ABSTRACT
One of the founders and visionary leaders of the Gay Games, Tom Waddell, started his athletic career with acrobatics and ballet dancing. Tom loved the physicality, beauty, discipline and creative adventure of ballet. As a teenager during the 1950s he choreographed his own dances and received professional tuition in Manhattan (Waddell and Schaap 1996: 28-29). Tom also enjoyed track and field athletics and American football. He found that the coordination and strength he developed from ballet could be applied successfully to his performance in these sports. In fact, he was so convinced of the value of dance that he tried to get his football mates interested. Both the players and their parents found this ‘too much’, too sissy and effeminate, definitely not what football players were all about. His brother Arthur had labelled Tom a faggot because of his ballet interests, and he already felt uncomfortable about his attraction to men. Like most young people he wanted acceptance and lots of friends. Fear of the homosexual stigma associated with dancing eventually got the better of him after a fellow male dancer who appeared very ‘effeminate’ propositioned him. In his biography he remembers this incident:
I didn’t want to be like that. I didn’t want to be effeminate. At that time homosexuals were generally thought of as men who wanted to be women. But I didn’t want to be a woman. I liked being male. I liked feeling male . . . I liked having muscles and strength. I was bothered by the idea that gayness meant femininity. I was confused by it, too.
