‘Romantic Sensation’ book spotlights Leon Belmont, a 19th-century gender rebel

Gender variance has existed in human biology and culture since time immemorial. And over the years, researchers have fortunately uncovered many surprising and inspiring stories of transgender and nonbinary people who’ve lived out loud throughout history — often despite the heteronormative, patriarchal societies that governed them.One such story belongs to Leon A. Belmont. Or should I say, Addie Liona Walker? Or was it Nova McClure Carr? Well, the answer is all three — as these identities were all espoused by the same human being. Now, a new biography, Romantic Sensation: The Queer Lives of Leon A. Belmont, 1853-1927 by historian Lizzie Ehrenhalt, recounts the details of the fascinating life of Belmont, a Gilded Age celebrity who made national headlines after breaking a Minneapolis ordinance on gendered dress codes, as well as a police report from a girlfriend claiming he was a woman. Due to this coverage, Belmont was dubbed a “curious and romantic sensation” by news outlets at the time.Ehrenhalt, who specializes in the history of gender and sexuality, said she first learned of Belmont’s existence while searching digital databases for evidence of queer and trans history, a regular practice in her field. Author and historian Lizzie EhrenhaltMichael Buxbaum/International Center for Documentary Arts“In 2019, I was deep into the digital archives of the Minneapolis Tribune when I saw an 1880 story about ‘A Woman Who Lived in Male Attire for a Year and a Half…Exercising the Masculine Prerogative of Making Love to Two Women at Once,’” she recalls. “That obviously caught my attention! I dared to hope that there’d be a follow-up article about this person, and there was. Then I found another one, and another one, and before I knew it, I’d collected more than a hundred newspaper items about this so-called ‘romantic sensation,’ Leon A. Belmont, and his life in Minneapolis.”After widening her search, Ehrenhalt discovered Belmont was born as Addie