John Radclyffe Hall

John Radclyffe Hall was a writer in the early 20th century, most well-known for her novel The Well of Loneliness, which tells the story of Stephen Gordon, a masculine invert. Hall herself was a self-proclaimed invert who lived with her partner, Una Troubridge, in a community of other masculine women. This community, as well as being an “independently wealthy [person] with high social standing,” allowed Hall to live safely and somewhat openly as a masculine woman (87). Significantly, Hall’s progressive push for societal sexual tolerance was not mimicked in the rest of her political views; rather, Hall was “not much of a feminist, and quite anti-Semitic” and was also “all too sympathetic to the fascist cause” during World War II (93).

Hall “thought of herself as a man but did not try to pass as one,” and so offers a new category of female masculinity to...