"According to that infallible scholarly source wikipedia, belly dancing has nothing to do with femininity or gays or whatever at all. It's just a gender-neutral folk dance form, like line-dancing."
I have been studying middle-eastern dance for twenty years. Whether it was once a gender-neutral dance, I don't know. I find the whole idea of "gender-neutral" dance completely contrary to every experience I have had of dance. At any rate, you can't possibly watch any belly dance today and call it gender neutral.
I mean, did you watch Mira dance? Would you call that gender neutral? I have seen very few dancers who are as good as she is, but they all attempt to do what she does, which is hardly gender neutral, yet definitely "belly dance."
Joanna