I could rebel by succeeding, while a lot of white middle-class men of my era seemed to rebel by failing, because the expectations had been set so very high for them.

I could rebel by succeedingīack in the 1970s, when some men were figuring out how their own liberation might parallel women’s liberation, there was a demonstration at which guys held a banner that said, “Men are more than just success objects.” Perhaps as a girl, I was liberated by expectations that I’d be some variation on a failure. Perhaps as a girl, I was liberated by expectations that I’d be some variation on a failure. There are all the things men are not supposed to do and say and feel the constant patrol on boys to prevent them from or punish them for doing anything inconsistent with conventions of heterosexual masculinity, those boys for whom, in their formative years, faggot and pussy – being not straight or not male – are still often the most sneering of epithets. I know and love a lot of men, straight and gay, and I see burdens they’re saddled with that I’m glad not to carry. I know that being a man can be a prison in other ways. I like a lot of things about being a woman, but there are times and ways it’s a prison, and sometimes I daydream about being out of that prison. By this I don’t mean to aspire to, or appropriate, or suffer from gender dysphoria and the deeper issues around bodies, sexuality and sense of self that trans people contend with. But I have wondered from time to time what life would be like if I were a man. I have worn jeans and shoes that are good for rough terrain for most of my life, along with lipstick and long hair, and being a woman has let me walk this line between what used to be considered masculine and feminine. I am old enough that girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers to school until midway through my elementary school education that I remember a local newspaper columnist arguing in a grumpy panic that if women wore trousers gender would vanish, which he saw as a terrifying thing. There was a sense of not having to please anyone and not having to be likable that was fun, but it wasn’t necessarily someone I wanted to be. I was not nearly so convincing as a Rod Stewart-ish man with charcoal five o’clock shadow, and I was a little taken aback to realise that, to me, impersonating a man meant manspreading on the sofa, belching and scratching personal parts, glowering and cursing. My boyfriend at the time, with the help of his mother, did so well that a lot of straight men were unnerved they needed to know that the lust-inspiring, simpering siren in the tight slip was not compromising their heterosexuality. When I was very young, some gay friends of mine threw a cross-dressing party.

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