WAPO: A 'real man' in a dress

[DBoon]

n late March 2020, 12 days after the death of her husband of 51 years, Vickie Goodwin received an email.

She had spent the past several weeks at home in central Wyoming sorting through his clothing, a common if painful burden for a grieving widow. In this case, however, the garments had weighed heavily on the life she built with her husband, Larry Goodwin, a onetime airplane mechanic, military veteran and rodeo cowboy. Skirts and peasant blouses dangled in their closet, alongside petticoats, dresses and hair ribbons. They were Larry’s.
...
But in the early 1970s, Larry began to wear feminine clothing in public.

The threat of violence loomed over them from that point on, especially in small-town Wyoming, the Cowboy State. No matter that Larry was in many ways a conventional man from rural America: great at building things, gruff in voice and demeanor, traditionally manly in almost every other way down to his calloused hands. He wasn’t gay and he wasn’t transgender — he identified as male and was attracted to women. But to break any one rule of masculinity was to be excluded entirely, and Larry became a warning about what would happen if you did so.

He was punched, teased, dragged, jumped, pushed and kicked, sometimes in front of his family. He was harassed by police officers and arrested on several occasions for wearing women’s clothes in public — which was not a crime. He was bullied at work. Once, Vickie recalled, Larry had his teeth knocked in by a stranger on their front lawn, some tough guy, as their son watched helplessly.

Even with his self-esteem in tatters, Larry forged an identity out of defending his right to wear what he wanted. Defiant, he adopted the nickname Sissy in the 1990s.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/21/masculinity-wyoming-lgbt-sissy-goodwin/

paywall, but there should be a free link somewhere

[usonian]

1. Archved.

https://archive.ph/y2lx3

[NoMoreRepugs]

2. K&R