Casa Susanna The Story of the First Trans Network in the United States, 1959-1968

"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 corresponde