Looking at the brightly coloured front cover of this book, I felt cheerful; turning it over and seeing the word ‘gender’, my heart sank. When I was a kiddy in the early 1970s, the word (especially when combined with ‘bending’) seemed full of fun and flighty possibilities — David Bowie in a dress, Marc Bolan flouncing about on Top of the Pops like a little girl at her birthday party, Danny La Rue making my mum snort Snowball down her nose on a Saturday night.