Unbelievable Women Who Pretended To Be Men And Got Away With It

#1 She Was Arrested For Posing As A Man When She Attempted To Marry Another Woman

40-year-old Surwati of Indonesia (who, like most Indonesians, goes by a single name) went to great lengths to hide her true identity and live her life out as a man. She had taken the name Muhamad Efendi Saputra and told people "he" was a police officer. He fooled everyone as he got a job on the police force and even managed to obtain a wife. After a whirlwind romance, Muhamad married 25-year-old Heniyati in a ceremony on Java island. However, she grew very suspicious after a few months when Muhamad refused to consummate their union. While he was out of town for business, she decided to go through some of his personal belongings, and that's when she discovered an identification card that showed her husband was actually a female named Surwati.

When Heniyati alerted the police of her husband's true identity, she was detained and then arrested after she dmitted to falsifying her papers and impersonating a man. If convicted, she could serve seven years in prison for the crime, though nobody is sure why she decided to live as a man. She was married to a man previously and has a 17-year-old daughter.

#2 She Pretended To Be A Man To Dupe Women Into Having Sex

Gayle Newland, England, created a fake profile on Facebook and assumed the identity of a guy named "Kye Fortune." She befriended innocent victims by chatting with them for a short time the asking to meet up. She then bound her chest and wore a wooly hat and swimsuit to disguise her appearance, telling the woman "he" was self-conscious about "his" appearance after hospital treatments.

'Kye's' identity was discovered when she insisted that one of her regular female friends wear a blindfold when they met up. According to court papers, the 25-year-old victim ripped off her blindfold during one meeting at her flat and saw Newland wearing a prosthetic penis. The two had had sex previously under the same circumstances over twelve times in less than 18 months. She was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault by the Chester Crown Court in 2015.

#3 The Egyptian Who Lived Her Life As A Man For 42 Years

In 2015, an Egyptian woman named Sisa Abu Daooh was honored by The Social Solidarity Directorate of Luxor for being the "ideal mother" because of her years of hard work to provide for her daughter and her grandchildren. The 62-year old had lost her husband when she was pregnant and she was left without an income. Being a woman is difficult in Egypt, and a working woman is frowned upon. But Sisa had to come up with something to support herself and her daughter, Houda.

She donned a "jilbab"a loose, full-length robe with wide sleevesas well as a white turban, or sometimes a men's hat known as a "Taqiyah" and black masculine shoes to pass as a man. She then went to work as a man making bricks and polishing shoes, among other jobs. Eventually, her daughter married a man who fell ill and couldn't work. So, being a resourceful woman, she remained the breadwinner of her family. Her real secret was revealed when the Luxor governorate decided she had been an extraordinary bread winner and gave her the award. She was later arrested and will live out her final days in prison.

#4 The Woman Who Pretended To Be A Man To Win The Judo Champ

Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi was born Rena Glickman in 1935 in Brooklyn, where she learned Judo and attempted to perfect her ability. Her attempts to compete in the city's judo clubs were met with resistance until she decided that she could compete if she were a man. In 1959 she entered the New York State YMCA judo championships and won, but her medal was not awarded after she got identified as being female.

With no options to compete in the U.S., Kanokogi traveled to Tokyo in 1962 to practice at the Kodokan, becoming the first woman at the main dojo with men. While in Japan, she met her husband, Ryohei Kanokogi, a black belt in judo, karate, and stick-fighting. They returned to the U.S. and started coaching judo for women. Judo became an Olympic sport in 1964 but was not open to women until 1988, when Kanokogi became the first coach, leading the team to the Seoul Olympics. By pretending to be a man she learned the sport she loved and gave her entire life for, passing away in 2009 at 74 and still coaching Judo in New York.

#5 She Disguised Herself As A Man To Go To Battle In The Civil War

Frances Clalin was born in Illinois in the 1830s and married Ohio-born Elmer L. Clayton with whom she had three children. When Elmer enlisted in the Union Army in 1861, Frances also enlisted disguised as a man and used the name, Jack Williams. She and Elmer served side-by-side until he died during the Battle of Stones River (or Murfreesboro) on December 31, 1862.

Clayton took up all the manly vices. To better conceal her sex, she learned to drink, smoke, chew and swear. She was tall and masculine, had tan skin, stood erect and walked with a soldierly stride. She was said to be an excellent horseman and swordsman who was highly respected. Her true identity was revealed after the battle at Stones River ended in 1863 when she let her true identity be known and was discharged from the military days later in Louisville.

#6 The Jazz Musician Who Portrayed A Man To Find Fame And Fortune

Billy Tipton was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in 1914 in Oklahoma City and began giving violin concerts at age seven. By the age of sixteen, after studying music in Kansas City, he began performing as a male in stage shows because he had learned the men got top billing. He formed his own popular trio in the 1950s and got booked alongside popular big band and jazz acts nationwide. His friends knew him as a caring and loving family man, with three adopted children, and a loving wife. But after he passed away in 1989 of bleeding ulcers, he was found to be not quite the perfect gentleman everyone believed.

Everyone was astonished to learn that Billy was actually a woman. His three children were just as bewildered as the community and the nationwide public after the story hit the evening news. People wanted some kind of explanation from the woman he claimed he had married 60 years earlier, Kitty Oakes, but she was not revealing any information. Tipton, who never underwent a sex-change operation, pulled off her astonishing masquerade for 50 years, and a book and movie based on her life, Suits Me, was a huge success.

#7 The Sci-Fi Writer Who Pretended To Be A Man To Succeed

The popular sci-fi writer only gave one interview in his entire career, and that was by mail. He was elusive to many, though he had a post office box and a bank account in his name, but nobody had ever met him in person. In 1976, they learned why. James Tiptree Jr. was Alice Bradley, a former CIA agent who had adopted the pseudonym while finishing her doctorate in psychology. When discovered as being a woman, Bradley said that she did it to create a mystery about her writing and wanted to submit her stories with a name that no editor would remember rejecting. She took the name "Tiptree" from a jam jar and the name "James" because males were more common in science fiction than females.

When her true identity was discovered by two fans, it rocked the science fiction community, though Sheldon would later say that she was ashamed of taking a male pseudonym because it meant that she had taken an easy path into the male-dominated field. She later released two more books under the false name and then retired when sales dropped.

#8 She Pretended To Be A Man To Find Her Husband Who Went Missing In Battle

When her husband went missing on the battlefield in 1778, Brita Hagberg became Petter and joined the Swedish army. While searching for her man, she was decorated for bravery for her heroic actions and when she found her husband, went back to life as a woman. She was not the only woman in Swedish history to have disguised herself as a man to serve in the military, but she may be the only one to have received a pension for her service.

#9 The Irish Woman Who Lived As A Man To Practice Medicine

As a young girl, Margaret Ann Bulkley wanted to study at the university, something that was frowned upon in Ireland in the 1800s. However, in 1809, she traveled with her mother to Edinburgh, where she enrolled under the name of James Barry to study literature and medicine. She graduated in 1812 and moved to London, where she further studied at the Royal College of Surgeons. By 1913 she was commissioned into the Army as Regimental Assistant where she served at Waterloo and also traveled to India and South Africa where she served as a military doctor and personal surgeon to the Governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset.

It was while serving as Somerset's physician that the first rumors spread about Barry's gender, as it is believed Barry and Somerset were lovers, and it was said that she gave birth to a child. For the next 40 years, Barry served as an Army surgeon, until retiring and returning to England where she died a year later. On July 25, 1865, chairwoman Sophia Bishop was laying out the body of James Barry when she screamed, "my master was a woman!"