True Sex. Emily Skidmore

elders (both George Green and William Howard being older than fifty). No doubt, the fact that both men were dead rendered them less of a threat to their community, and their age likely allowed their actions (particular with regard to sexual encounters) to be seen as harmless. Nevertheless, the fact remains that both George Green and William Howard chose to live their lives in rural communities, and those choices must be taken seriously. Both men moved several times throughout their adult life, and neither one chose to relocate to an urban area.48 These deliberate choices, I argue, reveal to us a side of queer history that has been obscured by an over-emphasis on metropolitan areas and urban enclaves. In order to prove this point a bit more forcefully, the following case study provides an opportunity to explore the aftermath of a “true sex” revelation on an individual who was still living. Indeed, the case of Willie Ray provides an opportunity to assess the level of acceptance afforded to individuals who transgressed gender expectations in the early twentieth century.

      Willie Ray

      Willie Ray first emerges in the public record on the 1900 federal census, which lists Ray as a twenty-five year-old white male born in Tennessee. At the time the census was taken, he was living as a boarder and working as a farm laborer in Booneville, Mississippi, a town of about one thousand people in the northwest corner of Mississippi in the predominantly rural Prentiss County.49 There are no known records of Willie Ray’s life prior to 1900; it is likely that he moved to the Prentiss County area between 1890 and 1900, and perhaps it was during this time that he began living as a man (although it is more certain that it was in this period that he began living under the name Willie Ray). The facts surrounding Willie Ray’s life in Mississippi become a bit clearer in 1903, when he was part of a lawsuit that received attention in newspapers across the nation.

      In July 1903, Willie Ray filed charges against a man named James Gatlin, who allegedly “got after Ray with a horsewhip.”50 According to the newspaper reports of the trial, Gatlin was upset with Ray for being “too attentive to Mrs. Gatlin.” Thus the stage was set for a classic love triangle that certainly would have attracted attention in at least the local papers, which frequently covered such interpersonal dramas. However, a startling revelation that emerged in Willie Ray’s cross-examination ensured that the story would be covered in newspapers across the South.

      During the trial, Willie Ray was placed on the stand and cross-examined by the defense lawyer. The lawyer asked Ray to comment on the accusation that he had maintained an improper relationship with Mr. Gatlin’s wife. In response, Ray revealed to the courtroom that he was biologically female. Now, why would Willie Ray choose this moment to reveal his “true sex”? The Jackson Evening News reported that Ray revealed his “true sex” “when it was necessary … to deny an allegation.”51 This account suggests that once the Prentiss County court realized that Ray was biologically female, the idea that he was flirting with Mrs. Gatlin would be debunked because same-sex desire between two biological women was inconceivable. However, this logic relies on the idea that people in Prentiss County were ignorant of the possibility of same-sex desire, and that they were completely isolated from the nascent discourse of sexology or popular representations of gender and sexual transgressions that appeared in the national press.52 While it is probable that some people in Prentiss County were unaware of sexology, to suggest that they had never conceived of affection between two members of the same sex is to discredit the savviness of individuals in rural communities.

      Instead, it is more likely that Willie Ray chose to reveal his “true sex” on the stand as a way of incriminating Mr. Gatlin and avoiding punishment for having an improper relationship with his wife. Indeed, whereas Gatlin’s behavior (whipping Ray with a horsewhip) may have seemed justified to the court when it was done to protect his wife from an unscrupulous man, Ray was likely aware that the court would view the same action very differently if the victim of his attack were a woman. This calculation proved to be accurate; once Ray disclosed his “true sex,” Jackson’s Daily Clarion-Ledger reported that Gatlin was “was bound over to the circuit court under a bond of $250, which he was unable to give, and was sent to jail.”53 For his part, Ray was also arrested and held for a brief period of time—not for improper sexual conduct, but for masquerading in male attire. However, in 1903, there was no law in Booneville (or anywhere in Mississippi, for that matter) that prohibited wearing the clothes of the opposite sex, and Ray was quickly released from custody.54 Thus assured of the legality of his queer body, Willie Ray apparently continued to live in Booneville and dress in male attire.55

      As Willie Ray’s story circulated away from the local context and onto the pages of national newspapers, the narrative remained strikingly similar to the one that appeared in the Mississippi press. The most common iteration, which appeared in newspapers such as the St. Louis Republic, Atlanta Constitution, and New York World, read:

      The people of Prentiss county, Miss., are wondering how Miss Willie Ray managed to palm herself off upon them as a man for nearly eight years without her sex being suspected even by her most intimate friends and neighbors.

      Miss Ray has lived in Prentiss county since 1895, and during the first five or six years worked for various farmers for wages. She dressed as an ordinary farm hand and made regular trips to Booneville, the county seat, each Saturday afternoon, riding horseback, to all appearances a neat-looking boy of quiet habits, although a steady chewer and smoker of tobacco.

      Willie was known all over the country as a first-class field hand, a hard-worker and good for his debts. Last year the girl in masquerade decided to start out as an independent farmer and rented a small farm, bought a small store and began to run into debt, as all small farmers are expected to do.

      Her sex was discovered last week at the court house in Booneville, where she was a party to a lawsuit, and since then Willie has had to wear skirts.

      She came from Tennessee, is about twenty-five years of age, and when asked her reasons for posing as a man said that she did it in order to go out and do a man’s labor for a living.56

      Just as in the national coverage of George Green and William Howard, Willie Ray’s story is depicted as an incredible and unusual tale. His case is cast as remarkable because of the success with which he passed as a man, and because of his ability to fulfill the demanding (masculine) tasks of farming for so many years without detection. Perhaps Ray’s story appealed to newspaper editors nationwide because it presented a narrative that appeared incredible—how could a woman pass as a man so successfully? In such iterations, the story was not “woman dresses as man and pursues women,” but rather “town was fooled for several years by woman masquerading in male clothes.”

      The national coverage of Willie Ray’s story illustrates a clear investment, on the part of newspaper editors, in portraying the rural community of Prentiss County as entirely ignorant of the potential of same-sex desire, and intolerant of gender transgression moving forward. Ray’s alleged relationship with Mrs. Gatlin generally did not appear in the national press; when it did, the accounts made clear that Ray revealed his “true sex” in order to “disprove an allegation that had been lodged.”57 As explained above, this logic depends an understanding of rural spaces as ignorant of same-sex desire. While Prentiss County was portrayed in the national press as lacking all knowledge of nonnormative sexuality, one attribute the area did supposedly have was a legal regime to regulate gender expression.