Womanface

I’m really heartened to see Spokane parents have had enough and are standing up against this. For the rest of the article it’s quite boggling and purposefully ignorant. Womanface is the last remaining blackface. There are no other groups for which it is acceptable to dress up and mock. It is one of the fronts in this war on women.

I don’t like womanface/ drag but think @ComtesseDeSpair has excellently communicated how black face has been a basic building block of racism whereas it’s just another component of sexism. I haven’t expressed that well, but would say neither are ok but nor are they directly equivalent.

Yes people do it in Australia to denegrstr aboriginals - I have always thought of it as a global cross cultural occurrence

I think 'blackface', for many of us, especially in the UK, does not just refer to one particular demographic usage in the US at one point in history, but refers to anyone at all 'blacking' themselves up for costume or for comedy.

I can think of some recent examples by white males who went to prestigious universities here. I can also think of times I have seen it myself on fancy dress nights out on my local town. These people are not at all linked or probably even aware of the Jim Crow era. They are simply putting on what they feel is a costume and making a mockery of it. It doesn't make it any less offensive.

Stupid, sodding strikethrough never works for me but I think my poin5 still gets across.

FFS. Read that article as follows and see if it makes sense (really hope strike out works):

For decades and decades, on stages and then in movies, —white Americans— men —darkened their faces with burnt cork or shoe polish, exaggerated their features and mannerisms— painted their faces with garish cosmetics, donned brightly coloured polyester miniskirts and boob tubes over artificial hips and silicone implant breasts and pretended to be —black Americans— women – lazy, oafish, superstitious, sexually rapacious, illiterate, stupid, inferior —black Americans— women.

It was a direct outgrowth of the nation’s history of —slavery and racism— patriarchy a —white-supremacist— misogynistic reflection of a majority culture ridiculing the very people it was oppressing. It flourished in the years after —slavery was abolished— the Equality Act was introduced - a knee-jerk cultural reaction by —white Americans— men who were clearly uncomfortable with the social ramifications of —free black Americans— women’s liberation.

That is why —blackface— womanface remains so offensive today. It’s not just the —burnt cork— hideous makeup and clothing. It’s the history and context.

I feel the same way about this comparison as I do about Nancy Kelly comparing holding gender-critical beliefs to holding anti-Semitic beliefs - the two aren’t comparable and as both gender critical and Jewish, it was deeply offensive.

Blackface and the systematic social and political repression of black people are so inextricably linked that the very term “Jim Crow” - rigid anti-black segregation laws in force between the end of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement - derives from an 1832 blackface minstrel number by Thomas D. Rice. Blackface in the US and its resulting dehumanization was utilised by white society as part of its moral and legal justification for violence, lynching and stats-sponsored killing of black people.

I have no liking at all for drag, I don’t think it’s funny or clever or kind; nor do I think it’s celebratory or embracing of women and feminist as many drag queens state. But I absolutely do not think it’s comparable to blackface.

Please answer how a man in drag acting out lovely woman doing charity work, is different from someone in blackface acting out a lovely black person doing charity work.

How are they different?

They are not. So if the drag queen version is in offensive then logically so is the black face. Shall we ask a black person how they feel about that.

OH NO wait, silly me! Let's ask a white man what he thinks shall we.

Interesting a white man has historically been the oppressor of both black people and women....

I read that article wondering if it was satire in moments..

''comparing drag queens to blackface performers – it cynically reduces the historical crime of blackface to little more than a selfish, opportunistic political strategy. ''

.. so then being a drag queen is a selfish, opportunistic political strategy?

''Drag is not blackface. It is not based on depicting women as comically subhuman for the delight of the nation’s majority population''

... uhh... That's what drag seems to be exactly!

Anyway, turns out the article is not satire, the (white male) author is stating that women have no right to be offended by the overly sexual, grotesquely exagerrated expression of apparant womanhood.

This line for me really shows that this man has no fucking clue what he is talking about :

''Mom Strong are not victims of centuries of overt and covert and continuing discrimination at the hands of drag queens''

Drag queens are men. Yes, absolutely 'Mom Strong' aka WOMEN have had centuries and centuries of discrimination from men. What a fucking numpty.

@Francescaisstressed will it is almost entirely male - 99.99999% I’d say - that’s got a wee whiff of being sexist just as a starter for ten I’d say

Drag can be sexist. It doesn't have to be and alot of the time isn't. Blackface is always racist.

It is not based on depicting women as comically subhuman for the delight of the nation’s majority population. It is not a vestige of a century of vigorous punching down by the powerful against the powerless.

Isn't it? Some of it looks pretty much like that. With sexual objectification thrown in for good measure.

@Francescaisstressed sorry the argument is that women have not been oppressed by the men wearing drag? And drag does not mock women? (Fishy smells??)

www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/jun/12/dont-compare-drag-queens-to-blackfaced-minstrels/

Sums it up for me

I'd like to see an answer to this too, OP.