AGP and the Sissies of Casa Susanna

If you want to understand today's trans movement a good place to start is a recent BBC film about a 1960s transvestite resort. Coyness about sexual fetishism is its lasting legacy.

Casa Susanna is an enigmatic and dark little film. Which is kind of strange given it tries so hard to be an uplifting one about people struggling heroically to be their authentic truthy true selves.

Commissioned by Arté and Storyville at the BBC it tells the fascinating story of “an oasis of acceptance”, Casa Susanna, a modest holiday resort tucked away in the Catskills that catered for secretive transvestites in the 1950s and 60s. There they dressed in the ladies’ fashions of the day while engaging in polite social activities. One of those was taking snapshots of each other, though let’s just say sometimes their enthusiasm is more noticeable than their politeness.

Is this enthusiasm a little hot under the collar….or brassiere?

That question will not be asked in this film, and that’s a shame. There are innumerable moments where the viewer feels what has been left out is more interesting than what we’re watching.

Above all, there is hardly a shadow, or breath of…sex.

Here’s the trailer

While it touches briefly on the situation of gay men, who at the time faced legal penalties for having sex, it portays the transvestites as almost entirely sexless creatures. Bosoms up, stockings being rolled up legs, head tilts agogo but it’s very much No sex please we’re in the Catskills.