Calling out the misogyny in drag is "hate" now

[Ravenclawsome]

Local museum has bought a costume featured on Drag Race.

It's then criticised those that point out that drag is misogynistic. 🙄

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/2385220/ru-pauls-drag-race-dundee-museum-hits-out-at-unacceptable-abuse-over-ellie-diamond-display/

[AlfonsoTheMango]

Of course it is. Anything less than slavering devotion is a transphobic / homophobic hate crime. Women know your place.

I hate drag. Always have and always will. Hate it.

[GoWalkabout]

One of the quoted comments 'What a state' could be viewed as abusive. The museum is quoted as saying that they welcome debate but that abuse is not acceptable. The article doesn't specify that the museum is saying calling drag misogynist is unacceptable?

[zafferana]

Men dressing as women 'for fun' is okay.

Women saying it isn't and it's sexist is a hate crime.

White people dressing up as other races is a hate crime.

Calling it out as racist is okay.

[AlfonsoTheMango]

@zafferana

Men dressing as women 'for fun' is okay.

Women saying it isn't and it's sexist is a hate crime.

White people dressing up as other races is a hate crime.

Calling it out as racist is okay.

Other races dressing as white people is ok. White people dressing up as other races is not ok.

Men dressing as women ok. Women calling it misogynist not ok.

[zafferana]

My DH and I were talking about this the other day and we reckoned that the one thing you DON'T want to be these days, because everyone knows they can discriminate against you and get away with it, is a straight, white, middle-aged person.

[AlfonsoTheMango]

@zafferana

My DH and I were talking about this the other day and we reckoned that the one thing you DON'T want to be these days, because everyone knows they can discriminate against you and get away with it, is a straight, white, middle-aged person.

You forgot middle class.

[zafferana]

Actually, I didn't, I'm MC and I often think it's a hate group all its own, but I hesitated to put MC because WC white people also get the piss taken and get called names.

[TRHR]

Drag is not misogynistic. If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women. It's complimentary. Whereas 'blackface ' is and has a history of being demeaning to black people. *
Also the GC theory is that gender shouldn't exist, and people should be able to dress however they want (think that's almost a direct quote from JKR) without changing sex - that's exactly what drag is. Why shouldn't men wear dresses if they want? Surely, as a take down of gender norms, GCs should support that? The fact some dislike drag showd to me that GC is more about dislike of trans people than gender norms, and that GCism is actually pro entrenchment of sex and gender norms.
Also drag is performed by cis women, trans men, non binary people, so not just cis men dressing in female clothes.

• On a tangential point, gender dysphoria is real and documented for thousands of years. Racial dysphoria just isn't. So again, false to compare being trans to blackface.

[beigebrownblue]

I am a straight, white middle aged person.

In amongst the various meaderings of my DD and her mates, aged around fifteen sixteen, all of whom are 'claiming their sexuality' and changing it every two seconds, i.e lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, trans, not trans, gay etc....

I comment that I can't afford to have a sexuality at ALL.

I'm too busy paying the bloody bills, can't afford the time to get to know anyone, too knackered...etc.

So how come some people are allowed a sexuality and others not?

[Hiddenmnetter]

Also the GC theory is that gender shouldn't exist, and people should be able to dress however they want (think that's almost a direct quote from JKR) without changing sex - that's exactly what drag is.

I think that is an inaccurate description of the GC position- value judgements about the existence of gender (for which I'm sure there are many GC who are) are not as central as the more fundamental tenant that gender roles are constructed, rather than innate (as opposed to one's sex).

[Ravenclawsome]

If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women. It's complimentary.

I don't know what drag you've been watching but that has NEVER been my experience.
Drag is a joke and women are the butt of it.

But then I'm guessing you're the sort of person who thinks "sex work" is empowering

[Redapplewreath]

If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women. It's complimentary.

Fish.

No. It's often now mickey taking of a subordinate group, based on enacting unpleasant and derogatory stereotypes.

And I say that as someone who used to very much enjoy the drag acts when I was young and in my twenties at the local gay pub where it was just friends who loved to dress up and perform. But misogyny's got awfully fashionable.

[Hiddenmnetter]

That is to say gender roles are a construct of social norms and expectations, fed through socialisation to children and reinforced in myriad ways throughout life. Where-as, sex arises out of one's chromosomal construction at the deepest level of being.

Criticisms of gender usually are based on the argument that most gender norms are based on toxic masculine models which are destructive of the emotional and psychical balance of most people

[Redapplewreath]

I'm all for people dressing any way they choose to express themselves btw. Male friends in high heels with eyeliner, great, do it, dress however you want and sod the stereotypes. Celebrate messing with the stereotypes and rigidity. The issue I have is with punching down and mickey taking of a superior group to a subordinate based on enacting those derogatory stereotypes.

[zafferana]

If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women.

I never found the depiction of Lily Savage to be remotely tribute-like to women - quite the opposite. Some drag queens are very talented, but drag as as 'art form' is not, IMO, a homage or a tribute to women.

[MrsPsmalls]

Drag so is misogynistic. As said upthread, women are the butt of the 'joke'.

[Aspiringmatriarch]

I don't really understand the issue with this. Sure if it's actually misogynistic (e.g. the fish thing is horrible), then I'd have a problem with it. I know some drag acts are like that, but not all. But I've seen so many times on here people saying things like 'why can't men who want to just wear dresses and makeup and be gender non-conforming, without everyone having to say they're actually women?' Surely that's what drag artists do - in an over the top way, as a stage persona. So just let them. It seems totally inconsistent to me, as a position, but maybe it's a different group of posters. I don't know.

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

Drag is not misogynistic. If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women. It's complimentary.

Please expand on how drag queens such as Malestia Child, Anna Bortion, and Miss Carriage are a tribute to women. How is it complimentary?

www.pride.com/comedy/2019/7/19/18-funniest-drag-queen-names#media-gallery-media-17

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

Oh, and of course not forgetting the drag queen named after JonBenét Ramsey, a murdered six-year-old girl.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_JonBen%C3%A9t_Ramsey

[Aspiringmatriarch]

But they're not all like that, are they Purgatory? I don't think Ellie Diamond is a particularly offensive act?

[TRHR]

@PurgatoryOfPotholes I agree those are awful names. I've never come across them before. My experience of drag is very 'mainstream' e.g. DR, PIB. But that is really still relevant as it's a thread about Ellie Diamond on UKDR, who I never saw being misogynistic. I'm not condoning hurtful humour in any genre, but nor do I think it should be used to undermine the whole genre, main ethos or majority content of love, admiration, inclusivity. IMO, picking out 4 poor names out of thousands of harmless ones (& which are unrelated to the TV show being discussed) looks like a stretch, from a determination to dislike a whole genre of gender nonconformity.

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

Whether they are all like that is immaterial. Play stupid games like saying Drag is not misogynistic. If you watched any, you'd know that drag queens dress up in homage and tribute to women. It's complimentary. and win the appropriate prizes. In this case getting confronted with the acts mocking child abuse that you recently justified.

If someone can't take women having opinions about child abuse jokes, then best not to risk patronising women on a parenting website. So awkward when it turns out the mummies don't live under a rock and actually are acquainted with popular culture, isn't it?

[PurgatoryOfPotholes]

genre of gender nonconformity.

Gods above give me strength

You're on a feminist board. You know what the most gender non-conforming class is out there? Feminists.

We're not objecting to "gender non-conformity". We're objecting to misogyny.

Stop building up straw feminists.

[SmokedDuck]

TBH I think drag varies really significantly in quality and also how it's conceptualised. I don't think it necessarily is misogynistic but it can be.

I do sometimes find it odd that it's become so mainstream. Mainly it's relevant as a medium by and for gay men, and I'm not convinced it rises to the level of high art. Museums and libraries and such mostly seem mainly to have latched on to it as a way to show their progressive credentials.

But there should absolutely be room in a liberal democracy for people to disagree about things like drag, in an adult conversation, without being accused of bigotry. But then I think the same about sex and race and sexuality, and a lot of people seem to struggle with even mild differences of opinion in those areas.