From Female Impersonators to Child Mutilation

29 March 2023

Many a marvel originated in San Francisco and the East Bay; Irish Coffee, Rock & Roll, Dirty Harry. It has always been an area known for its rich diversity of thought, innovative arts, and top-class entertainment.  

Female Impersonators, as they were once called, found a home in the city by the bay at Finocchio’s. The club, which closed more than twenty years ago, had been the place to take in these performances. It first opened in the mid-1930’s with vaudeville entertainment; comedians, singers, jugglers, and men dressed as ladies.

When, exactly, I became aware of Finocchio’s, I don’t recall. Certainly, by the late 60’s. One friend had an uncle who designed costumes for the female impersonators. Another acquaintance was married to a performer. No one I knew had an opinion on the shows, either pro or con. It was simply a part of the San Franisco nightlife.

Back then, and until Finocchio’s closed in the late nineties, it was strictly adult entertainment. Bawdy, sexually suggestive, but not sleezy. No twerking, spreading legs in a thong and, most assuredly, no minors in the audience. They would have been shut down in a heartbeat for such a violation.  

Nightclubs with drag performers had always been for a certain crowd, and that group never included children until recently. That all changed with the advent of Drag Queen Story Hour. I believe the first such event took place in San Francisco in 2015. 

However, even before the phenonium quickly spread to libraries and elementary schools throughout the Bay Area, the trans agenda was well under way, with children directly in its sights.

Ten, maybe fifteen years ago, elementary school classrooms proudly began to display each new true gender book published.  Books that spouted lines such as (paraphrased) “a baby can’t speak so the doctor must guess their gender.”  

Around this same time, misgendered young children became the new in thing. It’s often hard to tell if a young child is a boy or a girl in a city where little boys still sport 1970’s long hair. If one were to ask another adult, the reply is always, “She/he identifies as a girl/boy”.

Suddenly, seven-year-old boys began to show up in classrooms dressed in glitter, tutus, flowery shirts, and fingernail polish. Proud moms announced, “She identifies as a girl”, while actively pushing this belief on their little ones. Parents moved to the area citing that their children had been “mis-gendered” at birth. In the Bay Area, they said, these tots could grow up to who they were really supposed to be. Even more troubling is that these adults believe their children are in need of medical intervention.

Mothers, who well know the damage that can be caused by birth control pills, now run to clinics to get puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone therapy for their offspring. They happily inflict irreversible physical damage, not to mention emotional trauma, on their children just so they can brag that they have a transgender child.

It could be said that if an adult chooses to chemically and/or surgically transform their body, that’s up to the individual. However, that would be to ignore the damage being done to young adults with mental health issues. Young women flock to clinics for testosterone to “take the edge off.” It takes nothing more than a brief consultation to obtain hormones that permanently alter and harm their bodies. And only another few consultations to get body parts hacked off. The same goes for young men who feel they might not belong. The go-to diagnosis is “then you must be a girl.”

People are no longer gay or lesbian, which was never a problem in the Bay Area, but are transgender and in need of chemical and surgical alterations to their bodies.

What started out as a bit of fun at a club in San Francisco, has evolved into a radical ideology that harms both young minds and bodies.