Transformative Lives

Evidence of non-indigenous people living beyond traditional gender roles in Tennessee appears as early as the middle of the 19th century. In Nashville, a gender nonconforming man named Albert D.J. Cashier fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, including the Tennessee battles of Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville; today, a children’s book illustrates Cashier’s extraordinary life. Actresses Aleshia Brevard and Calpernia Addams both published memoirs detailing their Middle Tennessee upbringings as young boys and their transformations into womanhood. Tina Louise and Shawn Luis discovered drag performance as a means of expressing their authentic selves, while Jeannine Mancine (Drake) Sloss risked arrest living as a woman under Nashville’s “female impersonation statute,” a city ordinance in existence from 1967 to 1976 that prohibited gender expression different from one’s assigned gender at birth.