Cirrus@Austlit

'This article offers an alternative interpretive model for queertrans antecedence, focusing on the case of Harry Crawford in 1920s Sydney. Crawford was ostensibly on trial for murder, but his court case was more concerned with the social crime of gender transgression. He had been assigned female at birth but lived, worked, and married as a man. Although scholars have noted Crawford’s relevance to emerging histories of transgender lineage, he has primarily been interpreted as a butch lesbian, a ‘passing woman’, or as a kind of gender non-conforming optical illusion. This article seeks to reframe analysis of Crawford’s gender transgression by locating him within a broader genealogy of problematised queer and transgender expression.' (Publication abstract))