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.”
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