Drag and misogyny

I spluttered at that original comment and came to make a similar response.

I can't work out who should be more offended: gay men for the asumptions about them or women!

I think there is some misogyny in it, but also it's a significant part of gay culture

So misogyny is ok if the members of the patriarchy are gay?

Mentioning Jonbenet Blonde earlier has reminded me of a list of celebrity endorsements on their website.

"The Original “Fash Mag Slag”
One of the only Drag queens ever to perform on the Pyramid Stage of Glastonbury..ever!
Performing, Djing and Producing shows for over 10 years in London. Being a creative director for Sink The Pink and performing with Pop legends: Little Mix, Melanie C, The Pussycat Dolls, Zara Larsson, Nadine Coyle and more!"

So this impersonation of a little girl who was murdered as an entertainment act is juxtaposed with Little Mix, a mainstream popular girl band with fans who are under 18.

I think that moves somewhere beyond misogyny tbh.

I think over recent years the professional drag scene has morphed into a huge money making concern, so they are all desperately trying to out do and other and in so doing becoming more and more grotesque and crude.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Kids

One of the children had the stage name 'Queen Lactatia'. He can't have chosen that for himself, surely?I had to stop watching during that particular clip. I find modern drag to be horrendously misogynistic and nothing like what I encountered as a student in London in the late 90s. It seemed friendlier then, although that might just have been the particular scene I knew.

The fact that children are now getting involved chills me, and that one child has the name 'Queen Lactatia' puts me in mind of the vegan cat analogy. We all know who's making the choices.

I think the idea is that drag queens see themselves as bravely rejecting masculine stereotypes, by exaggeratedly pretending to take on feminine stereotypes.

It's all through a male lens. Nowhere in here are actual women seen, heard, considered.

This is maybe why female drag queens get so much hostility. When a real life woman opens her mouth, makes herself visible as a human with agency, it spoils the game being played by men, who were happily taking femininity as a voiceless mirage, playing with it for themselves, happy to claim it, ridicule it, mock it as it has no real impact on them, they can take the outfit off at the end of the day.

It's still males seeing women as not-quite-human, isn't it? Just as form of 'not-men'.

Is it nice to parody femininity that women are nevertheless bullied into conforming

Force someone to do something and then Laugh at them for it ?

I always thought of it as a parody of femininity rather than females,

Yes, sure, but what does it mean for a male to make this parody? And what does it mean for a female to make this parody?

You have to consider what the power differential is between a man and a woman.

Yes it's misogynistic. Many of the jokes are about how 'slutty' the drag queen is (even Lily Savage did this), and the names often follow along with this or are plain awfulin pther ways: Flo Job, Cheryl Hole, Miss Carriage, Anna Bortion Malestia Child...

I mean, it's all about power, isn't it?

In the male/female relationship, males have power.

Drag queens think they are rejecting their power to act as the one with less agency/power. To say this makes them actually in any way equivalent to understanding a woman's position is to say that a millionaire wearing ragged clothes has any right to comment on the oppression of poverty as part of their lived experience.

Impersonation doesn't offer much insight. It's only ever a reflection of how the impersonator sees the person they are pretending to embody.

"I think there is some misogyny in it, but also it's a significant part of gay culture - I think it's OK as long as we're aware of what's potentially problematic about it."*
*
It's this boundary that makes it hard for me to get worked up about 'fish' - although I totally understand why others do. Eg Drag Race is a behemoth and has lost a lot of its original charm, but it's easy to forget how small and underground it started. In a lot of ways I don't think it - and some of the terminology used by drag queens - was ever supposed to make it to the mainstream, or move particularly outside of gay culture.

You might argue this ignores a problem that would still exist (or even be worse) behind closed doors, but every subculture is going to have its own slang and in jokes, even if they're not in good taste.

I'm not sure. I always thought of it as a parody of femininity rather than females, especially in the context of the (mainly) gay men who would exaggerate a feature that they would face abuse or violence for expressing in ordinary life.
I also think a lot of gay men go into it for the pure fun of dressing up, and not anything to do with women.
However, I've since seen a huge amount of truly awful misogynistic drag acts and I think my original take is a lot more complex.
I still think my original feelings still apply for a lot of drag queens but as in most male-dominated environments, misogyny can be a huge problem and isn't called out or even recognised even when its running rampant and instead becomes integrated into the day-to-day.

I can't claim to be an expert on the history but my understanding is that in its original incarnation drag was about gay men and lesbians and happened in closed and often illegal clubs. It wasn't a spectator sport. It was the only place that butch dykes and effeminate gay men could meet and they performed for and sometimes with each other.

There was a middle period where the straight population were alllowed in.

But now it's just misogyny on steroids.

I can see nothing female in the face of a drag performer not even in a grotesque sense.

Who are they attempting to portray for laughs, if not a grotesque version of women?

It's not just about the performer, either. It's also about the pushback from the community, and their fellow performers, or the lack of it.

Jonbenet Blonde, Malestia Child, Anna Bortion, Miss Carriage are getting booked, aren't they? If they weren't, they'd have changed their names in response to the negative feedback.

It's perfectly possible to discuss the misogyny and sexism of drag without getting into the race/blackface issue..

Drag is a culture - the whole premise or 'joke' is that men 'abase' or ridicule themselves by dressing like women and taking on a hyper feminine appearance.

'He claimed women drag artists lack 'danger and irony' - in part because men dressing in women's clothes is an overt rejection of masculinity'

It's not 'ironic' for women to dress in a hyper-feminised manner is what he's saying here. Because he is unable to separate women from hyper-feminine. He's seeing those feminist stereotypes as intrinsically buried within women, the 'feminine' gender as being inherent and inborn to women. Saying that women and their gendered stereotypes are intrinsically linked in these ways is to say that hair, make up, tits, frocks, heels are part of the condition of 'woman'. It's also inferring that an extreme focus on appearance is somehow 'feminine'.

If he says there is no irony in women dressing as feminine he is saying women are feminine and can't escape that 'gender', can't comment on it, examine it from an objective point of view, can't be outside of that 'gender'. They should only live within it, never poke fun, never question it or mock it.

That's my reading of it, anyway.

Then again, he's calling it a rejection of masculinity. Is it? Wouldn't that entail men actually acting in ways that are considered not-masculine? That would be ... caring, kind, gentle, what am I missing. Drag queens are known for being outrageous, loud, funny, crass, ridiculous. It's showing a man taking on the outward stereotypes of femininity is ridiculous. To me it seems to be doing the opposite of rejecting masculinity. It's playing against the stereotype of masculinity, but it's not really undermining it, is it?

I honestly didn't mind much of the older forms of drag where it was clear that they were gay men who liked pretty costumes and who often had a hand in designing and making these. Sometimes the compere was a drag king.

The newer forms ... nah.

I think there is some misogyny in it, but also it's a significant part of gay culture - I think it's OK as long as we're aware of what's potentially problematic about it. I don't think it's hateful towards women but it does irk that queens are celebrated for displaying characteristics that have been used (inaccurately) to hold back women- oh, women are shallow, women are bitchy, women are so competitive with each other. Although these same accusations are held against gay men and drag culture is in large part a reaction to that rather than against women.

And what about the prosthetic breasts. It is rather womanface isn't it.

Oooh, now there's a new one — telling feminists that we have no sense of humour...

Justin Trudeau was publicly called out for blackface when he dressed up as Aladdin for a party. He was being a disney cartoon character.

Also, drag in under the trans umbrella and we all men under that umbrella are declared to be 'non-cis' women.

They're not the bad guys in this situation. If they want to dress as comically slutty women whose boobs keep bouncing fully out of their clothes and who keep having to pause their act to 'give birth' and then throw the baby into the audience because it's 'another black one' then... ok yes that particular example is very offensive but it's A) an extreme example and not representative of drag as a whole and B) one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

OK. The only thing you can say about this was

The sort of 'funny because it's so offensive' humour that would go down like a lead balloon on here.

And woman drawing boundaries stating that this behaviour is offensive and misogynistic are the 'bad guys' then? We are the problem? Because we can see it, and you can't?

Oh .... and we don't have a sense of humour apparently. Maybe I should be laughing with incredulousness at how ludicrous it is to be called the 'bad guys' for finding that offensive.

If they want to dress as comically slutty women whose boobs keep bouncing fully out of their clothes and who keep having to pause their act to 'give birth' and then throw the baby into the audience because it's 'another black one' then... ok yes that particular example is very offensive but it's A) an extreme example and not representative of drag as a whole and B) one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The sort of 'funny because it's so offensive' humour that would go down like a lead balloon on here.

You're making a judgement on the people who find racist comments offensive? You can't surely be saying that racist comments are acceptable if used as part of a drag act?