Cross-Dressing and Degeneracy in the British Popular Press During the First World War

This thesis analyses three different case studies across the First World War to illustrate the differing ways in which popular understandings of the same behaviour, a person assigned male at birth wearing women’s clothing, were discussed and understood in British popular culture. In doing so, I demonstrate how these discussions were affected by specific contemporary gender anxieties. As I argue, cross-dressing was often interpreted through the lens of dominant widespread British cultural concerns surrounding degeneracy. This lens was applied differently depending on the context and resulted in the act of cross-dressing being discussed and understood in a rich variety of ways in the British popular media.