Transvestite Fiction & Empathy Press, Including Gender Role Reflection, And First Person Crossdressing Narratives, 1982 to 1994

Tales of Transvestism

Archive

Four Transvestite Fiction Booklets containing reflections on gender, trans identity, self expression from 1982-1994, including story titles such as “Sissy in Satin,” “Living Doll,” “Jim into Jamie,” “Trapped in Panties,” and “My Husband Married Me To be a Woman.” A first-person passage states that a transvestite needs “feedback from others” to understand “gait,” “voice,” and “other mannerisms” while “perfecting a gender role,” placing social performance and self-assessment inside the language of everyday presentation. The group emerged during a period when queer and trans communities faced AIDS-era stigma, homophobic public discourse, and the lingering legal and social memory of anti-crossdressing enforcement in American cities. By 1980, defendants had challenged cross-dressing arrests in at least sixteen cities, while the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic began in 1981 and intensified public hostility toward already stigmatized queer communities. These booklets preserve small-press fiction created for readers seeking transvestite, crossdressing, and transfeminine narratives outside mainstream publishing, with fantasy plots, gender transformation motifs, and direct language about feminine identity appearing within the same print culture.

Crossdressing and Transvestite Fiction Booklets. Seattle and s.l.: Empathy Press and unidentified publishers, 1982 to 1994 and undated. Four staple-bound booklets, each approximately 50 pages, including two Empathy Press titles and two related transvestite or crossdressing fiction titles.
1] Slavik, Charles. Skirted Men: Tales of Transvestism. Book 2. Seattle: Empathy Press, 1982. The contents page lists “Sissy in Satin” beginning on page 4, with copyright credited to Charles Slavik and the publisher given as Empathy Press, P.O. Box 12466, Seattle, Washington 98111. Princeton cataloging identifies Charles Slavik as creator of another Empathy Press Skirted Men issue, confirming the publisher’s place within late twentieth-century LGBTQIA periodical and ephemera collecting.
2] TV Queens Fiction Digest. Number 23. Seattle: Empathy Press, 1990. The contents page lists “Living Doll,” “Jim into Jamie,” and “Trapped in Panties,” and the imprint invites readers to send material if they “enjoy writing and would like to see your fantasies in print.” That solicitation places the digest within a participatory reader-writer circuit, where fantasy manuscripts could move from private desire into small-run printed circulation.
3] Secret Pleasures: The Crossdressing Experience. Book 16. Seattle: Empathy Press, 1994. The contents page gives the story title “My Husband Married Me To be a Woman,” and the front cover identifies the work as “A Transvestite Fiction Fantasy.” Gerber/Hart’s transgender periodicals exhibit describes Cathy Charles Slavik’s Empathy Press enterprise as evolving by the early 1970s into several concurrent trans-oriented magazines, giving this later booklet a connection to a publisher with a longer transvestite and trans readership history.
4] Silky Slip-Ups. S.l.: s.n., undated. The cover caption reads, “Coming out. Caught out. Found out. BUT EVENTUAL ECSTACY,” using discovery, exposure, and eventual pleasure as the narrative promise. The cover art and title align the booklet with forced-feminization and crossdressing fiction conventions described in trans small-press fiction, where many plots turn on coerced dressing, transformation, or power exchange.

The booklets use the historical vocabulary of “transvestism,” “crossdressing,” “feminine identity,” and “gender role” before “transgender” became the dominant umbrella term in many public and archival contexts. Their contents connect erotic fantasy to questions of passing, social recognition, voice, gait, coming out, exposure, and reader participation, making the group especially useful for tracing how trans and crossdressing readers articulated identity through small-format fiction during the 1980s and 1990s. All four booklets are in very good condition, with intact spines, minor price-sticker residue, light discoloration, and handling wear to the covers. The group preserves an early small-press record of transvestite and crossdressing fiction made around the desires, anxieties, vocabulary, and self-fashioning practices of its own readership.

Item #23530

Price: $885.00