In 1963, the State of Hawaii passed an “Intent to Deceive” law that criminalized cross-dressing in public. As a means of enforcing the law, the police required drag queens, trans women, and female impersonators to wear red buttons imprinted with the words “I am a Boy.” Were they seen in public without the button, cross-dressers were subject to arrest, a $1000 fine, or both. Among those targeted by the law were indigenous Hawaiians known as mahu, a third gender combining male and female traits. 

How, I wonder, did the police decide upon the word “Boy” for the button? Why not “Man” since the cross-dressers at issue were all adults? Perhaps “Boy” was intended to make button-wearers seem more vulnerable to discipline and authority. The infantilizing effect of the word might also have been meant to echo the originating moment of gender assignment (“It’s a Boy!”) while insisting on its irreversibility.

About a month after I learned of the “Intent to Deceive” law, a U.S. Presidential executive order mandated that the federal government would only “recognize two sexes, male and female." The order declared that "these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” The order denies the very possibility—the “reality”—of transgender and non-binary people. Building on this disavowal, it represses the countless ways in which different individuals navigate, subvert, perform, contest, or remake gender as a lived condition. Indeed, the order prohibits the use of the word “gender” in any federal policy or document. In its place, only the word “sex” may be used and only in the sense of an immutable male/female binary. 

As I read the Presidential mandate, it occurred to me we had all been ordered to, in effect, wear either an “I am a Boy” or “I am a Girl” button. In an attempt to both answer and defy this call, I searched for an image of an “I am A Boy” button from mid-1960s Hawaii. The one I turned up was quite different from what I had imagined.  

Image

It includes the compulsory four-word declaration with “BOY” in especially large print. Beneath “BOY,” however, the word “GLADE” appears along with, in smaller type, an address and telephone number as well as the words “HAWAII’S FOREMOST FEMALE IMPERSONATIONS SHOW.” The Glade was Honolulu’s most popular drag nightclub in the 1960s and 70s. Many of the performers who appeared at the club, including the headliner Prince Hanalei, identified as mahu.   

This button’s punitive function was repurposed by the Glade into a wearable promotion of female impersonation. The compulsory proclamation of “BOY”-ness has been folded into an advertisement for the performance of cross-dressing, the very activity the “Intent to Deceive” law meant to suppress. The Glade billed itself as the "Boys will Be Girls Revue.” Its slogan was enacted by the dual message of the button.  

Claiming the language of one’s own subjugation so as to rework it into a form of resistance is what Michel Foucault calls “a reverse discourse.” I do not know how, or whether, the brutal force of federal policies and directives such as the one cited above will be overturned. I do believe, however, that part of our struggle at the current moment is to retain a sense of hope in the face of despair. The possibility of reversing the discourse is what gives me hope.   

Confronted with executive orders that deny the reality of transgender and non-binary people, I choose to channel the image of Prince Hanalei and other mahu performers at the Glade. I imagine them wearing their required red buttons with style rather than shame. The artificial mark of maleness imposed by the police becomes, against all odds, an accessory to drag flamboyance and trans charisma. What better moment, after all, to flaunt your “I am a Boy” badge than when you are appearing on stage in a perfectly teased bouffant wig and a shimmering, full-length gown?