Revisiting Transvestite Sexualities through Anita Bryant in the late 1970s

Peitho Volume 22 Issue 4 Summer 2020

Author(s): Morgan DiCesare

Morgan DiCesare is a graduate student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.

Abstract: This essay considers debates over intra-community norms of trans sexuality in print publications in the late 1970s. I argue that Anita Bryant’s rise made space for trans rhetors to challenge norms of respectable sexuality within transvestite communities. I show that trans rhetors metonymically invoked Anita Bryant towards a goal of supporting gay liberation within and without trans communities. For these rhetors, it was essential to support gay liberation because Bryant posed a threat not only to gay and lesbian people, but to all trans people regardless of sexuality.

Tags: Anita Bryant, Digital Transgender Archive, sexuality, Transvestite

“This period of assault by Anita Bryant raises the question of whether or not it is time for greater cooperation between the Male Women’s Liberation and the Gay Liberation movements. As Anita Bryant wins, we both lose. Cooperation does not mean we have to become gay, nor does it mean they have to become ‘transvestites’. It does mean we should unashamedly explore all areas of joint cooperation in pursuit of mutually beneficial objectives.”

(Linda Ann Stephens 3)

In June of 1977, residents in Florida’s Dade County, spurred on by Anita Bryant, voted to repeal the county’s anti-discrimination legislation, which had previously protected gay and lesbian people. Soon after the Dade County vote, the Journal of Male Feminism (hereafter Male Feminism¹), the publication of the North American transvestite organization The International Alliance for Male Feminism (hereafter the Alliance), ran a range of reprinted news reports about Anita Bryant, Dade County, and gay liberation. Linda Ann Stephens, the editor of Male Feminism at the time, framed the reprinted stories in her article, “Anita Bryant’s Assault: A time for greater cooperation between the male women’s liberation and the gay liberation movement?” which is excerpted above.

Stephens’s discussion of cooperation between transvestite² and gay communities served as both a call to action for and a framing of tensions between each group. As Stephens indicates, gay liberationists frequently disavowed transvestites “in a misdirected effort to avoid or overcome the false popular stereotype of gay men as effete, effeminate sissies” and transvestites distanced themselves from gay and lesbian people because “most of us are not gay” (3). While Stephens suggests that there was mutual animosity between gay and trans³ organizations and individuals in the late 1970s, she focuses on the normative investments, concerns about being aligned with stereotypes of effeminacy, that led many gay people to distance themselves from transvestites. Although Stephens notes that transvestites also distanced themselves from gay liberationists, she leaves this as a question of identification. That is, she argues, since most transvestites are straight, they saw little need to be involved in gay liberation. This essay revisits the question of “greater cooperation” between gay and trans movements posed in Stephens’s title with particular attention to the internal sexual norms of transvestite organizations and trans rhetors’ internal and public responses to these norms through Anita Bryant in the late 1970s.

Out of materials in the Digital Transgender Archive, issues of Male Feminism and Drag⁴ published between 1977 and 1980, I take up the call for this special issue to consider how trans rhetors challenged internal norms of (hetero)sexuality towards a goal of publicly supporting activism around non-normative sexualities in conjunction with non-normative genders. First, this essay addresses rhetorical constructions of the sexually normative transvestite, the “dull hetero TV [(transvestite)],” in issues of Male Feminism concurrent with Anita Bryant’s rise. Then, this essay turns to articles from both Male Feminism and Drag wherein trans rhetors sought to revisit and reframe the terms of normative sexuality within and beyond their communities in response to the exigence of Anita Bryant’s campaign. In this case, trans rhetors’ metonymic invocations of Anita Bryant functioned as an inventional resource allowing them to appropriate the terms of Bryant’s homophobic campaign towards redefining intra-communal norms of respectable trans sexuality and the terms of trans solidarity with gay liberationist movements.

The “plain, ordinary, basic, dull hetero TV”

This section takes up internal discussions in Male Feminism about expectations of sexual normativity to lay the terrain for internal and public challenges to these norms. As Robert Hill shows, through his reading of trans identities in the magazine Transvestia between 1960 and 1980, questions of trans sexuality did not begin with Anita Bryant. For example, Virginia Prince, founder of Transvestia and founder of the heterosexual transvestite sorority the Society for the Second Self (Tri Sigma or Tri Sig⁵), argued since the 1950s that “true transvestites are 4 exclusively heterosexual” (17). In Hill’s work with Transvestia, he uses “the terms ‘crossdresser’ and ‘transvestite’ interchangeably to refer to genetic males who identify as heterosexual and who enjoy periodically dressing in clothing that their society views as socially and culturally belonging to women” (378). In partial contrast, here I address transvestites who did not identify as heterosexual or who advocated on behalf of non-straight trans people.

In early 1977, the publisher of Male Feminism, the journal known until this point as Hose & Heels, would change its name from the National Alliance for Heterosexual Male Feminism to the International Alliance for Male Feminism. Male Feminism’s organizational and journal name changes were discussed by the journal’s editors on two terms. First, the editors note the turn to “international” to acknowledge a growing Canadian membership, and second, they discuss the removal of “heterosexual” from their name for a variety of reasons. Beyond shortening the length of the group’s name, they state that another factor,

was to reduce what some have felt was an overemphasis on the heterosexual dimension of the Alliance. Although from the formation and foundation of our Alliance, we have always made clear that we had no sexual orientation restriction on membership, some have perceived an overemphasis on the heterosexual component. As with the general population, the major component of our membership is likely to continue to be heterosexually oriented. The Board believed, however, that we had been giving somewhat undue emphasis to this dimension. (3)

As an organization that grew out of and separated from Prince’s Tri Sigma, the Alliance further distinguishes itself from Tri Sigma by explicitly approaching the category of transvestite as inclusive of any sexual orientation.

Although the Alliance’s name change was intended to welcome a wider range of transvestites, in particular those who were not straight or were from outside the United States, in the same statement, they temper an embrace of all sexualities, “the Board was unanimous in believing the International Alliance for Male Feminism should continue to take all reasonable measures to avoid developing even the appearance of a ‘swinger’ or ‘drag queen’ type of image. Persons into that, or into other unrelated areas such as S&M and B&D, should look to other groups to satisfy those interests” (3). In this statement, the editors distinguish certain sexual practices as “unrelated” to their work as a transvestite organization. Thus, while the Alliance sought to open its membership in terms of homosexuality, they maintained that respectable sexual practices—vanilla and coupled sex in this instance—remained a necessity for all in the organization.

Two years later, in a 1979 issue of Male Feminism, both the journal’s editor and a reader, Connie, speak to the terms of sexual normativity within the Alliance as part of a discussion about a possible merger with Prince’s sorority. Connie, a reader from New York wrote, “We should not open our doors to those who wish to practice the ‘oral’ or anal’ bit, the enema thing, extreme bondage or other far from the ordinary sexual processes” (23). As articulated by Connie, “ordinary sexual processes” are re-figured through a trans politic.

In response to Connie, Male Feminism’s editor, Glenda Renee Jones, provides a hierarchy of fetishes that affirms the terms of Connie’s letter, “Most all of the members of both organizations have some sort of ‘hang-up’, quite inoffensive such as undies, high heels, which are parts of the plain, ordinary, basic, dull hetero TV” (24). These comments make apparent the normative attachments that undergird this debate, the “dull hetero TV” offers a center from which deviations can be measured. Jones concludes her comments by noting, “There are a few bi’s in both Tri Sig and the Alliance…I would say the two groups are virtually identical in policy and membership composition.” Apparent here, in contrast to the editorial board’s 1977 statement and the anonymous submission I consider in the next section, Jones asserts that the Alliance remained quite straight, much like the members of Tri Sigma. In sum, Connie and Jones delineate the terms of a normative trans sexuality, indicating that, at best, only “plain, ordinary, basic, dull” homosexual or bisexual transvestites would be welcome in the Alliance.

Responding to the “dull hetero TV”

As the previous section shows how trans rhetors began to make space for homosexual transvestites in their organization by recentering normative—vanilla and coupled—sexual practices as necessary for homosexual and heterosexual members alike, I turn now to how trans rhetors sought to challenge the public and internal terms of normative transvestite sexuality through metonymic invocations of Anita Bryant. In a 1977 issue of Drag, an unidentified author points to Anita Bryant as the “unifying factor” that allowed for record crowds at New York City’s 1977 pride march (“Gay” 18). The author adds that 1977 marked the first time the pride planning committee invited a transvestite, Cocoa, to speak at New York City’s Pride. Susan Stryker describes the birth of Drag and its publisher, the Queens Liberation Front which was founded by “drag queen Lee Brewster and heterosexual transvestite Bunny Eisenhower,” as a response to “how quickly the gay liberation movement started to push aside some of the very people who had the greatest stake in militant resistance at Stonewall” (87).

As the Drag author notes regarding Cocoa’s invitation, “one person moved that she be stricken because only 25% of TVs are Gay, and therefore not deserving of representation” (22). The author argues that these efforts to deny connections between sexuality and trans identity were also apparent intra-communally, the “insidiousness of this blacklisting is actually encouraged by some TVs. Those who deny the gay aspects of some transvestites play right into the hands of those gay militants who detest the concept of Drag” (22). Here, the author links anti-trans gay people to anti-gay trans people who argue that their gender is respectable while decrying transgressive sexualities. Beyond acknowledging that many transvestites are gay, the author also argues that some transvestites not only stayed away from gay liberation because they were not gay, but also because they maintained investments in upholding normative sexual practices in their communities.

The author then invokes Anita Bryant to account for the issue with these positions, “One wonders that if the Gotterdamerung does occur, and all Gays fall victims to Anita Bryant, will a distinction be made to exclude those TVs who don’t suck cock? We think not” (“Gay” 22). The author’s rhetorical question calls for understanding that Bryant’s campaign sought a totalizing response to those considered sexually or gender deviant. The author links Bryant’s positions to homophobia and anti-trans sentiments as articulated within each community.

Similarly, in the same 1979 issue of Male Feminism I previously discussed, one bisexual member of both Tri Sigma and the Alliance, who advocated against the Alliance’s merger with Tri Sigma, addresses the limits of normative sexualities in the organization by articulating normativity with social myths and stereotypes. The author asked to have her name withheld, presumably out of concern about possible repercussions as a result of her views. She wrote,

The Alliance is receptive to this [bisexual] orientation—as it is to all orientations across the gender spectrum. Unfortunately, when I am in the company of my Tri Sig sisters, it’s strictly “Mums a word”…I believe [my Tri Sig sisters] are slighting themselves with their homophobia (Anita Bryant couldn’t be happier)…The issue is freedom from sex role stereotypes…Homosexuals, bisexuals—and, realistically—the entire issue of humanistic sexuality—rely on openness. If the doors are open, society’s myths soon perish. (22)

This narrative positions the Alliance as a more open organization than Prince’s Tri Sigma, and suggests the Alliance should center a fight against all of “society’s myths,” including both gendered and sexual norms. The author’s mention of Bryant’s happiness, in contrast to the silences the author experiences regarding her bisexuality, aligns the leadership of Tri Sigma and the Alliance with Anita Bryant as all seek to restrict sexual freedom. Under the rubric of “freedom from sex role stereotypes” produced through denying “society’s myths” the author identifies a common political struggle for transvestites and gay people, against Anita Bryant, regardless of sexual practices.

While the previous two examples invoke Anita Bryant as an external threat and as a stand-in for homophobic and transphobic beliefs, Bebe Scarpie, editor of Drag, invokes Bryant to address the problem with normative sexual attachments as held by trans people themselves. In her 1980 article, Scarpie challenges the homophobia of trans readers by arguing that guilt is the primary motivation for their anti-gay views. Scarpie writes, “an overt hatred of gayness…would primarily set up a clear demarcation between crossdressers—those whose drag is a prelude to normal sex—and those who crossdress for homosexual reasons, that is, a prelude to ‘abnormal’ sex” (33). Scarpie argues that homophobia, and efforts by transvestites to distance themselves from gay people, relies on an untenable distinction between normal and abnormal sex, allowing heterosexual transvestites to assuage their felt gender deviance through their “normal” sex. Indeed, Scarpie dismisses even the possibility of a normative sexual practice for transvestites

anti-gayness offers proof to the normalcy of the heterosexual TV in terms of our culture. It classifies you in the same corner as Mom, Apple Pie and the American flag—all the same syndrome. Your church will pray for you. The politicians will endorse you. Maybe even Anita Bryant will come to your town to lead an anti-gay rally with you…He cannot deny his crossdressing, yet he must somehow atone for this faggot-type thing. Everything is freakish about transvestites; from masturbating with satin around the penis, to being submissive to a dominant woman. (34)

Scarpie’s invocation of Anita Bryant, as a symbol alongside apple pie and the flag, marks Bryant a source of legitimation and normativity for transvestites seeking to alleviate their own “freakishness.” In Scarpie’s view, the “dull hetero TV” becomes an impossibility, a fantasy of self-hating trans people, like being supported by Bryant, that is only produced in the minds of trans people who fail to come to terms with their own desires. Further, Scarpie calls for an embrace of transvestites as “freakish,” a recognition that a conservative straight world would find little to celebrate in trans people, regardless of their “normal” sex.

Across this essay I show how the rise of Anita Bryant in the late 1970s provided trans rhetors with an opportunity to contest the norms of sexual respectability within and outside of their communities. In the context of discussions around normative expectations of transvestite sexuality, trans rhetors invoked Bryant as a stand-in for a threat to not only gay and lesbian people but also to all trans people. For the trans rhetors considered here, joining gay liberationists and advocating for pro-gay stances within trans organizations was necessary for the survival of all trans people. They challenged trans community members to face the terms of their own normative sexual attachments and recognize that Bryant, and a larger straight world, would view trans people with the same scrutiny as “militant homosexuals.” Linda Ann Stephens concludes her article, which opened this essay, by calling for transvestites to “take a stand” alongside gay liberationists against the homophobia and transphobia of Anita Bryant’s campaign (3). Her conclusion sums up the calls of the trans rhetors I have addressed here, “Societal attitudes do change! The direction of that change is determined, in part, by your actions or lack thereof. What is your responsibility and how well are you carrying it out?” (Stephens 3).

Endnotes

The term “feminism” in the journal’s title refers to femininity rather than the feminist political movement.
The rhetors considered here use the terms transvestite, crossdresser, and male woman, at times interchangeably, to generally refer to assigned-male individuals who cross-dress some or most of the time for a variety of reasons including, for some, sexual pleasure. While these terms are often considered offensive today, I maintain the original terms used by each rhetor I consider.
While this use of trans is anachronistic in relation to the late 1970s, the term’s contemporary, if contested, usage as an “umbrella” for a range of non-normative gender identities allows for a consideration of the authors in Male Feminism and Drag without making wider assumptions about their particular unstated identities.
These two publications represent the bulk of original indexed references to Anita Bryant available in the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) from 1977 through 1980. While Bryant is also mentioned in DTA-held publications such as Gender Review and Les Girls, she is referred to tangentially as part of news reporting or in republished news stories.
Although Virginia Prince’s Society for the Second Self is most frequently remembered as Tri-Ess, the documents I address here exclusively refer to her organization as Tri Sigma or Tri Sig.

Works Cited

Anonymous. “Letter to the Editor.” Journal of Male Feminism, no. 4, 1979, p. 22. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
Connie. “Letter to the Editor.” Journal of Male Feminism, no. 4, 1979, pp. 23-24. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
“Gay Pride March ’77.” Drag, vol. 7, no. 25, 1977, pp. 18-22. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
Hill, Robert. “Before Transgender: Transvestia’s Spectrum of Gender Variance, 1960-1980.” The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura, 1st ed., Routledge, 2013, pp. 364-79.
International Alliance Board. “Alliance Modifies Name, Broadens Base, Makes Other Changes.” Journal of Male Feminism, vol. 77, no. 1, 1977, p. 3. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
Jones, Glenda Rene. “Editor’s Note.” Journal of Male Feminism, no. 4, 1979, p. 24. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019. Prince, C. V. “Homosexuality, Transvestism and Transsexuality: Reflections on Their Etiology and Differentiation.” International Journal of Transgenderism, vol. 8, no. 4, 2005, pp. 17-20.
Scarpie, Bebe. “HOMOPHOBIA: Fear of Homosexuality.” Drag, vol. 8, no. 27, 1980, pp. 33–34. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
Stephens, Linda Ann. “Anita Bryant’s Assault: A time for greater cooperation between the male women’s liberation and the gay liberation movement?” Journal of Male Feminism, vol. 77, no. 3, 1977, p. 3. Digital Transgender Archive, Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Seal Press, 2008.