More on the same topic:

There was a period in the 1920s and 1930s when the lines betweeneffeminate and gay were not clearly drawn.  Indeed, there werevestiges of this still in the 1950s, when there were still a lotof swishy, effeminate gays about.  The construction worker modeldidn't take hold until about the 1970s.

Moreover, it wasn't until almost midcentury that sex researchersrealized that trannies were mostly straight.  Up to that time, thereasoning went, (a) women wear women's clothes; therefore trans-vestites are like women; (b) women have sex with men; thereforegays are like women; (c) hence gays crossdress and crossdressersare gay.  Nice reasoning, but dead wrong.  And in the popularmind, that reasoning is still widespread.  Stendhal says somewherethat it takes 70 years for a new idea to work its way down to thepopular level; I'd say his estimate was optimistic.

A Kinsey Institute publication estimates the number of gaycrossdressers to be the same (within measurement error) as thenumber of gays in the general population.  If you know anyprobability theory, you'll see that this means that the two kindsof behavior are independent.

Because of the popular confusion with the two groups, gays andtrannies are very uncomfortable bedfellows (if you'll pardon theword!).  About the only thing they have in common is the enemy.The Center in Manhattan has added Transgendered to its name, butthere's still a lot of resistance, & there probably will continueto be.

On top of all this, a ballet dancer has the added problem thatballet is associated with girls (Balanchine: "Ballet is woman"),so the popular conclusion is apt to be, *of course* he'seffeminate.  You just can't make some people see sense.

Terry Gal