Public Universal Friend

The Public Universal Friend (born Jemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819), was born as a fourth-generation English-American to a Quaker family in Rhode Island, and assigned female at birth. As a child, the person was strong and athletic, loved animals, and was an adept rider and avid reader. The person suffered a severe illness in 1776 (age 24), and reported having died and been reanimated by God (who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone") as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend.

The Friend refused to answer to the previous name any longer, quoted Luke 23:3 ("thou sayest it") when visitors asked if it was the name of the person they were addressing, and ignored or chastised those who insisted on using it. The preacher shunned the name completely, having friends hold realty in trust rather than see the name on deeds and titles. Even when a lawyer insisted that the person's Will should identify its subject as having been born under the name Jemima, the preacher refused to sign that name, only making an X which others witnessed, despite being able to read and write.

The Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes, largely avoiding gender-specific pronouns even in private diaries, and referring only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F." The Friend wore clothes that contemporaries described as androgynous or masculine, chiefly black robes. When a man criticized this manner of dress, saying "the singularity of [your] appearance would excited many remarks" including "some indecent ones", the preacher replied "there is nothing indecent or improper in my dress or appearance; I am not accountable to mortals, I am that I am", saying the same thing ("I am that I am") when someone asked if the Friend was male or female. Followers considered the Friend's androgynous clothing consistent with the evangelist's genderless spirit, and Susan Juster and other writers speculate that, for followers, the Friend embodied Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28 that "there is neither male nor female" in Christ.

The Friend preached throughout the northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends. The Friend's theology was broadly similar to that of other Quakers, believing in free will, actively opposing slavery, and supporting sexual abstinence. The Friend persuaded followers who owned people in slavery to free them, and the Society included black people. The Society also included many unmarried women, who took prominent roles in their communities that were usually reserved for men. In the 1790s, the Society formed the town of Jerusalem, New York, near Penn Yan. Many modern writers have portrayed the Friend as a pioneering figure in the history of women's rights (like Juster), sometimes even while acknowledging that the Friend defied the idea of gender as binary and as essential or innate (like Catherine Brekus and Catherine Wessinger), or else in transgender history (like Scott Larson and Rachel Hope Cleves). Historian Michael Bronski calls the Friend as an instance of an early American publicly identifying as non-binary.