Old North Illuminated hosted “Queer & Trans Early America in Print” as a part of its digital speaker series Feb. 11. Featuring speaker Jen Manion, historian and department chair of Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College, the talk discussed several of the earliest mentions of queer individuals in American print media, highlighting long-term historical shifts in public attitudes and terminology.

Manion is the Winkley professor of history at Amherst College and the author of two award-winning books, “Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America” and “Female Husbands: A Trans History,” as well as many more essays.

Old North Illuminated is a secular nonprofit dedicated to preserving Boston’s Old North Church as a historic site, focusing on diverse audiences. According to their website, the organization hopes to offer a more nuanced look at the nation’s complex history beyond the lens of the colonists who documented events solely in the context of their own experiences.

As a part of this goal, the nonprofit intended to bring awareness to groups that are underrepresented in discussions of American history, with queer and transgender individuals taking center stage for this event. Manion’s talk aimed to answer questions about the existence of these individuals in early America, how to explore this history authentically to a modern audience and the importance of this section of history.

“One of the reasons why I titled this ‘In Print Culture’ is because 90% of the sources I have and the material we end up working with to find out about these amazing queer and trans lives were printed somewhere,” said Manion. “They’re mostly in newspapers, sometimes in broadsides, sometimes in pamphlets. They’re not really people’s diaries or personal letters, but they’re stories about them.” 

Manion acknowledged that these sources are highly mediated and provide information through the opinions of onlookers instead of the personal testimony of the individuals who appeared in print.

Starting the discussion in 1850 and working forward, Manion began by covering female husbands, the subject of one of their two published books. Female husbands are individuals who were raised as women and later “transed their gender,” which is historically accurate terminology for what we think of today as “transitioned.” This would primarily involve acts such as cutting one’s hair and a change of name. The female husband would then live their life as a man and marry a woman.

Also discussed was the children’s publication “Juvenile Miscellany” that ran an article about Billy Bedlow, referred to as a “girl-boy,” in 1832. Bedlow was a boy who embraced all things feminine and faced stigmatization from peers as a result of their gender expression. While primarily a tale about bullying, the source invited conversation about how they would be labeled in the modern day — as a gay man, a transfeminine person or something else.

The audience proved to be deeply engaged with the talk’s contents, posing many thought-provoking questions. One participant asked about strategies for reading these texts to maximize insights into the queer experience.

Manion acknowledged personal struggles with conducting this research, specifically due to the negative associations made with queer individuals in these texts. 

“There’s a lot of derogatory stuff in the tone, and belittling and mocking. Once you get used to that, when there are positive to neutral to curious comments, it’s just amazing and you’re like, ‘everyone wasn’t terrible!’” said Manion.

Another participant asked whether the pushback against queer individuals is stronger in today’s current administration or during the 1800s. Manion highlighted difficulties with comparing the two eras due to the recent advancement in legal rights as well as social visibility.

“The context in which we are now being attacked and undermined and vilified is from a place in which we have so much,” said Manion. “The web of support, understanding, access and legitimacy is so much bigger, broader and deeper and that is the world in which we are being attacked and having some things threatened.”

The talk was largely a reminder of the long, unrelenting fight of queer individuals to be seen and understood and how they have gone from being seen as public spectacles to securing the recognition of their existence through legal avenues. Though there is much work to be done, there is also much to learn from this complicated history of publication.