GLR November-December 2023

How an ‘Androgyne’ Upended Gender in 1899 ARTMEMO

similar to himself, notably the hijra in India. There are scenes of heartbreaking vi olence, sexual and otherwise, directed at June due to his nature, as well as surpris ingly graphic depictions of his sexual en counters in the delicious demimonde of New York. His sorrows and joys are not un like those experienced by queer people to this day. At times, though, the book’s age really shows. For example, the lack of modern gender-affirming care, combined with a wish to be free of his intense sexual desires, leads June to undergo castration. June faces blackmail and expulsion from the university due to his sexuality and gender expression, something mercifully less common today. At times he veers into pseudoscience, argu ing that having sex diminished his mental capabilities. His fascination with becoming what he terms a fille de joie or “fallen women” also seems to come out of the Vic torian sexual mores in which he was raised. I suspect he felt, consciously or not, that only sex workers could be promiscuous or that promis cuous women were invari ably sex workers. Even the very institution of cruising has changed drastically from the dangerous days of Jennie June, what with the advent of hookup apps. The inescapable fact is that in June’s day queer peo ple lived extraordinarily dangerous, neces sarily secret, and generally difficult lives—as some of the more tragic details of his memoir, such as his sisters’ rejection of his gender transition, reveal. The wonder is that he felt any pride at all in an era so hos tile to “inverts” and “androgynes.” When virtually all of society demeans and fears one, mustering the courage to push aside self-loathing in favor of something like self acceptance requires extraordinary strength. Publishing a defense of oneself and those similarly inclined takes even more courage, especially in an era in which both cross dressing and same-sex sexual relations were criminalized. June’s bravery far surpasses that of any butch soldier he seduced. His memoirs are not only an important docu ment of queer life at the turn of the century and eloquently-written works of literature; they are also a testament to his fortitude and fearlessness. Lee Lanzillotta is a gay, transmasculine writer originally from Virginia. He studies Classics in Rome, Italy.

sified as creative nonfiction. This sometimes jarring combination of scholarly references, literary style, and cruising stories, as well as the sharp contrast between June’s two personæ, is fundamen tally queer. Many of us may be able to re late to this multifaceted, broken-up existence resulting from the grim confines of the closet (though people of my genera tion, “Gen Z,” tend to live out our gay lives online rather than in soldiers’ beds). Like many Uranian writers of the late 19th and early 20th century, June uses references to ancient Greek and Roman culture to justify his own identity. June stands out, however, in his deep identification with the ambiguously gen dered mythological figure of Hermaphrodi tos, a god with both male and female sex organs. They are widely depicted in statu ary, generally nude or partly so. In Ovid’s writings, Hermaphroditos originated as a boy and a nymph who were transformed into a single entity because of the nymph’s destructive desire—“not woman nor boy [but] neither and both.” It’s a sentiment with which Jennie June undoubtedly identified. He saw the god as evidence that androgynes like himself were known to the Ancients. June even juxtaposes a photograph of him self with one of a statue of Hermaphroditos. In these images, June and the statue both re cline in similar positions that subtly reveal their unique bodies. June’s small breasts, which he regarded with great pride, only in crease the resemblance. Remarkably, he wrote that “contrary to the ordinary view, there exists, in the human race, no sharp di viding line between the sexes. … The two sexes gradually merge into each other.” Despite its fascination with the distant past, Autobiography of an Androgyne seems relatable even today. June’s understanding of gender as a spectrum is strikingly mod ern, although he links gender and sexuality in a manner that today comes across as out dated. Many of us know from our own lives the basic contours of his experiences of self-loathing and subsequent acceptance. He found great comfort in reading about people

L EE L ANZILLOTTA B Y DAY, the pseudonymous Jennie June lived a respectable, middle class life in early 20th-century New York. By night, he traipsed through the shadows of working-class communities as a woman, cruising soldiers and other trade. If he’d been born a century later, he might have seen himself as a trans woman or non binary person, but in the language of his era he identified as a “passive invert,” a “Uran ian,” a “fairy,” a “boy-girl,” or an “androg yne” (from the ancient Greek ἀνδρόγυνος , or “man-woman”), and used masculine pro nouns to describe himself. I have chosen to do the same out of respect for this prefer ence. Channing Gerard Joseph of OutHis tory.org has tentatively identified June as one Mowry Saben, a prolific yet largely for gotten journalist. We know a lot about June because he wrote three memoirs chronicling his double life in graphic, poetic detail. The first and most famous, Autobiography of an Androgyne , was published with a limited run of 1,000 copies spised and oppressed step-children of Na ture—the sexually abnormal by birth.” However, the book was essentially ignored upon its release. June wrote in an eloquent, highly erudite style that displays his extraordinary learn ing. He intertwines surprisingly explicit de scriptions of his sexual encounters with thoughtful defenses of his nature. He regu larly refers to works by various prominent sexologists of the period, such as John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis. He comes across as extremely well-read, refer encing writers from Plato to Oscar Wilde. The narrative occasionally switches to the third person, allowing the reader to see June as he might have appeared to a contempo rary observer. As Yale professor of sexuality studies Scott Herring writes, the book could also be understood as an unusual example of the late 19th-century genre of slumming literature that served as a midway point be tween these slumming narratives and the camp writings of gay modernists. He also argues that, on account of the style and use of literary devices, the work should be clas and was only sold through the mail to “physicians, lawyers, leg islators, psychologists, and soci ologists.” According to June’s own introduction, he began writ ing the book in 1899 hoping that it might move the reader “to say a kind word for any of the de

Jennie June posing as the ancient Greek statue of Hermaphroditos . 1918.

November–December 2023

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