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Paris is burning
I just downloaded an old documentary from the mid-80s looking at New York’s gay and transgender society. It wasn’t real eye opener of what New York must have been like back in those days and how different sections of the transgender community were divided into houses, with its own house mother who rule without question and how younger people would view and peak house to a long to.
the title Paris is burning was the title to their annual party where people could come to view all be viewed as the best in many categories such as best first time out in a dress or passing such as male to female, female to male and do you look straight this was one of the oddest parts of the annual party but fascinating
Wonderful happy stories of those who started the dance craze of Vogueing who moved on to build careers to the less fortunate ones they would never see alt the end of the decade. the AIDS epidemic was still only in the background story to the gay community. Its not the best film documentary ever made but it is one of the rare ones on transgender society that have been made.Penny
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1 Reply
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Nice.
There’s a book called “Parting With My Sex” which is mostly about crossdressers in 19th century Australia. Men and women, straight and gay. The idea that gay and trans were different things didn’t become popular until around 1900 to 1930, so it gets kinda hard to tell whether somebody would have considered themselves to be a butch dyke or a trans man (for example) if they’d all been magically transplanted into the 21st century, but a few of them were about as trans as one could be in a world without hormones or surgeries without knowing what trans is.
The author was one of the historians interviewed in the documentary film “The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia.” The documentary maker carefully avoids ever mentioning trans people, but when the historians say “these people weren’t necessarily homosexuals, exactly”, you know they’re skirting around the hidden history of transgender Australia.
