Parting with my Sex

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In this original and unusual work Lucy Chesser explores the persistent recurrence of cross-dressing and gender inversion within Australian cultural life. Examples of cross-dressing are to be found in almost every area of Australian historical enquiry including Aboriginal-European relations and conflict convict societies the goldrushes bushranging the 1890s and its nationalist fiction and World War One. The book compares and contrasts sustained life-long impersonations whereby women lived worked and sometimes married as men with other forms of cross-dressing such as public masquerades cross-dressing on the stage and the prosecution of men who sought sexual encounters while disguised as women.</span></p>