Hello, everybody, and welcome to season six, episode two of Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated

queers in history.

I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, and member of the board of the Shulis Museum in Berlin.

And I'm Hugh Lemmy, a writer and author.

Last week, we talked about Julie Dobiny, a 17th century French, bisexual, sword-fighting, gender-bending opera singer.

Who are we talking about this week, Hugh?

Well, I don't think there's any point in a guessing game today, because I'm almost certain

you won't have heard about today's subject.

So I'll just go straight into it.

Today's subject is an Argentinian photographer called Jorge Horacio Balbe Pinero.

But I want to start the story some 20 years before Balve's birth in 1920 and some 7,500

kilometres from his hometown of Buenos Aires.

It's November 1901, and in a suburb of Mexico City, a squad of

policemen have gathered to undertake a raid. It isn't bootleg liquor or political radicals they've

come to hunt for, but rather a party, a party of cross-dresses and queers. Bursing through the door,

they find allegedly 41 people dancing in couples. Half of them are dressed

in men dressed in males' clothing. The other half are either men or maybe trans women in women's

clothing. And the event was a dance, subsequently known as El Bale de las 41, or the Dance of the 41, a private secret ball held for queer people.

These events were not altogether uncommon in a city, although public display of homosexuality and gender

non-conforming behaviour was to be in Mexico at the time. Same-sex sexual behaviour wasn't illegal, but laws against public

decency and obscenity were. And the social influence of both, the Catholic church and a patriarchal

sort of macho culture contributed to the ostracization of homosexuals. As a result, gay life operated

...