billy tipton

Frances Bolton (PHI) fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu
Fri Jun 5 06:13:17 PDT 1998


Billy Tipton lived with a succession of women, none of whom admitted that they knoew Tipton was biologically female.He never let them in the bathroom with him, and he explained the bandages which he always wore to bind down his breasts as necessary because of an old war injury. He died in poverty and obsurity in a mobile home in Wash. state. it was not until the amulance came to remove his body that it was discovered Tipton was, in fact, female.

Yes. Luce dropped acid, and admitted it after she left public life.

It seems pretty characterisic of Cohn to hang out at Studio 54. He liked being around powerful people, and they were there. He liked cocaine. And he liked pretty boys. Seems like a perfecrt place for him.

Frances

On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, christian a. gregory wrote:


> hey,
>
> there was an "interesting" article about tipton in the nytimes on tuesday (2 june). and it would appear that, with his first wife anyway, he had sex using a prosthetic device. his wife, betty cox, believed that she had had a miscarriage when she didn't conceive.
>
> i say "interesting" because the article is really a long promo piece for a new biography by diane middlebrook. from what i can tell, middlebrook's view of gender is basically a bad (but not wholly unusual) reading of _gender trouble_. as in all those "makeover narratives" on jenny jones, social mobility there is really just a function of appearance, and so one's ability to "move" successfully just depends upon one's willingness to obey the conventions of dress required at a particular moment. (this is an ideologeme of what evan watkins calls "technoideological coding" in his very smart book "throwaways".)
>
> i don't know about the other questions. but i'd also like to know if claire booth luce dropped acid.
>
> best
> christian
>



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