Only 30 Years Ago

Elizabeth George’s In the Presence of the Enemy was published almost 30 years ago. One of the main characters is a far-left tabloid journalist obsessed with bringing down the Tory government. He has an 8-year-old son who happens to be somewhat girly. Back then nobody could conceive of reformatting such children medically and surgically, so the far-left Dad limits his efforts to make the little boy more dudely to giving long, tedious speeches about the importance of masculinity and a plan to enroll the son in an all-male boarding school.

At the end of the novel, Dad realizes he was being an idiot and there’s no need to toughen up the child who, in spite of loving dance and flowers, is plenty tough already. And the only reason Dad was hung up on his son’s imaginary girliness is that the father had been molested as a child and feared the boy would be molested, too, if somebody perceived him as feminine. [This is the tiniest of subplots, so you will still very much enjoy the novel if you decide to read it].

Only 30 years ago, and it was possible to resolve this issue without physically invading a child and modifying his body.

Honestly, if what we have now is progress, then to hell with that kind of progress, don’t you think?