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Homosexuality Inverted: José Sarria's Performance Archive and the Making of Nelly Queens, 1958–1963.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	Homosexuality Inverted: José Sarria's Performance Archive and the Making of Nelly Queens, 1958–1963.
Authors:	Reithmayr, Mori (AUTHOR)
Source:	Journal of the History of Sexuality. May2026, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p270-301. 32p.
Abstract:	At the height of postwar antigay oppression, San Franciscan activist and female impersonator José Sarria staged a series of gay-themed operas at the local Black Cat café. Reading Sarria's oral histories alongside her neglected performance archive, this article contends that Sarria's shows were as much engaged in creating as in politically mobilizing an incipient gay audience. This fuller reconstruction of Sarria's operas and her unusual vision of an inverted male homosexuality makes three contributions to histories of homophile activism and homosexuality. First, it reveals US homophiles to be more ideologically diverse and open to challenging a conservative postwar gender politics than often assumed. Second, it helps unsettle accounts of the ostensibly smooth transition to the homo/heterosexual binary across the mid-century by revealing the underappreciated ability of homophile activists to develop alternative interpretations of the binary itself. And third, it shows how a currently resurgent gay respectability politics that is based on the rejection of an abnormalized, trans other has encountered imaginative resistance in one of its periods of greatest success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	At the height of postwar antigay oppression, San Franciscan activist and female impersonator José Sarria staged a series of gay-themed operas at the local Black Cat café. Reading Sarria's oral histories alongside her neglected performance archive, this article contends that Sarria's shows were as much engaged in creating as in politically mobilizing an incipient gay audience. This fuller reconstruction of Sarria's operas and her unusual vision of an inverted male homosexuality makes three contributions to histories of homophile activism and homosexuality. First, it reveals US homophiles to be more ideologically diverse and open to challenging a conservative postwar gender politics than often assumed. Second, it helps unsettle accounts of the ostensibly smooth transition to the homo/heterosexual binary across the mid-century by revealing the underappreciated ability of homophile activists to develop alternative interpretations of the binary itself. And third, it shows how a currently resurgent gay respectability politics that is based on the rejection of an abnormalized, trans other has encountered imaginative resistance in one of its periods of greatest success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	10434070