girls-dressing-up-as-boys-and-going-to-sea

[haptalaon]

A history of girls-dressing-up-as-boys-and-going-to-sea folk songs!

As ever, such a rich strand of history and culture, which straddles potential feminist readings - women claiming agency and going on adventures; lesbian readings - women and genderweirds living and loving women in plain sight; homoerotic readings - the erotic frisson of men desiring pretty sailor boys who turn out to be an appropriate partner, or can be imagined in the role of women in their lives; and transmasculine readings - boys before there were words for boys like us, living bravely.

& look, fighting the borderlands between these categories can get quite fraught - which I see very little value in. There's room enough for imagined people and the silence of the dead to speak for all of us, whatever stories we wish to make of them with our living voices.