Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco

Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. By Clare Sears . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. 216. $79.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

This important study provides a fresh approach to the topic of cross-dressing. The author aspires to transcend conceptual limitations of previous work on cross-dressing histories of the nineteenth century that all too readily embrace contemporary categories or language. Informed by queer theory and transgender studies, the analysis considers a broad range of cross-dressing practices alongside each other and avoids judgmental distinctions "between normative and nonnormative gender" practices (9). Sears deploys the concept of "trans-ing" to shift our attention "away from the recognizable cross-dressing figure to multiple forms of cross-dressing practices" (9). The result is a thoughtful, sophisticated exploration of people who chal- lenged, rejected, and played with gender in a wide range of circumstances to varied ends.

This study is well anchored in a particular place and time: San Francisco between 1848 and 1900. The periodization of the study is crucial and is described by the author as a time when the city was transformed from "a small, coastal village in recently Mexican territory into an epicenter of US capitalist investment, urban development, and imperial expansion" (5). As men flocked to the region during the gold rush, numerous cultural practices emerged that produced the "temporary fantasy of the gender binary" as men transformed themselves into women for dances in mining camps and dance halls. The gold rush also attracted countless passing men, some who were women donning male attire...