breathedout | On the 1912 deportation of Mary Sogan (Reply)

Aliens with ambiguous gender were far more perplexing to immigration officials [than same-sex-attracted aliens], but again the public charge clause [deportation of those likely to become a burden on the state] figured centrally in the government’s resolution of these cases. Consider, for instance, the case in 1912 of Hungarian Verona Sogan. Sogan arrived in New York dressed in female attire, but medical examiners contended that Sogan was, in fact, a malformed male. She had come from Hungary to meet her mother and stepfather, who “called for the alien as his stepdaughter and said the alien’s name [was] ‘Mary.’” Sogan was initially diagnosed with “hypospadias” and “arrested sexual development, which affects ability to earn a living.” The alien appealed the decision of exclusion, shrewdly maintaining that, if sent back to Hungary, “it [would] be extremely difficult… to start my life over again as a male among the people where I have thus far lived as a female.” Immigration officials promptly dressed Sogan in male clothing and subjected her to a barrage of questions. When asked why she wore female attire, she answered, “I was baptized as a girl and was always supposed to be a girl, wore girl’s clothes and did ladies’ work.” As if looking for another clue to Sogan’s true sex, the inspector asked Sogan if she was accustomed to sleeping with the male or female members of the family. “I always slept alone,” she cryptically replied.

The inspector then questioned Sogan’s stepfather, a poor woodcutter who had been in the country for six years, how he and Sogan’s mother would dress the girl if she were released to them. “As a girl,” the woodcutter replied. “Did you notice,” the immigration official asked Sogan’s stepfather, perhaps indicating to the woodcutter that he had given the “wrong” answer and highlighting the broader disciplinary effects of the exclusion process, “that since her arrival she has been placed in male attire?” When again questioned about the sex of his “alleged stepdaughter,” the woodcutter replied, “We always considered her a female but every new moon she somehow changes into the other sex.” Asked to explain how it was he knew that the alien had changed sex, the stepfather explained that he knew because, “she always appeared sad at such times.”

—Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

COULD THIS WHOLE STORY BE ANY MORE FASCINATING?? HOLY SHIT, HER RHETORICAL STRATEGIES AND THOSE OF HER STEPFATHER.

Tragically if unsurprisingly, this case was decided against Sogan and her family: the government declared that she was actually a man, then excluded her from citizenship on the basis that she was unemployable due to effeminacy, and therefore likely to become a public charge and a burden on the state. W O W, check out that logic.

I'm working on archiving my old reading posts from Tumblr. Most of them will be marked "Don't display on reading page" so as not to clog up people's dashes, but I may include the first post from each work/author as an advertisement/walk down memory lane, and with Canaday in particular I may fully publish multiple posts, since she's just so fascinating. Head over to my main page for more Canaday (or whatever author I'm currently archiving). Beyond tagging with the year read, I'm not making any effort to replicate original dates of these Tumblr posts; that is just too much work, and I have dated reading records offline. All I really care about is maintaining my commonplace book of quotes & commentary.