Casa Susanna: the story of the first trans network in the United States, 1959-1968

Abstract

In 2004, two antique dealers discovered 340 photographs from the 1950s‒60s at a flea market in New York City. What made these images singular was that they depicted men dressed as women, whose feminine identity was that of the 'respectable' housewife, the girl next door, or the kind matron. Here we find neither the feathers nor the extravagant make-up of cabaret, just perfect housewives in the privacy of their homes. Behind the photographs lay a vast, hidden network of crossdressers. They were married, loving fathers of the American white middle class. They were engineers, pilots, and civil servants. They embodied the American dream, and its nightmare, in a time of racial, sexual, and political segregation in a Cold War America that censored, repressed, excluded, and hunted down those who violated the gender norms of the time, from crossdressers to homosexuals. Susanna, Virginia, Doris, Fiona, Gail, Felicity, Gloria, and their friends, created a unique collective identity. Despite the risks, they corresponded with each other, got together, organized, and managed to alleviate their isolation through an underground magazine: Transvestia. Their haven was the home of Susanna and her wife Marie, tucked away in the Catskill Mountains, a few hours away from New York City. There they were able to live freely en femme. Photography was essential to their identity as crossdressers; in a quasi-sacred ritual, photographs circulated widely within their community. Despite their now outdated female identities, the Casa Susanna crossdressers broke with the gender prescriptions of their time and defiantly refused to submit to an archaic cult of masculinity. Defiant and determined, they organized the first known trans network in the United States. In their day, the crossdressers of Casa Susanna called themselves 'transvestites' or 'TVs' for short. This term is today deemed pejorative, and we have avoided it wherever possible. In French, however, the only available term is 'travesti'. We have used it here both for historical accuracy, and because most of the members of the Casa Susanna network made a clear distinction between their identities as crossdressers and other trans identities. There are three cases where we have opted to give a crossdresser’s masculine identity: for Felicity, Susanna and Doris. Either they were well-known in their lifetime or their families have given us permission to disclose their identities as part of making visible the difficult conditions that cross-dressing and trans individuals continue to face and the ongoing impact of this discrimination. As historians, we have tried to strike a balance between historical facts, the ways the individuals in the Casa Susanna circle self-identified, and our contemporary awareness of a spectrum of gender identities. Thus, in our view, this community stands as the first known trans network in the United States."-- Curators' statement by Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett (Rencontres d'Arles website).

Contents

Introduction / Susan Stryker -- The story of the first trans network in the United States, 1959-1968 / Isabelle Bonnet -- Performing authenticity: Casa Susanna's crossdressers and photography / Sophie Hackett.