Yn Sissy Insurgencies, mae Marlon B. Ross ar y ‘sissy’ i er mwyn ailfeddwl sut mae Americanwyr wedi dychmygu, mynegi a thrafod dynoliaeth o’r 1880au hyd heddiw. Yn hytrach na cyfateb y sissy i gyfunrywioldeb yn unig, mae Ross yn dangos mae sissy yn hylifol o ran rhywedd yn hanesyddol, yn ffisegol, yn hunaniaeth gymdeithasol a fel ffenomenon wleidyddol. Mae’n ailystyried sawl arweinydd, deallusion, cerddorion ac athletwyr Du yng nghyd-destyn y sissy, o George Washington Carver i James Baldwin a Little Richard. P’un a yw’n archwilio arfer Washington o lanhau fel sissuy, alltudiad sissy hunan-ffasiwn Baldwin, neu sissiffobia mewn chwaraeon proffesiynol a chenedlaetholdeb du, mae Ross yn dangos y gellir cofleidio a manteisio ar y sissy i gydymffurfio â normau rhyw America neu darfu patriarchaeth hiliol. Yn y modd hwn, mae’n elfen ganolog mewn dealltwriaeth modern o hil a rhywedd.

In Sissy Insurgencies, Marlon B. Ross focuses on the figure of the sissy in order to rethink how Americans have imagined, articulated, and negotiated manhood and boyhood from the 1880s to the present. Rather than collapsing sissiness into homosexuality, Ross shows how sissiness constitutes a historically fluid range of gender practices that are expressed as a physical manifestation, discursive epithet, social identity, and political phenomenon.

He reconsiders several black leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and athletes within the context of sissiness, from Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and James Baldwin to Little Richard, Amiri Baraka, and Wilt Chamberlain. Whether examining Washington’s practice of cleaning as an iteration of sissiness, Baldwin’s self-fashioned sissy deportment, or sissiphobia in professional sports and black nationalism, Ross demonstrates that sissiness can be embraced and exploited to conform to American gender norms or disrupt racialized patriarchy.

In this way, sissiness constitutes a central element in modern understandings of race and gender.