Everytime we switched partners, my new "leader" would give me a firm handshake and we would do introductions. This wasn't done with anyone else (I was paying attention).

Acab

(all cis are bastards)

That sounds like a really shit way to run a salsa class. In my class they rotate follows every few minutes during the lesson part and in the social dancing part everyone changes partners after every song, pretty much. Part of being a good dancer is knowing how to dance with anyone as long as there's good communication. If you only ever dance with same person, you'll only learn how to understand their body language and no one else's.

Also, in my classes all the instructors will lead or follow during the social part according to what their partner wants to do, including switching halfway through (which is pretty sick when it goes smoothly).

My dance classes explicitly referred to the followers as "ladies" 😭😭 it's so needlessly gendered

Yeah dance being so gendered is hard. I used to do a lot of swing dance, and learned to lead so that I could dance with this lady I had a crush on, but everyone just assumed I was a follow and pairing up was awkward. Eventually learned to follow just to make things easier for everyone. Being ambidancetrous is pretty cool too.

The dancing scene is very horny, yes.

I had a dance partner, we weren't together and never were interested in being together romantically. We just worked really really well in terms of movement. My ex and I worked TERRIBLY as dance partners, although theyre my ex so maybe that was portentious? Anyway, I was the leader but Im used to that in most other aspects of my life (not just dance or bedroom stuff), I was also the base in a base-flyer dynamic simply because Im so dang tall and used to be pretty strong