The Outing of Frank Woodhull: Gender
Transgression at U.S. Borders
On October 4, 1908,
a middle-aged Canadian in spectacles and a three-piece suit touched down in New
York after a sojourn in Europe. Though not an American citizen, he had been
residing in New Orleans for the last thirty years, so there was no reason to
expect any delays at the immigration center on Ellis Island. After he
identified himself to the authorities as Frank Woodhull, however, medical
inspectors pulled him aside for a more thorough examination, suspecting from
his sallow complexion that he might be ill. In the course of the inspection,
doctors were shocked to discover that this mustached gentleman’s biological sex
was not what they had first assumed. Born Mary Johnson, Woodhull had been
living as a man for the last fifteen years.
After two days of bureaucratic
confusion, the name ‘Frank Woodhull’ was changed to ‘Mary Johnson’ in the
files, and the individual in question was released in men’s clothes. At a time
when immigrants could be turned away for the slightest transgression, including
vague charges of “moral turpitude,” it seems remarkable that Woodhull was
readmitted to the United States. Not all immigrants enjoyed the same leniency.
At Angel Island, the main gateway for migrants from Asia, forced disrobing and
draconian immigration policies would have quickly excluded anyone like Woodhull
from ever reaching the mainland. At Ellis Island, too, another case of gender
passing resulted in deportation, perhaps because the migrant in question came
from the West Indies and treated the authorities with open defiance. Based on
these counterexamples, it seems Woodhull’s readmission to the United States was
based on two main factors—first, his racial and cultural profile, which
rendered his gender transgression less threatening, and secondly, his own
articulate self-defense, which mobilized conventional notions of gender and
morality to justify his own “disguise.”
“Mustached, She Plays Man”
The press of New
York City often hung around Ellis Island sniffing out stories. In the rumors
about Frank Woodhull, they found a scandalous and perplexing tale. While Woodhull
was being held overnight after the initial investigation, he spoke to a small
gaggle of reporters. In The Sun, one writer invoked Woodhull’s
occupation as a door-to-door book peddler to explain the sway he held over his
audience: “At times [Woodhull] thrust
her hands out and toward her questioners very much in the way of the book agent
in earnest entreaty. It could readily be seen that she could plead the cause of
a book with some eloquence. She said she had been successful because she had
been in earnest. She spoke as one who had been in the habit of convincing
people.”[1]
The reporters seem to have been won over by Woodhull’s charismatic manner—the articles
they published about the case are sympathetic, perhaps even surprisingly so,
given the nature of Woodhull’s transgression.
The earnest,
persuasive manner with which Woodhull convinced the press was likely a factor in
the decision of the Board of Special Inquiry as well. Without legal
representation, Woodhull spoke on his own behalf. His career as a book salesman
may have furnished him with the skills for this crucial self-defense, as The
Sun’s reporter suggests. We will never know precisely what arguments Woodhull
made to the authorities, but the New York City newspapers all seemed to be in
agreement on a few main themes. Woodhull left behind no personal account of the
affair, so we must rely on the press—keeping in mind its inconsistencies and tendency
to sensationalize—to reconstruct what Woodhull might have said.
“She Did it For Work”
Under the headline
“Passed Off as a Man,” The Evening Star blared “Did it to Get Work—She
Says She Had to Live Up to Her Face to Earn Living.”[2]
Of the dozen or so articles written in the wake of Woodhull’s arrival, two motivations
were presented for Woodhull’s dress—first, the difficulty of finding work as a
woman, and secondly, a naturally “masculine” appearance. According to The
Sun, “To Commissioner Watchorn she said that she had been compelled to put
on man's clothing because she could not earn a living as a woman. She had been
compelled to live up to her mustache, a disfigurement to her as a woman that
prevented her from obtaining work except of the hardest kind on ranches in the
West or farms elsewhere.”[3]
Here, Woodhull’s decision
to live as a man is implicitly excused because of his mustache. Of course, Woodhull
was not the only female-bodied person in Canada or the United States to have visible
down on the upper lip, and the vast majority of these individuals never
transitioned genders. Yet this physical “disfigurement” became a convenient facet
of Woodhull’s narrative. By presenting as a man, Woodhull was correcting the mistake
of nature. It would be worse for a woman to go about in skirts and a mustache,
Woodhull implied, than for a woman to pass undetected as a man. The papers, for
the most part, agreed: “If [Commissioner Watchorn] says she should wear
petticoats she may do it. But there is the problem of a petticoated woman with
a mustache, who would be much more conspicuously out of order than a mustached
woman in trousers.”[4] Woodhull’s
refusal or inability to fit into a box forced authorities to choose between the
lesser of two evils—a gender transgression that would be obvious to anyone on
the street, or a successful disguise with all its potentially subversive
implications. Whether Woodhull was aware of this dilemma and played it to his
advantage is impossible to say, but there is no doubt he emphasized the
“disfigurement” of his mustache to everyone who asked for his side of the
story.
Woodhull’s more
important argument was an economic one. He is quoted as saying, “At my
age...there is nothing that I can do in woman's clothes. Employers want young
and good looking girls or women nowadays. By adopting a man's dress I have been
able to live a clean, respectable and independent life, asking favors of
nobody, man or woman.”[5]
Woodhull—and the reporter who recorded his testimony—did not chose the words
“clean” and “respectable” lightly. They hint at one of the broader issues of immigration
in the early twentieth century. American officials, anxious about the spread of
‘sexual immorality,’ barred young women without husbands or fathers from entering
New York City, fearing they would end up falling into prostitution. To an
extent, these fears were sometimes justified—for unskilled female immigrants who
had fallen upon hard times, prostitution may have seemed like their only avenue
for support.
The most important
criterion for admitting immigrants of either gender was their likelihood to
become a public charge. Woodhull’s defense made two points immediately clear.
First, his decision to live as a man had prevented an even more egregious violation—that
of sexual immorality—by allowing him to attain “clean, respectable” work despite
being female in body and unsupported by a male parent or spouse. Secondly, his successful
career as a book canvasser removed much of the authorities’ incentive to force
him back into female garb; as Woodhull pointed out, he would be far less likely
to gain work as a woman, and thus far more likely to become a public charge.
“The Police Hardly See Where They Come in”
Another element in
Woodhull’s favor was the bureaucratic and legal confusion that arose over the
discovery of his sex. It is not unlikely that other individuals passing as men
had been processed at Ellis Island—given the restrictions on the admission of
single young women, there was an incentive for those unaccompanied by fathers
or husbands to present themselves as men—but most medical inspections were rapid
and cursory, so there was very little precedent for Woodhull’s case. As The
Sun observes, “Commissioner Watchorn, the doctors and everybody else at
Ellis Island, including the inspector who was the unconscious means of finding
her out, are sorry they did.”[6]
Woodhull was not treated like a criminal caught slipping over the border. Rather,
he was seen as an uncomfortable and inconvenient case defying easy categorization.
As the reporter suggests, the authorities would rather have Woodhull ‘on the
loose’ than in their charge.
Contributing to the
confusion were the legal implications. On what grounds could the United States
deport a woman dressed as a man? The assistant commissioner “told Miss Johnson
that she had, he thought, violated a law of New York by coming into the State
posing as a man.”[7] There
was some uncertainty, however, as to the law in question. The Sun and New
York Herald looked into the particulars—“If a woman, half disguised as a
man, appears in public she is likely to be arrested, either for collecting a
crowd or on an imputation of disorderly intent… But if the woman's disguise as
a man is perfect and she is not a vagrant, the police hardly see where they
come in.”[8]
As The New York Herald wrote, “There is nothing in the laws admitting
aliens as to their wearing proper clothing of their sex.”[9]
If there had been any question of Woodhull’s sexuality—a marriage to a woman, perhaps,
under a male name—the broad umbrella of “moral turpitude” could be used to
condemn him. Based on his testimony, however, Woodhull’s ability to work and live
independently was more likely to prevent prostitution and sexual immorality
than to enable it.
The logistics were further
complicated by the fact that Woodhull already lived in the United States: “It
is pretty certain that she will not be sent back to England, as that is not her
country, and she has money in the bank in New Orleans.”[10]
This was not a greenhorn, fresh off the boat, who could be sent back home to a family
overseas. Woodhull had been living in the United States for thirty years. Not
only was there a shaky basis for deporting Woodhull on moral, economic, or legal
grounds, there was no obvious alternative to readmission—immigrants who were
turned away at Ellis Island were typically sent back on the ship that had
brought them, but it would be nonsensical to send a mere tourist back to Europe;
perhaps even stranger to make special arrangements for deportation to Canada. Ultimately,
the Board of Special Inquiry followed the path of least resistance. As The
New York Times reports on October 6, the Board “came to the conclusion that
Miss Johnson was a desirable immigrant and should be allowed to win her
livelihood as she saw fit.”[11]
The question of what constituted a desirable immigrant we shall explore in the next
section.
Outline
Introduction
- Basic Frank Woodhull story
- The question: How on earth did Woodhull get past the authorities at the border?
- Thesis: His racial and cultural profile, and his self-defense, which mobilized conventional notions of gender and morality to justify his “disguise”
Part I: Persuading the Press
- “One who had been in the habit of convincing people”—the salesman’s self-defense
- Naturally masculine appearance
- Economic angle—“clean, respectable” work; not a prostitute and not a public charge
- Legal and logistical issues with deportation—by which law could they exclude him, and where else would he go?
- Admitted as a “desirable immigrant”
Part II: The Undesirables
- Alejandra Veles—another case of gender passing, and why Veles’ defense failed where Woodhull’s succeeded
- Woodhull as a WASP—what does “desirable immigrant” really mean?
- Gender, forced disrobing, and interrogation at Angel Island—the brutal double standard
- Racial passing among illegal Chinese immigrants—how does it relate to gender passing at the borders?
[1] “Mustached,
She Plays Man,” The Sun, October 5, 1908.
[2] “Passed
off as a Man,” The Evening Star, October 5, 1908.
[3] “Mustached,
She Plays Man.”
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Detain
Woman Garbed as Man.” New York Herald, October 5, 1908.
[10] The
Sun.
[11] “Woman in Male Garb Gains Her
Freedom.” New York Times, October 6, 1908.
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