Some of the people there had hormones and augmented stuff, but they all had penises and they’d all get out there and lip-sync to Barbra Streisand and the latest thing. They were female impersonators and they were wonderful. I talked to a lovely, probably 5-foot-1 Hispanic boy-girl and bought him a drink. I asked, ‘Why do you do this?’ He said, ‘When I’m a dude on the street, I’m just a little Puerto Rican motherfucker. When I’m here, I’m a hot Latina mama.’ It struck me that it was about power. He was a pathetic excuse for a man on all kinds of levels. But by trying to become a woman, he gains power, and hence the moth — the larva turning into the butterfly, the whole thing blossoming — it was the same impetus as a female impersonator, but it became psychotic. It was donning the cloak of feminine power.”
— Ted Levine, speaking with Rolling Stone about visiting transvestite bars to research his character Buffalo Bill in the 1991 thriller The Silence of the Lambs
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