Feminist Current
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Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community?

I don’t intentionally go to many drag shows. Not as a political or even personal decision — in fact, it’s not really something I’ve thought about all that much. I suppose that form of entertainment simply has never interested me. That said, it’s been around for so many years that these performances are practically mainstream — many a documentary has been made about drag culture and drag queens and drag performances are often a part of gay/queer nights, fundraisers, and other events. It’s pretty impossible to have missed drag. But because it isn’t very much a part of my world, I think it’s escaped my radar in terms of a feminist analysis.
The other night I was at a bar for a gay night and a portion of the evening featured drag queens. As I watched, I was struck by how accepted drag is by liberals and progressives — people who will, without a second thought, call out things like blackface and yellowface, which are understood by most (frustratingly there are some who continue to need education on why blackface isn’t funny or ok) to be racist.
Why is drag any different? Really, I’m asking. It’s possible I’m missing something here…
To me it seems equivalent to cultural appropriation or the way in which white people have mocked black people, Asian people, Indigenous people, and pretty much every other race/ethnicity that isn’t theirs, under the guise of “performance” or “satire.” Why is it cute or funny or entertaining for men to mock women via drag? Why is it not considered to be a form of cultural appropriation, but with regard to gender? Why have progressives and mainstream feminists avoided critique of these performances, in large part?
I imagine that the defense of drag would include arguments that say this performance of femininity is so exaggerated that it doesn’t mock women so much as it mocks a cartoonish version of extreme femininity, but I’m unconvinced that turning women into extreme, cartoonish charicatures that are to be mocked is particularly progressive — rather, it feels regressive to me. There must be a reason women don’t do this to men — turning masculinity into entertainment or a joke, that is.
Why is it funny for men to dress up as women and not for women to dress up as men? There’s something about this performance that says that femininity and, in turn, women, are a joke (just like white people dressing up as “Indians” for Halloween turn Indigenous peoples and cultures into a joke or simply a costume one can put on or take off at will). If only being a woman was simply a costume one could take off…
Last year, a drag queen named Daytona Bitch was fired from a Toronto Pride event for a blackface performance in which, as Laura Kane reports, “she dressed up as Miss Cleo, a kitschy telephone psychic from the late ‘90s, complete with black face paint.”
Daytona Bitch, in blackface.
—Daytona Bitch, in blackface.
“After tweeting photos of the costume, she received several outraged responses on social media from members of the LGBTQ community.” And rightly so. But where is the LGBTQ community on drag? Why is it understood that the appropriation of a marginalized ethnicity, race or culture is facilitated by white privilege and that it’s offensive, but not that the same arguments could be applied to a group of men (who benefit from male privilege) who appropriate femininity as a form of entertainment?
In a 2006 paper, entitled “Imitating Others As Control: Is Drag Sexist/Racist?” Kirsten Anderberg writes:
When men dress in drag and supposedly imitate women, it is most often very sexist in a remarkably similar way to the whites imitating racial minorities… All the things I have shunned as part of the ancient ‘cult of womanhood,’ all the superficial, commercialized, and fake aspects of ‘femininity’ that I have fought to be freed from, these men were embracing as their ‘womanhood!’ Tons of make up, huge dyed bouffant hair-dos, binding lingerie, heels, nylons, shaving…and these men in drag who were supposedly acting like women, also acted giddy, stupid, shallow…it is odd to me that this could be seen as anything but blatant sexism.
While there have been the odd critique here and there, I’ve seen little from mainstream feminism or from the LGTBQ community about the sexism of drag. In a post from back in 2011 called “Is drag sexist,” Kelly Kleiman asks: “Why do we despise performance in blackface and celebrate performance in drag? Is blackface considered an insult and drag a joke because of some inherent difference between them, or because African-Americans won’t tolerate ridicule while the women’s movement is still trying to prove we have a sense of humor?”
And I can’t help but wonder the same thing. Feminists are routinely accused of being “no fun,” having no sense of humour, and generally hating everything. We try very hard, as women, to be “in on the joke.” We pretend to like porn, join in on rape chants, laugh at rape jokes, and self-objectify, claiming that we like and feel empowered by our own oppression — we’re owning it, and therefore it’s ok. Wishful postfeminism, I’d call it.
Kleiman writes: “There was ridicule of African-Americans. ‘Look how silly they are! But look how they laugh, and doesn’t that prove they’re happy in the confinement in which we’ve placed them?’ Likewise, men who dress up as women and adopt stereotyped feminine behaviors are comical because of their stereotyped behavior, and the inference the audience is encouraged to draw is not that stereotypes are comical but that women are.”
Beyond that, it feels as though drag queens are given free reign to insult women and adopt over-the-top sexist language (bitch, ho, etc.) and objectified depictions of women in ways that women don’t even get away with, within a feminist context.
DIvine
—Divine
After watching a documentary about the famous drag queen, Divine, Julie Bindel wrote: “He played, according to his manager, female characters who were ‘trash’, ‘filth’ and ‘obscenity in bucket loads.’ But Divine was born into a conservative, middle-class family and played on nasty stereotypes of trailer trash women to get a laugh. In his films Divine called his female co-stars ‘sluts.'”
So a privileged male is permitted to mock women and use sexist, derogatory language because, what? “Performance art?” “Humour?” Help me out here…
To be clear, I don’t think that drag queens are all intentionally working to subordinate women (but who knows, I’ve never asked any), nor do I think your enjoyment of drag performances (if you do indeed enjoy them) make you a necessarily Bad and Wrong, misogynist person. But I do think that the unwillingness of the LGTBQ community and mainstream feminism to talk about drag as something that is no more acceptable than any other kind of cultural appropriation or than white people’s efforts to turn ethnicity and race into a stereotype and a joke, is significant.
After Daytona Bitch was fired, Toronto Prides’ executive director Kevin Beaulieu said about the performance: “It doesn’t meet our mission or our mandate, which is to celebrate the full diversity of Toronto’s LGBTQ community.” The statement begs the question: where are women in that “celebration” of “diversity?” Do we matter at all? Or are we just a joke?
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352 Comments Already

  1. morag - April 25th, 2014 at 12:09 pm none Comment author #167618 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Thank you for this! This is what drag queens and transwomen always fail to understand: femininity isn’t a fun costume that us women are sooo lucky to be able to take on and off. Femininity doesn’t reflect femaleness, in fact it’s like being forced to wear chains. Women who fail to be appropriateley feminine are tortured and killed around the world. This shit kills women, but who cares about butch lesbians when it’s much more fun to think lipstick is feminist?
    It’s the ultimate expression of privilege to say he wants to be seen as a “woman,” when most females would give up everything to be regarded as human beings.
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    • Grace - April 25th, 2014 at 12:42 pm none Comment author #167624 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Drag queens are NOT the same as trans women.
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      • Meghan Murphy - April 25th, 2014 at 1:43 pm none Comment author #167633 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I was under the same impression and, oddly, I was just informed on Twitter that many drag queens identify as women and am confused now. https://twitter.com/Chris_arnade/status/459772246027161600
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        • Jennifer "Renee" Bernard - May 8th, 2014 at 4:36 pm none Comment author #168074 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Don’t be confused. It is all still sexual dysfunction. Your blog is still precise. Whether drag or trans woman, the truth remains the same; women are being portrayed as trashy, slutty, and vulgar.
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          • Gus - May 19th, 2014 at 3:40 pm none Comment author #168588 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Drag is not a sexual dysfunction. It’s an art form. Then again, neither is transexuality.
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            • mmmariguana - May 19th, 2014 at 11:39 pm none Comment author #168630 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              There’s no business like show business.
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          • Dan - June 16th, 2014 at 3:56 pm none Comment author #170213 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Jennifer “Renee” Bernard,
            Wikipedia defines sexual dysfunction as follows in the first paragraph:
            “Sexual dysfunction or sexual malfunction is difficulty experienced by an individual or a couple during any stage of a normal sexual activity, including physical pleasure, desire, preference, arousal or orgasm. According to the DSM-5, sexual dysfunction requires a person to feel extreme distress and interpersonal strain for a minimum of 6 months (excluding substance or medication-induced sexual dysfunction). Sexual dysfunctions can have a profound impact on an individual’s perceived quality of sexual life.”
            Where did you get your degree in psychology or psychiatry? Drag queens, as posted numerous times correctly under this article, are not being such based on distressing sexual feelings as described by Wikipedia. A better example of sexual dysfunction is when someone has sexual problems regarding the actual act of having sex. This act is not occurring onstage during a drag performance, or the performer would be banned from the venue and arrested for indecent conduct.
            But if you do indeed have experience in the private bedroom with a significant number of drag queens to form a cogent opinion on their sex life and how distressing it has been to them for at least six months excluding substance or medication-induced sexual dysfunction, then please, do tell so that your opinion can have at least minimal weight.
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            • lizor - June 17th, 2014 at 7:32 am none Comment author #170244 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Oh look everyone! A man came in to explain How Things Are to us all and How We’re Discussing Things Wrong! How cool is that? I’ve never seen a dude do this before, like ever…
              I wish.
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              • Meghan Murphy - June 17th, 2014 at 12:17 pm none Comment author #170258 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                I, for one, am grateful to better understand what we’re all talking about and how we should actually be thinking about and discussing our own oppression.
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              • Kendra Robinson - January 31st, 2015 at 2:11 pm none Comment author #245109 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                Drag Queens are not representing women they are representing themselves.
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                • amongster - February 1st, 2015 at 10:13 am none Comment author #245304 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  Cool, then those men can shut the fuck up about “celebrating womanhood” if they are actually just celebrating themselves and giving a shit about how women feel. If you like to perfom femininity as a male, go ahead, but don’t talk like femininity is something inherent to women.
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                  • Meghan Murphy - February 1st, 2015 at 12:42 pm none Comment author #245326 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    Exactly, @amongster
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          • The Blasphemous Homemaker - November 11th, 2014 at 2:15 pm none Comment author #210303 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Being a transwoman is NOT a sexual dysfunction. There are many different hormones and chemicals in our bodies that determine sex and biology, and it is very valid to have an internal makeup that does not match your outward genitals. Discrediting the transgender experience is not just wrong, it’s cruel, as they already experience tremendous obstacles and discrimination in our culture. Please research the issue further and become educated.
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            • Missfit - November 11th, 2014 at 5:29 pm none Comment author #210366 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Whatever outward genitals you have, they are the results of your biology, hormones and chemicals, and whatever internal makeup you have matches your genitals; how could it not? On what basis? The only reason a person can come to a different conclusion is by believing that certain qualities are strictly to be found in people with a specific type of genitals.
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              • jack brody - February 2nd, 2015 at 7:15 am none Comment author #245481 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                While this statement seems correct it is only partially correct. It is in fact possible that, physically speaking, that the biology and associated homones develop the body with a certain sexual appearence but fail to fully develop the associated hormonal organs to fully support a distint gender. My sense that any discussion of the developmental biology is taboo, as is any discussion as to why sexual identity may result in anything other then physical the gender physically attributes. Instead, there seems to be a “this is what it is!” now lets be supportive. Finding a reason as to why someone should find themselves identifying with an opposite gender then their physical attributes tends to be looked upon as identifying abnormality and being unsupportive or creating a dialogue of exclusiveness.
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                • lizor - February 3rd, 2015 at 5:29 am none Comment author #245705 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  Can you tell me which “associated hormonal organs […] fully support a distint gender” that are not part of “the body” as you refer to it in the first part of your sentence? I’ve got lots of physiology books but can’t find “hormonal organs” that are not part of the body.
                  There is also no physiological evidence of gonad development without corresponding endocrine development in the way you imply being associated with a need for medical intervention to build facsimiles of sex organs for that enable performing intercourse. If there is such research, please cite it.
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              • Le - April 1st, 2015 at 5:40 pm none Comment author #257592 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                Missfit- Yes!! I am a woman because I have woman bits, NOT because I wear makeup or dresses or enjoy shoe-shopping or whatever other bollocks women are supposed to be defined by. Cut the gender-role crap and you cut the need to redefine people’s gender if they don’t fit in to traditional gender roles. (or something….;-) )
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            • Scott - November 12th, 2014 at 6:35 am none Comment author #210661 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Having the patriarchy making you believe that you are different and therefore inferior is the oppression that you suffer from. It is quite similar to the oppression that women face every day of their lives. The truth is that you are a unique person who is biologically male and you do not identify as a man. This is actually a good thing, it means that you are uncomfortable with the rape culture that the patriarchy has enforced for thousands of years. However when you adopt the stereotypes that are the instrument that oppresses women, you not only reinforce the system that is oppressing you but you are also unraveling the work of hundreds of people who fought and died to pass on the freedoms that females have today. not the least of which is segregated restrooms.
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            • CG - December 31st, 2014 at 9:58 am none Comment author #234189 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “Feminine” and “masculine” are really *HUMAN* traits,thoughts,feelings and behaviors! Unfortunately transsexuals both reflect and reinforce these artificial socially constructed categories in the very sexist,gender divided,gender stereotyped,woman-hating male dominated society we all live in!
              And there is plenty of decades worth of great psychological research studies by many different psychologists that shows that the sexes are much more alike than different in most traits,abilities and behaviors with a very large overlap between them,and that most of the differences between them are really small average differences,many of which have shrunk even smaller,and they find much greater individual *people* differences! Biologically the sexes are more alike than different too! As I said comedian Elaine Boosler said in the 1980’s,I’m only a person trapped in a woman’s body.
              Feminists(such as Robin Morgan,Janice Raymond,Gloria Steinem,Germain’e Greer Sheila Jeffreys etc) who have rightfully pointed this fact out,are not afraid of transsexuals or prejudiced against them,the issue is what I said it is. The only transsexual woman who actually debunks these common sexist gender myths,and gender stereotypes is Kate Bornstein author of Gender Outlaw:On Men,Women And The Rest Of Us,Gender Outlaws,My Gender Workbook etc. She was a heterosexual man who was married and had a daughter,then had a sex change and became a lesbian woman and then decided not to idenify as a man or a woman.
              I heard Kate interviewed in 1998 on a local NPR show and she totally debunks gender myths,and rejects the “feminine” and “masculine” categories as the mostly socially constructed categories that they really are.She even said,what does it mean to feel or think like a woman(or man) she said what does that really mean.
              And as cultural anthropologist Roger Lancaster wrote in his introduction, in his very good 2003 book,The Trouble With Nature sex In Science when he’s talking about how scientists constantly search for a ”gay brain”,a ”gay gene” or ”gay intergovernmental” patterns. Roger came out as a gay man in college.
              He then says (One can hardly understate the naive literalism of present-day science on these matters: Scientists still look for the supposed anatomical attributes of the opposite sex embedded somewhere in the inverts brain or nervous system.) He then says and this notion now enjoys a second,third,and even fourth life in political discourses.He then says it is by appeal to such conceits that Aaron Hans,a Washington,D.C.- based transgender activist,reflects on his uncomfortable life as a girl:”I didn’t *think* I was a boy,I *knew* I was a boy.” He says,Hans elaborates: ”You look at pictures of me- I actually have great pictures of me in drag-and I literally look like a little boy in a dress.
              Roger then says,Far,far be it from me to cast doubt on anyone’s sense of discomfort with the ascribed gender roles.Nor would I question anyone’s sense that sexual identity is a deeply seated aspect of who they are .But testimonies of this sort and appeals to the self-evidence of perception beg the obvious question:Just what is a little boy or girl * supposed* to look like? The photograph that accompanies Han’s interview shows a somewhat robust girl.Is this to say that (real) girls are necessarily delicate and (real) boys athletic? He then says (If so,virtually all of my nieces are ”really” boys,since not a one of them is delicate or un presupposing)
              Roger then says,There is indeed something compelling about such intensely felt and oft- involved experiences-”I knew I was gay all along”; ”I felt like a girl” – but that compulsion belongs to the realm of outer culture,not nature.That is, if ”inappropriate” acts,feelings,body types,or desires seem to throw us into the bodies or minds other genders,it is because acts,feelings,and so on are associated with gender by dint of the same all-enveloping cultural logic that gives us pink blankets ( or caps,or crib cards,I.D. bracelets) for girls and blue for boys in maternity ward cribs.He then says,when we diverge one way or another from those totalizing associations,we feel-we really feel;in the depths of our being-”different”.Therein lies the basis for an existential opposition to the established order of gendered associations.
              Roger then says But therein also lies the perpetual trap: Every essentialist claim about the ”nature” of same sex desire in turn refers to and reinforces suppositions about the ”nature” of ”real” men and women (from whom the invert differs), about the ”naturalness” of their mutual attraction(demonstrated nowhere so much as in the inverts inversion),about the scope of their acts,feelings,body types,and so on( again, marked off by the deviation of the deviant). Aping the worst elements of gender/sexual conservatism,every such proposition takes culturally constituted meanings -the correlative associations of masculinity and femininity,active and passive,blue and pink- as ”natural facts”.
              Roger then says,In a twist as ironic as the winding of a double helix that goes first this way,then that,the search for gay identify gradually finds it’s closure in the normalcy of the norm as a natural law.In the end,I am not convinced of the basic suppositions here. I doubt that most men are unfamiliar with the sentiment given poetic form by Pablo Neruda:”It happens that I became tired of being a man. ”Even psychiatrists who treat ”gender dysphoria”- a slick term for rebellion against conventional gender roles -admit that at least 50% of children at some point exhibit signs of mixed or crossed gender identify or express a desire to be the ”opposite” sex. Roger has a note number to the reference in his notes section to a March 22,1994 New York Times article by Daniel Goleman called,The ‘Wrong’ Sex:A New Definition of Childhood Pain.
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            • CG - December 31st, 2014 at 10:46 am none Comment author #234222 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              There is an excellent online article that I printed out 13 years ago,by Jungian psychologist Dr.Gary S.Toub,called,Jung and Gender:Masculine and Feminine Revisted. On his site it now only has part of this article and it says you have to register to read the full article. I emailed Dr.Toub years ago and he wrote me back several nice emails,in one he said he really liked my letter,and that it was filled to the brim with excellent points and references.
              In this article he talks about what parts of Jungian thought he finds useful and what he finds problematic. The first thing he says he finds useful is, In the course of Jungian analysis, he often assists female clients to discover traditionally,masculine qualities in their psyche and that he likewise frequently assist male clients to recognize traditionally feminine qualities in their psyche. He says this process frees each gender from the straight-jacket of stereotyped sex roles and expands his clients identities. He then said that the process also mirrors and furthers the breakdown of male-female polarization in our culture,and the cultural shifts towards androgyny.
              He also says that most importantly, his practice of Jungian analysis places the greatest emphasis on facilitating his clients individuation process. He says this means that he tries to assist clients,male or female,to search for their authentic self-definition,distinct from society’s gender expectations.He also says that many Jungian definitions of masculine and feminine are narrow,outdated and sexist.
              He also says that he has found that generalizing about what is masculine and what is feminine is dangerous,often perpetuating gender myths that are discriminatory and damaging.He says while there is some research supporting biological roots to personality differences,the majority of studies suggest that much of what is considered masculine or feminine is culture determined.
              He also says that viewing masculine and feminine as complementary opposites,while useful at times,is problematic. He then says as his gay,lesbian, and transsexual clients have taught him,gender is more accurately viewed as encompassing a wide-ranging continuum. He then says that likewise,the more people he sees in his practice,the more he is impressed at the great diversity in human nature. He says he has seen men of all types and varieties,and women of all kinds. He then says,he is hard-pressed to come up with very many generalizations based on gender.He says he knows that there are some statistical patterns,but how useful are they when he works with individuals and in a rapidly changing society? He says if each person is unique,no statistical norm or average will be able to define who my client is.
              He then says,from a psychologicalperspective,men and women are not, in fact,opposite. He says his clinical experience is that they are much more psychologically alike than different,and the differences that exist are not necessarily opposing.
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            • CG - December 31st, 2014 at 10:55 am none Comment author #234226 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Interview with long time feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin about her teaching and erasing her two twin daughters and her son with non-sexist non-gender roles and gender stereotypes. http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/activist/transcripts/Pogrebin.pdf
              Feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s son didn’t reject playing with dolls and tea sets, just as her identical twin daughters didn’t reject the non-gender stereotyped toys and behaviors she encouraged them to have. And her son didn’t grow up gay or transgendered he’s married and I think has children,but he didn’t grow up to be a macho football player either,as Letty said he’s a chef and loves to cook.
              And there is a lot wrong with sexist very limiting gender roles,gender myths and gender stereotypes that are mostly artificially created by the very sexist,gender divided,gender stereotyped,woman-hating male dominated family and society we all live in,which makes both sexes,into only half of a person,instead of full human people able to develop and express their full shared *human* traits,abilities,and behaviors etc. And then these artificial gender differences continue to reinforce gender inequalities,male dominance and men’s violence against women,children and even each other.
              There is a great 2005 book,Sex Lies And Stereotypes Challenging Views Of Women,Men and Relationships by social and cognitive British psychologist Dr.Gary Wood.He too shows plenty of great important research studies done over decades by many different psychologists that finds small average sex differences,and the sexes are much more similar than different.He also thoroughly demonstrates that gender roles,gender myths and gender stereotypes which are mostly socially and culturally constructed,harm both sexes because they are very liming,cause conflicts and misunderstands between women and men,and only allow each of them to become half of a person which can cause mental and physical conditions and diseases.
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            • CG - December 31st, 2014 at 10:57 am none Comment author #234227 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              And an interesting observation is that why is it ( I already know why) that the overwhelming majority of transgender men who became women are always wearing usually short or long dresses,skirts and high heels and make up? And of course Janet Mock is wearing a close fitted *pink* dress and make up on the cover of her book.
              A lot of heterosexual women often wear jeans and T-shirts,or other type tops,sweaters and blouses and sneakers or other flat shoes for casual wear,and don’t get dressed up most of the time unless for special occasions.But you rarely ever,I don’t think I’ve even seen one,see men who became women wearing jeans,or other pants,sneakers or some other flat casual shoes,and little or no make up!
              And believe it or not some women don’t wear make up at all.The ironic kind of funny thing is that I have spoken to more than a few consultants you talk to when you call, at Maybelline,Cover Girl,Revlon,and Loreal and even though they work for cosmetics companies they told me they don’t wear make up.
              The only unisex clothes that both sexes are allowed to wear or the casual clothes I mentioned above.But in Scotland men wear kilt skirts,and in the 1800’s many little boys wore dresses with longer hair.
              There was also once a ridiculous rule that women and girls weren’t even allowed to wear pants.And before World War 1 or 2, baby boys were dressed in pink because it was considered a light red ”masculine” color and baby girls were dressed in light blue which was then considered a delicate ”feminine” color,it just strongly demonstrates once again how these definitions are artificially culturally and socially created.
              In the beginning of time there were no clothes,so women and men wore their nude birthday suits,which weren’t dresses and skirts and high heels for women and only pants for men.
              Also some years ago I read a discussion on some woman’s blog about how ”feminine” is mostly artificially socially constructed,and the women who posted in the comments agreed but quite a few said they never even thought about it because of how conditioned they are and because of how our society encourages,enforces and rewards it and punishes people who don’t conform.
              One woman who said that she’s a heterosexual married woman who rarely wears dresses and skirts,and that when she does she feels like a female impersonator, I know exactly what she means I feel the same exact way, anything that you can put on and take off you just know it’s fake and it feels fake and that it’s socially constructed even the clothes we wear sometimes.
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              • Morgan - February 2nd, 2015 at 1:34 pm none Comment author #245524 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                If femininity is a social construct for cis women, then it follows that it would also be enforced against trans women, with the added danger of transphobia. This being the case, I can certainly see how trans women would prefer to fit the social construct of feminine, so as to be rightfully identified (and not outed, which increases dramatically the likelihood of violence and death) by others who are operating on a transmisogynistic and misogynistic bias.
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                • Morag - February 2nd, 2015 at 2:27 pm none Comment author #245533 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  “If femininity is a social construct for cis [sic] women, then it follows that it would also be enforced against trans women … ”
                  No. Transwomen are male. They were not groomed into femininity, and the female sex-role has not been not imposed upon them and enforced via various forms of patriarchal control and violence. They are men.
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      • adasd - January 1st, 2015 at 10:39 am none Comment author #234850 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Both treat womanhood as a fun costume and don’t face any form of “oppression” that wouldn’t dissapear once they admit to being men.
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        • sam - January 30th, 2015 at 10:13 pm none Comment author #244941 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Actually, that is quite false. Transexuals do not treat it as a fun costume anymore than they do manhood. They feel instead that their outward appearance should reflect that of what they feel the most, and receive lots of oppression. Drag queens also face discrimination, but not nearly as much as transsexuals. What you may mean is that they are not discriminated upon in their own community. Maybe, you should actually research a bit before you state unbiased claims that cannot be backed up. All I have to do is refer to the countries’ view on transsexuals and bathrooms or working in the military, really any federal employment for that matter; and thus the reason why anytime some transsexual, transgender, etc., gets an office, it is considered news.
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          • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 1:11 am none Comment author #244964 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            “They feel instead that their outward appearance should reflect that of what they feel the most, and receive lots of oppression.”
            Wow, man, that’s really deep and insightful. I can just tell that you’ve done a lot of research into “that of what they feel the most.”
            That of what men feel most is very important for women to understand and to honour. Feminists often forget to prioritize men and men’s delicate feelings, so thanks for reminding us!
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            • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 11:50 am none Comment author #245073 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              It’s always most important, when doing feminism, to think about what men feel the most, Morag.
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              • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 12:22 pm none Comment author #245085 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                So true, Meghan. Also, what men feel the most must be reflected in their outward appearance. That’s why they always make an appearance at feminist blogs, and at the scenes of violent and/or sexual crimes. We should understand this need men have to align the their internal feelings with external expression. Men have a need to be, and feel, whole. It’s different for girls, which is why we struggle to understand.
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                • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 12:29 pm none Comment author #245087 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  Do you think that if we just were better listeners and spent more time listening to men, we’d be better women and, by extension, better feminists?
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                  • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 3:08 pm none Comment author #245124 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    Dear Sister, we have much to learn. Yes, I believe it would make us better women, but not better feminists. The best feminist is not. That is, the best feminism is the sound of one hand clapping. I speak in riddles about silence because men like those. It makes them feel deep and complex and at peace with the violent world they have created.
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                    • lizor - February 2nd, 2015 at 5:22 pm none Comment author #245587 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                      Oh my God, you two. That was hilarious. Thank you.
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            • Morgan - February 2nd, 2015 at 2:02 pm none Comment author #245527 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Trans women are women, so yeah, including them in feminist discouse should be a fairly non-threatening stance to take. Trans men (that is, those assigned female at birth who identify as men) are the transgender people who really have no place in feminist discouse, seeing as they are men. Of course, there are grey areas for individuals who are neutrois or genderqueer, but the basics, as far as I understand them, are that if someone identifies in a certain way, why not believe and include them? Otherwise you will be operating in essentially the same manner as a homophobe who claims that queer men aren’t *really men,* or queer women aren’t *really women.*
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              • amongster - February 2nd, 2015 at 3:22 pm none Comment author #245558 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                Transwomen are transwomen. You might include those who have proven themselves to be supportive of feminism into some feminist groups but not into female-only spaces. Those spaces must exist. Transwomen may create their own transwomen-only spaces, no problem. They should not expect of females to make room for males though. That’s not what feminism is about, that’s not what females should do.
                And you confused yourself: Saying “transwomen are women” basically means that gender, a social construct, matters more than biological facts. It is you and folks like you, the whole queer community, that inforces gender and gender roles, not us who state that being female has real material consequences.
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              • Morag - February 2nd, 2015 at 3:24 pm none Comment author #245560 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                “transwomen” = male, men
                “transmen” = female, women
                All the rest is of your comment is magical thinking induced by queer theory.
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        • RS - January 31st, 2015 at 3:00 am none Comment author #244989 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Please do not speak for drag queens unless you are one.
          I’m a drag queen, and my feminine persona is a part of who I am. I am not a heterosexual male, and I lack quite a bit of male privilege because I’m an especially effeminate gay man even when I’m out of drag. It’s difficult for me to find work in any environment that isn’t gay friendly due to my voice and mannerisms (which I cannot successfully hide even when I try). I’ve been denied housing, and I’m often fear being assaulted.
          Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about drag. When I’m in drag, I feel more able to express myself without fear, and I’m able to express myself more fully by accessing other parts of myself that are difficult to manifest when I’m in “boy” drag. My drag persona has been with me since I was young, and it’s a part of my identity. This is a familiar story for many of my peers.
          This doesn’t mean that drag should be above scrutiny — there is a lot of misogyny in drag culture, as in most other cultures, that should be called-out. But it is NOT the same as heterosexual male misogyny, and it often does NOT come from a place of privilege: very few of my friends can “pass” as straight men, and many of us face the same hardships when it comes to living in communities with primarily cis-gendered heterosexual couples.
          So please — you obviously don’t know anything about drag queens, and it would serve you well to not try and speak for us. I hear what you are saying, but you are entirely wrong about appropriation. Drag is, for many of us, deeply personal identity; that identity happens to overlap with cis-gendered female identity in many ways, which is where the conflict lies.
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          • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 11:56 am none Comment author #245076 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            “Please do not speak for drag queens unless you are one.”
            So feminists shouldn’t critique male behaviour unless they are male? What kind of logic is that?
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          • amongster - January 31st, 2015 at 12:05 pm none Comment author #245079 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            It’s you who obviously doesn’t know anything about feminism so please don’t tell feminists how to do it. I have no intention to “speak for” *you*, I speak for myself and other women to whom drag is harmful.
            Just because you are a gay man doesn’t mean you don’t have still privileges over females and you make that clear by hiding behind “woman face” instead of having the guts to fight with females against the oppressive system that is gender. *You* turn “women” into an identity and make women’s lives even more intolerable. Your own suffering is no excuse for stabbing members of other oppressed groups in the back.
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            • Kteis - March 17th, 2015 at 1:59 am none Comment author #254279 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “hiding behind woman face” oh, so powerfull, thank you!
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          • Simon - January 31st, 2015 at 5:09 pm none Comment author #245151 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Garish costumes and idiotic mannerisms are part of the “cis-gendered female identity?” If you really believe this then I feel sorry for the women in your life.
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      • Mammajoon - January 17th, 2015 at 3:49 pm none Comment author #241873 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        And drag queens are not portraying ‘women’. They’re portraying drag queens. ‘We’re all born naked – the rest is drag.’
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    • The Real Cie - April 25th, 2014 at 2:05 pm none Comment author #167638 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Do not confuse trans women with drag queens. A trans woman is a woman who feels like she has been born into the wrong body. It is very distressing to these individuals to look in the mirror and see a body that they don’t feel could be theirs because it is the wrong sex. Drag is a form of performance art. Trans women are women.
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      • Miep - April 25th, 2014 at 5:59 pm none Comment author #167651 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        No, they are men who think they have been born into the wrong body. Thinking you are something you are not does not mean you are something you are not, it means you are confused.
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        • morag - April 25th, 2014 at 10:06 pm none Comment author #167662 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Exactly, Miep. My feminism is not about catering to males in anyway shape or form. And about drag kings: just because women do something doesn’t erase the political and historical ramifications of that thing. Goddess I hate drive by commenters who add nothing to the discussion and expect everyone to take their word as law on radical feminist sites.
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          • nobody - May 20th, 2014 at 6:42 am none Comment author #168662 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            If your feminism isn’t catering to men, then keep your filthy paws out of LGBT issues for fucks sake. There is a reason men in the LGBT community are becoming more hostile towards feminists: you come in acting like some kind of saviour then shit on them the exact same way the rest of society does. Its infuriating.
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            • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 11:05 am none Comment author #168671 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Uh, are there no women in the LGBT community? Are feminists not permitted to have opinions on sexism when it happens within a community that they don’t belong to? Gosh the LGBT community is starting to sound like it’s full of self-absorbed misogynists.
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            • ptittle - May 20th, 2014 at 5:11 pm none Comment author #168692 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              You want feminism to cater to men? CATER? Oh my. Are you ever mistaken about what feminism is all about. Cater to men. (sorry, can’t stop giggling) (the poor men become hostile because they aren’t catered to.) (oh for gawdsake grow the fuck up.)
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            • Nordie - May 27th, 2014 at 12:52 am none Comment author #169118 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              so, lesbians don’t “qualify” as LGBT issues now??
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            • Clemdane - June 6th, 2014 at 12:40 am none Comment author #169576 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              If they are becoming more hostile to feminists it is due to their own sexism.
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            • Sabine - December 5th, 2014 at 7:04 pm none Comment author #221708 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              And there I was thinking the “L” in LGBT was referring to lesbians…as in gay WOMEN???? But women should be keeping their “filthy paws” out of LGBT issues??? What a ridiculous, vile, misogynistic thing to come out with. Nobody is right.
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            • Sabine - January 31st, 2015 at 7:53 pm none Comment author #245191 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              There is a reason men in The LGBT community are becoming hostile towards feminists: THEY ARE MEN.
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          • Michele - August 12th, 2014 at 7:03 pm none Comment author #176466 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Then your feminism is bigoted. I’m a woman. I was born and bred a woman. Every part of me is real. But because I am a bisexual woman, I’ve been told by feminist radical lesbians that I’m confused or taking privilege, or am a disease carrier, or will wake up someday and give up men. Yet I’ve known since the age of five what I am and am not – and what I am not is monosexual. I’ve been told by radical feminists of all kinds that I don’t belong because my sexuality has always involved BDSM – and my fantasies go back to childhood. But these people don’t get to decide who I am any more than non-feminists of all stripes do. Your opinion won’t change who I am.
            I’ve met trans men and women who knew what they were since childhood, too. One can be a feminine man, a masculine woman, or a masculine man or a feminine woman. Layer aspects of queerness and straightness onto that, as well as a desire for self-presentation. I consider trans women to be my sisters and I am proud to stand with them. I consider trans men to be my brothers, and I am proud to stand with them too. But I will not stand with bigots, because it’s people who are bigoted who made it hard for me to come out to my parents, who made it difficult I ever told a person on a date what I was like, who made it impossible for me to stay home and be the person I am. You make life hard for them too, and that makes me sick.
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            • lizor - August 13th, 2014 at 5:42 am none Comment author #176545 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “One can be a feminine man, a masculine woman, or a masculine man or a feminine woman.”
              You define identity as existing within and rigid either-or essentialist binary. And then you complain that radical feminists – the people who reject these oppressive constructs – for making your life difficult.
              Wake up. It’s the gender essentialism that you have apparently bought into and promote with your words that is the source of the difficulties you name.
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        • Scott Snow - April 26th, 2014 at 3:54 pm none Comment author #167696 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Miep, you wrote, of trans women,
          “they are men who think they have been born into the wrong body.”
          Then you go on to assert transsexual individuals are simply confused.
          At first, I find your first assertion acceptable – they *think* they’re in the wrong body, for some unknown reason(s). But the “think” troubles me. Then I recall that I’ve also learned of the experiences of young families in which their pre-school aged child clearly identifies as the opposite sex from their physiology. I believe these children usually are not aware enough of sexual differences to recognize that their biological sex doesn’t match their identity. One place it can become an issue is when the child in question will attend a pre-school or Kindergarten, and the family needs the teacher and school administration to understand how their child differs from the physiological gender norm.
          I do not believe that such children usually “think” they are in the wrong body, but I am confident that as they grow, our culture will teach them to think that is the case.
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          • morag - April 26th, 2014 at 8:15 pm none Comment author #167712 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            I know what you mean-usually little boys say they want to remove their penis because his parents told him he can’t play with dolls. Same with little girls who say they want a penis-funny how the focus is always on the penis, it’s the ultimate indicator of society’s male supremacy. Theses kids internalize it early on.
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          • Ash - April 28th, 2014 at 2:38 pm none Comment author #167760 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Gender and physiology should never be used in the same sentence. Serious biological determinism. There doesn’t need to be a “matching” if there does, you are pretty much erasing people who are intersex.
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            • morag - April 29th, 2014 at 11:32 am none Comment author #167794 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              I’m not sure if you’re responding to me, but I think you misinterpreted what I was trying to say. I don’t believe there needs to be a “matching” between one’s sex and gender, since I believe gender is a bullshit social construct. I think it’s dangerous for adults to say “oh my son wants to play with dolls, he must really be a girl,” and then keep badgering the kid til he says he doesn’t want to have a penis anymore. Boys should be allowed to play with “girl stuff,” but in getting back to the point of this article we as feminists need to deconstruct what “girl stuff” means and how that relates to sexism. It’s homophobia and sexism that’s the foundation of transgenderism and sex changes. Also, many intersex activists have said that they don’t want to be lumped under the whole trans umbrella.
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              • Jennifer "Renee" Bernard - May 8th, 2014 at 4:41 pm none Comment author #168075 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                This sort of issue with not identifying with your birth gender and instead feeling as though you are a man trapped in a woman’s body or a woman trapped in a man’s body merely begins in childhood predominately because of some sort of traumatic experience. This could come in the form of child abuse, absence of a parent, etc. Out of all the “trans men and women” I have spoken to most admit they are not positive that they were born that way but rather wonder if there was a “trigger” and over 80% of these trans men and woman have been sexually abused as children. And 99% of them abused by men, not women. The same is the truth for those who do drag. These are facts and I do believe I am an authority on this because of my long history of interaction and one-on-one counseling with these groups. There is some food for thought…..
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        • Verita Fides - June 4th, 2014 at 8:26 am none Comment author #169517 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Where do you get off telling other people who they are?
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      • CG - December 31st, 2014 at 10:25 am none Comment author #234207 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I was widely considered a strikingly beautiful baby and child and many strangers would come up to me and my parents and say what a gorgeous and beautiful baby and child and people still tell me I’m beautiful as an adult woman,but I don’t ”feel like a woman inside” there is no such (natural thing
        ) I feel like as comedian Elaine Boosler said back in the 1908’s that she’s only a person trapped in a woman’s body.
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      • Sabine - January 31st, 2015 at 7:42 pm none Comment author #245190 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “Trans women are women.”
        Absolutely NOT.
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    • Independent Radical - April 25th, 2014 at 11:44 pm none Comment author #167665 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “This is what drag queens and transwomen always fail to understand: femininity isn’t a fun costume that us women are sooo lucky to be able to take on and off. Femininity doesn’t reflect femaleness, in fact it’s like being forced to wear chains.”
      I think you’re right on the money here. Men acting feminine can be offensive because they often take things that radical feminists regard as oppressive (e.g. beauty practices) and make them out to be fun. Rather than comparing drag queen to whites in blackface, I would compare drag queens to BDSMers. BDSMers take things that are clearly oppressive (e.g. tying people up and flogging them, a practice which resembles the way in which white slaveowners treated black slaves) and make them out to be fun and sexy. Drag queens do the same thing, although the oppressive nature of the things they celebrate is less obvious.
      I wouldn’t call it “cultural appropriation” because I think that implies that beauty practices are part of “female culture”, when in reality they were probably not created by women and nowadays are promoted to women by powerful corporations (almost always run by men.) They are part of capitalist consumer culture, not “women’s culture” and they definately should be mocked (though women should not be mocked for doing them.) This is why I am all for clips of men (in films) attempting to perform some beauty practice (e.g. walking in high heel shoes, or ripping hair of his legs) and suffering as a result. I don’t usually like watching people suffer (I don’t find slapstick funny) but these types of clips show that beauty practices are painful and ridiculous, a fact that is not acknowledged often enough.
      To summarise, men mocking beauty practices (and by extension “femininity”) in a way that makes beauty practices look ridiculous is fine. Men mocking women by reinforcing the idea that women in general like beauty practices and making women out to be ridiculous because they perform beauty practices is not cool. Pretending that painful beauty practices are fun and totally painless is also not cool (in the same way that giving the impression that women like to be punched is not cool.)
      I think people in the gay community are generally pro-drag queens but not pro-blackface because they are in favour of anything that deviates from the status quo with regard to gender. Also, conservatives hate drag queens and according to liberal non-logic anything a conservative dislikes is automatically positive, whereas blackface was something invented by racist reactionaries. I would argue that the blind endorsement of anything “subversive” is misguided. Not everything “subversive” is automatically good. “Subversive” things are not automatically bad either, but we need to evaluate “subversive” things to determine whether they’re good or bad for the (radical) feminist cause.
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      • anaelir - April 26th, 2014 at 4:47 am none Comment author #167673 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        While I agree with you on most points, I must say that I don’t think seeing men suffering from trying to wear heels or removing hair in movies sends the message that these practices are bad and should be stopped… I almost always get the message that “Look what those silly women put themselves through! They must be cray-cray!” or maybe, sometimes, it’s something like “Yep, we women must go through these everyday, but it’s just the way life is so we suck it up.”
        This is just my personal opinion, I may be wrong, am open to discussion.
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      • Morgan - April 26th, 2014 at 6:40 am none Comment author #167675 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I don’t agree with you that it’s comparable to BDSM, because in BDSM it’s generally women assuming their supposed “natural” submissive roles, but in drag it’s men appropriating those roles. But I do agree with you that it’s not quite cultural appropriation, because women did not create these things and they are not expressive of who/what women are. But it is appropriation, be it appropriation of our oppression or the harms done to us or whatever.
        I would also add that I don’t think men mocking anything women do is ok, no matter the intent behind it – “men mocking beauty practices (and by extension “femininity”) in a way that makes beauty practices look ridiculous” is not fine because it’s still mocking women for practicing them (or for having to practice them). I think I know what types of “comedy” or drag you are referring to but I rarely find them to be educational in delivery/message – sort of like “feminist porn.”
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        • Scott Snow - April 26th, 2014 at 4:17 pm none Comment author #167698 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Morgan –
          Regarding: “in BDSM it’s generally women assuming their supposed “natural” submissive roles” – do you have any references to back up that statement? I know of both dominant males and dominant females, but I don’t have any idea of the ratio between the two types participating in that community.
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          • Morgan - April 27th, 2014 at 8:58 am none Comment author #167722 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Of course I don’t – just my online observations of the BDSM community, it sure isn’t 50/50 split male & female doms. Just because a few female doms exist doesn’t completely erase the oppressive nature of the practice; even if it were 50/50 you can’t ignore the stereotypes, the links to slavery, etc. There are far more informed people than I who have written about the topic pointing out just how it’s not in women’s interest as a sexual practice.
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            • Scott Gilbert - April 29th, 2014 at 4:49 pm none Comment author #167801 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              It doesn’t matter if the role is played by a male or a female. the act is of a man dominating a woman. It matters not if the submissive is male or female, they are playing the role of a woman, which defends gender roles, which is not okay. it is a practice that ends up dehumanizing everyone.
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        • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 11:55 am none Comment author #234266 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Yeah and white racists told the same lies about Black people,that they were naturally submissive and that they deserved and were happy being slaves for White people.
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      • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 12:02 pm none Comment author #167687 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        This is a great point:
        “I wouldn’t call it “cultural appropriation” because I think that implies that beauty practices are part of “female culture”, when in reality they were probably not created by women and nowadays are promoted to women by powerful corporations (almost always run by men.) They are part of capitalist consumer culture, not “women’s culture” and they definately should be mocked (though women should not be mocked for doing them.)”
        But I don’t quite agree with this:
        “This is why I am all for clips of men (in films) attempting to perform some beauty practice (e.g. walking in high heel shoes, or ripping hair of his legs) and suffering as a result. I don’t usually like watching people suffer (I don’t find slapstick funny) but these types of clips show that beauty practices are painful and ridiculous, a fact that is not acknowledged often enough.”
        It really bothers me to see men doing these, like, Walk A Mile in Her Shoes events, stumbling along in ridiculous heels. I feel that a) it assumes all women wear shoes like that, which we don’t, and b) again, I feel it makes a mockery of women and women’s oppression… Though I see your point that it could “show that beauty practices are painful and ridiculous” and hadn’t considered that before, it still annoys me..
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      • Scott Snow - April 26th, 2014 at 4:11 pm none Comment author #167697 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Regarding:
        “:BDSMers take things that are clearly oppressive (e.g. tying people up and flogging them, a practice which resembles the way in which white slaveowners treated black slaves) and make them out to be fun and sexy”
        I take issue with the “make them out to be fun and sexy” bit. The “BDSMers” *do* find these things fun and sexy, as long as it is consentual. This crosses genders – a cis gender female might find tying up a cis gender male quite exciting, and if the male in question sexually enjoys being tied up, they will have a good time together.
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        • morag - April 26th, 2014 at 8:22 pm none Comment author #167713 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          1. Don’t fucking dare call women Cis on a radical feminist blog.
          2. What BDSMers like has nothing to with female liberation. You can go anywhere on the Internet to talk about how BDSM is great, but that shit doesn’t fly in feminism. Do you know how offensive you sound? Try reading some history, sociology, and feminism 101 before condescendingly telling women that an oppressive thing is fine because some people orgasm from it.
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          • Lola - April 27th, 2014 at 3:15 am none Comment author #167720 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Brilliant answer!
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          • Margaret McCarroll - April 28th, 2014 at 2:10 pm none Comment author #167756 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            a million thumbs up !!
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          • Lemon - May 17th, 2014 at 5:50 pm none Comment author #168451 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Unless you’re transgender or identify as a different gender from your genitals, you’re cis, sorry to burst everyone’s bubble but that’s how it is, whether you’re male or female or on a blog or not, you’re cis, not a bad thing at all anyways, it’s just that you identify yourself as the gender which matches your genitals so no harm done.
            Also I don’t think drag queens are all that bad, sure there are some which make fun of extreme feminism but a good majority identify themselves as women. So no, I can’t see that we should oppress drag queens due to a small minority, I mean, all groups of people have a minority which makes the rest look bad but we can’t all stereotype them due to that. Just my opinion though.
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            • Grackle - May 18th, 2014 at 2:17 am none Comment author #168475 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Did you read this article at all? Nobody suggested anything even remotely close to oppressing drag queens. Why would we want to do that?! The fact that we consider them an offensive mockery of the (socially constructed) female gender does not mean we want to oppress them, good grief. Feminism is wholly against all forms of oppression.
              As for the cis issue, everybody here is well aware of what it means, so you don’t need to trot out the basic definition as if it’s a new concept that we just don’t understand yet. I’m still trying to figure out my opinion of the term but I can easily see why it can be viewed as offensive as hell to those of us who consider gender to be a harmful socially-imposed hierarchy and not some magical innate quality.
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            • morag - May 18th, 2014 at 9:00 am none Comment author #168501 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Why are you so hellbent on labeling women “Cis” after we repeatedly explained why we reject that? Why are our lived experiences always invalidated but drag queens are sacrosanct? Radical feminists don’t believe in gender so of course we reject the idea that gender can somehow match genitals.Is it so difficult to listen to feminists when we speak before pissing all over comment sections like a dog marking his terrritory?
              2+
            • gxm17 - May 18th, 2014 at 10:53 am none Comment author #168507 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Bullshit. Cis is a name made up by the trans community. And, IMO, it’s hate speech. No different than calling a woman the c-word or calling an ethnic minority a pejorative. Feel free to use it if you want to but you’re not fooling anyone.
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            • Clemdane - June 6th, 2014 at 12:48 am none Comment author #169577 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              I’m a woman, not a ” Cis.”
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          • JC - July 11th, 2014 at 1:53 pm none Comment author #172023 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            You’re not educating anybody with this response. Its so hostile and confrontational that nobody is going to get past “how” you said something to the “what” of what you’re trying to say. If you want to be smug and accurate, then fine, but if you actually want to educate people and help them see things differently, you’re response is pointless and adds nothing to the conversation.
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      • gxm17 - April 26th, 2014 at 4:59 pm none Comment author #167699 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wearing fake breasts and assuming a higher pitched voice is absolutely appropriation. It is mockery of women’s bodies. Add on the cultural stereotypes and “drag” is the misogynistic version of blackface. So glad Meghan tackled this issue.
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    • Bailey Summers - May 10th, 2014 at 10:13 pm none Comment author #168157 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Stop intentionally labeling trans women with drag. We’d appreciate the civility to not do more image damage to us by stereotyping.
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      • morag - May 18th, 2014 at 9:27 pm none Comment author #168546 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Stop intentionally labeling females as roles for men to play and for equating femaleness with femininity. We’d appreciate the civility to not do more damage to us by stereotyping. Shocker, feminism is about and for women! If you want the “freedom” to appropriate femaleness and embrace the patriarchal idea of femininity, feel free to start your own movement. We’re not here to play nursemaid for you.
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    • Dan - June 11th, 2014 at 2:36 pm none Comment author #169917 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I appreciate the author’s willingness to ask questions in areas she admits to have little knowledge and interest, but the feminist slant which conveys legitimate concerns for women is inappropriately superimposed onto drag queens who she also admits are a culture in and of itself. The title of this article asks the question, “Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community?” but the feminist author answers her own question by stating that it has never interested her. A lack of interest would imply a lack of need for such interest, and here’s why.
      I believe that drag queens are behaving in an authentic manner based on their own personal psychological need. It is a statement of defiance to spite negative opinions from society stating that masculinity and femininity each follow strict rules, for example, by wearing a dress and retorting that because society does not consider them to be “real men”, yet obviously not real women either, they will be both and neither at the same time — a personal need to be who they are. While this can include obnoxious behavior, it is understood to be a catharsis from having grown up in a society where they felt rejected for simply “being”. It could be a plea for acceptance, not a method of representing womanhood, and anyway, why is the author taking the entertainment value of drag queen performances so seriously when drag queens so often portray themselves as humorously imperfect? That is, unless they are contestants in a pageant.
      It is inappropriate to say that there exists representation of just womanhood or just manhood, but our language doesn’t yet have words to describe the “neither-nor” part. The LGBTQ culture is actually a set of diverse and separate subcultures that group together in the political fight for equal rights. Drag queens represent one of those subcultures, but I would hardly say that drag queens dress up as women because they want to represent womanhood — which is not to say they haven’t carefully studied it, including its imperfections, just like a young girl studies womanhood as she is growing up. They know they will never become pregnant and raise children as only a mother can do. They do dress up to imitate (the correct word is “impersonate”) famous female actors and singers, or just as often, the feminine version of themselves. They represent themselves, not womanhood, and yes it is often very personal. Femininity does not always equate to being a woman, but there is not some other term to more accurately represent the intent of men in dresses. The author says drag feels “regressive”, so it is good that she admits having insufficient knowledge based on lack of interest to form a cogent opinion. This is also why her using “drag” and “racism” in the same idea is in dire need of explanation, because it suggests a very false and very serious accusation.
      Generally equating drag queens to racists is inappropriate. The intent to mimic another race in drag is likely more a compliment than a racist statement, as drag queens often want to “be” whom they feel the need to imitate — it can be viewed as a celebration of role models with a hard slant against the ideal, because no one is perfect. That’s probably the message: if society taught me I am flawed, I will point out how society is flawed and never the ideal it pretends to be.
      The author quotes Kirsten Anderberg, who is not an authority on drag queens or on psychology. If a white drag queen paints his face to look like a black woman, it is no more racist than when he paints his face to look like a white woman. It’s all about illusion. However, if the intent is to disgrace black people, then that would be racist. But if I paint a picture of a black woman, that is art, not racism. Should a white female impersonator try to impersonate a black woman WITHOUT using black cosmetic paint? That would hardly be convincing, and the illusion would fail.
      The author says that women do not imitate men using drag, at least not the same way or for the same reasons, but drag kings have been known to use a banana in their pants that they take out to eat on stage. But women do indeed make fun of men in ways that men do not make fun of women, so the assertion is pointlessly argumentative. Men and women have differences, so methods and motivations can be different as well.
      It would be more appropriate to say that drag queens equate to the childhood fantasy to be someone else whom they admire, and they do so using the imagination and the art of make-believe, for humor is a coping mechanism often born from suffering. Without it, and the ability to laugh at at one’s self, there is only suffering until equality and acceptance — not tolerance — are the norm.
      In short, being a drag queen is about being a drag queen. Compassion for the oppressed LGBTQ community would seem to be more important than trying to lay false accusations wrongly taken personally by hypersensitive people. It’s not about them. It’s about one’s own self, so take it or leave it, and by all means, DO ask a drag queen questions instead of speculating circles around things you don’t understand.
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      • amongster - June 11th, 2014 at 10:14 pm none Comment author #169942 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        so, basically you are saying that we are all just “hypersensitive peopel” who can’t take a “compliment” without being offended and who simply “don’t understand”. your other arguments have all been addressed already so in my oponion it is only *your* post that is inappropriate.
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        • marv - June 12th, 2014 at 1:19 am none Comment author #169948 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Dan, I can’ t stop you from defining drag in the way that you do but lord knows I want to. The fact that masculinity and femininity are social constructs of male supremacy that must be abolished altogether is lost on you. If you can’t see that women are a subordinated sex class to men you will never grasp the misogyny of male drag. Despite all your convoluted claptrap about drag as “defiance”, “catharsis”, “being” oneself, “a plea for acceptance” , “childhood fantasy “, in the end you are just another charlatan who is using compassion for LGBTQs as a cover for your menacing sexism. I wonder what you would think of heterosexual men impersonating caricatures of lesbians or gays but claiming they were not intending to do so. Intentions are moot. It is the actions that offend. Your liberal psychology ideology betrays your blindness to its patriarchal presuppositions and narcissism.
          If you read this article about blackface and racism and substitute them for drag and misogyny you could learn something IF you open your mind: http://feministcurrent.com/8161/beyond-halloween-revisiting-blackface/
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          • Dan - June 12th, 2014 at 3:35 pm none Comment author #169997 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Marv, drag queens, as well as many members of the LGBTQ community such as myself, abhor stereotypes and strict gender roles, with the latter already expressed in my original commentary. Your assumptions about what I know or don’t know are simply incorrect, but they are your opinion and I respect that because they are a statement on your own behalf and you may choose to represent yourself however you see fit on a public forum.
            Drag queens “choose” to be who they are in terms of how they represent themselves; they want to be like women because they associate their identity in part with being woman-like as they have learned or perceived women to be — in that case, the teachings of what is considered “womanlike” is the issue, not the symptom of drag queen behavior. The point is, they are not trying to represent womanhood, but “drag-queen-hood”, if there is such a term.
            I do not understand why you needed to use such emphatic words to disagree with me, but I really do have an open mind and it seems that your mind has already been made up to support your viewpoint at any cost. It is clear that you have pre-judged me as being a certain way, but as a gay man I am very sensitive to that because I have been pre-judged by nearly all of society, who also doesn’t know me.
            Do you think that just because I really do have compassion for the LGBTQ community that it is not possible for me to also have compassion for whatever beliefs or community you may associate yourself with? Tone down your attitude and hard-core presumptions about me, it is not compassion and it does little to help me understand your viewpoint, or to support it. It only tells me how you feel about me, and quite possibly how you feel about anyone who disagrees with you. I “get it”, you believe in what you do very strongly, but why should I show an open mind when you have closed yours to my views? I show an open mind because I have enough integrity to do so, and because I believe it is the right thing to do.
            I read the article at the link you provided. I can see it from several viewpoints, even opposing ones. If impersonating another is done for the purpose of disgracing them or the community they represent, it is certainly a bad thing. But it is not always feasible to substitute one term for another. So far, what I get is that you’re saying that if any given person is a certain sex and a certain race, then dressing up like the other sex or a different race is always offensive simply because it is.
            Have you watched the show, “Modern Family”? One of the two married gay male characters in the show is really straight in real life, though the other man is gay in real life. You ask me how I feel, I say the straight man is a very good actor. It is clearly possible for acting, whether on a TV series or as performed by a drag queen, to be tastefully done. That’s why it’s called “acting”, and you don’t see the LGBTQ community protesting the series.
            In your reply to me, I am certain that you were not “acting” when you called me a charlatan having betrayed blindness using convoluted claptrap. What were you thinking? Perhaps you were thinking that all humans should dress the same way and stick to their own race. But you can’t take away a person’s right to dress and behave as they choose, because you will take away your own rights at the same time.
            You argument isn’t with me, it’s with my having relayed a commentary based on my life experience that you happen to dislike so much that you must attack it and me as well. That says more about you than you realize. But if change in the drag queen community is really what you would like to see, you won’t get it by representing yourself as someone who pretends to know me well enough to box me into a few derogatory categories. Isn’t that what you are against in the first place — the misrepresentation of others? Or is it just “any” representation of others? Drag queens mock the “patriarchal social constructs” of femininity and masculinity simultaneously, and sometimes they do the same with race. Wrap your head around that.
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            • marv - June 12th, 2014 at 11:43 pm none Comment author #170018 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Gibberish. “[T]he symptoms of drag queen behaviour” and the “teachings of what is considered “woman-like”” are both sexist expressionism regardless if drag is “not trying to represent womanhood, but “drag-queen-hood”.” Similarly, blackface is racist no matter what the motives are.
              You stated that feminists were “hypersensitive” up the thread. Then you complained how “sensitive” you are to being “pre-judged by me. You have the audacity to come into a feminist blog telling them they are wrongheaded about male performance. You obviously don’t realize how male supremacist and galling you are. Feminism, has been pre-judged by you and “nearly all of society” even though you and they don’t know her.
              I am skeptical also about how much compassion you have for lesbians in your support for men in drag, since it feels/is so oppressive to women. Your self-serving definition of compassion as a matter of toning down attitudes and words is bogus in the face of such male entitlement. True compassion is not so shallow. It means fierce opposition to those who claim integrity yet speak in ways that uphold male power over women. You are closed minded to admit mimicking exploited groups is unjust because of the context of inequality. Imagine white people dressing up and acting as traditional aboriginals while dwelling on their confiscated lands. No equality country for women either, or for homosexuals.
              “Drag queens mock” women while thinking they aren’t, and “sometimes they do the same with race. Wrap your head around” all this, polite talking women fucker.
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        • Dan - June 12th, 2014 at 2:12 pm none Comment author #169988 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Amongster, my, my! Your reply seems to want to invalidate my entire commentary on drag queens based on the opinions of others, but you do not state precisely why you disagree or how you came to your conclusion. When you say “we”, are you referring to all feminists? Because when I said “people”, I was referring to society. My commentary was based on over three decades of interactions with hundreds of drag queens.
          To be clear, the “compliment” you refer to has nothing to do with feminists or womanhood. I never saw a drag queen impersonate a feminist. As I stated, it either has to do with the famous women drag queens impersonate, or simply the feminine version of themselves (particularly since many do not look enough like the famous women to be convincing). Drag queens represent themselves, and because drag queens are men, at best they represent men in dresses, and it comes from an innate desire to cross over and break and/or undefine the traditional gender stereotypes based on the either/or mentality of gender roles. It’s who they are, like it or not. They get to express their individuality just like you do.
          I believe many drag queens would feel very hurt if they were accused and convinced they are sexist, since like many members of the LBGTQ community they know deeply and from an early age how it feels to be judged and condemned from nearly all aspects of society. If this is what feminists believe, then as with the title of the article, the critiques should begin and an open dialog should be established. But the question is still begged, why haven’t such critiques or dialogs really happened yet? I think the answer is that they are being themselves, they are being men in dresses, and that is not the same as being sexist. As a gay man myself, I am aware of my own thoughts and methods that could be termed as more feminine, but no one can tell me to be any different. If I dress in drag because I associate my identity with it, or if even I wait until Halloween, that’s not sexist, and the accusation is quite unfounded.
          The very nature of the article itself has successfully opened a discussion on the topic of drag queens, and it doesn’t matter to me what other people think they know — when they don’t. Humanity is multifaceted with many truths. Discussion is not productive if “they said” so “I believe them” so “your opinion is inappropriate.” I believe you just don’t want to accept any viewpoint other than your own, which may be based on others who are just as angry as you are and need any target to express it. I choose discussion, not argument. Your reply is a statement on behalf of your own level of sensitivity and offendedness.
          But if you really do insist on disagreeing with my commentary, begin getting to know drag queens — you may discover a sense of community and shared interests, and your opinion may change when you learn things you never knew.
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          • amongster - July 23rd, 2014 at 12:09 am none Comment author #172819 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            dan, you are repeating yourself and it is boring. if you were interested in finding answers to your questions you would actually read and try to understand the arguments that have been made in the comments here. it’s all right in front of you, take it or leave it.
            i don’t care about the feelings of sexist men and if they “feel very hurt” when their sexism is pointed out to them. women are hurt by these men’s sexist behavior and we don’t just talk about hurt feelings here. believe it or not women too “know deeply and from an early age how it feels to be judged and condemned from nearly all aspects of society” and they can’t just step out of their dresses and get rid of their make up and play “men” to avoid oppression.
            i’m tired of apolitical “identity politics” that talk about “brain sex”, innate “feminine feelings” and alike while ignoring the reality of being socialized into gender roles and having internalized sexism. it is your privilege as a man to remain ignorant of the harmful consequences of gender and gender roles and to play with femininity when you feel like it.
            and yes, i don’t accept ignorant viewpoints. opinions are not truths and they are not sacred either. i am angry and sexist men are the right target for that anger. don’t really care what you think about my way to discuss things when you are not able to engage with all the points that have been made by others already.
            now excuse me but i’ve got better things to do than being repeatedly called hypersensitive for being righteously offended by sexism that you are unable to spot because of male privilege.
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    • Maia - June 16th, 2014 at 10:32 pm none Comment author #170222 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      The difference is this: race is not a spectrum. Gender is. If a male FEELS feminine, why can’t they express where they personally feel they belong on the gender spectrum? And trust me, as an effeminate man, they too suffer from patriarchy. They have a right to identify with the world how they want.
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      • Lo - June 17th, 2014 at 4:09 am none Comment author #170231 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Gender isn’t a spectrum either, it is a social construct, just like races.
        If you like pink, dresses, or football, it doesn’t mean you have to label yourself as “”girl or boy or fluid or 1586th gender”.
        Gender =/= personnality
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      • Mar Iguana - June 17th, 2014 at 5:16 am none Comment author #170235 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “And trust me,…”
        I have a real hard time trusting the ignorant-and-proud-of-it. Gender spectrum. Good grief.
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      • lizor - June 17th, 2014 at 8:07 am none Comment author #170246 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Alert! Alert! Social critique=taking away rights!!!! God Forbid anyone should discuss the social and cultural implications of what anyone “feels like” expressing! Feminists are imperilling human rights again!!!
        What do you mean by FEELS feminine? You put the “feel” bit in caps so you must have a pretty definable idea of what “feeling feminine” means. Please explain, because I have not got a clue what “feeling feminine” is and what that has to do with uncomfortable and expensive costuming.
        “race is not a spectrum”? Seriously, how did you concoct that? Do you really think that race is not a social construct while gender is?
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      • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:20 pm none Comment author #175137 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        How is race not a spectrum? Some people are born to a white and a black parent, and they’re basically forced to identify at black because of their skin tone, even though they’re biologically half-black and half-white. That’s a simplified example. In a globalized world, there are families made up of several genetic mixtures from around the world. Defined races will eventually fade if we continue on our current globalization path. I argue that race is also a spectrum.
        If a male feels feminine, let him behave exactly as he wants to (feminine, however he defines it). However, don’t go around saying you’re female just because you “feel like you’re female”. Someone who isn’t female doesn’t know what it’s like to be female, so there is no way they know they are female. It’s like me saying I feel like a potato. How do I know what it feels like to be a potato if I’m not a potato? At least if I dressed like a potato, there aren’t potatoes out there with feelings who might be offended at the appropriation of their identity. Unfortunately, females are actually people.
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      • Anonymous - October 20th, 2014 at 9:05 pm none Comment author #198401 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        The difference is this: race is not a spectrum. Gender is.
        I think there’s a lot of bi- and multi-racial individuals who might disagree.
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  2. Orla - April 25th, 2014 at 12:09 pm none Comment author #167619 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    In outport Newfoundland a regular sketch feature involves the local priest pinning on balloon boobs and wearing dresses. This is met with tons of laughter and applause. I find it deeply disturbing, on many levels.
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    • lizor - June 12th, 2014 at 8:38 am none Comment author #169967 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      That phenomenon occurs in working class cultures, especially in rural communities all over North America. It is not specific to Newfoundland or to one particular sketch. Communities that are more comfortable with rigid gender roles tend to find guys in dresses and pearls with balloons in their shirts to be hilariously funny.
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    • Mar Iguana - June 17th, 2014 at 7:15 am none Comment author #170243 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      This reminded me of England’s weird vicars and tarts parties.
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  3. aySHA (@aysha_marie) - April 25th, 2014 at 12:31 pm none Comment author #167622 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I don’t know any drag queens, but I do know a few drag KINGS.. not sure I am following you here.
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    • MJ - April 29th, 2014 at 12:36 pm none Comment author #167797 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I would be interested in some discussion about drag kings…I am not that familiar, but it seems to me that drag kings are not mocking male characteristics. Because everything is contextual, we have to consider the gender difference in a man imitating a woman in a drag show, vs a woman imitating a man as a drag king. IMO neither can really escape the notion that Western (and maybe others as well) culture values men more than women. So we have exaggeration in the drag queen example, and in the case of the drag king performances I have seen something more akin to “see how you cannot really tell if I am a man or a woman.” In other words, a drag king’s performance is judged on how completely the illusion convinces, vs most drag queen performances not really trying to fool the audience, but trying to make it as extreme and therefore UNbelievable as possible.
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  4. lamentoid - April 25th, 2014 at 12:33 pm none Comment author #167623 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Sheila Jeffreys’ Unpacking Queer Politics is ever-relevant
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  5. Susan B Journey - April 25th, 2014 at 12:47 pm none Comment author #167626 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I have been saying exactly this for years. Thank you!
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 25th, 2014 at 1:34 pm none Comment author #167630 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I shouldn’t say that it’s “escaped critique” — I think radical feminists have made the critique and a few others, here and there, but I just never hear a peeps from mainstream/popular feminism and certainly not from the LGTBQ community…
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  6. Corey Frost - April 25th, 2014 at 1:18 pm none Comment author #167629 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Thank you for writing about drag! Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye is one of the very few exceptions to the general lack of critique and analysis in feminist and lesbian and gay circles on drag. Her chapter “Lesbian Feminism and Gay Right” in her book Politics of Reality critiques drag as a form of mocking women. bell hooks also touched on some of the problems with drag in her essay “Is Paris Burning?”
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  7. The Real Cie - April 25th, 2014 at 2:16 pm none Comment author #167639 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    It would be nice if we could find actual drag performers to give their take on this. I’m not one. Perhaps I’m “missing something,” but I’ve never had a problem with drag. In a society where sex and gender roles have been exaggerated, such as Western society, forms of expression such as drag are inevitable.
    I do not see drag as mocking women, but as taking certain stereotypes to extremes and mocking the stereotypes. Drag performers know that real women do not behave in the exaggerated ways that their characters do.
    Drag performers such as Lady Bunny tend to also be very politically aware. I can’t speak for all drag performers, but Lady Bunny is interested in better treatment for all people. She tends to mock people who treat others poorly.
    I feel that drag is also a way for these male,and most often homosexual performers to express their feminine side in a society that decries men “behaving like women” and sees women as second class.
    There is no male drag because men’s clothing tends to be very similar and men tend not to wear makeup. However, I’d say there is also no male drag because no-one has thought to really give it a go. Perhaps it would be more interesting than people tend to think.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 25th, 2014 at 2:24 pm none Comment author #167641 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      What do you think about blackface? Would you say that equates to “taking certain stereotypes to extremes and mocking the stereotypes?” Would you ask that black people talk to white people who perform in blackface before forming an opinion on it?
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    • Ashley - April 25th, 2014 at 2:53 pm none Comment author #167644 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      There actually is “male drag” in the form of drag kings where women dress and perform as men. There are some videos of a group called the Miltown Kings that are kind of a fun example.
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      • amongster - April 25th, 2014 at 10:39 pm none Comment author #167663 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        there are videos on youtube called “shit girls say” or “shit guys say” etc etc and while those videos made by guys dressing up as girls and mocking feminine behavior get likes and laughs those very few made by girls dressing up as boys get dislikes and all the sexist comments, making sure to let girls know that they “are not funny” (especially not when they make fun of men, obviously).
        germany’s probably most famous drag queen, olivia jones, is also a tour guide in hamburg’s popular red light district reeperbahn.
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      • Ash - April 28th, 2014 at 2:41 pm none Comment author #167761 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I took part in a drag king show and no one laughed at us like they laughed at the drag queens.
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      • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 1:05 pm none Comment author #234306 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        What about jeans and T-shirts and some sweaters and tops and sneakers and flat leather shoes that both sexes wear? Is that drag? Obviously not!
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    • Alta Verso - April 26th, 2014 at 7:05 am none Comment author #167678 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Drag Kings” exist, but perhaps there is a conflict in making this into entertainment where mainstream culture has been so misogynistic. Maybe the stereotypical man image is just not as funny for reasons of oppression, it seems more like taking on a male image to falsify that power and privilege.
      Drag Queens, as men, in my impression, as a woman, take those stereotypes on in a way that could potentially (or does) threaten their male privilege, to use it as material for entertainment in a way that seems more like sharing in an awareness of the stereotypes and misogyny experienced by women from the male perspective. As a woman who has been around drag shows since the age of 16, and has appreciated them like many 16 year olds might watch Miss America, I have questioned this stuff, even to the extent of still relating wearing eye-makeup and lipstick at the same time to drag. I am a natural born woman who experiences life as a woman and recieves the subjugating gazes of hetero-male privilege if I do, which has not been in my best interest for a large part of my life. I find Drag Queens participate in an approach on misogyny and female stereotyping in a way that I relate to, but from a different angle. There is also the consideration that they are gay men who experience their own issues with misogynistic culture. Drag is a hyper-indulgence into taking on a different perspective, as I have come to understand it, in a way that is entertainment rather than intellectualized.
      Honestly, I have to say I have a harder time with trans women whom I do respectfully call women, and accept their choice to live this way, yet have a different perception of what women are from being born male. To me it becomes an existential conversation, where existence has determined a desire to be other than they are, to follow what their essence feels as a better image …but does this not adhere to taught stereotyping? As a woman who does not feel like changing into a man but accepts what life gives in my natural gender, what definitions are perceived in wanting to change gender? Am I supposed to fit into a passive, gentle, nurturing, boob sizing, heel wearing, hair obsessing, weaker-sex stereotype too when someone doesn’t feel like they fit into the masculine form? And how would this not reinforce these stereotypes that are bred from misogyny? …which comes back to the same point made about drag queens. As people I accept both, all, respectfully. But am I being accepted, when my gender is still being externally defined? As an obtuse performance I accept drag as a form of critique itself. I have a harder time accepting trans women as authentic women, who divorce all male experiences (good or bad) when they divorce their penis. I do accept trans women as “trans women” / “cisgender” etc., and appreciate moving beyond gender duality as has been defined archaically.
      (I realize I’m not just replying to a comment but to the whole article and conversation – I get wordy)
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      • sophie - October 22nd, 2014 at 8:18 am none Comment author #199056 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I think we can all agree that old fashioned gender stereotypes don’t reflect reality.
        Instead of thinking: ” As a woman who does not feel like changing into a man but accepts what life gives in my natural gender” ask yourself: “As a woman how would it feel to be forced into a male gender role with a male name and shaming for not conforming to masculine stereotypes.”
        I also have a hard time accepting trans woman that are obviously trying too hard with over the top woman stereotypes made by men who appear to be turning their gender into a performance while over quoting RuPaul and even saying that being trans is a life-style. Yes indeed, gay men claiming to be women because a feminine man is worse in the eyes of influenced people. This makes me think of that madonna song “what it feels like for a girl.” And no I am not a fan of hers.
        What ever happen to independent strong courageous women. It’s rude to assume all trans women have a different perception of being female more than other non-trans women. A lot seem to have thought that they were going to grow up as their mother but were horrified when they found out they were going to grow up like their father. Can you imagine being 4 and being told that? or 12 just before puberty and your body is ruined forever? That all your dreams of being a pretty dancer, a singer, an artist…just to be yourself are gone because your parents said so? Constantly shamed for being girly?
        “where existence has determined a desire to be other than they are, to follow what their essence feels as a better image” No, that is a stereotype also. You just can’t imagine the physical discomfort but I guess you could inject yourself with testosterone regularly to find out somewhat. Get a “full gender/sex change” and perhaps the discomfort and loss of identity will give you an idea of how transsexual people feel from birth.
        Also, what do you mean by divorce male experiences? would one not want to move on from the horrible past? and i mean move on, not deny. Also a lot of trans women don’t adhere to wimpy stereotypes and I hate those that do as if being pathetic validates womanhood.
        Do you wear make-up? I hear a lot of women complain about male-gaze but wear make-up for some reason. Also, girls openly talk about men as sexual objects but I guess that’s okay since you are oppressed which means by some sick logic escape the double standard.
        you said:”gay men who experience their own issues with misogynistic culture”. I would say this is true in a lot of cases I know personally because they are men who are ashamed to be feminine, also fem gays are like looked down upon however it isn’t the hatred or oppression of women, it’s the oppression of femininity in general and feminine people as it seems to be the case. Also guilt from male expectation of being macho. However it is wrong to dismiss ones own femininity as some other personality that ruins [insert man’s name] life and give it a girl name.
        Also drag made more sense when society was sexist and women were not allowed to be comedians or anything much really or war time when they were no women for miles because the army was all men and they were …anyways.
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        • amongster - October 31st, 2014 at 2:15 am none Comment author #203571 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Gender is not “natural”, it’s a social concept created to oppress females. I don’t have to imagine how it would be to be forced to be someone I’m not because women *are* forced to perform femininity. And the best thing about this is that females cannot even feel safe from being shamed, humiliated and violated when they have perfected femininity because femininity makes you a target. Gender is a no-win concept for women.
          It’s also the norm that girls are told they can’t do and become what they want because they are female. So again, we don’t need to imagine how harmful this is, we know it. This is what happens when you are at the bottom of a hierarchy and that hierarchy is called gender.
          What has “complaining” about the male-gaze to do with wearing make-up? Do you think women who wear make themselves into objects and should therefore shut up about male harassment?
          I don’t think anyone here will defend the objectification of people but it *does* make a different who is objectifying whom. In a society in which it has been normalized to see females as objects and in which males hold all the power it is not even possible for females to objectify males for long without eventually seeing them as the powerful.
          And no, not femininity gets oppressed, femininity *is* the oppression. It is misogyny, the hate of women and anything related to them, when feminine men get harassed.
          I also want to know since when society is free of sexism? I must have missed that big event.
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  8. LC West - April 25th, 2014 at 2:21 pm none Comment author #167640 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I’ve known a number if drag queens over decades 70s thru 90s and you can be assured the majority if them hate women. Plus they suck the air out of lesbian and gay culture. Like early Shakespeare, they play all the roles rending lesbians invisible. Especially butches.
    Not many women do like drag queens. I’ve found them vicious and demeaning. Especially if you happened to be trapped in a woman’s bathroom with them. Creepy.
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  9. Matt Hamblett - April 25th, 2014 at 2:43 pm none Comment author #167643 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Here is a celebrated example of women in ‘drag’-http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/video/28888/cross-dressers-topp-twins-as-ken-and-ken
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    • Nick - April 26th, 2014 at 11:00 am none Comment author #167683 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      While I am a fan of the Topp Twins I also think that the culture of drag kings could be critiqued. If you watch the documentary on the Topp Twins you’ll hear one of them mention that she can just be one of the blokes at the bar when she is in drag, treated as an equal with the other guys, you know go off to the strip joint with them and they wouldn’t feel weird about it because she’s dressed as a man.
      This is where I think most drag kings get excited about performing, they get to obtain certain amounts of power and to feel what it’s like to ‘be a man’, a lot of them in turn unfortunately begin to act in very sexist ways and treat women like shit all over again. Drag kings come on to women, call them names. All of a sudden dressing as a man makes them feel empowered to be sexist assholes.
      From what i’ve seen it reinforces the gender binary and reinforces patriarchal ideologies. Nothing about it has convinced me that it is in any way promoting subversive gender roles…which is an argument i’ve heard many times.
      So in my opinion both drag kings and queens are promoting similar practices and can be critiqued in the same way.
      2+
      • Matt Hamblett - April 26th, 2014 at 2:27 pm none Comment author #167694 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        No disagreement from me.
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  10. Kim - April 25th, 2014 at 3:29 pm none Comment author #167645 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I am sympathetic with your argument which is thought-provoking as is much of your writing on here. However, I agree with Cie and would elaborate: one might want to be more sympathetic to the historical position of gay men. That is, a performer like Divine may have been from a middle-class family, but doing drag may have allowed him to cope with being a gay, fat man in the late 60s and also allowed him to express his gender non-conformity. That is, disenfranchised gay men donned a role that felt empowering to them in a society that understood them to be worthless “sissies”–the role of a fabulous, strong, eccentric or ball-busting woman. It may seem and even be a grotesque caricature, but I feel that drag attempts to be a celebration of a certain archetypal woman as well as a send-up of gender conformity, and was aspirational and intended to be funny. In this way I think it may be distinct from blackface which is initiated from a different power dynamic. Although gay men may be “privileged” as males, there’s a lot of historical psychic trauma there, and I’ve often felt drag comes from that place. So in criticizing drag from a feminist perspective, I’d like to think we pay respect to that history as a starting point.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 25th, 2014 at 6:04 pm none Comment author #167654 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Those are fair points, Kim.
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      • ozzie - April 26th, 2014 at 7:37 pm none Comment author #167710 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        ”…fabulous, strong, eccentric or ball-busting woman. It may seem and even be a grotesque caricature, but I feel that drag attempts to be a celebration of a certain archetypal woman as well as a send-up of gender conformity, and was aspirational and intended to be funny.” I completely disagree with Kim here because absolutely nothing about what Divine did was ”aspirational” or a ”celebration” of ” fabulous, strong, eccentric, or ball-busing woman”. The whole premise/plot of John Waters’ The Pink Flamigoes, starring Divine, was Divine personifying the most shocking/disgusting and vile person possible: the film even contains numerous rape and incest scenes. While I do appreciate the fact that this was a campy, low budget-type artsy project created with the sole intention to provoke, let’s not pretend it was in any way a complement or a celebration of women. Divine has even had a strange type of misogynistic butterfly effect in culture–he was apparently the inspiration behind the look of Disney’s Ursula, the archetypal conniving, evil witch jealous of another woman’s youth and beauty.
        I’m all for gay men trying to empower themselves, but they can’t do it at the expense of another oppressed class.
        1+
        • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 7:46 pm none Comment author #167711 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I haven’t seen the film but you’re right that it certainly doesn’t sound respectful towards women — the opposite, rather.
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        • Morgan - April 27th, 2014 at 9:02 am none Comment author #167723 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “I’m all for gay men trying to empower themselves, but they can’t do it at the expense of another oppressed class.”
          Exactly. I am baffled by commenters explaining away the offensive nature of drag because gay men are oppressed. It doesn’t make it ok.
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    • gxm17 - April 26th, 2014 at 5:09 pm none Comment author #167701 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Wow. A “what about the menz” justification. Yes. Of course. Demeaning women is perfectly fine if you are a fat, gay man and need to vent your “psychic trauma” on those with less power than you.
      1+
    • Nordie - May 27th, 2014 at 1:04 am none Comment author #169122 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Gay men feel “empowered” by donning drag because it proves that there is still a class of people “below” them on the social totem pole (women, specifically). Whew! It sure IS reassuring to the gay male ego to know that, no matter how downtrodden you may be within the class of male people, you aren’t powerless. No, in fact, there is a whole class of people (women) you can lampoon and whose bodies you can appropriate for fun.
      It isn’t a “send up” of gender conformity because it is a performance that demonstrates how repugnant women truly are (for being ball-busters, or eccentric, or just overly feminine and “slutty”) in order to laugh at women and feel superior. It’s hilarious because it doesn’t frighten these men, because femininity has never been the damaging, degrading force in their lives that it is in theirs. We don’t laugh because we see femininity being “celebrated” and feel awful. Our suffering is hi-larious. Our actual social condition is just so funny. The beauty rituals and objectification we have forced down our throats are not silly to us. Frederick Douglass didn’t think blackface was funny, either. No one asked him to think about the poor lower-class white people’s fee fees when he said that, now did they.
      1+
    • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 1:21 pm none Comment author #234313 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      What about the fact that there are many macho gay men.a lot of football players are known and unkown to be gay etc.
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  11. Rusty - April 25th, 2014 at 7:08 pm none Comment author #167656 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I imagine that a big part of the aversion to analyzing drag queen performance is that many of the performers are trans women, as was mentioned above, even if they haven’t yet come out or transitioned. It’s hard to argue appropriation if it’s being done by members of the ridiculed group (women). Once you’ve got the whole “women do it too” argument happening, it suddenly becomes ineligible for critical analysis.
    I’d also guess that, from the perspective of identity feminism, there’s really nothing about womanhood and gender in general that even CAN be appropriated, since gender isn’t a system of power but rather an apolitical set of individual attributes that can be super fun to play with. In other words, drag is about “fucking with gender” and that in itself is a feminist act. No further analysis required.
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    • bex0r - April 26th, 2014 at 5:06 pm none Comment author #167700 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Wow. This blog has opened up a whole can of worms for me! My thinking and feelings about drag have always been very much along Rusty’s lines of explanation – gender hacking is intriguing to me, both as a progressive/radical feminist and as an artist. I like performances that call into question our societal norms and make us re-evaluate the status quo, but reading this critique and a lot of these comments has also opened my mind to examining why certain forms of drag are privileged and found to be “entertaining” while others are not. Does drag culture ultimately serve to reinforce traditional gender roles (even when they’re not being carried out by people who identify as that gender)?
      Further complicating my thoughts and feelings are the many close relationships I’ve had with trans women (and trans men) who utilized drag as a form of socially-sanctioned “test driving” of their new identities. As a feminist I fully believe in creating safe spaces for trans people to exercise their chosen identities without fear of reprisal or harm, and so I will never condemn drag queens for their performances. I think, however, it should okay to talk about why some queens choose to perform femininity they way they do and how that plays into the larger discussion surrounding feminist politics.
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    • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:26 pm none Comment author #175138 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “I imagine that a big part of the aversion to analyzing drag queen performance is that many of the performers are trans women, as was mentioned above, even if they haven’t yet come out or transitioned. It’s hard to argue appropriation if it’s being done by members of the ridiculed group (women).”
      Trans-women and women are not the same. It’s being done by men who want to present as women. Not by women.
      “Once you’ve got the whole “women do it too” argument happening, it suddenly becomes ineligible for critical analysis.”
      Women aren’t doing it too. Men who want to present as women do it. They aren’t the same as women.
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  12. Jason Regnier - April 25th, 2014 at 7:32 pm none Comment author #167657 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Really? There’s a deep feminist and academic literature base on this question, both making this argument and defending against it. Bell hooks was mentioned above, but Judith Butler and Peggy Phelan are two prominent examples of people that complicate the simplistic portrayal. Shoot, even RuPaul has talked about this. Also, the cheap comparison to blackface is lazy and fundamentally erases the unique history of that practice.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 25th, 2014 at 7:42 pm none Comment author #167658 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      And yet drag goes on, largely unchallenged in the mainstream and in queer culture/communities. I fail to see how the comparison to blackface is ‘cheap’?
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      • Jason Regnier - April 25th, 2014 at 8:23 pm none Comment author #167660 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Because there is nothing that is equivalent to blackface. The history of that specific performance has no analogue. The closest is maybe the Native American costumes that some people wear, but even that doesn’t reach the same level of single-minded denigration as minstrel shows. The purpose of minstrel shows was to police color lines, and for white people to take pleasure in terrorizing black populations. It’s all to easy to make comparisons to the history of racial oppression, but racism and sexism don’t operate the same way or have the same dynamics. Blackface isn’t just a matter of white people putting on black makeup and pretending to be black. If it were just that, it would just be regular-old offensive, but not as traumatic as it is. Saidiya Hartman argues that blackface can’t be understood outside of the context of chattel slavery and the socially gratuitous violence against (and social death of) black bodies. Drag may be offensive (though it’s probably not that simple) and may be motivated in some individuals by sexism, but the dynamics of gendered performance don’t have that same history. If they did, you wouldn’t have to make the analogy to blackface in the first place. Gendered performance is just that — inherently performative, which is why it’s so fluid and changing. Drag performances play on the markers of gendered performance, and much less on the materiality of women’s bodies. As people have commented above, they occur within a context of shifting gender norms and while they may sometimes reinforce sexism, they also take place in a context of challenging patriarchal and heteronormative assumptions about sexuality.
        Ultimately, I’m conflicted about whether drag performances (or even trans performances) perpetuate misogyny or are on balance ok, but the idea that this is new ground is just not true. I mean, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=drag+performance+sexist
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        • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 12:06 pm none Comment author #167689 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I find your anger at the notion that drag shows could possibly be offensive TO WOMEN, to be kind of telling, considering that it is only two men in the comments (as of yet) who have reacted with anger at this notion, to be men (presumably white men?). I don’t understand why you feel you are in the best position to know what is and what is not offensive or oppressive to women? I doubt you’d feel gender was simply performative (it is performative, but it is much more than that…) if you were part of a class who was forced to “perform” in a certain way and then systemically punished, discredited, abused, and silenced for it.
          There are others who’ve commented here and brought in new perspectives to this conversation, that I hadn’t considered before (and I appreciate those perspectives) but that haven’t reacted with such condescending anger at the mere thought that drag could possibly be offensive to women.
          I’m sure that not all drag performances are sexist and mock women, and that some are more critical of gendered stereotypes, but many-most just take on exaggerated “feminine” characteristics and let men play at and mock women’s lives and the roles forced upon them.
          And again, I didn’t argue that this was new ground, but rather that this critique was not being made within the LGTBQ community or in mainstream feminism.
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          • Jason Regnier - April 26th, 2014 at 9:12 pm none Comment author #167715 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Not sure where you got to thinking that I was angry. In fact, it’s a little weird that a self-identified feminist would so quickly impute emotionality to a pretty straightforward argument as a way to delegitimize it when that’s exactly how feminist concerns are themselves delegitimized. In fact, when I posted, I was worried that my comment would come off as overly sterile academic prose.
            I’m also not clear on where you got the idea that I said that drag couldn’t be offensive to some women. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I said the exact opposite. I repeatedly said that some drag could perpetuate sexism or be based in misogyny. I even admitted that I was conflicted about whether it was on balance good or bad. I just said that it’s not at all the same thing historically as blackface, and I’ll maintain that it’s not. Saying that just because you’re “offended” by drag that makes it the same ignores the fact that not all “offense” is the same (nor should it be — for example, you shouldn’t be concerned about offending MRAs). To think that the problem with blackface is just that it offends somebody is to trivializes its actual history as a direct mechanism for violence and racial terror. Drag just simply does not have this history, and if you do, I challenge you to prove it.
            And you’re right that the fact that I’m a man has effects on my perspective, but it’s not only men who make the argument about performance. In fact, it is *many* feminist women who make this argument. But beyond that, it’s ironic that you use this argument against me while failing to reflect on it yourself. If I don’t get to engage the argument because I’m a heterosexual man, then why should you get any say about drag when you’re not one of the queer individuals who finds drag a key way for them to explore and express their sexual and gender identity? And maybe even more importantly, why do you get to make the comparison to blackface when you’re not a black person?
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            • Meghan Murphy - April 27th, 2014 at 2:12 pm none Comment author #167730 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “To think that the problem with blackface is just that it offends somebody is to trivializes its actual history as a direct mechanism for violence and racial terror.”
              Christ, you’re manipulative. I certainly didn’t and would never make that argument, nor did I make that argument about drag. (See above blog post),
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            • Clemdane - June 6th, 2014 at 1:02 am none Comment author #169579 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              How is blackface a direct mechanism for violence? I don’t understand this part.
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          • drm342 - May 19th, 2014 at 9:54 pm none Comment author #168618 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Why are you so angry?
            Okay, be angry. It’s a good thing. Productive, healthy anger leads to social change, and I’m all for that. But there’s the rub: Be productive and healthy with it. I think you’ve automatically undermined your own argument by incorporating criticism of the author’s “gender” (forgive me, am I allowed to say that?), AND his race as a basis for discrediting him. In point of fact, you’re merely discrediting yourself because you’re displaying a clear lack of objectivity and an obvious conflict of interest.
            Also, if he is a man, then he would totally understand what it means to be a part of a hierarchical society in which individuals are expected to perform an idea of themselves for the benefit of satisfying gender stereotypes. Men are absolutely expected to ‘perform’ a pageant of maleness that punishes any indication of weakness or ‘femininity’ from the earliest age. Has anyone EVER said, ‘be a woman?’ Bahahaha, um, nope. But boys are told from day one, ‘be a man.’ Boys are cultivated to resist the emotional impulse, deviation from which earns us pejorative words like ‘sissy’ or ‘gay,’ because anything feminine is, in itself, considered insulting. And of course it disgusts me to live in a world where the idea of being a woman or a girl, or being compared to one, is the ultimate tool of shame culture. Yes, gross indeed.
            But tangled up in that male privilege and woman-shaming is a lot of disturbing female privilege as well: The playground notion that boys can’t hit girls back if girls hit them. My mother was not about that crap. If a girl hit me, I hit her like any other bully. The weakness of men is the facade of their strength; the strength of women is the facade of their weakness.
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            • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 11:41 am none Comment author #168676 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              No, of course not. No one’s ever suggested a woman or girl behave in a “ladylike” way, or told them to smile, or suggested their behaviour was “slutty,” “bitchy,” abrasive, pushy or crude when they behaved “like men” instead of like “ladies.”
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        • ozzie - April 26th, 2014 at 1:12 pm none Comment author #167692 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          ”Because there is nothing that is equivalent to blackface. The history of that specific performance has no analogue.” Your lack of knowledge and historical insight is astounding. You realize that examples of an underclass being mocked and degraded in art/film/performance/theatre/photography exist in nearly every country or culture with hierarchal social architecture, right? The purpose of them being to further reinforce the schism between those with fully human status and ”others”. Sometimes the motivation wasn’t to oppress but to express fear/disgust towards those not belonging to your race/group.
          ” Saidiya Hartman argues that blackface can’t be understood outside of the context of chattel slavery and the socially gratuitous violence against (and social death of) black bodies. ” Again, do you realize that women were also chattel (during this same period and beyond, and in many places, still are) and that violence towards them is till enacted, trivialized, eroticised or erased right?
          Your argument is completely devoid of reason/logic and seems more motivated by your knee-jerk distaste for something you’re apparently very invested in called out for its parallels to racism.
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          • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 5:53 pm none Comment author #167703 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            “Blackface isn’t just a matter of white people putting on black makeup and pretending to be black. If it were just that, it would just be regular-old offensive, but not as traumatic as it is. Saidiya Hartman argues that blackface can’t be understood outside of the context of chattel slavery and the socially gratuitous violence against (and social death of) black bodies.”
            Yeah, I am in awe at how incredibly ignorant you are with regard to patriarchal oppression of and violence against women.
            1) Drag isn’t just a matter of men putting on women’s clothes and makeup and pretending to be women either.
            2) (As pointed out above) Patriarchy and male violence against women also can’t be understood outside of the context of chattel slavery and the socially gratuitous violence against women either. As ozzie pointed out, women were treated as chattel in marriage, continue to be enslaved via trafficking and prostitution, and continue to be subjected to “gratuitous violence” on a daily basis.
            wtf.
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            • ozzie - April 26th, 2014 at 7:19 pm none Comment author #167708 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              He also says, ”…the dynamics of gendered performance don’t have that same history. If they did, you wouldn’t have to make the analogy to blackface in the first place.” The reason women have to draw analogies to other forms of -isms is that these other -isms are nearly universally understood as vile and abhorrent by at-least semi-reasonable people, but these same supposed semi-reasonable people seem to have a huge blind spot (intentionally or not) when it comes to the oppression of women. Like, their brains completely stop analyzing the situation as they normally would if we were talking about this happening to a class of people other than women. Someone was shocked that I thought Daniel Tosh should be as condemned and punished for his rape threats as Kramer (I forget the comedian’s name) was for his racist tirade. They couldn’t explain why the situations were not comparable mind you, but they were offended that I even suggested this nonetheless.
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              • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 7:27 pm none Comment author #167709 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                “The reason women have to draw analogies to other forms of -isms is that these other -isms are nearly universally understood as vile and abhorrent by at-least semi-reasonable people, but these same supposed semi-reasonable people seem to have a huge blind spot (intentionally or not) when it comes to the oppression of women.”
                Yes! Exactly! Women’s oppression is not “real” to many.
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                • Henke - April 28th, 2014 at 2:01 am none Comment author #167747 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  While I am not exactly sure how to make my case I think that it has almost everything to do that we live 24/7 thru a male gaze lens in how we look at each other and the world around us. This is being made possible so easy today with all kinds of media, political discussions and so on and so forth and more often than not as soon as women comes into play in a movies, tv-series and so on she is a character written by a man to fit the whole male gaze we all live in 24/7 in this industrial society, which just vanishes the real world women actually live in (and us men too of course).
                  If people would stop spending so much time on FB, WoW and watching TV but rather was out in the real physical world they would probably have a much greater chance to break this psychosis which is strikingly similar to domestication.
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                  • lizor - April 30th, 2014 at 4:20 am none Comment author #167816 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    “If people would stop spending so much time on FB, WoW and watching TV but rather was out in the real physical world they would probably have a much greater chance to break this psychosis which is strikingly similar to domestication.”
                    I just want to say that I think you are dead-on correct with this. People don’t seem to get that their practices are what actually constitutes them and their world view. Not engaging in the physical world seems to foster a belief that whatever you imagine, IS. It has been a huge catalyst to entitled individualism and has been an essential ingredient to the vicious anti-female backlash.
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                    • Peggy Luhrs - March 17th, 2015 at 12:07 pm none Comment author #254361 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                      You make a great point about the media encouraging magical thinking. As a designer and a builder I have to confront reality when my design is made into a building. I can’t ignore material reality. But sitting at a computer all day may allow that.
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                • Clemdane - June 6th, 2014 at 1:11 am none Comment author #169580 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  Yes, witness how long and how widely the furor over Donald Sterling’s racist comments has gone on, whereas casual misogyny of the same level is so accepted that it scarcely merits a headline.
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        • gxm17 - April 26th, 2014 at 5:22 pm none Comment author #167702 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I can not believe this fool used the word “chattel” and then tried to argue that that drag isn’t similar to blackface.
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      • Morgan - April 26th, 2014 at 6:54 am none Comment author #167676 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Meghan, let the man tell us how we should really feel.
        Note that comparing to blackface is “cheap” and being offended by drag is “simplistic.”
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        • Jason Regnier - April 26th, 2014 at 9:35 pm none Comment author #167716 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Nowhere did I, nor would I, deny the history of oppression of women. Yes, women were treated as property historically and in certain contexts today. I’m not saying that race-based oppression is worse than sex-based oppression. That’s not where I take issue with the comparison. I’m saying that what makes blackface so historically unique is not just that its a dominant group dressing up like a subordinate group. If you want to make the comparison to blackface, you actually have to read a book about blackface. Instead, you just base your analogy on a de-historicized facile similarity. That’s why I cited a well-respected black feminist historian who has actually done some research on this issue. Blackface was a particular practice that emerged at a particular historical moment for a particular purpose. Drag emerged at a different moment for a different purpose. You can make all the arguments you want about why drag is bad, and I think I’ve said that I am sympathetic to some of those arguments. But the comparison between them does a disservice to both because the similarity is only at a surface level. If you want to show that drag has an irremediable history of its own, do the work to document that history. Don’t rely on the analogy to do the work for you.
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          • gxm17 - April 27th, 2014 at 5:42 pm none Comment author #167737 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Women were not “treated” as property. They were (and many still are) property. “Drag” is an expression of misogyny that spans thousands of years, from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance to modern day. So, yes, it has a much deeper history than American blackface. But why are you so opposed to examining why one version of oppression via “entertainment” is no longer socially acceptable while another version of oppression via “entertainment” is (not only viewed as acceptable, but) often lauded as some “edgy” gender-defying statement when this crap has been around for thousands of years and it’s not even remotely provocative. It’s just good old-fashioned woman-hating “fun.” Maybe if men stopped stonewalling, gave this topic some careful thought and examined the basis of their motivation to dismiss a feminist perspective on drag, then maybe we might make some progress instead of reinventing the misogyny wheel again and again and again.
            “The purpose of minstrel shows was to police color lines, and for white people to take pleasure in terrorizing black populations.”
            I’m curious if you are aware that minstrel shows included drag in addition to blackface. So, one could argue, the purpose of minstrel shows was to also police women’s equality and to take pleasure in the oppression (an oppression that maintains much of its strength through terror) of half the population.
            “Gendered performance is just that — inherently performative, which is why it’s so fluid and changing. Drag performances play on the markers of gendered performance, and much less on the materiality of women’s bodies.”
            Bullshit. Then ditch the padding. Ditch the high-pitched mockery of women’s voices. And ditch the wiggling of a man’s narrow hips in an exaggerated ridicule of the natural gait of women. The “materiality” of women’s bodies if the foundation of drag. Without it, there is no drag, just a guy in a dress.
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    • afreuddiannightmare - April 28th, 2014 at 1:53 am none Comment author #167746 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Also, the cheap comparison to blackface is lazy and fundamentally erases the unique history of that practice. ” To say that we can compare two things is not to say that they are the same. Yes, blackface has a unique history, as does patriarchy. HOWEVER, they are not exactly historically distinct either. Patriarchy and racism co-existed at the time of the minstrel show, just as they do now at the time of the drag show. The “wench” and “yoller gal” were characters performed in minstrel shows who ridiculed black/non-white women and were played by white men. Many of them were teenage boys.”the funny old gal” was also a minstrel character who was a fat man pretending to be a fat ugly woman, where the humor is due to the absurd fact of just how ugly she is. Also, the minstrel show and drag show are both just that- shows for entertainment. While the blackface show may have served to terrorize blacks, just as the drag show might terrorize women both had an air of fun and lightheartedness. They were meant to be funny and entertain, yet we recognize that blackface is extremely offensive. The shows often advertised a “real glimpse” into black culture. The jubilee music that was played was said to be “authentic”. It was neither. Neither is dressing in drag a way to “try” on “authentic womanhood”, nor is femininity part of any authentic woman or women’s culture. Its absurd and offensive.
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      • Jan (@Jan4Matt) - May 1st, 2014 at 7:51 pm none Comment author #167882 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “Neither is dressing in drag a way to “try” on “authentic womanhood”, nor is femininity part of any authentic woman or women’s culture. Its absurd and offensive.”
        THIS
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    • imogen - May 27th, 2014 at 1:08 am none Comment author #169123 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      there is isn’t a “unique history” to erase because they have the same history (on the north american continent anyway): drag grew out of minstrel shows, and minstrel shows included drag in them. White men got a real kick in the 1800s of playing black female slaves while in blackface and drag. Go figure. I read about that here: http://afreudiannightmare.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/blackface-drag/
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  13. CD - April 25th, 2014 at 10:43 pm none Comment author #167664 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    For liberals, it’s probably something to do with the fear of appearing homophobic by criticising something that’s popular with a lot of gay men.
    I get that gay men are often ridiculed for being effeminate, and a lot of straight women treat their gay male friends as somewhere in between feminine and masculine, maybe encouraging them to act in a traditionally feminine way sometimes. I’ve got gay friends who fit in as “one of the girls”. But I would hope that gay men could see that their mistreatment for (in some cases) acting in a stereotypically feminine way is because our society encourages people to look down on anything considered feminine, whether that’s women ourselves or the behaviours associated with us. Also, because so many women are forced into feminine gender roles from birth, I don’t think that it’s possible to mock feminine behaviours without mocking women in general, as most of us do act at least somewhat feminine. I’m sure that drag queens’ intentions are good, but if the point of an act is to make femininity look funny, I don’t believe that they’re really challenging gender roles as much as they would like to think.
    Also, in response to Rusty, if a transperson who has yet to transition, i.e. who is living as a man, and is visibly male does drag… yeah, their intentions might be different, but how would that even be clear from their act? Anyway, if they’re mocking people, it doesn’t really matter if they identify with the group that they’re putting down – that definitely doesn’t make drag beyond criticism or analysis. Also, unless the definition for the word has suddenly been officially changed to mean something completely different, gender is *nothing but* a system for division of power; why do you think that men are brought up to dominate women and to occupy positions of power? These apolitical personal attributes that you’re talking about? The word for that is “personality”. Not gender.
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    • Clemdane - June 6th, 2014 at 1:19 am none Comment author #169581 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I think they’re actually reifying essentialist gender roles.
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      • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 5:57 pm none Comment author #234460 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        You mean they are reifying the myth of and artifically socially created gender roles.
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  14. christopher.scott.thomas@gmail.com - April 26th, 2014 at 12:00 am none Comment author #167666 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    This entire post is crazy to me. You openly acknowledge your ignorance yet seem to make VERY universal statements about drag. Why is it that men performing as women is “mocking” women? Why is not a celebration? Drag has never been just about women. It is a culture in an of itself that is fed by gay culture, female culture, pop culture. You’ve also isolated very specific examples of really racist drag queens who wear black face as a means to disregard a entire community. Seriously, not all drag is the same. not all drag demeans women, not all drag is done by men about women, some drag is actually political. To even compare blackface to the complicated and complex world of drag is also just fucking ignorant of racism.
    You should read books about camp and drag. The point is so far beyond “making women look funny” and your simplistic understanding of the art makes that very apparent.
    Seriously, you make constant claims without a single warrant for them….well, other than…I just don’t get it.
    This is why blogs are ridiculous, you get to post shit like this.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 12:16 am none Comment author #167668 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Do you honestly think that objectification or things like uncomfortable stilettos and cartoonish makeup “celebrates women”? Those things don’t empower women…
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      • Missfit - April 26th, 2014 at 7:23 am none Comment author #167679 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Neither terms like ‘bitch’ or ‘bunny’.
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        • Meghan Murphy - April 26th, 2014 at 11:37 am none Comment author #167684 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Certainly not.
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    • Morgan - April 26th, 2014 at 7:01 am none Comment author #167677 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Another man coming to a feminist blog to tell women how to feel about men mocking them.
      Some people probably argue that the blackface they do is celebrating black culture or was mocking stereotypes or was just for fun, doesn’t make it any less racist. You can’t “celebrate” an oppressed group by appropriating behaviours and appearances associated with that group. Its offensive to that oppressed group to then tell them they “should read books” about why it’s ok to mock them. Sounds to me like it’s your argument that’s ridiculous, not this blog.
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      • Gus - May 19th, 2014 at 3:45 pm none Comment author #168590 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        And yet you have the right to call out the LGBTQ community?
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        • imogen - May 27th, 2014 at 1:10 am none Comment author #169124 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          news flash, some women are feminists and L/B/ Q. durr.
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        • christa. - January 31st, 2015 at 3:09 pm none Comment author #245125 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          women do when members of lgbt community are reinforcing women’s oppression, yes. being lgbt does not give one a free pass to appropriate women’s lives/identities.
          and as imogen pointed out, GUESS WHAT, SOME WOMEN ARE LESBIANS AND/OR BI
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    • manyfesto - April 26th, 2014 at 7:23 am none Comment author #167680 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I think the idea is that men are not performing as women. they are performing as misogynist, offensive stereotypes of women.
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    • susanbjourney - April 26th, 2014 at 11:51 am none Comment author #167685 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      To use your terminology, Christopher, I’d say that you are “just fucking ignorant of sexism”. Which is pretty typical of your kind. Zero knowledge or analysis backed up by 100% self-confidence. Meh.
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      • drm342 - May 19th, 2014 at 10:05 pm none Comment author #168620 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        What does, ‘of your kind’ mean?
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        • marv - May 20th, 2014 at 12:49 am none Comment author #168637 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          It means sexist men, like Christopher, who condescend to women. Pretty obvious, unless you have that blocked mindset yourself.
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    • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:35 pm none Comment author #175140 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Because obviously for a man to dress like a woman it must mean he really likes women, because why else would a man be seen dead dressed like a woman?
      No.
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  15. Mercy - April 26th, 2014 at 10:21 am none Comment author #167682 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    It may help to compare to the use of drag outside the gay community, particularly in theater. If you look at it’s history in britain, on stage and in comedy shows, the comparison to blackface is much more straightforward, not just in terms of the performance being mockery but that it also served to facilitate an all male cast (and still, I think, serves this position in the old boys club of comedy, especially for stuff like Little Britain).
    It also allows for the character to be subject to levels of violence/degradation that wouldn’t be tolerated if there weren’t that distance between the actor and the character, if they felt the actor was one of the humiliated rather than one of them, in on the joke – look at something like Mrs Brown’s Boys for instance, the slapstick in that is much more violent than people would be willing to watch on a show with an older female lead; this shades into transphobia too with Little Britain and even moreso in pantomime, where the winks to the fact that the actor is a man are typically timed to come before a particularly nasty joke so as to cushion the blow – haha, this old woman’s got a dick, therefore it’s cool to have her strip to reveal a variety of comedy disfigurements, cluelessly attempt to pickup the hero then get catapulted off stage to raucous cheers (did I mention I hate British panto?).
    None of the gay drag I’ve seen has been remotely comparable to that kind of stuff, so the power differential idea has a lot of legs to me, but with gay rights moving along so swiftly I wonder how long it can last, if it hasn’t crossed the line already. Still, focusing on the Little Britain’s of the world and, once we’ve got it clear in everyone’s heads that this is unacceptable, mopping up the RuPaul’s has got to be the smarter move, tactically, rather than getting into the gay/feminist/transgender three way brawl that seems to be the usual end-point of this argument.
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  16. susanbjourney - April 26th, 2014 at 12:21 pm none Comment author #167690 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I think that each new generation of young women needs to learn about and think through these issues anew. The patriarchy is thousands of years old – misogynist crap has been raining down on girls and women for untold generations. We’ve got more females being trafficked for rape for money, more female murder victims (femicide), than in the history of the planet *right now* in 2014. I won’t be done talking about issues of female oppression until death sucks the air out of my lungs for the last time.
    To me, drag is exactly the same as blackface. It’s womanface, it’s members of the oppressor class mocking members of the class that they oppress. It trivializes women, caricatures us, turns us into entertainment in a mean-spirited, hostile way. I know that many gay males who perform drag are ignorant of their membership in the class that oppresses women because they’re focused on their subordinate role in the social hierarchy to heterosexual males. Nevertheless, they exist in the power-space between heterosexual males and heterosexual females.
    As a class, gay males – and male transwomen – absolutely participate in policing, judging, ridiculing and oppressing females for the patriarchy. Some of them call us bitches and sluts and fish and worse as much or more than most heterosexual males. Both in the workplace and in private life – I have experienced more direct abuse from some gay males than from some straight males, including a gay male manager who went out of his way to get me fired because I didn’t suit his ideas about how a “lady” should behave (dress, walk, make-up, shoes, voice tone, etc.) and another gay man in a political organization who walked in the door, took over, took credit for everything I’d already done and stabbed me in the back a dozen different ways so he could laugh at humiliating me and eventually replace me (as “ineffective”) with a cute young gay male.
    Please don’t tell me that gay drag queens are my bosom buddies in the war against the patriarchal oppression of women and girls, that they are celebrating me or paying homage to me. I believe SOME are but I also know that SOME are my mortal enemies and would do anything to hurt females just because they think it’s fun, including creating grotesque caricatures of females while acting in disgusting ways to wink-wink get everyone in on the joke about how stupid/ugly/slutty/useless women are (in his mind, at least) EXACTLY like the blackface minstrels who caricatured African-Americans as dumb/sly/lazy/childish etc. ad nauseum.
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    • bex0r - April 26th, 2014 at 7:00 pm none Comment author #167707 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Some of these comments are coming dangerously close to spreading trans hate, and I just wanted to check that you are aware of how your language could be considered as such. For instance, there’s no reason to use the term “male transwomen”. That would just be women, or trans women. To say that trans women play an active role in policing and oppressing hetero cis-gender women would also be patently false, based on current statistics around violence and victimization rates ( in 2010 44% of LGBTQH murder victims were trans women, and in 2009 trans women were 50 percent of murder victims. Yet trans people as a whole are only about 1 percent of the LGBTQH population.)
      I’m curious to know if you have any studies or research to back this claim up? I’m sorry that you feel you have been bullied by gay men in the past, but that is also not evidence that you or women in general are being actively oppressed by gay men. I would argue that many gay men who perform many of the unfavorable traits you mention are actually mirroring the ways that cisgender women treat each other. They’re not actively mocking, they’re adopting real, witnessed examples of how women act.
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      • morag - April 26th, 2014 at 8:34 pm none Comment author #167714 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        To but it bluntly bex0r, if you have a dick I and many women don’t care about your opinions on feminism. If you don’t have a dick, I and many other women aren’t going to pat you on the back and call you a sister for prioritizing dick. Do some reading. The points you brought up have been discussed in many feminist blogs before, and it’s frankly rude for you come to a blog and demand we reinvent the wheel over and over.
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        • drm342 - May 19th, 2014 at 10:12 pm none Comment author #168622 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          So, basically, you’re saying that anyone with a penis isn’t welcome in the conversation. Wow, incredibly enlightened, big, and not-fascist of you to exclude someone on the basis of prejudice, rather than to actively engage them in dialogue as an individual.
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          • morag - May 21st, 2014 at 1:07 pm none Comment author #168754 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Yeeeeeah, it’s the feminists who are the fascists. You little boys just hate being told NO by women in any way, shape, or form, don’t you?
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      • amongster - April 26th, 2014 at 11:08 pm none Comment author #167718 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “For instance, there’s no reason to use the term “male transwomen”. That would just be women, or trans women.”
        there is no reason to use “male transwomen” because “trans” already says that those women are male. however, to call them male is not offensive but reality and many reasonable transwomen agree with that. also, you use the words “transwomen” instead of just “women” yourself because it is important for you to make it clear which group is meant because they *are* different ( you even use the term “cis” for female born women…). i don’t understand why you would ask others to act differently.
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        • Meghan Murphy - April 27th, 2014 at 2:15 pm none Comment author #167731 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I honestly don’t understand why using the words “male transwomen” “spreads trans hate.” It’s perhaps unnecessary or redundant to add the word “male” there, but pointing out a biological fact doesn’t strike me as “hateful”? Transwomen know they were born male and will say things like “I used to be a boy/man.” It doesn’t mean they aren’t now trans and it doesn’t mean they can’t identify as transwomen.
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        • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:41 pm none Comment author #175144 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          In fact, to argue that just because you don’t feel like a man, you must therefore be a woman, makes women an “other”. It makes women “not men” by definition. It doesn’t give women their own unique identities, other than being “that thing that isn’t men”.
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      • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:40 pm none Comment author #175143 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “male transwomen” are not women. They’re men who want to be seen as women. Like I said before, you can feel like a potato, but if you’ve never been a potato, you don’t know what it feels like to be a potato, so you couldn’t possibly know that you are actually a potato.
        Men who feel like women were never women and therefore don’t know how it feels to be a woman and therefore can’t say that they feel like a woman, and definitely can’t say that they “are” a woman.
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  17. mmmariguana - April 27th, 2014 at 10:59 am none Comment author #167725 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Thing is, racism could not exist without sexism; they are not on par with each other. Women were the first humans to be enslaved lo these many thousands of years ago (no, it hasn’t been since the dawn of time), mainly due to extreme womb envy. Sexism is the root (it is radical) from which all other oppression sprouts.
    Men in drag, and surgically and/or chemically altered men (SCAMs, demanding they be considered women and pitching fits when they aren’t) are merely the latest iterations of men to erase women. They are men and we forget that men (whether they realize it or not) hate women at our peril.
    Racial (ethnic, social, class, caste, etc.) purity can’t be maintained unless women are completely controlled. When (not if) women get men off our backs, will the clouds part, rainbows appear, birdies sing and all human ills disappear? In a word, YES!
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  18. Tobysgirl - April 27th, 2014 at 12:49 pm none Comment author #167727 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    What I would like to hear from people are their thoughts about women doing drag, by which I mean women using tons of makeup, wearing painful, absurd shoes, wearing provocative clothing, speaking in high-pitched voices that are not natural, etc. I do not find clothing, shoes, makeup, gestures, voices, to be fundamentally male or female. All of these items are essentially gender-neutral even if society insists that dresses are female, trousers are male. I’m aging and disabled, so I do turn on the TV, and it is interesting how women news readers often wear skimpy clothing while men are fully clothed. What would we think if the male news reader for the BBC was wearing a tank top and shorts? Would he be doing drag? Would we laugh? What do we think of the women we see on television who will even say they look nothing like what we see? Are they mocking womanhood? If anyone reads this, I would hope that you realize I am ASKING QUESTIONS, not answering them.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 27th, 2014 at 2:03 pm none Comment author #167728 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I’ve written about femininity a lot on this site. What I think is that women are socialized and pressured to “perform” in these ways — to objectify themselves, sexualize themselves, and cater to the male gaze. It doesn’t “mock” femininity so much as it IS femininity and you’re right that femininity is not empowering for women.
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      • Tobysgirl - April 29th, 2014 at 10:29 am none Comment author #167788 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        More questions. Does femininity mean simply performing as women are expected to perform? Does it have any other meaning?
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        • Meghan Murphy - April 29th, 2014 at 12:46 pm none Comment author #167799 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Well, as I mentioned, it’s about hierarchy. Who is subordinate and who is dominant.
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  19. gxm17 - April 27th, 2014 at 5:51 pm none Comment author #167738 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Kinda OT, but why do websites exist that “teach” men how to walk like a woman? If a male transwoman “identifies” as a woman, then why does he have to learn how to walk like one? Wouldn’t he already walk like one, or at least his version of womanhood? All the effort, in addition to the extreme body modification, that is required kinda puts the lie to transitioning being anything “natural.”
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  20. Rebel Nana - April 27th, 2014 at 9:48 pm none Comment author #167741 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Back in 1979 I was befriended by one of the dearest persons that I have ever met in my life, and we remained friends until his passing in 1992. At the time Toronto was becoming a little more tolerant of the LGBT community but shamefully there was lot of hatred and violence.
    The St. Charles on Yonge Street was a notoriously well-known gay tavern where my friend ‘Blank’ would take me after our office hours to have a few pints. It wasn’t the kind of place that many straight girls my age would have dared to venture into, but because I was with ‘Blank’ and he was quite popular I wasn’t intimidated. I loved it, the beer was cheap, the food and music were fab and I didn’t get hit on left right and centre (which was the best part).
    One Friday night we decided to stay a little later than usual – at about 9 pm the bar-tender turned off the juke box that was piped into the PA and suddenly Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff was cranked. Then the double doors at the front of the Tavern were yanked wide open, the smoke filled air parted and in strutted 12 of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. They literally walked through the entire bar and marched right back out again. There were 4 – 5 bodyguards who waited at the doors and they escorted the women back onto a school bus that they had hired. I turned to ‘Blank’ and asked. “What on earth is going on?” He replied. “OMG you’re going to love this – this only happens about once a month.” All of the patrons in the tavern stood up and started applauding to the beat of the music. Some stood on their chairs and on the tables. On their way out the door I asked, “so where are they headed now?” ‘Blank’ replied, “that’s it – they’ll go home and change back into their man clothes.” “But why the bus and the body guards?” “Safer in numbers, if they take taxis, transit or walk they’ll get the shit kicked out of them or arrested by the police.”
    This was just the beginning of one of the largest movements in Canada, which lead to the inception of Pride Toronto in 1981 – and despite the fact that I have never witnessed another gay parade – with PRIDE I can honestly say that I witnessed one of the first.
    I really do not know enough about this subject from a feminist or from a personal LGBT perspective – but I would assume that ‘Drag Queen’s’ in a cabaret or burlesque show are simply campy artistic performers and this is how they happen to earn their living, just like strippers or prostitutes and regardless if one is on-stage or off-stage, or whether they are trans women, or trans men, transvestites or cross dressers – no one deserves to be beat up, murdered or raped because of the clothes they are wearing.
    In addition Have a look/listen to this link.
    Panti’s Noble Call at the Abbey Theatre
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    • morag - April 27th, 2014 at 11:59 pm none Comment author #167743 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Can you please point to where anyone here said anyone deserved violence? And of course the drag queens were the “most beautiful” women you’ve ever seen-femininity, womanhood, and conventional beauty are all man made definitions that don’t reflect authentic femaleness. Like I said upthread, it’s the ultimate privilege for a man to don high heels and fake implants and say he’s celebrating womanhood, and this misogyny isn’t erased because he’s gay. It appears that celebrating womanhood is just plain old woman hatred, and the status quo disguised as revolution.
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      • Rebel Nana - April 28th, 2014 at 2:28 pm none Comment author #167757 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        My post was not pointing to the fact that anyone here was discussing any form of deserved violence. My post was merely a reflexive comment about how I felt at a particular time and place – I was just 19 years old and in 1979 many folks were quite confused about feminism. I/we (the general population) were simply not aware of the ill effects of patriarchy, hegemonic masculinity and misogyny. It is unfortunate that my generation was so ignorantly conditioned. In this day and age it is remarkable (thanks to the internet) that we are now able to have these conversations and open dialogues – it is refreshing and a relief to know that so many bright young folks are challenging all of the rhetoric, confusion and backlash that has taken place for so long.
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    • jo - April 28th, 2014 at 1:34 pm none Comment author #167754 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      ” I would assume that ‘Drag Queen’s’ in a cabaret or burlesque show are simply campy artistic performers and this is how they happen to earn their living, just like strippers or prostitutes ”
      Well this is a feminist blog so the perspective of the readers here is usually that things like drag, and much more seriously, stripclubs and prostitution aren’t just simply things that happen – they exist in a sexist, misogynist society and the demand was created by it.
      And no, feminists are not the ones who wishes violence on gays/trans people.
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  21. Ash - April 28th, 2014 at 2:37 pm none Comment author #167759 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    It saddens me how quickly the conversation went off topic. But this article really gave me a lot to think about. I remember years ago, when i was like 18 or 19, i would go to drag shows and took part in a drag-king show…when i was on stage as a drag-king, it was more cool than funny…no one thinks its funny to be men. your article has really helped me reflect on that. it was weird, though, because one of the drag queens from a show i was at came outside for a smoke and insulted my haircut. I was pretty taken aback by their sexism towards me…that really made me think like “what the hell?”
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    • hootyhoo - April 28th, 2014 at 11:59 pm none Comment author #167772 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      For a man who likes to dress as a woman, it is obviously not to be “one of them” (ie a woman), but to be “the best” most extreme woman possible. The dominating woman, the winning woman, most beautiful woman in the room, loudest. It is a competitive male version of womanhood. I think, in a way, to be a man dressing as the most extreme woman possible is to imbue ‘woman’ with humanity (maleness) and respectability (masculinity) which would still allow them to look down upon and insult real women. Still allow them to hate women- “look how much better we can do it than you”.
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    • Tobysgirl - April 29th, 2014 at 10:34 am none Comment author #167789 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I wish I could remember the name of the Off-Broadway show I saw many years ago; in it, women dressed as men in a gentlemen’s club — the old meaning of the word, NOT a sex club — and behaved as men, and it was hilarious. So in that case it was funny to see stupid behavior being sent up by very sly female performers.
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  22. Morgan le Faye - April 29th, 2014 at 10:09 pm none Comment author #167809 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I’ve lived in San Francisco for many, many years. I have had gay/lesbian/LGBTQ friends, enemies and acquaintances. I’ve seen drag shows,
    and known some drag queens. That said, I suggest you speak with a few. Those that I know consider themselves to be paying tribute to women, through emulation, not imitation. They worship women. Watch ‘To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar ‘ to get an idea
    what drag queens are ayming for.
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    • Meghan Murphy - April 29th, 2014 at 10:47 pm none Comment author #167811 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I certainly am not or would not be opposed to hearing about what they think they are doing and what they think about women but, as was alluded to further upthread, I don’t understand why women should talk to men about what they think women should think about their representations of women in order to decide whether or not they should or should not take offense?
      In any case, if it’s anything along the lines of this, not super interested…. http://www.tbd.com/blogs/amanda-hess/2010/10/are-drag-queens-feminist–3759.html
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    • Missfit - April 30th, 2014 at 11:07 am none Comment author #167826 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I’d rather say they worship femininity. And by referring to themselves as women based on their wearing mascara and a dress reduces being a woman to a stereotypical notion of femininity. I don’t find drag subversive at all, it rather reinforces gender stereotypes. What would be subversive is a man wearing make up and high heels, not pretending that this makes him a woman and calling himself Mr. Peacock or whatever.
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      • marv - April 30th, 2014 at 7:57 pm none Comment author #167840 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “….known some drag queens. That said, I suggest you speak with a few. Those that I know consider themselves to be paying tribute to women, through emulation, not imitation. They worship women. Watch ‘To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar ‘ to get an idea
        what drag queens are ayming for.”
        Would you condone blackface if the whites were “paying tribute” to blacks “through emulation, not imitation.” What if they worshiped blacks. Patronizing, don’t you think. Should blacks give a damn what blackface is “ayming for”? If you think I am right then why not show the same respect to women? Looks like sexism is alive and well in San Francisco.
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    • JP - August 4th, 2014 at 8:49 pm none Comment author #175147 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      So if a white guy in blackface is actually trying to emulate, not imitate, black people (whom he worships), should black people first talk to him to find out his intentions before they get offended?
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  23. julia - May 5th, 2014 at 12:34 am none Comment author #167990 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    In response to this: “Why is it understood that the appropriation of a marginalized ethnicity, race or culture is facilitated by white privilege and that it’s offensive, but not that the same arguments could be applied to a group of men (who benefit from male privilege) who appropriate femininity as a form of entertainment?”
    Femininity is not something inherent to women. While it is true that ethnicity, race and culture are also “made up” they are more concrete than something like femininity.
    I understand that you are responding to drag in Vancouver which is a pretty sorry event. Davie Street and Commercial Drive are filled with misogynist gay men and les”bros” worshipping masculinity. Most of the drag you’ll see here is sexist, violent, and boring. However drag has a very rich tradition outside of this (ball culture, etc). Because your account of drag lacks nuance, I think the way you draw parallels to blackface is questionable. White people often use anti-black racism as an analogy for other forms of oppression. It’s a lazy form of analysis which is itself rooted in racist epistemology. It is especially sketchy in this case because of drag’s history in black communities.
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    • Meghan Murphy - May 5th, 2014 at 12:10 pm none Comment author #168011 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Femininity is not something inherent to women.”
      Of course it isn’t. My entire body of work argues the opposite. Femininity is forced upon us.
      And yes, you’re right. Most of the drag I’ve seen is in Vancouver and has been very sexist and racist. The last show I saw featured a hetero black man mocking black women.
      What’s odd is that your response the same one I receive every time I critique burlesque (and selfies, and porn, and everything, really) — that it ‘lacks nuance’ and that not ALL drag/burlesque is like that. It doesn’t render my critique irrelevant though.
      Your response hasn’t actually provided any examples, evidence or explanations for your disagreement with my arguments — you’ve only spouted academic jargon and made unfounded statements. I’m sure there are lots of points to counter my arguments, I just wish you’d offered them…
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      • marv - May 5th, 2014 at 9:25 pm none Comment author #168018 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        “While it is true that ethnicity, race and culture are also “made up” they are more concrete than something like femininity.”
        We must be from different planets. Where I live femininity (and masculinity) are concrete as concrete. They take on numerous specific manufactured forms that are resistant to liberation, e.g. porn, prostitution, marriage… If I could had the means to leave the Earth I would come and visit your world to see how your species lives.
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        • Meghan Murphy - May 5th, 2014 at 9:35 pm none Comment author #168019 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Yeah I’m not sure that there are any more concrete categories in this world than ‘man’ and ‘woman.’
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        • julia - May 10th, 2014 at 12:53 pm none Comment author #168135 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          On my planet, masculinity and femininity are codified behaviours that people take up in different ways at different times. Yes, it’s systemic, but one day I can wear a dress and shave my legs, and another I can cut my hair short and put on menswear. Whether I am perceived as being more feminine or more masculine, I will always be white. This is what I meant by “more concrete.”
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          • Meghan Murphy - May 10th, 2014 at 1:22 pm none Comment author #168137 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Gender isn’t just an individual choice though. It’s a hierarchical system that places people in one category or the other based on biology. How exactly do you think patriarchy works?
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            • julia - May 10th, 2014 at 2:05 pm none Comment author #168140 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              I’m in total agreement with you, Meghan. I’m talking about masculinity and femininity though, not men and women. Women do not always act feminine and men do not always act masculine. They might be punished for this socially but that doesn’t make it biological. Like you said, “femininity is forced upon us.”
              Do you think that mocking femininity is the same thing as mocking race?
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              • Meghan Murphy - May 10th, 2014 at 3:04 pm none Comment author #168143 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                “Men” and “women” IS gender. Do you mean males and females?
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                • Julia - May 10th, 2014 at 3:42 pm none Comment author #168147 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  I am not talking about gender or sex. I am talking about masculinity and femininity. I’ll ask my question again: do you think mocking femininity is the same as mocking race?
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                  • Meghan Murphy - May 11th, 2014 at 12:12 pm none Comment author #168181 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    @Julia
                    1) You don’t seem to understand the difference between sex and gender, nor do you seem clear on how power systems and the gender binary/hierarchy works. I’m just trying to clarify for you.
                    2) “I’ll ask my question again: do you think mocking femininity is the same as mocking race?”
                    Please stop trying to oversimplify this conversation. It’s disingenuous and unproductive. I just wrote an entire post noting comparisons/similarities between drag and blackface. Others have brought forward further context, history, and theory. Feel free to do the same, but all you’re doing here is being manipulative and derailing in an attempt to cover up the face that you don’t have any clear/substantive points to make.
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                  • gxm17 - May 19th, 2014 at 5:28 am none Comment author #168561 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    Drag queens do not merely mock “femininity,” they mock women’s bodies too. They wear padding, change the pitch of their voices, and imitate a woman’s natural gait. There are even “how to walk like a woman” websites. Ridiculing women’s bodies is fundamental to drag. As I’ve said before, get rid of the padding etc. and all you have is a man in a dress (with clown-like make-up).
                    Also, I want to point out that black face imitates supposed cultural qualities that are “made up” and not “inherent” to an entire race.
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          • marv - May 10th, 2014 at 8:51 pm none Comment author #168155 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            “On my planet, masculinity and femininity are codified behaviours that people take up in different ways at different times. Yes, it’s systemic, but one day I can wear a dress and shave my legs, and another I can cut my hair short and put on menswear. Whether I am perceived as being more feminine or more masculine, I will always be white. This is what I meant by “more concrete.””
            Race is invented, codified and systemic as well but can’t always be identified with skin pigmentation and other bodily features. Whether one is “perceived as being” a person of colour or white or mixed is not tangible in many cases.
            Anyway, in terms of the concreteness of gender we are talking about more than just styles, haircuts and individuals. The sexual division of power and roles between males and females as social groups is the real issue not the aberrations. Systems thinking is required here not diversionary individualism. We need a fundamental reordering of sexual relations since patriarchy structures the current range of options.
            One or both of us are extraterrestrial or lacks acuity.
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  24. ptittle - May 7th, 2014 at 10:53 pm none Comment author #168049 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I agree that we need to emphasize that drag imitates and possibly mocks the feminine, not the female. That said, given the comments about hierarchy and discomfort, I think the feminine is an appropriate target of mockery – if one is inclined to engage in mockery. I confess that I HATE seeing women perform femininity (I won’t say I find it offensive only because I haven’t worked out what exactly it means to be offended by something) – it hurts all of us. And I don’t accept the ‘it’s forced on us’ claim, nor even the ‘we’re pressured’ claim. I am, of course, aware that women are expected to appear feminine, as well as marry and man and reproduce, but many of us don’t do any of that, for some excellent reasons, and at least here in Canada, we don’t get stoned for our choices. So where’s the force and pressure? Sure, maybe we are ostracized somewhat, but geez louise, that’s a small price to pay; how stupid (needy?) is it to wear make-up and high heels, marry a man, and reproduce just to avoid ostracization?
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    • Meghan Murphy - May 8th, 2014 at 1:54 pm none Comment author #168070 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Well I’m not sure it’s always understood as ‘I might be ostracized if I don’t perform properly’ — I think women just grow up believing they have to in order to be considered attractive AND learn that being attractive to men is the most important thing they can be…
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  25. Alli - May 12th, 2014 at 6:26 am none Comment author #168230 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Have you followed Eurovision song contest and this year’s winner, Austrian Conchita Wurst?
    In press people have commented how he (in a drag, she) encourages people to be themselves and accept other as they are.
    I would like to read your comments!
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  26. isthisajoke? - May 18th, 2014 at 8:26 pm none Comment author #168541 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    This article and most of the comments (didn’t read through all of them sorry) completely miss the point of drag performance.
    As an example, the quote from Kleiman,
    Kleiman writes: “There was ridicule of African-Americans. ‘Look how silly they are! But look how they laugh, and doesn’t that prove they’re happy in the confinement in which we’ve placed them?’ Likewise, men who dress up as women and adopt stereotyped feminine behaviors are comical because of their stereotyped behavior, and the inference the audience is encouraged to draw is not that stereotypes are comical but that women are.”
    is flat out wrong. The audience IS encouraged to infer that the way women are stereotyped in society is comical and to question why we think women are expected to act this way.
    And your assumption that, “there must be a reason women don’t do this to men — turning masculinity into entertainment or a joke, that is.” is also grossly incorrect, Ever heard of drag kings?
    I’m sorry you fail to understand the point of most drag performances, please educate yourself a little further next time you intend to make a ridiculous blog post such as this.
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    • Meghan Murphy - May 18th, 2014 at 9:09 pm none Comment author #168545 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Of course we’re all aware of drag kings. But it’s far more commonplace and more popular to see drag queens.
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      • isthisajoke? - May 19th, 2014 at 1:25 am none Comment author #168554 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Right, so you are on the fringes of queer culture and are making a broad generalization about something you don’t understand. Give it a rest already.
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        • Meghan Murphy - May 19th, 2014 at 1:02 pm none Comment author #168574 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I don’t understand what it feels like to see men mocking women? Ok. Stupid me. Thought I did.
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  27. Tyler LaCount - May 19th, 2014 at 2:20 pm none Comment author #168579 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    The problem with that analogy is is that cis-gendered women don’t really “own” femininity as an identity the way a racial minority does. Anybody regardless of their sex can have a wide spectrum of gender identities. The idea that exploring that feminine side of yourself is “mocking” women is itself pretty offensive I think.
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    • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 11:54 am none Comment author #168678 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Femininity is something that is forced on women, just as masculinity is. Pretending as though women and men aren’t socialized (sometimes via violence) to perform gender which, in turn, reinforces the gender hierarchy and is oppressive, is just magical thinking. We can’t simply pretend gender away because some men decide to play with it on stage.
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  28. CK - May 19th, 2014 at 3:11 pm none Comment author #168584 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    As a drag performer myself, I’ll dive in.
    To me, it seems that your argument overlooks a key wrinkle by pushing everything into a male-female dichotomy. Gender, to many, is more of a fluid spectrum; people choose to identify not simply as male or female, but sometimes as somewhere in between or elsewhere (genderqueer is a broad heading, but there are all sorts of options that people have taken up).
    Drag as it stands now is typically not a tool used by heterosexual men, but rather a banner waved by gay men to fight back against oppression. It’s no coincidence that the Stonewall Riots were started by a drag queen. Gay men have historically been viewed as disgusting, deviant, overly sexual, and feminine. So the drag queens like Divine that took up such qualities did so knowingly, with the goal of becoming the very thing that straight society feared and embracing those qualities as beautiful.
    RuPaul, another prominent example, isn’t in it for the shock value, but rather emulates pop stars. Again, she does so with a highly specific intent. She has said in interviews that her performance is intended as a critique of Western celebrity culture. After all, media tells us that the most beautiful thing in the world is a specific type of young, thin, blond woman; by attaining that ideal as a black man, she undermines its validity and points out the falseness of the construct. Her drag is specifically aimed at questioning the beauty standards to which women are held.
    Drag has also provided a gateway for some women to find their way into their gender identity. Many transgendered women begin their journey through drag performance; Carmen Carrera is a prominent example of such a shift.
    In general, I think that gay men use the trope of female costume as a means of embracing the parts of themselves for which they have been shamed. Society views the crossing of gender lines as deviance. Men are discouraged from walking with a swish, wearing high heels, putting on make-up, or otherwise changing the dialogue about what men are supposed to be like. It is empowering to be a man in feminine dress as a means of mocking the whole idea of masculinity and femininity, with the aim of breaking down barriers in general. Drag queens, in my view, are forever posing a pointed question about male/female roles.
    I’d also encourage you to do a little more digging in terms of the reading you’re doing, because drag has definitely not escaped notice from feminists and queer theorists. Though there is, of course, wider and wider acceptance of this performance medium, it has had its share of critique. I know bell hooks has done writing about the ways that drag reinforces heteronormative views, and also about the problems of race inherent in drag performance. (To be clear, while I do drag, I am NOT supportive of blackface or other racially insensitive routines.) There are essays out there, though they might take more digging to unearth, but this discussion has been had and will continue to be had because there is not full consensus on the impact of male-to-female performance.
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    • morag - May 20th, 2014 at 9:39 pm none Comment author #168701 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      This is where feminists and drag queens differ: the former see gender as a hierarchy and the later think it’s a fluid spectrum. Mazel tov that gay men can ‘play” with femininity but that’s not the reality for women. A marginalized group shouldn’t seek empowerment from another marginalized group. Also your claim that Rupaul and Carmen Carrers has attained some kind of female perfection while commenting on pop culture is absurd and frankly shows how much some gay men have their head up their ass when it comes to feminism. Females are not an abstract concept in some guy’s head, nor are we fish, cis, or bitches. If you bothered to LISTEN for once you would see your points have been addressed ad nauseum here.
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  29. Vivian Divine - May 19th, 2014 at 3:40 pm none Comment author #168589 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Nobody ever says “I want to make fun of women” and goes through all the trouble and effort of being a drag queen. Women, trans or cisgendered, should be appreciative of drag queens. We are the most radical and best dressed symbol of the fact that genitals don’t define who a person is or what they’re good at.
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    • morag - May 19th, 2014 at 8:32 pm none Comment author #168611 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      So basically you’re saying “you stupid women, you should be thanking us drag queens for doing womanhood and feminism better than you.” Wow how original, I’ve never seen a man barge into a discussion before to tell us stupid women how it is. Your comment is laughable, and the fact that you’re writing this with linebacker shoulders and 5 lbs of makeup just makes it funnier. This isn’t Will and Grace here, where women will fall over backwards to cater to queer men and assure them that yes, you have the most radical politics, yes you’re so much smarter than me, and yes your slip hides your junk.
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      • Meghan Murphy - May 19th, 2014 at 10:01 pm none Comment author #168619 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        You should just SEE the virulent, horrid, misogynist comments I’ve been deleting here all day, morag. From men, of course. Gay men defending drag. Yep, they’re the real radicals.
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        • ptittle - May 19th, 2014 at 10:11 pm none Comment author #168621 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I know why you’re deleting them, and I thank you, but every now and then I think moderators of sites like these (IBTP and femonade come to mind as being subject to the same shit) should be allowed – posted at some other separate place – so women can see just how much men hate them. (women who still don’t get it.)
          I’m tempted to offer my place once a week, for an open ‘This is what real men are really like’ or ‘This is what real men really think about you’ thread, but of course that would just give them some sort of audience, attention…
          So again, thank you.
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          • Meghan Murphy - May 19th, 2014 at 10:22 pm none Comment author #168624 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            I know. I often consider posting them just so people can see, but I also don’t want to encourage it and worry that posting them will keep ‘em coming back…
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            • amongster - May 20th, 2014 at 4:28 am none Comment author #168650 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              i really appreciate that you delete those comments. there is already enough space for those people and sometimes it is even hard enough to read comments by simply uneducated males who still believe they know better. this page feels like a safe place to me and i’m thankful that you make that possible.
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              • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 11:10 am none Comment author #168672 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                I do my best. And yeah, I do sometimes let some through just so people can see and so they can be ripped apart, but this is not a public forum for misogynists. They have the whole rest of the internet.
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        • gxm17 - May 20th, 2014 at 5:28 am none Comment author #168656 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          You really don’t have to scratch the surface too far to reveal the ugly misogyny in so many men’s hearts.
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        • morag - May 20th, 2014 at 9:07 pm none Comment author #168699 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Eww you have my sympathies Meghan :( It’s a catch 22 with troll comments since you can either post them with the intent of showing how disgusting they are and then women waste their energy and respond to them. Or you don’t publish them and then get all of the “you’re exaggerating, not all men are like that!” comments. I agree that you have the most enlightening and best moderated comment section!
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          • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 10:28 pm none Comment author #168704 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Thanks to my commenters who happen to be the best commenters on the whole internet.
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      • Vivian Divine - May 20th, 2014 at 9:04 pm none Comment author #168698 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        You assume that my support of drag is based from the perspective of a drag performer, and in part it is. It is also from the perspective of someone who deals with the challenge of gender and the expectations of our binary society on a daily basis.
        You have no idea, only assumptions, of my gender, sex or expression thereof. (In fact, I am not a gay man, nor a man at all beyond what chromosomes dictate.)
        You have no idea, only assumptions, of what I look like or how I am perceived by the world. (I am more, often than not, taken for female and treated as such. Without any makeup at all. That includes the limitations imposed by a male-oriented society)
        Assumptions by men say that women are of lesser worth.
        Assumptions by one race say that others are inferior.
        I consider all people’s worth based on their abilities and attitude towards others.
        Instead of stereotyping gay people and drag, perhaps you should be reaching out to the fierce warriors within the culture who want all people to be treated equally.
        The face of drag and gender have changed. If people, especially the radfem
        movement, continue to generalize what people do you’ll continue to miss out on some very powerful allies.
        My message is that if my linebacker shoulders can exemplify society’s mold of womanhood so well, then maybe that mold isn’t quite so rigid after all.
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        • morag - May 20th, 2014 at 10:51 pm none Comment author #168708 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          You guys never fail to crack me up. “I’m biologically male but I’m a woman in my special lady brain where it counts! In fact I do woman so much better than you that I get treated as one even without makeup. Blah blah blah new age bulshit about letting love in your heart and embracing allies.”
          Feminists don’t care how hot you think you are or how well you fit the femininity box. Your delusionals of grandeur and MRA faux equality talk have zero to do with the liberation of women.
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        • Mar Iguana - May 21st, 2014 at 5:29 am none Comment author #168731 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “In fact, I am not a gay man, nor a man at all beyond what chromosomes dictate.”
          Bad chromosomes. Bad. Evil little tyrants.
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        • Jani - May 25th, 2014 at 9:31 pm none Comment author #168992 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I think drag queens are insulting to real women. Drag queens focus on, highlight, and ape the worst aspects of womanhood. Their promotion of vanity, vapidity, shallowness and an overemphasis on appearance and materialism projects a horrible, sexist, and demeaning view of women. Why haven’t women in the wider society protested this? Well, most women don’t see drag shows. Most women are too busy attending school or working at jobs to support their families or are taking care of children or caregiving for their elderly parents or friends. Most women are too damn busy to give a crap about some clowns in gowns insulting us. But those clowns when seen do provide us with something to point to as an example of an anti-woman.
          Drag queen anti-women do not amuse me – instead they make me cringe. And those women who do enjoy drag shows probably enjoy the objectification of women in beauty contests and in the larger media culture. Anyone who thinks drag queens are beautiful – don’t know what true female beauty is. True female beauty is strength. Its stretch marks and C-section scars. Its dark circles under your eyes from staying up all night with a sick child or relative and still going to work the next day. It’s being there for your family and friends when they need you, to bring jumper cables, food, sit with you during chemo and lend a spare hand or just provide a shoulder to lean on. Drag queens are free to play their dress up games – but they should keep them in those dark, nasty clubs where they belong. Not in the real world with real women. Real women have it hard enough without being mocked and insulted by silly drag queens.
          And while I’m on a roll. I feel sorry for Transsexuals. It must be terrible to be that confused. That said, I don’t care what you cut off and what you add on and how many darn chemicals and hormones you pump into your body. A transsexual will never truly experience what it is like to a woman, period. They will always be other, an outsider and never my sister.
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    • Sabine - December 5th, 2014 at 9:04 pm none Comment author #221743 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Women, trans or cisgendered, should be appreciative of drag queens.”
      Oh we SHOULD, should we??? Are you fucking kidding me? And if I hear “cis” one more time I’m going to scream….Also, being trans does not make a man a woman.
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  30. Caroline - May 19th, 2014 at 3:48 pm none Comment author #168591 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Comparing drag to blackface….. No. Just no. That is all sorts of wrong to do- racism (especially in America) has it’s own unique history and shouldn’t ever be compared to issues of gender. They are not the same. Using the the reference of blackface to forward your argument here is appropriation in itself (looks to me like you’re not black, yourself), and muddling up different systems of oppression.
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    • Meghan Murphy - May 20th, 2014 at 11:47 am none Comment author #168677 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      There are very clearly intersections between the ways in which people are subjugated based on race, class, and gender. The hierarchy that places white men at the top is tied to all of them. In any case, of course there are separate histories — one of my points is that progressives are comfortable calling out racism but not sexism and there is clearly sexism in drag. Yes, there are different histories, but that isn’t to say that we shouldn’t question why some forms of oppression are still accepted in progressive communities and others are not — particularly when they manifest themselves in ways that appear to be similar.
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      • Caroline - May 21st, 2014 at 7:23 pm none Comment author #168770 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Yes there is intersections, but this post was not much at all about intersectionality. It was trying to compare drag to blackface.
        In any case, I find it interesting that you start this post off by admitting that you haven’t seen much drag and haven’t thought much about it, and then immediately go painting it all as fundamentally misogynistic. I think if you were to look more into drag (and the endless forms it takes), you might start to see that it’s hardly ever about “haha this is a dude pretending to be a woman and making fun of all things feminine”. If that’s all drag was about, then you’d not see the multitude of styles there are out there- pageant queens, camp queens, club kids, genderfuck and tranimal, etc etc etc. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some men that dress up in drag because they think it is inherently funny to do so- but those men don’t make (successful) careers out of drag, because it gets old REAL quick. Drag is much more about the realization that gender is not some force of nature that controls us like gravity. It’s about exploring femininity and realizing it’s not such a scary monster thing, or creating a fully-realized character separate from the person behind it… rather than appropriating femininity to laugh at it. I’ll offer you this quote from BenDeLaCreme-
        “As a feminist and an advocate of trans rights, a man in a dress CAN’T be a joke. Wearing beautiful things and telling jokes are two ways I get to make the world closer to what I want it to be. To me, drag is the perfect vehicle for comedy not because “HA-HA MEN AREN’T WOMEN,” but because of the camp tradition. In camp, a character can simultaneously be the joke and be in on it—the character and creator coexist in a way that is rare in other forms. Some of my favorite comics are Amy Sedaris, Paul Reubens, Maria Bamford, Kristen Wiig, all the above-mentioned queens [Varla Jean Merman, Miss Coco Peru, and Lypsinka], and Seattle’s crown jewel Dina Martina.”
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        • Meghan Murphy - May 22nd, 2014 at 5:46 pm none Comment author #168816 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “Yes there is intersections, but this post was not much at all about intersectionality. It was trying to compare drag to blackface.”
          Hmm ok. The post was about pointing out sexism in drag and asking why it was acceptable for men to dress up as caricatures of women and mock them when we are comfortable saying that blackface (i.e. white people dressing up as caricatures of black people in order to mock them) is not ok.
          And I’m sorry but I went through the exact same thing when I wrote about burlesque and was told over and over again that I just hadn’t seen ENOUGH burlesque to be able to have an opinion on it. And NOT ALL burlesque is sexist, etc.
          I’m totally open to hearing different perspectives on drag and I’m sure there are lots of drag performances that are more subversive and aren’t merely focused on mocking exaggerated caricatures of women, but the drag I’ve seen has been mostly sexist and offensive. This isn’t a black and white argument — it isn’t all one thing or the other, so i think my criticisms can stand alongside other perspectives.
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  31. an30o - May 20th, 2014 at 12:45 am none Comment author #168636 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I was reading bell hooks’s “Is Paris Burning ?” where she quotes Marilyn Frye, a quote which I found extremely interesting, at least for the last sentence :
    “As I read it, gay men’s effeminacy and donning of feminine apparel displays no love of or identification with women or the womanly. For the most part, this femininity is affected and is characterized by theatrical exaggeration. It is a casual and cynical mockery of women, for whom femininity is the trapping of oppression […]. What gay male affectation of femininity seems to be is a serious sport in which men may exercise their power and control over the feminine, much as in other sports… But the mastery of the feminine is not feminine. It is masculine…”
    And as always, the men are the one who are really able to reveal something of a higher state, to put it at a higher level of perfection than women, you know, like in cooking for instance. Because men choose the time they dedicate for this and for them, (in a paraphrase of Christiane Rochefort), feminity doesn’t strike them as a constraint, but more as a way to feel themselves differently, they’re free of the strain of oppression. They don’t realise the luxury this is, to be able to try to be some sort of woman in a controlled environnement.
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    • morag - May 20th, 2014 at 9:45 pm none Comment author #168702 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      This is an excellent quote. I forgot where I read it, but I remember a feminist commenter argue that femininity is not an expression of femaleness but rather childlike behaviour. And who else but men can have the luxury of acting like a child minus the vulnerability and danger real children face?
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  32. Dr. Sassy Yoni, Esq. (@secret_sass) - May 23rd, 2014 at 3:07 pm none Comment author #168890 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Meghan, thank you for asking the questions that none of the woman-hating identity-zombies on the Left want to deal with – or even tolerate a woman asking. If you are interested, I wrote a related blog post here, “Sex & Race & Boundaries on the Left.” http://secretlyradical.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-initial-take-on-sex-race-boundaries.html I think those boundaries are treated differently b/c white supremacist patriarchy wants different things from the Others in each category (woe to those who are in both).
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    • Mar Iguana - May 24th, 2014 at 9:58 am none Comment author #168925 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Scratch a racist and you will find a sexist. Racism could not exist without sexism; they are not on par with each other. Women were the first humans to be enslaved lo these many thousands of years ago (no, it hasn’t been since the dawn of time). Sexism is the root (the radical) from which all other oppression sprouts.
      Racial (ethnic, social, class, caste, etc.) purity can’t be maintained unless women are completely controlled by any means necessary.
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  33. Lela - June 8th, 2014 at 11:06 am none Comment author #169721 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Hey Meghan, I’m late to this particular thread, but great post and comment thread! Glad to see you are still at it, and your regular commenters are so sharp! In my experience, progressive women are psychologically barred from articulating our less-than-awesome feelings about drag if we want to consider ourselves supporters of LGB people. As we have seen here, the stock response is to conflate feminist critique of drag with what “the rest of society” feels toward gay men, which is both false and intellectually lazy.
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    • Meghan Murphy - June 8th, 2014 at 12:23 pm none Comment author #169726 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Thanks Lela! Yeah it’s weird. (Some) folks seem very unwilling to acknowledge the possibility that (some) gay men might promote sexist or misogynist ideas…
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      • ptittle - June 8th, 2014 at 12:45 pm none Comment author #169728 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I confess I had that opinion initially too. (When I deejayed at a GLBT event, I realized I was wrong.) I think it was because I was thinking that being gay = challenging the whole heterosexual thing, including the hierarchy… But if being gay is ‘just’ biological, then there’s reason whatsoever to think anything at all about the attitudes/opinions of the gay population as a whole. Goes for lesbians too. I still mistakenly assume all lesbians are feminist!
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  34. Yeoman Nacelle Envy - June 14th, 2014 at 5:20 pm none Comment author #170122 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I wrote a very similar blog post just the other day and then a friend of mine found yours and linked me to it. Well put.
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  35. Dan - June 16th, 2014 at 3:28 pm none Comment author #170212 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    “Nobody”, I agree with your comment (May 20, 2014, 6:42 am). I have already been male-bashed for expressing my opinion, presumably because someone thought I was a heterosexual man when in fact I am a gay man.
    In response to your reply as well as to others who read this, I was looking on Wikipedia under “drag queen” and found two paragraphs that I strongly suspect the author of this article has based this article on:
    “Within the larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) communities, drag queens are sometimes criticized for their participation in pride parades and other public events, believing that this projects a limited and harmful image of gay people and impedes a broader social acceptance. This attitude itself is criticized for limiting self-expression and encouraging the idea that there are “right” and “wrong” ways to be gay. In more recent years drag queens have been prominently featured at these same events.”
    “A common criticism of drag queens is that they promote harmful stereotypes of women, comparable to blackface portrayal of African-Americans by white performers that was popular in the early 20th century. Conversely, some feminists embrace drag as a skewering of traditional gender roles, defying the social norms of male and female looks and behaviour and showing the artificiality of femininity and masculinity.”
    In answer to the author’s question (in the article’s title) and the example of blackface she provided, the LGBTQ community does indeed critique itself as apparently “Daytona Bitch” had infuriated many for doing blackface.
    According to Wikipedia’s information, while some women believe drag queens promote a harmful stereotype of women, some feminists “embrace” drag which defies social norms and shows the “artificiality of femininity and masculinity”.
    Wikipedia also gives a quote from American drag queen RuPaul who once said, “I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear seven-inch heels, four-foot wigs, and skintight dresses?” He also said, “I don’t dress like a woman; I dress like a drag queen!”.
    This is what many don’t “get”. Drag queens are gender expressing, entertaining, and in no way try to recreate or redefine what womanhood is — and drag queens as a whole cannot be labeled as racist. Some of them are, of course, but then again, some feminists are racist as well. Many feminists are sexist in that they discriminate against men, for example, by not wanting us to comment in this forum or in my case, I was assumed to be a “misogynist woman fucker”. That’s sexist, and many people who look in the proverbial mirror forget that what they are seeing is not someone else they hate, but themselves.
    I would encourage anyone to look up “drag queen” and “drag king” in Wikipedia, especially if they do not even know any such people, and then to formulate opinions that are better informed, rather than attacking each other as in “I’m right, you’re wrong”.
    Many members of the LGBTQ community know and appreciate that the Feminist Movement opened the doors for the LGBTQ civil rights and human rights movements. There will always be bad apples in any and every group, but at least the LGBTQ community includes all of humanity, and is not a members-only club.
    And, “Nobody”, I agree with your being infuriated — you are absolutely not alone in your feelings. About one in three people I personally know feel the same way. But also know this, such bad apples in feminism thrive on transferring their issues onto others. Why not do what I have done — engage in thoughtful, informative and respectful conversation with feminists who are the same, as they have ways to soothe the suffering that the bad apples try to project onto the world.
    No one can tell us or anyone in the LGBTQ community the “right” or “wrong” way to be who we are.
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    • Meghan Murphy - June 16th, 2014 at 4:56 pm none Comment author #170214 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Why are you mansplaining feminism to us?
      Also, for the record, there is no such thing as sexism against men.
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      • lizor - June 17th, 2014 at 7:53 am none Comment author #170245 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        FTR, Dan, “not wanting us to comment in this forum” – is not accurate. Your comments have been posted. The fact that you are so far out of your depth that you take up space preaching wikipedia to us (FFS) has you come off as ignorant and presumptuous. No one is preventing you from commenting. However, if you want cheers and pats on the head instead of informed engagement, then you should look elsewhere.
        And BTW, how is it that “the LGBTQ community includes all of humanity”? If it’s a community that has no exclusions and inclusions, why define the community at all? LGBTQ form a connected confederacy of people marginalized because they identify outside of the heterosexual, so-called “cis” majority. Maybe you should try doing a little more in depth research than wikipedia and invest in some serious consideration of the issues before writing long posts that do nothing but demonstrate the limitations your current understanding and your inflated self-regard.
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    • marv - June 17th, 2014 at 9:40 pm none Comment author #170278 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Many feminists are sexist in that they discriminate against men, for example, by not wanting us to comment in this forum or in my case, I was assumed to be a “misogynist woman fucker”. That’s sexist, and many people who look in the proverbial mirror forget that what they are seeing is not someone else they hate, but themselves.”
      Now that we know you believe in reverse sexism, what will your next oxymoron be? LGBTQs oppress heterosexuals when the former accuse the latter of heterosexism. That would be a heterosexist assertion. Don’t tell me you are hating on gays now not just women. That would also be self-loathing, something you already oppose. Cognitive dissonance?
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    • Lo - June 18th, 2014 at 8:43 am none Comment author #170305 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      You sure like Wikipedia. Best source ever.
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    • Sabine - December 5th, 2014 at 9:14 pm none Comment author #221746 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Wikipedia?? WIKIPEDIA???? Seriously? That is your source of information? I actually have my head in my hands at this point…
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  36. Maureen - June 23rd, 2014 at 6:45 am none Comment author #170636 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    In case you are interested in a Black woman’s point of view on “lady face” versus “Black face,” you can find it here:
    in which she writes:
    “Essentially they practice sex appropriation and as far as I’m concerned ‘lady face’ is just as offensive as ‘black face.'”
    It’s just one point of view, but I’m really far more interested in what a Black feminist has to say about this than what some dude who feels it is his place to lecture feminists on a feminist blog thinks about it.
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  37. Jonas Kaufman - July 4th, 2014 at 8:34 am none Comment author #171405 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Gender identity is not a binary it’s a scale. That, I think, is the difference. A person is either of a race, partly of a race or they’re not.
    But you can’t say that about gender identity.I know lots of gender fluid people, And I think drag queen/king-ing is an aspect of that.
    I think drag kings/queens are just expressing that part of their gender identity.
    This is an excellent explanation of some of the concepts I mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAoG8vAyzI
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    • amongster - July 4th, 2014 at 11:43 am none Comment author #171434 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “gender” is a hierarchy, even if you want to see it as a scale it is one that is not horizontal but vertical, obviously with masculinity on top and femininity on the bottom. women can do whatever they want, conform to femininity or not, they will always be the oppressed as long as “gender” exists. doesn’t matter how many identities you make up, patriarchy doesn’t care about them.
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    • Laur - December 15th, 2014 at 3:00 am none Comment author #225784 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Do you think in a sex equal culture drag would exist?
      And when you say “their” gender identity, where does this come from? Are some people born drag queens and others, well, not?
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  38. marv - July 4th, 2014 at 9:46 am none Comment author #171419 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Your point is redundant. It has already been made in the comments above. The video was tiresome and superficial. Several billion gender boxes are still boxes.
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  39. Here - November 1st, 2014 at 7:10 am none Comment author #204253 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Just putting my two pence in here. i;’m from Scotland, a medical student in Edinburgh and a drag artist in my spare time. My character “Lucia Vaughn Trapp”, is simply a character. Do I wear a Dress? Yes. Do I wear Breasts? No. (Partly because they’re expensive and partly because sometimes I like to work the androgyny angle). I personalty don;t define my character as any gender, they are simply a vehicle for which to entertain. Some people use she, some use he, I personally use they. I do not make jokes based on gender, most of my jokes are based on the audience (and only if they volunteer, I wouldn’t make jokes about unwilling participants) Even through I wear a dress, and tuck, and show of my legs. Does that cause me to mock females? No. Because, as stated, the societal construct of gender is should not exist (Although the mental gender is a definite thing)their are queens who mock femininity, and I disagree with that. However most of that comes from mocking their own character, and even more than that comes from mocking their own failure to become feminine. I personally don;t see drag as mocking feminine people.
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    • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 6:54 pm none Comment author #234492 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      No ”mental gender is *not* a definite thing but an artifically created thing!
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  40. Rosemary - November 13th, 2014 at 3:54 pm none Comment author #211324 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
  41. Cynthia Longerthanu - November 29th, 2014 at 3:23 pm none Comment author #218616 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    As a drag queen and an aspiring feminist, I want to point out that none of my performances have the intention of mocking women. She’s a means for me to look and feel beautiful, and act over the top and make jokes. She is upfront about her sexuality (a woman’s sexuality is to be celebrated not judged) but I wouldn’t make a joke about fishy vaginas, for example, as they have the negative connotation and victimise the woman. Also, as gay men, we have grown up having people pointing out female qualities in us and shaming us for them. This is a way of celebrating those. I quote BenDeLaCreme “As a feminist and an advocate of trans rights, a man in a dress CAN’T be a joke. Wearing beautiful things and telling jokes are two ways I get to make the world closer to what I want it to be. To me, drag is the perfect vehicle for comedy not because “HA-HA MEN AREN’T WOMEN,” but because of the camp tradition.”
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    • Meghan Murphy - November 29th, 2014 at 6:33 pm none Comment author #218693 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      The mere fact that you think you get to have any say or opinion on women’s sexuality or that you get to define what women’s sexuality is or should be kind of shows how problematic drag queens and drag queen culture is.
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    • amongster - November 29th, 2014 at 11:56 pm none Comment author #218830 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      There are no “female qualities”, there are human qualities that get gendered into feminine and masculine by a misogyn society. It’s very obvious that most men who like to be drag queens don’t have much understanding about the oppressivness of gender and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
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  42. Allen Jeffrey - December 4th, 2014 at 11:08 pm none Comment author #221239 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Well, most obviously, black skin is a biological trait of black people. Blackface has a history. It wasn’t worn merely for accuracy of appearance. It was worn explicitly to perform characters who displayed the negative stereotypes of black people, the implication being that those features—stupidity, vulgarity, indecency, violence, and so on—are intrinsic to blackness and to black individuals. In other words, blackface perpetuated an incredibly oppressive, violent, insidious racial essentialism.
    Big colorful hair, ridiculous makeup, glamorous dresses, and highly affected mannerisms are *not* biological traits of women. Those are, instead, all aspects of a socially constructed gender. There is no essentialist implication here. Perhaps importantly, there was no equivalent history of the vicious oppression of women by openly gay men, who were an ostracized sexual minority.
    Also worth mentioning is that notions of femininity and masculinity and the society that defined those, produced and reproduced them as norms, and punished deviance/deviants were not content to leave male-desiring male bodies alone. Those notions shaped those men, were projected onto those men or stripped from them, and the result was not trivial.
    Finally, a gender role is not a culture and so citation of hyper-feminity is not cultural appropriation. First, femininity is not the culture of an other when gay men are concerned (see above). Second, we are *all* involved in masculinity/femininity. Femininity does not belong exclusively, consistently, or uniformly to women. Third, note that you don’t call it cultural appropriation when Native Americans wear jeans or business suits. Cultural appropriation involves, in other words, massive *cultural* power dynamics.
    All that said, I think there are problematic elements. But these issues concern trans women specifically, not born-female women in general.
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    • Meghan Murphy - December 5th, 2014 at 10:01 am none Comment author #221482 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “…note that you don’t call it cultural appropriation when Native Americans wear jeans or business suits”
      Because who cares if an oppressed group ‘appropriates’ the ‘culture’ of a dominant group? Get it? Men are the dominant group, white people are the dominant group.
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      • Andrew Wale - January 31st, 2015 at 6:34 am none Comment author #245027 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Gay men are not the dominant group – anywhere.
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        • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 12:04 pm none Comment author #245078 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          1) Are all drag queens gay?
          2) Are gay men not men?
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    • Scott - December 5th, 2014 at 1:40 pm none Comment author #221564 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Second, we are *all* involved in masculinity/femininity. Femininity does not belong exclusively, consistently, or uniformly to women.”
      Allen I think you are missing a key point of radical feminism here. Radical feminism seeks to dismantle masculinity/femininity. So drag queens and kings are problematic because they reinforce these sex role stereotypes. It is even more so for the drag queens because it is men reinforcing the feminine stereotypes. I do think your first point is valid, but there are some similarities between the two, and Meghan has stated that she means no disrespect to the Black community by making this comparison.
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    • marv - December 5th, 2014 at 2:21 pm none Comment author #221581 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Well, most obviously, black skin is a biological trait of black people. Blackface has a history. It wasn’t worn merely for accuracy of appearance. It was worn explicitly to perform characters who displayed the negative stereotypes of black people, the implication being that those features—stupidity, vulgarity, indecency, violence, and so on—are intrinsic to blackness and to black individuals. In other words, blackface perpetuated an incredibly oppressive, violent, insidious racial essentialism.”
      Your extreme male bias prevents you from admitting gender roles are patriarchal cultural constructs as race roles are patriarchal white societal formations.
      A more astute comment from you would have said:
      “Well, most obviously, female bodies are a biological trait of female people. Drag has a history. It wasn’t worn merely for accuracy of appearance. It was worn explicitly to perform characters who displayed the negative stereotypes of female people, the implication being that those features – sexiness, stupidity, vulgarity, indecency, beauty obsessed, submissiveness, frivolousness, artificiality – are integral to femaleness, to female individuals and that men can appropriate them for fun and entertainment or to make a transgressive statement. In other words, drag perpetuates incredibly oppressive, violent, insidious sexual attitudes and dispositions.”
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    • Missfit - December 5th, 2014 at 4:39 pm none Comment author #221640 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      ‘Femininity does not belong exclusively, consistently, or uniformly to women.’
      Men can perform the social construct of femininity if they want. But when they pretend they become women by doing so, there is essentialist implication here. Men can have big colorful hair, ridiculous makeup, glamorous dresses, and highly affected mannerisms if they want. But when by doing so, they also put on fake breast, use female pronouns and female names, they definitely appropriate femaleness.
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  43. Ashley - December 12th, 2014 at 8:25 am none Comment author #224685 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I agree with most of your points in this article when applying it to cis men doing drag but not ever to trans women as many of the comments mistakenly seem to conflate. I hope to get across to you Megan that we are not the same. I may have been born with a penis but I AM female and always have been. It’s not an Identity or a feeling it’s a reality. A horrible reality that I wish wasnt true because it’s fucking hell and in no way fun or happy play time like it seems to be for drag artists. I think some radfems and all terfs seem to conflate gender roles and gender. Those two are not the same. As a feminist woman who happens to be a trans I despise gender roles with all my heart. I want to shatter the glass ceiling and destroy all forms of misogyny and oppression towards woman. Gender roles and prescribed femininity is absolute bullshit. There is no article of clothing nor action nor role that is inherently female. Just like cis women trans women can be femme or butch or anything inbetween or outside artificial boxes.I am not a man who is sympathetic to women nor a non male as others here have suggested. I am woman in the truest sense of the word. I hope others can understand the difference between trans women like me and drag queens and understand that we face the same issues as our cisters and merely wish to march in line against oppressive gender roles and other assorted patriarchal bullshit with them.
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    • amongster - December 13th, 2014 at 11:56 am none Comment author #225132 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      When you have been born with a penis you are male, have been male and always will be male. Your biological reality is what it is. Being female is not a feeling but a biological reality as well and you can call me TERF all you want, that doesn’t change the fact that you are male, that I am female and that your trans ideology about gender identities hurt real biological women aka females. When you really want to stop the oppression of females, stop calling yourself female. That would be the first important step and it only means to acknowledge reality! I’m not cis just because you are trans.
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      • Ashley - December 14th, 2014 at 4:50 pm none Comment author #225620 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        That is incorrect. My biolite a reality is that I’m female nothing more or less. I know you can’t accept this but I as amuch much a woman as any other woman who happens to be born with a vagina. Thinking othwrwise is far worse as it reduces women to nothing more than genitals and we are so much more than that sister! TERF ideology hurts us all and keeps us held back while cis males take everything they can and think it their just due. The idea itself that penis equals male and vagina equals female is something that only benefits cis men. I hope you can understand why such outdated standards of classification are incorrect especially since they were devised by and for the patriatchy! This is not ideology it is reality!
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        • Meghan Murphy - December 14th, 2014 at 6:11 pm none Comment author #225639 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Female isn’t only about whether or not one has a vagina… It’s a person who has two X chromosomes. Generally females DO have a vagina, uterus and ovaries (unless they’ve had hysterectomies or were born with some kind of genetic defect or something, I suppose). You are welcome to change the pronouns by which you refer to yourself, of course, but you can’t literally become a female if you are male… That isn’t a statement of opinion or one that bears any judgement, it’s just a fact…
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          • Ashley - December 14th, 2014 at 6:37 pm none Comment author #225644 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            That is an irrelevant way to view this and the only reason to bring it up would be to cause psychological damage to a trans person. That’s just a fact. Gender is far more than chromosomal makeup, private parts or reproductive organs.
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        • Morag - December 14th, 2014 at 6:28 pm none Comment author #225643 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “I know you can’t accept this but I as amuch much a woman as any other woman who happens to be born with a vagina. Thinking othwrwise is far worse as it reduces women to nothing more than genitals and we are so much more than that sister!”
          Oh, stop boring us with your silly “reduces women to nothing more than genitals” crap. Only a sexist man would think that the REALITY of genitals is a “reduction.”
          That is, only he would do the reducing. Stop projecting your shit onto those of us who do have vaginas, Ashley. People with vaginas are female human beings. If you can’t see beyond the vagina, that’s YOUR problem, not ours.
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          • Ashley - December 14th, 2014 at 7:05 pm none Comment author #225654 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            You are the only one being reductive here and by doing so you are acting like a transmisogynist to me and a transphobe to trans men who are men after all! What I speak of isn’t silly this all perpetuates the overt hatred and oppression trans people suffer and die from every day. By the hands of both cis women and cis men. If you hate patriarchy so much then stop being a tool for the patriarchy by helping them oppress your sisters just to make yourself feel better or vindicated or whatever you feel picking on a woman like me.
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            • Meghan Murphy - December 14th, 2014 at 7:22 pm none Comment author #225660 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Are you just trolling us? What you are saying doesn’t make any sense. You aren’t actually responding to anything anyone is saying here — you’re just making a bunch of irrational/irrelevant accusations.
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              • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 7:14 pm none Comment author #234507 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                There is no such thing as ”feeling like a woman or man” either,especially by nature!
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            • Morag - December 14th, 2014 at 7:38 pm none Comment author #225664 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              Who is the tool of the patriarchy, here? You dismiss feminist theory, analysis, thought, and argument as “picking on” little old you.
              You reduce women to their biological capacities and then tell US we’re being reductionist. That’s gratuitous aggression, by the way.
              You tell us that “female” is whatever a man feels inside, and that those feelings must be validated and protected by women, otherwise trans people will die. That’s emotional blackmail.
              You tell us that vagina, uterus, ovaries, etc. have no meaning, so that “female” will have no fixed meaning, so that females can’t identify as a discrete class of people against oppression. That’s erasure.
              This is all privileged male behaviour, gas-lighting and aggression. You’re a tool. Of the patriarchy.
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              • Ms Vanilla Rose - January 31st, 2015 at 11:20 am none Comment author #245067 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                Sigh. So, what is your take on female to male transpeople, Morag? Are you going to dismissively
                call them male, despite their XX chromosomes.
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                • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 11:43 am none Comment author #245072 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                  No, I call women “female.”
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                  • Ms Vanilla Rose - March 8th, 2015 at 5:39 am none Comment author #252466 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                    So you don’t respect their right to define themselves.
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                    • Morag - March 9th, 2015 at 11:51 am none Comment author #252722 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
                      Respect? What the heck are you talking about? People can play make-believe about male and female if it makes them happy, but other people are not obliged to play along. Do transgenderists have respect for the intellectual integrity of people who know the difference between male and female? No, they do not. Do not talk to me about “respect.”
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            • lizor - December 15th, 2014 at 3:59 am none Comment author #225800 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “the overt hatred and oppression trans people suffer and die from every day. By the hands of both cis women and cis men”
              ????
              Can you please show us the incidents (of which there are obviously many if it’s happening “every day”) of biological women murdering trans people.
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        • amongster - December 15th, 2014 at 1:11 am none Comment author #225758 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Your delusion is what hurts females.
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    • lizor - December 14th, 2014 at 7:07 pm none Comment author #225655 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “I am woman in the truest sense of the word”? What sense is that? Serious question.
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      • Ashley - December 14th, 2014 at 7:30 pm none Comment author #225661 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        I am not trolling you and I am actually answering your questions. They may not be the answers you expect or want to hear. They aren’t accusations they are long standing struggles with a type of oppression that has lasted well over 40 years now. Just hoping to help see how you might be unintentionally causing your fellow women harm.
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        • Meghan Murphy - December 14th, 2014 at 9:49 pm none Comment author #225700 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I’m causing women harm by acknowledging that being female is a real thing?
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        • Morag - December 14th, 2014 at 11:07 pm none Comment author #225723 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          You’re not a fellow woman, you’re a fellow. And like many of your fellow fellows you’re “just” telling feminists that we’re doing feminism wrong. By asserting that female people are people who are female. We understand that you want the definition of woman to be wide open so that men can come up with their own ideas about what a woman is. Too bad. That’s why we’re feminists.
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        • lizor - December 15th, 2014 at 3:52 am none Comment author #225798 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Ashley, you are reading a lot into my question despite the fact that I qualified it. I appreciate your expression of comradeship in the fight against patriarchy and I have no reason to think that you are insincere.
          One very important aspect of fighting patriarchy is exercising stringent self-awareness to determine where we – all of us here – have been shaped by, carry and reproduce patriarchal values.
          I asked you what you mean by being a woman in “the truest sense” because I didn’t understand what you meant by that. I was born with a full set of female reproductive organs that all developed much like the majority of female humans do. I have the biological ability to produce a human being, I bleed once a month, I can lactate and feed a baby if that’s the direction my life takes. I am aware of how my sex organs respond physically and sensually when I feel sexual attraction for someone.
          However, I have not got a clue whether I feel like “a woman” in my soul or in my mind. I have nothing to compare to, having never been anyone else. So I don’t understand what you are saying and I must approach your certainty about exactly what “being a woman” is with caution. You’ve since written ” I am female in my mind body and soul.” and with respect, you are not female in body. That is a material fact, no matter what interventionist alterations you might make. And I don’t really believe that anyone on earth can definitively say what having a female or a male soul or mind entails or how that is defined. If you have any insight to share beyond simply stating your sex as a fact (as per my original question) I am interested to hear it.
          Here’s another honest question: if you are female in body as you have stated, then what language do you use to describe my own physical body, with the operation of my sex organs as I described above? Surely there is a categorical difference between my physical development and yours (along with a difference in the psycho-social implications that we are subject to as a result).
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      • Ashley - December 14th, 2014 at 7:34 pm none Comment author #225662 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        That I am female in my mind body and soul.
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        • C.K. Egbert - December 14th, 2014 at 10:43 pm none Comment author #225715 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          What does it mean to be female under your definition? We are talking about “gender” as the social construction of sex-roles, differential socialization, etc. for the purposes of domination and subordination. That is what gender is and how it is used according to a feminist analysis.
          Based upon your responses, being female
          1. Cannot be having a vagina or uterus or anything else, because you claim that “female” is not based upon biological characteristics (or is itself a social construction)
          2. Cannot be the experience of being female-bodied (having a vagina, uterus, etc.)
          3. Cannot be the experience of being raised and socialized as female
          So, I’m guessing that you mean one of the following:
          1. You experience body dysphoria because you feel that you should have female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics.
          2. You believe you have some other characteristic which actually defines femaleness, such as “brain sex.”
          3. You identify with female sex-role stereotypes.
          4. You identify with some sort of “female essence” or “eternal femininity”.
          If it is (1), then it seems that your body dysphoria is based upon the idea that to be female is to have certain sex characteristics. (2) is very dubious (see Cordelia Fine), but even if it were the case, that is not the basis for sex-based subordination, so we would still be talking at cross purposes.
          You reject (3) above. If it is (4), you would need to define the content of a “female essence.”
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          • lizor - December 15th, 2014 at 11:47 am none Comment author #225904 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            Great comment. You could not be more clear.
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          • Ella Hawthorne - December 20th, 2014 at 2:05 pm none Comment author #228231 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            I keep coming back here to see if there is a comment from Ashley responding to this excellent inquiry. Please answer, Ashley.
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        • Mar Iguana - December 15th, 2014 at 5:04 am none Comment author #225811 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “…males take everything they can and think it their just due.”
          That includes you, Ashley. You are merely one more delusional man trying to co-opt what they think is the female mind body and soul.
          Patriarchy came up with the constructs of masculinity and femininity, not the biology of male and female. You can cross dress all you want to, but you will always be male, stuck with that pitiable little “y” chromosome.
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        • Terrie - December 31st, 2014 at 7:21 pm none Comment author #234511 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          No you are as comedian Elaine Boosler said back in the 1980’s I’m only a person trapped in a woman’s body! There is no such thing as a ”woman or man’s mind and soul,and there is plenty of research studies decades worth by many different psychologists,that has found the sexes are much more alike than different in almost all of their psychological,traits,abilities and behaviors and that there is a large overlap between them.And that most of the large differences found are *individual people differences!*
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  44. Mark - January 30th, 2015 at 9:32 pm none Comment author #244938 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    “There must be a reason women don’t do this to men — turning masculinity into entertainment or a joke, that is.”
    Hate to break it to you, but just like drag queens are men dressing up as women and performing, there ARE drag kings, who are women who dress up as men and perform. Maybe you should have done even the slightest bit of research on drag before writing an article like this.
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    • Meghan Murphy - January 30th, 2015 at 11:55 pm none Comment author #244948 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Drag kings don’t mock men and turn them into trashy, cartoonish, “sluts” and parade around in ridiculous outfits. Also, men are not an oppressed class so the context for women dressing up as men is different than the opposite.
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      • Jackie - January 31st, 2015 at 4:14 am none Comment author #245009 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Reality check, Meghan, gay men ARE an oppressed group….
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        • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 12:11 pm none Comment author #245082 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          So that gay men also suffer under patriarchy gives them free reign to be sexist??? How does that work, exactly?
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          • vagabondi - January 31st, 2015 at 5:02 pm none Comment author #245149 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            No, he means that its not OK how women are always dressing up as gay men, to demean and dehumanize them, of course. Because gay men are oppressed by other men.
            OK, so how about we’ll stop if you do? Oh, wait, we don’t do that. So we’ll start, we’ll invent a so-called art form, make up (ha) elaborate justifications for it, and then we’ll stop when you do.
            Deal?
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      • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 10:17 am none Comment author #245056 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Heh. Along with the standard, boring, and very tired “you should do some actual research” have you noticed that “I hate to break it to you” is also very popular? And it’s always used to introduce information that is pretty much worthless to the discussion.
        For comfortably sexist men, who could never be bothered to understand a feminist analysis before they jump in to explain why it’s wrong, It’s a stock phrase that they use for its own sake. “I hate to break it to you” simple means “I think women are dumb.” It’s the beginning, and the end, of their “argument.” Anything in between those two points is tripe.
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        • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 11:34 am none Comment author #245069 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          I know, like ‘whaaaaat”??? Drag KINGS, you say???! They think they’re awfully original don’t they — blowing minds across the internet.
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    • lizor - January 31st, 2015 at 4:04 am none Comment author #245005 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Hate to break it to you but Occasionally Occurring Exception!!”
      Hate to break it to you Mark, but the existence of drag kings whose numbers are minuscule in comparison to drag queens and whose hold on the culture is non-existent in comparison to Drag Queen culture (se Ru Paul’s Drag Race) has no impact whatsoever on the issues Meghan has raised.
      Hate to break it to you Mark, but you look like an asshole when you post a comment ordering a woman to do “research” when, if you got off your lazy ass and did a bit of research on you own, (like perhaps reading more posts on this blog and actually applying some honest intellectual energy to what has been written) you’d know that Meghan’s analysis is always well-researched.
      Hate to break it to you, but your comment is trolling 101 and is as status-quo and unoriginal as they come.
      Nice try.
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      • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 12:42 pm none Comment author #245094 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Yes! “Hate to break it to you” can be used for intellectually honest purposes, and for legitimate mockery of intellectually dishonest trolling.
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  45. Jackie - January 31st, 2015 at 4:12 am none Comment author #245008 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    This is precisely why the world has turned on feminism… women like this.
    I’d way rather be a woman moving through this world than a gay man. You people really have no clue what they go through, do you? Drag performances depict bold, brave, fearless women. These men, who are otherwise treated with contempt and disgust by so much of the world, use the mask of the female form to empower themselves and find their strength. Anyone who finds that offensive is an imbecile and really needs a reality check.
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    • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 12:15 pm none Comment author #245083 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      OH MY GODDD. FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME: MEN DON’T GET TO DECIDE WHAT WOMEN ARE, WHAT WOMEN SHOULD BE, WHAT WOMEN SHOULD LIKE. You people are all so fucking entitled and self-absorbed it’s incredible.
      The reality check is the number of drag queens and gay men who have shown up on this post — who clearly have never read a thing on feminism, but are here to defend their entertainment — and are ordering women to respect what they do because REALLY it’s a compliment. YOU need a fucking reality check. Like, outside your drag bubble.
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  46. Andrew Wale - January 31st, 2015 at 6:27 am none Comment author #245026 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    The author of this article doesn’t appear to have spoken to any drag queens or looked beyond the performances themselves in to the lives of the men behind them. I am not a great lover of drag, but I know that much about women is celebrated with it. There are also many different forms of it from pointless, offensive rubbish to serious political commentary. This article seems to me shallow and under researched.
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    • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 12:08 pm none Comment author #245080 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      What difference does it make whether or not drag queens think they are being sexist? What does it matter what the lives of the men behind the performances are like? Should I ask a porn producer whether or not he thinks porn is misogynist in order to know for sure whether or not it is? Should I ask a pimp what his perception on prostitution is to really get the full story on whether or not prostitution is feminist? Should I ask a white person whether or not they think blackface is ok before deciding whether or not it is truly racist?
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  47. wyatt - January 31st, 2015 at 7:47 am none Comment author #245037 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I think you’re wrong. The only drag queens I’ve been exposed to are the ones on Rupauls dragrace. It looks like it depends on the queen. Some do it because they are trans, some do it because they are super “fishy” and they love the look and feel of being a heteronormative women. Some do it to feel accepted and comfortable with themselves. Others do it as an act. The current winner is an insult comic. A really funny one too. Most queens just want to entertain people. If they do that dressed as women and impersonating women and in the mindset of a women I don’t buy that as a brand of sexism for women if anything you could co-opt it in femenisms favor. I always thought it was a feminist idea to begin with, one of the few parts of femenism I actually enjoyed. I don’t think any of them do it to make fun of women. They mostly do it to celebrate women.
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    • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 11:40 am none Comment author #245071 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Are you actually using the term ‘fishy’ to describe feminine-looking men and then telling us that drag isn’t misogynist??
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      • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 12:10 pm none Comment author #245081 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Well, he HAS done a lot of research. Into “femenisms” and fishy men.
        I hate to break it to you, Meghan, but men are real smart. So maybe we should listen to his opinions on where “femenism” has gone wrong.
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  48. Eric - January 31st, 2015 at 10:06 am none Comment author #245055 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Ladies, I don’t really know how to answer this article. I think some interesting points are brought up, but not all drag queens portray women in such negative ways. Also…have you heard how we as gay men talk to one another? Drag is about being who you want to be, some wise words from RuPaul.
    Before you hate on drag,I suggest you all go and properly educate yourselves on drag history. Just because you’re a lady doesn’t mean you know our culture and our history and our struggle. If you think drag is coming from a dark place…then girl, you might want to get some thicker skin. If you want to see some hate, lets talk about black face. THATS hateful.
    Dressing up like a sickening lady, hair done up, painted to high heaven, and strutting around being fabulous…those sound like positive things. I’ve always thought of drag of being a celebration of who you want to be, the freedom to express and be beautiful, whatever that means to you.
    Also, you don’t bring up drag kings, at all. If drag queens are mocking women…are drag kings mocking men? Naughty drag kings, how dare they try to feel beautiful (or handsome I guess).
    This video is a video RuPaul made for Mary Cheney, its never to late for a Her-story lesson.
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    • Meghan Murphy - January 31st, 2015 at 11:35 am none Comment author #245070 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      LADIES. Ladies. Listen up, LADIES. We’re flattering you. Now shut up. Ladies.
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    • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 12:00 pm none Comment author #245077 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “…are drag kings mocking men?”
      I should hope so, but I’m not really sure. I think the girls-in-drag are trying to prove that they are “equal” to men.
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    • insolence - February 1st, 2015 at 11:35 am none Comment author #245319 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “hair done up, painted to high heaven, and strutting around”
      That sounds like a whole lot of expense, artificial masking, and exhibitionist work to get to a feminized true self.
      Said Dolly Parton, a woman expert in womandrag, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
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  49. TonyG - January 31st, 2015 at 11:00 am none Comment author #245061 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    Just wow. The conversation here is so very intolerant with so many disrespectful responses that lack even an attempt to seek an understanding.
    The equation of drag and blackface can be facile if it does not explore the particular and separate histories and manifestations of each. Too, my experience, organizing in NYC in anti-racist and anti-sexist organizations and direct actions is that feminist and queer critique of drag has been common where I am from (New York City).
    I believe it is important to not stereotype drag performers, drag queens, or those who employ drag (both male and female drag) as if those who engage drag are a monolith with singular motivations to denigrate.
    I am African American and queer-identified, and I would have to say that the history of drag culture is much more nuanced in terms of performance, intent, motivation and as a tools of oppression vs. liberation.
    It’s not that drag does not exist in terms of oppression, it is just very different from that of blackface in terms of its political force which includes measurable attempts to question and support feminism, women’s rights, activism in liberation movements, including LGBT rights, where as blackface utterly lacks this history in terms of its political agency to engage in attempts to undo discrimination and upend stereotypes.
    Whether one likes drag queens or drag kings, or not, drag as cultural expression includes a political agency that has been real in the United States in terms of empowerment of queer culture, questioning stereotypes, and giving agency to those whose lack voice because of their inclusion in a class of people who are discriminated against because of their gender, gender expression, and gender identity.
    Again, I cannot say the same about blackface, rarely, if ever a political or social force for undoing racist manifestations of power that subjugate.
    While the history of drag is mixed on this front, I would have to acknowledge that it is, at the very least, mixed. I would acknowledge both its positive and negative consequences in terms of attempting to dismantle sexism as opposed to reinforce it.
    There is so much for all of us to learn by listening to a different perspective, but how we do it, says just as much as what we say.
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    • marv - January 31st, 2015 at 1:40 pm none Comment author #245099 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Glib, stale and contradictory reasoning. Those who defend blackface use the same rational as you do about drag. They say it is a mixture of racism and “questioning stereotypes, and giving agency to those whose lack voice because of their inclusion in a class of people who are discriminated against because of their” RACE.
      You warn against stereotyping drag performers because of its nuances, intents, motivations and liberatory potential for women. Blackface on the other hand is dismissed outright for these qualities in reference to overcoming racism. Why don’t you show more tolerance to blackface instead of failing to be more receptive/listening to a “different perspective”? Where is the open mindedness you champion now? Double standards.
      In truth blackface and drag are about racist and sexist ideology and conduct: whites deciding for blacks and men for women.
      If you really cared about understanding you would have read all the previous comments which addressed your points numerous times instead of being monotonous.
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    • christa. - January 31st, 2015 at 2:16 pm none Comment author #245111 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “empowerment of queer culture, questioning stereotypes, and giving agency to those whose lack voice because of their inclusion in a class of people who are discriminated against because of their gender, gender expression, and gender identity.”
      aka men get to decide where and when it’s ok to put on womanface.
      when a man decides to dress up as a woman, it’s ok because he’s doing it because reasons.
      what stereotypes are being questioned, exactly? were women asked if this was an ok method to use to do this questioning? who is gaining agency by impersonating/mocking/”complimenting” women? why is it ok for them to gain agency via caricaturizing women? is it not possible for this class of people who “lack voice” to gain their agency in ANY other way that doesn’t involve playing out offensive stereotypes of women? is it men’s place to appropriate anything from women’s culture for ANY reason, no matter who these men are?
      “”””empowerment””””
      you know who is discriminated against because of their gender and/or gender expression? WOMEN. yes, some groups of men face a form of discrimination because of failure to adhere to masculinity. they don’t get to use WOMEN’S oppression to ameliorate or anesthetize their own.
      basically all i am reading in these comments defending drag is that women’s opinion doesn’t count, PERIOD. but it also doesn’t count because women’s oppression isn’t real. and it also doesn’t count because women’s oppression is real but not AS REAL as various men’s oppressions. and women’s opinions don’t count because they didn’t ask the men first re: what opinion women should have. and women’s opinion doesn’t count because drag isn’t offensive (oh, ok, all these women are wrong i guess). and also women’s opinion doesn’t count because drag is a CELEBRATION, ladies!! don’t worry your pretty heads about it.
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      • Morag - January 31st, 2015 at 3:35 pm none Comment author #245129 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        Exactly, christa. It’s almost as if women weren’t real people. Therefore, neither are our experiences and opinions. Gee, it’s almost as if Woman was just a costume. A costume, perhaps, that is temporarily infused with humanity and “agency” when men wear it.
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      • TonyG - January 31st, 2015 at 11:03 pm none Comment author #245216 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        First of all not all feminists are women. You can try to dismiss me because I am a man, but good luck with that.
        Never in the history of blackface has it been used in terms of liberation of black people and became accepted in a liberation movement as an agency of change. Drag has been utilized and accepted in that manner by queer culture.
        I have never ever seen blackface utilizeas a systematic empowerment tool, in a movement, or otherwise, to uplift Black folk. It has not happened. An individual may claim that for himself without the reality of it being part of an anti-racist movement, organization or institution, but s/he would stand alone in that regard.
        Drag by men and women has long been a part of, and played an existential, even powerful role in the liberation of gay men, lesbians, transgenders and questioning people.
        Show me where blackface has been used during political events, rallies, and movements participated by Black folk as an empowerment tool that has been accepted by those Black folk it has claimed to uplift. It has not happened. Manifestations of drag have proven itself as a tool of empowerment and uplift for queer men and women. Historians consider those who engaged drag not as a form of entertainment but as an expression of who they were inside to have been a main, if not THE salient, revolutionary impetus at Stonewall in New York City for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Movement that planted the liberationist seed that bloomed into the modern day lesbian and gay civil rights movement, marriage equality moment, and a movement that has seen the United States enact laws that protect gender and transgender expression.
        That cannot be said of blackface whose agency for social change has been weighted unquestionably to subjugation and ridicule.
        One cannot provide evidence where blackface has in actuality been a force for black liberation. To even suggest such a thing is ludicrous. There is no evidence of it whatsoever. Nor is there evidence that blackface has been accepted as a form of expression that Black culture in the United States has embraced. Again, drag culture and expression is different, and has found a place of acceptance as part of queer culture to such an extent that it is, in fact, inseparable from the queer liberation movement.
        One can try toas if using a cookie-cutter, simply to place blackface in the same category of drag, but that is a fallacy. It is a decidedly tunnel-visioned and uncritical look at American history.
        Drag is part of queer culture. Drag queens and drag kings, some feminist in perspective and their life’s activism, can and do use it as an expression of challenging gender norms and gender stereotypes and do it in ways that do not succumb to sexist stereotypes because it is an expression of their gender and how they live every day in their lives, not as a costume to perform or belittle.
        Just because some do not believe these people exist does not mean that they do not. And as far as drag’s role in gay and lesbian liberation, one cannot unwrite that history. It will forever exist.
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        • amongster - February 1st, 2015 at 1:13 am none Comment author #245232 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “First of all not all feminists are women. You can try to dismiss me because I am a man, but good luck with that.”
          This makes clear that we should definitely dismiss men who claim to be feminists.
          “Drag is part of queer culture. Drag queens and drag kings, some feminist in perspective and their life’s activism, can and do use it as an expression of challenging gender norms and gender stereotypes and do it in ways that do not succumb to sexist stereotypes because it is an expression of their gender and how they live every day in their lives, not as a costume to perform or belittle.”
          This is why “queer culture” mostly sucks and is totally unhelpful to the liberation of women. And those feminists “with perspective”? No feminits at all but handmaidens.
          Gender is a social construct to force women into submission, it’s not a toy even if privileged men like to play with it.
          “Just because some do not believe these people exist does not mean that they do not. And as far as drag’s role in gay and lesbian liberation, one cannot unwrite that history. It will forever exist. ”
          Unfortunately there is no doubt that these people and their oppressive behaviour exist. I cannot unwrite this history of oppression but I will definitely try and put an end to it.
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        • Laur - February 1st, 2015 at 1:41 am none Comment author #245237 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “That cannot be said of blackface whose agency for social change has been weighted unquestionably to subjugation and ridicule.”
          It has been weighted this way because black folks understandably find it disgusting. And women, including lesbians, are saying we find drag disgusting, a mockery of our daily existence. I know that many gay men love drag and find drag revolutionary. But just because you adore something and it was part of a movement that was revolutionary does not mean its existence is not appalling and sickening to women.
          And bringing up drag kings as a way to say that both men and women do drag, is silly. Most people don’t even know there are drag kings. When you talk about drag’s historical use, you are talking about men.
          Today we regularly have drag queens as hosts at LESBIAN night clubs. The women there don’t care for that, but since gay men, lesbians, and transgendered folks are all lumped together, the particular wishes of lesbians are not taken into account.
          And finally, can I say just how offensive I find it that men in drag are referred to as “she”?
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        • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 9:18 am none Comment author #245295 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “First of all not all feminists are women. You can try to dismiss me because I am a man, but good luck with that.”
          Gosh, Sir, I would never dream of questioning your authority. We girls and women are so lucky that you’re a feminist.
          This is what every liberation movement really needs: a member of the oppressor class to act as its spokesman, to keep tabs on the unruly oppressed class, and to make sure we aren’t getting any funny ideas.
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        • lizor - February 1st, 2015 at 10:02 am none Comment author #245301 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          No one is dismissing you because you are male. We’re saying your argument is not compelling for a number of reasons including the fact that you refuse to acknowledge your own advantaged position in the hierarchy as a male. We’re also noticing that you are making straw arguments and not addressing what has actually been written. Meghan did not “place blackface in the same category of drag” in the way you depict it in your post. Race and gender oppression have similarities and differences. To dismiss an apt comparison because it does not have an exactly parallel history is weak gruel.
          There may be a few historic instances where men performing our culture’s tropes of femininity has been used to defy heterosexist normativity, and I do wish you had provided evidence of how drag has been an effective strategic weapon in the struggle against the oppressive effects of the gender binary rather than just stating it as a given.
          And nobody said that blackface has been a force for black liberation (Spike Lee’s treatment of it in Bamboozled notwithstanding) so why have you taken up so much space countering that non-existent position? Do you honestly think that drag is free of misogyny? Or are you just here to put us in our place?
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        • C.K. Egbert - February 1st, 2015 at 10:32 am none Comment author #245307 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “Not all feminists are women.”
          Not all civil rights activists are black either; don’t you think it would be offensive if a white proclaimed themselves an anti-racist and then lectured you on why blackface is liberating?
          “Again, drag culture and expression is different, and has found a place of acceptance as part of queer culture to such an extent that it is, in fact, inseparable from the queer liberation movement.”
          We are specifically talking about the liberation of women. Just because it is used as part of “queer culture” does not mean that it is not oppressive to women. There are elements of many minority cultures that are extremely oppressive to women (including “queer culture;” just look at the “cotton ceiling”).
          “Drag is part of queer culture. Drag queens and drag kings, some feminist in perspective and their life’s activism, can and do use it as an expression of challenging gender norms and gender stereotypes and do it in ways that do not succumb to sexist stereotypes because it is an expression of their gender and how they live every day in their lives, not as a costume to perform or belittle.”
          The idea that this genuinely does “challenge gender norms and stereotypes” is precisely what we are arguing about it. HOW is it challenging stereotypes and norms while avoiding a mockery of women?
          “Just because some do not believe these people exist does not mean that they do not. And as far as drag’s role in gay and lesbian liberation, one cannot unwrite that history. It will forever exist.”
          I really don’t understand why whenever a feminist critiques someone, they get accused of thinking that “these people don’t exist.” Why would we be critiquing something nonexistent exactly? Not agreeing with what you do or the political implication of what you do is not tantamount to claiming that you don’t exist.
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        • Ella Hawthorne - February 1st, 2015 at 10:33 am none Comment author #245308 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          “First of all not all feminists are women. You can try to dismiss me because I am a man, but good luck with that.”
          LOLOLOLOLOL.
          But seriously though, how entitled is this douchebag that he thinks women need to defer to his opinion on our own oppression, and that he’s not going to go away even after he’s been dismissed?
          “And as far as drag’s role in gay and lesbian liberation, one cannot unwrite that history.”
          As a lesbian, I’d like to state for the record that men’s drag performances have had zero positive effect on my liberation.
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        • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 10:38 am none Comment author #245309 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          Another short-hand term is entering the radical feminist lexicon: “dragsplaining.”
          I think everyone will enjoy this very relevant blog post, “Double-standard Face.” (You, too, TonyG!). An excerpt:
          “You would think, that of all people to understand the parallel of blackface and womanface, it would be a black male. But apparently not, if you have made your entire career out of it. Misogyny, the game that males of any colour can play.”
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        • swan princess - February 1st, 2015 at 11:16 am none Comment author #245317 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          What is inaccurate is that you keep replacing the actual feminist movement for women’s rights with “queer movement” as if they are the same. They are not.
          Gender itself is inescapably a sexist stereotype. What you call “gender expression” is impossible without sexist stereotypes.
          There are no examples of a man’s performance of womenface that has advanced women’s political, economic, or social standing.
          You remind me of men who say Hustler’s (ab)use of black women was a liberatory action for black women. It was not.
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          • Meghan Murphy - February 1st, 2015 at 12:41 pm none Comment author #245325 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            And of Hugh Hefner claiming to have liberated women with Playboy.
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          • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 3:00 pm none Comment author #245339 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            “There are no examples of a man’s performance of womenface that has advanced women’s political, economic, or social standing.”
            Yes. Right. Exactly. It’s all for them, at our expense. This is why they can’t understand us. Scratch that. This is why they can’t even HEAR us, which is a precondition for listening, and listening is a precondition for understanding.
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          • Meghan Murphy - February 1st, 2015 at 6:47 pm none Comment author #245362 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
            I think you really touched on something key here, swan princess… I think it is kind of taken for granted, by many, that ‘queer politics’ and the feminist movement are one in the same. And they are not at all. I wish they were, but they aren’t. People in the ‘queer movement’ (whatever that is — anyone care to explain what they mean when they say ‘queer culture/movement/poitics’? Because to me it just seems like mostly parties with vague S&M themes/burlesque/drag — and I like parties, but they don’t constitute any kind of ‘movement’) seem to think they are doing ‘feminism,’ often without really understanding what feminism is…
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            • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 7:39 pm none Comment author #245367 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
              “I think it is kind of taken for granted, by many, that ‘queer politics’ and the feminist movement are one in the same.”
              Absolutely!
              All one has to do is head over to the conservative/libertarian-type blogs when something hot and topical is happening — say, transgender civil rights activism. Listen in for a while, and it becomes very clear that most people view queer politics, liberal feminism, and radical feminism as one and the same.
              In fact, when “bathroom” polices are passed here and there (e.g., allowing males into the ladies’ room because of sacred “identity”) conservatives will lay the blame on feminism and feminists. All social changes regarding sex-roles are considered “radical” (wrongly synonymous with “extreme” or even “extremely weird”) and therefore radical feminism is considered the queerest of them all.
              Of course, in the rare cases where people further to the political right DO know the difference, they hate us all equally! The point is, though, that they don’t know the difference — and they can’t be blamed for this. Queer politics, culture and activism, because its leaders are male, is mainstream and in everybody’s face. They have hijacked the term “feminism” for themselves, which leads to feminists being blamed for many of the very things we are fighting against!
              Quite simply, we are not heard. Even if we, for example, dropped “radical feminism” and went back to using “women’s liberation” to describe and articulate our goals, the postmodern/queer/sex-positive/porn-lovin’/genderist brigade would just continue appropriating, misrepresenting and doing their best to make us invisible.
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        • marv - February 1st, 2015 at 9:02 pm none Comment author #245382 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
          TonyG’s patronizing rationalism has another counterpart in the use of American Indian insignia and stereotypes by the mascots of some NFL and college football teams.
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    • Laur - February 1st, 2015 at 1:45 am none Comment author #245239 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      TonyG, I don’t believe most male drag performers MEAN to denigrate, but the end result is still a mockery of what it means to be a woman.
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      • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 5:46 pm none Comment author #245352 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
        You know, Laur, I agree with you here. Most likely don’t know it’s mockery, and most probably don’t intend to denigrate women. In fact, I have seen certain, very particular, intelligent drag performances that I actually found to be almost sensitive to the reality of women’s lives (some Kids in the Hall skits come to mind).
        What is outrageous is this. A feminist taps a drag queen on the shoulder and says, “Hello Mr. Queer Man who is also oppressed, but in a different way, by this heterosexist-patriarchal shit pile we call society. I was wondering if I could talk with you about the ways in which drag culture mocks womanhood under this heterosexist-patriarchal shit pile? I don’t think you’re aware.”
        And THEN — all of the sudden, he becomes a manly man, he disassembles, he disintegrates, he demands her silence and leaves puddles of stinking, misogynist goo all over the damed place for us to clean up. It’s like, we women don’t really know how fast a man is speeding, drunk on his privilege, until we ask him to please slow down, and he just runs us over instead. (Ugh, sorry — metaphor soup).
        Anyway, they really show us who they are, and what they really think about women. Gay men — and the straight ones who call themselves “queer” — are no different from straight men of any political stripe or colour or class. The are all united in a basic kind of woman-hating. They do not regard us as people worth listening to.
        Well, it’s all good to know, good to know. Not that we didn’t know! But, it’s a reminder, right? Men cannot be feminists. They can either get over themselves, and get out of the way — or not.
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  50. Caleb - January 31st, 2015 at 1:14 pm none Comment author #245095 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    First off, you begin by stating that you do not have a lot of direct experience with drag culture. This becomes very apparent as the article progresses. You seem to have a very warped idea of the history, intentions, and cultural realities of drag. It is deeply problematic – and outright false – to suggest that drag is simply a satirical jab at women. I can see how at a glance, the art form could be interpreted as nothing more than privileged men making a colourful joke out of the act of trying on oppression for size and perpetuating stereotypes. I can see that. However, one need not look very deeply into the drag community to see that this is a warped and incorrect interpretation.
    Drag cannot be simply viewed as “men dressing as women.” Drag is gender-bending. Gender is a socially constructed category that is intensely fluid, deeply personal, and cannot easily be bracketed off into fixed categories. Most drag performers do not feel that they are “men dressing as women” – they are people experimenting with gender expression. They take on names, pronouns, and identities that they connect with. Gender expression is something that everyone should be free to modify as they see fit. You do not need to have a certain fixed identity (like male or female) to be entitled to express your gender in a way that feels powerful to you. Therefore, people who do drag are not appropriating anything – rather, they are challenging the gendered restrictions that have been placed on them and finding a creative means to express their personal relationships with gender.
    Since the eruption of this debate, there has been a lot of comparison of drag to blackface – and I feel that the counterarguments I’ve seen floating around have been inadequate. What the counterarguments seem to be omitting is the role of history. Blackface is offensive. This is obvious. But there is more than one reason for this. Yes, it is offensive because it perpetuates cultural and racial stereotypes and makes a laughable caricature – an unacceptable mockery – of a real racial identity. We know this. What this article does not address is that fact that part of what makes blackface so hurtful – so intensely demeaning – is that fact that it is steeped in a deep and painful history of oppression and injustice. This matters. When someone puts on blackface, they are not only taking a harmful swing at oppressed groups today, but they are willfully discounting the weight of a long and horrific history that is attached to that action.
    Drag does not work the same way. The history of drag in the queer community is a history of liberation, acceptance and empowerment. It is a history steeped in the casting off of restrictive gender roles, the embrace of difference, the breakdown of societal norms, and pride in identity. Equating this with blackface is just not fair to the history that brought us here.
    I take particular issue with this quote:
    “All the things I have shunned as part of the ancient ‘cult of womanhood,’ all the superficial, commercialized, and fake aspects of ‘femininity’ that I have fought to be freed from, these men were embracing as their ‘womanhood!’ Tons of make up, huge dyed bouffant hair-dos, binding lingerie, heels, nylons, shaving…and these men in drag who were supposedly acting like women, also acted giddy, stupid, shallow…it is odd to me that this could be seen as anything but blatant sexism”
    The problem I have is this: how exactly does the fact that you have rejected certain expressions of femininity entitle you to declare those expressions unacceptable for anyone else? There are many different ways to celebrate femininity – and that is what drag queens are doing. They are not attempting to demean it – they are attempting to explore and appreciate different ways of being feminine. Suggesting that some forms of femininity are somehow less legitimate than others is downright offensive.
    Lastly – I was very taken aback by your utter ignorance of the existence of drag kings.
    “There must be a reason women don’t do this to men — turning masculinity into entertainment or a joke, that is. Why is it funny for men to dress up as women and not for women to dress up as men?”
    There are plenty of women who engage in drag performance by taking on male characters and experimenting with masculinity. The fact that drag kings are not so heavily featured in the public eye is indicative of another separate set of problems.
    I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with drag culture in greater depth. I believe that you really do genuinely want to understand – and I think the best way to do that is to engage with people for whom drag is a part of their lived experience. Drag is a complex and rich art form, with and equally complex and rich history and culture. I think there is much we can learn from it.
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    • amongster - February 1st, 2015 at 12:55 pm none Comment author #245328 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “Drag is gender-bending. Gender is a socially constructed category that is intensely fluid, deeply personal, and cannot easily be bracketed off into fixed categories. (….more nonsense)”
      No, no, no. NO! Gender is NOTHING YOU SAID. Nothing. And if you had actually read ANY of the comments here you had already understood that gender is an oppressive system and not some feelings.
      I would suggest YOU familiarize yourself with feminism and gender abolition and actually READ WHAT BASICALLY EVERY FEMINIST IS SAYING HERE before you tell us that we can learn from you or some dude with lipstick on.
      0
    • Meghan Murphy - February 1st, 2015 at 1:57 pm none Comment author #245335 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      “First off, you begin by stating that you do not have a lot of direct experience with drag culture.”
      What the fuck does that have to do with anything?? Like, do I need to be a porn star to critique porn? A capitalist to critique capitalism? How much more drag do I need to watch in order to form an opinion?? This argument — that one has to BE _____ in order to critique _____ is illogical and anti-intellectual.
      “Drag is gender-bending.”
      Wait. So it drag a representation/performance of women/femininity or not? Why dress up as women if the intent is not, in fact, to perform femininity? It is NOT ‘gender-bending’ — gender is something that is imposed on males and females in a patriarchal culture — not a temporary ‘fun’ performance you wash off at the end of the night. “Gender” has very real impacts on women, under patriarchy. It is oppressive. But how nice that you can play at it for a moment for laughs! HA!
      “The problem I have is this: how exactly does the fact that you have rejected certain expressions of femininity entitle you to declare those expressions unacceptable for anyone else? There are many different ways to celebrate femininity – and that is what drag queens are doing.”
      Oh cool. So now dudes get to decide what ‘femininity’ is and how we should ‘celebrate’ it? Wow. WOW. This is what male entitlement looks like.
      “Drag does not work the same way. The history of drag in the queer community is a history of liberation, acceptance and empowerment.”
      I don’t CARE whether or not “queer culture” feels liberated by drag. I care about ending sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, and violence against women. That is what feminism is and does. Whatever you think “queer culture” is may or may not have anything to do with feminism. If whatever it is you are doing perpetuates misogyny or sexism then it is oppressive to WOMEN. Your male-centered movement centered on identity politics and debauchery has nothing to do with feminism. Clearly.
      “Lastly – I was very taken aback by your utter ignorance of the existence of drag kings.”
      How many times to we have to go over this?? I am aware of drag kings and have seen drag king performances. What does this have to do with drag queens and their sexism?
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    • Morag - February 1st, 2015 at 3:53 pm none Comment author #245347 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      Caleb, I would really suggest that you educate yourself about radical feminism and what sex roles (aka, gender) really are. I would really suggest that you put down your Judith Butler, and can the queer theory, because it’s not only misogynist, but idiotic. As if you would do that, right? You’re very comfortable right where you are.
      Take this tripe:
      “Suggesting that some forms of femininity are somehow less legitimate than others is downright offensive.”
      Once people understand what femininity actually is, they will realize that it is never, ever legitimate. Because it’s enforced. Because it is the other side of masculine domination. It’s imposed. Whether a woman complies, or resists, there it is: a standard of measurement, a bulls-eye painted on her back. Or on another part of her body — depending upon how un/lucky the woman is in her life.
      Femininity is submission, you offensive asshole. Femininity is a collection of signifiers that mean “do it to her, that’s what she’s for.”
      Femininity IS NOT a game that men can play for fun and entertainment and sexual kicks. Femininity is not something girls and women choose, you twit.
      Femininity means not being taken seriously, it means harassment, poverty, abuse, incest, and rape. Female genital mutilation. Honour killings. Not being believed. Being ridiculed for having breasts, for being fuckable and impregnable — or, conversely, for not being these things. Femininity starts at birth and ends at death. It means that your everyday condition of never really being heard, or understood, is naturalized. Just the way things are.
      You’re big on naturalizing femininity, aren’t you, Caleb? It’s really nifty for the men who are not born into the feminine class to play around with it, and claim that they really feel girly sometimes, eh? As long as it’s just mascara and heels and sparkles, right? But not the really messy stuff. Leave that shit to the cows.
      How fucking dare you tell us what our own lives mean because some men think imitating womanhood makes for some good, fun, liberating times?
      Enjoy the liberation you find in mocking the lives of people about whom you know nothing, you selfish, arrogant, audacious, smug Narcissist.
      1+
  51. christa. - January 31st, 2015 at 3:41 pm none Comment author #245131 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    does it strike anyone else as arrogant that, after 290+ comments, men are coming on here to mansplain to women about drag. i wish i grew up with all that male socialization and male privilege that tells me my opinion is unquestioningly correct and couldn’t have possibly been stated & refuted already. and also tell women that they’ve got it wrong about their own oppression.
    A+
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  52. Shannon - February 28th, 2015 at 4:28 pm none Comment author #251166 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I find this very interesting and I don’t think that women should be so ridiculed and mocked for a performance. That being said, it seems I’m seeing a lot of feminists group drag queens and transgender women together, or even flat-out misguider trans women and say really terrible, transphobic things. All I can say is, I have NO time for your feminism if you don’t respect the identities and rights of trans women. While I’m a young cisgender women myself and I can’t possibly understand the experiences of transgender women, they ARE included in my feminism because they ARE women. Intersectionality is mandatory.
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    • Meghan Murphy - February 28th, 2015 at 5:23 pm none Comment author #251171 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      I don’t understand what your comment has to do with the post at hand or what you are even responding to?
      0
  53. Bio queens - March 11th, 2015 at 3:40 pm none Comment author #253074 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
    I’m doing some research on feminism and drag queens, and I would like to ask you ALL a question:
    How do you feel about Bio-queens?
    Bio queens or faux queens are biological women who perform as drag queens or females who impersonate female impersonators such as Miss Holy Mcgrail.
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    • marv - March 11th, 2015 at 4:25 pm none Comment author #253083 on Why has drag escaped critique from feminists and the LGBTQ community? by Feminist Current
      It’s like feminist porn. Both glorify femininity and women as sex doodahs. Drag is sexist in spite of who is performing it, though men are by far the worst culprits.
      0

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