Guardian journalist: Don't debate drag

That is revolting, MichelleOfTheResistance! I have never seen that show - how the BBC can defend that is shocking! Just imagine if that had been an insult aimed at TW how different the response would have been.

All they seem to be saying in response to the complaint is, "Oh dear! Poor little snowflake! You do know there are other channels on your moving talkie-picture box thingie, don't you? Try putting some new batteries in the Remote, Boomer! Ps. Thanks for the Licence Fee, Sucker!"

And that's from me as a massive supporter of Publicly Funded Broadcasting and BBC Radio addict!

How very dare they!!!

Actually came here to post this link to a current thread about a Drag Queen who has issued a PSA on Twitter asking that Woke Mums please stop involving their kids in Drag because it is bad for them and bad for Drag.

Kitty Demure - A friendly message to mothers who want their kids influenced by drag

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3799692-Kitty-Demure-A-friendly-message-to-mothers-who-want-their-kids-influenced-by-drag

On the "woman face" thing. I was involved in the earlier thread mentioned. The references to white men donning black face during lynchings, or while transporting black people to lynchings, seem to be VERY recent. The evidence seems to be one or two photos where it is not clear whether actual events are depicted or "staged" enactments. Obviously a subject where anyone doubting the provenance or interpretation of these images is likely to be blasted by a woke firebolt!

The other theme that emerged was that in the USA the "woman face" thing was being used by trans activists to denigrate (has that word been banned yet?) Magdalen Berns for her "Woman Face" video - and would non-USA GC women please stop making things worse by defending use of the term "Woman Face"?

I dipped out of the discussion around about when that explanation was put forward and forgot to go back after the break. I had a lot of sympathy for the black GC feminists in the USA who said they were having a hard time fighting off accusations of being associated with a bunch of white racists in the UK on the basis of Magdalen's "Woman Face" video. Also frustration with the insistence from the USA wokerati that USA history, culture and interpretations trump (ha!) everything else worldwide!

It's as difficult an issue to discuss as Drag when there are such different cultural contexts either side of the pond. Even the Wikipedia link upthread about Drag - it was helpful because another angle, but just that, another angle, not the only one, not definitive and obviously omitting history in other cultures.

On that note - just before Xmas the Religious Right in the USA was having kittens about some recent wokish entertainment event involving cross-dressing. Much foaming at the mouth that it would (obviously!) corrupt kids, trans them, utterly depraved, etc!!

They don't have Panto, of course

A recent development with Panto is, would you believe it (Yes) that while Pantomime Dames are still a staple that Principal Boy is now routinely being played by a bloody man! Not faux outrage at all - how many sodding starring roles are there for young women that this one is being given away?!

While the Principal Boy was usually played by a Big Name in major shows this was a key route in smaller productions for young women to get an Equity Card and employment.

When I saw this happening it did make me wonder about the motives, in these times when a cross-dressing woman is now automatically appropriated as a "transman".

So much is being warped, misappropriated and propagandised, without regard for the impact on women and girls, that I hear alarm bells ringing bloody everywhere!

Incidentally, can anyone think of any other class of people it would be considered appropriate to laugh about stereotype slurs re how they supposedly smell?

Acts of ‘blackface’ tended to mock and laugh at people while RuPaul’s Drag Race does quite the opposite and respects and pays tribute to women

Calling women 'slappers' and joking about the stink of their genitals is respectful and paying tribute to women? How exactly?

What are they smoking in that office?

This is to further my complaint in light of the entirely inadequate response to my initial complaint ( above). None of my specific points were addressed. These were around the offensive use of demeaning words such as 'Slapper', 'Slag' and so on ( words which are used to demean women) - and the insinuation that female genitals are dirty and/or disgusting. Bear baiting and cockerel fighting were around in Tudor times too - but are now considered inappropriate. Likewise heterosexual men dressing, 'mincing' around, and using words such as 'faggot', 'girly boy' and 'poofter' - for the purposes of general entertainment would now, rightly, be considered offensive - even if presented, and highly popular, on our TVs as recently as the 1970's. Please address my specific points, because this issue is not one which is going to disappear any time soon. Just because drag has been a central part of gay male culture does not disguise the inherent misogyny of much of it. Showing repeated adverts on prime time terrestrial TV which depict ugly images of women as ' cows' is not something I want my granddaughter exposed to. Ru Paul has not been without controversy in the U.S either - with trans rights groups deeming it 'transphobic' and not at all inclusive. And the issue of misogynistic content is a discussion and a debate that is also going on in the U.S amongst both the black and white community - with comparisons to 'black face' being made

This is the complaint.

I've just received this response to my, escalated initial, complaint about the offensive portrayal of women and insulting/demeaning language featured in the recent series of Ru Paul's Drag Race. This second response is also completely evasive and in no way adequately addresses my specific concerns around the use of insulting terms such as 'Slag' and 'Slapper', and also regarding the insinuations and suggestions that female genitalia is dirty and disgusting:

Thank you for contacting us again. We were sorry to hear you were unhappy with our previous response.We acknowledge you remain unhappy that some men dress up as women and you find it sexist and that you feel we shouldn’t include this or drag queens in our output

Women have long dressed up as men for similar reasons – British artists Vesta Tilley, Hetty King and Ella Shields are just some examples of performers who became famous in their eras for impersonating men. Drag and crossing-dressing is an established form of entertainment

We do not see the similarity that you draw nor do we agree that artists in RuPaul's Drag Race are comparable to a non-black person painting their face to imitate a black person in ‘blackface’ style. Similarly we do not recognise your view that Drag Race is misogynistic. Acts of ‘blackface’ tended to mock and laugh at people while RuPaul’s Drag Race does quite the opposite and respects and pays tribute to women

RuPaul's Drag Race is open to drag artists/performers to apply and take part and performers of any sexual orientation and gender identity are eligible to audition

However we recognise this programme is not for you

Total evasion and standardised response .They have refused to engage with the substance of my complain in any direct or meaningful way. How on earth do/would they justify the use of the words 'slapper' etc, and the word 'fishy'? They can't; so they haven't. The line seems to be we " adore women" we don't hate them. If that is the case, then stop using demeaning terms and insults.

I'll be taking it to the next stage, of course

In relation to the wider topic of this thread, re comparisons that have been made between blackface and 'womanface', as I said, I'm still open to hearing more on this, especially from POC.

I would be against shutting down all discussion of parallels however, as I think there are clear similarities. The two situations are not identical and indeed, no-one is suggesting using the term blackface to describe women's experience.

But given that both black people and women have been caricatured and dehumanised by white people/men respectively, and given that these caricatures and dehumanisation have fed into violence against both groups, learning lessons from that is important for both POC and women, who are trying to fight back against similar attacks from the far right (and in the case of women, also the far left).

@RoyalCorgi and @terfsandwich

Tangential to the topic of this thread, but re your comment above:

"I was taught in school that concentration camps were different to the death camps. Concentration camps were for locking up undesirables and their families.

I was taught that they were invented by the British in South Africa, in the Boer War, was it?

So yes I've always thought it fine to liken the locking up of refugee families with concentration camps."

To respond to that, which was in response to my earlier post on this topic:

Many of my (Jewish) family members were murdered by the Nazis in WWII: I agree with AOC that it is not only acceptable but a moral duty to draw parallels between Trump's treatment of detainees in immigration/detention camps and the Nazis' treatment of Jews. As the only way to achieve Never Again is to ensure that we stop this kind of behaviour before it gets to the mass genocide stage (rather than merely bemoaning it afterwards). I have no problems with calling Trump a fascist or with highlighting similarities between his treatment of immigrants and minorities and the Nazis' treatment of Jews and other minorities.

BUT as stated above, most Jews do NOT agree with AOC's use of the term 'concentration camps' to describe the immigration/detention centres in modern-day US. This is because:

Concentration camps, as understood by most people, mean mass killing and torture centres. Most notoriously of Jews, but also of other minority groups. As RoyalCorgi writes above, the largest and most notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz, where over a million Jews were murdered, was also a concentration camp, in the sense of a slave labour camp. You can't separate killing centres from holding/slave labour centres neatly. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camp-system-in-depth describes how from their earliest establishment in Nazi Germany, concentration camps "had always been places where the SS could kill prisoners. After the beginning of the war, however, the camps increasingly became sites for the systematic murder of individuals or small groups of persons." "Recognizing the increasing numbers of these small-scale killing operations and because they needed an efficient way to kill prisoners who had become too weak to work, the SS authorities equipped several concentration camps with gas chambers during 1941-1942." Post-1942 and with the decision to go for mass genocide of Jews, "SS and police officials established four killing centers in German-occupied Poland exclusively for this purpose", as well as the one in Auschwitz.

"Scholars have estimated that the Nazi regime incarcerated hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in the concentration camp system between 1933 and 1945. It is difficult to estimate the total number of deaths. One estimate notes a range of between 795,889 and 955,215 deaths of registered prisoners, excluding the deaths of registered Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz and Lublin/Majdanek. If one counts the number of Jews (registered and unregistered) killed at Auschwitz (approximately one million) and at Lublin/Majdanek (at least 89,000), the number of deaths in the concentration camp system ranges between 1,885,889 and 2,045,215."

So in a nutshell, by the most conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in concentration camps by the Nazis.

To therefore use the same word for somewhere in the US that is a forced holding centre with extremely poor conditions where there have been a tiny number of deaths is therefore rather more than just linguistically inappropriate. It plays into Holocaust denial by suggesting that the camps were nothing more than holding/slave labour centres. Plus it does those in the current camps in the US no favours as it is too easy for the far right to denounce critics as liars by pointing out that there is no policy of mass murder in current US detention centres, and therefore there can be no similarity between the two.

The reality is that there are similarities between Trump's treatment of immigrants and the Nazis' treatment of Jews initially. Enforced detention, dehumanisation, lack of food and humane conditions, separation of families etc - these are all things we should be shouting about. As the example of the Nazis show where these things can lead.

But they haven't got there yet. So as I said earlier, it IS important to draw parallels and to seek to learn the lessons of history. It is ALSO important, however, to avoid over-reach with those parallels, as that risks erasing millions of dead from the historical record in favour of a trite "Gotcha", and of making those comparisons too easy to ridicule.

What Trump is doing is bad enough. We don't need to pretend that he is actually conducting mass genocide currently and it doesn't strengthen our case to pretend he is.

Tweet us unprotected now.

Male guardian 'journalist' telling people what can and can't be discussed is part of why paper is going down the crapper. I used to be a loyal reader but they can get in the bin, I used to read Prick news regularly as well

I always hated drag - especially panto, used to think it was because I didn't understand white British culture.

I don't really find the idea that someone doing well thought out comedy in drag could instead just wear a dress on stage very convincing. People like Cobain doing that aren't funny, for one thing, maybe it's worthwhile and exploring femininity, ( though I have my doubts) but it's not similar, any more than someone giving a TED talk about a topic is the same as a comedian addressing a topic.

I think it's to the point that comedians walk a very very fine line around being offensive in many cases. I can think of some nice safe comedians with shows on the CBC, and they are dead boring. When you are touching on various absurdities, which is what a man "being" a woman is, you will always be close to offending people. Of course looking at femininity through comedy will also touch on women and femaleness. I think drag also looks at maleness and masculinity actually, it's really the two together, in tension.

Being subversive to the straight male patriarchy is Nicky Wire up on stage in women’s clothing, or Kurt Cobain in a skirt, or Lou Reed singing about gay sex while wearing women’s clothes and make up despite being forced through shock treatment for being bi and being treated like a pervert and freak show by media.

Men can wear women’s clothes in all kinds of ways that don’t involve ridiculously exaggerated fake breasts, massively over sized lashes, 50 layers of make up, super high stilettos, fish net stockings on show under teeny skirts or ‘hot pants’ all while acting ‘slutty, vacuous, bitchy’ and using fish like it’s acceptable. All of these things don’t subvert the patriarchy they uphold it. Misogynistic men love that drag says fish the same way they love handmaidens screwing over women. It keeps patriarchy firmly in place with zero effort from themselves.

'for them drag is about being a different self, an alter ego where they are free and accepted and celebrated by the drag community.'

Why does this alter ego ago so often need to involve hypersexualised offensive caricatures of women's bodies and personalities though?

Bearded woke bloke thinks he can shut women down. Bearded woke bloke can't. And drag is woman face and it is misogynistic. Bearded woke bloke doesn't get to decide for other people. The guardian really has gone downhill if that's the low quality of writers they employ. They haven't a clue what proper journalism is. Then again, they give Owen Jones a platform too. Misogynistic shitty rag.

I think that's the underlying idea of drag but it seems that quite a lot of drag artists either actually are misogynists or not smart enough to carry it off. So that's why we end up with men insisting that it's ok to refer to women as fish, or tuna etc.

I agree with a lot of the comments on here, I hate the term fish but my interpretation of drag is a little different.

I've watched drag race on occasion and I think if drag men were here they would say it's about being subversive to the straight male patriarchy it isn't about laughing at women at all. The men who typically perform drag are openly gay men who themselves have faced a lot of persecution. When you hear their stories about being disowned by family etc, for them drag is about being a different self, an alter ego where they are free and accepted and celebrated by the drag community.

Do they really use the term fish???

Yikes.

Absolutely just. Women wouldn’t see fish as an acceptable term in any other arena.

I think for me a lot of the drag apologists seem to confuse drag with men wearing women’s clothing, or even as dressing as women, when imho it’s hugely different. Someone dressing as women for Shakespeare or a spoof or rockstars in skirts isn’t about demeaning women, drag is. The obvious exaggeration points to that (massive heels, breasts, lashes, make up and clothings) as does the entire focus on women being slutty, brain dead bitches.

Drag is a very specific variety of men wearing woman face and then being able to wash it off and go on enjoying their privilege and power, while we continue to be actively harmed by the stereotypes they perpetuate by suggesting this is all woman are

Or even by not necessarily suggesting that "this is all women are", but perpetrating certain types of portrayal, and sentiment, that are still used to demean women in everyday life, and on the street, today. Implications that women's sexuality or behaviour is 'sluttish' and somehow dirty, for example. Also the use of predominantly working class stereotypes feeds into this.

I was taught in school that concentration camps were different to the death camps. Concentration camps were for locking up undesirables and their families.

I was taught that they were invented by the British in South Africa, in the Boer War, was it?

So yes I've always thought it fine to liken the locking up of refugee families with concentration camps.

Nah I don’t buy that excuse goose. For a start it’s ignorant to suggest that gay men are more likely to be drawn to femininity any more than straight men- Nicky wire, Richie James Edwards and Kurt Cobain were all clear they were straight but liked wearing women’s clothes and make up. It’s completely ok for men to enjoy what is transitionally thought of as women’s clothing- that’s not drag. Drag uses exaggerated stereotypes like massive fake breasts, massive fake eye lashes and over the top make up and hair. Overtly sexualised clothing and ‘slutty, bitchy’ stereotypes to laugh at women. If men want to explore femininity it’s very easy to do so in ways that don’t make fun of stereotypes that make fun of women, there’s plenty ways rather than the caricature of womanhood drag portrays. Men expanding what’s ok for men is just getting on and wearing whatever they like and not making a joke of how vacuous, slutty and bitchy women are. Drag is a very specific variety of men wearing woman face and then being able to wash it off and go on enjoying their privilege and power, while we continue to be actively harmed by the stereotypes they perpetuate by suggesting this is all woman are.

Goosegoot, you make some interesting points.

I agree with you that drag can be pro-women, and I think there are few GC feminists who would not applaud men exploring their own so-called feminine side (ie by wearing stereotypically feminine clothing which is denied to them as men in a patriarchal culture, such as bright, colourful clothes or make up, etc).

As above, I think the key issue is whether this is done to hit up or down, or just to expand the concept of what it is to be male.

I think the issue is that much drag is quite blatantly misogynistic. And while you might claim that is just low quality drag, it's debatable how much the misogyny is (these days at least) central to and typical of drag as a whole.

Interesting, Arran.

I do wonder if people have, as you suggested, leapt from 'blackface is dehumanising, and dehumanisation can lead indirectly to physical attacks', to 'people attacked black people while actually wearing blackface themselves', which is something completely different.

It does matter, because while the claims may have started from an understandable and worthy desire to protect black people from further offence, they may have unintentionally morphed into a way of closing down and removing women's opportunities to accurately describe our own oppression and to draw valid forms of comparison to other forms of oppression.

That is not to say that oppression against women and against POC are identical, because that would obviously be a ridiculous claim and diminish the real histories of violence and discrimination against both women and POC, but nevertheless, without a good reason, I see no reason to avoid using the term 'womanface', given it pithily and clearly expresses the main issues around drag and more generally, around men dressing up as women.

Just as I am concerned about the erasure of the word 'woman', I am concerned about further attempts to police and erase other language used to describe women's oppression.

I wonder if the [blackface] has been used as the costume when attacking/lynching Black people is akin to the argument in this HuffPo piece?

There is no acceptable reason to ever don blackface. It’s not a joke; it isn’t funny. No claims about humor or creative license can ever make it okay. Blackface is part of a history of dehumanization, of denied citizenship, and of efforts to excuse and justify state violence. From lynchings to mass incarceration, whites have utilized blackface (and the resulting dehumanization) as part of its moral and legal justification for violence.

www.huffpost.com/entry/just-say-no-to-blackface-_b_1752139?guccounter=1

Dehumanisation, systemic abuse and lack of respect are never either moral or legal justification for violence or denying civil rights. The HuffPo piece seems like it might be misquoted and morph into something else. (I'm surprised by how this stuff happens in cuttings for years.) (I may be very wrong and would be interested in the source.)