What do you think?
Rate this book
Sissy!: The Effeminate Paradox in Postwar US Literature and Culture
Winner of the Elizabeth Agee Prize in American Literature
An innovative exploration of postwar representations of effeminate men and boys
Sissy! The Effeminate Paradox in Postwar US Literature and Culture expands on recent cultural criticism that focuses on the ways men and boys deemed to be feminine have been—and continue to be—condemned for their personalities and behavior. Critic Harry Thomas Jr. does not dismiss this approach, but rather identifies it as merely one side of a coin. On the other side, he asserts, the opposite an American artistic tradition that celebrates and affirms effeminate masculinity.
The author argues that effeminate men and boys are generally portrayed using the grotesque, an artistic mode concerned with the depictions of hybrid bodies. Thomas argues that the often grotesque imagery used to depict effeminate men evokes a complicated array of emotions, a mix of revulsion and fascination that cannot be completely separated from one another.
Thomas looks to the sissies in the 1940s novels of Truman Capote and Carson McCullers; the truth-telling flaming princesses of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room ; the superstardom of pop culture icon Liberace; the prophetic queens of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America ; and many others to demonstrate how effeminate men have often been adored because they are seen as the promise of a different world, one free from the bounds of heteronormativity.
Sissy! offers an unprecedented and counterintuitive overview of cultural and artistic attitudes toward male effeminacy in post–World War II America and provides a unique and contemporary reinterpretation of the “sissy” figure in modern art and literature.
An innovative exploration of postwar representations of effeminate men and boys
Sissy! The Effeminate Paradox in Postwar US Literature and Culture expands on recent cultural criticism that focuses on the ways men and boys deemed to be feminine have been—and continue to be—condemned for their personalities and behavior. Critic Harry Thomas Jr. does not dismiss this approach, but rather identifies it as merely one side of a coin. On the other side, he asserts, the opposite an American artistic tradition that celebrates and affirms effeminate masculinity.
The author argues that effeminate men and boys are generally portrayed using the grotesque, an artistic mode concerned with the depictions of hybrid bodies. Thomas argues that the often grotesque imagery used to depict effeminate men evokes a complicated array of emotions, a mix of revulsion and fascination that cannot be completely separated from one another.
Thomas looks to the sissies in the 1940s novels of Truman Capote and Carson McCullers; the truth-telling flaming princesses of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room ; the superstardom of pop culture icon Liberace; the prophetic queens of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America ; and many others to demonstrate how effeminate men have often been adored because they are seen as the promise of a different world, one free from the bounds of heteronormativity.
Sissy! offers an unprecedented and counterintuitive overview of cultural and artistic attitudes toward male effeminacy in post–World War II America and provides a unique and contemporary reinterpretation of the “sissy” figure in modern art and literature.
- GenresNonfiction
264 pages, Hardcover
Published September 26, 2017
1 person is currently reading
18 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 10, 2024
Thomas maps the paradoxical category of the sissy in American Post-War Culture and Literature. He argues that it was used to shore up concepts of masculinity, as both an object of ridicule and disgust.
Vito Russo opens his renown study of homosexuality in the Hollywood film The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987) by summarizing this conventional wisdom about eminency in American culture. “Nobody likes sissy,” Russo writes. “That includes dykes, faggots, and feminist of both sexes. Even in a time of sexual revolution, when traditional roles are being examined and challenged every day, there is something about a man who acts like a woman that people find fundamentally distasteful. [4] 3
Sissies are thus seen as either proto-homosexuals or homosexuals. This implied meaning adds to the visible provocations of effeminacy (a man appearing feminine and demeanour, comportment, and/or affect), and in total, we can say that the sissy is a walking scandal of sorts, lured spectacle. Effeminate men make a scene of themselves, and this scene is pathetic and abnormal, it evokes “moral nausea” onlookers. 10
The sissy was thus “used on screen and off, as both scapegoat and weapon” (Russo 31); sissies in film served as a negative example, there sometimes monstrous and sometimes comical failed manhood serve to short up the real man's successful heroic masculinity. 13-14
Finally, 1940 also makes sense as a starting date for this project because in Gay New York (1994) historian George Chauncey demonstrates that the middle decades of the 20th century saw a shift in the way in which Americans understood the relationship between same-sex desire and gender identity. Chauncey’s claim is that in the late 1930s, American culture experienced a “re-organization of sexual categories and the transition from an early 20th century culture divided into ‘queers’ and ‘men’ on the basis of gender status to elite 20th century culture divided into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals’ on the basis of sexual object choice” (22). That is to say in the pre-World War II gay world that Chauncey maps, men (particularly working-class men) could have sex with other men and still be understood to be ‘normal’ so long as they undertook the supposedly “active” role in same-sex relations and maintained a “masculine” gender performance in their day-to-day lives. Chauncey claims that this shift and thinking about sexual behaviour and gender identity began in the late 1930s and intensified during and after World War II, until homosexual/heterosexual eventually became “the hegemonic sexual regime in American culture” (23). I contend that it is this “hegemonic sexual regime” that colour so much of our contemporary understanding of both effeminacy and so-called “successful” or “Real” masculinity. It does make sense to begin the project at a point when the regime change Chauncey describes was settling into place. 25
The real boy/sissy binary, and the value judgements inherent within it, was circulated in a variety of ways. Texts played a huge part. As Kenneth B. Kidd has shown, there was an entire industry of “boyolgy” in the final decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th, a proliferation of “descriptive and proscriptive writing on boyhood across a variety of genres” (1) 38
Historian George Chauncey argues that “the hetero-homosexual binaries, the sexual regime now hegemonic and American culture”-where in the gender of one sexual partner is presumed to constitute proof of an inequality called sexuality, which is either heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual-“is a stunningly recent creation” that came into existence only in the middle decades of the twentieth century (13). Prior to it, there was an older regime-dating to at least the 1890s in New York City, especially among the working class-in which man gender performance, not the gender of a sexual partner(s), determined whether he was understood to be normal or abnormal. [2] 69
What Chauncey calls “the ascendency of gay”-first as a code word for homosexual, and later as the name for an identity-“reflected then, reorganization of sexual categories and the transition from an early 20th century culture divided into ‘queers’ and ‘men’ on the basis of gender status to elite 20th century culture divided into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals’ on the basis of sexual object choice. (22, emphasis Chauncey’s). 70
They are James Baldwin’s Truth-Telling Queens on steroids, speaking truth not just to individuals, but to the nation as a whole. 137
Vito Russo opens his renown study of homosexuality in the Hollywood film The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987) by summarizing this conventional wisdom about eminency in American culture. “Nobody likes sissy,” Russo writes. “That includes dykes, faggots, and feminist of both sexes. Even in a time of sexual revolution, when traditional roles are being examined and challenged every day, there is something about a man who acts like a woman that people find fundamentally distasteful. [4] 3
Sissies are thus seen as either proto-homosexuals or homosexuals. This implied meaning adds to the visible provocations of effeminacy (a man appearing feminine and demeanour, comportment, and/or affect), and in total, we can say that the sissy is a walking scandal of sorts, lured spectacle. Effeminate men make a scene of themselves, and this scene is pathetic and abnormal, it evokes “moral nausea” onlookers. 10
The sissy was thus “used on screen and off, as both scapegoat and weapon” (Russo 31); sissies in film served as a negative example, there sometimes monstrous and sometimes comical failed manhood serve to short up the real man's successful heroic masculinity. 13-14
Finally, 1940 also makes sense as a starting date for this project because in Gay New York (1994) historian George Chauncey demonstrates that the middle decades of the 20th century saw a shift in the way in which Americans understood the relationship between same-sex desire and gender identity. Chauncey’s claim is that in the late 1930s, American culture experienced a “re-organization of sexual categories and the transition from an early 20th century culture divided into ‘queers’ and ‘men’ on the basis of gender status to elite 20th century culture divided into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals’ on the basis of sexual object choice” (22). That is to say in the pre-World War II gay world that Chauncey maps, men (particularly working-class men) could have sex with other men and still be understood to be ‘normal’ so long as they undertook the supposedly “active” role in same-sex relations and maintained a “masculine” gender performance in their day-to-day lives. Chauncey claims that this shift and thinking about sexual behaviour and gender identity began in the late 1930s and intensified during and after World War II, until homosexual/heterosexual eventually became “the hegemonic sexual regime in American culture” (23). I contend that it is this “hegemonic sexual regime” that colour so much of our contemporary understanding of both effeminacy and so-called “successful” or “Real” masculinity. It does make sense to begin the project at a point when the regime change Chauncey describes was settling into place. 25
The real boy/sissy binary, and the value judgements inherent within it, was circulated in a variety of ways. Texts played a huge part. As Kenneth B. Kidd has shown, there was an entire industry of “boyolgy” in the final decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th, a proliferation of “descriptive and proscriptive writing on boyhood across a variety of genres” (1) 38
Historian George Chauncey argues that “the hetero-homosexual binaries, the sexual regime now hegemonic and American culture”-where in the gender of one sexual partner is presumed to constitute proof of an inequality called sexuality, which is either heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual-“is a stunningly recent creation” that came into existence only in the middle decades of the twentieth century (13). Prior to it, there was an older regime-dating to at least the 1890s in New York City, especially among the working class-in which man gender performance, not the gender of a sexual partner(s), determined whether he was understood to be normal or abnormal. [2] 69
What Chauncey calls “the ascendency of gay”-first as a code word for homosexual, and later as the name for an identity-“reflected then, reorganization of sexual categories and the transition from an early 20th century culture divided into ‘queers’ and ‘men’ on the basis of gender status to elite 20th century culture divided into ‘homosexuals’ and ‘heterosexuals’ on the basis of sexual object choice. (22, emphasis Chauncey’s). 70
They are James Baldwin’s Truth-Telling Queens on steroids, speaking truth not just to individuals, but to the nation as a whole. 137
Displaying 1 of 1 review