Boys Will Be Girls

"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls" is a line from a 1970 song titled "Lola" by The Kinks, which describes a close encounter with a drag queen of the same name.

That line has been taken out of the context of the song and has been tossed about to describe the phenomena of gender role reversal for the past 44 years.

I have been very aware of gender role reversal even longer than that. From nearly five decades of experience, it is my opinion that either there are more gender role reversals today than in the past or the gender role reversals are more public about it today than in the past. I believe that it is a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

In the past, that is, before 1965, gender role reversals were very closeted. Girls being boys and boys being girls were invisible. There were places where the reversals could meet and socialize, but those places were very private and unknown to the majority of the general public.

Personally, I found out about two of those places around 1968 after I had been dressing in the closet for about 5 years perfecting my femulation and itching to explore the world as a woman. Through Darrell Raynor's 1966 book A Year Among the Girls, I found out about a transwoman getaway that I later learned was called "Casa Susana.” Through the 1968 film documentary The Queen, I discovered drag beauty pageants. Both of those places were out of reach for the 17-year-old girl I had become, but it was reassuring to know that those places existed.

Today, it is almost laughable (and kind of sad) to consider the lack of places that were available to gender role reversals in the past. Now we are everywhere --- even on the cover of Time magazine!

Our increased visibility has encouraged other gender role reversals to leave the closet behind and explore the world for themselves. And their new visibility encourages still others to become visible and on and on and on.

So, "the gender role reversals are more public about it today."

Our increased visibility has also encouraged others to try gender role reversal for themselves. Here, I am referring to people who would have been clueless without our increased visibility. They would have gone through life lost in between genders, trying hard to adhere to the definition of their birth gender, but not succeeding  and not knowing where to turn because as far as they knew, there was no place to go.

Thus, "there are more gender role reversals today than in the past."

 

 

 

Wearing Harley Viera Newton.

 

 

 

Orloff, an early 20th Century professional femulator