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Different men are
motivated to
Cross-Dress for a variety of reasons including a desire
to achieve sexual excitement, to entertain, or to express a feminine sense
of self. |
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Vaudeville sensation Julian Eltinge in
costume (left) and in street clothes. |
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Miguel de Molina (1908-1993)
reinvented the Spanish flamenco performance, but his open gayness and
gender-bending stage persona provoked hostile reactions that plagued
his career. |
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José Peréz Ocaña
(1947-1983) was a fixture on the counter-cultural scene in Barcelona in
the 1970s. The Spanish drag performer and painter was the subject of a
milestone film in Spanish cinema by gay director Ventura Pons. |
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Charles Pierce
(1926-1999) was a self-proclaimed male actress who took an aggressive
stance against homophobia, believing that quick wit, a serious
attitude, and consummate acting skill could vanquish oppression. |
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Virginia Charles
Prince (b. 1913)
has been a pioneer in
organizing social and support groups for heterosexually-identified male
cross-dressers. |
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Sylvia Rivera
(1951-2002) is
a legendary veteran of the
Stonewall Riots. Rivera is notable
for helping to spark the event that ushered in the modern-day Gay
Rights Movement. |
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RuPaul (RuPaul
Andre Charles, b. 1960) is a six-foot five-inch tall African-American
drag queen who usually performs in a blonde wig. He has given drag a
new visibility by infusing it with gentleness and warmth. |
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Craig Russell
(1948-1990) was one of the major female impersonators of the 1970s and
1980s and one of the last of the school that actually sang or spoke
live in the voices of the ladies he impersonated. |
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José Sarria
(b. 1923?) -- also known as "the Widow Norton" -- is a San Francisco
singer, drag performer, and activist who exemplified gay pride before
the phrase was invented. As the founder of the International Court
System, he presided over the expansion of drag culture into a vast
network of charity balls and extravaganzas. |
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The Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence is an organization composed primarily of
gay men who appear publicly in drag, dressed as nuns. The Sisters
combine radical politics, street theater, and high camp and participate
in a host of charity functions and political events. |
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In
Film,
transvestism is often reduced to a mere joke, a harmless tease that
tacitly reassures us that people can change their clothes but not their
sexual identities. |
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Variety and
Vaudeville and related theatrical forms featured cross-dressed
acts, as well as routines that challenged prevailing gender
constructions. |
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Ed Wood
(1924?-1978)
was a transvestite film director who died a penniless alcoholic, but
posthumously became the center of one of cinema's most enduring cults. |
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Cross-Dressers: Gay
Male, Part 2 is the second half of a two part series.
Click
here to view Part 1. |
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