Susan's Place Transgender Resources

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QuoteIf you were a queer kid like me growing up in the '60s, I hope you were fortunate enough to come across books by Louise Fitzhugh. She may have saved your life, or at least made it a bit more comfortable.

When I was eleven, I didn't know I was gay, I only knew that I felt different from other people, even from my own family. I was beginning to try to put put together the puzzle pieces: I knew I liked boys, the clothes they wore, and the things they did, but I knew I didn't want to marry one. My secret engagement to the girl across the street, which had seemed like a real possibility when she first accepted my proposal at age seven, was on the rocks; she was beginning to show an interest in boys and would laugh at me when I would remind her of her promise. If I didn't keep it quiet I figured it wouldn't be long before she started laughing at me in the presence of other girls.

I had to go underground.

Enter Harriet M. Welsch, who became my role model and savior. I read the book soon after it came out (and now bless the school librarian who put it on the library shelves for me to find). I was absolutely shocked by it at the time. Shocked that Harriet could defy her parents and her friends, and still survive. Shocked that she loved Ole Golly so much that she threw a shoe to express her anger at her departure. Shocked that an adult author could know so well what really went on in the minds of children.

But the thing that shocked me the most about Harriet was her cross-dressing.  It's an aspect of the novel that girls today would miss entirely (thank goodness!) but back in 1965, Harriet's spy clothes struck me as revolutionary. Back then, girls in blue jeans and hooded sweatshirts were uncommon, although not unheard of. But the high top sneakers Harriet wore were solely boyswear. I know for sure because I used to beg for them but my otherwise indulgent, liberal parents refused, although they bought them regularly for my brothers.

I've read elsewhere of women my age who were inspired to keep notebooks and start their own spy routes, eat tomato sandwiches and leave anonymous notes after reading Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret. At eleven I didn't particularly like tomatoes, didn't have the patience to write, and already had a spy route, so I wasn't inspired to start any of those things. What Harriet did inspire me to do was to experiment with crossdressing. I used whatever money I earned doing odd jobs to buy boys' clothes on the sly and then went into other neighborhoods to play at passing as a boy. When an old man in a grocery store called me "Sonny," I knew I had passed some sort of test. It was remarkably easy to to do, and it was as deliciously thrilling as sneaking into Agatha K. Plumber's dumbwaiter. Over the course of a year, I developed quite an extensive wardrobe of boys' clothes which I kept hidden at the back of my closet when I wasn't using it as my own version of a spy uniform.

It really came as no surprise to learn that at the time she was writing Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh herself had been a stone butch known within the lesbian community as Willie. When she came into a large inheritance, she vowed never again to wear women's clothes and had all her men's clothes tailored. I don't know if she consciously thought of Harriet as crossdresser, but I am certainly not the only one to have recognized her as a baby butch and kindred spirit.

Which brings us to the purple socks.

Harriet the Spy fans will remember the Boy with the Purple Socks as a kid in Harriet's class who was so boring no one ever bothered to learn his name. "Whoever heard of purple socks?" Harriet wonders in Chapter 2. "She figured it was lucky he wore them; otherwise no one would have even known he was there at all." He later tells his classmates that his mother wanted him to dress completely in purple so he would stand out in a crowd but he refused to comply, except for the socks. And as it turns out, the purple socks do make him stand out in a crowd, not to the masses but to a smaller group of kindred spirits. He also stands out to readers in the gay community for whom the color purple has symbolic meaning. For me purple socks represent one of the small details Fitzhugh puts in her books which resonates with a gay audience used to reading between the lines.

Reading Harriet the Spy today as an adult, I find a queer subtext throughout. Not only do you have Harriet, the quintessential baby butch, but her best friends, Sport and Janie, who run exactly contrary to gender stereotypes. Sport acts as the homemaker and nurturing caretaker of his novelist father while Janie the scientist plans to blow up the world one day. It was as if Fitzhugh was telling us kids back in the '60s that you didn't have to play by society's rules, the first lesson a queer kid has to learn in order to be happy. Harriet's whole ordeal with her friends ostracizing her after they invade her privacy by reading her spy notebook sounds to me very much like a coming out story. Her parents' response to it all is to take her to a psychiatrist for analysis. Sound familiar? Most importantly, the sage Ole Golly resolves matters with a piece of advice that takes on special meaning for queer kids:

Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.
It is this piece of advice, with all focus on the first sentence, that aroused adult ire, both in the past and today. Ironically those indignant adults are generally the same ones who would make life difficult for gays, or for anyone who refused to conform to their standards. But for gay kids, with equal focus on both sentences, it turned out to be a life saver. All those years ago, whether consciously or unconsciously, she provided us with the tools for survival.

The message is inherent in all of her books, from Suzuki Beane to Nobody's Family Is Going to Change: Be true to yourself. Refuse to conform. Find your own way, even if your friends and family threaten to reject you. It will be painful but you will survive. This was pretty powerful stuff for those of us who read her books when we were young.

Louise Fitzhugh died far too young and we never got a chance to thank her. This site is a small tribute to her and her work. 

Wow ... just wow.  Now a lifelong mystery of mine has been solved in that very astute little blurb.  When I was young, about 8 or 9, I loved Harriet the Spy.  In fact I made it my birthday book and gave the school library $20 bucks of my own money to get my name forever sticker-ed inside it's covers. 

I just thought it was so important that everyone needed to read it.  However no one else seemed to take to it like I did.  Like the article above said, it was the first book I read in which the heroine openly defied her parents, her school, and the established system.  This was obviously in the eighties and not the sixties but I was so controlled and restrained that any rebellion in thought, word or deed seemed like a super power.  Just because she was brave enough to have the urge to be different and than actually go about doing it.  The cross dressing was a small part and I believe she got in trouble at one point for not dressing like a girl but she didn't let it bother her. 

Now I want to read it again.  So good.  Thanks for posting this and reminding me.     

I thought this was so astute.  I also loved Harriet because she was a writer, an outsider always being honest in her observations.  The way Ol' Golly tells her she has to apologize and lie was so brave and bold and strange to me that it became such a great kids book.  Such an amazing story.

ETA I hope people pass this on so parents of transgender kids are sure to suggest it to them, especially.

thats so weird. that was my favorite movie when i was younger and i never knew why. i must have watched it over a hundred times. that makes so much sense.

The movie didn't really capture Harriet the way the book did

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I really recommend reading the book.  I never thought about the reversed roles of Janie and Sport and the way the traditional mom and dad had her feeling like an outsider, and only Ol' Golly, who also was not a typical "female" nanny image was her safety zone.


Check out the drawings by Lousie Fitzhugh here

http://purple-socks.webmage.com/char.htm (http://purple-socks.webmage.com/char.htm)