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Course:CSIS200/2024/Mascs and Monocles: The Construction of the Masculine Lesbian in Early Twentieth-Century Western Europe

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About the Author

I’m DJ, part-time UBC undergrad student, full-time queer. As a non-binary person who is generally perceived as a woman by the public, I have a complex relationship with gender and lesbianism. My gender and sexuality are personal and fluid, but all the intricacies of my self-perception aren’t generally perceived by strangers. I look like a lesbian — because of the way I dress, speak, and carry myself, I am treated like a lesbian in my day-to-day. The way I dress is mostly about gender expression, and that gender expression is read as lesbian, does that make my gender lesbian? Today we generally think of gender and sexuality as discrete categories, so am I experiencing a sexuality as a gender? This is what brought me to writing this essay, I want to explore the history of lesbianism as a gender expression. I don’t intend to find answers or define anything in concrete terms, I just want to know a little more about the circumstances that led to my place in this world and open the door to messier identities (historical and contemporary) that cannot be pinned down.

Introduction

From Ellen DeGeneres’ pantsuits to viral “What’s your stud name”* TikToks, the masculine lesbian is a well-recognized identity category. In searching for a history of modern Western lesbianism, many quickly assign a lesbian identity to masculine-presenting women of bygone eras. In this video, the creator calls the monocle “one of the first lesbian coded fashion accessories,” and asserts that its appropriation from menswear and trendiness in all-women colleges makes it a symbol of homosexuality —  a contemporary understanding associating masculine dress with lesbianism.

Today, “lesbian” is an expansive identity label* encompassing a plethora of sexual and romantic attractions, gender expressions, and experiences. A contemporary understanding of “lesbian” is difficult, if not impossible, to neatly define. What remains stable is that a lesbian is something one can be: it’s a personal identity. The concept of “sexuality as identity” is relatively new. Retroactively applying this to people of the past obscures the societal context in which they lived and flattens their complex experiences and identities. Can we conclude that women wearing monocles in the early 1900s were lesbians? Were they attempting to signal that to others if the identity category of ‘lesbian’ had barely begun to emerge?

* Stud: an African American masculine lesbian

* Identity label: a type of word used to a trait or characteristic that is important to one’s concept of self and/or lived experiences

The Monocle

Fig. 1 Early twentieth-century gold rimmed monocle

A monocle is a single eyeglass held in place by the eye-socket, offering vision correction to one eye (Fig. 1). It was invented in the 1700s[1] but became popular as a fashion accessory during the modernist period[2] (late 19th to mid-20th century). The monocle as an accessory was first adopted by aristocratic British men.[2] A “Baron X” was described by The Times as wearing “nothing more formidable than a monocle”[3] at the 1911 Coronation Exhibition. In "Monocles on Modernity," Marius Hentea explains that the monocle suited the aristocracy because it “could not be worn easily and [...] required a level of sophistication,” a fact that “could be inverted by the powerful, who could afford to not be fussy about their manners.”[2] Aristocratic associations led to its adoption by dandies, but the monocle quickly grew into a trend reaching beyond these social groups.[2] Vogue named it a “fad of the moment” in 1911.[4] The advent of the fashion magazine, along with department stores and the decreasing cost of the monocle (a result of increasing globalized supply) allowed upper and middle-class Europeans and Americans to stay up-to-date on trends and easily purchase trending items.[2]

Fig. 2 Portrait of Una, Lady Troubridge. Oil paint on canvas by Romaine Brooks, 1924

Some argue monocles were adopted during the inter-war period as a lesbian symbol. Famously Una Troubridge, Radclyffe “John”* Hall’s same-sex lover, appears wearing a monocle in a portrait painted in 1924, (Fig. 2) and the Parisian lesbian bar “Le Monocle” took the accessory as its namesake. However, the monocle was worn by many upper and middle-class women even before WW1. The Penny Illustrated Paper describes it as “the latest fancy among ‘smart’ women”[5] in 1898. In 1911, Vogue asserted that it was fashionable “for both men and women,”[4] and detailed the different ways they were styled. The monocle was worn for a myriad of reasons by many kinds of people. This “symbolic anarchy”[2] makes it questionable to assume that Una Troubridge and other monocled women in same-sex relationships were using the monocle to convey a specific meaning.

* Radclyffe Hall adopted a male name, she insisted on being called John.[6]

Modernity and Masculine Dress

The Modern Girl

Fig. 3 Young woman on a ship dressed in 'Modern Girl' or 'flapper' style, 1929

In early twentieth-century Europe, women’s fashion was changing dramatically; the ‘Modern Girl’ (also called ‘flappers’) with her boyish figure, short cropped hair, and masculine mannerisms was the ‘it girl’ of the 1920s.[7] Straight lines were prioritized in clothing to create slender, boyish silhouettes, and the Shingle and Eton (ultrashort hairstyles) were popular (Fig. 3). In “Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s” Laura Doan describes a photograph of actor Edna Best in The Sketch in 1925. Best is photographed in “the tell-tale ‘accessories’,” extremely short hair, cigarette, and monocle”[7] and the text below the image calls her an “unpleasantly mannish girl,”[7] yet there’s no insinuation of homosexuality. Doan draws attention to the monocles “swirling jumble of connotations,” remarking on its “multiple symbolic meanings [denoting] possibly, but not necessarily, sexual identity.”[7]

This style came with an “attitude of rebelliousness and pleasure seeking,”[7] drawing criticism. A 1927 Punch cartoon depicts a woman with short hair and a cigarette wondering why her son is “not nearly as obedient as [he] used to be,” her son replies “Well, mother, if you ask me, I think present-day fashions might have something to do with it,”[8] implying that the Modern Girl is incompatible with motherhood. Fears that the Modern Girl would lead to the downfall of European society were not only centred on the perceived dissolution of gender roles — class confusion threatened the patriarchal elite. The popularization of ready-made clothes made it cheaper for more people to wear new trends;[7] Vogue published articles titled  “Dressing on a Limited Income”[9] from 1919 to 1922. In a 1921 letter to The Times, an “octogenarian”* complains that “the modern girl, half dressed, loud voiced, cigarette smoking, and bumptious mannered, is at present an unlovely object, to whatever social rank she belongs; and at present [...] she is found in all grades of society.”[10]

Cultural changes spearheaded by young women were undeniable. A Punch cartoon from 1927 depicts a girl with ultrashort hair, wearing trousers and holding a tennis racket speaking with her aunt; commenting on her trousers, her aunt says “Well, daresay they’re comfortable, but — I suppose I’m old fashioned — I don’t much like them. Why, one might think you were a boy,” the niece responds “Oh, come, dear old thing, that’s absurd. Who ever saw a boy wear earrings?”[11] This cartoon exhibits young people's changing conceptions of gendered clothing. Trousers were indicative of masculinity to the aunt, but to the niece, earrings were enough to portray a definitively feminine presentation. This shifting attitude is visible in a 1921 editorial in Daily Mail describing schoolchildren flooding train platforms returning to England for the holidays. While the author disparages the modern schoolgirl as “more dangerous than the male,” they also describe how these girls “carry themselves with supple grace and buoyant confidence” and asserts that “they are the equals, not the imitators of boys and [...] are even more boyish than boys.”[12] The author concludes by describing them as “happy, healthy young England,”[12] insinuating the boisterous attitude of the schoolgirls reflected positively on the health of the nation.

* Octogenarian: a persons between 80 and 89 years old

Women's Sexuality in Modernity

Attitudes towards the Modern Girl shifted partly due to women’s newfound sexual agency. In “The Myth of the Mannish Lesbian: Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman,” Esther Newton defines two generations of the ‘New Woman’: the first were bourgeois English and American women who pursued an education and earned a living in all-female institutions, the second came of age twenty years later and radically redefined female sexuality with the freedom found by the first.[13] The first generation formed ‘romantic friendships’ that “constituted [an] alternative to heterosexual marriage,” allowing financial independence outside the family sphere; they did not describe their relationships “using [...] sexual language.”[13] Newton argues that they didn’t view their relationships as sexual because they existed in a culture that believed that “only men and fallen women were sexual beings.”[13] While these women did work to gain independence, they did so with the privilege of “feminine purity that protected bourgeois women from [...] the temptations of sexual pleasure.”[13] This protected the homosexual experiences of these upper-class white women from accusations of perversion. The second generation “wanted to join the modernist movement”[13] and invent a new female sexuality. The Modern Girl, who “took up drinking and smoking, [and] threw off their traditional feminine dress,”[13] claimed sexual agency by announcing she too could have sexual desires. The emergence of “the flapper style had come to reflect the sexual atmosphere of popular bars and dance halls.”[13] But this new ideology* of women’s sexuality was heteronormative*, Newton writes: “Advocates of sexual emancipation [...] carried the new idea of ​​free union, supposed to satisfy [...] heterosexual desires.”[13] Where were women who didn’t fit within this new paradigm of heterosexuality left?

* Ideology: a set of beliefs or principles that inform the political/social beliefs and/or actions of a culture or individual

* Heteronormative: the concept that opposite-sex attraction is the default

Lesbianizing the Masculine

While females across the globe have always been having sex and falling in love with each other, how these relationships were defined and redefined during the twentieth century offers insights into why masculine women are often read as lesbian today.[14]

Before Modernity: Anne Lister

Fig. 4 Watercolour portrait of Anne Lister, painted by Mrs Taylor in 1822

Anne Lister (Fig. 4), an English gentlewoman alive from 1791 to 1840, wrote about her sexual and romantic relationships with women in her diaries.[6] Lister was “constantly mistaken for a man or treated like one during her daily life,”[6] despite the fact she was wearing women’s clothing. In Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam suggests Lister’s mistreatments were “the direct consequence of public recognitions of her masculinity,”[6] referencing her landowner status (she was the sole heir to her uncle’s estate). Halberstam describes Lister’s disinterest in masculine women, quoting from her diary a rejection of masculine women pursuing her, Lister writes: “two Jacks would not suit together.”[15] Describing herself as a ‘Jack’ suggests Lister believed she was somehow masculine, and this made her an incompatible lover to another masculine woman.

Today Lister may have described herself as butch-for-femme*, but she didn’t identify with her period’s closest approximation to present-day lesbianism. She recounts a conversation, “Got on the subject of Saffic regard. I said there was artifice in it. It was very different from mine & would be no pleasure to me.”[16] Lister's reference to a “Saffic regard”* suggests that she had a conception of what sex/love between women was that she didn’t identify her sexuality in. Whether it was her masculinity, sexual preferences, or something else that led her to identify outside of “Saffic regard,” Lister is a prime example of how cultural conception shapes understanding of one's sexuality. She couldn’t have been a lesbian because there was no lesbian to be.

* Butch-for-Femme: A masculine lesbian (butch) who is only interested in feminine women

* ‘Saffic’ (usually spelt ‘sapphic’) refers to Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. She is a symbol of love and desire between women, and is the origin of the word ‘lesbian’

Sexual Inversion

Havelock Ellis published Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume II, third edition in 1927. The appendix “The School-Friendships of Girls” brought the “intimate friendships between girls in school [into] the harsh glare of sexological theory.”[14] Ellis’ interview with an Englishwoman reveals that “romantic and emotional attachments formed by girls for their female friends [...] are far commoner than is generally supposed among English girls”[17] These “intimate friendships” formed the romantic friendships that Newton described. In the appendix, these relationships are characterized by “the extraordinary frequency with which [...] lovers exchange letters,”[17] before its publication these letters didn’t face scrutiny. Newton notes that “the letters [...] were in no way embarrassed or shameful” and that “their passionate outpourings were signs of purity and moral elevation.”[13] Ellis applied a sexological lens, bringing these relationships into view. Despite saying that they weren’t an “expression of real congenital perversion”[17] his pathologization* stoked fears that schoolgirls were experiencing a dysfunctional sexuality. He connected female masculinity to same-sex attraction by stating that these relationships had “an unquestionable sexual element” and quotes from an Italian researcher that “one of the girls shows man-like characteristics.”[17]

In the chapter “Sexual Inversion in Women,” Ellis defines two distinct categories of homosexual women. The first are “not repelled or disgusted by lover-like advances from persons of their own sex” and are “always womanly.”[18] By contrast, the “actively inverted woman” is marked by a “distinct trace of masculinity.”[18] While he states that this masculinity could “consist only in the fact that she makes advances to the woman,” he later associates masculine dress with homosexuality, claiming there’s a “pronounced tendency among sexually inverted women to adopt male attire.”[18] Ellis’ theory of inversion “folded gender variance and sexual preference into one [...] and attempted to explain all deviant behaviour in terms of [...] a binary system of sexual stratification in which the stability of the terms "male" and "female" depended on the stability of the homosexual-heterosexual binary.”[6]

* Pathologization: to regard or treat someone/a group as psychologically abnormal or unhealthy, usually through a supposedly medical or scientific framework

The Well of Loneliness

Fig. 5 John Radclyffe Hall wearing a suit and holding a puppy, 1930

John Radclyff Hall was a well-known English writer, living from 1880 to 1943 (Fig. 5). Hall was independently wealthy and of high social status, allowing her to live with her partner Una Troubridge in a “large community of other couples and other ‘inverts.’”[6] Hall wore men’s clothing, but also wore skirts, she presented herself as a masculine woman and took offence to women “masquerading” as men.[6] Adopting the name John and referencing herself as a husband in letters to her lovers[6] demonstrates Hall’s masculinity; she may have viewed herself as an “invert.”

Hall was heavily influenced by Havelock Ellis’ work, reading his publications and having him write a preface for her 1928 book The Well of Loneliness.[19] The protagonist of The Well of Loneliness, Stephen Gordon, is an “invert” — she wears masculine clothing and has a masculine figure.[20] Stephen leads a life of self-hatred and ends up alone, falling in love with two more feminine women, who eventually leave her for men. The book portrays the “subterranean worlds of homosexuals as lonely drug dens filled with moral perversion,”[6] contrasting Hall’s experience in lesbian bars she frequented that “provided a lively base for a rather flourishing community.”[6] Despite this, Hall claimed she drew from herself the “fundamental emotions that are characteristic of the inverted”[19] to write the book.

The Well of Loneliness hit shelves in July 1928 and was well-received.[19] Until August 19th when James Douglas, right-wing editor of Sunday Express, published “A Book That Must Be Banned.” He claimed the book was anti-Christian  propaganda that would destroy morality in England and poison children’s souls.[19] He called on the Home Secretary to stop the book’s sale. Hall’s photograph was printed alongside it, with short hair, masculine clothes and a lighted cigarette.[19] Shortly thereafter the Home Secretary found it obscene and ordered it removed from shelves. This scandal drummed up more demand for the book; smuggled copies spread the theory of sexual inversion to thousands of readers[19] — with an inextricable association with its monocle-wearing author.

The first on-screen kiss between women in the 1930 film Morocco captures the connection between homosexuality and masculine dress

Conclusion

We can’t conclude that the monocle was a lesbian symbol in the 1920s, but its use can illuminate why some assume it was. As Margorie B Garber explains “Clothing as a system of signification, speak in a number of registers: class, gender, sexuality, erotic style. Part of the problem [...] is in determining which set of referents is in play in each scenario.”[21] While it’s not comprehensive — factors of race, class, and nationality not explored here impacted the construction of masculine lesbianism in a myriad of ways — this essay attempts to decode a portion of lesbian history that has brought us to today’s conceptions of lesbian gender expressions.

As masculine women engaging in same-sex relationships became increasingly visible in the West, the masc lesbian cemented itself in the collective consciousness and “lesbian” became something one could be. From the 1930s to the 1950s “bar and club culture developed clear norms and modes of dress,”[14] giving us “butch,” “stud,” and “bulldyke.” Monocles represent the complicated construction that inform lesbian identities today. It’s important to consider historical contexts when telling Queer histories, but that doesn’t disqualify the monocle as a part of lesbian histories. Even though women wearing monocles 100 years ago didn’t call themselves lesbians, their lives and relationships can still reflect those of living lesbians.

Maybe the monocle is a lesbian symbol after all, not for the women who wore them in the 1920s but for contemporary lesbians who claim those women as a part of their history.

References

  1. ↑ "Monocle". Encyclopedia.com. Dec. 3, 2024. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Hentea, Marius (Nov. 2, 2013). "Monocles on Modernity". Johns Hopkins University Press. 20: 215 – via Project MUSE. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ↑ "The Coronation Exhibition. Saluting the King's Statue". The Times. Monday, June 5, 1911. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The Monocle a Fad of the Moment". Vogue. Feb. 15, 1911. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ↑ "Rosalind's Fashions". The Penny Illustrated Paper. Nov. 26, 1898. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Halberstam, Jack (2018). Female Masculinity. e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection: Duke University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-1-4780-0270-3.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Doan, Laura (Autumn, 1998). "Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s". Feminist Studies. 24: 672 – via JSTOR. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ↑ Baumer, Lewis (Jan. 26, 1927). "You Know, Bobby, You're Not Nearly so Obedient as You Used to Be. I Wonder why that Is". Punch. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ↑ "Dressing on a Limited Income Articles". Vogue Archive.
  10. ↑ "Our Young Men". The Times. Monday, Aug. 8, 1921. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ↑ Baumer, Lewis (Wednesday, Apr. 27, 1927). "Aunt. "Well, I Daresay They're Comfortable, but—I Suppose I'm Old-Fashioned—I Don't Much like Them. Why, One Would Think You were a Boy"". Punch. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "More Boyish than Boys". Daily Mail. Tuesday, Dec. 20, 1921. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 13.8 Newton, Esther (2008). "Le mythe de la lesbienne masculine : Radclyffe Hall et la Nouvelle Femme" [The mythic mannish lesbian: Radclyffe hall and the new woman, English Translation by Oristelle Bonis]. Cahiers Du Genre. 45 – via Cairn.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Rupp, Leila J. (2009). Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. NYU Press. p. 188. ISBN 0-8147-7592-6, 978-0-8147-7592-9 Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help).
  15. ↑ Lister, Anne; et al. (Helena Whitebread) (1992). I Know My Own Heart: the diaries of Anne Lister, 1791-1840. New York: New York University Press. p. 127. ISBN 0814792480.
  16. ↑ Lister, Anne; et al. (Helena Whitebread) (1992). No Priest But Love : excerpts from the diaries of Anne Lister, 1824-1826. Washington Square, N.Y: New York University Press. p. 49. ISBN 0814750761.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 Ellis, Havelock (1927). "Appendix B: The School-Friendships of Girls". [Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume II] (3rd ed.). Check |title-link= value (help)
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Ellis, Havelock (1927). "Chapter 4: Sexual Inversion in Women". [Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume]. 2 (3rd ed.). Check |title-link= value (help)
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 Souhami, Diana (1998). The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 197. ISBN 0297818252.
  20. ↑ Hall, Radclyffe (1928). The Well of Loneliness. United Kingdom: Jonathan Cape.
  21. ↑ Garber, Marjorie B (1992). "Chapter 6: Breaking the Code: Transvestism and Gay Identity". Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge. p. 161. ISBN 9780203479728.
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