OVERVIEW

The 1950s held conflicting realities for gay women, many of which were media-stoked and known to gay women that lived the life. Such conflicts are embodied in the roles of gay icon Mercedes McCambridge, famous for playing tough talking dames of the period, and also of the period's future. In the 1958 Touch of Evil she is the butch gang leader who wants to watch the rape of naïve Janet Leigh; an unlikely role or request from a real butch living on the mean streets of the urban US.

Stella said, “I should have made a list of my girlfriends,” when we met and unraveled her history; she is emblematic of many gay women—butch and femme—from that period. Many had girlfriends, and plenty of sex. I did not meet, nor heard of, any butch that “watched,” much less wanted to watch a rape. I did hear from women forced to watch a rape that was perpetrated as punishment for being gay. Many informants talked of such an experience and in one case that experience has been dramatized. Butches during this period, although biologically female, were characterized by the media as the butch gang leader type character above with a masculinity that designated them not only as queer, but as predatory, inhabiting a maleness coalesced in a female form so perverted that it could wreak havoc on normal society.