Also, by adopting female characteristics and by adhering to strict gendered rules of sexual behavior, queens could attract allegedly "normal," straight sexual partners. Dressing as a "flaming queen" was a means of entering into the subculture of gay society. However, the risks were worthwhile for many. In his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Quentin Crisp recalls being stopped a number of times by police because of his effeminate appearance. Adopting such an appearance was dangerous, for it was risky to be overtly homosexual. At least three items of clothing had to be appropriate to the gender. In America it was illegal for men (and women) to cross dress unless attending a masquerade. Overt gay men, who did not want to go so far as to cross-dress, sometimes adopted the most obvious signifiers of female mannerisms and dress: plucked eyebrows, rouge, eye makeup, peroxide blond hair, high-heeled Women's Shoes blouses. The tradition has been carried on by gay drag performers such as American performers Divine and RuPaul and British television star Lily Savage. One of the greatest American drag performers was Charles Pierce, who began his career in the 1950s, and was best known for his impersonations of film stars such as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Cross-dressing performers, commonly known as drag queens, used women's clothes to parody straight society and create a gay humor. Similarly the Arts Balls of the 1950s in London offered an opportunity denied in everyday life. In the 1920s, the Harlem drag balls offered a safe space for gay men (and lesbians) to cross-dress. Male homosexuals continued to cross-dress in both public and private spaces throughout the nineteenth century. They wore "gowns, petticoats, head-cloths, fine laced shoes, furbelowed scarves, and masks some had riding hoods some were dressed like milk maids, others like shepherdesses with green hats, waistcoats, and petticoats and others had their faces patched and painted" (Trumbach, p. Many of the mollies wore women's clothing as both a form of self-identification and as a means of attracting sexual partners. London's homosexual subculture was based around inns and public houses where "mollies" congregated. By the eighteenth century, many cities in Europe had developed small but secret homosexual subcultures.
Even before the twentieth century, transvestism and cross-dressing among men were associated with the act of sodomy.