Women’s Role Models: Ringers

In this and the following posts, I hope to go a bit more in-depth with the character types covered in the Women’s Role Models: Introduction post (in other words, actually discuss some role models) and then look at things from a more modern perspective as well as what this means from a fantasy fiction point of view.

As with the previous post and the starting point (Women’s Roles in Fantasy Fiction), I’m still focussing on the “medieval” period of Europe – loosely 800-1600 A.D. (or C.E.). I’m actually starting later and finishing later than most historians because I’m looking at the period that inspires “medieval” fantasy, rather than the historic period. Either way, this is a huge amount of time and a lot of things changed so any generalisations will be crude and possibly insulting. So, to repeat (again) my disclaimers:

1. I am doing this from a (white) British point of view.
2. I am not a historian.
3. I may remember things wrong, particularly as I have a tendency to see the possibility of a story rather than the details.

In this post, I’m going to look at Ringers.

Before we start, I’d like to thank Cheryl Morgan [External Link] for having a read through a draft of this and helping me to clean it up. Anything you disagree with is purely my fault, anything that works for you was probably Cheryl’s suggestion.

Cleaning up My Definitions

(Or: Oh crap, I’ve been unintentionally insulting, haven’t I?)

For the purposes of this set of posts, a Ringer is someone who is not biologically male who presents themselves as male for a significant part of, if not all of, their life. This is not quite the same as declaring that we’re looking at women, per se, although I will be using the terms somewhat interchangeably when covering the historic bits because we don’t know how the individuals felt about it.

So, in what follows, we’re going to assume that “woman” equals “not biologically male” and that the people around them would have felt the woman in question was “pretending” or “lying” by presenting themselves as a man. This is where the use of the word “Ringer” as a description comes in. It would generally be used as:

Ringer: any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor. (Dictionary.com: Ringer [External Link])

But I also mean it in the sense of:

[Dead] Ringer: a person or thing that is almost identical to another. (Ditto)

In that there is no real appreciable difference between a man and a woman’s competence (I might also have gone with the substitution of something equivalent or, indeed, the use of a someone known to perform better 😉 ). Any difference is down to the individual as much as biological sex or gender identity. I know enough women with swords to be scared to say otherwise.

Anyway, most or all of this is not the modern view of things, is grossly unfair, and simplified to the point of stupidity. We will be coming back for some more fine-tuning in a section below called “What’s My Motivation?”

Back to Maiden, Mother, Crone

Before we go into some examples, here’s a reminder of the age banding I’m using:

• Child, the next generation.
• Maiden, the candidate for change, unsettled and ready to move.
• Mother, the establishment, settled and not ready to move.
• Crone, ousted by the establishment and encouraging the candidate for change, yet settled and not ready to move.

I mentioned in the Women’s Roles in Fantasy Fiction post that the Child and Crone age groups are a special case in that these are the age groups when the sexual dimorphism make very little difference. Without clothing and presentation cues (provided certain parts of the anatomy are covered up), most of us probably couldn’t tell the difference between a male and female child, and an older man and an older woman, at first glance. Some of us will continue to find it hard in conversation – dependant on how “typical” of our gender expectations the individuals are.

It’s suggested that female children might be presented as male, i.e. replacing a dead son, in order to hold on to money or a family business. The best example is from a later period that I’m covering at but is worth a look: Mary Read (Wikipedia: Mary Read [External Link]). How often things like that actually happened is open to debate.

It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine an elderly Goody Someone-or-other being in a strange place deciding (or her family deciding) that it is better for her to be seen as male as they travel – and being accepted as such more easily. Or even the other way round, which is technically beyond the scope of this post.

Both Maidens and Mothers will have a different body shape to hide. A teenager, with youth and a relatively high level of fitness on her side, is going to have an easier time adapting to new physical activities – younger people do learn physical activities faster, and recover faster. An actual mother is more likely to have an established life so it’s going to be more of a wrench to leave everything behind – even if much of it was uncomfortable or painful for her.

A Basic List

Using Wikipedia timelines, I’ve found references to some Ringers who served in combat and have not been widely or well remembered after discovery (Women in warfare and the military in the medieval era [External Link] and Women in warfare and the military in the early modern era [External Link]). These bullet points are copied and pasted from the relevant lists:

• 1335: The Scots defeat a company led by the Count of Namur. Amongst the Count’s casualties was a female lancer who had killed her opponent, Richard Shaw, at the same moment that he had killed her. Her gender was only discovered when the bodies were being stripped of their armour at the end of the engagement. “The chronicler Bower seems to have been at least as impressed by the rarity of two mounted soldiers simultaneously transfixing one another with their lances as with the fact that one of them was a woman.”
• 1472: Onorata Rodiana from Cremona, Italy is mortally wounded in battle. She had disguised herself as a man to become a soldier.
• 1580s: A woman is reported to have served as a man in the Portuguese army in Angola for a period of five years before she was discovered.

In the first instance, there is no guarantee that the fallen lancer’s companions didn’t know she was female. In the second, there is some doubt of the woman’s historical existence – partly questioned because there were known to be women leading and taking part in warfare at the same time and in the same area as this. The third instance has no details attached and I haven’t found anything further elsewhere (which means I probably need to look harder). The wording suggests that the woman was sent home on discovery but does not tell us anything about how she was viewed.

As I mentioned in the introductory post, I haven’t come across any historic (or substantiated) references to farmers, merchants, craftsmen or priests who were later revealed to be women. This does not necessarily mean it didn’t happen, only that it isn’t recorded or I haven’t seen it. These people may not have been considered important enough to record, without some legal dispute. And the Church, for one, would not have liked something like a priest turning out to be a woman being widely advertised. But, without a record, we can not categorically say that these kind of Ringers existed. This stops us writing about them in a historical context but doesn’t make them unavailable for fiction.

Role Model: Catalina de Erauso

(Wikipedia: Catalina de Erauso [External Link])

I’ve only been able to find further information for one woman who fits the Ringer description during the period I’m covering. But, while she was born during the period, she was actually active in the Seventeenth Century. She was born in Spain in 1592 (ish) and died in 1650 in what is now Mexico.

Catalina was effectively raised in a convent and she fled from it at fifteen. She became a sailor and then a soldier, serving in South America. Wikipedia mentions that she came from a family of soldiers but I wonder how well she actually knew her father and brothers if she were raised away from them. Did she glorify their lifestyle and want a part of it? Was she trying to prove that she was as good as they (and, by extension, that they shouldn’t have abandoned her at a nunnery at age four)?

She first revealed her sex after a serious injury – fearing she was about to die and wanting to confess – but recovered and returned to being a man and a soldier when she recovered. Another incident – either an injury or killing another man – brought a repeated confession and reveal. And the man she confessed this time to decided to hold her to the social norm. However it was put, we can assume there was blackmail – if only of the “examine your conscience, my child” kind – and Catalina was Catalina and in a convent once again.

Word got around about her adventures as a man and Catalina exploited it, eventually getting dispensation to wear men’s clothes full time. She also took on a man’s name again later in life.

What’s My Motivation?

There’s an interesting read about cross-dressing in (semi-)historic circumstances on Heather Rose Jones’ site here: Cross-Dressing Women in the SCA and the SCA’s Period: A Personal View [External Link]

If nothing else, it’s a reminder to cover what exactly I mean when I’m talking about women “pretending” to be men in these contexts. The first thing to remember is that the whole period I’m loosely covering, and eras forwards and backwards of it, are assumed to have a binary sense of gender and a binary sense of dress. This may or may not be true but we’ll stick with the assumption.

In other words, everyone who looked obviously biologically male were men and wore men’s clothes, everyone else was probably a woman and should dress accordingly. Public sexuality was strongly linked to biological sex, because the “natural” order was to appreciate the opposite sex, so public displays of attraction and penetrative sex was definitely a man / woman thing. (I’ve mentioned in the introductory post that I suspect the sexuality, as defined by modern standards, of private displays were probably a lot more fluid. Cheryl has suggested that acts may only have counted as sex if they were penetrative, which would fit in with the male orientated bias. But we’re not really discussing sexuality as such, here.) As men had better status and legal rights than women, wearing male clothing basically conferred male status and recognition on a female.

Thus, there are several reasons for a woman to put on men’s clothing (two of which were briefly covered before):

1. Protection – It wasn’t unknown, and in some periods it was actively encouraged, for a woman to put on men’s clothing while travelling or likely to be at risk of attention. Men’s clothing was effectively “sewn up” so that pants were difficult to remove, which would ensure a woman’s reputation. (The arguments against usually begin when someone wants to wear such clothing on a regular basis.)
2. Titillation – It also appears to have been a social convention to accept a (higher status) woman dressed in male clothing, not necessarily as male but as not-female, even when it’s clear what biological sex she is. Which means “ladette” behaviour problems are not new. See here: (Lothene Experimental Archaeology: Women Warriors of the 14th Century [External Link])
3. Activity – There are some activities that men’s clothing might be more suitable for – e.g. combat as that seems to come up a lot. (What can I say, I like swords.)
4. Authority – Sometimes, a woman has to wear the trappings of a male equivalent in order to have their authority. This could probably be lumped in with activity as, in the main, we’re probably talking about things like wearing armour and weaponry.
5. Access – Some things were clearly men only, such as a long term, independent career.
6. Gender Identity – While the terms are new, it’s unlikely that the situation itself is. There are bound to have been people born as biological female or designated as women who identified as men. (Which leads to wondering what happened to biological males who identify as women, but that’s beyond the scope of this blog post.)

The sort of women we’re considering as Ringers are covered by the last two reasons. The motivations for either, however, are not entirely mutually exclusive. The records suggest that this happened mainly in military situations and even though some higher status women were involved in warfare and accepted, it does not show that the rank and file were open to anyone. What I’m trying to say is the gentry or higher might be able to step into a knighthood or captaincy and move up from there while a poor woman would have to start lower down the hierarchy but the lower levels would not have necessarily been open to women. This means that to become, say, a man-at-arms the only route was to become a man. That said, as Heather Rose Jones points out, the instances we know about are the ones who were “found out” and can therefore be considered failures at passing. No-one knows how many were successful, because we will never identify them as women.

The test as for which of the two Ringer motivations is which, then, would probably be: If a man is discovered to be biological female, did he continue to live as a man (or try) or did he return to being she? By that definition, Catalina de Erauso should probably be classed as a man, as he made repeated attempts to be recognised as one.

More Recent Examples and Modern Equivalence

There are more examples of Ringers mainly from the early modern and modern periods. There are a few of them listed on Listverse: Top 10 Men Who Were Really Women [External link] and Mental Floss: 8 Historical Cross-dressers [External link]. If nothing else, the wording of the titles show that we still have difficulty getting away from assuming biological sex is the same as gender identity.

Among those listed are James Barry, a doctor whose presentation as male may have been encouraged by his mother in order to pursue a medical career, and journalist Norah Vincent, who is an example of an addition to the historic list of reasons:

7. Curiosity – which is not the same as Titillation if it is done with a genuine wish to become informed about a subject. In this case, how men function socially, and whether they’re so different from women. However, it’s still not a (potentially) life-long option.

In the West, a lot of the status that goes with simply putting on men’s clothing has disappeared. As observed by Heather Rose Jones, and others if I could remember the links, a significant amount of our clothing is gender neutral – at least by medieval standards. One doesn’t have to be a man to wear jeans, or a military uniform, or running shoes, or a baseball hat, or a suit. The gender definition comes in small tweaks to style as much as the type of clothing. Therefore, in theory, a modern Western woman does not need to:

1. Put on men’s clothing (which is no longer tied together in the same way) in order to travel.
2. Put on a man’s clothes in order to cut loose at the weekend.
3. Put on men’s clothes to do a certain job. As someone who gets to wear jeans and t-shirts to work all the time because of the outdoor element, I can categorically say that I believe this form of cross-dressing is no longer necessary, although there is such a thing as suitable clothing. (Don’t turn up for work with me in high heels and I won’t turn up to the office in muddy boots.)
4. Put on men’s clothes in order to confirm their authority. Although things like suits and uniforms are inspired by years if not generations of designing for men.

However, there are still certain roles that are only open to men that might still inspire women to present as men (if you feel like serving on a submarine in some navies, for example) and there are definitely people who are biologically female or have been raised as female who identify as male. There are also parts of the world who see things differently – whether that be in greater difference between clothing worn by either gender, how those genders are defined or what options are available to them.

Putting That In Writing

In a world that (loosely) reflects the European medieval period, there ought to be room for a woman who spends time dressed as a man. How often it would happen (and whether it would be spotted) basically depends on how easy it is for a woman to enter into such things as trade or someone not biological male to be accepted as a man. There is a whole spectrum of possibilities available to these characters. Typically, fantasy fiction focuses on combat so the examples here relate to that:

• Tamora Pierce’s The Song of The Lioness sequence [External Link] has the main character pass as a boy for martial training. Although she is accepted as a woman knight in the sequence, she never intended to reveal her true gender and necessity usually has her in men’s clothing.
• Cheryl suggested Mary Gentle’s Ash (Wikipedia: Mary Gentle [External Link]), which has both a woman who cross-dresses as a man and a respected woman warrior (a “Soldier” in this series of blog posts)

I can’t pretend to know what goes on in any person’s head (I’d be on a hiding to nothing if I were to even try given the AS page) but a writer and their readers could logically assume that anyone who has the guts to try this approach has courage and determination. Their ultimate goal probably isn’t becoming the Emperor of the World, as just getting by may even be hard enough work, but they will want to do well in whatever path it is that they picked. They probably won’t appreciate anyone who pretends to be male for pure amusement, and may therefore be dismissive of them, because the Ringer is presenting themselves seriously – they either are a man in the wrong body or a woman who has put a lot of effort into fitting in. They may resent a woman who can come in as a Soldier, General or Politician?a> as they won’t – apparently – have had to sacrifice as much as the Ringer to achieve the respect they receive.

In order to live as a man, they’ll probably be good at keeping secrets, at keeping things private (such as feminine hygiene) hopefully without seeming to and thus arousing suspicion. This is assuming that there isn’t generally forgotten medieval knowledge about using herbs to create an equivalent effect of certain medical treatments.

Unless they have the blessing of their family or some friends that stick with them through thick and thin, they will have left everything of their old life behind them. If they identify as women, they have denied themselves almost everything that their society offers them – at least in the sense of children and a partner to face the world with. It doesn’t preclude romance or even sex (it’s entirely possible to get up to all sorts of things with one’s clothes on so a well managed affair wouldn’t necessarily mean a reveal) but they must always keep something of themselves apart.

If they identify as a man, I suppose they are more likely to be somewhere on the continuum of self-dislike to self-hatred – if only through frustration that their body is the wrong one. Someone who identifies as woman and who is simply disguising themselves is more likely to be frustrated with the world for not matching up with their expectations of life rather than themselves. But whether this shows to anyone outside will depend heavily on how they internalise the obstacles between how they see their lives and how the rest of the world see them.

It’s unlikely that anyone of particularly high birth would fall into this (long-term) as they have a following of servants and such to escape, and it would have been acceptable for them to take up war-like interests under the right conditions. Unless they’re running away to become a craftsman or priest or similar but they must first have seen or experienced enough of that to know that was something they had a calling to do. (But the reasons for men’s clothing other than “Access” and “Gender Identity” remain open for plot devices.)

In order to get the point across in a story, a Ringer will probably be somewhat less controlled than an historically accurate version – telegraphing a bit more for the audience behind the fourth wall. In reality, a Ringer Naval ship’s captain would have to work hard to ensure they never revealed themselves so they didn’t get discharged. There’s the possibility that their ship would work things out but silence keeps an open secret hidden better than talking about it – if the Ringer was a good captain, the ship wouldn’t want to lose them. In a fictional version, the audience is more likely to be presented with a person who was a male captain while the ship sailed and apparently disappeared for two days as soon as the ship reached particular ports, appearing in story as their female selves.

What does this mean for the “standard” roles in a story? Probably not a lot. It depends more on what the story is expected to achieve. It would be very easy to let the “big secret” of the character’s true biological sex dominate their part as in the captain example above, and that’s without putting them in a story. This reduces something that is a complex subject to a plot point rather than something that “just is” but can cause major personal issues as it is more likely to be in real life. Typical roles as applied to a Ringer might look something like this:

• Protagonist – There are stories where the protagonist has been a Ringer – if only for part of the story – in order to pursue a martial career. Having a one remain cross-dressed for the entire story is still unusual. It may also be uncomfortable for the reader as most of us still expect the woman to end up secondary to her (male) love interest.
• Antagonist – Making a Ringer the antagonist could be dangerous territory, particularly in a world of simple good vs. bad, as this reinforces the “unnatural” view of cross-dressing we would expect of the medieval-style setting but doesn’t sit well with modern sensibilities as it has the potential to be denigrating to women, transgender, and intersex.
• Ally – A close ally would be expected to share the truth with the protagonist – although they would naturally be too good to do such a thing as use it as blackmail. If the ally keeps their “big secret” from the protagonist there would be a lot of tension and it would probably end up being a sub-plot.
• Advisor – The standard moment of rebellion would probably involve the protagonist accusing the Ringer of lying to them – only to realise it wasn’t important after all and make up with them, if they’re still alive by the end of the story.
• Unexpected Ally – Having a “big secret” makes a Ringer an easy choice for being open to persuasion. Perhaps too obvious.
• Henchman – The reader would probably expect the antagonist to be aware of the truth and be holding it over the Ringer in order to keep them on side.
• Traitor – As the inverse of the Unexpected Ally the same thinking applies.

The Writer’s Cry For Help

Here’s the request for more audience participation. If you have some real life and fictional examples of Ringers, please leave a comment or contact me so that I can add them into the lists.

The Women’s Role in Fantasy Fiction Blog Posts

I thought I’d make it easier to jump from post to post so the series is now linked at the bottom of each post. The six posts are:

1. Women’s Roles in Fantasy Fiction
2. Women’s Role Models: An Introduction
3. Women’s Role Models: Ringers (this one)
4. Women’s Role Models: Soldiers
5. Women’s Role Models: Generals
6. Women’s Role Models: Politicians