When I was nine, living on a remote Vermont property in 1960, I found a trunk of my mom's old clothes—Ladies' Aid uniforms from WWII, a sparkly purple gown, and a Revolutionary War gentleman's suit. I was obsessed with Superman, but even at nine I knew Clark Kent's disguise was ridiculous. Glasses? Please. My mom wore glasses, and I never mistook her for someone else when she took them off.

So I invented a better disguise: Suzie Darren, society news reporter. She wore the purple gown and went barefoot because I couldn't manage the heels. After rescuing my sisters from imaginary peril as Superman, I'd vanish and reappear as Suzie, interviewing Nanny the Goat about last night's gala.

The next thing I knew, I was face-to-face with Ray, the man my mom had hired to do carpentry and odd jobs. He slept in the room next to mine and I considered him to be a friend.

This time, though, he was grim, trying to explain that other boys would beat me up if they knew I dressed like a girl. I was immediately confused. There were no other boys there, and besides it was a secret identity. (That last part didn't help.) But Ray wasn't talking about logic. He was transmitting something deeper: shame.

The costume trunk disappeared.

Now, at 74, I can say I'm not trans, not a drag queen. But when I feel a knot in my stomach watching a bearded friend play with drag, I know Ray's disgust—and probably my mom's—got passed on. It wasn't there before. No one ever groomed me to be gay. But make no mistake: I was groomed to be straight. And that grooming, like all child grooming, wasn't about joy. It was about control.

(And let me add, I have no problem with "real" drag queens. I've met a few in person—including the beautiful Miss Coco Peru—and they were all lovely people. It's just guys playing with drag, like Rudy Giuliani, that make me cringe.)

The Real Groomers

Let's talk about grooming. Not the kind that gets headlines and moral panic, but the kind that's so normalized we don't even see it. The kind that tells boys not to cry, girls to smile, and everyone to fit into a binary that's more theological than biological.

This grooming starts early. It's in the church pews, the dress codes, the boys will be boys and ladies don't do that. It's not about protecting children—it's about preparing them to serve a social order…one rooted in religious orthodoxy, patriarchal hierarchy, and fear of deviation.

Ray wasn't really worried about my safety. He was worried about my symbolism. A boy in a dress threatened the order. And that order, like most rigid systems, was religious at its core—even if no one mentioned God.

Wear This, Not That

In the Paleolithic world, clothing was about survival, not symbolism. Both men and women wore hides, furs, and woven grasses to keep warm, protect from the sun, or carry tools. Archaeological evidence suggests little distinction between male and female attire—function dictated form. A woman scraping hides or carrying a child needed the same protection from cold as a man hunting. The idea that clothing should signal gender is a much later invention, tied not to biology but to social hierarchy.

Clothing was survival. Men and women wore hides and grasses to stay warm and carry tools. No one cared who wore what. But as societies grew, clothing became a sermon. In Rome, a matron's veil wasn't for warmth—it was a badge of respectability. In medieval Europe, hose and doublets for men, gowns and head coverings for women. These weren't fashion choices. They were visual catechisms.

The rules hardened. Not because they made people happy, but because they made people legible. Controllable. A man in a gown disrupted the sermon. A woman in trousers threatened the liturgy of gender.

In medieval Europe, separation deepened. Guilds, universities, and political offices excluded women, while convents and households became their sanctioned domains. Clothing became a visual shorthand for this divide: hose and doublets for men, long gowns and head coverings for women. What had once been practical differences hardened into rules, enforced by law and custom.

Drag as Heresy

Drag, in its broadest sense, is theatrical heresy. In ancient Greece, men played women on stage because women weren't allowed. In Shakespeare's England, Juliet was a boy in a dress. The term drag may come from the skirts that dragged across the stage—but the real drag was the weight of taboo.

By the 19th century, drag balls emerged in Black and Latino communities. William Dorsey Swann, born enslaved, called himself the Queen of Drag. These gatherings weren't just parties—they were rebellions. Against grooming. Against control.

Today, drag is mainstream. RuPaul wins Emmys. Queens read to kids in libraries. And the backlash is fierce. Because the pendulum swings. Not toward happiness, but toward visibility. And visibility threatens control.

The Gospel of Shame

Ray's warning wasn't just about clothes. It was about obedience. About grooming me to fear deviation. And that grooming wasn't secular—it was spiritual. A gospel of shame passed down through generations. Not to make us happy, but to make us compliant.

Even Paul of Tarsus, whose letters shaped Christian gender norms, was torn. He greeted women leaders—Phoebe the deacon, Junia the apostle—but also urged silence and submission. Was he a misogynist? Or just trying to make Christianity palatable to Roman respectability?

Either way, the result was the same: grooming. Not for joy, but for order.

Gender Rules in Various Cultures

The idea that men hunt and women gather has been challenged by archaeology and ethnography. Recent studies show women hunted in nearly 80% of foraging societies. Jane Auel's fictional Ayla in The Clan Of The Cave Bear, the woman who hunts, was not fantasy but reflection of real possibilities suppressed by modern bias.

Indigenous cultures often recognized more fluid roles. Among some Native American nations, Two-Spirit people held respected positions, embodying both masculine and feminine traits. In Polynesia, the māhū occupied a similar space. Gender rules were not universal; they were imposed, often violently, by colonial powers seeking to enforce European binaries.

Thus, the shame groomed into me at 9 was not inevitable. It was cultural, not natural. Other societies might have seen Suzie Darren not as a problem but as play, or even as a sign of spirituality.

The Pendulum of History

Suzie Darren wasn't a cry for help. She was a creative solution. A better disguise. But the adults couldn't see that. They saw a breach in the liturgy. A child playing outside the lines. And they responded with shame.

But shame is a costume too, one we're groomed to wear. One that drags across the stage of life, heavy with centuries of control.

And maybe, just maybe, it's time to take it off.

Caftans are very comfortable!