Wild Women, Wild West: Queer Women’s Sexuality and Gender Presentations on the Western Frontier

While there has been considerable study regarding the lives of homosexual men in the Wild West and on the American frontier, there has been significantly less scholarship focusing on the lives of queer women. This article argues that, despite the newfound freedom provided by the perceived lessening of gender restrictions in the Wild West, queer women and AFAB people still found themselves condemned by media and the public, as demonstrated in newspaper articles and personal accounts from the nineteenth century. By following the lives of prominent figures that exhibited queer traits, such as dressing masculinely, presenting as men, and entering romantic relationships with women, historians can more acutely understand how possibly queer women and AFAB people conducted themselves in the American West, as well as how the public received these people.