Gay balls , cross-dressing balls , pansy balls , or drag balls were depending on the place, time, and type public or private balls that were celebrated mainly in the first third of the 20th century, where cross-dressing and ballroom dancing with same-sex partners was allowed.
By the s, the balls had become important cultural events for gays and lesbians, even attracting tourists. 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. 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 , [5] Catalonia , [6] the Basque Country [7] or Valencia , [8] 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. 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 , when a police raid discovered that her molly house was a gay brothel. Berlin's clandestine gay underground can be followed up to the 18th century, in spite of the persecution gays were suffering. In Prussia , Paragraph of the penal code, and later the introduction of Paragraph in the German penal code , with other laws for public scandal, and child protection , made the life of gays extremely difficult.
