Catterina Vizzani was born in Rome to a carpenter’s family.  At age 14 she fell in love with a girl who was teaching her embroidery.  Catterina would dress in men’s clothes and visit the girl’s window at night.  Their relationship lasted for over two years, until the girl’s father found out and threatened to turn Catterina over to the courts.
Catterina left Rome, dressed in men’s clothes, taking the name Giovanni Bordoni.  With the help of a priest, he got work as a vicar’s servant in Perugia.  The Vicar was an austere man and complained of Giovanni “incessantly following the Wenches, and being so barefaced and insatiable in [his] Amours.”  It was rumored that Giovanni was the best seducer of women in that part of the country.  This reputation did not make the vicar happy, and he complained to the priest who had recommended Giovanni.  The priest wrote to Giovanni’s parents, who in turn told the priest everything.  After learning the truth, the priest decided to keep Giovanni’s secret.

After four years with the vicar, Giovanni left Perugia for Montepulciano where he fell in love with the niece of the local minister.  The minister was very protective of his niece, so the couple planned to secretly travel to Rome in order to be married.  This plan was found out, and they were intercepted on their journey.   During his attempt to surrender Giovanni was shot in the left thigh, four inches above his knee.

In the hospital, suffering from gangrene, Giovanni’s wound grew so painful that he was forced to remove the “leathern contrivance” (that was fastened just below the abdomen) and hide it under his pillow.  On his deathbed he revealed to a nun that he was female and a virgin and requested the ceremonial burial given to virgins.  The body was laid out in the proper habit of a woman, with the virginal garland on the head and flowers strewn about the clothes. 

A surgeon and professor of anatomy at Sienna, Giovanni Bianchi, dissected the body in an attempt to find an explanation for “those who followed the practices of Sappho.”  He examined it extensively, including removing and dissecting the hymen, clitoris, fallopian tubes, intestines, colon, gall bladder and liver, finding everything in its “natural state.”

Catterina/Giovanni’s funeral procession was extremely popular, people flocked from all parts of the city to get a view of the corpse.  There were even attempts at canonization.

Sources:Bianchi, Giovanni. The true history and adventures of Catharine Vizzani, a young gentlewoman a native of Rome, who for many years past in the habit of a man; was killed for an amour with a young lady; and found on dissection, a true virgin. With curious anatomical remarks on the Nature and Existence of the Hymen. By Giovanni Bianchi, Professor of Anatomy at Sienna, the Surgeon who dissected her. With a curious frontispiece. London, 1755. 

Norton, Rictor ed. “The Case of Catherine Vizzani, 1755”, Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 1 December 2005.

Carl Lapp, a Sámi, died in 1694 in the Swedish parish of Hed. Upon preparation for burial his neighbors discovered that he had a female body.  They reported this to their local pastor and eventually the matter was brought all the way to the High Court. Court records show that it was unclear what kind of burial “the Lapp,” as he was known (a reference to the former name for the Sámi people, Laplanders), should receive. 

At the time of his death, Carl had been married to his second wife for thirteen years. She claimed that she did not know his sex, as they were elderly when they married and had never had sexual relations. However, he had a son with his first wife, both of whom had died. The court investigated the nature of his relationship with his wives and the existence of the child. They concluded that he was guilty of “participation in the sin of fornication that the former wife had carried on and kept it silent and hidden it, allowed the child to be baptized and recognized it as his own, and after his former wife’s death, continued in his evil intent and grave sin with continued contempt for God’s holy order.” The fact that he had deliberately “mutated” his sex combined with having repeatedly “abused the holy institution of marriage” warranted the death penalty under Swedish law. Therefore, he was ordered to be buried in the forest instead of in the consecrated ground of the churchyard. Ironically, burial in the forest had long been a Sámi practice opposed by Swedish Christian clergy.

Sources:

Fur, Gunlög.  “Reading Margins: Colonial Encounters in Sápmi and Lenapehoking in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” Feminist Studies  32.3 (Fall 2006): 491-521.  

Rupp, Leila J.  Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women.  New York University Press, 2009.

On Holy Monday, 1796, in Mexico City, Gregoria Piedra was seen taking the Eucharist out of their mouth after receiving Holy Communion. This act was made more egregious because Piedra was dressed as a man. The witness to the act said Piedra held her gaze, revealed their disguise and ran out of the church laughing. 

The parish priest went to the Holy Office and demanded that Piedra be arrested for such a sacrilegious crime. When they found Piedra, still dressed in men’s clothing, they were watching the Holy Monday procession and blowing out the candles of those who were in the procession. Piedra was detained in the court jail while the inquisitors gathered more information. In order to determine whether crimes against the faith had been committed, they specifically sought information on Pierre's Catholic faith. Upon further investigation it was found that Piedra had been incarcerated several times for various offenses, among them provocation, dressing as a man, and taking communion multiple times. 

Piedra was well known in the neighborhood. According to neighbors they were more of a man than a woman. Piedra was known by the nickname “la Macho” because of their masculine physical appearance and demeanor. They had many female companions and were seen more often in the company of women than men. Piedra often played pelota, had no address or occupation, and it was rumored that they had served in the military as a man, either in the cavalry or the regiment of the pardos. 

Though Piedra was seen as insolent, irreverent and mischievous, the inquisitors did not have enough evidence to charge them with crimes against the faith. Piedra’s actions were seen as those of a delinquent rather than a sinner, since Piedra was still a devout and practicing Catholic. However, the investigation had revealed Piedra’s “inclination towards

women,” which caused a considerable amount of confusion. What was the crime? Under whose jurisdiction did it fall? Since it was not a crime of faith the Holy Office did not want to deal with it, and the Royal Court had no legal precedent to follow so they did not know what to do with Piedra either. 

Piedra was held in jail while the case was pushed between the Royal Court and the Holy Office, sometimes being forgotten altogether in the bureaucracy of the colonial government, until 1798, at which point Piedra was transferred to a women’s correctional facility. Though purported to be an institution that educated and reformed inmates, it was really a penitentiary: fellow inmates were thieves, adulterers, and murderers. Piedra was sentenced to eight years in prison for crimes of a “dissolute” and “perverted” woman.

Sources:

Carrera, Magali M. Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Ludlow, Ursula Camba. “Gregoria la Macho y su “inclinación a las mujeres”: reflexiones en torno a la sexualidad marginal en Nueva España, 1796-1806.” Colonial Latin America Historical Review (Fall 2003) 479-97.

Penyak, Lee. “Criminal Sexuality in Central Mexico 1750-1850.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1993. 

Additional information:

Archivo General de la Nación Mexico City, Inquisición vol. 1349, exp. 28, fol. 337, fol. 344

Sitting in the Water Grizzly was born into the Ktunaxa Nation (Kutenai or Kootenai).  After leaving a marriage to a Canadian servant in which she was essentially a “slave wife,” she returned to her tribe, declaring that her husband had used supernatural powers to change her sex and she was henceforth a man.  She changed her name to Kaúxuma Núpika or Gone to the Spirits, adopted men’s attire and weapons, and took a wife.

Traveling extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest, Kaúxuma Núpika served as a courier and guide to the fur trappers and traders.  To the tribes of the region he was a prophet (predicting large numbers of white men bringing diseases), a peace mediator and a warrior.  On one journey, after an unsuccessful trip to raid horses with other Ktunaxa warriors, Kaúxuma Núpika crouched down while crossing a stream so that his brother could not discern his sex (for it had not physically been transformed).  After this event he changed his name to Sitting in the Water Grizzly or Qánqon Kámek Klaúla.

Qánqon Kámek Klaúla was killed while trying to broker peace between the Salish and the Blackfeet.  His death is described as magical, his wounds healing each time he was struck until finally his enemy had to cut out his heart.  He is remembered as a hero, a healer and a supernatural being.

Sources: 

Barry, Neilson J.  “Ko-Come-Ne Pe-Ca, the letter carrier.”  Washington Historical Quarterly 20 (1929): pp. 201-203.

Lang, Sabine. Men as Women, Women as Men: Changing Gender in Native American Cultures.  Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Rupp, Leila J.  Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women. New York University Press, 2009.

Schaeffer, Claude E.  “The Kutenai Female Berdache: Courier, Guide, Prophetess, and Warrior.”  The American Society for Ethnohistory Vol.12, no. 3 (Summer 1965): pp.193-236.

Sperlin, O.B., “Two Kootenay Women Masquerading as Men? Or Were They One?” Washington Historical Quarterly 21(1930): pp. 120-130.

Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

Jeanne or Jean Bonnet was born in Paris but moved to San Francisco with their family as part of a French theatrical troupe. By the time Bonnet was fifteen, he was in trouble for fighting and petty thievery, and was placed in the Industrial School, San Francisco’s first reform school.

As an adult, Bonnet was arrested dozens of times for wearing male clothing, an illegal act that got him frequently mentioned in the press. Bonnet “cursed the day she was born a female instead of a male,” according to newspaper accounts. He was quoted as declaring, “The police might arrest me as often as they wish—I will never discard male attire as long as I live.”

Bonnet spent much of his time on Kearny Street and made a fairly good living by catching frogs and selling them to French restaurants in downtown San Francisco. In 1875 he began visiting brothels, convincing the women to leave prostitution and form an all-female gang. Together they supported themselves by shoplifting. One of these gang members was Blanche Buneau or Beunon, who had just arrived from Paris.

Bonnet and Blanche moved to McNamara’s Hotel in San Miguel, just outside of San Francisco, to keep Blanche safe from a threatening ex-lover. On the evening of September 14, 1876, Bonnet was lying in bed waiting for Blanche when a shotgun blast came through the window, killing him instantly. It was eventually determined that the shot was meant for Blanche and was the act of either a jealous lover or a pimp wanting to kill Blanche as “an example to the other girls.” Unfortunately, neither theory was ever proven. The women of San Francisco’s red-light district came out en masse for Bonnet’s funeral.

Sources:
Boag, Peter. Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

“Brevities.” Daily Alta California, December 17, 1875.“By State Telegraph.” Sacramento Daily Union, September 16, 1876.

Mullen, Kevin J. “The Little Frog Catcher.” In The Toughest Gang in Town: Police Stories from Old San Francisco. San Francisco: Noir Publications, 2005.

Rupp, Leila J. A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project. “‘She Even Chewed Tobacco’: A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America.” A slideshow based on primary research by Allan Bérubé. Edited and reprinted in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey. New York: New American Library, 1989.

In her essay, “Man Royals and Sodomites: Some Thoughts on the Invisibility of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians,” Makeda Silvera recounts conversations with her grandmother and mother about the lesbian women in their community. One of those women was Jones or Jonesie, as she was known.

Jonesie lived in Kingston, Jamaica. Described as a “mannish-looking Indian Woman with flashy gold teeth,” she was loud and brazen, but generous and easy to talk to. She dressed in her husband’s clothes, smoked Craven A cigarettes and could often be found in her yard with her dogs, “always barefoot and tending to her garden and her fruit trees.” She had the best mangoes on the street and would always share.

Silvera’s mother remembers Jonesie keeping to herself, except for when she would visit their veranda. On the veranda she talked to anyone, she was always drinking and smoking and reminiscing about her past. Especially about her love of women, she would say things like, “Dem girls I use to have sex with was shapely. You shoulda know me when I was younger, pretty, and shapely just like the ‘omen dem I use to have as my ‘omen.” She would brag about how she could go to Coronation Market and pick up any woman she wanted.

Ordinarily if you were deemed a ‘man royal’ or a ‘sodomite’ you were in danger of repercussions, especially if you were unmarried. Those repercussions ranged from social ostracization to battery or even gang rape. The fact that Jonesie was married provided her with a certain amount of protection. People made fun of her, not because she was a lesbian, but because she would stumble home from the rumshop drunk. Jonesie was tough though, she could take care of herself. No one would really mess with her and she threatened to beat up anybody who tried.

Sources: 

Brodell, Ria. "Re: Miss Jones or Jonesie." Received by Makeda Silvera, 17 Jun. 2016. Facebook message.

Silvera, Makeda. “Man Royals and Sodomites: Some Thoughts on the Invisibility of Afro-Caribbean Lesbians.” The Lesbian Issue.  Spec. issue of Feminist Studies 18.3 (1992): 521-532. Web. 28 Jan. 2015.

In 1934, Sakuma Hideka and Chiyoka worked at a coffee shop in Tokyo together with another (unnamed) woman.  Newspaper accounts of their story describe the three women as having a polyamorous relationship that they knew society would never condone.

Knowing that they could not live as a couple or threesome, Hideka and Chiyoka embarked on a journey to commit shinjū (double suicide or “love suicide”) by jumping into Mount Mihara, an active volcano on the island of Ōshima off the coast of Tokyo.

  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, the third woman attempted to commit suicide on her own, leaving farewell notes to her family.  Alerted by these notes, the press learned of Hideka and Chiyoka’s intentions and followed them to Ōshima, catching up to them before they could throw themselves into the crater.

  Afterwards, Hideka wrote her own account of the incident, describing their two-day journey to Mount Mihara, their stay at an inn, and how they held each other close “thinking only of death.”  She criticized the press for spreading rumors about her family, disparaging her masculine appearance, and trivializing their suicide attempt by asking readers to contribute satirical songs about it.  She expressed her loneliness and wondered why self-sufficient women in love could not live together just as heterosexual couples did.

Sources: 

Hideka, Sakuma. “Joshi Ketsui suru made” (Until [we] resolved to commit love suicide). Fujin Gahô, 1934.

Robertson, Jennifer. “Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide in Imperial Japan.” Signs (Chicago) 25, no. 1 (Autumn 1999): 1–35.

“Watashi wa koi no shorisha” (I am a survivor of love). Asahi Shinbun (Tokyo), June 14, 1934, morning edition.
Thanks to Mamiko Imoto for translation assistance.

Excerpts from the book Butch Heroes (MIT Press, 2018)