These young people didn’t live in a world of ladies and gentlemen. They were allowed to dress like slobs and curse like gangsters. To drink like tosspots. To tattoo and pierce their bodies like primitives. To listen to songs with animal rhythms and vulgar lyrics. They had no curfews, no chaperones, no guidance that applied to real-life male and female behavior. Indeed, they were told that gender was mutable and sex an irrelevance. And then the young men—only the men—were held to rules of behavior that would have been restrictive when Victoria was queen.
