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When I collected my name badge at the American Sociological Association's annual conference

in New Orleans back in the 1970s, I was far too preoccupied to check its accuracy.

So it was only one iron dressed in my hotel room that night

that I realized why I had had such a number of disconcerting encounters

throughout the day, because it read Miss Laurie Taylor.

Of course, if I'd been of a different metal,

I might have shrugged off the embarrassment

and found a way of turning my nominal contradiction

into an attribute.

Well, my daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much. The Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.

Now I don't blame him because he's running here. bottle of booze.

Now I don't blame him because he running head, but the meanest thing that he ever did was

before he left he went and named me Sioux. Well he must have thought that it was quite a joke and it got a lot of laughs from a lots of folks.

Seems I had to fight my whole life through. Some gal would giggle and I'd get red and some guy'd laugh

and I'd bust his head. I'll tell you life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

Yes, Johnny Cash, with the story of a boy given a girl's name by his father so to help

him to become tough and strong. Well it's a story which has got a particular appeal to my first

guest today. She's Jane Pilters, who's

associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester and she's the author of an article

in the journal Sociology entitled Names, Bodies and Identities.

...