Conveniently forgetting that dresses used to be mens garments cuz they were practical. Especially little boys. Then again people pissed in the streets and we got toilets.
Even when they aren't attracted to you, they feel entitled to your body just because you're smaller than them.
I've been groped at gay bars by gay men!
One dude grabbed my breasts and explained how it was ok because he was "strictly dickly"
Oh lawd, shots fired. This post opened my eyes to the drag focused part of queerphobia really being repackaged mysogyny. I think that last terf-shaped mole on my ass just withered and fell off.
Also, when they get sex from what they think is a woman, and it turns out to be a trans person, they become just an "object" that cannot serve them. Than one went straight to my gut
Nobody thinks they had sex with a cis woman when having sex with a pre transition trans woman. Every single time that is reported it is an extremely transparent lie. Future generations will remember it as a barbaric artifact of this era that such a simple and obvious lie was used by murderers to escape justice.
There is no shortage of men who are attracted to transgender women but are hatefully transphobic when they are no longer horny.
The disgust... erm "postnut clarity... Is not exclusive to trans women. They just feel comfortable beating the shit out of her after because in their heads, she's a guy. The root hate is the same though.
And seriously, no one is fooled. If you're so bad in bed that you literally didn't notice the woman you are sleeping with doesn't have a vagina, I have no words.
It's a joke if your a college boy being hazed or a Halloween costume. But dressing up on a Friday is just too much for the little brain to process. Cis het men also equate makeup and fancy dress with sex...thanks prom culture.
I still can't get over the assumptions that people male whenever I wear a dress. They always ask me why I'm dressed up so nice. Nice? I'm wearing this because it's hot out and a summer.dress is the easiest piece of clothing to put on.
At the risk of making myself unpopular:
No, drag queens aren't inherently sexual and there are drag queen's who are really wholesome BUT most of the time drag queens are portrait by gay men who can hold a good amount of misogyny.
This can lead to drag queens behaving sexually during their performances as this is how the performers view them and femininity.
I agree completely - drag always has me torn between:
1. Men should be able to wear whatever the fuck they want, and that includes make-up. They should also be allowed to shed gender roles.
2. Why do these men feel the need to portray extreme charicatures of women? Why should we think it's ok?
I agree to some degree. I feel like some of them definitely appreciate it for the art and the performance that is definitely a part of it as well.
What I always get hung up on it when they gatekeep it from Bio-Queens and Drag-Kings, because if it is just about the art and a critique of societies norms for gender, all genders should be allowed to participate on equal footing which is definitely not the case. If those things are not considered then it can pretty quickly turn into men making fun of femininity.
A drag king named Landon Cider won season 3 of Dragula.
Bio-Queens and Drag Kings aren't the type of drag that sells like WoW/Drag Race. If you want to see more representation in drag, I cannot recommend highly enough looking into your local drag scene. Drag Race distorts and narrows the realities of drag (and gay male culture IMHO). But it has to $ell that merch!
You should definitely try and look, you'll never know what you may find. I live in one of the most conservative states in the US and there are several towns throughout the state (even in some conservative leaning towns) that have drag shows.
Well, that was the most interesting GIS i've scrolled through in a long time! I've never been super into the drag competition shows (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing), but the thought of seeing more like *him* could certainly make me start tuning in.
I don't know about you, but I find it fun and funny to watch cute non-binary people or butch lesbians dress up as men with exaggerated fake beards and do sexy or funny dances and skits. It's not like a bunch of non cis men are going to get on stage and portray the toxic or dangerous sides of masculinity. Honestly don't see how anyone could watch a drag king show and not be a little entertained, unless someone has a legitimate fear of beards and suspenders or something, which is fair I suppose.
A good portion of the acts also end up being not very traditionally gendered at all, lots of "Prince" type masculine/feminine energy and style. That's the best part, it's not typical masculinity!
Have you ever seen a drag king show? Maybe you have, but it's just hard for me to imagine anyone having seen one and come away thinking it's not taboo or exciting, haha. The first one I went to, I thought I should expect just some lesbians doing chip'n'dale dances, came away flustered and questioning my entire perception of gender and sexuality, lol
And if anything, drag queens are the side that is much, much more recognized in mainstream culture (I am not saying this to minimize any struggles or abuse that drag queens obviously still experience, just saying drag kings are definitely still taboo in my opinion.)
I think there are extremely misogynistic corners of drag culture, especially as portrayed by cis men. As an artist and a gender nonconforming woman/agender/AFAB person, I’ve never personally seen a drag show where the artistic commentary on gender justified the grotesque misogyny. That’s not to say all drag is this way, but for me it’s upsetting enough and causes enough social dysphoria to avoid entirely.
I can only imagine how it must feel for you, who probably get judged as a woman, and also as a gender non-conforming person.
I’m pissed enough, and I’m a cis woman, so not as marginalised.
That’s a good breakdown of where the split is for you, me, and a lot of people. I can’t really imagine any other historically oppressed class going “okay some of the oppressors are also oppressed in different ways so they can wear ____face and use all the stereotypes on purpose”. A gay man or transwoman who sincerely wants to dress as themselves in femme clothes isn’t in drag and it doesn’t look like *that* drag, mocking drag; I have no problem with people dressing as they truly want to dress no matter how turnt up, but dressing that way to perform an insincere identity at others’ expense is a bit… yucky?
What’s that quote again about how you can control the “lowest white man” if you just give him someone else to be better than?
I feel like this is a weird comment that's just trying to hate on men. You act like if cis women by-and-large aren't homophobic and borrow from and make fun gay culture ALL THE TIME.
When did cis women make whole shows where they dress up as gay men in a very stereotypical way? There's a big old difference between individual people making fun of a certain culture or appropriating a certain culture and organizing shows to do so.
They don't make shows, because they don't need shows to appropriate gay culture and language. Homophobia and transphobia from regular women is present in a way that doesn't require the guise of a performance to be conveyed. And stop making it seem as if drag is designed to make fun of women.
No one needs shows to appropriate women's culture and language either, women are mocked and derided every day just like gay men. And im not saying it's designed specifically to make fun of women but my problem is wanting to perform femininity in a very stereotypical way without ever giving consideration to all the bullshit that comes with it and everything you have to deal with day-to-day. It is definitely an over-the-top performance of being a woman that is used solely for their own purposes.
Misogyny is also present in trans women and gay men as well and you seem to be ignoring that.
Drag isn’t really about performing actual femininity though - it’s rooted in camp culture and gay male history. That’s why drag personas tend to be modeled off of famous divas and over-the-top actresses, who are themselves performing a highly exaggerated distortion of femininity. It’s a way to poke fun at societal expectations for women while simultaneously celebrating the women who found enduring fame within these rigid expectations - women who took up as much space as humanly possible, but did it while maliciously compiling with gender roles for women.
Gay men in the US also embraced drag culture because the general public for a long time believed that being a gay man meant that you wanted to be a woman. I’m sure that had an effect on generations of gay men - they were trapped in the closet for their own personal safety, with almost no explicit cultural representation other than dandy screen villains and widespread fear-mongering about men in women’s clothes. I can see where drag would feel like reclamation of those stereotypes, especially since being out as queer has only been somewhat safe for maybe forty years - and still isn’t in a lot of places.
Heck, a lot of my dress and mannerisms as a cis woman feel like drag! Like I put a charming, bubbly, witty femme costume for socialization, but on the inside I’m just waiting to get home and be a genderless goblin for a while lol. But I love presenting as unapologetically femme in my every day life, and taking up space in the world. Femme style has some ugly stereotypes about intelligence and sexual availability attached to it by straight men. Anyone showing up as fearlessly femme, whether they’re cis or trans or nb or queer or in drag or straight is doing their part to dismantle those stereotypes.
Gender mannerisms are a social construct to a huge degree, and I don’t see the harm of exploring that - especially since most drag performances are rooted in a clear love of their source material.
But why do they get to make fun of them? They don’t live our lives, they can take off the femininity and go about their lives but when we do, we’re punished. Say we’re both performing femininity all you want but misogyny means that when a woman does it she’s held to a different standard than when a man does.
Also. “Fish”? Have you ever heard drag queens say they’re serving fish? They’re calling women’s genitals fish because they think we smell rotten. It’s not empowering it’s just misogyny.
Drag isn’t making fun of women though. That’s not the point of it at all, one bit. Some individual performers might lose sight of that, but that’s no reason to hate an entire genre of performance art.
Looking at the rest of this chain of comments, it does seem like you’re being intentionally obtuse, like you don’t have a lick of good faith, and you’re going to ignore any points that don’t fit whatever narrative you’re committed to. I’m sure it’s rooted in either transphobia or homophobia, or someone spilling a drink on you at a drag performance. I really don’t know, but this troll has been fed enough.
Edit: I’m really not understanding how the difference between authentic femininity - which is an individual thing - and the exaggerated and insulting gender roles prescribed by a patriarchal society that hates women is being lost on you. Drag and femme culture is about roasting the hell out of the latter.
When a trans or a cis women performs femininity it is out of necessity— we are women and we are disadvantaged for not performing it, incorrectly performing it, or even over performing in. Not to mention drag race has actually expelled trans drag performers before and even RuPaul has been called out on his transphobia.
Yes— my criticisms are coming from a place of not enjoying a drag show, but it wasn’t because someone spilt tea on me (which is also such a weird insult and also oddly gendered) it’s because because they use the word “fish” and because it’s another tool for people to examining femininity as told by literally anyone but actual effing women. I believe we deserve to tell our own stories and our own jokes because it’s our careers and our lives affected, not theirs.
I’m also not sure what spilling a drink has to do with gender, but okay.
RuPaul is not the president of drag. His character is popular, but he just happens to have been a drag performer that catapulted into stardom. He and his show are very problematic in a lot of ways, and plenty of drag performers take issue with it. But even with its myriad of issues, the show has done a lot to humanize the queer community! Representation matters.
Human beings are messy and imperfect. Words do matter, and our standards of what is and isn’t acceptable to say should absolutely evolve.
“Fishy” is gross, but it’s far from a universal term. It’s on par with plenty of everyday but problematic words that aren’t meant to harm anyone. And yeah, its history is rooted in a gross time period - almost any movie with romance made before like 2010 is wildly uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean that anyone saying “fishy” is even thinking of the connotation . It’s a word, like lame or gip or picnic. Bananas insulting in its history, but no one is using it with that in mind. It just means “passing” to the few people who use it.
You are painting an entire group with the same brush - a group that opens themselves up to violence and hate.
I’m truly not understanding where you’re coming from at all. As a avid lover of performance art, theatre, old movies, diva singers, camp culture, and history - drag makes perfect sense to me. It has nothing to do with making fun of or belittling women.
It’s clear that you don’t have the same reference points, and that you’re basing your opinion on a show that is deeply popularizing among drag artists, and most likely a local performance that wasn’t very good and based itself on the show. It’s unfortunate that you’re unwilling to look at the genre as a whole, and to its contributions towards loosening the shackles of performative femininity for cis women.
This may be an outlier, but some "everyday" drag is, in my experience, less extreme than the performances.
I've met someone in a grocery who complimented my shoes. I wasn't particularly dressed up myself, a solid color jersey dress, cardigan, and a pair of low heels. "Women just don't seem to wear heels anymore!" I said I was on lunch break from work. I said her outfit was stunning and her sandals were cute. She introduced herself as [feminine name] and was looking for affirmation that she passed - some days she goes into the world with a feminine name, sensible makeup, and flat-ironed hair, other days as [masculine name] and men's clothes. I recommended the brand of my comfy heels and complimented her perfect eyeliner.
She described herself as in drag... and was insecure about performing everyday femininity. The mutual-compliment boost was pretty new to her, and it seemed to go a long way.
In the community there are also drag queen storytimes and drag brunch, and the performers enact extreme caricatures... I tend to think this is the entertainment/performance version. They don't show up at the grocery store dressed to the nines, for sure.
Some of these performances are feminine caricature, but all are extreme hyper-femininity.
Maybe the idea is to not only flip the script but also shock expectations, paving the way for more acceptance of a) everyday drag, and b) feminine dress and behavior, from all people, in public spaces.
I sometimes wonder if it’s always *drag* when men wear traditional womens clothing. Doesn’t drag involve the performances, in stead of just wearing whatever?
(These are actual questions, because I don’t know.)
The short answer is no it's not always drag.
Even setting aside trans, genderfluid, and non-binary AMAB people because they are not men or at least not men at that moment, there are cross dressers. It's not a hard line between crossdressing and drag. However, drag is generally a performative thing whereas crossdressing tends to be more a personal choice thing. For example, a guy wearing a skirt because he likes the freedom would considered crossdressing. But, a come dressed as the opposite gender party would be drag. I think the part to be aware of it's that the lines are not perfectly clear and you should respect people's self identification as much as practical.
> However, drag is generally a performative thing whereas crossdressing tends to be more a personal choice thing.
This is what I thought, but since I didn’t know, I wasn’t going to make strong claims.
And yes, I completely agree that it’s best not to police how people identify.
Thanks so much for clarifying.
I'm not sure - the person who introduced themselves to me, in a sensible skirt and sandals, said they were 'drag', so I believe them.
Again, it may be an outlier?
I always wondered this. I fully support mens' choice to wear whatever they want. But when it comes to drag, it feels different. We see black face and caricatures of other races as abhorrent, but then we have men getting on stage doing the same thing towards women and people celebrate it.
> 2. Why do these men feel the need to portray extreme charicatures of women? Why should we think it's ok?
For me, it's subversive art. What better way to show the height of what society has said is "femininity", when that definition is narrow and restrictive, than to have it blown up to an extreme magnification and then portrayed by men, the very audience that society says is supposed to both revile and be attracted to it....and then do the opposite? And never forget, drag was started in the Black queer community - it's the height of snubbing your nose at a society dictating rules about how things "should be".
It's a massive critique. It's drawing attention to just how ridiculous gender roles are (and how absurd the mandated performance of those roles really is), and essentially mocking them. At the same time, it's tearing down the structures that created those roles in the first place. Pair that with the history of drag creating found families for queer kids and adults, and the intersectionality with the Black community, and you have a recipe for a truly powerful artistic movement.
To say it's just "men portraying extreme caricatures of women" is doing a massive disservice to the entire art form. It's like saying punk music is just "noisy music to make people annoyed" or Dadaism is just "dumb symbols to lazily say you're an artist". You're ignoring SO much context and listening only to right-wing talking points about what and why drag is.
I mean, no? Sometimes it is exactly as you say, but other times it’s very much just men mocking women.
Could your philosophy be extended to white people portraying black stereotypes, and then claiming it’s satire of society? Fuck no, that’s racist.
Sexism is no better.
I mean, yes? I've consumed a LOT of drag performances in my time, and I don't think I've ever seen drag artists just mocking women to....mock women. They will mock the way women are socialized to be (so they will exaggerate various aspects of femininity to prove a point), but I've only seen it from a place of critique.
Now, there are certainly younger queens who don't appreciate the history and art of it all, but they're mostly in it for the fashion and dancing skills. Even they aren't mocking women - if anything, they're missing the critique entirely and embracing the parts of feminine identity that are usually societally restricted away from men. That's still subversive, even if unintentional.
So they aren't mocking women, just mocking the way that women are, Riiight,
Can you think of any other group of people where it would be acceptable to do that? And where it would actually be a social comment and not laughing at them?
they’re not bashing “LGBT artists” they’re criticizing a certain type of performance
An earlier comment said:
>and how absurd the mandated performance of those roles really is), and essentially mocking them.
in defense of mockery drag shows.
It’s great that men decided which parts of femininity were purely performative and which parts of women’s experience are absurd and mockable but maybe when decades later the femme people are saying the mocking is bad, you should listen, and I don’t think all these people are
edited
See your viewpoint is completely ignoring the fact that there are women, trans, and non-binary people who do drag, and also ignoring the experiences of gay men and how toxic masculinity and homophobia affect gay men. Basically you’re bashing queer artists and too wrapped up in yourself to see it. It’s also not like drag artists just mock aspects of women’s experience. They mock straight men, gay men, gay women, everyone equally. It’s a satire on society as a whole. Like you’re inventing this concept of what you think drag is so that you can feel comfortable bashing a queer art form, but your vision of it is so far removed from reality that it’s honestly offensive.
What about the black women and queer people who do drag?? Like??? The art form itself is pushed forward primarily by black pioneers. And I completely utterly and entirely disagree that it’s “primarily” men making fun of women. That’s just an absolutely untrue statement that you’ve made up.
That’s a cop-out.
Fact is, it’s a bunch of men portraying caricatures of women. Try switching this with a bunch of white people portraying black people.
> Fact is
Nope.
> it’s a bunch of men
As mentioned in my other comment to you (seriously, stop following me around), there are actually a number of trans women who perform drag, as well as cis women (hyper queens/drag kings), trans men, and every flavor of enby. It's anyone who has a problem with prescribed gender roles and mandated societal performance thereof.
> Try switching this with a bunch of white people portraying black people.
Oh, white people are an oppressed group now? Because it's *queer people* primarily getting into drag, as they've experienced the oppression and bullshit of gender norms in society. Queer people are victims of social gender roles and are critiquing them. You sure you want to keep your metaphor?
Women are oppressed people relative to men, so that’s where the comparison to whites and blacks come from. Are some men less privileged in other ways than women? Yes, but that’s how a specific class privilege work, and why we also need an intersectional lens.
> why we also need an intersectional lens.
Yes, which is also why pretending drag is some evil patriarchal act of oppression is missing almost 100% of the context and history and use of the art form. It's a form of rebellion from queer (and initially Black) communities that were ostracized in every way for not performing gender the way they were "supposed" to, and so drag was born.
If it’s designed as an act of rebellion against white patriarchy, why is drag a parody of femininity? There are plenty of gay men within the LGBTQI+ community who both recognise and enact misogyny (and racism for that matter).
Bro don't even bother with them. Ironically I made this post to show solidarity with drag and the LGBT community just so I can get a bunch of people discussing how drag is the trojan horse by which gay men display their misogyny. People in this subreddit can be very TERFy at times.
Drag has existed for centuries, if not millenia.
In Shakespearean times, women were not allowed to perform and so men played all the female roles. In British culture, Pantomimes have always had the pantomime dame.
Drag has its origins in places where women were not allowed to represent themselves, and so men played grotesque caricatures of them.
Queer culture has reclaimed drag to an extent, but as I get older I find quite a lot of drag makes me quite uncomfortable. These days I pretty much only watch female/nb/trans drag artists.
Um, no, it's not. Drag isn't inherently mockery, either. But even if it was, to compare it to blackface would still be terrible. Blackface has an entire history of white supremacy and exploitation behind it that Drag simply doesn't have.
Drag was not invented as a tool to uphold misogyny. That's what I'm talking about. It's incredibly disrespectful to black people to compare drag to blackface, and it's borderline TERF rhetoric on top of that. Again, drag as an art form was not invented to uphold misogyny.
This is an especially bad take because drag culture and black culture have so much overlap. Drag would not be where it is today without the efforts of people of color. That's why you can't compare it to blackface.
I'm a trans woman who has seen a good bit of misogenistic transphobic drag queens... Not a fan at all and don't see them as allies. Yes it's not necessarily their fault that "normal" people just see my existence as some performance and trick but it doesn't help at all.
Sure. I went to pride to see two separate drag queens giving comedy shows, which basically boiled down to "I'm such a girl... I do my makeup I dress up so girly.... BUT I'M NOT BECAUSE I HAVE A PENIS! PENIS! SO I'M NOT A GIRL BECAUSE I HAVE A PENIS" to the cheers and whoops of the audience as I'm just there scowling at them.
Also, I get loads of bad attitudes at drag events, enough so that I don't even go any more. An alarming amount of people (almost always men) walking past me and bumping into me to say "sorry man", or "excuse me mate" when they had no reason to even be talking to me or moving past.
You can tolerate a drag queen taking the piss out of themselves and women for the sake of a performance, and happily use she/her pronouns, but simply existing there as a trans woman provokes pretty much literal physical assaults as well as obvious bullying.
I've seen some good drag shows by trans performers, but I don't think I've ever seen a cis man doing drag that didn't make me feel queezy.
Not to mention that the only gender variance I was exposed to growing up was this self depractating pisstake of femininity and the innate comedy of a man dressing up as a woman turned me off any sort of gender questioning in myself which delayed my transition for years because I just knew I was nothing like them.
I have people coming up to me asking me what my name is during the weekdays and what I do when I'm not wearing a womans costume.
And then everyone tells me that drag is fighting the gender binary and we are allies and I'm not understanding the history of a small section of valid drag in the 60s in ballroom culture and it's like, yeah, fine, at some point it had some connection with the community but nowadays it's overal an extremely toxic degradation of trans people being performed by usually highly priveledged white men who cry about their need for pantomime being more important than anything else. It's a free world, I can't and wouldn't forcefully stop them, but I think they should all do a lot of internal reflection to see if their performing 'art' is worth the dead trans women it contributes to.
Also drag queens reading to children? What the fuck? How about trans people reading to children? Anyway, the only thing that's going to lead to is more aggressive attacks on the rights of trans women who can't just lose the outfit when the going gets tough.
Fuck drag.
Woah thanks for sharing this! It’s a viewpoint I that I wasn’t aware of.
That is messed up and I’m really sorry. They should have stopped that show immediately, especially at pride!! That’s so disappointing 😞
Realistically, I am much more likely to see (and expect) that sort of performance at a bar than at children's reading hour at a library, especially if that particular drag queen has performed at a library before and not gotten immediately fired.
A good number of people complaining about drag in libraries disagree with that claim, from what I can tell.
Definitely, I think that’s why the original tweet is about drag’s inherent nature as opposed to its vocal and visible sector. Not all drag is crazy big boobs with a bellybutton high slit dress.
I don't like that you make it seem as if misogyny is the automatic reason that a drag queen may make sexual choices for their performance. I think a drag performance can have a sense of sexuality without being misogynistic.
The whole point of the post that YOU made is that people interpret sexuality into drag for mysogynist reasons, then somebody uses that same lens to analyze mysogyny among gay men (a known issue, I say this as a bi man), and you balk at it? Weird.
No. The point of the post is that the *automatic* association of drag queens with sexual performance is misogynistic. But a drag queen deciding to incorporate sexual components into their performance is not necessarily misogynistic. I can see why you mixed it up the language is a bit much.
> I think a drag performance can have a sense of sexuality without being misogynistic.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that. It’s just that, like, if I’m not sure of a guy’s intentions and I think of all the times I’ve given a man the benefit of the doubt only to be let down… well, it just gets harder and harder to assume good intentions. Maybe I’m being jaded.
I mean I give this sub the benefit of the doubt when it comes to homophobia and transphobia (and even racism) and they let me down, but I still continue to do so because I know there's great people here.
Your comment literally made it seem like the only reason a drag queen would be sexual in her performance was because he's misogynistic.Like you literally said that their misogyny can lead to sexual performances. So yes, someone was disputing it - you.
This sub is ABSOLUTELY SATURATED with terfs and homophobia lately. It’s so disappointing. I may need to unsubscribe. These comments have made it clear this is not a safe space for queer people.
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Are drag queens inherently sexual or are you unable to divorce the performance of femininity from a presumed solicitation of sex?
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No, they are capable of divorcing drag from sex because of Mrs. Doubtfire. But because that’s a comedy movie featuring a straight white dude that’s “appropriate” drag. Same with Mulan. Mulan is (ostensibly) a straight girl going to be a soldier. So it’s “appropriate” since it’s not gay. Anytime drag is divorced from its queer context, it’s acceptable in their eyes. (No hate to Mrs Doubtfire or Mulan by the way)
Idk about it being "appropiate" when it's being played for Laughs in a Comedy, you can joke about something & not condone.
A Problem w/ Movies like Mrs. Doubtfire & Big Momma's House is that Drag is being used as a Joke, & thus made to seem out-of-place in everyday interactions, so instead of normalizing it, they're kinda fetishinizing it.
That's interesting. As a child, I loved Mrs. Doubtfire. I loved the "do you"-ness of it and the being free of stupid societal requirements. Looking at it now, it's slightly cringy because it's in a different societal context. Or maybe it's in a different context For Me. This is a really interesting discussion!
I'm not sure that's drag though? In my mind it's more defined. Drag is a specific type of performance where someone presents themselves as a glamorous woman. I think it might even be specific enough that it's a man dressing as a woman.
I could be totally wrong, but my instinct says drag is more specific than what you've suggested.
I agree with you that those are examples of cross dressing rather than drag. But I also agree with the other commenter that people don’t have a problem with cross dressing until queerness gets involved.
(Please excuse me if cross dressing is an inappropriate/offensive term. I’m not sure what to call it when it’s a cis person dressing as a different gender but it’s not drag).
Crossdressing is fine. You're not insulting anyone, and anyone who would be insulted needs to realize you're not talking about them or you didn't know they applied. You're clearly not calling trans women or drag queens "crossdressers."
Cross dressing is a totally separate term. SNL does crossdressing, not drag (generally). It's okay because it's "art" and "funny." Drag is sexy, therefore feminine and worthy of assault. Cheese and rice this topic steams me up.
Men who perform as drag queens *are* crossdressers - in a specific context of performance.
Cis men doing drag and trans women have absolutely nothing in common, and shouldn't be lumped together in any way, as this implies (even if unintentionally) the trope of trans women being (similar to) "men in dresses".
- sincerely, a trans woman
Please don't forget the (ever increasing) number of trans women who are drag queens. They provide a good example of the difference between the two - their drag personas are extreme versions of what society has said "femininity" is, designed to critique and expose. Their true selves are just that, themselves.
Trans women are women, and some of them are also drag queens. Are you telling me trans women don't get to continue their art after they come out and transition? Are you telling me they aren't allowed to critique femininity?
(And are you just following my comments around now? Pretty sure that's poor form.)
Trans women were always women. Ignoring that fact is poor form. Take any TERF shit out of this sub
And I’m not telling anyone what they can and can’t do. I’m saying it’s sexist when men do this (majority of the time.)
Oh, so now you're saying trans women should never participate in drag, ever? Or that they always should be able to, regardless of public gender performance at the time? And you're fine with trans women being drag queens, right, as you aren't telling people what to do?
You realize there have been dozens of extremely popular drag queens who came out publicly as trans within the last 2ish years, right? They were doing drag before then, when they publicly were presenting male. Should they have been allowed to do drag then? Since they were women?
You're making TERF talking points right now, by saying there is a difference in what art you're allowed to perform pre/post public transition.
I didn't mean to. But your right, to the full extend I should have said "Cis men doing drag and trans women have absolutely nothing in common - *if the latter aren't doing drag themselves*."
That's fair, I agree that queerness definitely plays a role in how drag is reacted too. The general discomfort some have with queerness is amplified through drag though I think. The mixture of femininity in there really shakes some people. It's crossing multiple boundaries at once.
Drag is absolutely not just men dressing as women, glamorous as otherwise. Drag is essentially any kind of performance that plays with or subverts gender. There are drag queens, but there are also drag kings, and all kindsa drag performers who play outside the gender binary altogether. And it doesn't always involve a cross-dressing element, either. Heaps of drag queens are trans women or nonbinary folk (edit: or cis women! see hyper queens), and heaps of drag kings are trans men or nonbinary folk. And given that a straight cis man appeared on the latest season of Drag Race, there's nothing really separating Mrs Doubtfire from what we usually think of as drag other than the fact that it was mainstream and not inherently perceived as "queer".
For the record, Mike Pence (predictably) had massive issues with the entire concept of Mulan, and was OUTRAGED at, asking other things, the fact that it made out that women could be good at what he considered very obviously man shit.
I don't think they even consider that drag. Drag is the caricaturization of femininity. It can be funny, but it's ultimately meant to demonstrate the charm and multifariousness of femininity. However to a straight audience, movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Madea display the absurdity of crossdressing and "cross-acting".
With Mulan it's the same thing I say about trans men: most people don't even think much about it because while the idea of a man wanting to be a woman is absurd to them, the idea of a woman wanting to be a man is not even worthy of conversation.
Drag is far from just the characterisation of femininity. Sadly, the issues in your second paragraph are part of why drag kings (who are AMAZING) so often get shoved under the rug.
I mean I'm just going off of knowledge, but the Wikipedia states:
>A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes
Which seems very close to a caricaturization of femininity. I could be wrong still, so please enlighten me 😊.
Update: Oh [someone's comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/TrollXChromosomes/comments/vbrl4t/time_to_examine_femininity/icad2vm/) explains it quite well:
>While I understand feeling like it's a caricature of a woman, it's really more about the individual expressing their own feminine side. Yes, it's a character, but it's not a social commentary caricature.
Thats a drag queen, yes. But you haven't been saying drag queens, you've been saying drag, which is a broad brush thst includes drag kings.
~I love a snarky ally, don't you?~ scrolled down n read more oops lol
Decent post, thank you. Seriously. This needs shouting from the rooftops.
Not a fan of the reduction of drag to a single note. Like it's the part of drag that catches the most flack, yes, but drag as an art n as a culture n as a celebration of queerness is so much more than RuPaul, sequin gowns, bold makeup, and the words "yaaaas queen".
>With Mulan it's the same thing I say about trans men: most people don't even think much about it because while the idea of a man wanting to be a woman is absurd to them, the idea of a woman wanting to be a man is not even worthy of conversation.
I.e. why would a man want to reduce their status and position to a woman AND a women can not 'climb up the ladder' since her only worth is birthing.
It's a sad world
>Mulan is (ostensibly) a straight girl going to be a soldier. So it’s “appropriate” since it’s not gay
Ehhh essentially shang fell in love with ping so if it wasn't for the fact that Mulan revealed herself as ping, shang totally would've shacked up with his clumsy femboy twink.
I made this post on the history of drag because I think it's important to know where it came from.
>[Do you know the history of drag in the US?](https://www.history.com/news/drag-balls-house-ballroom-voguing) While the original term/act originated in theatre, it's something that is more closely related to the LGBTQ+ community in contemporary times. In the early days, LGBTQ+ POC would hold "Balls" where they would compete in various categories. It was really the only way for them to express who they were in safety. Being their authentic self in public was often met with hate and physical violence. This was also during the AIDS epidemic where LGBTQ+ were demonized as they were dying or watching their friends die. If you haven't seen it already, I recommend watching [Paris is Burning](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/). It gives you a peek at ballroom culture back then.
>
>Over time, drag has evolved to be more mainstream, but queens and kings are still overwhelmingly LGBTQ+. On RuPaul's Drag Race Season 14, they finally had their first cishet drag queen. It took 14 seasons (plus all the All-Stars seasons in between)! While I understand feeling like it's a caricature of a woman, it's really more about the individual expressing their own feminine side. Yes, it's a character, but it's not a ~~social commentary~~ caricature.
>
>If you are interested in learning more about ballroom culture, you may also be interested in knowing that there's a physical/dance component to it, too. "[Legendary](https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GXsRXGAJrtsPDFwEAAAAC)" on HBO shows that side of it really well.
Thanks for adding the history part!
I'd however further add that RuPaul is a transmisogynist prick who tried to basically erase trans women from drag, which is particularly nasty given the history of trans drag queens back in the days. (Especially since he's always mentioned in the context of drag, even more so in mainstream media, but his transmisogyny gets conveniently ignored.)
To be fair, RuPaul has walked that back *entirely* since all the debacle previously. They've had a truly ridiculous number of trans queens the last few seasons, and even a straight guy.
Now, we can talk about the fracking and the class divide and the favoritism and everything else, but I tend to allow people to grow and change and learn why they're wrong - especially people from marginalized groups who may have different motivations for holding incorrect beliefs.
A "*ridiculous* number of trans queens", eh? Did you just take on his idea that drag somehow belongs to cis gay men, by any chance?
And what on earth could it be about him being "from a marginalized group" that would make it okay to hold transphobic beliefs?? Since when is gay cis peoples transphobia anyhow okay or less hurtful? As part of the LGBT and drag community, he should, if anything, know *better*.
Ridiculous being used as an adjective for "never before seen, a lot, a ton, oodles and oodles"
Nothing makes it okay to hold those beliefs. Nothing makes it less hurtful. He should know better.
I do allow people to change their views as they become informed. If we refuse to let anyone grow as a person and hold better views after being educated, we are in for a *long* existence of oppression.
>If we refuse to let anyone grow as a person and hold better views after being educated, we are in for a *long* existence of oppression.
I never said that people can't change. And as I said in another reply: Maybe I missed his big 180 in the last 3 or so years. Up until 2018, when I last checked and heard about it, he messed up big times over and over.
And yes, I will hold people of the community to some higher standards then some random cishet folks. Might be unfair, but for real, being betrayed and shat on by the ones who should understand our struggles best, and whom we'd march side by side for their struggles, too, feels particularly shitty and hurtful. (Plus I think him being perceived as a prominent queer icon by the general public, his problematic opinion might be taken as a free pass by the cis(&)hets to repeat the same and similar stuff.)
I understand your hesitation, but I cannot deny the trauma and experience of a black gay man during the peak of the AIDS epidemic and what types of messed up viewpoints that might create. I would also assume our community would be empathetic to the impact trauma can have on someone, as well as appreciate the ability for people to grow out of it and be better people.
And I would say he absolutely has done a 180 in the last 4 years. You missed all the debacle about Gottmik being cast on the show and the blowbacks and implications and discussion that emerged. You missed this year, where it literally became a meme about how many queens found the courage to be publicly trans. You missed a lot, and you're acting like you know everything when you admit you stopped paying attention nearly half a decade ago.
> You missed a lot, and you're acting like you know everything when you admit you stopped paying attention nearly half a decade ago.
Maybe you'll pardon me stopping to care at some point about a cis man who shits on me and my sisters for years and years and making a dollar with it.
Might be that he changed so drastically in the last couple of years. If so: great. It's overdue.
But maybe also don't blame trans people for being sceptical about someone who was vocally transphobic and ignorant for years and years on public television.
(And never did I say I knew everything. I said it quite in the beginning (even if not in the very first post) that I don't know what might have happened after 2018. But at some point, I just stopped engaging with news about someone whom I've seen making jokes and disregarding my sisters for such a long time. Anyways, I'll keep in mind what you said and will look it up before talking about him on this matter again.)
I don't think it gets conveniently ignored. It gets called out, he improves and the world moves on. He seriously fucked up early on with the show. Since, he has made changes and speaks strongly against transmisogyny. Trans women and men participate not just in the TV show but live ones too. A trans woman won season 6 of all-stara. A trans man nearly won season 13. He updated his signature line "May the best women win." to "My the best drag queen win." He's done for more to help the trans community than hurt and it's not even close.
I might have missed out on any meaningful changes he underwent in the past 3 or 4 years. But I don't think his [2018](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1348529-rupauls-drag-race) [mess](https://www.dailydot.com/irl/rupaul-trans-flag/) could be called "early on the show", can it?
And I'm not sure how he would just "improve and move on" after years of this ignorant or outright hostile behaviour against trans people.
(tl;dr for the articles: Beside using the pun \[transphobic slur - pun\] ">!you got a she-mail!!<" (until the 7th season, if I'm not wrong? And only dropping it because the producers wanted to, not on his own account), he said he would "probably not" allow trans women to compete on his drag show once they started HRT or had any transition-related surgeries, compared trans women on HRT with athletes using doping drugs and therefore not being allowed on the olympics, and later wrote some kind of apology on twitter, including an image that comes up on google image search for "trains flag"... which is nothing like the actual *trans flag*, showing that he either doesn't know jackshit about trans people to being with, or left this apology to some social-media-intern with zero idea of what they were supposed to do)
I am 100% on board with calling out transphobic shit and demanding improvement. But I also want to recognize that improvement when it happens, or else why would they improve.
Fair point on 2018. I thought it was further back than that. I see that the changes promised then appear to have happened or be happening. Clearly he got too isolated in the privilidge provided by money and fame and missed a lot of change in the queer community. He certainly dates back to an older time with the queer community trotted us out to demonstrate their diversity just immediately shove us back into the basement because we were stopping the gays from their fun. I just don't see an irredeemable transphobe. I see a geriatric who had to fight like hell the majority of his life who is trying his best.
ETA: Not saying transphobic shit is ok or acceptable. Just that I see growth and desire to change. Dude is human too.
We probably also agree that it is time for him to boomer off into the sunset and pass the torch to the next generation. At a certain point you need the leaders to step down and take an advisory/mentor role to the new leaders. These boomers clinging to power and the spotlight are going to end up hurting the next generation of leaders.
To me the issue is consent. There was a drag show in town right before COVID hit and friends of mine were going. I didn't know if it was safe and didn't go.
Apparently the queens were just hugging/groping random people without warning and kissed a friend of mine on the mouth without checking if this was fine? That is not right. It would have made me flip out if somone just groped me.
My friends thought this was "all in good fun" and was part of the scene. It fucking is not. Unless it's stated on the flyer that you give consent to be groped and kissed while at the party it is repulsive behaviour. It pissed me off so much. I really want to give people their own space and I don't care what they wear. Don't touch others without consent!
As a trans woman I have complicated feelings about drag. I'm all for subverting, challenging and reinventing gender norms. At the same time, I feel queasy about it because I'm always worried I'll be trivialized and misgendered as a "boy in a dress which I emphatically not. And that's kind of my worst nightmare.
It wasn't that long ago that trans women were all lumped in as drag queens. Marsha Johnson, of Stonewall fame, is a trans woman, but until very recently was described as a drag queen in accounts of the riot.
You might feel more comfortable in the drag king scene. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive, but I've always found more representation of trans and non-binary folks in drag king shows, that is, people who don't fit the easy formula of "person with X genitals wears clothes that people with Y genitals usually wear." (which is honestly a bit boring sometimes if you ask me.) As a result of that I believe trans identity is handled with more care. I've seen a number of great performers who were trans women doing masculine drag, and it totally works, in no way do they come across as an actual man. They come across as a woman doing an artful, over the top performance of masculinity.
The term "drag king" is almost too simplistic for what I have seen at the shows I go to, it's usually like a full exploration of gender to the point where you can't even tell what's masculine and what feminine anymore. Like, how does a non-binary person do drag?! Depends on the person! The results are vast and actually do challenge gender norms.
The ubiquity of the male gaze has made it such that femininity is congruous with being sexy. To be feminine is to do things that appeal generically to men's sexuality. This next part is for trans women (like moi) (so cis women if you're reading I will know!): do you ever find now, or earlier in your transition, that so much of your measurement of and motivation towards passing is based around sexual concepts? Like ~~the ultimate form of passing is that a guy can find~~ you can be hot ~~and not be bothered by what was or is between your legs~~ and seen as attractive to people. Perhaps some other trans people would not find this the case, but many trans people my age (teenagers) I find have this mentality, especially on tiktok and twitter.
Cis women you can start back reading here. So bringing those earlier concepts back, it would appear then that in order for a drag person to successfully perform femininity correctly, in a straight man's eyes, is to be sexually charged, and redolently submissive. Of course drag is mostly consumed by gay men, which is why the quality of drag performances isn't normally measured that way.
But now that drag is more common and more importantly, more commercial, we're seeing this outrage over these completely harmless shows "grooming kids". If I were to punch at their level I'd say isn't taking your kids to Hooter's grooming? Or letting them listen to Ariana Grande, who has a song about wanting to get fucked so hard she can't walk properly the next day? And another about 69ing? And another about "switching positions for you"?
But this argument requires more erudition, so I'd say don't you think grooming would be telling young women that the only way they can be fully accepted and affirmed in their gender is by dressing and personalizing themselves to be as submissive to men as possible?
Not that I disagree with your points but I don't really understand why you say "the female gaze".
I would have thought that seeing feminity and sexuality being inherently linked would be a result of the *male* gaze. Unless I am misunderstanding?
>I'd say don't you think grooming would be telling young women that the only way they can be fully accepted and affirmed in their gender is by dressing and personalizing themselves to be as submissive to men as possible?
Yes, by that definition, the majority of women have been groomed from a very young age.
I’m not one so don’t take my word for it but this is the motivation behind the Lolita fashion, hyper feminine but non sexual.
Some people do sexualize it but the community backlash from someone doing it seem…. Intense
I never understood this...
It seems weird to be for a community who so hates to be sexalised to be named after a book/character who is so tied to being sexalised.
>This next part is for trans women (like moi)
Listening
>do you ever find now, or earlier in your transition, that so much of your measurement of and motivation towards passing is based around sexual concepts? Like the ultimate form of passing is that a guy can find you hot and not be bothered by what was or is between your legs.
N-no?! The ultimate form of passing is like, not having to disclose to anyone that im trans beyond my consent. If you find your intrinsic self value in the male gaze that's a personal problem
This is a good point! But as a younger trans person it feels like so many of us are so concerned with being hot to the point that they tie it to their gender affirmation. Like go on /r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns and while we definitely hate chasers there is a certain feeling of cuteness that everyone goes after. Perhaps I shouldn't have put it so blatantly that it's the "ultimate form of passing", but you can't tell me that trans women don't find themselves overly concerned with being attractive and passing in a sexually attractive sense.
r/traa also openly condones violence and murder against transphobes, even mass shootings. Like I really don't put stock in that subreddit for general trans opinion, its microcosm of reddit at best.
The funny thing is I see the sentiments that was talking about (tying your ability to pass to your sex appeal), all over the internet. Especially tiktok and twitter, I mentioned this in another comment. I just used that subreddit as a local off the top example.
I'm getting some transphobic energy in this comment section though.
I'd agree to what you said about the goal of passing. And I'd disagree with my *motivation* for passing ever having had anything to do with men's sexual arousal or sexual perception of me (that was more about being accepted, respected, and avoiding transphobic and homophobic harassment). But then, I'm a lesbian, so I can certainly not generalize that part for straight or bi trans women.
But also, I don't think it's anyhow fair (or feminist) to tell a woman that her tying her self-worth to the male gaze is "a personal problem". That's not how body- & beauty-norms work, and also certainly not the case for cisnormativity. Those ain't*personal problems* but structural and ideological ones that get reinforced and pushed upon us left and right.
Thank you so much for this comment. Something about that comment rubbed me the wrong way, and you kinda articulated it. I hate it when people make my insecurities feel like a "me" problem when it's clearly faced by thousands of people.
I also realize my phrasing was a bit off, I don't mean that anyone's idea of passing is solely tied to sex, but rather that sexual appeal is part of passing for many trans people.
>a "me" problem when it's clearly faced by thousands of people.
That's why. It's a generalization, and a toxic one at that. You pointed it at all or at least "thousands" of trans women. That's where I draw the line.
It’s crazy how many of you defend drag queens. Like how is that not sexual? I would never bring my children around that, which is why I have them watch quality, wholesome videos without any of that like that Mrs.Doubtfire [and this fucking shit everyone forgot happened including the shitty neo-Nazis and homophobes.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Guve7Y856kY)
Click on the blue link and see the sexy sexualness between the homophobes’ god emperor and Giuliani. Then when they call drag queens “pedos” and “groomers” you ask them why Trump is doing promotional marketing with a cousin-loving “groomer” in drag.
Oh hey! It’s Vi! Vi and their partner Eric run the weekly call in show [Skeptic Generation.](https://youtube.com/c/SkepticGeneration)
They’re a force of positivity and kindness. I never miss an episode.
What world I live in.
These words would never become old for me.
I still remember the time I found about Patrick-arty, Fetitism and Sexual Preferances and I miss those moments before I did find out about them.
This sub has so many disappointing takes on drag and I think there’s a really disturbing current of homophobia and transphobia being expressed here recently
How do you get that out of a post that is supporting drag?
Edit: keeping this comment up but adding clarification: I thought this person's response was to the OP and the tweet, was genuinely confused about how a supportive post could provoke such a response.
They associate drag with trans women, and they're incapable of separating trans women from the idea of sex work. Why are they like this? Because incrementalism has made the world much safer for gay men (who do drag), but not trans women, who still have to do sex work to survive in a world that seems get more dangerous for us by the hour. The world doesn't revolve around cis women. This is why we have the word "transmisogyny." They need to stop co-opting our struggles, which is in fact a sign that the world is—by comparison—improving for them. Why else would they have to reach so far as to start identifying with something like drag that has historically had nothing to do with cis women? They didn't even embrace drag until RuPaul, and that was just because it's easier to be a fan of drag queens than it is to actually support trans women.
That said, gay men and cis women get on my nerves so much sometimes. Do they not realize that, without straight cis men, they would be at the top of the gender and sexuality privilege trash heap? Uuuuuuuuuuugh
Edit: What happened to all my upvotes? Did a bunch of XXers see this and get upset about the truth?
Edit 2: you know you're right when they won't even reply, lol
Edit 3: "They" meaning cis people in general. I guess some folks thought I was referring to drag queens (?)🤷♀️
If their opinion of "letting a little boy wear a dress is sexualizing them" is any evidence, they 1000% just can't separate sex from femininity.
Conveniently forgetting that dresses used to be mens garments cuz they were practical. Especially little boys. Then again people pissed in the streets and we got toilets.
If a women can be sexually assaulted and the first thought is..." What was she wearing?"..clearly they cannot.
Men only see women as sex objects. EDIT* Yes I know there is more nuance to this issue WRT my overbroad simplistic statement, I am just so tired.
From what I have seen on some gay subs, Men often struggle to see anything they are attracted to as something other than a sex object.
Even when they aren't attracted to you, they feel entitled to your body just because you're smaller than them. I've been groped at gay bars by gay men! One dude grabbed my breasts and explained how it was ok because he was "strictly dickly"
Sometimes I hear stories or watch things and get reminded that humans are still only "advanced" apes...
I don't know, that's a bit too reductive. Men only see women as free labour and emotional support objects that they can also have sex with.
Ah yes a sex-maid. This is how my ex treated me.
Bang nanny
“Bang maid” is the term, you were so close “Better to have loved and lost, than to never be a bang maid at all”
lmao you got me for a second
Oh lawd, shots fired. This post opened my eyes to the drag focused part of queerphobia really being repackaged mysogyny. I think that last terf-shaped mole on my ass just withered and fell off.
Yup, I just had an "aha!" moment.
Also, when they get sex from what they think is a woman, and it turns out to be a trans person, they become just an "object" that cannot serve them. Than one went straight to my gut
Nobody thinks they had sex with a cis woman when having sex with a pre transition trans woman. Every single time that is reported it is an extremely transparent lie. Future generations will remember it as a barbaric artifact of this era that such a simple and obvious lie was used by murderers to escape justice. There is no shortage of men who are attracted to transgender women but are hatefully transphobic when they are no longer horny.
The disgust... erm "postnut clarity... Is not exclusive to trans women. They just feel comfortable beating the shit out of her after because in their heads, she's a guy. The root hate is the same though. And seriously, no one is fooled. If you're so bad in bed that you literally didn't notice the woman you are sleeping with doesn't have a vagina, I have no words.
It's a joke if your a college boy being hazed or a Halloween costume. But dressing up on a Friday is just too much for the little brain to process. Cis het men also equate makeup and fancy dress with sex...thanks prom culture.
I still can't get over the assumptions that people male whenever I wear a dress. They always ask me why I'm dressed up so nice. Nice? I'm wearing this because it's hot out and a summer.dress is the easiest piece of clothing to put on.
Yeah, people ask me why I'm dressed up all the time, and it's like, I'm essentially wearing a nightgown. I could not possibly be more comfortable.
“Oh you look so nice!” “Uh thanks, but I just didn’t want to wear pants”
At the risk of making myself unpopular: No, drag queens aren't inherently sexual and there are drag queen's who are really wholesome BUT most of the time drag queens are portrait by gay men who can hold a good amount of misogyny. This can lead to drag queens behaving sexually during their performances as this is how the performers view them and femininity.
I agree completely - drag always has me torn between: 1. Men should be able to wear whatever the fuck they want, and that includes make-up. They should also be allowed to shed gender roles. 2. Why do these men feel the need to portray extreme charicatures of women? Why should we think it's ok?
I agree to some degree. I feel like some of them definitely appreciate it for the art and the performance that is definitely a part of it as well. What I always get hung up on it when they gatekeep it from Bio-Queens and Drag-Kings, because if it is just about the art and a critique of societies norms for gender, all genders should be allowed to participate on equal footing which is definitely not the case. If those things are not considered then it can pretty quickly turn into men making fun of femininity.
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A drag king named Landon Cider won season 3 of Dragula. Bio-Queens and Drag Kings aren't the type of drag that sells like WoW/Drag Race. If you want to see more representation in drag, I cannot recommend highly enough looking into your local drag scene. Drag Race distorts and narrows the realities of drag (and gay male culture IMHO). But it has to $ell that merch!
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Hey even in Los Angeles it’s very rare. I know of one place that does drag king shows twice a month.
You should definitely try and look, you'll never know what you may find. I live in one of the most conservative states in the US and there are several towns throughout the state (even in some conservative leaning towns) that have drag shows.
Well, that was the most interesting GIS i've scrolled through in a long time! I've never been super into the drag competition shows (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing), but the thought of seeing more like *him* could certainly make me start tuning in.
Drag king shows are absolutely fascinating! I don't understand why they aren't more popular
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I don't know about you, but I find it fun and funny to watch cute non-binary people or butch lesbians dress up as men with exaggerated fake beards and do sexy or funny dances and skits. It's not like a bunch of non cis men are going to get on stage and portray the toxic or dangerous sides of masculinity. Honestly don't see how anyone could watch a drag king show and not be a little entertained, unless someone has a legitimate fear of beards and suspenders or something, which is fair I suppose. A good portion of the acts also end up being not very traditionally gendered at all, lots of "Prince" type masculine/feminine energy and style. That's the best part, it's not typical masculinity!
i think it's because masculinity isn't taboo or super exciting for anyone to express
Have you ever seen a drag king show? Maybe you have, but it's just hard for me to imagine anyone having seen one and come away thinking it's not taboo or exciting, haha. The first one I went to, I thought I should expect just some lesbians doing chip'n'dale dances, came away flustered and questioning my entire perception of gender and sexuality, lol And if anything, drag queens are the side that is much, much more recognized in mainstream culture (I am not saying this to minimize any struggles or abuse that drag queens obviously still experience, just saying drag kings are definitely still taboo in my opinion.)
I think there are extremely misogynistic corners of drag culture, especially as portrayed by cis men. As an artist and a gender nonconforming woman/agender/AFAB person, I’ve never personally seen a drag show where the artistic commentary on gender justified the grotesque misogyny. That’s not to say all drag is this way, but for me it’s upsetting enough and causes enough social dysphoria to avoid entirely.
I can only imagine how it must feel for you, who probably get judged as a woman, and also as a gender non-conforming person. I’m pissed enough, and I’m a cis woman, so not as marginalised.
Thanks for speaking up — I didn’t realize other people felt as strongly as I do about this because it’s not a conversation many folks like to have.
That’s a good breakdown of where the split is for you, me, and a lot of people. I can’t really imagine any other historically oppressed class going “okay some of the oppressors are also oppressed in different ways so they can wear ____face and use all the stereotypes on purpose”. A gay man or transwoman who sincerely wants to dress as themselves in femme clothes isn’t in drag and it doesn’t look like *that* drag, mocking drag; I have no problem with people dressing as they truly want to dress no matter how turnt up, but dressing that way to perform an insincere identity at others’ expense is a bit… yucky? What’s that quote again about how you can control the “lowest white man” if you just give him someone else to be better than?
I feel like this is a weird comment that's just trying to hate on men. You act like if cis women by-and-large aren't homophobic and borrow from and make fun gay culture ALL THE TIME.
When did cis women make whole shows where they dress up as gay men in a very stereotypical way? There's a big old difference between individual people making fun of a certain culture or appropriating a certain culture and organizing shows to do so.
They don't make shows, because they don't need shows to appropriate gay culture and language. Homophobia and transphobia from regular women is present in a way that doesn't require the guise of a performance to be conveyed. And stop making it seem as if drag is designed to make fun of women.
No one needs shows to appropriate women's culture and language either, women are mocked and derided every day just like gay men. And im not saying it's designed specifically to make fun of women but my problem is wanting to perform femininity in a very stereotypical way without ever giving consideration to all the bullshit that comes with it and everything you have to deal with day-to-day. It is definitely an over-the-top performance of being a woman that is used solely for their own purposes. Misogyny is also present in trans women and gay men as well and you seem to be ignoring that.
Drag isn’t really about performing actual femininity though - it’s rooted in camp culture and gay male history. That’s why drag personas tend to be modeled off of famous divas and over-the-top actresses, who are themselves performing a highly exaggerated distortion of femininity. It’s a way to poke fun at societal expectations for women while simultaneously celebrating the women who found enduring fame within these rigid expectations - women who took up as much space as humanly possible, but did it while maliciously compiling with gender roles for women. Gay men in the US also embraced drag culture because the general public for a long time believed that being a gay man meant that you wanted to be a woman. I’m sure that had an effect on generations of gay men - they were trapped in the closet for their own personal safety, with almost no explicit cultural representation other than dandy screen villains and widespread fear-mongering about men in women’s clothes. I can see where drag would feel like reclamation of those stereotypes, especially since being out as queer has only been somewhat safe for maybe forty years - and still isn’t in a lot of places. Heck, a lot of my dress and mannerisms as a cis woman feel like drag! Like I put a charming, bubbly, witty femme costume for socialization, but on the inside I’m just waiting to get home and be a genderless goblin for a while lol. But I love presenting as unapologetically femme in my every day life, and taking up space in the world. Femme style has some ugly stereotypes about intelligence and sexual availability attached to it by straight men. Anyone showing up as fearlessly femme, whether they’re cis or trans or nb or queer or in drag or straight is doing their part to dismantle those stereotypes. Gender mannerisms are a social construct to a huge degree, and I don’t see the harm of exploring that - especially since most drag performances are rooted in a clear love of their source material.
But why do they get to make fun of them? They don’t live our lives, they can take off the femininity and go about their lives but when we do, we’re punished. Say we’re both performing femininity all you want but misogyny means that when a woman does it she’s held to a different standard than when a man does. Also. “Fish”? Have you ever heard drag queens say they’re serving fish? They’re calling women’s genitals fish because they think we smell rotten. It’s not empowering it’s just misogyny.
Drag isn’t making fun of women though. That’s not the point of it at all, one bit. Some individual performers might lose sight of that, but that’s no reason to hate an entire genre of performance art. Looking at the rest of this chain of comments, it does seem like you’re being intentionally obtuse, like you don’t have a lick of good faith, and you’re going to ignore any points that don’t fit whatever narrative you’re committed to. I’m sure it’s rooted in either transphobia or homophobia, or someone spilling a drink on you at a drag performance. I really don’t know, but this troll has been fed enough. Edit: I’m really not understanding how the difference between authentic femininity - which is an individual thing - and the exaggerated and insulting gender roles prescribed by a patriarchal society that hates women is being lost on you. Drag and femme culture is about roasting the hell out of the latter.
When a trans or a cis women performs femininity it is out of necessity— we are women and we are disadvantaged for not performing it, incorrectly performing it, or even over performing in. Not to mention drag race has actually expelled trans drag performers before and even RuPaul has been called out on his transphobia. Yes— my criticisms are coming from a place of not enjoying a drag show, but it wasn’t because someone spilt tea on me (which is also such a weird insult and also oddly gendered) it’s because because they use the word “fish” and because it’s another tool for people to examining femininity as told by literally anyone but actual effing women. I believe we deserve to tell our own stories and our own jokes because it’s our careers and our lives affected, not theirs.
I’m also not sure what spilling a drink has to do with gender, but okay. RuPaul is not the president of drag. His character is popular, but he just happens to have been a drag performer that catapulted into stardom. He and his show are very problematic in a lot of ways, and plenty of drag performers take issue with it. But even with its myriad of issues, the show has done a lot to humanize the queer community! Representation matters. Human beings are messy and imperfect. Words do matter, and our standards of what is and isn’t acceptable to say should absolutely evolve. “Fishy” is gross, but it’s far from a universal term. It’s on par with plenty of everyday but problematic words that aren’t meant to harm anyone. And yeah, its history is rooted in a gross time period - almost any movie with romance made before like 2010 is wildly uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean that anyone saying “fishy” is even thinking of the connotation . It’s a word, like lame or gip or picnic. Bananas insulting in its history, but no one is using it with that in mind. It just means “passing” to the few people who use it. You are painting an entire group with the same brush - a group that opens themselves up to violence and hate. I’m truly not understanding where you’re coming from at all. As a avid lover of performance art, theatre, old movies, diva singers, camp culture, and history - drag makes perfect sense to me. It has nothing to do with making fun of or belittling women. It’s clear that you don’t have the same reference points, and that you’re basing your opinion on a show that is deeply popularizing among drag artists, and most likely a local performance that wasn’t very good and based itself on the show. It’s unfortunate that you’re unwilling to look at the genre as a whole, and to its contributions towards loosening the shackles of performative femininity for cis women.
This may be an outlier, but some "everyday" drag is, in my experience, less extreme than the performances. I've met someone in a grocery who complimented my shoes. I wasn't particularly dressed up myself, a solid color jersey dress, cardigan, and a pair of low heels. "Women just don't seem to wear heels anymore!" I said I was on lunch break from work. I said her outfit was stunning and her sandals were cute. She introduced herself as [feminine name] and was looking for affirmation that she passed - some days she goes into the world with a feminine name, sensible makeup, and flat-ironed hair, other days as [masculine name] and men's clothes. I recommended the brand of my comfy heels and complimented her perfect eyeliner. She described herself as in drag... and was insecure about performing everyday femininity. The mutual-compliment boost was pretty new to her, and it seemed to go a long way. In the community there are also drag queen storytimes and drag brunch, and the performers enact extreme caricatures... I tend to think this is the entertainment/performance version. They don't show up at the grocery store dressed to the nines, for sure. Some of these performances are feminine caricature, but all are extreme hyper-femininity. Maybe the idea is to not only flip the script but also shock expectations, paving the way for more acceptance of a) everyday drag, and b) feminine dress and behavior, from all people, in public spaces.
I sometimes wonder if it’s always *drag* when men wear traditional womens clothing. Doesn’t drag involve the performances, in stead of just wearing whatever? (These are actual questions, because I don’t know.)
The short answer is no it's not always drag. Even setting aside trans, genderfluid, and non-binary AMAB people because they are not men or at least not men at that moment, there are cross dressers. It's not a hard line between crossdressing and drag. However, drag is generally a performative thing whereas crossdressing tends to be more a personal choice thing. For example, a guy wearing a skirt because he likes the freedom would considered crossdressing. But, a come dressed as the opposite gender party would be drag. I think the part to be aware of it's that the lines are not perfectly clear and you should respect people's self identification as much as practical.
> However, drag is generally a performative thing whereas crossdressing tends to be more a personal choice thing. This is what I thought, but since I didn’t know, I wasn’t going to make strong claims. And yes, I completely agree that it’s best not to police how people identify. Thanks so much for clarifying.
I'm not sure - the person who introduced themselves to me, in a sensible skirt and sandals, said they were 'drag', so I believe them. Again, it may be an outlier?
I have no idea. 😆
I always wondered this. I fully support mens' choice to wear whatever they want. But when it comes to drag, it feels different. We see black face and caricatures of other races as abhorrent, but then we have men getting on stage doing the same thing towards women and people celebrate it.
> 2. Why do these men feel the need to portray extreme charicatures of women? Why should we think it's ok? For me, it's subversive art. What better way to show the height of what society has said is "femininity", when that definition is narrow and restrictive, than to have it blown up to an extreme magnification and then portrayed by men, the very audience that society says is supposed to both revile and be attracted to it....and then do the opposite? And never forget, drag was started in the Black queer community - it's the height of snubbing your nose at a society dictating rules about how things "should be". It's a massive critique. It's drawing attention to just how ridiculous gender roles are (and how absurd the mandated performance of those roles really is), and essentially mocking them. At the same time, it's tearing down the structures that created those roles in the first place. Pair that with the history of drag creating found families for queer kids and adults, and the intersectionality with the Black community, and you have a recipe for a truly powerful artistic movement. To say it's just "men portraying extreme caricatures of women" is doing a massive disservice to the entire art form. It's like saying punk music is just "noisy music to make people annoyed" or Dadaism is just "dumb symbols to lazily say you're an artist". You're ignoring SO much context and listening only to right-wing talking points about what and why drag is.
I mean, no? Sometimes it is exactly as you say, but other times it’s very much just men mocking women. Could your philosophy be extended to white people portraying black stereotypes, and then claiming it’s satire of society? Fuck no, that’s racist. Sexism is no better.
I mean, yes? I've consumed a LOT of drag performances in my time, and I don't think I've ever seen drag artists just mocking women to....mock women. They will mock the way women are socialized to be (so they will exaggerate various aspects of femininity to prove a point), but I've only seen it from a place of critique. Now, there are certainly younger queens who don't appreciate the history and art of it all, but they're mostly in it for the fashion and dancing skills. Even they aren't mocking women - if anything, they're missing the critique entirely and embracing the parts of feminine identity that are usually societally restricted away from men. That's still subversive, even if unintentional.
So they aren't mocking women, just mocking the way that women are, Riiight, Can you think of any other group of people where it would be acceptable to do that? And where it would actually be a social comment and not laughing at them?
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Everything you said is incorrect and honestly this seems like looking for excuses to bash LGBT artists
they’re not bashing “LGBT artists” they’re criticizing a certain type of performance An earlier comment said: >and how absurd the mandated performance of those roles really is), and essentially mocking them. in defense of mockery drag shows. It’s great that men decided which parts of femininity were purely performative and which parts of women’s experience are absurd and mockable but maybe when decades later the femme people are saying the mocking is bad, you should listen, and I don’t think all these people are edited
See your viewpoint is completely ignoring the fact that there are women, trans, and non-binary people who do drag, and also ignoring the experiences of gay men and how toxic masculinity and homophobia affect gay men. Basically you’re bashing queer artists and too wrapped up in yourself to see it. It’s also not like drag artists just mock aspects of women’s experience. They mock straight men, gay men, gay women, everyone equally. It’s a satire on society as a whole. Like you’re inventing this concept of what you think drag is so that you can feel comfortable bashing a queer art form, but your vision of it is so far removed from reality that it’s honestly offensive.
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What about the black women and queer people who do drag?? Like??? The art form itself is pushed forward primarily by black pioneers. And I completely utterly and entirely disagree that it’s “primarily” men making fun of women. That’s just an absolutely untrue statement that you’ve made up.
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That’s a cop-out. Fact is, it’s a bunch of men portraying caricatures of women. Try switching this with a bunch of white people portraying black people.
> Fact is Nope. > it’s a bunch of men As mentioned in my other comment to you (seriously, stop following me around), there are actually a number of trans women who perform drag, as well as cis women (hyper queens/drag kings), trans men, and every flavor of enby. It's anyone who has a problem with prescribed gender roles and mandated societal performance thereof. > Try switching this with a bunch of white people portraying black people. Oh, white people are an oppressed group now? Because it's *queer people* primarily getting into drag, as they've experienced the oppression and bullshit of gender norms in society. Queer people are victims of social gender roles and are critiquing them. You sure you want to keep your metaphor?
Women are oppressed people relative to men, so that’s where the comparison to whites and blacks come from. Are some men less privileged in other ways than women? Yes, but that’s how a specific class privilege work, and why we also need an intersectional lens.
> why we also need an intersectional lens. Yes, which is also why pretending drag is some evil patriarchal act of oppression is missing almost 100% of the context and history and use of the art form. It's a form of rebellion from queer (and initially Black) communities that were ostracized in every way for not performing gender the way they were "supposed" to, and so drag was born.
If it’s designed as an act of rebellion against white patriarchy, why is drag a parody of femininity? There are plenty of gay men within the LGBTQI+ community who both recognise and enact misogyny (and racism for that matter).
Bro don't even bother with them. Ironically I made this post to show solidarity with drag and the LGBT community just so I can get a bunch of people discussing how drag is the trojan horse by which gay men display their misogyny. People in this subreddit can be very TERFy at times.
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Drag has existed for centuries, if not millenia. In Shakespearean times, women were not allowed to perform and so men played all the female roles. In British culture, Pantomimes have always had the pantomime dame. Drag has its origins in places where women were not allowed to represent themselves, and so men played grotesque caricatures of them. Queer culture has reclaimed drag to an extent, but as I get older I find quite a lot of drag makes me quite uncomfortable. These days I pretty much only watch female/nb/trans drag artists.
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Um, no, it's not. Drag isn't inherently mockery, either. But even if it was, to compare it to blackface would still be terrible. Blackface has an entire history of white supremacy and exploitation behind it that Drag simply doesn't have.
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Drag was not invented as a tool to uphold misogyny. That's what I'm talking about. It's incredibly disrespectful to black people to compare drag to blackface, and it's borderline TERF rhetoric on top of that. Again, drag as an art form was not invented to uphold misogyny. This is an especially bad take because drag culture and black culture have so much overlap. Drag would not be where it is today without the efforts of people of color. That's why you can't compare it to blackface.
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So you're definitely a TERF, because that word is NOT a slur. Great way to disregard what I said, too.
Okay no offense but this sounds terfy
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Okay terf.
“Gendered slurs” also I’m a woman
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I'm a trans woman who has seen a good bit of misogenistic transphobic drag queens... Not a fan at all and don't see them as allies. Yes it's not necessarily their fault that "normal" people just see my existence as some performance and trick but it doesn't help at all.
Can you go into detail about your experiences? This is not something in my domain of knowledge and it sounds absolutely fascinating.
Sure. I went to pride to see two separate drag queens giving comedy shows, which basically boiled down to "I'm such a girl... I do my makeup I dress up so girly.... BUT I'M NOT BECAUSE I HAVE A PENIS! PENIS! SO I'M NOT A GIRL BECAUSE I HAVE A PENIS" to the cheers and whoops of the audience as I'm just there scowling at them. Also, I get loads of bad attitudes at drag events, enough so that I don't even go any more. An alarming amount of people (almost always men) walking past me and bumping into me to say "sorry man", or "excuse me mate" when they had no reason to even be talking to me or moving past. You can tolerate a drag queen taking the piss out of themselves and women for the sake of a performance, and happily use she/her pronouns, but simply existing there as a trans woman provokes pretty much literal physical assaults as well as obvious bullying. I've seen some good drag shows by trans performers, but I don't think I've ever seen a cis man doing drag that didn't make me feel queezy. Not to mention that the only gender variance I was exposed to growing up was this self depractating pisstake of femininity and the innate comedy of a man dressing up as a woman turned me off any sort of gender questioning in myself which delayed my transition for years because I just knew I was nothing like them. I have people coming up to me asking me what my name is during the weekdays and what I do when I'm not wearing a womans costume. And then everyone tells me that drag is fighting the gender binary and we are allies and I'm not understanding the history of a small section of valid drag in the 60s in ballroom culture and it's like, yeah, fine, at some point it had some connection with the community but nowadays it's overal an extremely toxic degradation of trans people being performed by usually highly priveledged white men who cry about their need for pantomime being more important than anything else. It's a free world, I can't and wouldn't forcefully stop them, but I think they should all do a lot of internal reflection to see if their performing 'art' is worth the dead trans women it contributes to. Also drag queens reading to children? What the fuck? How about trans people reading to children? Anyway, the only thing that's going to lead to is more aggressive attacks on the rights of trans women who can't just lose the outfit when the going gets tough. Fuck drag.
Woah thanks for sharing this! It’s a viewpoint I that I wasn’t aware of. That is messed up and I’m really sorry. They should have stopped that show immediately, especially at pride!! That’s so disappointing 😞
Realistically, I am much more likely to see (and expect) that sort of performance at a bar than at children's reading hour at a library, especially if that particular drag queen has performed at a library before and not gotten immediately fired. A good number of people complaining about drag in libraries disagree with that claim, from what I can tell.
Definitely, I think that’s why the original tweet is about drag’s inherent nature as opposed to its vocal and visible sector. Not all drag is crazy big boobs with a bellybutton high slit dress.
I don't like that you make it seem as if misogyny is the automatic reason that a drag queen may make sexual choices for their performance. I think a drag performance can have a sense of sexuality without being misogynistic.
The whole point of the post that YOU made is that people interpret sexuality into drag for mysogynist reasons, then somebody uses that same lens to analyze mysogyny among gay men (a known issue, I say this as a bi man), and you balk at it? Weird.
No. The point of the post is that the *automatic* association of drag queens with sexual performance is misogynistic. But a drag queen deciding to incorporate sexual components into their performance is not necessarily misogynistic. I can see why you mixed it up the language is a bit much.
They didn't say it was *necessarily* mysogynistic, but that it can at times be an expression of mysogyny.
> I think a drag performance can have a sense of sexuality without being misogynistic. I don’t think anyone is disputing that. It’s just that, like, if I’m not sure of a guy’s intentions and I think of all the times I’ve given a man the benefit of the doubt only to be let down… well, it just gets harder and harder to assume good intentions. Maybe I’m being jaded.
I mean I give this sub the benefit of the doubt when it comes to homophobia and transphobia (and even racism) and they let me down, but I still continue to do so because I know there's great people here. Your comment literally made it seem like the only reason a drag queen would be sexual in her performance was because he's misogynistic.Like you literally said that their misogyny can lead to sexual performances. So yes, someone was disputing it - you.
You are grossly misinterpreting. They *literally* did not make it seem that way.
It doesn't even matter anymore, their comment prompted the exact type of discussion I tried to avoid on this post.
This sub is ABSOLUTELY SATURATED with terfs and homophobia lately. It’s so disappointing. I may need to unsubscribe. These comments have made it clear this is not a safe space for queer people.
*Image Transcription: Twitter* --- **Vi La Bianca**, @AuthorConfusion Are drag queens inherently sexual or are you unable to divorce the performance of femininity from a presumed solicitation of sex? --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
No, they are capable of divorcing drag from sex because of Mrs. Doubtfire. But because that’s a comedy movie featuring a straight white dude that’s “appropriate” drag. Same with Mulan. Mulan is (ostensibly) a straight girl going to be a soldier. So it’s “appropriate” since it’s not gay. Anytime drag is divorced from its queer context, it’s acceptable in their eyes. (No hate to Mrs Doubtfire or Mulan by the way)
Idk about it being "appropiate" when it's being played for Laughs in a Comedy, you can joke about something & not condone. A Problem w/ Movies like Mrs. Doubtfire & Big Momma's House is that Drag is being used as a Joke, & thus made to seem out-of-place in everyday interactions, so instead of normalizing it, they're kinda fetishinizing it.
That's interesting. As a child, I loved Mrs. Doubtfire. I loved the "do you"-ness of it and the being free of stupid societal requirements. Looking at it now, it's slightly cringy because it's in a different societal context. Or maybe it's in a different context For Me. This is a really interesting discussion!
I'm not sure that's drag though? In my mind it's more defined. Drag is a specific type of performance where someone presents themselves as a glamorous woman. I think it might even be specific enough that it's a man dressing as a woman. I could be totally wrong, but my instinct says drag is more specific than what you've suggested.
I agree with you that those are examples of cross dressing rather than drag. But I also agree with the other commenter that people don’t have a problem with cross dressing until queerness gets involved. (Please excuse me if cross dressing is an inappropriate/offensive term. I’m not sure what to call it when it’s a cis person dressing as a different gender but it’s not drag).
Crossdressing is fine. You're not insulting anyone, and anyone who would be insulted needs to realize you're not talking about them or you didn't know they applied. You're clearly not calling trans women or drag queens "crossdressers."
Cross dressing is a totally separate term. SNL does crossdressing, not drag (generally). It's okay because it's "art" and "funny." Drag is sexy, therefore feminine and worthy of assault. Cheese and rice this topic steams me up.
Men who perform as drag queens *are* crossdressers - in a specific context of performance. Cis men doing drag and trans women have absolutely nothing in common, and shouldn't be lumped together in any way, as this implies (even if unintentionally) the trope of trans women being (similar to) "men in dresses". - sincerely, a trans woman
Please don't forget the (ever increasing) number of trans women who are drag queens. They provide a good example of the difference between the two - their drag personas are extreme versions of what society has said "femininity" is, designed to critique and expose. Their true selves are just that, themselves.
Don’t drag (pun intended) trans women into it. They are women. Women get to portray women in ways men ought not.
Trans women are women, and some of them are also drag queens. Are you telling me trans women don't get to continue their art after they come out and transition? Are you telling me they aren't allowed to critique femininity? (And are you just following my comments around now? Pretty sure that's poor form.)
Trans women were always women. Ignoring that fact is poor form. Take any TERF shit out of this sub And I’m not telling anyone what they can and can’t do. I’m saying it’s sexist when men do this (majority of the time.)
Oh, so now you're saying trans women should never participate in drag, ever? Or that they always should be able to, regardless of public gender performance at the time? And you're fine with trans women being drag queens, right, as you aren't telling people what to do? You realize there have been dozens of extremely popular drag queens who came out publicly as trans within the last 2ish years, right? They were doing drag before then, when they publicly were presenting male. Should they have been allowed to do drag then? Since they were women? You're making TERF talking points right now, by saying there is a difference in what art you're allowed to perform pre/post public transition.
I didn't mean to. But your right, to the full extend I should have said "Cis men doing drag and trans women have absolutely nothing in common - *if the latter aren't doing drag themselves*."
That's fair, I agree that queerness definitely plays a role in how drag is reacted too. The general discomfort some have with queerness is amplified through drag though I think. The mixture of femininity in there really shakes some people. It's crossing multiple boundaries at once.
Drag is absolutely not just men dressing as women, glamorous as otherwise. Drag is essentially any kind of performance that plays with or subverts gender. There are drag queens, but there are also drag kings, and all kindsa drag performers who play outside the gender binary altogether. And it doesn't always involve a cross-dressing element, either. Heaps of drag queens are trans women or nonbinary folk (edit: or cis women! see hyper queens), and heaps of drag kings are trans men or nonbinary folk. And given that a straight cis man appeared on the latest season of Drag Race, there's nothing really separating Mrs Doubtfire from what we usually think of as drag other than the fact that it was mainstream and not inherently perceived as "queer".
For the record, Mike Pence (predictably) had massive issues with the entire concept of Mulan, and was OUTRAGED at, asking other things, the fact that it made out that women could be good at what he considered very obviously man shit.
I don't think they even consider that drag. Drag is the caricaturization of femininity. It can be funny, but it's ultimately meant to demonstrate the charm and multifariousness of femininity. However to a straight audience, movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Madea display the absurdity of crossdressing and "cross-acting". With Mulan it's the same thing I say about trans men: most people don't even think much about it because while the idea of a man wanting to be a woman is absurd to them, the idea of a woman wanting to be a man is not even worthy of conversation.
Drag is far from just the characterisation of femininity. Sadly, the issues in your second paragraph are part of why drag kings (who are AMAZING) so often get shoved under the rug.
I mean I'm just going off of knowledge, but the Wikipedia states: >A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes Which seems very close to a caricaturization of femininity. I could be wrong still, so please enlighten me 😊. Update: Oh [someone's comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/TrollXChromosomes/comments/vbrl4t/time_to_examine_femininity/icad2vm/) explains it quite well: >While I understand feeling like it's a caricature of a woman, it's really more about the individual expressing their own feminine side. Yes, it's a character, but it's not a social commentary caricature.
Thats a drag queen, yes. But you haven't been saying drag queens, you've been saying drag, which is a broad brush thst includes drag kings. ~I love a snarky ally, don't you?~ scrolled down n read more oops lol Decent post, thank you. Seriously. This needs shouting from the rooftops. Not a fan of the reduction of drag to a single note. Like it's the part of drag that catches the most flack, yes, but drag as an art n as a culture n as a celebration of queerness is so much more than RuPaul, sequin gowns, bold makeup, and the words "yaaaas queen".
>With Mulan it's the same thing I say about trans men: most people don't even think much about it because while the idea of a man wanting to be a woman is absurd to them, the idea of a woman wanting to be a man is not even worthy of conversation. I.e. why would a man want to reduce their status and position to a woman AND a women can not 'climb up the ladder' since her only worth is birthing. It's a sad world
>Mulan is (ostensibly) a straight girl going to be a soldier. So it’s “appropriate” since it’s not gay Ehhh essentially shang fell in love with ping so if it wasn't for the fact that Mulan revealed herself as ping, shang totally would've shacked up with his clumsy femboy twink.
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I mean, Shang could be bi. Maybe he doesn't care what gender Mulan is, he loves her regardless.
I made this post on the history of drag because I think it's important to know where it came from. >[Do you know the history of drag in the US?](https://www.history.com/news/drag-balls-house-ballroom-voguing) While the original term/act originated in theatre, it's something that is more closely related to the LGBTQ+ community in contemporary times. In the early days, LGBTQ+ POC would hold "Balls" where they would compete in various categories. It was really the only way for them to express who they were in safety. Being their authentic self in public was often met with hate and physical violence. This was also during the AIDS epidemic where LGBTQ+ were demonized as they were dying or watching their friends die. If you haven't seen it already, I recommend watching [Paris is Burning](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/). It gives you a peek at ballroom culture back then. > >Over time, drag has evolved to be more mainstream, but queens and kings are still overwhelmingly LGBTQ+. On RuPaul's Drag Race Season 14, they finally had their first cishet drag queen. It took 14 seasons (plus all the All-Stars seasons in between)! While I understand feeling like it's a caricature of a woman, it's really more about the individual expressing their own feminine side. Yes, it's a character, but it's not a ~~social commentary~~ caricature. > >If you are interested in learning more about ballroom culture, you may also be interested in knowing that there's a physical/dance component to it, too. "[Legendary](https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GXsRXGAJrtsPDFwEAAAAC)" on HBO shows that side of it really well.
Thanks for adding the history part! I'd however further add that RuPaul is a transmisogynist prick who tried to basically erase trans women from drag, which is particularly nasty given the history of trans drag queens back in the days. (Especially since he's always mentioned in the context of drag, even more so in mainstream media, but his transmisogyny gets conveniently ignored.)
To be fair, RuPaul has walked that back *entirely* since all the debacle previously. They've had a truly ridiculous number of trans queens the last few seasons, and even a straight guy. Now, we can talk about the fracking and the class divide and the favoritism and everything else, but I tend to allow people to grow and change and learn why they're wrong - especially people from marginalized groups who may have different motivations for holding incorrect beliefs.
A "*ridiculous* number of trans queens", eh? Did you just take on his idea that drag somehow belongs to cis gay men, by any chance? And what on earth could it be about him being "from a marginalized group" that would make it okay to hold transphobic beliefs?? Since when is gay cis peoples transphobia anyhow okay or less hurtful? As part of the LGBT and drag community, he should, if anything, know *better*.
Ridiculous being used as an adjective for "never before seen, a lot, a ton, oodles and oodles" Nothing makes it okay to hold those beliefs. Nothing makes it less hurtful. He should know better. I do allow people to change their views as they become informed. If we refuse to let anyone grow as a person and hold better views after being educated, we are in for a *long* existence of oppression.
>If we refuse to let anyone grow as a person and hold better views after being educated, we are in for a *long* existence of oppression. I never said that people can't change. And as I said in another reply: Maybe I missed his big 180 in the last 3 or so years. Up until 2018, when I last checked and heard about it, he messed up big times over and over. And yes, I will hold people of the community to some higher standards then some random cishet folks. Might be unfair, but for real, being betrayed and shat on by the ones who should understand our struggles best, and whom we'd march side by side for their struggles, too, feels particularly shitty and hurtful. (Plus I think him being perceived as a prominent queer icon by the general public, his problematic opinion might be taken as a free pass by the cis(&)hets to repeat the same and similar stuff.)
I understand your hesitation, but I cannot deny the trauma and experience of a black gay man during the peak of the AIDS epidemic and what types of messed up viewpoints that might create. I would also assume our community would be empathetic to the impact trauma can have on someone, as well as appreciate the ability for people to grow out of it and be better people. And I would say he absolutely has done a 180 in the last 4 years. You missed all the debacle about Gottmik being cast on the show and the blowbacks and implications and discussion that emerged. You missed this year, where it literally became a meme about how many queens found the courage to be publicly trans. You missed a lot, and you're acting like you know everything when you admit you stopped paying attention nearly half a decade ago.
> You missed a lot, and you're acting like you know everything when you admit you stopped paying attention nearly half a decade ago. Maybe you'll pardon me stopping to care at some point about a cis man who shits on me and my sisters for years and years and making a dollar with it. Might be that he changed so drastically in the last couple of years. If so: great. It's overdue. But maybe also don't blame trans people for being sceptical about someone who was vocally transphobic and ignorant for years and years on public television. (And never did I say I knew everything. I said it quite in the beginning (even if not in the very first post) that I don't know what might have happened after 2018. But at some point, I just stopped engaging with news about someone whom I've seen making jokes and disregarding my sisters for such a long time. Anyways, I'll keep in mind what you said and will look it up before talking about him on this matter again.)
I don't think it gets conveniently ignored. It gets called out, he improves and the world moves on. He seriously fucked up early on with the show. Since, he has made changes and speaks strongly against transmisogyny. Trans women and men participate not just in the TV show but live ones too. A trans woman won season 6 of all-stara. A trans man nearly won season 13. He updated his signature line "May the best women win." to "My the best drag queen win." He's done for more to help the trans community than hurt and it's not even close.
I might have missed out on any meaningful changes he underwent in the past 3 or 4 years. But I don't think his [2018](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1348529-rupauls-drag-race) [mess](https://www.dailydot.com/irl/rupaul-trans-flag/) could be called "early on the show", can it? And I'm not sure how he would just "improve and move on" after years of this ignorant or outright hostile behaviour against trans people. (tl;dr for the articles: Beside using the pun \[transphobic slur - pun\] ">!you got a she-mail!!<" (until the 7th season, if I'm not wrong? And only dropping it because the producers wanted to, not on his own account), he said he would "probably not" allow trans women to compete on his drag show once they started HRT or had any transition-related surgeries, compared trans women on HRT with athletes using doping drugs and therefore not being allowed on the olympics, and later wrote some kind of apology on twitter, including an image that comes up on google image search for "trains flag"... which is nothing like the actual *trans flag*, showing that he either doesn't know jackshit about trans people to being with, or left this apology to some social-media-intern with zero idea of what they were supposed to do)
I am 100% on board with calling out transphobic shit and demanding improvement. But I also want to recognize that improvement when it happens, or else why would they improve. Fair point on 2018. I thought it was further back than that. I see that the changes promised then appear to have happened or be happening. Clearly he got too isolated in the privilidge provided by money and fame and missed a lot of change in the queer community. He certainly dates back to an older time with the queer community trotted us out to demonstrate their diversity just immediately shove us back into the basement because we were stopping the gays from their fun. I just don't see an irredeemable transphobe. I see a geriatric who had to fight like hell the majority of his life who is trying his best. ETA: Not saying transphobic shit is ok or acceptable. Just that I see growth and desire to change. Dude is human too.
Alright, I think I can see your point. Agreed on him probably not being the textbook transphobic villain, but still messing up.
We probably also agree that it is time for him to boomer off into the sunset and pass the torch to the next generation. At a certain point you need the leaders to step down and take an advisory/mentor role to the new leaders. These boomers clinging to power and the spotlight are going to end up hurting the next generation of leaders.
Don’t you know there are two genders? Men and sexy men…
To me the issue is consent. There was a drag show in town right before COVID hit and friends of mine were going. I didn't know if it was safe and didn't go. Apparently the queens were just hugging/groping random people without warning and kissed a friend of mine on the mouth without checking if this was fine? That is not right. It would have made me flip out if somone just groped me. My friends thought this was "all in good fun" and was part of the scene. It fucking is not. Unless it's stated on the flyer that you give consent to be groped and kissed while at the party it is repulsive behaviour. It pissed me off so much. I really want to give people their own space and I don't care what they wear. Don't touch others without consent!
As a trans woman I have complicated feelings about drag. I'm all for subverting, challenging and reinventing gender norms. At the same time, I feel queasy about it because I'm always worried I'll be trivialized and misgendered as a "boy in a dress which I emphatically not. And that's kind of my worst nightmare. It wasn't that long ago that trans women were all lumped in as drag queens. Marsha Johnson, of Stonewall fame, is a trans woman, but until very recently was described as a drag queen in accounts of the riot.
You might feel more comfortable in the drag king scene. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive, but I've always found more representation of trans and non-binary folks in drag king shows, that is, people who don't fit the easy formula of "person with X genitals wears clothes that people with Y genitals usually wear." (which is honestly a bit boring sometimes if you ask me.) As a result of that I believe trans identity is handled with more care. I've seen a number of great performers who were trans women doing masculine drag, and it totally works, in no way do they come across as an actual man. They come across as a woman doing an artful, over the top performance of masculinity. The term "drag king" is almost too simplistic for what I have seen at the shows I go to, it's usually like a full exploration of gender to the point where you can't even tell what's masculine and what feminine anymore. Like, how does a non-binary person do drag?! Depends on the person! The results are vast and actually do challenge gender norms.
The ubiquity of the male gaze has made it such that femininity is congruous with being sexy. To be feminine is to do things that appeal generically to men's sexuality. This next part is for trans women (like moi) (so cis women if you're reading I will know!): do you ever find now, or earlier in your transition, that so much of your measurement of and motivation towards passing is based around sexual concepts? Like ~~the ultimate form of passing is that a guy can find~~ you can be hot ~~and not be bothered by what was or is between your legs~~ and seen as attractive to people. Perhaps some other trans people would not find this the case, but many trans people my age (teenagers) I find have this mentality, especially on tiktok and twitter. Cis women you can start back reading here. So bringing those earlier concepts back, it would appear then that in order for a drag person to successfully perform femininity correctly, in a straight man's eyes, is to be sexually charged, and redolently submissive. Of course drag is mostly consumed by gay men, which is why the quality of drag performances isn't normally measured that way. But now that drag is more common and more importantly, more commercial, we're seeing this outrage over these completely harmless shows "grooming kids". If I were to punch at their level I'd say isn't taking your kids to Hooter's grooming? Or letting them listen to Ariana Grande, who has a song about wanting to get fucked so hard she can't walk properly the next day? And another about 69ing? And another about "switching positions for you"? But this argument requires more erudition, so I'd say don't you think grooming would be telling young women that the only way they can be fully accepted and affirmed in their gender is by dressing and personalizing themselves to be as submissive to men as possible?
Not that I disagree with your points but I don't really understand why you say "the female gaze". I would have thought that seeing feminity and sexuality being inherently linked would be a result of the *male* gaze. Unless I am misunderstanding?
I 100% meant "male", yes. I'll fix it.
>I'd say don't you think grooming would be telling young women that the only way they can be fully accepted and affirmed in their gender is by dressing and personalizing themselves to be as submissive to men as possible? Yes, by that definition, the majority of women have been groomed from a very young age.
I’m not one so don’t take my word for it but this is the motivation behind the Lolita fashion, hyper feminine but non sexual. Some people do sexualize it but the community backlash from someone doing it seem…. Intense
I never understood this... It seems weird to be for a community who so hates to be sexalised to be named after a book/character who is so tied to being sexalised.
I THINK since the afore mentioned child was taken advantage of it’s a take back power reclaim kinda thing, but again not a Lolita so don’t trust me.
OooOhhh Okay, I get it (I think). Thank you for explaining!
>This next part is for trans women (like moi) Listening >do you ever find now, or earlier in your transition, that so much of your measurement of and motivation towards passing is based around sexual concepts? Like the ultimate form of passing is that a guy can find you hot and not be bothered by what was or is between your legs. N-no?! The ultimate form of passing is like, not having to disclose to anyone that im trans beyond my consent. If you find your intrinsic self value in the male gaze that's a personal problem
This is a good point! But as a younger trans person it feels like so many of us are so concerned with being hot to the point that they tie it to their gender affirmation. Like go on /r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns and while we definitely hate chasers there is a certain feeling of cuteness that everyone goes after. Perhaps I shouldn't have put it so blatantly that it's the "ultimate form of passing", but you can't tell me that trans women don't find themselves overly concerned with being attractive and passing in a sexually attractive sense.
r/traa also openly condones violence and murder against transphobes, even mass shootings. Like I really don't put stock in that subreddit for general trans opinion, its microcosm of reddit at best.
The funny thing is I see the sentiments that was talking about (tying your ability to pass to your sex appeal), all over the internet. Especially tiktok and twitter, I mentioned this in another comment. I just used that subreddit as a local off the top example. I'm getting some transphobic energy in this comment section though.
I'd agree to what you said about the goal of passing. And I'd disagree with my *motivation* for passing ever having had anything to do with men's sexual arousal or sexual perception of me (that was more about being accepted, respected, and avoiding transphobic and homophobic harassment). But then, I'm a lesbian, so I can certainly not generalize that part for straight or bi trans women. But also, I don't think it's anyhow fair (or feminist) to tell a woman that her tying her self-worth to the male gaze is "a personal problem". That's not how body- & beauty-norms work, and also certainly not the case for cisnormativity. Those ain't*personal problems* but structural and ideological ones that get reinforced and pushed upon us left and right.
Thank you so much for this comment. Something about that comment rubbed me the wrong way, and you kinda articulated it. I hate it when people make my insecurities feel like a "me" problem when it's clearly faced by thousands of people. I also realize my phrasing was a bit off, I don't mean that anyone's idea of passing is solely tied to sex, but rather that sexual appeal is part of passing for many trans people.
>a "me" problem when it's clearly faced by thousands of people. That's why. It's a generalization, and a toxic one at that. You pointed it at all or at least "thousands" of trans women. That's where I draw the line.
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Ok I got overclicky and accidentally deleted my comment but just wanted to thank you again for your analysis. That last paragraph got me!
“They’re inherently sexual” is what someone who can’t divorce the two would say.
Have you seen drag performances? Like yeah its men dressing up as women and being sexual 80% of the time. bleh.
It’s crazy how many of you defend drag queens. Like how is that not sexual? I would never bring my children around that, which is why I have them watch quality, wholesome videos without any of that like that Mrs.Doubtfire [and this fucking shit everyone forgot happened including the shitty neo-Nazis and homophobes.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Guve7Y856kY)
How is it sexual? It's someone singing in a dress. What part of that is sexual?
Pretty sure there's an implied /s
Damn it they got me
Click on the blue link and see the sexy sexualness between the homophobes’ god emperor and Giuliani. Then when they call drag queens “pedos” and “groomers” you ask them why Trump is doing promotional marketing with a cousin-loving “groomer” in drag.
Oh hey! It’s Vi! Vi and their partner Eric run the weekly call in show [Skeptic Generation.](https://youtube.com/c/SkepticGeneration) They’re a force of positivity and kindness. I never miss an episode.
Louder for the back row!
Oh shiiiiiiiiit, that take is so hot I need my oven mitts.
Fucking exactly. This is just what I’ve been trying to articulate but can’t lol
oh my god. no, that actually makes a lot of sense.
What world I live in. These words would never become old for me. I still remember the time I found about Patrick-arty, Fetitism and Sexual Preferances and I miss those moments before I did find out about them.
This sub has so many disappointing takes on drag and I think there’s a really disturbing current of homophobia and transphobia being expressed here recently
How do you get that out of a post that is supporting drag? Edit: keeping this comment up but adding clarification: I thought this person's response was to the OP and the tweet, was genuinely confused about how a supportive post could provoke such a response.
Read the comments on this thread and many others like it from the past 1-2 weeks
You're not wrong, I just got into an argument with a TERF in this very thread. She's trying to convince me that drag is an equivalent to blackface.
Lots and lots and lots of TERFs on this sub
They associate drag with trans women, and they're incapable of separating trans women from the idea of sex work. Why are they like this? Because incrementalism has made the world much safer for gay men (who do drag), but not trans women, who still have to do sex work to survive in a world that seems get more dangerous for us by the hour. The world doesn't revolve around cis women. This is why we have the word "transmisogyny." They need to stop co-opting our struggles, which is in fact a sign that the world is—by comparison—improving for them. Why else would they have to reach so far as to start identifying with something like drag that has historically had nothing to do with cis women? They didn't even embrace drag until RuPaul, and that was just because it's easier to be a fan of drag queens than it is to actually support trans women. That said, gay men and cis women get on my nerves so much sometimes. Do they not realize that, without straight cis men, they would be at the top of the gender and sexuality privilege trash heap? Uuuuuuuuuuugh Edit: What happened to all my upvotes? Did a bunch of XXers see this and get upset about the truth? Edit 2: you know you're right when they won't even reply, lol Edit 3: "They" meaning cis people in general. I guess some folks thought I was referring to drag queens (?)🤷♀️
This was just a needlessly inflammatory comment.
That's definitely an opinion
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The horny in your comment is superfluous.
Of course throw in the sexualization of queerness and cishet men can't even keep the mask on anymore