Guardian journalist: Don't debate drag

@CodenameVillanelle at the risk of being a pain and being told to go and do my own research, I would be interested to see the critiques of the womanface/drag/blackface position. From my own meagre research and knowledge the genesis of these have been fairly similar (as an entertainment form which ridicules the minority being portrayed) but I am not terribly knowledgeable on the subject, and would like to be more so...

what is the difference between black face & woman face?
Black face has been used to commit violence against black people.
So no, it's not the same.

@Michelleoftheresistance you hit the nail on the head. None of us care that much about drag and care more about the fact that we're supposed to spend our lives walking on egg shells lest we accidentally offend anyone and then when a "cis white woman" says "actually I find this offensive" the resounding reply is "shut the fuck up!".

Personally I don't find drag funny as I do always feel like the joke is at my expense. I'm happy for other adults to go and watch it but the idea that it's somehow teaching us all about gender is absurd.

I think it is related to the Maddonna/Whore thing.

Drag is taking the piss out of the latter. Since any woman is that who does not fit the 'saintly mother' box is the latter, it is not coming from a place of love.

I think that there are some instances of drag being incidental to the humour - the League of Gentlemen fall into that category, because the writers play all of their main characters and some of them happen to be female. I will never not laugh at Steve Pemberton in American tan tights and a big helmet-hair wig. Similarly, Hinge and Bracket were talented musicians and there never seemed to be anything malicious about their act. I can see why some people might not have liked Cissie and Ada but I thought the fact that they looked nothing like women (and weren't really trying to) was all part of the humour.

On the other hand, something like Mrs Brown's Boys offends me because the "humour" depends on him being dressed up as a woman. Oh, look how hilarious it is when a middle aged woman says feck a lot! Tee fucking hee. There's nothing clever about it, it's just a lazy, one-note novelty act.

The Ru Paul style drag queen stuff is so obviously offensive to women that I can't fathom how it has become the sort of cosy teatime family entertainment that can be constantly referenced during Strictly.

Justhadathought
Drag as a cultural phenomenon dates back to Tudor times

Are they referring to those times when women were banned from acting and female parts had to be played by men?

Women are allowed to be offended by things. It’s just that we first have to go and find a man to tell us whether it’s okay to be offended or whether we’re worrying our silly little heads over nothing. It’s so lucky for us that so many generous helpful men are so keen to tell us what we can and can’t talk about.

The Guardian: Women, do as we say; think as we tell you to; say what we tell you to say.

Also The Guardian: The Guardian is dying, please everyone give us money so we can keep going. For the sake of quality journalism.

Women: Um...

I think most emotionally healthy people signal a 'back up nutjob' when a total stranger tries to dictate to them what they should and shouldn't do.

It doesn't matter how I personally feel about drag: the fact stands that more and more people are saying 'I find this offensive'. Now usually everyone runs around like headless chickens desperate to prevent any offensive or possibly politically incorrect or insensitive actions.

Isn't it funny that when it's only women who mind/are affected that suddenly is ok? It's like the UK's knee deep in misogyny and women are oppressed or something. (And we still definitely can tell which sex people are...… no one tell Judge Tayler.)

Whenever someone is saying "no debate" I invariably go and find out about it myself.

Yes. I have a pretty strong contrarian streak, and I find I have to exercise a significant amount of self-control not to take the opposite view without giving the whole thing fair consideration.

There are a lot of articles in the vein of telling people what they must do or think, rather than trying to be really persuasive, presenting it as something that the author thinks or some group wants to convince us all of. The sense is they have some sort of moral authority

Exactly this.

I am also not personally annoyed/offended by drag. I can't see the actual harm.

But increasingly people are being told that they shouldn't be talking/thinking/having an opinion about something. It's very annoying and I can't fathom how people think that telling other people they can't debate something will work. Whenever someone is saying "no debate" I invariably go and find out about it myself.

It's the fact that lots of drag acts don't DO anything. Edna Everage would have been funny played by a woman as would Hinge and Bracket. But the RuPaul people.. Just dress up

Reality tv contests are 99% of the time degraded versions of the real thing. You don't watch American Idol realistically hoping to see an Aretha Franklin.

Dame Edna made good use of her actual maleness in her humour, I think. I recently watched an old interview she did with Ivana Trump and k.d Lang, and it was completely hilarious.

I don't necessarily mind drag, it really depends and I don't think it's always much about women per se, and I don't mind male performers dressing up as women in sketch comedy at all.

But why "not a debate"? If some people don't really like it, or have a problem with it, it pretty much is a debate, isn't it? You might say, this isn't a concern many people share, so I don't think I will write a column about it, but then you aren't going to tell others not to if they care.

It goes along with a type of headline you see a lot in The Guardian "People Need to..." or "We Must All..."

There are a lot of articles in the vein of telling people what they must do or think, rather than trying to be really persuasive, presenting it as something that the author thinks or some group wants to convince us all of. The sense is they have some sort of moral authority.

I don't call it woman face but can understand why some do.

I understand the objections but on the other thread thought the global worldwide fact of women's oppression was downplayed.

We've done all that on the other thread though.

'Saying that, I can see why some see it that way. It does paint femininity as something ridiculous.'

Certainly in my day female sex characteristics were mocked

Breasts
Calling women fish

And then there is the double offence that women and girls are socialised/ coerced into performing femininity for the male gaze, and that is then used as a stick to beat us with.

The crass characterisations of female personality 'types' is also male pigeonholing of women as 2D, not whole rounded people, which again much drag focuses in on.

Yeah I've never liked it since I was a kid and that's kind of that really.

I saw the sapphic kitty womanface/ blackface discussion, too, Arran, and I found it a convincing argument. HOWEVER, that's someone (me, you, probably others) deciding not to use a comparison any more because reasons were given, it was debated, and we were won over. That is a far more effective way to stop people saying offensive things, especially well-intentioned people. Saying #nodebate is just cartoonish: "DON'T DO IT BECAUSE I SAY SO."

It looks like the drag umbrella is very wide and all kinds of thing fall under it from less problematic characterisations of women as people to misogynist parodies accompanied by horrible language to demean women.

That sums up very well my feelings about it

It looks like the drag umbrella is very wide and all kinds of thing fall under it from less problematic characterisations of women as people to misogynist parodies accompanied by horrible language to demean women.

There is a fond place in my heart for Little Britain

General feminine traits being mocked is a greyer area. It does seem hateful

It is o.k, it would suggest, to use words like 'Slag' and 'Slapper' for general entertainment purposes, but try using the word 'faggot' and 'bum-boy' for the same and see where that gets you.......Owen Jones would be up in arms......

Lorraine Kelly is a fool then

How do people have the energy to be mad at drag

We didn't during all of those years tolerating it in the name of support for our gay friends - even though we never liked it and actually found it insulting and offensive.....but times have changed......and now it is being force fed by the likes of the BBC and 'Drag Queen story Time' for children. I'm no longer willing to say nothing.

It is entirely possible to have criticisms of several different things all at once. Like Jo Swinson might say "It's not a pie"....

• I meant hyper femininity/performative femininity

General feminine traits being mocked is a greyer area. It does seem hateful.

I see it as part of queer culture. Same as drag Kings. And tbh there's bigger fish to fry, like the pay gap, violence against women and all that shit. Someone local to me died last week after police ignored her pleas about her stalker ex and now her kids have no mum and a murderer for a father. How do people have the energy to be mad at drag. Saying that, I can see why some see it that way. It does paint femininity as something ridiculous. But then I do think femininity is a ridiculous social construct, same as toxic masculinity.

How the journalist responded is shit though. And it's shite when women's views get muted on the subject in favour of liberal/lefty men's.

Comedy drag isn't always bad. It would be hypocritical to say it was because I love The League of Gentlemen and Portlandia (where the drag goes both ways). Stuff like Drag Race I have no time for though and I'm not keen on performers who build their whole act and persona on being a woman.