Parting with My Sex

Book excerpt: In this original and unusual work, Lucy Chesser explores the persistent recurrence of cross-dressing and gender inversion within Australian cultural life. Examples of cross-dressing are to be found in almost every area of Australian historical enquiry, including Aboriginal-European relations and conflict, convict societies, the goldrushes, bushranging, the 1890s and its nationalist fiction, and World War One. The book compares and contrasts sustained life-long impersonations whereby women lived, worked and sometimes married as men, with other forms of cross-dressing such as public masquerades, cross-dressing on the stage, and the prosecution of men who sought sexual encounters while disguised as women.