Casa Susanna was a popular weekend destination in Jewett, New York in the United States, [1] for cross-dressing men and transgender women in the early 1960s. The bungalow camp was run by Susanna Valenti [2] and her wife Maria, who also ran a wig store in town. [1]
Maria purchased the 150 acre property in the mid 1950s; originally, the Valentis had dubbed it Chevalier D'Eon Resort. [3] They charged $25 for a weekend's stay, which included food, lodging, and lessons in makeup.
Hidden away in the rural Catskills, Casa Susanna provided much needed privacy to its guests, in a time when public cross-dressing was a criminal offense across most of America. [4] However, guests occasionally visited the town of Hunter to shop, where they were met by a range of reactions. Some were negative, but many locals saw them as reliable customers. [4] Casa Susanna was a haven for its guests to celebrate their "inner girl" without persecution, and acted as an important space within which guests were allowed to comfortably and happily participate in activities such as gardening and board games whilst expressing their gender identity or inner desire to cross-dress. [5]
Most guests at Casa Susanna were married, and considered themselves heterosexual men who enjoyed cross-dressing, but many others later identified as transgender and lived out their lives as women, including Virginia Prince and Susanna herself. [1]
Casa Susanna also offered photography, having appointed one of their guests, Andrea Susan, as their official photographer. In doing so, the Valentis avoided the possibility of sending the negatives to a professional developer who might later call the police, and allowed for affirming photographs of their guests to be taken as a souvenir and as a source of affirmation for their gender expression.
Andrea took many photographs of her fellow guests and developed them at home; [6] though Polaroid cameras were available at the time, Andrea used a film camera that required the use of negatives instead, and put the negatives in the possession of her photography mentor Dick, who had gifted her her photography equipment. However, when Dick later married, these negatives were thrown away, eventually making their way to a Manhattan flea market in the mid 2000s. There, they were found by Robert Swope, "a gentle punk rocker turned furniture dealer", who bought every photograph he could find and published them in a book with his partner Michel Hurst. [6] The release of the book Casa Susanna, fifty years after many of the photographs themselves were taken, led to many former attendees of Casa Susanna coming forward to share their experiences, allowing Casa Susanna to be documented.
The book Casa Susanna , based on a collection of photographs from the site, inspired the Tony-nominated play Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein. [7]
Casa Susanna , a documentary film by Sébastien Lifshitz, debuted at the 79th Venice International Film Festival. [8]
Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and express oneself.
Transvestism is the practice of dressing in a manner traditionally or stereotypically associated with a different gender. In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional, or ceremonial reasons. The term is considered outdated in Western cultures, especially when used to describe a transgender or gender-fluid person.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transgender topics.
A gender bender is a person who dresses up and presents themselves in a way that defies societal expectations of their gender, especially as the opposite sex. Bending expected gender roles may also be called a genderfuck.
Marsha P. Johnson was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
Tri-Ess is an international educational, social, and support group for heterosexual cross-dressers, their partners, and their families.
Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.
In the context of gender, passing is when someone is perceived as a gender they identify as or are attempting to be seen as, rather than their biological sex. Historically, this was common among women who served in occupations where women were prohibited, such as in combat roles in the military. For transgender people, it is when the person is perceived as cisgender instead of the sex they were assigned at birth. The person may, for example, be a transgender man who is perceived as a cisgender man.
Mak Nyah, alternatively spelled maknyah, is a Malay vernacular term for trans women in Malaysia. It arose in the late 1980s in order to distinguish trans women from other minorities.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. The term may also include cross-dressers or drag kings and drag queens in some contexts. The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.
Virginia Charles Prince, born Arnold Lowman, was an American transgender activist. She published Transvestia magazine, and started the Foundation for Personality Expression (FPE) and later the Society for the Second Self for male heterosexual cross-dressers.
This article details the history of cross-dressing, the act of wearing the clothes of the sex or gender one does not identify with.
Casa Valentina is a 2014 American play written by Harvey Fierstein which premiered on Broadway in April 2014 and opened in London in September 2015. It tells the story of men who spend weekends at a resort in the Catskill mountains, dressed as women.
Lee Greer Brewster was an American drag queen, transgender activist, and retailer. He was a founding member of the pre-Stonewall activist group, Queens Liberation Front. In the 1970s and 1980s, he published Drag magazine. Brewster helped to raise funds for the very first U.S. celebration of Pride, Christopher Street Liberation Day in 1970. He continued to help raise funds and organize Christopher Street Liberation Day for several years. Lee Brewster was active in the homophile and gay liberation movements, working with the Mattachine Society of New York as well as the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
Accounts of transgender people have been identified going back to ancient times in cultures worldwide. The modern terms and meanings of "transgender", "gender", "gender identity", and "gender role" only emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, opinions vary on how to categorize historical accounts of gender-variant people and identities.
A transvestite pass was a doctor's note recognized by the governments of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic – under the support of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld – identifying a person as a transvestite. Transvestite at this time referred to all individuals whose gender identity or preferred clothing was discordant to that associated with their assigned sex, and so included both cross-dressing and transgender people. As gender-confirming surgery was only an emerging practice in the early 20th century, obtaining a Transvestitenschein, along with an official name change, represented the maximum extent to which many trans individuals could transition.
This article addresses the history of transgender people across the British Isles in the United Kingdom, the British colonies and the Kingdom of England until the present day. Transgender people were historically recognised in the UK by varying titles and cultural gender indicators, such as dress. People dressing and living differently from their sex assignment at birth and contributing to various aspects of British history and culture have been documented from the 14th century to the present day. In the 20th century, advances in medicine, social and biological sciences and transgender activism have influenced transgender life in the UK.
Louise Lawrence (1912–1976) was an American transgender activist, artist, writer and lecturer. During the mid-20th century, she organized a network of gender non-conforming people across the US and abroad, and advocated for transgender issues. She was an early founder of the magazine, Transvestia. Academic and historian Susan Stryker wrote, "If there is an unheralded founder of the transgender community in the United States, it’s Louise Lawrence.".
In Nazi Germany, transgender people had a variety of experiences depending on whether they were considered "Aryan" or capable of useful work. According to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Nazi German government "brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures."
Denise A. Norris is an American transgender activist who co-founded the transgender rights activist organisation, The Transexual Menace with Riki Wilchins in 1993. In 2012, she received the Stonewall Spirit of Pride Award from the Stonewall National Museum and Archives for her contributions to the transgender community. In 2014, she created the Institute for Transgender Economic Advancement.
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