[desertblues]

I don't have much to add to what's been said about the book. I rather liked it and feel myself educated ( ahem.., I thought I knew a much of the world at my age,but apparently not.....).

As an aside: it pained to me read of the insufficient medical care for these men.

It appears to me that Mc Kenna wanted the story of Fanny and Stella to be the story of all Fanny's and Stella's of the Victorian period; be more than life like and therefore used the "Female" in his book, as stated on page 67 of his book:
(quote)
‘the Female Dialect’ (or so Fanny, the fount of all wisdom on matters sodomitical, had informed Stella), and it was as old as time, or nearly so. It was a strange and secret language; an upside-down, inside-out sort of dialect where ‘she’ meant ‘he’, and ‘he’ meant ‘she’; where men were called by women’s names, where Frederick was Fanny, Ernest was Stella, Amos was Carlotta, and Cecil was Cecilia, or Sissy for short. Most of the men styled themselves just plain Miss and Mistress, but there was no shortage of those who liked to call themselves Lady This, the Countess of That or the Dowager Duchess of So and So. There was a positive glut of Princesses, and more Queens in the few square miles of London than there were kingdoms in the wide world for them to rule over.
They were sisters. Side by side and shoulder to shoulder. Sisters for better or for worse. Sisters in sickness and in health. Sisters in drag and sisters out of drag. They made a formidable and fearless pair. London stood before them, waiting to be conquered, ready to fall at their feet in a swoon.'. (end quote)