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Perverse Modernities: A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe
Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco
By
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-0-8223-7619-4
Publication date:
2015
Book Chapter
Problem Bodies, Nation-State
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Published:January 2015
This chapter examines multiple points of convergence between cross-dressing law and the federal immigration controls that developed in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. Immigration law did not target cross-dressing as a specific practice, but supporters produced political narratives of nonnormative gender to mobilize restrictions on national belonging. In particular, political campaigns for Chinese exclusion relied heavily upon cross-dressing imagery to vilify Chinese immigrants as hyperfeminine, deceptive men. Federal immigration law also ensnared people who wore clothing that “did not belong” to their sex, including Chinese women stowaways who tried to enter the nation undetected and resident immigrants who...
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