There have been gay and transgenders and cross dressers since the beginning of time imho. But they didn't try to force their way of life on anybody else. Go ahead and "come out". Just accept the fact that many people won't accept you and don't try to force it.
Of course in Shakespeare's time only men were allowed to act on stage, so Juliette, Lady Macbeth, Ophilia,.. and various unnamed serving maids in his plays were all performed by men or boys in women's clothing, and this was not played broadly for laughs.
I think this requirement was a hangover from the Christian church's dim view of actresses, picked up in Late Antiquity. If you read the word usually translated from the Latin or Greek as "actress" in a text from Late Antiquity, understand that this is not the correct translation into modern English. The correct translation is "porn star". (Hence the scandal whan Justinian and his best general, Belisarius, both married "actresses".)
