Cross Dressing Ball

Gay balls, cross-dressing balls or drag balls, depending on the place, time, and type, were public or private balls, celebrated mainly in the first third of the twentieth century, where cross-dressing and ballroom dancing with same sex partners was allowed. By the 1900s, the balls had become important cultural events for gays and lesbians, even attracting tourists. Their golden age was during the Interwar period, mainly in Berlin and Paris, even though they could be found in many big cities in Europe and the Americas such as Mexico City and New York City.

Precedents

By the end of the 17th century, a gay subculture is documented in Europe, with cruising areas, bars, parties and balls, cross-dressers, and slang. Scholars like Randolph Trumbach consider it is the moment when gay subculture appears in Europe. On the contrary, historian Rictor Norton considers unlikely that such a subculture would appear fully formed, and thinks that it was actually the increase in surveillance and police procedures that brought to the surface an underground culture that had not been visible up to that moment.

The archives of the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon preserve information of the so-called "''danças dos fanchonos''" from the beginning of the 17 century. About 1620, the "''fachonos''", the baroque equivalent of modern drag queens, organized big parties in the ''Gaia Lisboa'', the gay Lisbon. These itinerant celebrations, called "''escarramão''", or "''esparramão''", used to include pantomimes with racy scenes, where some of the participants were dressed as women, and other as men. His Majesty's High Court in Mexico City discovered in 1656 a similar case, when Juan Correa, an old man, over 70 years old, confessed that he had been committing the unspeakable vice since his childhood. Correa's house, in the outskirts of the city, had been used as a meeting point to celebrate balls, where many men dressed as women.

Several studies have not found similar phenomena in the judicial cases in Aragon, Catalonia, the Basque Country or Valencia, even though in the Valencian case there are evidences of a subculture and a possible gay ghetto. In Spain, cross-dressing was socially only allowed for carnival, when even those closest to the king could dress as women. On the other hand, in France, during Louis XIV's reign, no ball was complete without cross-dressers.

By the end of the 17th century, there was a completely developed gay subculture in London, with the molly houses used as clubs, where gays met regularly to drink, dance and have fun. These taverns are well known thanks to the Mother Clap's molly house scandal from 1726, when a police raid discovered that her molly house was a gay brothel.

Cross-dressing balls

Germany

The Empire

Berlin's clandestine gay underground can be followed up to the 18th century, in spite of the persecution gays were suffering. In Prussia, Paragraph 143 of the penal code, and later the introduction of Paragraph 175 in the German penal code, with other laws for public scandal, and child protection, made the life of gays extremely difficult. In fact, the activities of Magnus Hirschfeld or the first homosexual movement could not avoid the regular police raids and closing of premises in the 1900s. And not just the premises were being watched by the police, in 1883, the moral police had 4799 "transvestite" and transgender woman under vigilance, even though " permits" could be handed out to cross-dressers in cases considered "medical".

It is thus surprising that, beginning mid 19th century, the ''Urningsball'' or ''Tuntenball'' came to be, balls of uranians, or queens, tolerated, but watched by the police. By the 1900s, these balls had achieved such a fame in Germany, that people from all around the country, and even foreign tourists, would travel to Berlin to participate. These balls were celebrated in large ballrooms, as the Deutscher Kaiser, in the Lothringer Straße, or the Filarmonía, in the Bernburgstraße, the Dresdner Kasino, in the Dresdner Straße, or the Orpheum, in the Alter Jakobstraße 32.

For example, the ''Berliner Morgenpost'' described extensively on October 17, 1899, a gay ball that had taken place in the hotel König von Portugal, where balls were still being celebrated in 1918. The ball season used to begin in October and go until Easter, with a frequency of several balls a week, sometimes two the same day. Hirschfeld, in his book ''Berlins drittes Geschlecht'' (1904; "Berlín's Third Sex"), described the balls in following fashion:

As a consequence of the Harden–Eulenburg affair, and the subsequent social upheaval, the balls where prohibited; in 1910 they were allowed again, but they never achieved the splendor of this golden age.

The Weimar Republic

After the I World War appeared the first mass movements for homosexuals, the ''Freundschaftsbund'', popular associations of gays and lesbians that dedicated an important part of their effort to socialization and diverse activities for their members, like excursions, visits, sports, and balls. For example, the club ''Kameradschaft'' ("camaraderie") organized on November 1, 1929, celebrating their anniversary, a Böser-Buben-Ball ("Bad Boys Ball"); the club reached 100 members, and survived until 1933. ''Kameradschaft'' tried to offer some support and activities for gays from lower extraction; so their balls were celebrated on weekends, Saturdays or Sundays, and gathered about 70 men, many without a job, who could pay the low entry price.

In 1922 the association Gesellschaftsklub Aleksander e.V. celebrated balls every day, beginning 7 o'clock p.m., with a quality orchestra. In 1927 the Bund für Menschenrecht (BfM) bought the Alexander-Palast, but that same year they changed to the Florida and the Tanz-Palast salon of the Zauberflöte, in the Kommandantenstraße 72, in Berlin. The BfM balls took place from Tuesdays to Sundays; the entry was free, but you had to pay 50 Pfennig for a dance card that allowed you to actually dance. In the 1920s gay balls reached enormous sizes, with premises filling several ballrooms with some thousands of men. And not just in Berlin, several other cities in Germany organized smaller balls for gays.

In the 1920s and 30s, there were uncountable bars, cafés, and dance halls in Berlin. The most elegant could be found in West Berlin, near the area formed by the Bülowstraße, the Potsdamer Straße, and the Nollendorfplatz, reaching up to the Kurfürstendamm.

No doubt, the most famous was Eldorado, that really was two, one on the Lutherstraße, and a second one in the Motzstraße. Curt Moreck (Konrad Haemmerling) described it in 1931, in his ''Führer durch das „lasterhafte“ Berlin'' ("Guide through the 'dissolute' Berlin"), as "an establishment of transvestites staged for the morbid fascination of the world metropolis." The program at the Eldorado included loud and racy shows by drag queens, addressed mostly to a heterosexual audience, that, now as then, wanted to "satisfy their curiosity, and dared to visit the mysterious and infamous Berlin". Moreck continues, even though he himself was encouraging, and was part of this kind of voyeuristic tourism with his travel guide:

Eldorado became one of the nocturnal cultural centers in Europe. The establishment hosted from bank managers to members of parliament, as well as theater actors and movie stars. Amongst them, divas like Marlene Dietrich, often with her husband Rudolf Sieber, and Anita Berber, singers like Claire Waldoff, and writers, like Wolfgang Cordan, Egon Erwin Kisch, or Josef Hora. Magnus Hirschfeld was well known there.

The co-founder and commander of the SA, Ernst Röhm, was also a patron, and Karl Ernst, later a nazi politician and Gruppenführer SA, tried to survive for a time working —depending on the source— as a waiter, an employee, or a rent boy in the Eldorado of the Lutherstraße. The ballroom cum cabaret has been mentioned, directly or indirectly, serving as inspiration, in many literary works, as in ''Mr Norris Changes Trains'' (1935) and '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939) by Christopher Isherwood, or the memories of Erika, and Klaus Mann. The atmosphere has been captured in paintings by Otto Dix, and Ernst Fritsch.

By the end of the 1920s, the German society had taken their image of homosexuals from this kind of establishment: decadent, refined, depraved, degenerate, tightly linked to drugs, wild sex, and prostitution. The Bund für Menschenrecht tried to distance gays of this kind of milieu in 1927, but to no avail. In 1932 the chancellor Franz von Papen started a campaign against the "depraved night of Berlin", and in October of that same year all balls for homosexuals were prohibited.

On January 30, 1933, the nazi party came to power, and on February 23, 1933, the Prussian Interior Minister ordered that all bars "that have abused heir permitto promote immorality" be closed. He was referring specially to those "that are frequented by those who pay homage to the anti-natural immorality". On March 4, 1933, the ''Berliner Tagblatt'' informed about the closing of some establishments the day before. Of the over 100 establishments catering to homosexuals in Berlin very few survived, and those would be used to help watch and control the homosexual population.

France

In France, until the end of the 19th century, gays and lesbians met usually in private homes and literary salons, hidden from the public, with the Opera Ball in Paris one of the few exceptions. The Opera Ball, celebrated yearly for carnival, allowed some small leeway. The first big public ball that allowed cross-dressing was the Bal Bullier in 1880, in the Avenue de l'Observatoire, followed by the Bal Wagram in 1910.

After World War I, Paris became one of the nightlife centers in Europe, with focal points in Montmartre, Pigalle, and Montparnasse, and numerous short-lived bars catering to gays and lesbians, surviving between police raids, ruinous scandals, and the public's insatiable thirst for new thrills. Many establishments were also known for drug trafficking. Journalist Willy described the atmosphere in the bar "The Petite Chaumière", catering to foreigners looking for strong sensations:

In the 1920s, there were several balls in the Bastille area; these occurred mainly in the Rue de Lappe, where workers, drunken sailors, and colonial soldiers gathered to dance. It was not strictly a homosexual milieu, but men could dance together, and one could find a partner for the night. Daniel Guérin described one of the dens as a place where " ..workmen, prostitutes, society women, johns, and aunties all danced. In those relaxed and natural days, before the cops took over France, a chevalier could go out in public with a mate of the same sex, without being considered crazy.» On the other hand, Willy presents a completely different aspect of the milieu, "What you see are little delinquents, not too carefully washed but heavily made up, with caps on their heads and sporting brightly colored foulards; these are the guys who, when they fail to make a buck here, will certainly be found hauling coal or other cargo."

The so-called ''bal de folles'', and later ''bal de invertis'', flourished in Paris after the I World War, and even in other French cities as Toulon. In Paris, homosexuals were attracted mainly to the Bal Musette de la Montaigne de Sainte-Geneviève, in the number 46 of the Rue Montaigne de Sainte-Geneviève, where you could find gays and lesbians. Later, the big balls for carnival attracted a gay public, as the one celebrated yearly in the Magic-City, in the rue de l'Université, 180, inaugurated in 1920, and active until the prohibition on February 6, 1934.

In time, the "Carnaval interlope" in Magic-City became a big event, visited by prominent vedette from the varietés, like Mistinguett, or Joséphine Baker, that handed over awards to the best drag queens. The Bal Wagram offered the opportunity to cross-dress twice a year; at 1 a.m., the drag queens did the ''pont aux travestis'', a costume competition, doing the catwalk in front of the most selected people of Paris, that came to walk on the wild side for a night.

The drag queens participating came from all walks of life, and ages, and presented a savage satire of the society, its values, and its traditional hierarchies, with images of exaggerated femininity, and masculinity: countesses dressed in crinoline, crazy virgins, oriental dancers, sailors, ruffians, or soldiers; theirs names were correspondingly colorful: Duchess of the Bubble, the Infante Eudoxie, the Mauve Mouse; the Dark One, Sweetie Pie, Fréda, the Englishwoman, Mad Maria, the Muse, the Teapot, the She-wolf, Sappho, Wet Cat, Little Piano, Princess of the Marshes, Marguerite if Burgundy, etc. Charles Étienne, in his novel ''Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos'', describes "Didine" in following fashion:

Many of the onlookers just went to insult and harass the gay people participating, as Charles Étienne describes in his novel ''Le Bal des folles'':

England

There are at least two instances of cross-dressing balls that have been documented in England. The first one was known through a police raid of a ball celebrated in the Temperance Hall, in the Hulme area of Manchester. On September 24, 1880, the Chief Constable of Manchester received anonymous information about an event "of an immoral character" that was about to take place in the Temperance Hall of Hulme. The detective Jerome Caminada was dispatched with police constables to observe the ball and make any necessary arrests.

Of the 47 men that congregated, all wore fancy dress costumes, 22 as women; a pair was dressed as Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and another as Romeo and Juliet. The windows of the Temperance Hall had mostly been blacked out and so Detective Caminada and his constables had to observe the ball from a neighbouring rooftop. Caminada reported that the ball had begun at 9.00 pm, that dancing had commenced at around 10.00 pm and that every now and then, a couple disappeared into a side room. Just after 1.00am, mindful that some guests had started to leave, Caminada gained entry to the ball by giving the password "sister" in an effeminate manner to a doorman dressed as a nun. After the door was opened, the police raided the building, and detained all participants.

The trial showed that some of the revellers were not from Manchester and were regulars of similar balls that were organized in several cities, as Leeds, or Nottingham. The men were bound over to keep the peace on two sureties of £25 each, a significant sum. Some were unable to pay it and ended up in prison as a result. All the arrested men had their names, addresses and professions published widely. LGBT History Month in the UK commissioned Stephen M Hornby and Ric Brady to write a three-part play about the ball as part of the first OUTing The Past festival in 2015 in Manchester. The play was called "A Very Victorian Scandal" and Dr Jeff Evans acted as the Historical Adviser to the writers.

Dr. Matt Houlbrook, of the University of Liverpool, affirms that in the 1920s and 30s, cross-dressing balls were being held secretly almost every weekend, gathering 50 to 100 men. And this, in spite of it being illegal, and being a big personal risk for those participating: they didn't just risk prison, if found out, they could lose their livelihood, be isolated socially, and finally suffer a nervous breakdown, or try suicide. In 1933 headlines informed about "Lady Austin's Camp Boys" scandal.

The affair began when 60 men were detained in a private ball room, in Holland Park Avenue, in London, after cross-dressing police officers had been watching them dancing, made up, dressed as women, and having sex. Twenty-seven men were arrested, and convicted between 3 and 20 months of jail. Even so, many stood up for their behavior, notoriously Lady Austin, who said "There is nothing wrong n who we are You call us nancies and bum boys but before long our cult will be allowed in the country."

Spain

Mid 19th century, during the reign of Isabella II, appeared the ''sociedades de baile'', "ball societies", mostly groups of young people that tried to rent some premises to organize a ball; but there were also other, more elegant, or pretentious, that rented theaters for their balls. The ball societies exclusively catering to gays appeared shortly after, mainly in Madrid, and Barcelona, as there were no special requirements to create one, and could be established, and broken up very easily. The most important ball society for the "Uranian flock" met at the El Ramillete, in the calle Alvareda, in Madrid, where you could count "over a hundred sodomites with elegant suits, and rich jewelry". In Barcelona, later, during the regency of Maria Christina, the biggest number of gay dancers met at the Liceo Rius.

The dancing public was off all types, but mainly transvestites and young men of the working class –,workers of trade, and commerce, workshop apprentices, and servants – for whom the balls were the highest point of their lives: exploited by their employers, and frightened of being discovered by the society. The balls allowed them to forget their situation for a couple of hours, express themselves with freedom, mingle with their equals, and, with a little luck, meet someone. Other, less fortunate, as was the case for transvestites, effeminate men, and ''chulitos de barrio'', neighborhood thugs, without a job, or rejected by their families, they used the balls to find their first time customers. For carnival, huge balls were celebrated, and the boys spend the whole year preparing their costumes for that important day.

At the beginning of the 20th century, all these balls had already disappeared, and were just a memory of the past, as recounts the author Max Bembo in his book, ''La mala vida en Barcelona'' ("The Bad Life in Barcelona"): "I could not find in the homosexualism of Barcelona the appearance it used to have; the parties where the baptism of homosexuals were celebrated; the very scandalous balls; the sardanapalic festivities, the shame of the city". It's very probable that the disappearance of these public balls was due to the application of laws of public indecency, and the consequent withdrawal of the homosexual life into private residencies, and clubs.

United States

Stag dance

During the 19th century, in the United States, mainly in the Great West Frontier, there were many towns where women were few and far between. So, for cowboys, miners, loggers, mountain men or railroad workers, it was very difficult to find a woman, and marry. In these groups, men often formed intimate friendships, that sometimes ended in real love stories, that were accepted as a fact of life. It is difficult to know up to what point this was simply due to the lack of women, or if precisely this kind of life attracted those men that preferred the company of other men.

In this environment, and in the military,In military circles it was not uncommon to organize balls where men would dance with each other, as women could not be part of the military, and very often were not available. There are several short films documenting the fact, as
Jacks 'the Dasant'
', from 1922, that shows a ball celebrated on HMS ''Hood'', with Brazilian, U.S., French, and Japanese sailors participating;
Interned Sailors
', from about 1914–1918, is a short film of unknown origin, depicting a group of sailors looking, while two play the accordion, and other dance together; or
male soldiers dancing together during WWI
', that shows a group of sailors dancing on a ship. is where the stag dances developed, and where men danced with each other, without it having any special meaning. Beemyn talks about the stag dances celebrated in San Francisco during the gold rush, in 1849, similar to frontier celebrations called Rocky Mountain Rendezvous. Thousands of young men arrived to the city from all continents, converting a small frontier town into an amusement city, where everything was possible. Thanks to the lack of women, and prejudices, men had fun with each other, also dancing. In these balls, the men that took the role of the woman usually wore a handkerchief knotted around their arm, but there were also those that dressed as women.

Drag ball

Drag balls in the United States can trace their origins to the debutante balls, quadroon balls, and costume parties at the end of the 19th century. In the beginning, they were simple parties where men dressed as women, and women dressed as men could go, and where two men could dance with each other; but there are also records of more exclusive balls by the 1880s, where homosexuals – men and women – could be counted in the hundreds, up to 500 same sex couples, that slowly waltzed the night away at the sound of an excellent orchestra.

In the 1920s these balls had already become big social events in the gay and lesbian world, where —mainly men— competed for the best costume. Often, they included a "parade of the fairies", to show the costumes, and the participants with the most spectacular gowns received a prize, in the form of money. The judges often were personalities from literature, and the show business. It was mainly in the black communities of New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans