Tattoos and Resistance: Working-Class Women as "Others" and Surprising Stories About Resistance and Same-Sex Relations

Abstract: Through the analysis of newly discovered empirical material, this article explores the history of medical views of female sexuality, same-sex relations, gendered oppression, and resistance toward such oppression at the turn of the twentieth century. Referring to medical sources describing tattoos and tattooing practices among women selling sex, the article illustrates how these women's tattoos were understood according to race science and colonial views of race. Medical authorities interpreted tattoos as signs of the women's "racial" inferiority and used tattoos to demark white working-class women as outsiders to Scandinavian whiteness. However, the tattoos also reveal that some women apparently had the names of female lovers written on their skin. To compensate for the archival silences that surround these tattoos, the article uncovers these women's voices and agency by focusing on their resistance and rebellion against the medical regime.