Billy Tipton: The Musical Flow of Gender

Billy Tipton (1914–1989) was an American Jazz musician and band leader. Assigned as female at birth and named born Dorothy Tipton, when he died in 1989 no one, including his family, was aware of his biological sex. Billy Tipton assumed a male gender identity in order to advance his career as a jazz musician. As a man he was able to achieve financial independence and fame, which forced him to continue his life as a man in order to make it in a world dominated by men.1 As Dinitia Smith says, “To pass as a man, Dorothy bound her breasts with Ace bandages and wore a prosthetic device. Later, she would tell people that she wore the bandages because of a childhood accident in which her ribs were broken.”2 Billy Tipton became a very successful musician and performed as a singer, pianist, and saxophonist.3 Later in his career he also worked as an actor and a comedian, he even took roles that involved him being a woman, a case of double-cross dressing.4 It was not until after his death that his children, wife, and the world discovered his assigned sex.5 Tipton had gone almost his entire life with no one discovering his sex, even his previous five wives and sexual partners were none the wiser.6

Billy Tipton became a fascination of the world. Marilyn Jurich suggests that it is impossible to know whether Tipton was born in the wrong body, or if “perhaps she discovered that he was more identical to who she actually was.”7 Billy Tipton has earned his place as “an emblem for the current fascination with gender.”8 He along with so many others, challenged the ideas of gender and sex and his story asks the question of whether gender is social construct. Living as a man allowed Billy Tipton to find employment and gave him the social power given to men. This power proved difficult to give up.9 Tipton’s story reminds us that gender differences are a function of how individuals present themselves and how others interpret that presentation.

Madeleine Wilk (she/her)

Education major