Drag and misogyny

By all means, stay mad and stay ignorant.Nobody cares. Gay people don't. They'll keep doing drag to fight oppression in ways that they see fit.The world will keep spinning.
Women will keep dying . Girls who menstruate will still be banished to freeze in huts to save men from having to endure the stench of their genitals. Men will continue to humiliate women to get back at other men . The world will keep spinning and drag will still be totally and utterly misogynistic.

Gay men are not opressed by feminist women for being feminine. Mumsnet feminist's entire fucking worldview is that gender and masculinity and femininity are only loosely based on sex. You dufus. What part of this are you not getting?

Not all gay men are feminine. That sounds remarkably like a societal expectation to me.

I have never met anyone so trapped by the binary and steroetypes and so oblivious to how led by the nose by it they really are , Yeahbutnaw.

do you have any gay male friends?

Do you have any female friends?

To equate it to a drag queen performance, though, it wouldn't be 'themselves', it would be - I dunno, a bloke with a huge fake beard, a Dali moustache, a huge chest wig, a giant cock and balls, jeans hanging off his arse, and a voice as rough as a badger's backside, etc. Lurid, crass and exaggerated.

Instead of conforming to masculine expectations, drag performers accentuate their imagined, insulting, facile and superficial simulcrum of femaleness as a 'fuck you' to other men.

Indeed. Women as homosocial tokens for men to use in their discourse between themselves. This makes it very clear that the men who do this don't see women as full humans but only as secondary service drones.

@Shedbuilder

All due respect, but do you have any gay male friends? You seem to be reducing LGBT oppression to violent acts, which is a gross misrepresentation of oppression.

Do straight women take part in gay-bashing? Yes. Probably not as often as men. But they do.

Do they participate in other forms of LGBT oppression? Abso-fucking-lutely. How many times have you heard a woman introduce a friend as "my gay friend"? How many times have you heard a woman say, "Such a waste" when they hear someone is gay? How many times have you heard a woman make fun of gay stereotypes?

Answer? All. The. Fucking. Time.

CuriousaboutSamphire

that one was terrific Curious. That poster surely must have had a 'oh.... right....' moment, but we may never know because they may never be able to admit it.

Hence they perform FEMININITY. Yes! And their perception of feminity usually involves it having a distinctive and unpleasant smell, amongst other stupid, debasing, persistently negative perceptions.

Which is the point you are determined to side step! - or step ball change of you wish to feminise that a bit more!

drag to fight oppression
Let's be charitable as assume this is the case.

1. How do stage names mocking abortions and miscarriage fight the oppression of gay men?
2. How to misogynistic jokes about women's genitals fight the oppression of gay men?

Yes, absolutely. It's an expression of woman-hating. There's nothing redeeming in it.

Gay men are oppressed for being FEMININE.
Hence they perform FEMININITY.
Performing masculinity would, by definition, be conforming to societal expectations.
What part of this are you not getting?

Surely a drag performer could give up drag and perform as themselves and come up with clever jokes to mock masculinity? Or maybe they can't, maybe the best a drag performer can manage is a shallow characature of an easy target?

Men in drag aren't performing femininity, they're performing a parody of it.

The equivalent would be a parody of extreme maleness.

But that's never done, for some reason.

@LolaSmiles

CuriousaboutSamphire I've not noticed them. I shall keep an eye out for any corkers.

So I now have a completely different mental image and opinion of that poster. They now make me

It's not women who oppress men for being gay, is it? Women are rarely guilty of gay-bashing. Few women oppress camp or feminine gay men: they are often the kind of gay men that women feel most comfortable with. It's men who oppress other men for being gay. So why the palpable dislike and hatred of women and women's bodies in so much drag? Why take it out on women?

Many of my LGB friends, including men, are increasingly worried about the displays of sexuality and paraphilias that we see at Pride. It's as if everyone is scared of saying that anything is inappropriate: and those of us who do are told we're humourless feminists. People are allowed to have boundaries. Just because we're LGB doesn't mean we can do what we want and expect people to tolerate it.

And a pretty far reach to say 'Gay people don't care'. Or are you a gay man and this is you speaking for the entire gay population?

Oh, you are talking about the gangs of women out beating up drag queens?

Amazing that women are so powerful all of a sudden, having been conveniently ignored and dismissed for so long.

Now you come onto a feminist board and tell women we're big bad meanies oppressing gay men by noting that their depiction of women is offensive?

To those who support drag, can I ask what the benefits of drag are? The two obvious ones are -

The performer presumably gets something out of it (money and / or some sort of pleasure or validation or release).

The audience (or at least some of the audience) presumably find it funny.

But, it seems to me, that neither of those reasons are really good enough reasons if it's true that lots of women hate it and find it bigoted.

Can anyone point out any other benefits of drag? Does it make intelligent points, or help break down stereotypes, or help undermine bigotry and hate? Does it build up oppressed people?

It occurs to me that even if the drag opponents on this thread are laying it on a bit thick (and I don't think they are), then there is still an argument that trivial benefits of drag are easily outweighed by the possible downsides.

Hence they perform FEMININITY.

Performing masculinity would, by definition, be conforming to societal expectations.

What part of this are you not getting?

It would be more effective to rip the piss out of toxic masculinity

Ah, but that would be genuinely risky.

Far safer for drag queens to continue to mock women than ever turn their anger towards maleness, masculinity or men.

That's utter bollocks.

drag to fight oppression

Fight men's oppression by subjugating females?

"Who are gay men being oppressed by? Not women."

Are you having a laugh? You think only men are responsible for LGBT oppression?

You're on Mumsnet. There's a woman a few threads down saying her son can't be gay because he likes rough sports and isn't effeminate.

You're the oppressors of gay people as much as straight men are.

'It has essentially nothing to do with women' - in that women are not included in the human race in this picture, I see that. It's a matter of men using women - straight men insulting gay men by calling them 'feminine' - i.e. like women and gay men hitting back by acting out a parody of women. The problem is that 'woman' here is used either as an insult or as an empty signifier, devoid of agency. Drag queens are using 'woman' as a kind of sacrificial decoy. 'Take her, not me'.

'Woman' is not a mask, doll, or puppet used in a power game between men.

Women are here, telling you how they feel.

You could listen.

By all means, stay mad and stay ignorant.

Nobody cares. Gay people don't. They'll keep doing drag to fight oppression in ways that they see fit.

The world will keep spinning.