For nearly 200 years, the term “female husband” was used to describe an individual assigned female at birth who chose to live fully as a man.
Historian Jen Manion, a professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said from the 1700s to early 1900s, the British and American press wrote about "female husbands" in a mostly salacious and sensationalized way. And when their assigned gender was revealed, they were usually detained by police and run out of town.
Manion captures these lives in “Female Husbands: A Trans History,” a book that came out this spring. Manion spoke to NEXT about the treatment of female husbands over time and how that connects to our modern understanding of gender and sexuality.
