse cultures allowed people to choose more sex/gender paths, and this diversity of human expression was honored as sacred. I had to chart the complex geography of sex and gender with a compass needle that only pointed to north or south.

You'd think I'd have been elated to find this new information. But I raged thatthese facts had been kept from me, from all of us. And so many of the Native peopleswho were arrogantly scrutinized by military men, missionaries, and anthropologistshad been massacred. Had their oral history too been forever lost?

In my anger, I vowed to act more forcefully in defense of the treaty, sovereignty,and self-determination rights of Native nations. As I became more active in thesestruggles, I began to hear more clearly the voices of Native peoples who not onlyreclaimed their traditional heritage, but carried the resistance into the present: thetakeover of Alcatraz, the occupation of Wounded Knee, the Longest Walk, the Davof Mourning at Plymouth Rock, and the fight to free political prisoners likeLeonard Peltier and NormaJean Croy.

Two historic developments helped me to hear the voices of modern Native warriors who lived the sacred Two-Spirit tradition: the founding of Gav American Indi-ans in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara Cameron (LakotaSioux), and the publication in 1988 of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Randy Burns noted that the History Project of Gay American Indians "has documented these alternative gender roles in over 135 North American tribes." 10

Will Roscoe, who edited Living the Spirit, explained that this more complexsex/gender system was found "in every region of the continent, among ever) typeof native culture, from the small bands of hunters in Alaska to the populous, hierar-chical city-states in Florida." 11

Another important milestone was the 1986 publication of The Spirit and the Flesh 12 by Walter Williams, because this book included the voices of modern TwoSpirit people.

I knew that Native struggles against colonialization and genocide - both physical and cultural - were tenacious. But I learned that the colonizers' efforts to outlaw, punish, and slaughter the Two-Spirits within those nations had also met with fierce resistance. Conquistador Nurio de Guzman recorded in 1530 that the last person taken prisoner after a battle, who had "fought most courageously, was a man in the habit of a woman. . . ." 13

Just trying to maintain a traditional way of life was itself an act of resistance. Williams wrote, "Since in many tribes berdaches were often shamans, the government's attack on traditional healing practices disrupted their lives. Among the Kla- maths, the government agent's prohibition of curing ceremonials in the 1870s and 1880s required shamans to operate underground. The berdache shaman White Cindy continued to do traditional healing, curing people for decades despite the danger of arrest."14

Native nations resisted the racist demands of U.S. government agents who tried to change Two-Spirit people. This defiance was especially courageous in light of the power these agents exercised over the economic survival of the Native people they tried to control. One such struggle focused on a Crow bade (bote) named Osh-Tisch (Finds Them and Kills Them). An oral history by Joe Medicine Crow in 1982 recalled the events: "One agent in the late 1890s . . . tried to interfere with Osh-Tisch, who was the most respected bade. The agent incarcerated the bades, cut off their hair, made them wear men's clothing. He forced them to do manual labor, planting these trees that you see here on the BIA grounds. The people were so upset with this that Chief Pretty Eagle came into Crow Agency, and told [the agent] to leave the reservation. It was a tragedy, trying to change them."15

How the bades were viewed within their own nation comes across in this report by S. C. Simms in 1903 in American Anthropologist: "During a visit last year to the Crow reservation, in the interest of the Field Columbian Museum, I was informed that there were three hermaphrodites in the Crow tribe, one living at Pryor, one in the Big Horn district, and one in Black Lodge district. These persons are usually spoken of as 'she,' and as having the largest and best appointed tipis; they are also generally considered to be experts with the needle and the most efficient cooks in the tribe, and they are highly regarded for their many charita- ble acts....

"A few years ago an Indian agent endeavored to compel these people, under threat of punishment, to wear men's clothing, but his efforts were unsuccessful."16

White-run boarding schools played a similar role in trying to force generations of kidnapped children to abandon their traditional ways. But many Two-Spirit children escaped rather than conform.

Lakota medicine man Lame Deer told an interviewer about the sacred place of the winkte ("male-to-female") in his nation's traditions, and how the winkte bestowed a special name on an individual. "The secret name a winkte gave to a child was believed to be especially powerful and effective," Lame Deer said. "Sitting Bull, Black Elk, even Crazy Horse had secret winkte names." Lakota chief Crazy Horse reportedly had one or two winktemves. 17

Williams quotes a Lakota medicine man who spoke of the pressures on the winktes in the 1920s and 1930s. "Themissionaries and the governmentagents said winktes were no good, andtried to get them to change their ways.Some did, and put on men's clothing.But others, rather than change, wentout and hanged themselves."18

Up until 1989, the Two-Spirit voices I heard lived only in the pages of books.But that year I was honored to beinvited to Minneapolis for the first gathering of Two-Spirit Native people, theirloved ones, and supporters. The bondsof friendship I enjoyed at the first eventwere strengthened at the third gathering in Manitoba in 1991. There, I foundmyself sitting around a campfire at thebase of tall pines under the rolling col-ors of the northern lights,drinking strong tea out ofametal cup. I laughed easilyrelaxed with old friends andnew ones. Some were feminine men or masculinewomen; all shared same-sexdesire. Yet not all of thesepeople were transgendered,and not all of the Two-Spirits I'd readabout desired people of the same sex.Then what defined this group?

I turned to Native people for theseanswers. Even today, in 1995. I readresearch papers and articles aboutsex/gender systems in Native nations in which every source cited is a white socialscientist. When I began to write thisbook, I asked Two-Spirit people to talkabout their own cultures, in their ownwords.

Chrystos, a brilliant Two-Spirit poet and writer from the Menominee nation, offered me this understanding:"Life among First Nation people,before first contact, is hard to reconstruct. There's been so much abuse of traditional life by the Christian Church. But certain things have filtered down to us. Most of the nations that I know of traditionally had more than two genders. It varies from tribe to tribe. The concept of Two-Spiritedness is a rather rough translation into English of that idea. I think the English language is rigid, and the thought patterns that form it are rigid, so that gender also becomes rigid.

"The whole concept ofgender is more fluid in traditional life. Those paths are not necessarily aligned with your sex, although they may be. People might choose their gender according to their dreams, for example. So even the idea that your gender is something you dream about is not even a concept in Western culture - which posits you are born a certain biological sex and therefore there's a role you must step into and follow pretty rigidly for the rest of your life. That's how we got the concept ofqueer. Anyone who doesn't follow their assigned gender role is queer; all kinds of people are lumped together under that word."19

Does being Two-Spirit determine your sexuality? I asked Chrystos. "In tra- ditional life a Two-Spirit person can be heterosexual or what we would call homosexual," she replied. "You could also be a person who doesn't have sex with anyone and lives with the spirits. The gender fluidity is part of a larger concept, which I guess the most accurate English word for is 'tolerance.' It's a whole different way of conceiving how to be in the world with other people. We think about the world in terms of rela- tionship, so each person is always in a matrix, rather than being seen only as an individual - which is a very different way of looking at things."20

Chrystos told me about her Navajo friend Wesley Thomas, who describes himself as nadleeh-like. A male nadleeh, she said, "would manifest in the world as a female and take a husband and participate in tribal life as a female person." I e-mailed Wesley, who lives in Seattle, for more information about the nadleeh tradition. He wrote back that "nadleeh was a category for women who were/are masculine and also feminine males."21

The concept of nadleeh, he explained, is incorporated into Navajo origin or creation stories. "So, it is a cul- tural construction," he wrote, "and was part of the normal Navajo culture, from the Navajo point of view, through the nineteenth century. It began changing dur- ing the first half of the twentieth century due to the introduction of western education and most of all, Christianity. Nadleeh since then has moved underground."22

Wesley, who spent the first thirty years of life on the Eastern Navajo reservation, wrote that in his initial fieldwork research he identified four categories of sex: female/woman, male/man, fe- male/man, and male /woman. "Where I began to identify gender on a continuum - meaning placing female at one end and male on the other end - I placed forty-nine different gender identifications in between. This was derived at one sitting, not from carrying out a full and comprehensive fieldwork research. This number derived from my own understanding of gender within the Navajo cosmology. "

I have faced so much persecution because of my gender expression that I also wanted to hear about the experiences of someone who grew up as a "masculinegirl" in traditional Native life. I thought of Spotted Eagle, who I had met in Manitoba, and who lives in Georgia. Walking down an urban street, Spotted Eagle's gender expression, as well as her nationality, could make her the target of harassmentand violence. But she is White Mountain Apache, and I knew she had grown up withher own traditions on the reservation. How was she treated?

"I was born in 1945," Spotted Eagle told me. "I grew up totally accepted. I knewfrom birth, and everyone around me knew I was Two-Spirited. I was honored. I wasa special creation; I was given certain gifts because of that, teachings to share withmy people and healings. But that changed - not in my generation, but in generations to follow."

There were no distinct pronouns in her ancient language, she said. "There werethree variations: the way the women spoke, the way the men spoke, and the cere-monial language." Which way of speaking did she use? "I spoke all three. So did thetwo older Two-Spirit people on my reservation."24

Spotted Eagle explained that the White Mountain Apache nation was small and isolated, and so had been less affected early on by colonial culture. As a result, theU.S. government didn't set up the mission school system on the White Mountain reservation until the late 1930s or early 1940s. Spotted Eagle said she experiencedher first taste of bigotry as a Two-Spirit in those schools. "I was taken out of the mis-sion school with the help of my people and sent away to live with an aunt off reser-vation, so I didn't get totally abused by Christianity. I have some very horriblememories of the short time I was there."25

"But as far as my own people," Spotted Eagle continued, "we were a matriarchy,and have been through our history. Women are in a different position in a matri-archy than they are out here. It's not that we have more power or more privilegethan anyone else, it's just a more balanced way to be. Being a woman was a plus andbeing Two-Spirit was even better. I didn't really have any negative thoughts aboutbeing Two-Spirit until I left the reservation."26

Spotted Eagle told me that as a young adult she married. "My husband was alsoTwo-Spirit and we had children. We lived in a rather peculiar way according to stan-dards out here. Of course it was very normal for us. We faced a lot of violence, butwe learned to cope with it and go on."27

Spotted Eagle's husband died many years ago. Today her partner is a woman.Her three children are grown. "Two of them are Two-Spirit." she said proudly."We're all very close."28

I asked her where she found her strength and pride. "It was given to me by the people around me to maintain," she explained. "If your whole life is connected spiritually, then you learn that self-pride - the image of self - is connected with everythingelse. That becomes part of who you are and you carry that wherever you are.

What was responsible for the imposition of the present-dax rigid sex gender system in North America? It is not correct to simply blame patriarchy, Chrystos stressed to me."The real word is 'colonization' and what it has done to the world. Patriarchy is a tool of colonization and exploitation of people and their lands for wealthy white people."3

"The Two-Spirit tradition was suppressed," she explained, "l ike all Name spiri- tuality, it underwent a tremendous time of suppression. So there's gaps. Bui we've continued on with our spiritual traditions. We are still attached to this land and the place of our ancestors and managed to protect our spiritual traditions and our lan- guages. We have always been at war. Despite everything - incredible onslaughts that even continue now - we have continued and we have survived."31

Like a gift presented at a traditional give away, Native people have patiently given me a greater understanding of the diverse cultures that existed in the Western hemisphere before colonization.

But why did many Native cultures honor sex/gender diversity, while European colonialists were hell-bent on wiping it out? And how did the Europeans immediately recognize Two-Spiritedness? Were there similar expressions in European societies?

Thinking back to my sketchy high-school education, I could only remember one person in Europe whose gender expression had made history.

They Called Her "Hommasse"

Didn't Joan of Arc wear men's clothes?" I asked a friend over coffee in 1975. She had a graduate degree in history; I had barely squeaked through high school. I waited for her answer with great anticipation, but she dismissed my question with a wave of her hand. "It wasjust armor." She seemed so sure, but I couldn't let my question go. Joan of Arc was the only person associated with cross-dressing in history I'd grown up hearing about.

I thought a great deal about my friend's answer. Was the story ofJoan ofArc dress- ing in men's clothing merely legend? Was wearing armor significant? If a society strictly mandates only men can be warriors, isn't a woman military leader dressed in armor an example of cross-gendered expression?

All I knew about the feudal period in whichJoan ofArc lived was that lords owned vast tracts of land and lived off the forced agricultural labor of peasants. But I made the decision to study Joan of Arc's life, and her story opened another important window on trans history for me.

In school, we'd quickly glossed over the facts ofJoan ofArc's life. So I hadn't real- ized that in 1431, when she was nineteen years old, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church because she refused to stop dressing in garb traditionally worn by men. And no one had ever taught me that her peasant followers considered Joan of Arc - and her clothing - sacred.

I discovered that more than ten thousand books have been written aboutJoan of Arc's extraordinary life. She was an illiterate daughter of the peasant class, who as a teenager demonstrated a brilliant military leadership that helped birth the nationstate of France. What impressed me the most, however, was her courage in defending her right to self-expression. Yet I was frustrated at how many texts analyzedJoan of Arc solely as an individual, removed from the dynamics of a tumultuous period and place. I was particularly interested in understanding the social soil in which this remarkable person was rooted.

Joan of Arc was born in Domremy, in the province of Lorraine, around 1412. Only half a century before her birth, the bubonic plague had torn the fabric of the feudal order. One-third of the population of Europe was wiped out, whole provinces were depopulated. Peasant rebellions were shaking the very foundations of European feudalism.

At the time, France was gripped by the Hundred Years War. French peasants suf-fered plunder and violence at the hands of the marauding English occupationarmies. The immediate problem for the peasantry was how to oust the English army,a task the French nobility had been unable to accomplish.

Joan of Arc emerged as a leader during this period of powerful social earth-quakes. In 1429, dressed in men's clothing, this confident seventeen year old pre-sented herself and a group of her followers at the court ofPrince Charles, heir to theFrench throne. In the context of feudal life, in which religion permeated everything, Joan asserted that her mission, motivation, and mode of dress were directedby God. She declared her goal: to forge an army of peasants to drive out the English.Prince Charles placed her at the head of a ten-thousand-strong peasant army.

The rest is history that has been replayed again and again in text and film.Unable to read or write, Joan ofArc dictated a letter to the King of England and theDuke of Bedford, leader of the English occupying army in Orleans, demanding thevleave French soil, vowing, "[I]f you do not do so, you will remember it by reason ofyour great sufferings." 1

On April 28, 1429, Joan led a march on Orleans. The next day, she entered thecity at the head of her peasant army. By May 8, the English were routed. Over thenext months, she further proved her genius as a military strategist and her abilitv toinspire the rank-and-file soldiers by liberating other French villages and towns andforcing the English to retreat.

Joan persuaded Charles to go to Rheims to receive the crown. It was an arduoustrip - long and dangerous - through territory still occupied by English troops.Although her army was exhausted and famished along the way, they forced the English to yield still more turf. As Charles was crowned King of France, Joan stood beside him, holding her combat banner. The French nation-state, soon to be fully liberated from occupation, was born.

On May 23, 1430, Joan was captured by the Burgundians, French allies of the English feudal lords. The Burgundians referred to her as hommasse, a slur meaning "manwoman," or masculine woman.2 Had she been a knight or nobleman, King Charles would have offered a ransom for Joan's freedom, since ransom was the customary method of freeing knights and nobility captured in battle. Even the sums were fixed - one could ransom a royal prince for 10,000 livres of gold, or 61,125 francs. 3 Once ran- som was offered, it had to be accepted. ButJoan's position as military leader of a popular peasant movement threatened the very French ruling class she helped lift to power. The French nobility didn't offer a single franc for her release. What an arrogant betrayal. How anxious they must have been to be rid of her.

The English urged the Catholic Church to condemn Joan for cross-dressing. The king ofEngland, Henry VI, wrote to the infamousInquisitor Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop ofBeauvais: "It is sufficiently notorious and well- known that for some time past a woman callingherselfJeanne the Pucelle (the Maid) , leavingoff the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominablebefore God, and forbidden by all laws, woreclothing and armour such as is worn by men."Buried beneath this outrage against Joan'scross-dressing was a powerful class bias. It wasan affront to nobility for a peasant to weararmor and ride a fine horse. This offense waslater elaborated in one of the charges againstJoan that claimed she dressed "in rich andsumptuous habits, precious stuffs and cloth ofgold and furs."4

The Burgundians sold Joan of Arc to theEnglish, who turned her over to the Inquisi-tion in November 1430.Joan was held in a civil prison in Rouen, France, an English stronghold at that time. She was reportedlv guardedby English male soldiers who slept in her cell, in violation of the Church's own rules. She wasshackled in a small iron cage "in which she waskept standing, chained by her neck, her handsand her feet," according to the locksmith whobuilt the cage.5

Joan's trial began in Rouen on Januan 9, 1431. The Grand Inquisitors condemnedJoanfor cross-dressing and accused her of beingraised a pagan. Church leaders had longcharged that the district of her birth, Lorraine, was a hotbed of paganism and witchcraft. One of the principal accusations againstJoan was that she associated with "fairies, a charge leveled by the Church in their waragainst paganism. (Which, incidentally,derives from the Latin paganus, meaning ruraldweller or peasant.) The Church was wagingwar against peasants who resisted patriarchal theology and still held onto some of the old pre-Christian religious beliefs and matrilineal traditions. This was true of peasants in the area of Lorraine, even in the period ofJoan's lifetime. For instance, the custom of giving children the mother's surname, not the father's, still survived there. 7

Scapegoating Joan of Arc and the area of her birth fueled the Church's reac- tionary campaign. And the moreJoan ofArc was idolized by her followers, the more she posed a threat to the Church's religious rule. Article III of the Articles ofAccusations stated this clearly: "Item, the said Joan by her inventions has seduced the Catholic people, many in her presence adored her as a saint... even more, they declared her the greatest of all the saints after the holy Virgin "8 No wonder the Church fathers feared her!

On April 2, 1431, the Inquisition dropped the charges of witchcraft againstJoan, because they were too hard to prove. Instead, they denounced her for asserting that her cross-dressing was a religious duty compelled by voices she heard in visions, and for maintaining that these voices were a higher authority than the Church. Many his- torians and academicians viewJoan ofArc's wearing men's clothing as inconsequential. Yet the core of the charges againstJoan focused on her cross-dressing, the crime for which she ultimately was executed. However, the following quote from the verba- tim court proceedings of her interrogation reveals it wasn't just Joan of Arc cross- dressing that enraged herjudges, but her cross-gendered expression as a whole:

You have said that, by God's command, you have continually worn man's dress, wearing the short robe, doublet, and hose attached by points; that you have also worn your hair short, cut en rond above your ears, with nothing left that could show you to be a woman; and that on many occasions you received the Body of our Lord dressed in this fash- ion, although you have been frequently admonished to leave it off, which you have refused to do, saying that you would rather die than leave it off, save by God's command. And you said further that if you were still so dressed and with the king and those of his party, it would be one of the greatest blessings for the kingdom of France; and you have said that not for anything would you take an oath not to wear this dress or carry arms; and concerning all these matters you have said that you did well, and obediently to God's command. As for these points, the clerks say that you blaspheme God in His sacraments; that you transgress divine law, the Holy Scriptures and the canon law; you hold the Faith doubtfully and wrongly; you boast vainly; you are suspect of idolatry; and you condemn yourself in being unwill- ing to wear the customary clothing of your sex, and following the cus- tom of the Gentiles and the Heathen.9

Even though she knew her defiance meant she was considered damned,Joan's testi- mony in her own defense revealed how deeply her cross-dressing was rooted in her identity. "For nothing in the world," she declared, "will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man's dress."

But by April 24, 1431, Joan'sjudges claimed she had recanted, after having beentaken on a tour of the torture chamber, and brought to a cemetery where she wasshown a scaffold that her tormentors said awaited her if she did not repent. Joanallegedly accused herself of wearing clothing that violated natural decency, andagreed to submit to the Church's authority and wear women's apparel. She was"mercifully" sentenced to life in prison on bread and water - in women's dress.

However, sinceJoan could neither read nor write, did she know the exact detailsof what she was signing? This is an important question, because cross-dressing wasnot a capital offense at that time. And the Inquisition did not have the power to turna heretic over to the secular state for execution. But the churchjudges were empowered to condemn a relapsed heretic. 11

Did Pierre Cauchon, the Inquisitor, trick Joan into making her mark on a document that signed away more than she'd realized? Perhaps Cauchon later revealedthe exact contents of the phony confession in hopes she would renege. Or wereparchments switched? Witnesses described Joan making her mark on a short declaration; the confession in the court records is very long. 12

Whatever the case, Joan recanted the alleged abjuration within days andresumed wearing men's clothes. Herjudges asked her why she had done so. whenputting on male garb meant certain death. According to the court record she saidshe had done so "of her own will. And that nobody had forced her to do so. Andthatshe preferred man's dress to woman's." Joan told the judges she "had neverintended to take an oath not to take man's dress again."13 The Inquisition sentencedher to death for resuming male dress, saying "time and again you have relapsed, asa dog that returns to its vomit. . . ." H

Joan ofArc was burned alive at the stake on May 30, 1 431 , in Rouen. She was nine-teen years old. The depth of her enemies' hatred toward her transgender expression was demonstrated at her execution, when they extinguished the flames inorder to prove she was a "real" woman. After her clothing was burned away andJoanwas presumed dead, one observer wrote, "Then the fire was raked back and hernaked body shown to all the people and all the secrets that could or should belongto a woman, to take away any doubts from people's minds."15

Joan of Arc suffered the excruciating pain of being burned alive rather thanrenounce her identity. I know the kind of seething hatred that resulted in her murder - I've faced it. But I wish I'd been taught the truth about her life and her couragewhen I was a frightened, confused trans youth. What an inspirational role model-abrilliant transgender peasant teenager leading an army of laborers into battle.

But one aspect of the information I'd gathered left me puzzled. Why did the feu-dal ruling class and the Church abhor her transgender so violently, while the peas-ants considered it so sacred? There's no question how much Joan of Arc washonored by the peasantry. Even the Church admitted that the peasants consideredher the greatest of all the saints after the holy Virgin.

It's also clear thatJoan of Arc's cross-dressing was central to that reverence. Gay historian Arthur Evans noted that before Joan was captured by the Burgundians:"[W]henever she appeared in public she was worshipped like a deity by the peas-ants The peasants believed that she had the power to heal, and many would flock around her to touch part of her body or her clothing (which was men's clothing). Subsequently her armor was kept on display at the Church of St. Denis, where it was worshipped." 16

According to Professor Margaret A. Murray, "The enormous importance as to the wearing of the male costume is emphasized by the fact that as soon as it was known in Rouen that Joan was again dressed as a man the inhabitants crowded into the castle courtyard to see her, to the great indignation of the English soldiers who promptly drove them out with hard words and threats of hard blows."17

I could not answer, yet, why the peasants venerated Joan of Arc's cross-dressing. But I thought back to a clue buried in the con- demnation ofJoan by herjudges. What did they mean when they charged that her cross-dressing was "following the custom of the Gentiles and the Heathen?" What cus- tom? Were there other examples of cross- dressing among the peasantry? Did the peasants consider transgender itself to be sacred? If so, why?

I had no idea where to find the answers to these questions.

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