Drag queens banned from Pride event "because they may offend transgender people"

Ha, yes to the "performing" aspect to getting "done up" in accordance with prevailing feminine standards! I do it every work day

And whether drag acts (as opposed to blokes who wear some female clothes / get done up as women / etc just because they feel like it and with no accompanying "routine" IYSWIM) are offensive or not.... I think the point is that quite a few feminists / women have been saying for years that they find drag acts offensive - usually down to a feeling I guess that they're just taking the piss - and everyone said so what it's just a laugh innit. A few trans people say they don't like it and BOSH banned from an event where they have been heavily involved for yonks.

So

That NUS thing is ridiculous also. So if a woman wants to go to a fancy dress party dressed as, I don't know, David Bowie, that's against their rules? Erm OK.

This is a new step isn't it, for certain sections of the trans community. To say that not only does everyone have to accept that they are what SEX they say they are, irrespective of body, and they can and should dress accordingly and even more use facilities and so forth, but that people who are comfortable with their sex MUST dress and present according to prevailing gender norms? I mean, that's just wildly regressive, isn't it. Back to Bowie - so he'd be banned by them.

I have no problem with drag. I have done male drag on occasions, and some of my gay friends are professional drag queens. However, I have problems with misogynistic or racist drag.

For example, RuPaul's Drag Race is great fun and all, but it lost me once I realised how appropriative and misogynistic it was. Referring to each other as "bitches" and the total appropriation of black woman culture by black males and white males alike.

I went to a horrifically racist, anti-semitic and misogynistic drag show and had to leave half-way through, it was so awful. The response to our strongly worded complaint was "but the performer is gay so he can't be racist or sexist, he's oppressed too. Plus he was performing as a woman, he clearly loves them!" That sort of drag is disgusting.

"And why is it problematic for people to cross-dress?"

If someone is wedded to the idea that wanting to wear certain clothes is supporting evidence for them being "really a woman" (even if they also say that "feeling like a woman" still trumps everything else), then perhaps they feel self-identified men wearing them takes away some of that supporting evidence?

I do strongly dislike some drag acts, and find them very misogynistic. I have heard drag queens who were otherwise funny refer sneeringly (definitely not affectionately) to fish or "that fish over there" meaning a woman. It made me aware that although lesbians and gay men may be thrown together at times, there are still tensions between their different needs and attitudes.

That said, I think there is a difference between drag and blackface in the sense that feminine dress is an acquired/imposed characteristic but skin colour is something we all just have. We all live in and are for now stuck with a world of gender stereotyping and I feel instinctively wary of anything that seems to go along with that and says only people who are 'officially' (by some definition or other) one thing get to wear certain clothes.

I feel in principle that anyone should be able to wear whatever clothes they want, including for dramatic purposes, and what they do and say should be assessed separately from dress. So if someone was to decide not to hire drag queens because they found their words misogynistic or nasty, that would make more sense to me than saying the problem is the mere fact of a drag queen dressing in certain clothes without having declared himself as trans and therefore "really a woman".

As they are saying trans drag queens would be OK (but they don't want to have to ask), they are basically saying that anyone who is 'officially' (by their definition) a woman can wear certain clothes and cosmetics, but people who aren't 'officially' women are causing offence by doing so. There's something fundamentally wrong with that. Also with the idea that drag queens are making a joke of trans women's clothes but it's irrelevant what they have been doing all along in aping and making a joke of 'women's clothes'. This has a huge whiff of "now it's annoying trans people it matters, when it was only annoying feminists it didn't".

"‘It was felt by the group within the Trans/Non Binary Caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke, however transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke..."

So, the social view of gender (does that mean the prevailing view?) is problematic. And making conventional gender roles into a joke is problematic.

Personally, I don't agree with either of those statements, to the extent that I can understand them. This action does worry me, particularly when I remember that a lot of people who are trans or supportive of trans equate intellectual disagreement with the conceptional foundation of transgender as it is currently most commonly expressed, with hatred of trans people.

Are LGB people who do drag going to be accused of transphobia as well, now?

And why is it problematic for people to cross-dress?

In that sense women who perform 'feminine' are in drag, just as much as any drag queen.

I find that comment pretty offensive.

And the comment Likewise I find some born women's gender performance offensive.

Oh dear, they might women , but shudder, they are the wrong sort of women.

I have a problem with the 'banning' of drag or men dressing up in 'women's' clothing.

DH is from the sort of rugby/sports playing background where he and his peers have frequently taken up the opportunity to go out on special nights out (celebrations, birthdays, stag do) dressed in 'women's clothes'. They don't do so to mock women. There is even no real sense of it being 'humiliating' to wear women's clothes, given the glee with which they volunteer themselves to do it.

As far as I can tell, it allows them the opportunity to let down their inhibitions a little and to be more flamboyant than they would normally. Yes, it is seen as a bit of a laugh and a bit silly, but no more than any other dressing up.

In my view, any attempt to prevent such cross dressing other than as a serious expression of gender identity just further enforces rigid gender identities. If you say "a man in a dress must be mocking women/trans people" then it takes away the idea that men might like wearing dresses and makeup for no other reason than that they occasionally enjoy doing so.

I think there is a fundamental difference between blacking up and drag. It is only if we make rigid distinction between 'men's clothes' and 'women's clothes' that a man in a dress is seen as appropriating female attributes, whereas putting on black face paint is appropriating an actual, rather than constructed attribute.

Not read Judith butler with agree with Manatee that the only possible TG objection to drag is that it shows the difference between gender and sex, and shows performing femininity for the total bullshit it is.

My brains hurting is a "cis drag" queen a man (who was born a man and believe they are a man) pretending to be a woman or a woman (who was born a woman and identifies as such) parodying a draq queen look?

Flora - well I missed that memo. What solipsistic bollocks

Soo - what about Lily Savage and Dame Edna Everage then? Are they offensive too? I've not seen any offensive-to-women as a whole in their acts, but maybe I wasn't watching carefully enough.

I agree with that OThe but somehow Judith Butler concludes that sex is also socially constructed and therefore identity is the core aspect of whether a person is male or female.

Judith Butler reckons there's no difference between women performing 'femininity' and men performing 'femininity' as in both cases the performance is a cultural thing that has no basis in the material reality of people's bodies. In that sense women who perform 'feminine' are in drag, just as much as any drag queen. It's just more obvious when a man does it because it's not normalised.

From this perspective the transX are the mistaken ones, as they are reifying the cultural, artificial performance (gender) while denying any importance to the only thing that does actually matter (bodies). So it's no wonder some find drag artists offensive, as they're parodying the artificiality of the very gender performance that transgender people want to claim is natural and innate. In other words by parodying 'femininity' they are showing transgender up for the nonsense it is.

I love him

And an action transvestite

He's an executive transvestite

AFAIK, Eddie Izzard identifies as a transvestite. He's a man, who sometimes chooses to wear clothes more usually worn by women.

He has identified as what? A drag performer or transgender?

Is my impression also ehric
However he does/has identified himself as such. Although he identifies as a lot of things...I feel in a way as to say, it doesn't matter, stop trying to apply labels?

Is the proper definition of drag, a parody of women?

Eddie izzard isn't a drag act - his comedy is not about parodying women or playing up to stereotypes, he's just a comedian who sometimes performs in lipstick and heels, much like many female comedians. He will sometimes use his gender performance as a subject for comedy but equally so do women comedians. He's not mocking or sending up women, he just likes to wear typically feminine clothes.

MUS need to stop using the term 'cisgender'. It is highly offensive

I also don't like drag acts
Except Eddie Izzard. I bloody love Eddie Izzard. How do others that don't like drag, feel about him?

I never feel like he parodies women at all.

Wow. I am a bit bothered about that NUS motion. I remember one student 'Hollywood Legends' party where quite a few of us happily went as members of the opposite sex (I was Tom Cruise, being rather short.) Have they had a similar motion against pimps and hos parties or is that OK?

Name changed (not due to this thread I hasten to add, but timely reminder from another one) but tis me, Kindle.
flora I admire anyone of any gender, sexuality or race who can be arsed in 31 degree heat, to wear costume or make up of any kind, whether it is for personal pleasure, freedom of expression or performance.
I am always amazed by it, whether it is the people running marathons in hot, furry costumes or the amount of effort people make at Fasching on the carneval floats or the elaborate outfits and make up people will be wearing next Saturday. The discomfort and sheer bloody commitment that all of the above show impresses me because I am decidely a Less is more minimalist person, it has little to do with the look itself or parodies, but more to do with Wow! angel wings and twelve inch heels on these cobbles? And I would feel the same whether it was a drag queen or a lass on her hen do doing it. I admire anyone committing to a look or a cause that takes them personal time. Live and let live.

But this sort of issue is likely to get more frequent as trans rights go from being marginal to apparently dominant, so there are going to be conflicts within LGTB communities.

There is a reference in the Pink Times article on the event to a NUS conference resolution about cross dressing:

“Conference resolves amend the NUS Zero Tolerance Statement policy to cover all NUS events and conferences; and to encourage Unions to ban clubs and societies from holding events which permit or encourage (cisgender) members to use ‘cross-dressing’ as a mode of fancy dress.”

It's weird that women's objections to being parodied are irrelevant, but trans issues seem to be leading to more gender conformance. Especially as many people who later identify as start by cross dressing, given that how on earth could you determine who was 'cis' and who trans? Or who is wearing fancy dress and who is trying to pass?