Editing Lesbian (section)

=== Female husbands ===
[[File:Viola and the Countess - Frederick Richard Pickersgill.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Gender masquerade was a popular dramatic device in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as this scene of [[Viola (Twelfth Night)|Viola]] and [[Olivia (Twelfth Night)|Olivia]] from [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' painted by [[Frederick Pickersgill]] (1859).|alt=Painting of a Renaissance-era woman dressed as a man, standing and looking away, as a woman dressed as a woman holds the other's hand to her breast, looking imploringly at the other, set against a bucolic backdrop.]]

Hermaphroditism appeared in medical literature enough to be considered common knowledge, although cases were rare. Homoerotic elements in literature were pervasive, specifically the masquerade of one gender for another to fool an unsuspecting woman into being seduced. Such plot devices were used in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' (1601), ''[[The Faerie Queene]]'' by [[Edmund Spenser]] in 1590, and [[James Shirley]]'s ''[[The Bird in a Cage]]'' (1633).<ref name="Jennings2007"/>{{rp|pp=1–11, 22–24}} Cases during the Renaissance of women taking on male personae and going undetected for years or decades have been recorded, though whether these cases would be described as [[transvestism]] by homosexual women,<ref name="Dekker">{{Cite book |last1=Dekker |first1=Rudolf M. |title=The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe |last2=van de Pol |first2=Lotte C. |date=1989 |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0333412527 |location=London, United Kingdom}}</ref><ref name="Lucas1988">{{Cite journal |last=Lucas |first=R. Valerie |date=1988 |title="Hic Mulier": The Female Transvestite in Early Modern England |journal=[[Renaissance and Reformation]] |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=65–84 |issn=0034-429X |jstor=43445585}}</ref> or in contemporary sociology characterised as [[transgender]], is debated and depends on the individual details of each case.

If discovered, punishments ranged from death, to time in the [[pillory]], to being ordered never to dress as a man again. [[Henry Fielding]] wrote a pamphlet titled ''The Female Husband'' in 1746, based on the life of [[Mary Hamilton (bigamist)|Mary Hamilton]], who was arrested after marrying a woman while masquerading as a man, and was sentenced to public whipping and six months in jail. Similar examples were procured of Catharine Linck in Prussia in 1717, executed in 1721; Swiss Anne Grandjean married and relocated with her wife to Lyons, but was exposed by a woman with whom she had had a previous affair and sentenced to time in the stocks and prison.<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=51–54}}

Queen [[Christina of Sweden]]'s tendency to dress as a man was well known during her time and excused because of her noble birth. She was brought up as a male and there was speculation at the time that she was a hermaphrodite. Even after Christina abdicated the throne in 1654 to avoid marriage, she was known to pursue romantic relationships with women.<ref name="Faderman1981"/>{{rp|pp=54–55}}

Some historians view cases of cross-dressing women to be manifestations of women seizing power they would naturally be unable to enjoy in feminine attire, or their way of making sense out of their desire for women. [[Lillian Faderman]] argues that Western society was threatened by women who rejected their feminine roles. Catharine Linck and other women who were accused of using dildos, such as two nuns in 16th century Spain executed for using "material instruments", were punished more severely than those who did not.<ref name="Norton1997"/>{{rp|p=191}}<ref name="Faderman1991"/>{{rp|pp=51–54}} Two marriages between women were recorded in [[Cheshire]], England, in 1707 (between Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill) and 1708 (between Ane Norton and Alice Pickford) with no comment about both parties being female.<ref name="Jennings2007"/>{{rp|p=30}}<ref name="Aldrich2006"/>{{rp|p=136}} Reports of clergymen with lax standards who performed weddings—and wrote their suspicions about one member of the wedding party—continued to appear for the next century.

Outside Europe, women were able to dress as men and go undetected. [[Deborah Sampson]] fought in the [[American Revolution]] under the name Robert Shurtlieff, and pursued relationships with women.<ref name="Katz1976">{{cite book |last=Katz |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Ned Katz |date=1976 |title=[[Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.]] |publisher=Thomas Y. Crowell Company |isbn=0-690-01165-2 |pages=212–214}}</ref> [[Edward De Lacy Evans]] was born female in Ireland, but took a male name during the voyage to Australia and lived as a man for 23 years in Victoria, marrying three times.<ref name="Aldrich2006"/>{{rp|p=224}} Percy Redwood created a scandal in New Zealand in 1909 when she was found to be [[Amy Bock]], who had married a woman from Port Molyneaux; newspapers argued whether it was a sign of insanity or an inherent character flaw.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Coleman |first1=Jenny |title=Unsettled Women: Deviant Genders in Late Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century New Zealand |journal=Journal of Lesbian Studies |date=2001 |volume=5 |issue=1–2 |pages=13–26 |doi=10.1300/J155v05n01_02|pmid=24807564 |s2cid=22507224 }}</ref>