Grayson Perry: Hands Off Our Pantomime Dames!

Various newspapers are reporting that the traditional panto dame and principal boy are disappearing from the stage, supposedly because of encroaching political correctness. As a cross-dresser myself I think that's a shame; cross-dressing can be a much-needed licence for subversion.

It's an interesting symptom: the fact that on the one hand, these days, you have an awareness of gender dysphoria and transsexualism and metrosexual habits, and on the other, thanks to the dead hand of commercialism, a real rigidifying in gender roles. My daughter's generation, for example, are much more fluid in their attitudes to sexuality, and yet young people these days are sold an altogether more distinct version. It's gender stereotyping: pink for girls, camouflage for boys. There's a very powerful reinforcement of gender roles from a very early age. I often say to parents: what would you rather have, a tomboy or a sissy? And for most, it's a no-brainer.

Pantomime and its cross-dressing traditions spring out of that long tradition of carnival and subversion; a time when eveything went topsy-turvy, people were able to mock their rulers, everything became anarchic. That's where it comes from. And interestingly, cross-dressing still has that potency. As a cross-dresser myself, I know it's a licence to cause mischief, and that's part of the role you take on. For many transexuals and transvestites, this is problematic: all they want to do is be taken seriously in the opposite role. They don't want the fact that it brings with it another kind of comedic, anarchic presence, that someone like Dame Edna exploits to the full...

Grayson Perry talking to Guardian Online.