Livia Gershon is a freelance writer in Nashua, New Hampshire. Her writing has appeared in publications including Salon, Aeon Magazine and the Good Men Project. Contact her on Twitter @liviagershon.
Indonesian tombois are understood as men in many public contexts, but their families of origin often treat them as female in some respects and male in others.
In the late nineteenth century, many Cuban immigrants supported racial equality. That began to change as white supremacist terrorism grew in intensity.
In the 1930s, hitchhiking was viewed as an opportunity for generosity on the part of the driver and a way to practice good manners on the part of the rider.
In the 1960s and ’70s, guides began wearing period costumes and farming with historical techniques, a change that coincided with the back-to-the-land movement.
Giacomo Casanova achieved celebrity not through any particular achievement but by mingling with famous people and making himself the subject of gossip.
In nineteenth-century India, many locals stood up against British hunting—sometimes at the cost of their own lives—as a means of cultural conservation.
In the early 1800s, Americans formed all sorts of anti-vice societies, triggering jokes and serious resistance to reform through a wave of anti-societies.
Poor laws passed in Great Britain in the 1830s reversed a centuries-old tradition to forbid workhouses from serving roast beef and plum pudding at Christmas.
Taking a ship from Europe to the Americas in the early 1500s meant entering a world of cutting-edge applied technology and the mixing of social classes.
In the early twentieth century, folk music in Sweden was connected with right-wing nationalists, leaving a complicated inheritance for today’s music fans.
In the nineteenth century, Queen Ranavalona became a foil to Queen Victoria, her “savage” queenship held in contrast to that of the “civilized” female monarch.
As urban growth brought rich and poor Parisians closer together in the 1830s, masked balls encouraged class mixing and costumes that crossed gender lines.
In 1723, a group of enslaved African Americans petitioned the Bishop of London to ensure that their children could attend school and learn to read the Bible.
As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the government created the first modern state propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.
Believing in ghosts wasn’t a class marker until the 1820s, when suddenly the educated classes tried to convince the masses that these apparitions were delusions.
The bathroom didn’t become a thing until the nineteenth century, and most working-class US homes added plumbed-in amenities in piecemeal fashion over time.
