Kellor Starts a Fascinating LGBT Discussion

Recently I created some entries on Frances Kellor a fantastic timeline project.  My entry on Kellor's co-founding the National Urban League in 1910 got included in the women's timeline.  The entry on Kellor's first book being published in 1901, got included in the African - American timeline.  It likely got put there as the book concerns the plight of African - American women in southern penitentiaries.
The time line organizers are working on an LGBT timeline.

The editor of the timeline had removed Kellor's sexuality from the initial timeline entries I wrote.  The editor explained that if you click on the timeline, it expands, and then Kellor's LGBT status was mentioned. It was not put on the time line itself, he explained, because her LGBT status did not seem relevant to the accomplishments.  We do not, after all, put all peoples' sexuality on the timeline.

In response, I noted that both Kellor's first book and the group she merged to form the National Urban League, aimed to help women exclusively.  Kellor only lived with women. As a transgender person from childhood, she wrote a lot about gender.   Her identity was intimately tied to the projects she chose to pursue.

Then, via email, the woman that introduced an even more radical suggestion:

Why not just have one timeline for all groups?

The suggestion was put forward because straight students will not look at the LGBT timeline.  This leaves prejudice unchallenged.  Furthermore, LGBT students would feel better about themselves if their experience were normalized.

I agree with the idea of inclusion.  But, taken to the extreme, this thought would mean the disappearance of African - American Studies and Women's departments.  And, I would argue that Kellor's LGBT status informed her aiming to create an inclusive form of Americanization.  But, we do not want to see LGBT persons as necessarily separate and different.

What do you think?  Can you come up with arguments for either side?

Capsule, Kellor, and You!

My two most recent books concern the formation of identity in modernity.  “Capsule: A Search for Identity in Modern Japan” follows Adam and John as they systematically discuss sources of identity on psychedelics.   “Founding Mother: Frances Kellor and the Creation of Modern America,” looks at ways in which Kellor (1873 – 1952) presaged, promoted, and formed our modern sense of American identity.

The quintessential characteristic of modernity is choice.  You can live as a gay Buddhist all the while working as a corporate executive, voting Republican, and have surrogates create multiple children for you.  You could also stay single, vote Democrat, and spend the majority of your time improving your drinking skills.  Nothing fetters your self-invention in this modern world. 

In its valuing of choice, modernism contradicts traditionalism.  In traditional societies men and women know their roles. They have children.  The men work and the women raise the children. In this sense, child-free transgender persons represent the final frontier of modernity, of the Western modern experience.  They have become the essential Americans.  No tradition binds them.

Kellor lived with a woman, had no children, and dressed as a man.  And, she ran the Americanization movement that greeted immigrants from 1906 – 1921.  100 million Americans trace their heritage to Ellis Island.  During Ellis Island’s hey day she ran New York’s Bureau of Industries and Immigrants; the official governmental agency in charge of immigrant affairs.   This is only one way that this LGBT role model created America’s modern self-image.

The definition of American identity Kellor promulgated eschewed traditional American sources of identity.  Rather than our old Protestant definition, she taught that Americans were those who participated in political activism.  Her multicultural parades showed that being American required no particular sets of beliefs.  To her, as to us, our national identity solely stems from our label as a democracy.

This lack of judgment made a world safe for modern gender benders with alternative life styles like Kellor.  So from where do we get our moorings today? 

In Capsule Adam and I discuss our lack of belonging.  He lives in Japan and so is clearly out of place.  And, I am bewildered by the dizzying array of choices my life presents.  In a backdrop of adventure in Japan, we ponder if marriage, LGBT lifestyles, travel, nationalism, our personal stories, our work, or many other sources of identity could provide us with a fulfilling sense of community, belonging, meaning in live, or identity. 

To understand Capsule’s conclusions, you must read the book.  But know that the search, the fact that we must self-identify fuels every fun moment.  And, Kellor necessarily launched the search that the Capsule chronicles.  Once we have left our traditional moorings, we get faced with choice.  Founding Mother helps us understand where our modernity comes from.  Capsule helps chronicle the adventure that being let loose from roles entails. Both help us to understand who are and might become in this modern world.  

Transgender Pronoun Disclaimer Help

Hello Readers, Colleagues, and Friends,


I am especially asking the LGBT scholarly community to critique the "Note on Pronouns" that will appear on in the final edition of Frances Kellor's biography, Founding Mother.   


Your comments are greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance,


Here is the text:

A Note on Pronouns

Throughout this text, though transgender, Frances Kellor will be referenced with the feminine pronouns, “she,” “her,” and, “herself.” Kellor was the male persona in her forty-seven year relationship with Mary Dreier, argued publically that women needed to take on more “masculine” characteristics, changed her name from the feminine “Alice” to the more masculine “Frances,” and dressed in men’s clothes.  Within the broad parameters of today’s language, Kellor was transgender. But, the past lives with different terms. In Kellor’s time, sex change operations did not yet exist.  As such, to expect her to even consider becoming anatomically male is anachronistic. In her ongoing focus on gender roles, Kellor called herself “masculine,” but she never called herself “male.” Therefore, throughout this text we shall use feminine pronouns in reference to Kellor.

Frances Kellor Lives in Lady Gaga and Media Bias

     
The transformation of a photograph of the transgender lesbian activist Frances Kellor (1873 – 1952) raises important questions concerning our current perceptions of gender. The photograph shows Kellor in her full masculine guise.[i] Months thereafter, a line-drawing rendition of the image appeared.[ii]  The contrast between the photograph and the line-drawing provides a contrast between what Kellor really looked like and an artistic rendition for public consumption.  The newspaper redrew her as they would like to have seen a female leader – they feminized this giant figure.

 Frances Kellor had her likeness in the newspapers a lot. She garnered wide publicity for her studies of African-American women in southern penitentiaries. Her work leading up to the founding of the National Urban League received a lot of attention, as did her undercover work for domestic workers.  When Theodore Roosevelt told crowds about Kellor taking him to homeless shelters, she needed no introduction. But at the time of the images, the public would have read of her monthly as the head of the movement that greeted immigrants –the Americanization movement.

  At first glance, the photograph of Kellor could be one of a man.  An acquaintance from childhood claimed dislike of young Kellor was widespread because she walked and talked like a boy.  Here we see a thirty-seven year old Kellor dressed in men’s clothes.  She has a tie on and a shirt that accentuates extremely broad shoulders.   Kellor worked as a basketball coach and rowed on the Cornell boating team she helped form. The expression on this reformer’s face gives the impression that she is busy and businesslike. The mess on her desk provides another clue that could lead an unsuspecting      reader to think ‘male.’

  The drawing rendition of this photograph could not but retain the masculine tie and shirt.  But several essentials have been feminized. While a Romanesque slightly florid design accompanies the photo, we now have a full flower below Kellor and another above her. The hair has feminized streaks and sits a bit looser. The eyebrows have been stylized. And the harried expression in the photograph has been transmuted into a welcoming feminine smile. 

  The differences between the photo and the drawing are subtle.  To totally feminize this short-haired, tie wearing, broad-shouldered person, would require a total falsification.  And, perhaps my perception that a slight hint of breasts appears in the drawn version verges on the paranoid. Furthermore, we could argue that newspapers routinely work to make people appear more appealing.  Still, in this case, it seems the aggregate of the small changes, making Kellor more “appealing,” results in a much more feminine appearance overall.

  Today it is still news when Lady Gaga or others act as ‘gender benders.’  The media’s shock reflects our fascination with this chink in the armor of the dominant gender paradigm.  And while at first blush the rare attention to ‘gender benders’ might not seem socially significant, it should raise our awareness of the constancy of normalized gender depictions. Female celebrities’ femininity, their dress, and make-up get hyped daily. And while these women may love performing these gender roles, Kellor’s photograph makeover reminds us of the longstanding and constant public pressure to bend girls to femininity and alternatives. 

 But what does this matter?

 The line-drawing rendition of the photograph sat above a headline that read, “Little Sister of the Alien Comes to Teach.” No male in Kellor’s position would have been described as a “Little Brother.” Upon becoming the first woman to head a New York State Bureau, a surprised New York Times told readers that they would have thought, “the head of the New York State Bureau of Industries and Immigration would be some big strong man.”[iii] Earlier the Times exclaimed that if anyone had suggested a year earlier that a woman would have had held Kellor’s position in a Presidential campaign they would have been “thought mad.”[iv] With such a powerful known history, this depiction of Kellor as “little” and familial illustrates how feminized images of women can diminish them.

 Not only can the reception of Kellor’s masculine image tell us something about gender perceptions, her example can remind us of means to fight it. Kellor advocated using sports – particularly basketball - to make women more masculine. Specifically, she thought sports would get women out of the home and off gossipy topics and into the street publically fighting injustices. In 1916 Kellor opened a women’s campaign for Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes with a “historical discussion of men’s campaign trains and the masculine way of working.”[v] And, of course, in contrast to the more feminine settlement house workers around her, Kellor often dressed as a man. 

 The drawing of Kellor identifies her as “Miss Frances Alice Kellor.” As a teen Kellor wrote under the name of ‘Alice Kellar.’ After leaving her hometown, she only wrote under the more androgynous name Frances Kellor. This feminized depiction of this ‘little sister’ marked her gender by revising her girlish first name. Not all women would be comfortable changing names, dressing as a man, or adopting “masculine” styles of activism; nor should they have to. But we would do well to understand the dynamics in public presentations of gender. To this end, we would do well to teach Kellor’s example and depictions of gender in today’s media.

  Finally, these comparisons model something of a victory in public perception. The photograph appeared in The New York Times in April of 1912. The article it illustrated showed Kellor scouring filthy conditions in industrial sites.  The ‘Little Sister’ drawing was printed in The Los Angeles Times in November of 1913. The text noted Kellor was a “remarkable woman” for leading a New York Bureau. Kellor’s level of achievement was new for women on the West Coast. The drawing and the headline had not yet caught up with the possibility of powerful masculine women. But the photo running earlier in the East Coast paper showed that activism had laid the groundwork for seeing women as powerful.

[i] “Preying Upon Helpless Immigrants After They Land,” The New York Times, April 14, 1912, SM10

[ii] “Little Sister of the Alien Comes to Teach,” Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1913, II1

[iii] “A Good Samaritan for Hapless Alien Hosts is Miss Frances Kellor,” New – York Tribune, May 12, 1912, A4

[iv] “Women as A Factor In the Political Campaign:  For the First Time in American History Their Active Support Is Openly Sought by All Parties,” The New York Times, Sept. 1,1912, SM9

[v] “Tells Why Hughes Asks Women’s Aid,” The New York Times, Aug. 7, 1916, 9

Kellor's LGBT Status and Today's American Identity

More than nearly any other American, Frances Alice Kellor can claim to have shaped America’s modern identity.  Historians acknowledge her as the leading figure in the Americanization movement (1906-1921).  This movement sought to assimilate and educate immigrants during the greatest period of immigration our nation had ever known.  As the head of New York’s Bureau of Industries and Immigrants, she was officially in charge of immigrants during the pinnacle of this population transfer.

How did Kellor’s transgender lesbian identity impact her sculpting of our public identity?

Kellor’s vision of Americanization did not involve cultural, ethnic, racial or religious norms.  She only insisted that immigrants become activists in pursuit of social justice.  The ideal she promulgated made all potential Americans without regard to their private cultural ideals.  As such she helped launch the vision that led to today’s multiculturalism.  In her view, and ours, all cultures can equally claim their status as Americans.  

Again, how did Kellor’s transgender lesbian identity impact her sculpting of our public identity?

When in public, Kellor only discussed policy.  Her letters to her girlfriend contain sentimental terms of endearment, but in public she identified as a male and had a hard edge.  She wrote that her male attitude and attire addressed the limited access women had.  She needed to be taken seriously outside of what she called “sex cloisters.”  And her aggressive transgender public persona might likely taught immigrants something about being an American. But more importantly  for our question, we read nothing referring to sexuality in her work. 

Rather than her transgender identity, her lesbian identity informed the way in which she shaped our national character.  Her private life remained intensely private.  And, consistently, she removed immigrants’ private lives from their qualification of being American.  Again, she argued that all who publically fought for social justice were Americans.  Your personal characteristics and morality were removed from the scrutiny in her formulation.

The Americanization curriculum Kellor wrote, presaged today’s social sciences in looking at numbers more than normative behaviors.   And in doing so she pushed a social trend of her era towards bureaucratization.  But much of the Americanization movement demanded cultural conformity.  Kellor had that option available.  It was popular.  Instead, as she rose to the top of the Federal Americanization bureaucracy, she separated personal characteristics from American identity.

In separating the public and private realms, she kept her lesbian life safe.  In this way, even more than her transgender identity, Kellor's lesbianism informed the culturally neutral version of Americanization she championed and we assume today. 

Alice Kellar's Transgender Name

Recently a person about to read Kellor’s biography, Founding Mother, wrote me “I refer to her [Kellor] as a woman only because that is how she is portrayed on just about every site.” She then asked, "Would it be more correct to refer to her as Francis (male), than Frances (female)??”

In the small town of her youth, Coldwater, Michigan, Kellor wrote a gossip column under the name “Alice Kellar.” Mysteriously, upon arriving at Cornell University’s law program, she changed her last name's spelling from “Kellar to Kellor” and swapped out her feminine first name for her middle name, “Frances.” So while she used the female spelling, she consciously chose her sexually ambiguous first name.

A banker's daughter in Coldwater disliked Alice because she and talked like a boy.  In all images of Kellor she has some level of male attire; in the majority she simply dressed as a man. Despite her shortness, Kellor had her arm around her girlfriend’s shoulders in a photo in which they both greeted Eleanor Roosevelt. The visual record is clear that Kellor took the male role in her life and same-sex marriage of 49 years.

When others denounced women’s basketball because it would make girls too masculine, Kellor championed it for the very same gendered reason. Kellor publically identified her considerable political career as masculine, and railed against the gender-based cloistering of women into feminine concerns. In a very real way, Kellor’s transgender identity suffused all of her work.

As no private letters show her self-identifying with the pronoun “he,” I referred to Kellor as “her” throughout Founding Mother.  However, the book forefronts the looming importance of masculine gender identity to Frances, (with an ‘e’). 

Frances Kellor's Basketball Lesson

This blog post will illustrate one use of the "Essential Questions" handout in the Lesson Plans section of www.franceskellor.com.  We will use the "Essential Questions" handout to discuss the 1903 article "Girl Students Find and Esthetic Side to Physical Exercise."  This can be found in the Articles section of www.franceskellor.com .  And it includes a very handsome photo of Kellor!

This article lists Kellor as an Instructor in Physical Culture at the University of Chicago.  Today, we call this position a Coach of Physical Education or PE Coach.  Coach Kellor pushed the phrase physical culture because she believed that sports contained cultural lessons that could remake society.  In particular, she thought that sports could help women become more active in the public arenas of commerce and politics.

But with this exercise, we are to simply look at the evidence in the article to answer one of the Chapter Two "Essential Questions" found at the Kellor site and here. For this exercise we'll choose "2) In what ways do sports change men and women's character?  What are the possible moral implications?  If sports can influence character, does this give validity to critics of women's basketball such as Coach Hill?"  In class you could discuss such issues with your fellow students and make a poster for a presentation of your findings.  

In my reading of the article, Kellor says "Yes" to the idea of changing men and women's character.  Sports, she tells us, make everyone "harmonious."  But they only make women "artistic."  Her sports friends agree and call this artistic value "aesthetic."  What does aesthetic mean?  Well in this case, it means that sports make women carry themselves and present themselves in a certain way.  It is close to the word "decorum."  In this context, what does Kellor's photo tell you about her aesthetic?  

Some clues help us answer the second part of "Essential Question 2," about moral implications.  Coach Kellor says that sports teach both men and women the social value of being harmounious.  They encourage both strong individual effort and "machine like teamwork."  So if everyone in society did sports, Coach seems to imply that we'd be both stronger individually and learn how to work together better.  We'd be efficient socially. 

The last portion of the question requires some background knowledge.  Coach Hill helped Kellor start the Cornell rowing team.  But she thought basketball, in particular, made women too "masculine."  If we accept Kellor's argument that sports change women, could sports change people in both a good and a bad way?  I think Kellor pushes for a feminine aesthetic decorum to fight off the bad influences sports could have.  What do you think people of 1903 might have thought these were.

Herein, I have come to the end of my ability to carry out this lesson plan in isolation.  To really explore the current and historical impact of sports, I need a classroom of people to discuss ideas with.  Until that happens, I would settle for some thoughtful comments on this blog post.  And, I hope this article has helped you see how you could use Kellor in your own classroom.