Date of Award
1-1-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in History
First Advisor
Eva B. Payne
Second Advisor
Rebecca K. Marchiel
Third Advisor
Alex S. Lindgren-Gibson
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Transvestia magazine was important for the creation of the modern transvestite community. This project shows how the editor of the magazine defined her readership and how the stories, letters to the editor, and advertisements published within the magazine helped to develop this sense of community within the readership. The contents of the magazine were tabulated into spreadsheets and counted along with relevant data, including word counts, what issues the items appeared in, where they appeared inside the magazine, etc. The first five years of the magazine were compared with the last five years, showing how it changed editors, length, frequency, and price, but its focus stayed the same. This magazine was compared to the Dallas Voice, a newspaper for gay men which overlapped with the magazine in time, but was written for a different community. The stories published in the magazine included both fiction and nonfiction. Many of the fictional stories included a standard format for a male character, often on who was reluctant to cross-dress at first, coming to accept himself as a transvestite. There were also many true stories about real men coming to accept their transvestite identity. The letters to the editor of the magazine, which were sent in from all over the country, often praised the magazine for being for them. Some of the letters included shorter versions of the kinds of true origin stories that were also published in the magazine. These letters also came in from family members who supported them. The advertisements tended to be for apparel to help achieve a feminine appearance. The community that the Dallas Voice was aimed at comes across rather differently. The Dallas Voice does not include fictional stories to the same degree that Transvestia did. The letters that were published in the Dallas Voice were frequently about health concerns, including mental health. The advertisements tended to be more for bars and apartments. The Dallas Voice shows us an image of a community more concerned with housing and healthcare than feminine apparel and fictional stories.
Recommended Citation
Shinn, Amanda Elaine, "An Examination of Community Formation Through the Lens of Transvestia Magazine" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3388.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3388