"The DeWolf in Male Clothing" - Ina Coolbrith, Charlie Stoddard, Bret Harte, Jean Bonnet
“Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of 'To Kill a Mockingbird', I think you're focusing on the wrong shit.” - Wanda Sykes
We’ve seen unfortunately well-organized right wing forces seize control of the Supreme Court and state legislatures and judiciaries to pass sixty laws (and counting) in nearly half of U.S. states this year to limit what children can read or hear about LGBTQ people, whether trans youth can participate in school athletics, what trans or nonbinary adults can wear in public, which bathrooms and pronouns they can use, and whom doctors can treat.
Drag shows are under particularly intense attack by the MAGA right, as part of their relentless cultural war to drag the country back into the 1880’s. Given the obvious real threats to children’s safety in this country, as Jon Stewart recently schooled a MAGA state senator from OK, why all the particular hysteria about drag shows?
Drag shows have always been an existential challenge to the patriarchy. In the 1860s it was illegal in California to even wear clothing of the “opposite gender.” The patriarchy wants to mandate only two sexes, with one forever and inexorably dominated by the other.
Now, as then, it’s on us to push back.
Read After the Gold Rush from the beginning:
Chapter 137
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May 9, 1866 - San Francisco, California
Ina Coolbrith, Bret Harte, Charlie Stoddard, Jean Bonnet, Eliza DeWolf
That spring, the Bohemians lost their central gathering place. The Californian was in serious financial difficulty, and Webb finally shut the office doors and left for New York, for good. Frank Harte moved over to the San Francisco Bulletin. Twain was in Hawaii.
Though Ina would sometimes go out drinking with Charlie, she was unable to participate in the all-night revelry of her male writing peers, nor could she wallow in the Montgomery Block saunas with them.
So she brought the conversation to her.
Somehow the family had managed to hold onto their house on Russian Hill. Ina turned it into a haven, and threw open her doors to the Bohemians, creating a sanctuary of clean and airy rooms, decorated with flowers from her garden, marble busts, and of course, walls and walls of books. Frank and Charlie were frequent visitors; Charlie described the parlor dreamily: “There is always a kind of twilight, a faint odor of fresh violets, and a sense of peace.”
But today the peace was broken. Ina and Frank were in the midst of a heated argument over Eliza DeWolf.
Doctress DeWolf and her husband had come to San Francisco to lecture on spiritualism and women’s issues, and the night before Ina had attended her lecture entitled “Dress Reform—the New Costume for Women." DeWolf had scandalized the audience when she stepped out on stage wearing breeches and boots. Ina had experienced a jolt at the sight, but then a fierce exultation spread through her.
In their lecture, DeWolf and her husband advocated that women wear “bloomers” or bifurcated pantaloons, as a practical and hygenic alternative to heavy skirts, petticoats, and corsets.
And liberating, Ina realized. To be able to walk on the streets without the heaviness of layered skirts, without the constant risk of said skirts being soiled from dragging through human and horse excrement…
She wasn’t quite ready to take up male dress, but she’d resolved on the spot to return for the next night’s lecture: "Causes and Preventatives of Female Weaknesses." But that lecture was canceled when deWolf was arrested—for wearing bloomers in the street.
The next day the newspapers were in a frenzy over the incident, somewhat predictably dubbing her “The DeWolf in Male Clothing.”
A front-page article in the Alta California detailed the incident:
A tremendous sensation on Montgomery Street was caused by the appearance of a female dressed in black doeskin pants, men’s boots, riding jacket, hat, etc, full masculine apparel, leaning on the arm of what appeared to be a man although it may have been a woman.
Ad captandum vulgas.
A mob of small boys numbering in the hundreds gathered and followed, yelling and hooting.
As the police arrest any man caught on the street wearing women’s clothing, we see no reason as to why the rule should not be applied to the opposite sex as well.
A letter to another San Francisco newspaper ranted:
Any woman who appears on the street arrayed in a suit of men's clothes insults the whole sex. The police should apprehend this flagrant miscreant and put a stop to such carrying ons ere others imitate the example.
It was signed, to Ina’s digust, "Propriety.”
Other newspapers had piled on, including —to Ina’s dismay— Frank Harte in the Golden Era.
The police had taken note. The following day DeWolf was arrested and charged with violation of the city’s law prohibiting public appearance “in a dress not belonging to his or her sex.”
Ina was so infuriated she threw the newspaper down on the parlor rug before Frank like a gauntlet.
“And now she has been arrested. For wearing clothes men do not approve of.” Ina glared at Frank. “You must be so very proud of your part in all this.”
“And why should she not have been arrested?” Harte blustered. “There is already too great a lack of femininity, bashfulness, exclusiveness and timidity in our women. I am against any innovation in attire—”
Ina finished with him, mockingly quoting his article: “—which tends to lower the standard of female modesty or which makes women more masculine and confident.’ I read your editorial. You sound like one of those jeering boys, frightened by something too adult for them to comprehend.”
“It is the law,” Frank began, but Ina could see he was flustered.
Sprawled on the divan behind him, Charlie was uncharacteristically silent. Surprising—since this call for reasonable dress echoed what he himself had expressed to Ina. But he had been in his own funk for some time now, and she was too annoyed with Frank to concern herself with Charlie’s moods.
“So you, Francis Bret Harte, the great crusader for democracy—you approve that she has been arrested? That she has been jailed for the clothing she wears?” She advanced on him. “You wish women to be ‘less confident?’ Perhaps you too believe ‘Puddings rather than poetry’ are ‘the proper sphere of woman?’”
“I did not mean you,” Frank said weakly.
“You appear to have missed something fundamental about me,” Ina said, and took great pleasure in slamming the door behind her on her way out.
In the offices of the Daily Dramatic Chronicle, the scandal had ignited a quieter squabble. The initial vitriolic editorial had spewed from Charles de Young’s pen:
“The open antagonist of marriage should not be flattered by any serious discussion of his plans for regulating the fashion of a petticoat, much less for changing the family relations on which society is based. America is the home of purity and liberty and not a theater for license and indecorum to exhibit their pranks.”
Michael seldom dared to cross Charles, but today he found himself advancing a suggestion. “It is curious, though, that women of a certain class are able to dress as they please, without intervention by propriety or police.”
Charles scowled at him, but Michael continued, “Lillie Hitchcock often dresses in men’s clothes to go gambling. And the women of Billy Ralston’s own wedding party all wore bloomers for the wedding trip, and were extensively photographed just so.”
It was a small victory, but victory nonetheless. Michael’s empathetic editorial appeared the next day.
“The issue is a grave and important one. The mind that can find in the matter nothing more than a wretched joke, must be one of the most feeble and frivolous cast.”
Ina noted the Chronicle’s divergent opinion as she devoured the papers. She read along anxiously as Dr. DeWolf was convicted and sentenced to county jail.
She was overjoyed when mere days later, a sympathetic judge overturned DeWolf’s conviction.
Ina took great pleasure in visiting the Mint that day and reading the news aloud to Frank in his office. “’The perambulating Doctoress DeWolf celebrated her victory by returning to Montgomery Street and parading most conspicuously in a pair of glaring green bloomers.’”
She dropped the paper on Frank’s desk with a smug look. Frank knew better to say anything.
While DeWolf triumphed in the courts and in the papers, seventeen-year old Jean Bonnet, born Jeanne, was nowhere near as fortunate. He’d been arrested for petty thievery—while dressed as a boy. And he was on his way to the Industrial School. Founded as a “House of Refuge” for the City’s destitute children, in truth it was notoriously corrupt and inhumane. Abandoned children as young as two years old were confined within its prison walls. Of its sixty boys and five girls, only twelve had committed anything resembling a crime. Jean had heard the rumors of the horrors within, the lashings, the solitary confinement cells, the forced labor—and worse.
The police delivered him to the school in handcuffs. The warden/headmaster met them at the door, and eyed Jean up and down, a look he knew all too well.
“A girl that doesn’t know the place God put her in? We’ll soon cure that.”
Jean said nothing. And for the millionth time he cursed God, and the day he was born a female instead of a male.
Read After the Gold Rush from the beginning: