"We share a sacred secret": gender, domesticity, and containment in Transvestia's histories and letters from crossdressers and their wives.(SECTION II ... An article from: Journal of Social History
Book Details
Author(s)
Robert Hill
Publisher
Journal of Social History
ISBN / ASIN
B00509DG02
ISBN-13
978B00509DG08
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This digital document is an article from Journal of Social History, published by Journal of Social History on March 22, 2011. The length of the article is 12169 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
From the author: After WWII in the United States, gender and sexual minorities began to construct social identities in a cold war climate hostile to gender and sexual transgression. The coming of the sexual revolution in the mid-1960s and 1970s unleashed forces that provided opportunities for these groups to demarcate their differences from one another, achieve visibility, and court public favor in a more permissive and tolerant society. In this article, I examine how a cohort of white, heterosexual crossdressers and their wives forged a redeeming social script in ways that seem counterintuitive to the "spirit of the times." The presence of transvestism within the sacred, idealized space of the American home produced tremendous anxiety on the part of these transvestite husbands and especially their wives. To deflect the stigma of sexual deviancy and sooth feelings of insecurity, these couples utilized strategies of containment and embraced the domestic ideal, even well into the sexualized and swinging seventies. Their strategic yet curious retreat into domesticity compels a second look at the consensus, conformity, and containment narratives that once dominated our scholarly imagination of intimate matters during the postwar years. Might current revisionist histories have gone too far in discrediting these potent forces? How do gender and sexual populations beholden to whiteness and notions of respectability fit within the sexual revolutions of postwar America?
Citation Details
Title: "We share a sacred secret": gender, domesticity, and containment in Transvestia's histories and letters from crossdressers and their wives.(SECTION II SEXUALITY)
Author: Robert Hill
Publication:Journal of Social History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2011
Publisher: Journal of Social History
Volume: 44 Issue: 3 Page: 729(23)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
From the author: After WWII in the United States, gender and sexual minorities began to construct social identities in a cold war climate hostile to gender and sexual transgression. The coming of the sexual revolution in the mid-1960s and 1970s unleashed forces that provided opportunities for these groups to demarcate their differences from one another, achieve visibility, and court public favor in a more permissive and tolerant society. In this article, I examine how a cohort of white, heterosexual crossdressers and their wives forged a redeeming social script in ways that seem counterintuitive to the "spirit of the times." The presence of transvestism within the sacred, idealized space of the American home produced tremendous anxiety on the part of these transvestite husbands and especially their wives. To deflect the stigma of sexual deviancy and sooth feelings of insecurity, these couples utilized strategies of containment and embraced the domestic ideal, even well into the sexualized and swinging seventies. Their strategic yet curious retreat into domesticity compels a second look at the consensus, conformity, and containment narratives that once dominated our scholarly imagination of intimate matters during the postwar years. Might current revisionist histories have gone too far in discrediting these potent forces? How do gender and sexual populations beholden to whiteness and notions of respectability fit within the sexual revolutions of postwar America?
Citation Details
Title: "We share a sacred secret": gender, domesticity, and containment in Transvestia's histories and letters from crossdressers and their wives.(SECTION II SEXUALITY)
Author: Robert Hill
Publication:Journal of Social History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2011
Publisher: Journal of Social History
Volume: 44 Issue: 3 Page: 729(23)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
