Anachronisms in Labeling in Queer Historical Fiction

Sooo... I have several pieces of writing (most recently a YA adventure novel) that feature people who were born girls, who put on boys' clothes and started passing as boys for various reasons--mainly originating in personal safety and carrying on for personal desire/identity.

I have a hard time discussing these characters when querying etc. because on the one hand I sort of think of them and their girlie female love interests as proto-butch/femme lesbian couples. But in fact, they are possibly more proto-trans characters.

Really though, they are not proto-anything, but just what they are. What they are has no name I can settle on however, as I am loathe to be anachronistic.

How about ya'll? Anybody here have a similar conundrum in your work? How to you handle it?

That's just it, though, they didn't very much--love that dare not speak its name and yadda yadda...

Within the books I mostly call these cross-dressed characters men and boys--which is how they think of themselves. But of course, it's more complex than that (and those complexities arise in the stories). There were various contemporaneous slurs to refer to queer people and those come up a bit in the books themselves. But even words like "invert" (which I must admit, I adore!) doesn't appear for quite some time after the period I'm in (1850-1900ish).

Also, even if "invert" were the going term (let's say we're in the 20s), not many people in the general population are going to get that when I'm trying to tell them about the book.

It has just recently occurred to me that my characters are somewhat illegible and that makes them harder to "sell." They are lovely, though, once given a chance!

That's about what the query sounds like now. I'm still a stickler for "really" or what-have-you to second-guess a "true" identity, you know?

I put the query someone on the web for feedback, just saying "Born a girl, X has been dressing as a boy, blah-blah" and I use male pronouns. Then I say "his childhood sweetheart Y [girl's name]" and someone's feedback was. "I don't get it. It sounds like a lesbian story."

Welp. I was stumped at that point.

True that (less than astute readers). BUT his gender is a big part of who he is, so it needs a mention. Otherwise, I think once a reader (or agent, or editor) got the book, it would feel like a gotcha.

I don't know that there's much of a solution to this problem, but I keep tweaking in the hopes of improvement.

Interrobang is an awesome screen name! (!? that is)

I love the word Tom. I think it's more English than U.S. American though. And even so, doesn't quite get at m current MC who really thinks of himself as a man-with-a-difference rather than as a woman who likes women.

Just as an aside, I also love using the words "queer" and "gay" in their earlier contexts, as a wink to my readers.